Dungeon Lords 1.6.3

[Moderator]

10:14, 22nd May 2009 by bounty hunter2:
Not bad, but still has a lot of work to put into it. First, a lot of lacking tooltips, badly written. Then missing hotkeys on many abilities and heroes. Then, the terrain should be improved. The dungeons don0t have much options, all the rooms look the same. The heroes are poorly done, they have unoriginal or regular spells. There isn't much originality here, neither much options. It has some potential, but still, Rejected.

Use our Map Development forum for further development of your map, this is nowhere near approval, yet.

--

Linaze: Reset to pending.

 

[Eldrazor]

You should seriously try to make each player (dungeons team) less attatched to each other. Give them their own piece of the dungeon, with several connecting pieces, their own bosses, stuff like that. Like this it's just impossible to get a well-organized dungeon. I like the idea. A lot, but you should really improve the possibilities for the dungeon keepers, as for now they can only build a couple of traps (that are severely underpowered) and have the option to choose from 2 unit types during the whole game (that are severely underpowered too) Also, the diggers maybe look cool, but don't work well at all. After a while it takes way too long before they get to a wall and I often see one of them miraculously not hearing the order or something and staying behind.

 

[M0RT]

Yeah, the possibilies aren't that great yet, I am planning on improving that of course. Map balance is something that takes longer time, I am trying to balance it for a long time now, and it's still pretty imba.
Digger work on "acquisition range", so go complain to blizzard No idea how to create some system for that, but It may change in future.
I realise it can be hard to organise, but I am thinking of decreasing the number of Dungeon Lord players, splitting the dungeon can't do anything good.

Thx for such a quick response

 

[Alfred]

Tested alone and it looks very good, i´ve just dont like to have to cast embrace in every lair to make spawn, it should be automatic so the keeper can focus in defence instead of clicking and clicking.

 

[M0RT]

The main problem here is, that all the buildings belong to "dungeon" player, and there is (so far I know), no way to detect, which player actually gave to order to build the dwelling. If I could detect that, I could remove the whole embracing procedure. The whole point of embrace is only to determine which player's units will spawn. The only thing I could do is give an order to the nearest worker to embrace it, but then sometimes you could end up with some other Dungeon Lords embracing "your" lair (you can re-embrace, but then it wouldn't spare you any time). I am however planning on including some non-embraced building detector, which will alert Dungeon Lords that there are still unembraced lairs in the dungeon, making them less likely to forgot them.
I am afraid I can't prevent Dungeon Lords from the loads of clicks, the digging system needs the clicks

 

[Tleno]

I've been waiting for map like this for ages! I give it 5/5!

I would also like if you would make more modes (How much time does round takes, Full sharing for dungeon lords, Every has it's own money/spot, etc.), traps (Fake treasure (Need to check if its real), sucking, smashing traps, giant sucking/blowing air vent D it would be fun), etc.), and my own few ideas, like miniboses (Can move everywhere, used to find and destroy Heroes, but there is a special way for heroes to stop him.), heroes can buy buildings in town to get something useful, like income and spots with a size of a one tile (or something like that) that traps heroes inside of it when they enter. Then it will be easier to slow them.

 

[Paladia]

So the map is based on Dungeon Keeper but you've chosen to name it after Dungeon Lords, which is a completely different game? Talk about confusing the potential player base.

 

[Alfred]

There´s no problem with clicking when diging, but clicking to spawn... D:
make the spawn automatic and also give it some restriction, something like, activate a Building to make it spawn and also, give the keeper a restriction to make it posible to have only 3 Buildings with spawn on, so if he activate the fourth, automaticaly turn off the first.

 

[M0RT]

I am planning on including more traps, buildings etc... of course. I like your idea with fake gold, but I am not sure how useful it could be.
Building in town is also an interesting idea, but for now I should concentrate more on Dungeon Lords part, they deserve more attention.
Problem with spawning is that the game CAN'T detect, who built the building (all building belong to the shared player), and every Dungeon Lords spawns different units.
I didn't realise that Dungeon Lords was a game when I named the map like this, but so far I know, since this has nothing in common with the game, it may not be a violation of any copyright, while naming it Dungeon Keeper and having simmilar game theme could be.

