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Azure TD Remastered 4.0

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Azure Tower Defense Remastered

Version 4.0

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Azure Tower Defense is a non-mazing, cooperative tower defense that can be played by up to 8 players. Enemies will spawn on the sides of the map and make their way towards the World Tree in the center. Players can build towers and train heroes in order to stop the onslaught.

The original map is made by Blizzard Entertainment and included in the Frozen Throne/Reforged expansions. The Remastered version greatly improves gameplay by:


-Fixing bugs
-Correcting tower and creep balance
-Adding 3 new late-game towers
-Improving tower descriptions
-Adding difficulty levels
-Adding a "Shared Income" mode
-Adding many other features to improve gameplay and ease of learning


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Gameplay Information

Azure Tower Defense is a non-mazing, cooperative tower defense that can be played by 1-8 players. Enemies will spawn on any side of the map that has a player present. As enemies move towards the center of the map, their paths will fan out with each intersection they reach. Players will construct towers and train Heroes in order to stop the enemy waves, as well as to catch any leaks traveling towards the World Tree at the map's center.

Players may build early-game towers using the Azure Wisp and Malachite Shaman builders. These builders are versatile, and their towers can be upgraded individually. There are also three elemental builders: the Crimson Warlock builds Fire towers with low range and high splash damage, the Icy Apparition builds Ice towers that can slow groups of enemies, and the Emissary of Thunder builds Lightning towers that have high range and single-target damage. Elemental towers of each type can only be upgraded globally; thus, it is optimal to only specialize in one type of element.

The late-game towers are built by the Crystal Cardinal. However, unlocking these powerful towers requires investing 4000 gold to research Crystalis Technology. Unlocking and building these towers is necessary to beat the game, as only the late-game towers have sufficient DPS density to damage high-regeneration enemies in the endgame. Players must decide when and how they will save up the gold to make this important investment.

One option is to build many towers from the early-game builders, skip the elemental technologies, and save directly for Crystalis Technology. This is usually the fastest way to reach 4000 gold; however, it is very risky to pull off. The Astral Zenith, an all-around late-game tower, is unlocked with Crystalis Technology alone.

Detouring into one of the elemental technologies will delay a player's researching of Crystalis Technology, but it greatly improves defenses in the mid-game. Additionally, the possession of an elemental technology along with Crystalis Technology unlocks an additional late-game tower along with the Astral Zenith. This additional tower will have properties suggestive of its respective element.

Other builds, such as using gold to stack items on Heroes instead of building mid-game towers, can be strong in certain situations. Many creative methods have been found to beat the game.

Both strategic knowledge and micromanagement skill are necessary to beat Azure Tower Defense. Players who possess an abundance of both will find it easier to save gold for technology, help other players, and beat the harder difficulties of the game. Other ways of increasing the game's difficulty include adding dummy computer allies to increase the locations where enemies spawn, or playing multiplayer online, where you will have to assist new players with their waves while still focusing on yours.

All in all, Azure Tower Defense is an engaging game that is easy to learn yet very replayable with a high skill cap.


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New and Unique Features
  • Difficulty Modes: There are four difficulty modes: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Expert. The difficulty modes affect the armor and movement speed of enemies. Players may vote on what difficulty they want to play, and the game will average out the votes to pick a difficulty level appropriate for the average of the players.
  • Shared Income Mode: When Shared Income Mode is voted for by a majority of players, 33% of the gold earned by each player will be equally distributed to all human players in the game.
  • Improved Tower Descriptions: Tower descriptions now state the exact parameters of the tower, such as the damage, range, splash radii, and abilities.
  • Tips Feature: Players may type "-tip [early/mid/late]game" or "-tip XX" [01-30] to receive a helpful piece of advice.
  • Zoom Feature: Players may type "-zoom XXXX" [0001-9999] to change the camera zoom.
  • Player Gold Multiboard: Displays the amount of gold each player currently has in the game.
  • Leaver Gold Redistribution: If a player leaves, the game will split both their current gold and gold income among the remaining players, who will also receive control of the leaver's units and towers.
  • Hero Damage Scaling: Heroes now gain +15 damage per primary attribute point, allowing their attacks to scale better in the lategame and remain useful.
  • Item Shop: Contains items that can improve the utility of a player's heroes.
  • 3 New Late-game Towers: This improves strategic variety by allowing more than one viable tower in the late-game. It also increases the viability of detouring into elemental technology specialization by rewarding players with an unlocked endgame tower associated with their element.
  • Tower Sell Function: Allows players to sell towers for a 50% refund.
  • Tower and Creep Balancing: Makes many different builds viable throughout the game and gives a linear increase to difficulty as the game progresses.
  • Debugging: Fixed several bugs that caused certain towers and units to not deal damage or have functioning abilities.
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Important Changes from Version 3
  • Redesigned Astral Frost Tower: Removed the "Freezing (Area)" ability, and replaced it with a new ability that slows units hit by its splash damage (this new slow stacks with Frost Attack, but it no longer stacks with itself). This was to nerf Astral Frost spam strategies which could freeze groups of enemies indefinitely.
  • Difficulty Level Adjustments: Difficulty levels now have an increased effect on enemy armor, but a reduced effect on their speed. This allows for greater strategic consistency across difficulty levels; previously, creeps in "Expert" difficulty moved so quickly that only a couple of strategies were viable.
  • Improved Tower Descriptions: Tower descriptions now have color-coded parameters to make them more readable.
  • Tower Sell Function: Replaced the "Demolish Tower" ability (which gave no refund) with a "Sell Tower" ability which provides a 50% refund. This makes tower placement errors more forgivable for newer players.
  • Entangling Roots Debug: Enemies will no longer stand still after having Entangling Roots cast on them. In previous versions, if an enemy unit had Entangling Roots cast on them but was never attacked by any unit or tower, the enemy unit would stand still forever even after the spell expired.
  • Other Minor Balance Changes and Debugging: For a comprehensive list of changes, please see the Changelog.
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Changelog

