Avatar of Ice

[cleavinghammer]

^ Except that the bullet dies when it hits the water, and the switch can be attacked normally anyway from the other side of the gate. (And you should make the location of the spring clearer, remove the black mask from its location and have it pinged.)

About the circles: I got the icewall ones to work (send snowball into it), and casting warcry in another got me a snowmaker, but all others had no reaction when I cast snowball or warcry.

 

[Turnro]

I respectfully disagree that a cinematic should end where the game pauzed. If your characters move in the cinematic, why not move them in the game?

When I suggested some tips for the cinematics, I stated that the starting and ending cinematics of each map do not need to have all of the settings. In your case, the units do not necessarily need to be paused.

But because I create units and have camera movements I need to disable the skip when units are created to avoid double units.

Camera movements are automatically stopped once you have issued another order. If you reset the camera at any time, all camera movements will cease.
As for the units, all you need to do is create the unit before the player is able to skip the cinematic.

So my question to you: How do you stop your cinematic trigger from running after you've skipped?

You would be glad to know that you are on the right track. What you're missing is variables. First, create a Boolean variable (a Boolean is a true or false statement). Give it a name that you will easily remember, like 'Movie1Skipped'. When the player skips the cinematic, set the variable to true. Before each necessary action in the cinematic trigger, add an if statement. In my case, it is 'If Movie1Skipped Equal to True, then Skip Remaining Actions, else Do Nothing'.

I chose the food cap trigger because I didn't want to lose gold to upkeep.

There is still a better method to use. Go to the Advanced button in the toolbar, and select Gameplay Constants.
Advanced > Gameplay Constants...
You will find that you can edit quite a bit, but most importantly, you are able to edit the amount of food you can get, as well as changing the upkeep. In your case, you will be able to change it so that the player can never have upkeep, even if they have full population!

 

[cleavinghammer]

Beat level 5:

* Strange bug which I think is caused by skipping the intro cinematic: all items which require puzzle solving are already out, so pushing down the switches isn't needed (and does nothing).
* Why does that one yeti thank you for his bear? You've never seen it before...
* The Magic Pen barrier doesn't respond to any spell (though some of the items can be picked up if the unit is close enough).
* Make the pig bigger, it looks too small...
* Give the healer yetis a different model (oracle, for example) so one can tell the difference.
* The boss fight: the avalanche only worked once.
** Also in the cutscene, the camera goes straight through the Elder.
* In several cutscenes, the camera can still move around (if you move the mouse to the left edge of the screen, the camera goes left, etc.).
* Make wood available in all shops, it's annoying to backtrack all the time...
* A problem with Snowball: The distance traveled by the snowball is nowhere near the distance you can cast it at (That is, tell the Elder to cast it at maximum range, and the snowball will die maybe halfway to the targeted unit).
* There's a circle of power in the southwest corner that doesn't seem to do anything...
* Two other bugs:
** Sometimes the unit portraits disappear for some reason, though the only change in gameplay is that the unit isn't centered on when the portrait is clicked. It goes away after a while, though sometimes it reappears.
** At some point the second optional quest was marked as completed, even though I never discovered it.

For level six:

* Why on Earth do the Felguards have Lich voices?
* Which yeti ancestor are you supposed to kill? They're all named Yeti Ancestor.
* Make the Meteor ability kill trees as well...

 

[Sage Chow]

Lots of text on both our accounts: My point is that your set up of cinematics is way more efficient: Hiding all units and creating actors separately.
* Unfortunately in the long cinematics I didn't use this. I load Dagar in the ship, and then I can't move him instantaneously, I create Ragnar halfway etc.
* The trigger keeps running: I also use a boolean trick (slighly different) to stop small cinematics. But in a long sequence I would have to incorporate 20 or more checks for every action. Also camera movements are nót reset by the skip if you add waits in the trigger <Cleavinghammer: these are the portait "bugs" that you've observed, resulting from "transmission from unit">.

Conlusion: Next time i'm using your method from the start, but i'll keep the slightly annoying 3 second thing instead of rewriting the long cinematics (again).

There is still a better method to use. Go to the Advanced button in the toolbar, and select Gameplay Constants.
Advanced > Gameplay Constants...
You will find that you can edit quite a bit, but most importantly, you are able to edit the amount of food you can get, as well as changing the upkeep. In your case, you will be able to change it so that the player can never have upkeep, even if they have full population!

I'm aware of this. Out of pure curiosity: why would it be better to use the gameplay constants over the normal trigger: set food cap/max (which doesn't apply to all players so the AI can do what it needs to do)?


Cleavinghammer,

You got me just in time.. "Done" to all points! The second quest IS the bear one, so that's why you've never seen it. Added comments etc. The Iceblock over the magic pen can be destroyed but is hard to target, reduced life so you can take it out with a single blow/snowball. The items thing is weird.. maybe its just the items in the blue fire field?

Further:

* Changed to Grom, do you have a better suggestion? The satyr and bandit ones just sound too high for my tastes and the orcs keep screaming "for the horde!" all the time.
* Haha, yeah not so clear on my part. It's the hero magnataur one.
* The meteor ability dóes kill trees, although not in this level (the custom models lack a proper death animation).