 

[takethat]

dungeon keeper dont have the looting treasure part, and since your map not for commercial purpose, dont think got any problem at all.

i play with my friend with this map, we found something funny, the dungeon player spend times to make a maze, but heroes simply destroy wall and walk straight, avoiding most traps, and when i use all of my creeps finally block a hero into a room, he just break the wall n ran... can you make the heroes unable to break walls? while giving them a mercenary camp to hire dwaven worker (this is also similar to dk)

lighning trap damage ally unit too.

some times the spider spawn next to a real portal.

lastly, my game crash in the third round,

 

[M0RT]

You are only able to break through walls if the dungeon lords don't connect all three entrances (this is here to prevent DL from blocking some treasures)

Lightning trap, as all lightning btw, can damage ally units on purpose (even fire does). This gives Heroes chance to use the traps for their own advantage a bit. (Also it makes DL think while building traps, they can't just spam all their traps all over a single room)

some times the spider spawn next to a real portal.

What do you mean? He spawns in the hero's village?

I know the game crashes sometimes, could you describe what everyone was doing at that time?

 

[wereguy2]

Ah, tis finished!
It is a good map, with a good concept, but it still needs work on tooltips, Capital Letters and grammar.
The shard system is very good.
It needs more minigames for variation.
Wasnt there more Dungeon Lord races before?
The physics and Doodad placement system is marvellous, though almost every one of these needs capital letters in its name.
Every miniboss has the same sound set.
Maybe you should consider different (to an extent) doodads for different buildings.
What happened to Boss Residences?
DETECTOR BUILDINGS!!!!
Despite it's flaws, which I REALLY think you need to fix, this is still a great, innovative map.

EDIT. Some good changes
3.5/5 Voted for Approval :3

 

[M0RT]

Are the missing capital letters really such issue as you are suggesting?

More minigames, minibosses, minibuildings and any other content in general is coming, whenever I get some idea I include it, so all these things are coming slowly. (I will fix the identiccal sound sets, It's there because I sometimes test the map without sound )

There was a third Dungeon Lords race, Slime, but 1) I didn't like it 2) There is no compensation for Necromancer when there are no Undead YET (there will be some simple summon spell) -> Necromancer was useless whenever someone picked Slime
Boss residences were removed, now you can use minibosses (which are going to have abilities)

Maybe you should consider different (to an extent) doodads for different buildings.

I already considered that, but the problem is, it's hard to detect WHICH building the tile belongs to (it would require some changes in the system)

Detectors are coming, I just forgot about them again

 

[operationer]

4/5

Nice I like maps like these, and this is very cool. Just need more improvements and contents and it will be great!

 

[hotdog911]

Nice map, I liked it alot. The comments below are based on a 1v1 LAN game (where I played both sides lol)

I think you need to make some things clearer in the map. For Example: The first time I built my dungeon, I didn't realize that you had to connect it to ALL 3 entrances, I just thought you had to connect it to a single entrance. Another would be the mini-bosses. When I built the structure, I thought I would be recruiting stronger units, not bosses. Maybe it's just the same thing said differently, but I was kind of expecting to be able to build more than one of each type.

After my dungeon prevailed (against myself...) in the first round, and I had started building my dungeon for the second round, the game started the third round I think. My dungeon got converted back to one square with the workers inside, I had more gold than before and the dungeon's lumber was reset.

During round 3, My boss died without being attacked. I had built 2 boss boosters, and the regen thing in the lair was on. I am just making a guess here, but I think the degen is percent based, and since he had more life due to the boosters, he lost more than he got from the regen in the lair.

Round end messages repeat twice.

That's all that I can think of right now. I really liked your map, and would rate it a 3/5 right now, but I will withhold my rating for a little while.

 

[wereguy2]

I just think that lack of capital letters makes things look sloppy D:
Oh well, tis your map

 

[Lakai]

I dont know what to do, i didnt played dungeon keepers but i ve checked some videos and i saw there was some creatures that destroys the tiles but here i dont know how to destroy the tiles

 

[wereguy2]

Lol, click on them and your Fiends will automatically attack them!

 

[Lakai]

I dont see any fiends, i just see 3 circles ( note i play this in sp )

 

[Teldrassil]

This map seriously needs improvement,

1. The nerubians will actually run away from their assigned goals, I couldn't make the dungeon in time because my workers kept running away

2. The creeps need to be much stronger

3. the boss's degeneration is very badly handled, the degeneration is higher than the heal, causing them to randomly die if the heroes took too long

4. the traps are just plain bad

5. the boss needs more spells, or a variety of bosses

6. you should be able to choose what units spawn at each base, and they shouldn't be summoned units

7. a lot of the "minigames" don't actually activate and the heroes have nothing to do while waiting.

there are more but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[takethat]

u should make it once the real portal connected with dungeon, show a msg to all player, the tunnel is clear, not forcing dungeon player to go dig all the way to the portal, which already not enough time to make a decent dungeon.

