The Rise of the Scourge v1.9.3

[copsychus]

Could you change it to match with patch 1.24?

i can't play it with 1.24 patch

 

[Thingolus]

so, you rate it 1 just becouse some little bugs and YOU dont understand it? thats just not right....3 would be the smallest i would give for this reasons, but i didnt have any problems with the map

edit:damn, should be a answear for Masashi, but i looked at your map and saw its already deleted....thats freaking funny!

 

[Smiley]

I can't seem to be able to play the latest version, it just refuses to leave the team selection screen. Not sure if the problem's on my part or yours, but just giving you a heads up.

This map looks very interesting and I would love to play it if I can. :}

 

[Sparta955]

Super sorry about the error, I dont know what the problem could be, I made two very minor changes in this version. I'll check them over though.

I guess the Jass from newgen corrupted the save again, I'll have to reupload version 1.9.3. No big deal, sorry for all of those who downloaded and couldnt play =[

 

[Cweener]

Alrighty,
I will give my full review now, or you can see my final rating at the bottom.

Full Review of the map "The Rise of the Scourge v1.9.3"

Please note, parts of the description section, and almost all of the terrain section of this review I borrowed from ap0calypse, because he is awesomeness.

Description

"The reason why a good description is necessary is to encourage players to play your game.
It will grip the attention of people who (accidentally) pass by, attention is one of the basic things a map must have, otherwise it will be forgotten in the thousands and thousands of maps on battle.net."
( - The Importance of a Description, by ap0calypse).

Also,
If you'd like some examples of a good description try the following links.
Shining Waters by R.Gaming_Strike
Avatar by dj0z

Additionally, a description is required (not just optional).
Only a few people will download your map with no description and it is certain to get rejected.

Hmmm, your description definitely gives the necessary info, but it can give so much more. I'm not going to count this against you necessarily, but still, it can be added to.

Triggers

General Triggering Tips

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1) Leaks and how they affect you

Now, if you don't know, the definition of a leak, an object handle that is used and stored in memory but cannot be recalled.
In layman's terms, it's basically like having something on your computer taking on space, but you can't get rid of it, so it bogs down your memory uncontrollably.
Try the hidden tag below for more info on leaks.

Your triggers leak! Quite a bit. It was almost heart-breaking. I would highly recommend all of those tutorials to you. They will come in handy!

In this hidden tag are some examples of leaky triggers.

Links to tutorials

Basic Memory Leaks by thunder_eye / Ralle
Complete list of things that leak by hvo-busterkomo
Basic GUI Memory Leaks by Me
What is a leak? by baassee

2) Inefficiencies: The plague of triggers

Now, an inefficiency can be a couple of things.
1) It can be a trigger that need not exist due to another trigger fires on the same event.
Note, that practically any two triggers that fire on the same event, can be combined, with the exception of triggers that turn off or on.
This is due to the fact that we can use if-then-else for the conditions.

2) It can be a way you do something, that just doesn't have to be done that way. (Things like manually putting a if-then-else 8 times with the same actions but with different players can be avoided by looping 8 times through one if-then-else and using integer A as the player number)

This is not only the plague of most maps, it's the bane of your map's existence. That has to be the most triggers I've ever seen in a map. I was doing some math, and in about an hour, I figured you could condense it to around 250 triggers from the 700+ it has now. I definitely recommend you see some tutorials for that.

Link to a helpful tutorial

Terrain

General Terrain

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1) Tileset

Choose your tileset carefully: a combination of about 3 or more different types of grass for forests is not a luxury.
The tileset is the base of the terrain, it's very important that you learn to combine tilesets that look good together (note that some of the edges of tilesets can be different when next to another type, you need to think about that too: what looks good next to what?).
Most people start out with 1 or 2 different types of tileset that don't match eachother, then go to randomly placing a few tilesets that do match eachother and then finally, after some practice, can succesfully combine tilesets and know where to place them.


Notice, you've got lush green grass next to..snow.
This would never happen in actuality. If you could get a few more tiles you may be able to transition to the snow, but as f now, the snow needs to be gotten rid of.

2) Transition

This part also belongs to the tileset somehow.
When you're creating a terrain and you're using different tilesets, make sure that they are mixed and that you can't see any clear border.

Not much to say here. You were pretty good about creating nice transitions. Loved it. Maybe another grass tile would be good though.

3) Cliffs

Try not to use cliffs (in the terrain palette: apply cliff: increase/decrease one/two).
Cliffs could be used when you actually need a cliff, but when you need a mountain of some sorts, or a wall use the raise land tool or doodads.

It didn't seem that you used any, which in this case, is a very good thing as you didn't need them.

You should also never use the standard water-tools for the terrain, there's a far better (yet more complicated) option to create water.
Cliffs could be used when you actually need a cliff, but when you need a mountain of some sorts, or a wall use the raise land tool or doodads.
The thing here is that you need to create a new map in order to make this work, I don't think you can adjust this when you've already made your map.
What you need to do: when creating a new map, there's an option called "Initial Water Level", if you set this to "shallow water", you start off with your terrain completely under (shallow) water.
Afterwards, when the terrain is created, you should raise the land (not with the cliff tool!) so it is slightly above water-level (it should look like land on the minimap, but may not be too high).
When this is done, click the "apply height: plateau" tool and drag it all along the terrain, starting from the little patch of land, now the entire terrain should be above water-level.
To create a river now is very easy: lower the terrain and you've got water - this can be done to create puddles, rivers, sea, whatever you want.

Again no problems here except the way you made the water.