In principle, i'm now done with the major updates. I'm just going to see if I can skin the campaign screen somehow so that Dagar appears instead of Arthas.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Nope, it's every single puzzle on the map, including the book of teleport.

Also, towards the end there are a few tomes of experience, you might want to change them since by that point the hero's reached max level.


The Felguard already has a soundset, I dunno why you'd want to change it...

 

[Sage Chow]

Nope, it's every single puzzle on the map, including the book of teleport.

Also, towards the end there are a few tomes of experience, you might want to change them since by that point the hero's reached max level.


The Felguard already has a soundset, I dunno why you'd want to change it...

Hmm, that's not good.. I'll have another look, maybe i already noticed this and changed it in my version. The tome of experience fest was there because you absolutely must be at lvl 6 to cast snowstorm to advance to the next level. It was a kind of failsafe. Maybe i'll drop a few. Obviously most items should have been hidden there aswell..

 

[cleavinghammer]

Aaaand in the latest news, it seems there's some kind of game-crashing bug on the sixth map, no idea why.

(The error message reads "The instruction at '0x6F40B341' referenced memory at '0x00000028'. The memory could not be 'read'", don't know if it'll help. I got it when trying to load a save before killing the last cult member.)

This might actually be my computer's fault, so if no one else encounters it, don't worry about it.

Also, the Meteor Impact spell needs tweaking: the damage is done before the meteor lands.

 

[I34w90_238j]

The cinematics in this campaign are very long and uninformative, so they should be skipped even if you never watched them before. However you introduce a whole new story based on original Wc3 characters. And you set up a good atmosphere in first mission, that encourages the player to play on. Some mini-game are frustrating, yet amazingly simple and interesting.
There are lots of side quests, so if the player gets bored and overpowered, there will still be something to do in each map.

The terrain is very detailed, but some places are not as good as the rest of the territory.
You used invisible platforms (on ladders) inaccurately, as I could, on some places near those towers, walk over the palisade. That does pose a problem, but it can be easily solved using JASS and basic geometry.

As a minor map moderator, my duty is to give this piece of warcraft a thumb up.

 

[Sage Chow]

The cinematics in this campaign are very long and uninformative, so they should be skipped even if you never watched them before.

Hahaha! Best comment so far! I hope for my sake you're trying to tell me that all cinematics should have a skip ability. Because when I read the post it looks like your advice is that I just throw all the cinematic in the garbage.. LOL, so much for delicasy.. xD

However you introduce a whole new story based on original Wc3 characters. And you set up a good atmosphere in first mission, that encourages the player to play on. Some mini-game are frustrating, yet amazingly simple and interesting.

The minigames are frustrating? I played them a lot and made the score to get a prize a little harder each time.. Maybe I got really good at them.. Although the chicken still have me screaming at the screen too, but I also smile because I made them so annoying.

You used invisible platforms (on ladders) inaccurately, as I could, on some places near those towers, walk over the palisade. That does pose a problem, but it can be easily solved using JASS and basic geometry.

I never got into Jass, so I wouldn't know how to do that, but I should have used pathing maps anyway. The little towers are just a little extra in the terrain, so I won't bother too much with them anymore. I did fix some of the pathing blockers.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[BlackKnightTGS]

Great campaign, haven't finished it yet, but I've found a bug:
The Tribal Icon in the inventory doesn’t show, shows the empty inventory icon when I pause.
For now 4/5

 

[cleavinghammer]

About level seven: the concept is awesome, and it works well, but PLEASE let the player build towers! It's already challenging enough without having to interrupt an attack by running back to defend your base...

Also, the guardian of the afterlife is only level 6?

 

[Forsaken Ranger]

updated review

You have improved significantly Sage from the first submission. There are still a couple issues and suggestions I have for you.

Chapter 1:
-Once the tuskarr become allies, I'd recommend giving shared vision of them to the player as They do not have it. I'd also recommend modifying the AI to take turns attacking the tuskarr and the icetroll bases. The demons only attacked the tuskarrs and my base was completely safe the whole map.
-When you are about to go do the rune quest, all the runes appear in font of the troll shaman and you can pick one up before you even go on the quest. May have been a trigger error, but after I completed the rune quest, I was then able to also take the other two runes that were in front of him. I don't know if you intended this or not, but that's what happened for me.
-Quest to kill demon warlock said "quest completed" even before I killed him, again, might be a trigger error.
-I also liked what you did with bringing the runes together to get that special ability. I noticed that the ability had said level one on it. Does this mean that you have certain quest rewards placed throughout the campaign that can increase it's level up to 3? If so, that is a very good idea.

Chapter 2:
-Troll Hero has 1150 range at the start and all the way through the mission. Is he supposed to have a range that high?

Chapter 3:
-You cannot go back to the caves where you start out. This is the same bug as before where when you try going back down into the starting caves, it takes you back to the campaign screen. I'm not sure what's wrong there, but I know it is possible to set up triggers that allow you to go back to that original area as is seen in the Orc campaign and also a user created campaign called "Maelstrom".