when i said, the fiend spawn next to the portal i meant inside the dungeon area, the fiend spawn NEXT to a portal (1 out off the 3) since i have no idea knowing whether this particular portal is real or false, i have to dig a long way to another place (which waste my time)

it seems you intend to not letting dungeon player to utilize every space, for example a 3x3 room, i cant make another 3x3 room directly connected to the 1st 1, if i do so, there wouldnt have any building slot.

heroes able to destroy lair... quite irritating to dungeon player, and sometimes for hero, who forgot they come to steal, NOT desetroying the dungeon.

there should be some stunning skill for dungeon player,

creep die infront of hero, not because they being killed, is because thier expirition timer end. hero get away as usual.

this is what my friend tell me : "i know the trap hurt allies, thats why i bring your creep near me n let the trap kill them"
my answer to him : "...", "haha, ya...."

giving the strengh of those creep, it is more like a cave then a dungeon.

however this map still has a lot of potential:

make a version that gives more time to both side, and target of the heroes is to kill the boss, let dungeon player able to mine gold and build up army of darkness and harras the village (or even the casle)

if you able to solve the detection problem, let the dungeon player war between themself, and heroes always comes in bad timing.

 

[M0RT]

Lakai: that was a bug in 1.4.2b, now it's fixed
Teldrassil:
1. At this moment I am using standart unit "acquisition range" to make them attack selected tiles, which are hostile. Unfortunatelly, the built-in pathfinding system fails for some reason. I am working on a system for workers, which would assing the work better (including embrace lairs)
2. I already tried to balance the creep power multiple times, it's very hard due to the fact that heroes cannot heal. And even if the creeps don't hurt them, they can be used to hold them long enough.
3. You mean main boss or minibosses? I haven't seen boss die from degeneration ever (though someone else already mentioned that). I will try replacing this by life regeneration aura.
4. you mean too weak?
5. more content is coming, now I am still focusing on gameplay. I am planning a whole set of bosses
6. you choose that by building either secondary or primary dwelling. If you could spawn any units at any dwelling, the dungeon lords characters will need to be removed
7. you mean when the same minigame starts for the second time? that's the only way I saw them fail, and I hope there aren't any more.

takethat:
Many of the game mechanics lead the Dungeon lords to create bigger (=larger area) dungeons. If they could build a building every second tile, or move minions limitless over the entire dungeon, they would create giant room with an army of skeletons, which would either crush heroes, or it will be defeated and heroes walk through the rest of the dungeon undisturbed. Therefor the units have timers, so they can't move so far away from their lair, there are more entrances, so the dungeon lords can't know exactly where the heroes come in and rooms need to be further away from each other.
Also, the creeps are pretty weak, because heroes can't heal. And regardless of their strength, if you manage to outmaneuver heroes, they won't get to the dwellings and minions will spawn faster than thay will die.
Traps are supposed to work on dungeon inhabitants. Building dungeon shouldn't be about spamming lots of traps, dwellings, minibosses and everything else in one room, where the heroes get crushed. Also it provides further tactical possibilities for heroes, which can use your trap agains you.
The game already takes ~30-40 minutes, which is exactly what I wanted, making it longer could be boring.

Thanks everyone for suggestions, I will try to present new version as soon as possible

 

[Teldrassil]

You should still remove your trigger for making them auto move, or at least add a condition in there that makes it so they won't be issued to auto move if they are currently selected

 

[takethat]

there wont be limitless creep if it is limited by food,

btw, create 1 more hero to cast universal spell like embrace lair, remove the embrace from worker, it is very annoying every time i cast embrace the worker already walk quite far away, forcing them back and forth is really wasting time.

suggestion : traps : Door (Wooden Door, Steal Door, Magical Door, Secret Door) XD

 

[wereguy2]

That would be good, doors

 

[M0RT]

Teldrassil: there is no trigger that moves with workers, they auto-attack hostile units (the only hostile units they can attack are red tiles), I said I am thinking of a trigger system to move them. I don't like having 2 different workers there, I would rather create some system do distribute work between workers.

I already thought of some doors, but then I figured it would be pretty hard to make some doors system (with auto-open/close->fixed pathfinding, limiting doors to corridors (so they won't stand in the middle of room) and so on...)

 

[Tleno]

What about if wokers would move underground (Some kinda like burrow)?

 

[wereguy2]

Below the tiles?
That would work.

For the doors you could just make them manually opened/closed (Or have an automatic system in which units have to stand in front of them - Unit moves within range of Unit In Unit Group or something like that..)

 

[M0RT]

Well there was burrow in the very first version, but it wasn't useful at all, I removed that.

