#1 Warcraft 3 Reforged Modding Community

fladdermasken · Jun 18, 2016

loadingscreen2.jpg.842f2fc357ff8cdd4a35a705d601ded5.jpg

Element TD on your phone

Element TD, a community hit that first drew breath arounud 2006, has by now seen a full decade of development. From early Warcraft III release in September 2006, to a Starcraft II release in June 2009, and most recently a Dota 2 release in February this year. On the 15th of June, Element Studios LLC returned to the spotlight with their first release for mobile phones. Right now it's supported on Android systems (4.1 or later), but an iOS release is in the pipeline and will be released soon.

Gameplay Preview

Element Tower Defense returns in this strategy game based on elemental combinations. The elements you choose determine the towers that you can build. Countless combinations offer more strategies to discover.

Element TD provides hours of challenging gameplay to fans and new players alike. The level of depth and replayability are unparalleled in the genre;

Global leaderboard to compete against your friends and the world

44 different towers with unique abilities and multiple upgrade paths

50 different creep types to challenge your defenses

3 different maps to mix up your tactics

6 different elements (Light, Darkness, Water, Fire, Nature, Earth)

4 different modes (Random, Chaos, Rush, God)

4 different difficulty settings (can you master Insane?)

Family-friendly theme so everyone can play

Regular updates will be adding new content, features, and mechanics. Some items on our list;

Animation for creeps and towers

Achievements/Challenges

Improved visual effects

Expanded leaderboard stat collection

We are continually working to improve the game. Please share your ideas and report bugs to our community (forums.eletd.com). Your contributions are invaluable to us.

The App

The app is available on Google Play at the modest price of $2.99 for the full game. There will be no micro-transcations or pay-to-win elements.

Download Here.

The Team

Meet Element Studios LLC, the team behind Element TD.

Karawasa (Leader)
CRAZYRUSSIAN (Artist)
WindStrike (Designer)

You can follow the development progress and get news and updates either on their dedicated website, http://www.eletd.com/, or right here on THW in Karawasa's development thread.

Past Versions

Want to check out the previous versions of the game on other platforms? See below.

	Warcraft III version
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/element-td-survivor-4-3b.125024/

	Starcraft II version
http://forums.eletd.com/topic/95210-sc2-element-td-150/

	Dota 2 version
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/16970

Ralle · Jun 10, 2016

Welcome to HIVE 2

The time has come, the upgrade is finally ready to be used. There is still a lot for us to do, but from here on out we are able to begin using the new system, and continue upgrading things as we go. The site is based on XenForo, a more modern and up to date forum platform. So far, we have rewritten our resource systems, the pastebin, chat and Night Elf theme. While we're very happy with it, if you ask Archian he will cringe and say NO IT IS NOT READY because the theme is not as refined as he would like.

However, I have worked on this upgrade since 2012. The old site is only growing older, and with this becoming more prone to hacks. This has been worrying for all of us, but in the long run it has proven to be useful: development of Hive 2 really sped up as a result of this, and now... Here we are. Today is the day! I, and the rest of the staff, hope you enjoy it.

If you didn't have the chance to look at the beta site, a few things will be new to you. Please read the rest of this post carefully to make the transition as easy as possible.

Resources are something that have changed a lot. You will come across the notion of a bundle. Everything submitted is a bundle. When a resource is uploaded, a bundle is created. Updating bundles allows the resource to be updated, and for more resources to be added. The reasoning for this is simple: now you can submit a model and upload alternative versions, alternative textures, suggested icons and even test maps. Everything will come nicely bundled in a simple, single package. Naturally, though, only things that must go together should be bundled. It is not a method to create huge compilations of things - for this, we still have the packs section.

Additionally, bundles may now have multiple authors (currently, this can only be added by a moderator). This fixes a longstanding issue previously experienced when working with other people or taking over projects. Bundles may have multiple screenshots. Models can be filtered by animation names. On top of this the new wysiwyg editor is available when editing bundle descriptions.