Notice how jagged the water is.
It looks completely unrealistic, and you did this throughout the map.

Now, look how much better it is. It still isn't good, but this was literally a 30 second edit.
Simply use the smooth and lower tool in combination with each other.
I recommend you do this across the map.

Doodads:

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1) Spamming doodads

Doodads may never be spammed, you can place a lot of environmental doodads (such as shrubs), but never overdo it.
A lot of people spam things like rocks, waterfalls or fire, but that is not the point of doodads.


Now here, this is definitely unnecessary. I suggest you remove them, as they really don't look good at all.

Additional:

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1) Weather/Fog

These are main ingredients when creating a cinematic and shouldn't be forgotten in other maps either.
There's no need for a weather effect (in fact: please don't touch it if you don't really know what you need to do with it), but a (triggered, not weather) fog can drastically improve how a terrain looks, or the 'aura' it gives off.
Creepy maps need a darker fog, happy maps a light one, you can make it change for day/night purposes, you can change it depending on the region you're in.
Basically this decides what kind of map you're playing

To make a default fog: go to Scenario -> Options, there you should see the option "Use Terrain fog", set style to "Linear" (nothing else) and choose your color.
You probably need to lower the starting Z as well (about 1000, or even less if you want), otherwise you won't see a lot of the fog.

2) Sky

You seriously don't need this if you don't use camera's that have an angle of attack of at least 330 degrees...
In cinematics however, it decorates the entire terrain and - if it matches the cinematic theme - it really expresses the general idea.

Object Editor Work

General Obj Editor Tips

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1) Ability Tooltips

I have written an entire maps worth of ability tooltips before, about 60 of them. It took me about a week. Seriously. Put some serious thought into these. Anything and everything we need to know should be here.
If it has a cooldown. If it has a certain range, and even if it's melee. What targets it can affect. How many targets. How long to cast. The basic idea of it. And anything else you can come up with.

Now, you did very poorly here.
The tooltips just state what the basic idea is. Nothing more.
You should definitely go more in-depth here.

2) Other Tooltips

2A) Regular Unit Tooltips

Now, these are pretty easy.
They should include things like, unit classification. Unit's range. What the unit can/can't target. The basic info on the unit. The build time for the unit. Attack cooldown. And anything else you can come up with.

Again, very poor. Most used default blizzard tooltips, and who really like those?
I recommend re-writing 90%+ of them.

2B) Hero Tooltips

These are a bit more intricate.
They should include things like, abilities. Stats and stats per level. Base attack. Lore behind the hero. Range of the hero. Attack cooldown. Targets he/she can attack. Any other special information. And anything else you can come up with.

Again, here you did not do well at all. The tooltips lack information, and are generally as un-helpful as they come.

3) Balancing

Now, I really can't tell you how to balance your map. All I can say is if you play it with a full-house and you play as every position(not every color) and noticed it was no harder nor any easier, then you can say it's been tested for balance. Outside of that, it hasn't been properly tested.

Gameplay

General Gameplay Tips

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1) Replay value

This refers to how well your map can be replayed. Major bugs, imbalances, and other things to just generally mess up the gameplay, will affect this.

Now, I'd say this map was great to play again if it's lag wasn't so bad.
I'd never play this again myself, I'm not sure about the rest of battle.net.

2) Bugs and how they affect your map

Now, a bug is anything that is supposed to happen but can affect gameplay. Things like glitches for example. These can not only hurt the replay value of the map, but are general annoyances, and can lead to imbalances.

I really couldn't fault you here. I couldn't find any in-game bugs that were notable.

3) Laginess, and overall file size.

Now, lag can be caused by a couple of FIXABLE(key word here) things.

1) It can be because you have a lot of triggers. Now, on battle.net if you have more than 300 triggers, your map probably goes to hell. This can be easily fixed, by combining triggers. I've never seen a map that actually needed 300+ triggers.
2) It can be due to trigger leaks. If your game starts out fine, but gets worse, it's probably due to leaks. We've a number of tutorials on this site alone to help here.
3) It can be due to unnecessary doodad spam. This is pretty self-explanatory. Too many doodads are a bad thing. In the object manager you can see how many doodads you have, and what the limits are.
4) Just a big file size in general. Things like imports, music, triggers, and terrain size, all contribute to map size. If your map exceeds 7 MB, it probably won't have a high replay value, due to the lag it's bound to have on Battle.net.

The map size is VERY large. This is because of the triggers bloating the size, the imports that don't even look right, and it even looks as if you have some unused units in the obj editor. I recommend basically stripping everything that isn't need from the obj editor and import manager. Then going and fixing your triggers.

Last Words

My final comments/concerns

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I really really disapprove of almost everything about this map.
The description basically needs more info.
It's terrain is confusing and rough in places, but has good merging.
The triggers lack in every way possible.
The obj editor work on different units is okay, but add some tooltips, that's one of the most important aesthetics there are.
The gameplay is alright. It'd be better if I didn't have to deal with such lag about halfway through though.

Ultimately, I recommend you visit lots of triggering & terrain tutorials.
That can help your map 100X.

My final rating,
1/5 (Poor)
Rejected

 

[WOWWARS]

I'm kinda too late but how is it 1/5?

terrains a def 5 using alot of work in making lordaeron completely transform by end game.

Triggers are like Lordaeron tactics which is also a very large game back then or still is.


gameplay's Fine just that if u lose your heroes your kinda screwed.

Though i agree with the Tooltip things he really needs to finish all units.

Description really doesnt change if the games bad or good its just a brief writing of what the game is no less or larger.

I'd give it a 3.5/5