Footmen Chronicles v1.95

[Moderator]

17:53, 16th Jul 2009
PurplePoot: Your description is an excellent example for new members, and from ap0calypse's reviews as well as the votes of others this seems to be a step in the right direction for footman wars maps. I'll mark this as "reviewed" as ap0calypse's reviews are excellent.

Approved with a 4/5 rating as suggested by ap0calypse and based on the votes.

 

[Ouguiya]

Hello all!

Any comments, bug reports, ideas, criticism or praise are all welcome. Should you find any bugs, I will attemt to fix them as soon as possible.

 

[ap0calypse]

This is the first review, if I have interest in checking out the updated version, I will add a checklist of what you have done/still need to do.
If you ask me to check the updated version, I might also do it...

Review #1

General:

• Not original, everything has been done before (and better)
• Description is good, but could be better.
• It has been made from scratch, instead of the lame "copy and pretend it's mine"-thing going on with these types of maps.

Gameplay:

• Very short shop-range
• You can control all units, which is good
• You should set a maximum number of units (and maybe upgrades to increase that maximum, that's up to you).
• Good item-combination

Terrain:

• Another footmen-wars-terrain, pretty bad.
• Try to make your map different through the terrain, this is just a copy of the other maps.
• Flat, bad tile positions, the blizzard cliffs look somewhat outdated.

Objects:

• Lack of custom items
• Attack/Armor types well implemented
• Lack of custom spells

Yet another Footmen Wars, but this one actually has a good item combination system and is more balanced than others (except the fact that melee-heroes can attack faster than ranger heroes when fully upgraded).
Unfortunately, it has a lot of standard standard abilities and items, the units haven't been customized too much either and that makes the game more boring.

Rating: 3/5 (Useful)
Vote for Approval

Reason:
The original rating would be 2.6/5, but since you've at least try to balance the game (which hasn't been done in a lot of other footmen wars) and have a good combination system, I have uprated it.

You should really improve the terrain (use a good tileset, create a theme, anything but this).

Review #2

[ √ ] Terrain has been changed
[ √ ] A reward after 2500 kills (which is insanely much at b.net )
[ √ ] Some really nice spells (I didn't check all custom-heroes yet)
[ √ ] I actually like the idea of giving credits inside the spell-description
[ / ] Still no AI
[ / ] Not a really appealing description
[ / ] No advanced tech (not necessary)
[ X ] "Poisonous Weapon" ability learn- and normal button switched
[ X ] Typo: "The mochine of doom" (?)
[ X ] Still no max. unit-amount
[ X ] I still didn't go "yay" when checking the items/heroes

The map has improved, but it still lacks some features.
My rating has increased (3.4/5, +0.8), but the general rating remains the same (3/5).

The AI isn't necessary and neither is the appealing description (it contains all information, but it doesn't look very well), but it gives the map a better look.
The max. spawn amount is a way to reduce lag (you can also create modes/commands to set the max spawn amount), it isn't a hard trigger anyway.

Good luck with your map.

 

[killerbine]

Review of Footmen Chronicles

Alright, on to my first review...
I have played the map a few times, and feel that I have seen just about half of it, but I think that I can still give a rating based on that:

Terrain: 3/5 - Yeah, it is classical, but it is not that annoying either. I guess this is because I haven't played too many footmen maps, but I think it's not that bad, but it's not THE killer terrain either. A 3/5 seemed apporpriate.

Custom stuff: 4/5, yeah, there are many things in there which do come from the classical Frozen Throne, but I do not really think that this is such a bad thing. A good old mana potion is simply more familiar than some exotic new stuff.

Heroes: 5/5: The classical ones + 33 new ones really is quite a boon. It's also not the Footmen Frenzy heroes which everyone else had and which really were annoying. A 5/5.

Items: 5/5: A real awful lot (140 items does sound impressive). Even if some are classical, there are many new ones which more than make up for it, and they are quite well balanced.

Units: 5/5: The new armor / weapon implementation system really blew me away. The idea of having 3 defensive and 3 offensive races was cool. Although it creates dynamic, it still allows balance, something which rarely coincides.

Balance: 5/5 I have been tiptoing around this point for some time, but it has to be said seperatly: The balance simply is great. No units are obviously stronger than others (except the armor and attack advantages and disadvantages of course), and most of the heroes are quite well balanced too. A few exceptions, true, but I think these will soon be balanced out too, so no reason to remove a point here.

Additional things: 5/5: The just for fun stuff, like the flying merchant, the weather control center and the jukebox really are fun, but even better is the amount of control the user has with the Mass unit controllers to move and/or attack things everywhere.