The chat has been updated to use WebSockets. This makes it more robust, and makes the transmission of messages a lot faster. This means we no longer support a browser that none of you should be using anyway: Internet Explorer. We recommend instead using either Chrome, Firefox, or if you absolutely must stick with Microsoft, Edge. This is not the only new addition to the chat, however, as it now also supports multi-user private messaging. It will be a useful feature if you're trying to collaborate with a large group of people! We also have a discord server (a widget will be added to the site shortly) that is useful for voice chatting, and we use this regularly during the game nights we host.

Previously, the BB Code system used to be forgiving when people used [tabs], [TABLE], and [INVTABLE] while overlapping tags. This is no longer the case. You may stumble across some broken posts, or notice that posts you’re trying to make will show up broken. If this happens, please contact us and we will help fix the code. The reason for this breaking change is that the former system actually made it possible to ruin the whole page layout if code was crafted in a special way.

Social groups no longer exist. However, all content has been imported into a forum named “Social Groups”. This was a tough decision for us to make, but it was decided for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the functionality of social groups has been replaced by the ability to create private group conversations.

The pastebin is the same as it ever was, only now it has wysiwyg controls and will eventually remind you when an entry is due to expire.

Ralle · Jun 7, 2016

After almost a year of development, we proudly present a brand new chapter for Gaias Retaliation.

Travel to Dun Haldran, a dwarven town high up in the Whitepine Mountains and prepare the pathway towards the epic conclusion of Gaias Retaliation.
A dozen new quests, several new bosses and hundreds of new items await our adventurers.

A complete revamp of the ability system now presents abilities as grouped choices, adding further depth to customize your character. Talents can further shape your playstyle by improving abilities or adding passive bonuses to your hero.

As your equipment improves, so does your character. Every piece of armor and weapon adds a new flavour to how your character looks and feels, changing not only the visible equipment parts, but also the clothes worn by the character.
To further customize your character, you can change your hair color and hide your equipped headgear.

The last update implemented the first new character class since the early days of developement of Gaias Retaliation back in 2009. Unleash the raw mental powers of the Psion or hone your skills on the bending of metal and play as a tanky Hexblade.

Find lost souls on your travels and explore the depths of the mysterious Soul Vault.
These souls will grow and gain power while in your sanctum, granting stronger bonuses as you progress through the game. Soul Vaults can be saved and loaded independent of your heroes and can be shared by across all your characters. Level up new characters and still get benefits for your favorite!

Select from a large variety of mounts and travel faster across Ankhmaron.

Custom Music & Voice Acting

Tired of reading and listening to the same old tracks?
Get a fresh selection of various awesome ambient music pieces and voice acted quests by dropping our official Gaias Expansion Folder into your WC3 directory!
This package is completely optional and will not modify your game files in any way. It will only be used by Gaias Retaliation and has no impact on other maps.

So what are you waiting for?

Download Gaias Retaliation v1.2C now or play directly on Battle.net by adding our bot "Gaias" to your friendslist and join the hosted games!

PurgeandFire · Jun 6, 2016

One of our users, Abelhawk, recently created a youtube series to showcase the fascinating and hilarious easter eggs within Warcraft III's campaigns (check it out here!). David Fried, one of the campaign designers for Warcraft III, noticed those videos and contacted Abelhawk for a fun interview! Check it out below, or on Abelhawk's blog.

Abelhawk: First things first, what was your specific position at Blizzard? Did you just design the campaign levels themselves, or did you have a hand in designing anything else about the game?

David: So at Blizzard I started in Quality Assurance. It was my first job in the game industry and my second job at all. I was working at a technical book store and I was running out of money for college. I didn't want to go into debt, so I thought, why not work in games? I was technical-minded, and I loved games. So, why not give it a try?

I called 4-1-1 and asked for the number for Blizzard, and they gave it to me. I immediately called and asked if they were looking for anyone who had Macintosh experience (I was a big Mac person at the time). Lo and behold, they needed Mac QA testers for Diablo and Starcraft! I went in for an interview and immediately felt at home. Everyone was wearing T-shirts and jeans, and playing games. I knew I wanted to work there, and my background in computers and games made the interview a breeze.