-Changed the description of all towers to include the tower stats, such as damage, attack speed, and splash radius.
-Changed the description of all heroes to include their abilities and primary attribute.
-Changed the description of all pertinent technology and builders, to incorporate the 3 new ultimate towers that are in the game.
-Gave a slight buff to the Azure Guard Tower, increasing its attack speed from 1 to .75, and raised the cost of its damage upgrades from 10 to 13.
-Gave a slight buff to the Azure Hammer Tower, decreasing the cost of its damage upgrades from 15 to 13.
-Gave a slight nerf to the Azure Dragon-Hawk, decreasing its attack speed from 1.25 to 1.5.
-Changed the Hero attack types from piercing to Hero. Also fixed a bug that prevented the Lich hero from dealing damage.
-Astral Zenith tower: Increased the attack speed from .6 to .5. Also lowered the splash radius and removed its cold attack.
-Created a new ultimate tower Astral Frost that unlocks with Crystalis Technology and Insight of Shiva. This tower has 2000 range, moderate splash, a cold attack, and bash.
-Created a new ultimate tower Astral Inferno that unlocks with Crystalis Technology and Strength of Hephaestus. This tower has 1500 range and a huge splash radius.
-Created a new ultimate tower Astral Starshooter that unlocks with Crystalis Technology and Wisdom of Zeus. This tower has 3000 range, single target damage, and a massive critical strike.
-Added 4 difficulty levels: Easy, which reduces enemy armor by 2 and movement speed by 10%; Normal, which gives no change to armor or speed; Hard, which gives enemies +2 armor and +10% speed; and Expert, which gives enemies +5 armor and +25% speed.
-Added a voting system that allows players to vote on the difficulty level, giving players a share of the total vote based on how many human players are in the game. A function measures the total vote and selects a difficulty level appropriate for the human players.
-Updated the Map Description and Loading Screen to display a summary



-Edited a trigger that caused monsters to spawn evenly from all sides when more than 4 players were in the game, even if the players were not evenly distributed across the map. The monsters will now spawn in numbers proportional to the players on each side.
-Added a shop to every side of the map with hero items.
-Created an item Orb of Fire that gives hero +50 damage and splash damage.
-Created an item Orb of Lightning that gives hero +50 damage and chance to purge.
-Created an item Orb of Venom that gives hero +50 damage and poison effect.
-Created an item Orb of Corruption that gives hero +50 damage and reduces enemy armor.
-Created an item Claws of Attack +150 that gives hero +150 damage.
-Created an item Claws of Attack +500 that gives hero +500 damage.
-Created an item Gem of Pulsing Adrenaline that gives hero +30 Agility.
-Created an item Helm of Heavenly Enlightenment that gives hero +30 Intelligence.
-Created an item Hood of Devilish Cunning that gives hero +20 Agility and Intelligence.
-Created an item Tome of Agility +5 that gives hero permanent +5 Agility bonus.
-Created an item Tome of Intelligence +5 that gives hero permanent +5 Intelligence bonus.
-Changed item Claws of Attack +42 to Claws of Attack +50 and dropped its gold value to 100.
-Changed item Elixir of Intelligence to have a gold value of 100.
-Changed item Elixir of Agility to have a gold value of 100.
-Decreased the wait timer in between rounds from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
-Changed Tower Astral Starshooter to shoot red colored lightning at its targets rather than plain white.
-Improved the Difficulty voting trigger. The voting function now only gives voting weight to players who actually voted, rather than all human players.
-Added an optional new feature Shared Income Mode, that players can vote for or against with a function similar to the difficulty vote. Shared income mode taxes each player 33% of all gold they gain, and redistributes this tax evenly across all human players in the game.
-Added a new feature that distributes the gold and gold income of leavers across all ingame human players, and grants full unit control of the leaver's units to all allies.
-Decreased the damage of the Astral Inferno from 3000-3000 to 2500-3000.
-Increased the bash time of the Astral Frost from 3(2) seconds to 5(3) seconds, and increased the bash chance from 3% to 4%.
-Created a multiboard that displays the name of each player and their current gold.
-Buffed the Pale Grim and Slogra boss rounds, and made a harder version of each that spawns on lanes with 2 players.
-Fixed a bug that allowed players other than red to research Crystalis Technology multiple times.
-Increased the attack speed of the Obelisk of the Glacier and Obelisk of Shiva from 1.8 to 1.5 and 0.9 to 0.8, respectively.
-Decreased the attack speed of all fire towers (Fire Shrine, Inferno Skull, Hellmouth of Hephaestus, and Astral Inferno) from 1.25 to 1.33.
-Increased the damage of Thunder Spire and Spire of Zeus from 800-900 to 800-1000 and from 1000-14000 to 1200-1500, respectively.