Additionally, the "Random race" option really was something I enjoyed: Having a race at random, for a little bit less money, but being fixed on it. It's just a great way to make things more interesting.

Total: 4,57: Close, but in terms of mathematics, one should round up when it get's above x,5, so this is what I will do.

I am hoping that Ouguiya will make the terrain a bit nicer, and continue to add features, but I think he deserves his 5/5 poits for this one.

Hopefully, we will see more from you. So long!

 

[ap0calypse]

*Previous post updated, review #2 has been added*

 

[ap0calypse]

I'm sorry for the delay, but here is my review:
Since this is a very good update (in my opinion, at least), I won't change my previous post, but add a new review here.

Review #3

General:

• The description on the hive and in-game is very good
• There are multiple maps for other modes, does it have a reason why you didn't add all those modes in the same map?

Gameplay:

• The "Equalized" armor says "undead" and has an incorrect tooltip.
• For some reason, there didn't spawn any Raiders when my Orc tier was level 3.
• This game was very balanced.
• The alliance/XP/gold/spawn-systems were good and didn't cause any trouble as far as I've seen.

Terrain:

• The terrain has been greatly improved, featuring a hellish landscape
• The weather effects have been applied in a good way
• The center looks really good
• My suggestion: add a triggered fog

Objects:

• The "Holy Domination" tooltip isn't correct. (it says "and lasts 0")
• The items are pretty good, though there are some standard ones, it fits the rest of the map (standard + custom heroes / standard + custom items).
• The races weren't original, even if you only change the models and names it would make it more interesting (for me), instead of footy's bandits or something... it's just so it wouldn't look like every other footmen wars, unless you want to keep that part alive.
• The amount of heroes/items is pretty good, as long as you realize that quality is better than quantity

This is quite an interesting footmen wars, the terrain, item-system, damage-/armortypes, balancing and 'fun stuffs' make it different from other, lower quality maps.
It still needs some finishing touches (fix the tooltips, as said before), a triggered fog (or edit it in the "Options" screen, next to the "Description") might make it look better and the current bug(s) need to be removed.

Rating: 4/5

This map has been improved a lot since the last update, the most important part was the terrain, which is very well done.
I usually don't like hellish landscapes, because they're too plain, but this one was actually good.

You've certainly earned those 4 thumbs up (5/5 is very hard to get, so 4/5 is a really good rating ^^)

 

[Rispetto]

Footmen Chronicles

*Cough*.
So it's basically Footy Wars? >.>

 

[Tlactar]

i'd give changing the void tier 5 a thought... flying units are just damn imbalanced. If you went for tier 5 undead for example you'll have no chance to win

 

[Tlactar]

btw: is there any info what those different modes do?

 

[Tlactar]

guess i found a bug or two, dunno if they'll already be fixed in the 1.90er version:
when in... dunno, i think restricted or handicapped mode (the one where you can't level past lvl 4 for the first minutes) my hero got stuck at level 4 though everyone else was able to level up past lvl 4. It worked again a bit later, but it's still a big disadvantage...

another one was: in the endgame i wanted to buy some jewels for tier 5, but 2 of them just disappeared... bought 5, got 3... quite odd...

 

[ap0calypse]

Do not triple post (not even double ><).

Is it possible that the items combined, so you got 3 (combined) items, instead of 5 (standard) items?
I agree with the game mode description and Tier 5, though... that should be changed

 

[Tlactar]

hey, there is quite some time between the posts

The jewels are the 2nd resource (instead of wood) - so not directly items.

 

[ap0calypse]

hey, there is quite some time between the posts

The jewels are the 2nd resource (instead of wood) - so not directly items.

Ohh, sorry for both my answers ^^ (I wasn't looking at the time, I saw the same person 3x in a row, so I answered >.>).
About the jewels: I thought you meant a necklace, a ring, ... (things like that: jewelry xD).

Well, in any case I cannot answer this, though the jewel-bug seems strange... if it's just a normal Gold -> Wood-item (standard), then it would be very rare if it bugged.

 

[Ouguiya]

Hello everyone!

I have heard numerous requests for changing Tier 5... Although it was not my real intention to do so, I agree in respect to it being very disadvantageus to orc or something.

1.90 was already prereleased as I am writing this, but the bugs found made it impossible for me to upload it here.

The version currently stands at 1.92. Should that be as bug-free as I'd like it to be, I will upload it here too.

Thus, this leads us to the following:

Tier 5 will be changed from tier "Void".