I got the job and started in QA, and while I was there for almost two years, I developed a knack for making neat test levels for Starcraft in StarEdit. I created a new co-op campaign map for Starcraft N64 called Resurrection, and it was very well received, so when Blizzard was looking for new level designers to take over the Starcraft Map of the Week program, I was picked right up.

"Deception" was my favorite Map of the Month that I made. It has the most story elements, and a lot of them ended up sliding into Starcraft lore. That was back when Metzen wasn't paying too much attention to what I was doing. I also did "Trademasters," "Mercenaries II," and "Arena," which someone once told me inspired the Arena maps in WarCraft 3 that eventually became DOTA, but that's not a straight line nor verifiable.

Soon WarCraft 3 began ramping up in development, and so I was moved to helping create the campaign maps. At Blizzard, everyone on the team gets a say in game design, systems, and story elements. So it's a very cooperative process. Primarily though, the level designers are the closest to the end product, and thus they end up working the hardest and longest of anyone on the team. Both because level designers are often waiting for tools and other elements of code and art, which we then have to implement long after everyone else is done, but also because we're the people who have to find the fun, and make sure that each map is an enjoyable experience.

For WarCraft 3 RoC I created "The Culling" (my claim to fame really, if I have one), "Digging Up the Dead," "By Demons Be Driven," and "A Destiny of Flame and Sorrow." I was also the writer of the team, so all of the tooltips (we called them ubertips internally, don't know why), most of the items, and the color schemes for information on abilities and items were my idea. I also wrote a large portion of the flavor text in the game, and some bits of the extended manual. Though looking back, it's definitely not my best writing.

Abelhawk: As a quality assurance employee and later as a campaign designer, how closely did you work with people like Metzen, Samwise, and the voice actors of the game?

David: It wasn't until I was working full time on the N64 Starcraft campaign map that I regularly started speaking to devs from "upstairs." That's how I met Michael Heiberg and Mark Kern. I actually already vaguely knew some of the level designers because three of them were former QA (Scott Mercer, Dave Hale, and Eric Dodds, all great people).

I played Dungeons & Dragons with Chris Metzen, Sam Didier, Jason Hutchins, and Derek Simmons for well over two years while I was there. Everyone was really cool to work with. Blizzard Entertainment was truly a company of like-minded nerds who just wanted to make cool stuff. Once I moved to level design, I interacted with Sammy and Chris all the time. I even had Mike Morhaime come and help with "The Culling," because the triggers got... a bit complicated and he came in to clean up.

Abelhawk: How long did it take to make a single campaign map on average? What was the process like? Did you have the story first, then the map layout, then triggers, testing, doodads, etc.?

David: An average campaign map takes about two weeks if the premise is simple, and up to eight weeks if it's a very trigger-heavy map (as most of mine were). The story was written first by Chris Metzen, then we'd all sit down and walk through the campaign scene by scene to determine what sort of levels each campaign would entail. That first phase is where the level designers get to give a lot of feedback on the story.

So we had the intro and outro story first, then we would pick which ones we wanted to do (I called dibs on "The Culling" immediately). Then we would make a document or write up something about what we thought would make a cool level. Then we'd round-table discuss our levels with the other level designers. After that, we'd go start the layouts, and once we had the basics, we'd start putting in triggers to make things work. When we had a fully playable level, we'd get feedback from other level designers, and then if it was approved by the lead (Rob Pardo at the time), it would go out to all-company testing. Then you'd get a ton of feedback, and combined with bugs from QA, you'd spend the next couple weeks fixing things to make it shippable. Of course, you often had multiple maps in the works at a time, so you'd be starting the layout of a new one while tackling the worst bugs on the existing ones you had. It could get a bit hectic towards the end, which is why level designers are often the ones working right up until the moment you ship. Whereas code and art often gets locked down much earlier.

Abelhawk: Do you remember any changes that occurred to the original storyline over time? Were there any big changes in the lore while the maps were being made?

David: There were a lot of changes to story throughout development. The original Illidan was still Furion's brother, but he was a satyr. His dabbling in magic had changed him into one. It was totally a take on Pan from Shakespeare, and it felt really weak. We were all like... "Whaaaat?" So Chris took that back to the drawing board and made him much more badass. Probably one of my favorite characters.