As before, I cannot yet give this campaign a rating as I am unable to progress beyond chapter 3 due to the bug. Once this is fixed, I will be able to do so and imagine that I will give a very good rating. Good luck and I hope you are able to fix chapter 3's bug.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Annnnnd another intro cinematic bug, for level 8: When pressing ESC during the skip countdown, not only does it not skip the cutscene, but has the strange side effect of setting up TWO countdowns. And, more amusingly, it seems to double the number of units you're supposed to have, making the level far easier to start with.

Also, please make the barracks and/or the lounge belong to the player, since it is near impossible to get a unit back to the shop once past a certain distance (They line up at the bottom of the west cliff instead of going around...)

And the end sequence is seriously screwed up. Way too many waves barely spaced at all, and you don't get a message when (when, not if) either the Elder or Dagar dies.

 

[Sage Chow]

@ Forsaken Ranger:
I'll look into the maelstrom maps now. But from what i've seen he uses a central hub map instead of a ring. My last resort is to change the save path from saves\Map1 to just Map1. There are reports of a 43 character limit to the savepath and filename. Maybe this extends to the directory in which W3 is stored.. Or there is a protection that prevents me from creating this folder.

The items should be hidden at map initialization. When I test it, everythings seems to be working fine, but for some reason this doesn't work when other people play the campaign.. I conclude that my slighly older version of WE is the cause of this bug.

You can upgrade the IceBolt in chapter 7. But maybe i'll add another upgrade in chapter 4.

@ Cleavinghammer:
Chapter 8:
Please get the new version (1.02) for chapter 8. I also found that this chapter was lacking quite a bit and I made quite a lot of changes. The attack waves are still pretty hard though and the bosses are still spicy. I might rebalance it again if necessary. I made the Demons and Undead neutral in the end, so i'm not quite sure of the difficulty after all that. Note that you can buy a zeppelin from a secret laboratory to get around more quickly, and you can also buy a scroll of resurrection in the beginning to keep your troops alive. I also added more reinforcement events.
The entire concept of the level is to deal with the distance, by gathering some easy gold early on you can go back to fight the Dragons later to conserve your troops (after getting some nets). I'll see if I can make it sell the units without a patron present.

Chapter 6-Part II:
When I made the concept demon race, my idea was to cram everything in those two gates and use only the sacrificial pit as a defence mechanism. As a result the gates are nearly impenetrable, but once destroyed the demons are worthless. The summoning time for units and their power was slightly increased to compensate for the lack of defence. I even considered creating a defence portal to summon temporary guards for gold. In the end I decided on the burning storm ability to defend the base in a pinch, requiring some sacrifices in advance.
Playing the level myself, I also felt that in practice it is quite hard to defend and launch an expedition at the same time. In the update I redid the attack waves of the undead a little. But it was also supposed to be hard to get to the secret treasure rooms. I added a scroll of town portal in the far away places to still be able to defend after a long expedition.

 

[cleavinghammer]

I see. I'll try getting to those later.

EDIT: (Sigh) I stilll can't get level three to work properly. And since now the missions aren't all available, seems I won't be able to look at the others...

Weird bug on chapter two: the unit I chose (Trapper and a Mammoth, then I fused them once past the bridge) doesn't move or attack. You can still select it, and it still counts as yours, but can't do anything.

I like the new menu screen (face looks a bit strange, but the rest looks cool).

 

[Sage Chow]

I see. I'll try getting to those later.

EDIT: (Sigh) I stilll can't get level three to work properly. And since now the missions aren't all available, seems I won't be able to look at the others...

Weird bug on chapter two: the unit I chose (Trapper and a Mammoth, then I fused them once past the bridge) doesn't move or attack. You can still select it, and it still counts as yours, but can't do anything.

I like the new menu screen (face looks a bit strange, but the rest looks cool).

I'm aware that the cave thing isn't solved yet. I'll look into it once the weather cools down a bit. However, you cán access the later chapters. Just type "revealallcampaignbuttons" in chapter 1 or in the bonus map. The gamecache will still restore the heroes and items from the previous version. Although some items may change into the easter egg artifacts that I planted in this version.

The chapter two bug is cause of the mounting system. I should have disabled that.

I'm glad you liked my feeble attempt at skinning the campaign screen (we can't all be as awesome as Redshift ). I may redo the eyes a little.

 

[Turnro]

I have downloaded the campaign again and played the first chapter. You would be happy to know that the map has significantly improved from the original version, but there are still a couple of bugs/errors I found:

Chapter 1

- You have changed the Furbolg Quest a bit. At the start, I thought that you couldn't get the quest anymore, since nothing happened when I went up to the Icetroll Fisherman. It was only when I crossed the bridge that made me think otherwise...
- When you get the Sea Monster quest from the Icetroll, the camara view does not reset and stays where it is.
- You have improved the Summoner's harvest gold animation, but there were a couple of times where I would train a new Summoner and their harvest animation would be faster then usual (it seems a bit odd having the sam units animation faster then it is suppose to).
- I have only noticed that the Icetroll Summoners are classified as an 'undead' type. You will need to change this.

I will have a look at the rest of the campaign soon, as my time is limited.