@Tlactar: Thank you very much for the bug report. I rechecked it, and found some weird thngs. They should be fixed now. Should they still persist in 1.9x, please let me know.

As for the jewel bug: I am really at a loss here. The way players get jewels is by simply buying them, as items, which then adds one jewel. (This is the usual "gold-give-item", and not triggered, so I find it very strange it bugged.)

I will, in either case, take a look at it again.

Thanks again everyone, so long.

 

[Strike1]

My 2 cents

To introduce this post, I must say that I boycott footmen games with a passion. My friend begged me that I play this one, so I gave it two games. The style of game it presents is generally not fun, and instead of focusing on the army, most maps allow people to make their heroes so powerful that teching up is almost useless. This map has the most potential so far at becoming an actual good footmen map, but it still has some work to do. I understand it is still a beta, and thats why there is so much work . Anyway, here comes the rant

Idea to incite more battles

The first battle always takes a while to start, and whoever goes out to the middle first is going to find themselves fighting a multi-front battle and be behind from the get-go. There should be (at least an option to enable, but better if it is default) a system that counts the number of units in middle, not counting heroes or summons. Whoever has the most gets an amount of gold per unit every few (5) seconds. It could start at 2 and increase as the game progresses. This could also be turned off when the difference is less than 5 or 10 (unless no enemy units are present) this would occur during a battle.

Mode picking inconvenience

My friend and I like to play with very specific modes. Overspawn and standard. This leads to a fast and fair game. However, the host isn't the one who can pick the modes, everyone can! We routinely tell people which modes to pick. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. It would be very nice if the host got a menu at the beginning "I decide" and "Everyone votes". This way, we can choose the modes without having to leave the game and ban everyone in that game for not listening. We tell them before the game starts, so they are free to leave if they don't like the modes.

Tier Balance

Tiers aren't balanced at all. I got tier 1 and 7 attack upgrades before getting a hero. The riflemen had an attack that did 24-42 damage, making the average damage about 33-35. When I upgraded to tier 2, the militia only had 20-28 damage. Their AVERAGE damage is the LOW END of tier 1! The only bonus they get over riflemen is 110 hp. Given that I sacrificed a ranged attack for that, it isn't an upgrade at all. Tier 4 finally got above the tier 1 top end damage. That is horrible. I haven't done any looking at this for other tiers, but humans definitely need tier 2 to be stronger.

Attack type balance

I know the attack types are supposed to dictate some strategy, but I think they are a little overdone. After the first battle closed in the same game as above, I had about 150 kills(4 hero kills!) and everyone else had 20-40. I had a solid edge. My partner decided to buff his hero up. At the end of the game, Id almost killed bottom left, but they left before I could get gold (this should be fixed). Top right left almost off the bat. Bottom right had one person tech naga, and the other one buffed their hero. The turning point of the game was when bottom right sent their units to bottom left, thinking there was still a base there. His army was tier 2 nagas. I had tier 3 humans with more attack and armor upgrades. His army rolled mine over. The game ended after his tier 3 army rolled my tier 4 army and they took our base. I was 3 jewels away from tier 5. There's no way this is balanced.

Sure, one can argue that attack types make it interesting, and my partner should tech to counter the other (naga in this case) race, but what happense when their partner counters your partners tech? They get two counters to you, unless there's some sort of a triangle in which my tech counters theirs. But this argument is useless when an army can destroy another army that is one tier above them. The tiers definitely need to upgrade units more.

Summon balance

I have a replay of this if it is required. The shadow hunters Serpent Wards benefit from attack upgrades. This makes them way overpowered. Not sure if any of the other summons benefit from this, but it should definitely be fixed.

Mercenary shop

I've tried using the units in the mercenary shop, and none of them, I repeat NONE of them have been worth the money. Many of the active skills cost too much mana and aren't worth the effect. Summons are easily sniped by heroes. Any passive effects such as an aura are cheaper if you buy the aura item from the shop. I gave a quick glance over them in single player, and none of them looked worth the money. The most expensive summon appeared to be a dragon with 2 charges. It did about 50 damage with splash. For 2700 gold, this is simply a waste. This summon should DESTROY because as far as I am concerned, the enemy just got a tier up on me, or they are almost 3 jewels closer to tier 5 in the long run.