Jaina was supposed to die in a very early draft, but that idea was squashed pretty quickly. Arthas didn't need any more motivation to chase Mal'ganis than he already had, but that was planned to be a main story element. There was supposed to be a love story between Arthas and Jaina, but that didn't work out. It was a bit too Raynor and Kerrigan again, because Jaina was going to become a banshee or something... I don't remember very well, but that plot point obviously got moved to Sylvanas Windrunner. There were a lot of similarities between the Starcraft and WarCraft 3 plotlines, to the point where the first few drafts got sent back multiple times.

I remember towards the end of development there was a huge backlash because of the ending cinematic where Archimonde is attacked by Nightelf tree sperm. There was all sorts of meetings and in-fighting about it. Pardo was rounding people up to basically attack the cinematics department for giving us something nigh-unusable. In the end we made it work, but the joke about the World Tree jizzing on Archimonde would come up at least once or twice a month until we shipped

Abelhawk: If you could go back and change anything about WarCraft 3 that you worked on, or do anything differently, what would it be? This can include mistakes you think other developers made, such as in the storyline. Is there anything you wish was different about the game, campaign, etc?

David: Well, I would certainly have wanted a lead level designer for both projects, because a lot of itemization and level design problems went relatively unnoticed until late in the project. So a lot of item shifting occurred towards the end of development as we saw things like three levels in a row dropping a ring of protection +1 and things like that. That was part of the reason I had been working on the randomized drop box triggers: to streamline the process and remove the possibility of multiple types of the same object dropping (one of the triggers we were waiting on was a way to check the player's inventory for a type of item we intended to drop, and then to choose a different random item if the player had it, and other stuff related to that).

There were also issues where triggers would get stuck somewhere and the level would just sort of peter out. So if I could go back I would probably study programming a little bit more so that I could have done a better job with my heavier trigger levels. I also would have looked at that cinematography book earlier so that I didn't make so many mistakes in the early cinematics.

As to changing the campaign itself, I think there were a couple of levels that weren't as interesting as they could be, and for me, I felt the campaign was more about showing off a really crafted WarCraft 3 experience. So all of the levels where you just built a base and destroyed the enemy, I would have liked to have redone as something more interesting. In game development, there's always that feeling that "oh man, I could have done that so much better."

Abelhawk: Do you still play WarCraft 3? What is (or was) your favorite race to play in Melee maps?

David: I haven't played WarCraft 3 in a very, very, very long time. There's something about finishing a very long and difficult creation process that will make you hate the game, even if you loved making it. Especially if you're a level designer and you have to play your own levels and other people's levels over and over and over, through multiple iterations. There was some excitement after release to see what players were making, so we hung out on Battle.net playing user-made maps quite often, but after playing the fifth iteration of "Whatever Tower Defense" you get a little bit tired of that as well. It wasn't until TFT development started picking up that we went through the user-made maps more seriously and picked out DOTA as something to include in TFT. It was a very early iteration of DOTA but we helped fix some of the buggy trigger issues and updated it with new triggers we were releasing with TFT. The plan was to have DOTA on the disc for TFT, but I guess it ended up taking more time than we thought so we released it later online. I think it was obsolete within the first two days of release of TFT, because... of course it was.

My favorite race to play was the orcs, specifically for the Blademaster. He was such a broken champ and could singlehandedly dismantle a player's base with his invisibility and ridiculous crits. The moment he got ahead it was basically over. That and the grunts were so broken as far as unit health and damage. I wasn't known as a good player, though I was well remembered for my Protoss high templar control when we used to play Starcraft in QA. People feared the psionic storm.

Abelhawk: Did you make any of the Melee maps, or was that a different department than the campaign designing one?

David: I made one or two melee maps, but I was known as the guy who made crappy ones. Mainly because I wasn't much for layout as I was for heavy trigger and story maps. None of them were popular, and I think a lot of them got removed later because they had serious flaws where I tried to do something unique with the terrain that ended up making the map unfun to play a serious PvP game on.