If I made doors, they would have to be auto-opening, not some lame manual doors. But that's not a problem at all. Problem may be making Pathfinder count doors as passable for DL minions and unpassable for heroes. Also, i would like to limit building doors to corridors, and merge horizontal and vertical door, but I can't change the building GUI.

 

[wereguy2]

Ooo, how about this: The doors have no collision, so the pathfinding wouldnt be screwed up, and when an allied units come near one, the model changes to an opened one, but if an enemy does this, the collision is turned one!

 

[Teldrassil]

maybe you could just make it so the tiles will take damage over time when they turn neutral hostile, so they don't need to be attacked by the builders at all, this would make things go faster and remove that pesky pathing problem. Also, with a damage over time it would still give the DM a chance to cancel the deconstruction by turning them back to neutral passive, which would remove the DOT, and should give them back full hp.

and I'm pretty sure you have at least one trigger that moves the builders, or else they wouldn't interrupt their current orders to attack a wall or move to another side of the map for no reason, even when I have no neutral hostile blocks they run around a lot looking dumb.

 

[M0RT]

You're right, there is one trigger, that orders them to stop when they kill a tile (that makes them stay at their current location, rather then returning to their "guard location" after they went too far). I am going to change the order to attack the closest (or maybe random close) tile, so they will constantly dig at one place.

It used to be automatic (simillar to your DOT version, just the tiles were droping, and when they touched ground, they dissapeared), but it didn't look that good, and it didn't feel like you were really digging the dungeon.

 

[takethat]

problem of making worker attack closest tile is that it will screw up if you 1 2 make a maze like dungeon.

i use to spare 1 worker to dig maze all over the place to confuse the Heroes, and it din work pretty as the worker will try to atk the tile bhind a tile.

and i wonder why i cant use shift to make a que target for the worker...

 

[M0RT]

Well there is still the possibility of making my own pathing system, but I am afraid that could faild due to the JASS operation limitaitons.

I am not sure how to detect the shift-orders (I am afraid that is not accesible for game script), so I can't exclude workers that have commands from the standart stop-trigger.

What do you mean about the maze dungeon? I am afraid I didn't catch that

 

[Tleno]

He tryed to make labirinth dungeon, I think...

So what about making workers "dig" underground. Or at least blink.

 

[wereguy2]

Wtfrejected?

 

[Tleno]

To buggy?

 

[M0RT]

Well it surprised me to (considereing some of the maps that get approved here). He was right with the tooltips and hotkeys, but:
1. the terrain is ganerated in-game. Considering that, it doesn't look that bad
2. lack of originality? attribute and item systems, digging a dungeon (ok, stolen from DK, but original among WC3 maps), special physics.....
3. all hero skills are fully triggered (ok, I got damage system, so I have to trigger them), but their are designed to be used tactically (maybe that didn't work out as I wanted), so I don't want to use some super-combined spells with great effects, the point here is to clever use simple skills

from my experience, the game is fully playable already, although it's still missing content

EDIT: 1.4.3 added with many improvements, check the changelog

 

[ShadowDemonLord]

try replacing the support columns with actual columns

 

[M0RT]

You mean replacing the model? I can't do that, becouse column models don't have animations (they are doodad models), which I need.

 

[wereguy2]

What?

 

[ShadowDemonLord]

That is not what i meant... I meant, replace the support column with a pillar... for example, the icecrown pillar, heres an idea for the animation, replace the model file with the icecrown pillar.

 

[ShadowDemonLord]

Oh and an idea for your entrance problem... make multiple entrances and have the dungeon masters decide which one they go into.

 

[wereguy2]

Dont double post.
A support column looks more fitting than a pillar, too civilized.

 

[Tleno]

ShadowDemonLord gave me an idea! What about upgrading a support column? Like into a trap that creates flying knieves around it when heroes come to close or stronger column...

 

[wereguy2]

Meh, there already is traps, this would just complicate things.

 

[ShadowDemonLord]

Well, if the dungeons were supposed to be there for a while, and... well then again I suppose that the rocks tumbeling down ontop of people wouldnt be a good thing for long old dungeons condsidering the roof would be more supported and... whats the word im looking for... tiled over or so... (not quite the words i was looking for)

 

[Tleno]

So what about upgrading the dungeon's support columns?

 

[M0RT]

I think the falling ceiling, while it may be "unrealistic", gives more tactical opportunities, and therefor I am keeping it.

About the column trap... it is an interesting idea, I might add it, if I think of some clever way to build it (I got a idea of a hunted-goldmine style, but I am not sure if it's editable in this way)