I chose the Horde.
FOR DA HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORDE
Also sorry if you think I was being too negative, I actually did enjoy some parts of the map
writing...
edit:
Originally Posted by Vengeancekael
I didn't say you should change the map's actual name, just the file's name.
Review:
Gameplay:
The skills are pretty basic, I have only checked the troll voodoo master hero and he didn't have any custom spells except for cannibalistic, although that one is also a default warcraft skill if I remember correctly. But your choice of spells was nice, the voodoo master had hex, a lightning attack, cannibalism, although that's a bit weird. Using Wrath of the Loa is so much fun <3
The game doesn't feature any custom combat systems or item systems, etc., thus making the map pretty simple and really special. However, the story does make things more interesting, with all the trolls against the horde and treachery. You can also make choices, for example choose sides at one point, changing the course of the action. It's also a bit annoying in the beginning when you don't have a scope yet and these spirits are hitting you.
Terrain:
The terrain work is fine, you've managed to fill up the map with trees, however animated grass, custom tree models would have been better and this is a single player map, so the file size doesn't matter. The trees make things really complicated, the pathing is completely messed up, moving through them is just a nightmare and it's hard to attack another guy who starts attacking you, yet he keeps disappearing into the fog. Overall the map isn't spectacular, it's pretty basic, but ok, even though it's not really beautiful, it is actually an obstacle to the player. I don't know if that's intended, but as the player, I didn't like it, it wasn't really fun, more frustrating.
Items:
Item-wise I only picked up normal warcraft 3 items, no custom ones.
Polishing:
There are no quest updates when you finish a quest phase, nor a sound played. Several disabled skill icons are missing, for example Wrath of the Loa and Cannibalistic Strike. How about reducing the collision size of units, in the middle of all these trees, they're all stuck.
The exclamation point does not disappear when you acquire the quest from Gintol.
Overall:
This is your second map, also it doesn't mean anything if you use GUI and not Jass, all of my maps are made using GUI. The map can be fairly fun due the storyline, but the map isn't polished, there's almost nothing custom in the game and the terrain is just frustrating at some times.
This isn't a disaster, but good enough.
Rating: 2/5
Gameplay
True, Hex and Healing Wave are normal WC3 spells altered for 4 levels. Wrath of the Loa is basically a minor alteration of Archimonde's Finger of Death. Cannibalistic Strike is just a Goblin Alchemist's Transmute with a trigger that restores the casting unit's health. I am not an expert in spells. In fact that was one of the main things that was criticized in the first map. Good to know for the future. However, with my limited knowledge of spells that I had, I decided to center them around a specific role, as follows:
The Voodoo Master isn't as good fighting alone, I designed him to be more of a support hero. He is pretty brilliant more to the endgame where there are larger battles. At the start, he is rather hard to play, I've noticed.
The Mercenary was designed with stealth in mind. Sneak behind enemy lines, take out his casters/ranged, you get the image.
The Champion was to be an armored beast, capable of taking huge amounts of damage.
The Ogre Mage was supposed to be sort of a blending of the three. He would support fellow units by casting "Animate Dead" to bolster their ranks, he could perform the Champion's role due to his huge amount of health and his "Life Drain", and could take care of spellcasters with a Soul Burn or a Mana Burn.
I made that so that the player would feel the need to get the scope. If I didn't do it, I think many players would've ignored the item, and then suffer the consequences. But I think I'll nerf the spirits a little bit, just to make them be more of an annoyance than a mortal threat.
Terrain
It was meant to be confusing and hard to navigate. Seems I misinterpreted how the community would react. Oh well.
Also, I did look for custom tree models, but they didn't seem to be what I was looking for. I wanted something dark and brooding, and didn't find any custom tree models for that. Could check again, I've looked for them about 2 months ago.
Items
There's only a few custom items ingame. There's some food (aka, health and mana potion) that you get from an optional quest. Anything else is quest items that don't do anything except exist and be handed over to quest givers.
Polishing
The quest, at least in my opinion, are pretty straightforward. "Go kill x then return to me." or "Go collect this and return to me". Some aren't that straightforward, but those are more the end of the game. For example, at one quest in the later game you're sent to retrieve an item. When you enter the region that the item is in, your ship is destroyed, and you are teleported at the lair of a Naga Sea Witch. But I'm getting a bit beyond the point. My point is: is that really needed? Isn't it obvious that you should return to base?
About the disabled skill icons... I think that's an issue with every skill that has a custom icon. To be honest, I have no clue how to fix it.
About Gin'tol's exclamation mark... that's kind of how it is for most quest givers that require an item. You think I should make it so that it shows only when the Hero acquires the necessary item?
Overall
This map was built on the idea of maximizing the good points of my previous one and trying to minimize the bad things about it.
About the GUI/Jass thing: i've always thought that GUI was an "inferior" form of triggering compared to Jass. From all the triggering tutorials that I've read, many of them implied that after mastering GUI, one should move on to Jass. That's why I said that at the beginning.