-Created a new feature that increased the cost of both tiers of Lightning, Ice, and Fire technologies by 500 every time a different technology type of that respective tier was researched. The purpose of this was twofold: one, to nerf the strategy of going fire or some other technology early game, then switching to lightning at round 40 to unlock Astral Starshooter towers for the boss rounds; and two, to discourage noobs from picking multiple technology types at once (which is a bad strategy anyway).
-Increased the armor of boss rounds 10 by 5 (2 to 7); 20 by 3 (0 to 3), and 30 by 5 (0 to 5).
-added a feature that allows players to receive gameplay tips by typing "-tip xx" (with xx being a 2-digit integer between 01 and 30) or "-tip early/mid/lategame", with a trigger that feeds them one of 30 tips numbered from 1 to 30, with earlygame tips being low numbers and lategame tips being high numbers.
-Changed the description of the Crystal Cardinal builder to explicitly say it is a lategame builder.
-Explicitly stated that the first invisible round is 20.
-Radically changed and buffed the Astral Frost tower. The tower now has 100% chance to bash and freeze targets within an area of 300 for a tiny duration (it also freezes its actual target for slightly longer).
-Changed the Astral Frost's attack to have a damage of 1667-3333 and an attack speed of 1. Astral frost now stuns units in 250 area for .1 seconds and freezes its target for .3 seconds.
-Created a new Zoom feature that allows players to change the camera zoom.
-Reduced the attack speed of the Azure Dragon-Hawk from 1.5 to 1.67.
-Buffed the items in the Artifact Merchants by reducing their cost.
-Edited the item drop trigger so that tomes of strength no longer drop.
-Reduced the damage of the Obelisk of Shiva from 425-500 to 375-450 and increased its cooldown from 0.8 to 0.9.
-Restructured the attacks of Heroes. Primary Attributes now give +20 damage. This allows hero damage to scale better in the lategame.
-Rebalanced Hero attributes slightly. Azure Tiger Priestess now has 17+3.5/lvl Agility and 8+1.5/lvl Intelligence; Azure Witch now has 10+1.5/lvl Agility and 20+3.5/lvl Intelligence; and Emperor Sorcerer now has 12+2/lvl Agility and 23+3/lvl Intelligence.
-Hero base mana is now set to zero. Heroes gain mana only from Intelligence points (this allowed me to scale hero primary attributes higher increasing their damage in the late game).
-Rebalanced Hero attacks slightly. Azure Tiger Priestess now has 400 starting damage with 1.75 cooldown; Azure Witch now has 500 starting damage with 2.0 cooldown; and Emperor Sorcerer now has 600 starting damage with 1.5 cooldown.
-Removed items Claws of Attack +250, Claws of Attack +1000, Helm of Heavenly Englightenment, Gem of Pulsing Adrenaline, and Hood of Devilish Cunning from the shop (item damage was too difficult to balance in tandem with Hero Agility's percentage scaling and Orb of Fire's splash bonus).
-Added Items Gem of True Seeing, Sobi Mask, and Boots of Speed to the shop. Set in-game maximum unit speed to 500 (up from 400).
-Increased the damage of the Astral Inferno to 2667-4000. Reduced the Astral Inferno splash radius from 450/450/450 to 200/400/600. This allows it to perform better vs. boss rounds and not nearly as powerful normal rounds.
-Azure Guard Tower upgrade now increases the tower's attack range by 30 for each upgrade, in addition to the +50 damage.
-Reduced the Gas Bomb Tower's damage from 550-650 to 500-650. Reduced Hades Lacrimator damage from 1000-1400 to 1000-1300.
-Changed the Astral Starshooter tower to have 5000 damage, 1.5 cooldown, 3333 range, and a critical strike that has 3% chance of 10x damage vs. non-boss units. This was mostly to nerf the Astral Starshooter's effectiveness vs. bosses while keeping it viable vs. normal rounds.