 

[Sage Chow]

- You have changed the Furbolg Quest a bit. At the start, I thought that you couldn't get the quest anymore, since nothing happened when I went up to the Icetroll Fisherman. It was only when I crossed the bridge that made me think otherwise...
- When you get the Sea Monster quest from the Icetroll, the camara view does not reset and stays where it is.
- You have improved the Summoner's harvest gold animation, but there were a couple of times where I would train a new Summoner and their harvest animation would be faster then usual (it seems a bit odd having the sam units animation faster then it is suppose to).
- I have only noticed that the Icetroll Summoners are classified as an 'undead' type. You will need to change this.

- The furbolg quest didn't work anymore? I must have messed up the cinematic skip in the new version.. I'll have a quick look.
- The summoners gold animation was reset to a very minimal periodic trigger. I forgot to add a "unit is trained" event. The animation speed of the summoners must be set to 25% to make the harvest animation look good. Do you know if there is a better way to set their animation speed? (Maybe using the Object Editor?)
- I was under the impression that the undead classification is a requirement for the undead harvest ability. Turns out I was wrong Only the race is important.

I'll update this campaign again somewhere this weekend due to that cave bug. Since I find it a bit lame to do just that I'm hoping to finalize some more easter eggs in chapter 6 (they're quite big) and fix some stupid mistakes (I revised some more tooltips/cinematic skips etc).

 

[grimsmile]

The latest version STILL has problem in the cave of chapter One.
I cannot come to the next chapter.

 

[Vengeancekael]

As a member of the Group Map Reviewers, I will be reviewing campaigns/cinematics :

[+] Interesting Story
[+] Entertaining for some people
[-] Weird Terrain (empty, some spots are flat)
[-] Bad camera work (It should constantly move)
[-] Bad minigame controls

I guess this is a campaign that can be played by some people.

Final Rating : 2/5

Status : Approval

 

[Sage Chow]

Updated to version 1.03, have fun with it! I added a really cool new hero as an easter egg in chapter six. You can get the cheat-code by solving the new floor puzzle in the valley of the liches.


@ grimsmile: Well, the latest version was only the second one..I mean "STILL" would be more like, say, this version.. You may be in luck and the new trick worked, or I will have to call in the big guns on this one..
Either way, you can continue beyond Ch 3 by typing "reveallallcampaignbuttons".

As a member of the Group Map Reviewers, I will be reviewing campaigns/cinematics :

[+] Interesting Story
[+] Entertaining for some people
[-] Weird Terrain (empty, some spots are flat)
[-] Bad camera work (It should constantly move)
[-] Bad minigame controls

I guess this is a campaign that can be played by some people.

Final Rating : 2/5

Status : Approval

Ai.. 'some people' huh.. I guess 'some people' might even write a review about it I like that bad minigame controlls is a minus. I realize that this is a vital part of the overall gameplay and that my poor triggering and physics tarnish in comparison to modern day action games. You dó have to tap the arrows keys to actually steer, you know

On a more serious note; I'm not sure how to interpret "weird terrain". I get the impression that you either played all the maps, and thus refer to certain places and maps (I do have the tendency to create natural open terrain) or that you just played the first half hour, and probably refer to the cinematic map.. idem dito for the camera work.. But, hey, there are over 30 cinematics in the campaign, i'm bound to get one right eventually! Anyways, thanks for the heads up, although some more information would have been nice.

 

[Blood Raven]

On Chapter five: the Path of the Yeti, there is an ice blockade that i just cant pass trough, i cant destroy it, only my troll priest can pass trugh...

 

[Forsaken Ranger]

new review

Okay, so here's an updated review of bugs or issues that I've found. Some of them weren't really big deals, I just threw them in just in case you want to do something about them. As before, they are broken down by chapter.

Chapter one:

-I completed the rune quest and the troll did of course let me choose the one rune. I did. At some point in the same map afterward, I had saved and loaded a couple times and I'm not sure if that is what caused this, but the other two runes became available for me to take again when I loaded the game.
-AI may still need reworked. The demons were only attacking the tuskarr the entire time. My base did not get a scratch. I'm not sure if you can maybe make it so they alternate their attacks between bases, but it would give a little bit more challenge.
-Again, in the main quest log to kill the demon, it said the quest was complete even before I killed him. Don't know if you want to change this or not

Chapter two:
-the only thing I can really think of is after the siege, Zulzujas still had his 1150 range. He had 600 to start with and then it became 1150 at the siege, but it stayed that way afterward.

Chapter three:
-Well at least you did fix the cave bug. I was able to go back down into the cave where I started and it did not go back to the main screen.
-I bought the upgrade for the ice bolt spell and at some point, it went back down to level one. I ended up having to buy it again.
-After you complete the optional quest to assemble the emerald pieces, there are still emerald pieces available to find. I don't know if you intended this or not, but it got to the point where I was picking up additional pieces and the progress for the quest was actually saying something like "find -4 more pieces". You might want to add a trigger that just destroys the remaining pieces once you complete the quest or something to that effect.

Chapter four:
-The game gave a Fatal Error a couple times in the map. I don't know if this is maybe because of custom spells or what have you, but the one time it seemed like it crashed was after I used Zulzuja's ultimate. The other time was at the ending cut-scene.
-The other thing about this map is the AI. It behaves like the AI in melee maps. I noticed the demon forces had attacked some of the creeps on the map and consumed items, probably tomes. You might want to change that so they don't attack creeps. I know the enemy forces through the blizzard campaigns do not attack creeps. Of course I'm saying this because I'm being greedy and want all the tomes for myself but yeah whatever, haha! The frustration was due to having fought a group of creeps and the demon hero actually came over and ninja'd a strength tome the nerve I tell you. LOL.

