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- Apr 18, 2008
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Greetings to all of our fans and followers!
Welcome to the third installment of our Developer's Blog series!
Today, I present to you our new melee map - Frozen Islands. Asides from the map itself, we will also be discussing the new control point - the Forest Sentinel, as well as some new units such as the Goblin Sappers and goblin War Turtle. Also in store are some screenshots of new artwork.
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Frozen Islands is a 2v2 map, focusing heavily on naval combat - the map is separated into several islands, each holding a player, a gold mine(or two) or a control point. In the very middle of the map, our new control point, the Forest Sentinel, stands guard. He is a powerful opponent, with a big amount of health and damage. Attempting to attack him with a small army will likely result in severe loses, but very good protection against enemy raids, assuming you keep at least some troops or towers near him. The Sentinel guards the middle island, which contains two gold mines and several trees - Control of this area will easily give you the economical advantage.
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The Forest Sentinel is a powerful building, able to launch powerful projectiles to a long range(able to reach even up to the gold mines surrounding him!) and withstand a lot of damage. Once destroyed, however, he will regrow over the course of short amount of time and join your cause, acting as a mighty protector for your expansions. In combination with guard towers surrounding him and the player's forces near him, he can prove to be considerably problematic for your enemies. He also doubles as a 'tank' - Taking up a lot of damage from the enemy while you load up your army in the transports and send it to help the sentinel defeat the invading enemy.
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And as if that weren't enough, the Forest Sentinel may also be upgraded with 'Strong Bark', 'Enchanted Bark' and 'Blessed Bark' - A 3-tier upgrade that becomes available as you upgrade your Great Hall. It improves the Sentinel's health, armor and damage. Be warned, however; Should the enemy manage to capture your Sentinel after you have upgraded it, the upgrades will remain and your own resources might very well be used against you!
Also included in our new map are Creeps. Since in Scars of Conflict you can't summon heroes, creeps don't give experience, or items. In Scars of Conflict, creeps have only one purpose - and that is to protect key locations, such as control points, landing shores and gold mines. They also provide a minor gold bounty when defeated, but the amount is small enough to be barely noticeable.
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Our first creeps are the Bandits. They are composed of 3 units(and a 4th one, the Bandit Mage, is possibly coming soon) - The Bandit Captains, who are moderately powerful melee units with Leadership Aura(which boosts nearby creeps' damage) and Defend(which protects them from damage), the Bandits, who are weak melee units with no abilities and the Bandit Spearthrowers, who are weak ranged units with no abilities.
And now is the time to take a look at some of our new units. First in line come the Goblin Sappers, the always-classic team of suicidal goblin engineers, handling much more explosives than their short, fragile bodies can handle. In Scars of Conflict, the Goblin Sappers have two roles: First of all, they retain their traditional role of harassing hit-and-run units especially useful at destroying buildings and clutters of weaker units(such as peons). For that, they use their Detonate ability, which does just what it says; Detonates the dangerous explosives on the Sapper trio, killing them in the process(and hopefully some enemies as well!).
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Their second role, however, is unique to Scars of Conflict. The Sappers can be upgraded with Concussive Mines - An ability which enables them to plant invisible mines on the battlefield, which will explode when an enemy unit approaches them, dealing instant damage and slowing the enemy down, allowing your ranged units and towers to take care of the assaulting force. Thanks to this ability, the Sappers are also a powerful defensive unit.
Another new unit that we have is the goblin War Turtle. The War Turtle is an amphibious unit, with the main purpose of destroying heavy enemy ships such as Juggernaughts. It is rather slow, but not slower than a Juggernaught. The War Turtle also has an ability called "Disabling Shot", which reduces the armor and damage of a target mechanical unit, which further increases the turtle's potential against juggernaughts, especially in large groups.
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Finally, we have the Ogre Mauler. Replacing the Ogre and Ogre Magi units, the Ogre Mauler is a heavy, tier 3 melee unit, specialized at destroying buildings thanks to his 'Demolish' ability, which causes him to deal 1.5 times his normal damage to buildings. However, the Ogre Mauler isn't good only for that. Being a powerful melee unit, the Ogre Mauler is also rather effective against ground units overall, but is easily countered by flying units and faster ranged units.
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Asides from new units and a new map, we have also been working on a bunch of new art(As you might have noticed from the screenshots
). Some examples of that are the War Turtle, the new Orc Transport texture, the Juggernaught texture, a lot of new icons, etc. Here are a few screenshots of some of them: |  |  |  |  |
We are currently working on the last remaining units for the Horde, which are the Warlock and the Goblin Ace. We're also working on the new Troll Destroyer model as well as several new icons.
And finally, to conclude this gigantic Developer's Blog, here is a video of Player Red's forces invading Player Blue's expansions(protected by the Forest Sentinel), utilizing Goblin Sappers(Player Blue even cleverly laid down a few Concussive Mines near his shipyard), Ogre Maulers and War Turtles.
And... That's it! I hope you enjoy this development diary as much as I enjoyed writing it(for about 13 hours in total, losing the whole thing once and having to rewrite it from scratch... D
. Keep in mind that much of the content you see in the screenshots and in the video is placeholder(for example: Death Knight's soundset, Shrine of Sargeras model\texture, naval upgrade icons, etc) and will probably be changed before the BETA release. See you guys next time!
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