-Astral Frost:
-reduced damage from 1667-3333 to 2000-2500.
-reduced splash radius from 50 (100%), 150 (50%), 250 (10%) to 50 (100%), 100 (50%), 250 (10%).
-"Freezing (target)" renamed "Brain Freeze". Stun duration changed from .3(.24)s to .5(.167)s.
-removed "Freezing (area)" ability.
-added ability "Cold Shock" which slows all units damaged by the Astral Frost by 10% for 3 seconds. (this slow stacks with Frost Attack).
-Obelisk of Ice:
-increased splash radius from 50 (100%), 75 (50%), 100 (10%) to 50 (100%), 100 (50%).
-Obelisk of the Glacier:
-reduced attack speed from 1.5 to 1.8s.
-Obelisk of Shiva:
-reduced splash radius from 50 (100%), 125 (50%), 200 (10%) to 50 (100%), 100 (50%), 200 (10%).
-Spire of Zeus:
-increased chance to bash from 15% to 20%.
-Inferno Skull:
-increased damage from 500-550 to 500-600.
-Hellmouth of Hephaestus:
-increased damage from 750-800 to 750-900
-Azure Dragon-Hawk:
-reduced attack speed from 1.67 to 2.0.
-increased mana cost of "Slow" from 50 to 100.
-All Heroes:
-damage now increases by +15 per primary attribute point instead of +20.

-Difficulty Modes:
-"Easy Difficulty" now reduces armor by 3 and movement by 5%, instead of 2 and 10%.
-"Hard Difficulty" now increases armor by 3 and movement by 5%, instead of 2 and 10%.
-"Expert Difficulty" now increases armor by 8 and movement by 10%, instead of 5 and 25%.
-Tower Descriptions:
-tower descriptions now have color-coded parameters, allowing for easier readability.
-Tower Sell Function:
-replaced "Demolish Tower" ability (which cost 1 gold and refunded 0 gold) with "Sell Tower" ability which refunds 50% gold.
-Debugging:
-Azure Guard Tower now appears as a human Guard Tower instead of as a Scout Tower.
-Azure Hammer Tower now appears as a human Cannon Tower instead of as a Scout Tower.
-Units hit by Entangling Roots no longer stand still indefinitely unless attacked.




Original map by Blizzard Entertainment
Remastered by Eric Jensen [BYU_FOOTBALL]

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Contents

Azure TD Remastered 4.0 (Map)

Reviews
deepstrasz
I suggest colouring the Damage and stats for each description. It's all white and it's not really nice to look at. Maybe you could find a proper place for the Demolish Tower ability and maybe you could make it give some resources back instead of...

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
Level 68
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
18,706
  1. I suggest colouring the Damage and stats for each description. It's all white and it's not really nice to look at.
  2. Maybe you could find a proper place for the Demolish Tower ability and maybe you could make it give some resources back instead of taking gold.
  3. Maybe you could make a tileset change through triggers.
  4. Instead of having the U hotkey for upgrading towers, what about the same hotkey used for the build command of that tower?
  5. Maybe make the towers be more differentiated. Guard and Hammer Tower look alike (even the Gas Bomb Tower looks the same as the latter; there are many custom models on this site you could use). And also when they are upgraded, a size or hue change?
  6. Could be worth mentioning how many times you can upgrade a tower in the upgrade description. I know it says so in the build description.
  7. Attack Ground (e.g. Gas Bomb Towers) is placed where it should not be, near the upgrade.
  8. Lightning Towers have a weird position in the build menu.
  9. Hero abilities could be on WERTY.
  10. Strength tomes are useless. Heroes are invulnerable and there's no hero based on Strength.
  11. A Tartaran Slime stopped moving after coming out of being entangled right to the right bifurcation of the enemy's starting zone. And another one somewhere on the right/southern branch (playing solo). They move once attacked by the heroes. The first one I mentioned was trying to run away back to the portal :D. Killing them might result in the next wave coming even if the units spawned after their death are still going towards the tree. Actually the issue happens wherever the spell is cast.
  12. Maybe an upgrade to make the towers near the tree stronger against enemy waves?
All in all neat implementations. Maybe you could do more, diversify heroes/game styles etc.
Please make the descriptions better.

There's also this previous version you might want to check: Azure Tower Defense Ultimate v.21.1

Awaiting Update.


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EDIT:
Seems you did not bother much with other points than the descriptions.

Approved.
 
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