Chapter five:
-The game Fatals here too. Again I don't know if this is due to custom spells.
-The pig that you are supposed to catch is invulnerable. I'm not really sure what you are supposed to do to get him.

Your improvements with each successive version are remarkable I must say. From reading your other posts, I also appreciate the way you handle criticism whether it is positive or negative, specific or detailed. I think most people would fly off the handle to certain things that have been said in previous posts but you do not do that. Keep that up! Anyway, I cannot give this campaign a rating as of yet due to not being able to complete it, but hopefully if you can fix the fatal errors, I will be able to do so. Good luck.

EDIT: I believe I know what is causing the Fatal. It seems to happen every time the demon's chain lightning spell hits certain units. I had gotten to the demon portion of the campaign and when I used it, the game crashed. This happened several times in the previous map with the yeti. When the chain lightning would hit certain units it would crash.

 

[grimsmile]

I can come to the ch 2 and 3 now.Thanks.

 

[Sage Chow]

Your improvements with each successive version are remarkable I must say. From reading your other posts, I also appreciate the way you handle criticism whether it is positive or negative, specific or detailed. I think most people would fly off the handle to certain things that have been said in previous posts but you do not do that. Keep that up! Anyway, I cannot give this campaign a rating as of yet due to not being able to complete it, but hopefully if you can fix the fatal errors, I will be able to do so. Good luck.

Thank you for such a positive attitude! LOL, this is the third time some stupid bugs prevent you from finishing my campaign! I'm really sorry about that and the patience is much appreciated! I'll just soldier on from here to version 1.04 (minor sigh) until I get things right..

Fatal errors: After typing some blabla about these errors I checked the map.. Seems like I just disabled the wrong Trigger, D'OH! I also deducted it's the chain lightning: One of the Endure triggers orders the casting unit to stop (which isn't there). The Endure triggers were "conveniently" named Endure2 and Endure3.. What a blunder! I'll update the maps tonight..

Chapter one:
- Runes: Those runes should have been gone. I used the 'hide item' action again and the save/load somehow affects this. (Hrr, Stupid Hide Item function)
-AI: I tried to make the demon AI regard the tuskarr as a neutral, hoping to draw attacks to the trolls. It doesn't really work. To be honest I have no idea how to make an AI target a specific player/location, except by using a custom patrol trigger.. *idea sparks*
-Warlock: Oops, forgot to change that trigger.. version 1.04?

Chapter two:
- The range bonus can only be set using an upgrade. I can't undo upgrades as it may fail in some cases. I'll leave it in there for now.

Chapter three:
-The Icebolt Upgrade will activate in the next level as mentioned in the comment. You were supposed to get there only before the final boss fight. It's queued by moving up and down the caves. I did this so it wouldn't interfere with later gamecache events. (read: I was too lazy to add a few extra variables.. you caught me )
-There are 11 emerald pieces to make the quest a little less sadistic. I guess I could just turn of the quest message trigger.. (^^same lazyness)

Chapter four:
-I changed the AI of this chapter a lot. Initially I read a tutorial that suggested the AI to attack creeps to make it (more) active. I kept the "attack creeps" so the enemy heroes could match the player heroes after gathering items for three chapters. I've been ninja'ed out of a tome quite a few times myself.. it is a bit frustrating, I agree.
So the question(s) posed: Was the AI acceptable (in general terms) and should I prevent them from taking items?

Chapter five:
Welcome to my insane mind.. Spoilers ahead:

cryptic tips

You can purchase a trap to place in the circle. Invulnerable units may still be ensnared.

Did the other puzzles pose any problems? Maybe I should add a hints section in the map. Also, some items were supposed to be hidden in the map, such as gold etc. Is this fixed?

On Chapter five: the Path of the Yeti, there is an ice blockade that i just cant pass trough, i cant destroy it, only my troll priest can pass trugh...

Hi! Welcome to the hive. You can cast Snowball from the circle of power in front of the gate to destroy it. Use Hero Abilities, Item Abilities, Snowmaker abilities or place items near circles of power later on. There are also hidden tricks at places without a circle of power!

 

[Mr.Pockets00000]

looks like it could be fun... ill dl the first few maps and see

 

[warblazer]

you should add a way to get more lures for the chapter one quest for the three runes, because it said "A" circle of power, i didnt know that ment that there were 3, and it allows you to place the lures anywhere, dont know if this was intended but to prevent confusion maybe you should list this?

 

[Sage Chow]

you should add a way to get more lures for the chapter one quest for the three runes, because it said "A" circle of power, i didnt know that ment that there were 3, and it allows you to place the lures anywhere, dont know if this was intended but to prevent confusion maybe you should list this?

Yeah, there was supposed to be one monster, initially. But I liked them and decided to add more. I'll make the lures available at the shop in the next update.

 

[Forsaken Ranger]

further review

Okay, I was able to complete the missions after map 5, so here's what I noticed.