Level tomes

I think level tomes would be an interesting feature in the game, but the maximum stock is 1 and they cost 1250 gold. If you're hurting THAT much for a level, you likely don't have the gold or can't afford to use it on the tome. If you have the money and the tables are fairly equal and you are looking for an edge, this is far from giving it to you. If you can afford to waste the money, you can't even waste it fast enough for it to be of benefit, and by this point you're probably already maxed on your hero level. I'm generally level 20-ish if not already 24 by the time I get tier 5. No money can be wasted before tier 5, because the first person to tier 5 generally wins. Level tomes should be much cheaper and come to at least 5 stock.

Incorrect tooltips/small immolate rant

Cloak of immolation says it does 125 damage per second. It really only does about 30. One of the values should be changed to reflect this. I think the damage on it could stand to be buffed a bit. If you get this item before spending any other gold, your hero can't make good use of it. HP is too little and your hero can easily be focused down. Even if he doesn't get focused, the damage doesn't seem to be nearly as significant as getting tier 1. This only gets worse as you get the item later -- by being smart and getting survival items first. Can't recall how much the recipe costs, but the immolation on that is only 40 per second. That is not nearly powerful enough. That one should be at least 80-100 with how easily the higher tiers can focus down a hero. I personally hate hero buffing, but I think they deserve this.

 

[Tlactar]

one small thing: Dark Revenant's Ultimate has only zeros in the tooltip for damage etc. Also: Is it intended that he gets to lvl 4 ultimate faster than the other characters?

edit:

while in handicapped mode with max lvl 8 i managed to get to lvl 9 before the counter changed to lvl 12 max

 

[Ouguiya]

Hi there again, tlactar!

Thank you for pointing out the 2 bugs with the dark revenant, they will be fixed.

The thing you mentioned with handicap mode is perfectly fine. As our open source friends would say: "It's not a bug, it's a feature"

Originally, it was a bug, due to how the system works. However, getting to level 9 is only possible when one "shoots over" level 8 in one go, which is REALLY hard to accomplish. Thus, we left it in, thinking: "Let's reward the pros with one level here".

If this is what you meant, then there is no problem. In the case that you meant that there is a delay between level 8 and 12 barrier, I shall take a look immedieatly.

Hope you continue to have great games. The next version will be 1.94, and this will probably be the last one before 2.00 comes out.

Until then, have fun.

 

[Tlactar]

Yup, that was exactly what i meant Guess i've been too good then

keep up the great work!

edit: uh, one thing you might want to consider: Change the hotkeys from z,x,c,v to q,w,e,r please - for all of us who don't have an american keayboard layout

editedit: the spellbane's 3rd spell has the same hotkey as the 2nd - or at least the tooltip says so

 

[mrpoli]

Good map, but you could do better than this!
4/5 for you

 

[Tlactar]

just one minor thing: the ... hmm, dunno what it's called in english... the skeletal orc's 3rd skill has a 10% chance at 1st lvl, 9% at 2nd and afterwards it's 10% again...

and one major thing: My Teammate just got 3x1000 gold bonus for killing 1000 units. The text appeared 3 times, too. And well, right after that the game crashed...

 

[Tlactar]

hmm, anyone else not able to host this map after the new patch...?

 

[Ouguiya]

Hello Tlactar, and all the others who may be reading this:

As you may know, the new patch all but demolished the custom maps scene (except DotA, which blizzard game extra support to).

Luckily, I was able to restore functonality to the map, and it works again now, as it were.

I hope that you can live with the small bugs, problems, and maladjustments until 2.0 is out.

Have fun, and a good game.

Yours,

Ouguiya

 

[Tlactar]

Thanks a lot, you made my day

I hope there'll be random versions again for 2.0?

 

[Ouguiya]

Naturally.

There will even be an AR version for 1.95, coming up today (check the link in the description to epicwar.com)

However, enthusiasts of the TR and CR versions will have to wait for 2.0, unfortunatly.

Have fun with it, and thanks for your bug reports tlactar.

Cya

 

[Tlactar]

and thx again

dunno if it's a problem or a feature, but... my TP didn't work last game. At least double clicking it didn't...

are you considering changing the hotkeys to qwer instead of zxcv for 2.0, btw? would make it a lot more fun to play for people with a non-us keyboard

edit: Ok, you need to balance those moon-priest's owl-scouts... they just totally ruined a game. Haing three of them flying around was already a pain in the ***, but at the end he had like 10 of them at a time - no chance at all to play a normal game (manaburn...)

oh and:

 

[Tlactar]

Hmm, turning off moneyflow for player blue just made it crash, too :/

 

[Tlactar]

heya, how is it going?

 

[Ouguiya]

Status report

Hello all,

First, a big thanks to Tlactar for the information he provided me.