There was only one design department for WarCraft 3, which included seven "level designers" and Rob Pardo as the lead game designer. Tom Cadwell (aka Zileas) joined after WC3 as an associate game designer and to help with unit balance. I remember when he put in the bat riders initially, he made them completely broken and then abused them in a game all of the game designers were playing. Of course, Tom Cadwell went on to be design director at Riot Games and made League of Legends, so he's doing just fine now.

Abelhawk: How involved are you in WarCraft now? Do you play Hearthstone or WoW, read the novels, or play the pen-and-paper RPG? Are you excited for the movie next month?

David: I have no involvement with WarCraft now. I played some Hearthstone shortly after it shipped. It's cool, a very good online version of a CCG that avoids all the traditional trappings of card based CCGs that plague other online ones... But I'm not that into it. I read one of the graphic novels and I've played through WoW and its first expansion, but other than that, it's just not a universe that interests me anymore. I expect the movie to be a failure in all honesty. I've never seen that sort of relationship work well for a game.

Abelhawk: What can you tell me about the Frozen Throne? Which campaign levels did you work on, did the story change at all during development, and was the process of making the expansion any different than making Reign of Chaos?

David: On TFT I made "Wrath of the Betrayer," "The Brothers Stormrage," "Dungeons of Dalaran," and "King Arthas." Dungeons of Dalaran was my favorite one to make. The story was pretty straightforward and there weren't any major changes as compared to ROC. Everyone had gotten into a rhythm and so it was all very quick and businesslike this time around. All of the triggers we wish-listed on ROC became a reality for TFT, so map creation was much easier, triggers in general became much cleaner, and so forth. It was just a lot easier overall.

Abelhawk: Is there anything else you'd like anyone to know about WarCraft 3, Blizzard, game design, programming, careers in the gaming industry, or anything else?

David: People should know that there are real people working on these things. They tend to think of game development studios as these nebulous monstrosities, or some sort of tentacled monster that can only focus on one thing at a time. Features take time, and usually one or two people are assigned to a feature, and putting more people on the same feature would increase the amount of time it takes to complete rather than decrease it (or at the very least would waste a lot of time of one or more of those people). Multiple features are often in the works at a time, so the idea that one feature not being done in a patch is related to other features that were done is a fallacy. If a feature didn't get done, it simply wasn't ready at the time of that patch, and it has no impact on the other features

Abelhawk: Thanks so much, David! Best of luck in your future game design work. Thanks for your time talking to me, and thanks on behalf of all of us fans for your work on WarCraft 3!

David: Thank you for taking the time to closely examine three years of my labor of love.

David Fried has 17 years of game design experience, having worked on such games as WarCraft III, World of WarCraft, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and many others. He recently became the lead designer at EdgeCase games. His YouTube channel about game design and analysis can be found here.

pyf · May 15, 2016

Happy Birthday, Beyond the Dark Portal

In a recent tweet earlier this month,
Blizzard reminds us Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
was first released 20 years ago

So, the beginning of May is not only related to Star Wars after all. :grin:

First published by Blizzard Entertainment on April 30, 1996 in the US, WCII: BDP is Cyberlore Studios' official expansion pack for Blizzard's WCII: Tides of Darkness (first released December 9, 1995 in the US).

A word about Warcraft II: The Dark Saga

In 1997, Blizzard and Electronic Arts released Warcraft II: The Dark Saga for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. This console game combined the campaigns of WCII: ToD and WCII: BDP.

This console game has many interesting differences compared to the PC version. Please see here for a complete list.

Among many notable things, the console version includes additional FMVs throughout WCII: BDP's campaigns.

These CGI movies were not included in the Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, released in 1999.

Opening title

Orcs campaign

Humans campaign

Sources :

JudgeHype.com
Wikipedia.org (Tides of Darkness)
Wikipedia.org (Beyond the Dark Portal)

WoW Wiki (The Dark Saga)
Blue Blizz Box (outstanding historical video resources here)

fladdermasken

Gameplay Preview

The App

The Team

Warcraft III version

Starcraft II version

Dota 2 version

Ralle

Ralle

PurgeandFire

pyf

Affiliates

Popular resources

Popular maps

Heroes online