All chapters overall:
-The AI is basically the same as melee map AI. I'd really recommend changing it to a more custom type if possible. It just gets redundant from each map to expect the same type of attacks over and over again where they bring a hero and a bunch of units and they retreat when damaged too badly. Having different AI in each map at least adds more to that map's uniqueness.
-The frost ward from the yeti spell casters is very weak in terms of hit-points. The wards are always targeted as a top priority from the enemy and they are never even able to get a shot in to attack the enemy. If they are to be a prime target when that spell is cast, I'd recommend giving them way more hitpoints. This will compensate especially if there are large amounts of enemies. It has very slow attack speed and all enemies are going to attack the ward at once anyway and still end up destroying it quickly. that's just my thoughts, because I just really don't find very much use in that ability.

Chapter 5:
-I tried ensnaring the pig with trapper nets and bear traps after doing warcry in the circle of power. Neither one worked. When I tried using the nets to target him, it said target is invulnerable. So you actually can't do anything with invulnerable units.
-There were also a bunch of other circles that I had tried using many different units that did not work either. I don't know if there is some kind bug that is not making the abilities trigger the circles but they weren't working.
-Also the platforms you step on were not being pressed down. Some you couldn't even get to in order to press down. I am not even sure what they are for as there is no hint or indication.

Chapter 6:
-In part one, I typed in the "cheat" that is given in part two after finding the item in the northeast area. It didn't do anything but give me a message that the 5th hero is revealed, yet there were no changes on the hero. I am not sure what this was supposed to do.
-I cannot get to the fire orb to give to Boreas after destroying the crypt in the lower right hand corner. There is like an invisible force that prevents you from even getting near it. I don't know if this is supposed to be like this or if it is a bug, but if it is, perhaps a hint would do better to make this clear?

-Chapter 7
-The hidden laboratory becomes accessible when you cast freeze. However this is after Dagar has left the map due to putting him in the circle of power in the yellow undead base. There is then now way to upgrade his icebolt ability to level 3. I'm not sure if you caught this or not.
-Another thing is that the objective decsription says something like hold off the undead long enough for Alvar to activate the third obelisk. The problem is that you basically have to kill the undead before even activating the previous obelisks. When you do that, they're aren't any to hold off.
-I also killed Brutus by destroying his base, and at one point it said get to the third obelisk before Brutus does. Things seem a bit screwy in this map with triggers and all, I'm really not sure what to make of it??

-Chapter 8
-After you bring Dagar to the center island to cast his spell, the timer to meltdown still continues ticking.
-Alvar is not in this map. It had a blank portrait and his name when he was supposedly talking during the cinematic, but he is not in this map. As such, It can't be completed, because I assume you need him to get past that wall where the circle of power is. All I started off with was like four units, but no hero.

Alright, that is what I've noticed so far through the maps. Still seems to be quite a bit of bugs. It's getting to be a pain to have to start all over every update and take the time to go through all maps again.Therefore, I think I am going to wait past several updates to try the campaign again. Best of luck!

 

[rcshaggy]

For some reason I can't get passed mission 3 with the defense of the Troll base.

I waited out the whole thirty three minutes and I thought the mission would end after that.
If its just me well can someone help me progress?

 

[Sage Chow]

@ Forsaken Ranger: Thanks for the feedback. Some things you mention aren't bugs. They just have kinda crazy solutions. I realize I need to water it down a bit more as it isn't clear. But I do want to promote some creative problem solving.
I know I still need to do a major revision of chapter seven. I postponed it a bit as I needed some fresh ideas. Expect this map to be changed like the first one. The rest of the chapters won't be changed much anymore as I'm working on a new project.

Reply (SPOILERS)

All chapters overall:
- I left the AI in chapter 7 un-altered as I was expecting to do a bigger upgate of this map after some feedback. The AI in chapter 6 has two attacking AI's and two defending. Should I decrease the attack frequency in this level even more?
The chapter 4 AI comes in waves, but i could reduce the frequency even more and make them more defensive, skipping the creep hunting. The chapter 5 AI is meant to attack and is also in waves.
-The frostward could be increased in strength, but I'm reluctant to make them overpowered. If they get too much hitpoints they will just wall the enemy. I'm also frustrated that they are targeted by the AI instantly. I could experiment with "targeted as", maybe the AI lays priority on wards. I'll try upgrading the hitpoints to 50 or 65 max.

Chapter 5:
-Allright I'll just spill the beans: You were supposed to buy a bear trap from the shop and place it in the circle. Then you ensnare the stags that roam the forest to get bait. I'll add some more hints in the conversation.
-The other circles are kind of hard. They are mostly fun easter eggs that require a mad mind. You can get the Ogre by casting freeze on the mountain giant (or using a subzero potion). That one should have been do-able.
You can cast Freeze Magic on magical barriers (the pen, the force wall, etc). The blue fire requires the fury buff to enter (a fiery spirit), or the endure buff at a 50% hp cost. Also: cast freeze on the lake (try to find the target) to cross, bowl the pillar near the first camp for gold, use the bear to enter the water after dispelling the blue fire.
-You can flip switches by placing a frostward over them. There is a hint in chapter 2 (when you recieve the frost wards) explaining that they may flip switches. Note that you can do this in other places in the campaign aswell. In the ruins this gets you the Robe of Boreas, also acquired by casting wand of illusion to get the illusion over the fence. In map one this flips the switch on the island, in map 6 this solves the floor puzzle with less units.