Review of your review of my review
Gameplay:
I haven't checked out your first map, but people usually improve over time. Making mistakes is not a bad thing, it's actually like feedback, you learn from your mistakes and you master things like making complicated triggers, making enjoyable gameplay, etc. And sequels usually are an improvement to the first map or just a follow-up to an already good map. In this case it's an improvement I guess.
Yes, making custom spells can sometimes be hard, but sometimes easy. Custom spells don't necessarily have to be too complicated to be cool, flashy etc., but if you're not that good at making spells yet, it's hard for you to realize your ideas and actually make them the way you want them to. Usually you end up making a much simpler spell, almost completely different from the original idea. But there is still a way for you to add custom spells, you could easily use the custom spells from the
spells section.
Some of them are in Jass and thus you would need jass knowledge to import them into your own map, but there are a lot of GUI spells which can be imported and used in your own map easily. If you are going to use custom spells from the spells section, be sure to pick the good ones and also don't forget the specific hero's theme, for example don't just give the voodoo master a custom health drain spell, which does fit, but then also give him the ability to summon gigantic ogres, which wouldn't fit to the hero's other spells.
Yes, I see you've made somewhat different classes, so that almost everyone can pick his favorite one. In a single player map, every class should usually be capable of doing things on his own, thus support heroes would be a bit useless, since there aren't other people to support. But in your map, you do get access to other units and thus for example the voodoo master can act as a support hero with his healing ability.
You could improve the class balancing by checking which class the player has picked and then for example making the first enemy units a bit weaker, by giving one of the enemy's units a passive skill with a range consisting of 99999 and the spell base should be for example 'command aura', but hold shift and then click the spell's value, so that you can give it a negative value, thus reducing the enemy's armor. My point being that you should add an auto-balancing system specifically for each hero, for example reduce the enemy's attack damage and armor, but give them different skills, thus keeping the map still a bit challening and fun. I know it's hard for you to realize all of this, but at least start by doing the first thing I told, meaning reduce the enemy's armor.
Terrain:
Ah I see what you mean, you wanted to fool the player and make a terrain different from other ones, not just a forest, but a very irritating one. Sadly making things too irritating isn't always a good thing, the player may get frustrated really quickly and stop playing the map in the beginning, without seeing what the map actually has to show. You could've have for example not put all of these trees so close to each other, but instead in order to still keep it a bit weird, but fun, add traps, for example spikes, charging assassins, etc.
There are a lot of tree models available, you could check wc3c.net as well and have you checked the
Ultimate terraining map? It offers a lot of custom models, ranging from special effects to decoration models and of course a lot of tree models.
Items:
I see, well it's not a big deal that there aren't a lot of custom items, but making custom items is rather easy, easier than making custom spells.
I guess you know that you can make almost any item you want 'active', thus being able to give the item a specific spell. Thus you have a wider range of custom items, without even having to make the custom spells for the items. You could easily take an item, for example Hood of cunning, which gives you bonus agility and intelligence and then also give the item the ability Shadow meld. That is just an example, but I hope you got the idea now.
Polishing:
Yes I see what you mean, the quest update messages or sounds aren't necessarily needed to indicate that you've done something, more to actually fill the silence and these sounds kinda encourage you, you're making progress in the world etc. And for some of the quests, the quest update sound would be needed or at least a message, for example the Gintol quest, he doesn't actually say how many murloc eyes you need, so I checked the quest log again and in the cutscene he didn't say anything either if I remember correctly.
When you import the custom icons, the icon files are usually called 'ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\BTNX.blp'
and there are other icons coming with that icon, more specifically 'ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISBTNX.blp'
BTN stands for button and DISBTN stands for disabled button. So in order to fix that problem, you need to import both the icons.
You can take this icon as an
example (not advertising, it's not even mine lol). If you scroll down just a little, above the download link it says:
Import the icons to the following paths:
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\BTNFire_Staff.blp
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISBTNFire_Staff.blp
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\ATCFire_Staff.blp
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISATCFire_Staff.blp
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\PASFire_Staff.blp
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISPASFire_Staff.blp
ATC stands for autocast, which is the same icon but with an autocast border around it. And for the disabled version, you need to use 'ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISATCFire_Staff.blp, not 'ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISBTNFire_Staff.blp'.
PAS stands for passive.
You can check tutorials for resource importing on the site, there are several of them.
And regarding Gintol, yes that would be a good idea, or just add an interrogation point, meaning you're not finished yet and THEN, when you have found for example the item needed for the quest, change it to an exclamation point.
Overall:
GUI isn't necessarily inferior to Jass, it's more of an interface language, it's a bit easier to work with for beginners and you can see that a lot of complicated systems and spells uploaded in the spells section are made with GUI. If you manage to learn Jass, then things will be a lot easier for you, the code is clearer and things that require multiple triggers in GUI will only need a few lines in Jass. My point being that you can make almost anything in GUI or Jass, but Jass does make things easier for those who learn it.
I hope you'll be making more maps, either warcraft or starcraft ones, it doesn't really matter. And I also hope you will be making more progress and learn new things over time.
Approved