The crash problem really is a nagging bug, although I am not certain what causes it. I tried to look into it, correcting a few sources of crashes, but leaving out others, it really is a problematic battle.

Plus, unisversity isn't getting easier, which keeps my free time very limited. I will continue to work on the map, but cannot give a definite release date for it, although I hope to make it in october at the very least, or first days of november.

To respond to some messages I have received:

- Keyboard hotkeys: It really is difficult to set the keyboard hotkeys to something which "everyone fnds good". I can only stay on the US-Keyboard for the moment, since going for the french keyboard for example, would cause americans to write me, I should revert back... Sorry for this.

- The double-click bug from the town-portals is something numerous people have told me. Though it is a mystery to me where the bug came from (I didn't do anything to mess with settings such as this), I will try to correct it as soon as possible.

- The crashes which occur in game are something I tried very hard to correct with each version, but some of them just don't feel like leaving it seems. I will put a lot of time and effort into squishing this bug.

Thanks for reading, and so long.

 

[Tlactar]

yeah, i know about that university part quite well...

Take your time, no need to hurry!

one more thing about the keybord:
well, ok. The french layout is weird, right. Didn't know that, but it makes sense if you think about it...
But most other layouts are quite similar (at least the european ones), except the sometimes switched y/z keys.
Using the upper row of keys instead of the lower one (qwert instead of zxcvb/yxcvb) will still work great for all the layouts that the current keys work fine for, but it will improve usability for the ones with switched y/z keys a lot. Your fingers will even be closer to the number keys -> even less work for your hands

http://jonasmartinsson.50webs.com/keyboard/images/US_Swe.jpg
opposed to
http://www.aurint.de/kbd_De.png
http://www.aurint.de/kbd_Pl.png
and lot's of others, for ex. almost all eastern european ones

but hey, it's your choice, just wanted to clarify my point
Firstly your time should go into the other more important changes, this is not THAT important

keep up the great work!

 

[Ouguiya]

Dear people,

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their longstanding support. Without a few select people, this map would not have been possible.

These people include (but are not limited to):
Seskal, Killerbine, Tlactar, ap0calypse, the good people at thehelper.net and so many others, who directly or indirectly helped this map: Thank you all.

Unfortunately, as some of you have noticed, I have not been able to upload a new version for a long time. The problem is because my university years are getting more difficult by the month, and with exams breathing down my neck, I am having less and less time.

This pains me greatly, since I was hoping to introduce a whole new system, ripe with new tactical and strategical possibilities, to finally break free from the typical "corner vs center"-system, where basically it just boils down to: "We smash each other in the center, until one is imba enough to kill everyone else." I had plenty of ideas, but no time to realize them.

Part of the problem also was the limits imposed by the World Editor, which make it hard to do things easily.

Sadly, since I do not have the time to continue like this, and am lacking the tools to create things like that, I regretfully have to declare this project:

-Terminated-

Again, I thank everyone for their support. in this long time of development, testing and playing.

I hope that, when Starcraft II comes out, I will have enough time again to start creating a ... Well, let us call it: Marine Chronicles, shall we?

If nobody has ripped that name already then, I hope to be able to create a map there. The new possibilities announced for the world editor there sound really cool. I hope to see everyone I miss from the Footmen Chronicles there!

Yours,

Ouguiya

 

[ap0calypse]

This is really sad news... don't you have some kind of apprentice, or someone to carry on this map?

It would be a waste to see it go like this, honestly... this is the greatest footmen wars I've seen and I am really glad that I did my best to help out, comparing the initial map to this one is a major breakthrough, not only because of the increased quality, but also because it breaks free of the standard Footmen Wars-genre, creating a different atmosphere.

I can only hope all goes well... perhaps I'll see you in SC2? ^^

 

[Tlactar]

Awww, that's really sad news, but if you can't find the time... it was really one of the best Footmen Maps out there, if not THE best.
No chance you could at least publish what you got done so far since the last update, or is it unplayable?

I hope SC2 comes out at all... they really take their time finishing Battle.Net 2... *sigh*
Would be great seeing yout there!

 

[Newominus]

I found this game extremely boring.

 

[Ouguiya]

Update!

Hello everyone!

Well, as you know, Starcraft 2 is approaching. Having read the new features, I think I will give it a go, trying to make a new footy kind of map there.

The premium maps really made me think twice if I wanted to do this, but I will do it despite that money-making nonsense.

However, since I simply don't have the time to make such a huge map from scratch (it should be FAR better than Footmen Chronicles, and that took me over a year with the little time I have...), I think this will go public on a team, if I can find one.

Best regards,

Ouguiya