Chapter 6:
-The cheat does work, but the hero (a shapeshifter) immediatly transforms in Brutus. If you play on for two minutes he will revert back. I'll move the second hint back to when you insert the cheat next update.
-Well, you can't just walk into burning fire now can you . If you would have played on after the cheat (it isn't required) you will notice some slight changes to the level. There is now a troll merchant where the felbeast was. Buy his upgrades and apply some logic. Note: beating chapter five will reset the level to the first time around until you beat the reconnaissance level again.

-Chapter 7
-Knobbs the merchant walks around the map randomly. You may or may not encounter him early on. He also has two places to upgrade the IceBolt.
I plan to create a better system for this.
-You could kill the undead bases first. (My strategy was to buy a secret potion and have a Hero sneak into the camp.) But even if the undead bases are destroyed, two Lich champions + some troops are spawned from the Obelisks. I will place them in Iceblocks to make this a bit better but I guess I'll change a lot more
-Brutus: Yes that was sucky on my part. It's part of the planned revision.

-Chapter 8
-The meltdown triggers the undead attack, therefore it needs to keep running telling you how much time there is left.
-Alvar is not in this map. (!!) Ai, this is a major error. I'll need to fix this soon. I think it's because of the newly inserted cinematic skips.

Well, you don't need to start over, as the gamecache will work fine recreating your stored heroes. And even without stored heroes the levels should run normally (just without some artifacts and boosts). But I understand completely. I played all levels over and over again and it gets a bit boring. I guess that's why I created the new eastereggs.

For some reason I can't get passed mission 3 with the defense of the Troll base.

I waited out the whole thirty three minutes and I thought the mission would end after that.
If its just me well can someone help me progress?

Did you get the cinematic with the blademaster, taunting you to come to the lake down south? There is a short wait after the timer runs down, so you can clean up the demons that are still in your base.

 

[Gon Lafaut]

I love ice maps

 

[Sage Chow]

------------------ Updated to version 1.04 ----------------

Remember to bring your snowgoggles for chapter 7 as it is white!

I'll still be doing small revisions and bug fixes, based on the comments. But I'm going to work on a new project as well. I'm working on a sideways campaign called Avatar of Forest which will be much more rpg like, but again with two new playable races (one is 90% completed). The story will have nothing to do with undead this time (i'm sick of them), but will revolve around Allegra, an elven ranger that has to travel back and forth through time to save her beloved forest from an invading troop of humans (the forsaken) seeking the avatar of forest to cure their polluted lands. If people are interested I'll even make a small WIP page and stuff.

 

[tulee]

------------------ Updated to version 1.04 ----------------

Remember to bring your snowgoggles for chapter 7 as it is white!

I'll still be doing small revisions and bug fixes, based on the comments. But I'm going to work on a new project as well. I'm working on a sideways campaign called Avatar of Forest which will be much more rpg like, but again with two new playable races (one is 90% completed). The story will have nothing to do with undead this time (i'm sick of them), but will revolve around Allegra, an elven ranger that has to travel back and forth through time to save her beloved forest from an invading troop of humans (the forsaken) seeking the avatar of forest to cure their polluted lands. If people are interested I'll even make a small WIP page and stuff.

the sea monster quest on chapter 1 is still buggy : (

 

[Sage Chow]

the sea monster quest on chapter 1 is still buggy : (

Allright, so ehhm.. what exactly is the problem? Do the runes still appear before completing the quest?

 

[supertoinkz]

Soooo...is it bug free? I would like to play it once more.

 

[Sage Chow]

Soooo...is it bug free? I would like to play it once more.

Well not completely, obviously, there are 14 friggin' maps with over 70 triggers.. there's bound to be some mistakes left o_0. But since you played the very first version (yeah I even put you up in the credits for that ) and assuming you didn't play on from there the maps should be significantly improved to a very playable level. And since I don't get payed, I'm refusing to play all maps for the 100th time just to find that one little bug, so I'm counting on the community to filter some of the final bugs aswell. So my advice: Download, enjoy and complain to me if there are major problems

 

[supertoinkz]

Okay, downloading, will report later.

 

[CaoSong]

***SPOILERS***

Chapter 1 - A few minor typos but other then that it's pretty good. The Tusskar army attacks far too often... as soon as I destroy one attack party, they're already sending another, not kidding, they really were attacking that quickly, need to make them attack slower so people have a chance to build up some units before attacked again. When I reached level 2 I got Ice Wave instead of Arcane Will like it suggests, however Ice Wave wouldnt work till I reached level 3 and got Arcane Will.

Chapter 2 - When I skipped the cinematic at the start after destroying the first generator, the ghouls stayed invincible... also after skipping the cinematic during the start of the siege battle, none of my units were in place, nor would my hero attack on his own for a while. And finally, after I cleaned out the remaining demons, I was left with only 1 Trapper... so I picked him as one of my champions... however after I then clicked on the big tower in the center of the fortress... and it let me take the fortress to battle as my 2nd Champion >_>;

Chapter 3 - Only got a little into it then gave up after the 2nd piece of the green crystal grew up on a ledge I couldn't reach...

 

[Forsaken Ranger]

Okay, I've downloaded the latest version again. In chapter 3 at the very end, there was a point where the cinematic just stayed on view of where the troll leader was supposed to head. Nothing happened it just waited and waited until I ctrl+alt+deleted. In later maps, chain lightning is still bugged and causes the game to crash. I would maybe suggest taking chain lightning out and giving them forked lightning instead. Maybe that might solve things. I say this because it is so annoying, especially if you haven't saved in a while and the game crashes like that. It crashed three times on me in map 5. I had been able to get through this map before in a previous version but now it seems I can't. I thought this bug didn't affect my hero, but I guess it does as that is where it crashed the third time. I won't have time to play these games anymore very soon due to an upcoming busy schedule that will last indefinitely. It's a shame really, as I saw a lot of potential that I probably won't get to see realized, but my rating is a 4/5 for this campaign from what I can do. Good luck on future projects and I encourage you to even work with others if at all possible on any projects. You might find someone has strengths in areas of map-making that you find yourself weak in, in order to complement your own abilities. Take care.

 

[Sage Chow]

------------- Updated to version 1.04b ------------------

Fixes only the minor things mentioned above ^^. Thanks to Caosong and Forsaken Ranger for the heads up. I replaced the chain lightning with forked lightning. The new ability does not increase in power after stealing a soul, but the trigger and stop order should not cause a bug anymore.

 

[Jayman]

How do i get it to work

How do i get it to work

 

[rcshaggy]

Had a glitch on where Arthas on the Undead Campaign was changed and the units and stuff had a glow effect.
It was fixed when I deleted Avatar of Ice.
Oh and by the way FIX THE GOD DAMN CHAPTER THREE!!!

 

[CaoSong]

What's wrong with Chapter 3?

 

[SasuhKun]

This looks good... I have a question though. What are those last two "chapter 3" maps?

 

[rcshaggy]

What's wrong with Chapter 3?

The damn mission doesn't end when I finally defend the troll camp for that long time. What's wrong?
I'm getting so fucking pissed off at it.

 

[CaoSong]

Oh, just a note, that's actually still Chapter 2, just the 2nd part of Chapter 2.

Anyway, did you have your little 3 on 3 duel with the Blademaster? if you killed the Blademaster before having to defend the fort that might have messed up the trigger.

 

[Sage Chow]

Ahh so the chapter 2 end is unclear.. I thought I added a bunch of comments and cinematic pings telling you to go to the lake.. Maybe I need to put in even more? What should I do to improve this?
You're supposed to survive the siege with the main tower. After the timer runs down you will need to wait for the Blademaster to taunt you. Then you can take the bridge, select two units and continue to the lake (pings).
The blademaster is supposed to be invisible until the very end, so you can't kill him by accident. Maybe the selection of units is lagging or unclear? I made it so you can't select structures anymore and units are spawned to select if you don't have enough units left.

 

[CaoSong]

The second time I tried Chapter 2 I was able to kill the Blademaster, he's near the South Gate... you should probably put him in a different place, maybe up in the corner somewhere till after the Fort battle just so he cant be found and killed (unless you changed him in the last update).

Also I'd like to point out that on Chapter 2 I had to search around the Fort a little cause a couple demon units were hiding and not approaching the fort, and I had to kill them before I could get the Blademaster's challenge. So Warlord, look around the fort and make sure all the demons are taken care of cause that might be the problem.

EDIT: I played the bonus Melee Map... and I have to note that the enemy AI doesn't do anything... I picked 3 AI enemies, the Orcs were harvesting gold and built a lumber mill but that was it, the Undead were harvesting lumber but built nothing, and the Ice Trolls didn't do anything at all... Also the Demon buildings require a large area to be built, not sure why but I had to clear out an area of trees so I'd have room to build the other buildings (also it would be nice if the Demon's had a guard tower of some sort, maybe add it to the spires like the Undead Spirit Towers work)

 

[Sage Chow]

^^ Yes, there is another blademaster (storywise the same one, obviously) joining in the attack waves trying to sneak in and kill your hero. This blademaster can be killed during the siege without reprecussions.

* You don't have to kill any demons around the fort: There's a 2 minute wait after the countdown runs to zero, before the blademaster taunts you. This wait was intended to allow the player time to chase the enemy and make the player really repell the final attack wave. I reduced this time in version 1.04 (not B), but I guess I should have extended the timer by one or two minutes.. (If only for the fact that we've been debating about it for so long )

The melee AI does work for me, but I usually battle one AI. I'll need to do some testing. I'll model/make a fire upgrade for the obelisks in a later version. More people have complained and with reason. I didn't make a tower unit before, because the build time of simple units is low and the demon pit can use burning storm to protect the camp in a pinch (provided you've stocked up on sacrifices). The building space is equivalent to the dimensional gates pathing, the concept was to have the demon army's focus in defending their expensive gates, defending with powerfull bulky units or cheap, sacrificible units at a fast summoning time.

>_> Enough bla-bla for now