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Heaven's Fall: Melee Gameplay Mod

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Kyrbi0

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Indeed, the best answer I could give about how I face the map size limit is that I do not face the map size limit.

I have heard it said before, and I well understand it, that the choice to make it a mod imposes limitations in that it cannot be a map on Bnet. But, that's how it's always been.
You and me both, brutha. Battlenet Schmattlenet.
 
a few posts up posted a link. At this link posted countdown timer. When it reaches zero heavens fall v 2 will go live . With God's help, it'll be the fantastic revamp I've visualized and hopefully have a campaign. Currently on family vacation, though, so only making HF creeps on laptop and WiFi hotspot doesn't like picture uploads.


Might release the creeps through HF v1 launcher for funzies. Currently in bed on phone, tho.
 
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I've been working with Retera on some new neutral units and heroes this week that he'll probably post about soon. I'm Matt the Hunter or Wurmcrusher as you may have seen in the credits of Heaven's Fall. I hope to be working on the Risen and some more neutral heroes as well. Hi All!
 
3 cheers for the inventor of the Zear making a Hive account!

I've been working on some sweet screencaptures of the stuff we've been working on while here on vacation, and Wurmcrusher left me some descriptions that I've added below.

Coming to a mercenary camp near you, I introduce the Heaven’s Fall mercenaries!
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Totem Thrower: This slow-moving frail siege unit has a slow attack but an incredible range to batter down towns from afar. He may need a spotter to take advantage of his long range as his vision range is short.
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Troll Hunter: This fast lightly-armored troll has a ricocheting axe attack to quickly deal with large groups of small units. However, his light armor leaves him in danger from focused attacks.
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Banner Herald: This heavily armored melee fighter also comes with unique banners to aid allies in a small radius. He can provide an increased rate of attack and a small amount of protection. Be warned, his banners are weak and easily broken and last only a short time.
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Hired Spellhurler: This unarmored mage is perhaps one of the least hale in the game but makes up for his frailty with a variety of powerful spells such as fireball, invisibility, and a long range acid arrow.
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Earthshaker Golem: This heavily armored slow moving monstrosity is the strongest and most expensive mercenary unit to date. With a flame thrower and cleaving attack he can easily clear large groups of enemies. His long range meteor siege cannon also quickly razes buildings. Perhaps his only weakness is his vulnerability to attacks from above.
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Hopefully in the next few days some information about more neutral heroes will be posted.

(Edit: When I first posted the pictures it was getting late and I almost forgot Wurmcrusher's descriptions on the new content, so I heavily edited the post to add cool new descriptions!)
 

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Introducing the new neutral hero the Storm Lord!

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Not shown in the hero abilities is the interaction between thunderstep and lightning barrage where you can teleport and keep shooting lightning from around the Storm Lord.

Soon we will also post about heroes with earth and fire themes.
 

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And we've now made the Storm Lord's Earth counterpart, the Earth Shaper!

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The "Heavens Fall 2" campaign polls are leaning in the direction of the Final Alliance campaign being voted on as the first to be made.

Anybody interested in contributing to that effort?
 

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Kyrbi0

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Oh gosh, true Elemental Heroes... I'll save my "hero design critique" for the actual 'review' of HFv2, but still... Maaaan, that's neat.

Although I have to say, with your modeling prowess I'm a little sad to see you simply did some heavy-edits to the regular Rock Golem. Personally hoping for some really interesting "Stonemother"-type deal (or at least something different from the Creep). Meh...
 
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Oh gosh, true Elemental Heroes... I'll save my "hero design critique" for the actual 'review' of HFv2, but still... Maaaan, that's neat.

Although I have to say, with your modeling prowess I'm a little sad to see you simply did some heavy-edits to the regular Rock Golem. Personally hoping for some really interesting "Stonemother"-type deal (or at least something different from the Creep). Meh...

What did you mean by Stonemother? These models are still works in progress and aren't fully done and the Stoneshaper could definitely use some retouching. If you had a cool idea for a rocky type hero we'd be glad to hear about it.
 

Kyrbi0

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What did you mean by Stonemother?
Umm... I mean, I don't assume everyone's played WoW, but I do figure most Wc3 Modders have at least familiarized themselves with it for 'idea-gathering', as Blizzard hasn't messed everything up... :p

Basically as the links describe, "Therazane the Stonemother" is the name of the Elemental Lord that served as one of the four "lieutenants" of the Old Gods when they all wreaked chaos & stuff way back when in Wc3 lore-history. Basically, she's what I would consider the "archetype" or "inspiration" for what I would hope to someday create in terms of an additional Neutral Hero; an "Earth Elemental Lord (Lady?)" opposite the Blizzard-provided Ragnaros-inspired Firelord.


(Now, this 'dream' of mine is by no means a unique one; everyone and their mother (pun not intended :p) has designed an 'Earth Lord' and a 'Water Lord' and a 'Wind Lord' since the Firelord's patch came out (especially the Neptulon-inspired "Tidal Lord" after this beautiful gem of Jigrael's came down from heaven... :p). However, I feel I embody a certain mixture of skillsets (years of experience in Hero analysis & design, considering Theme & Role) & proclivities (deep love & respect for the Lore, aesthetic sensitivies, etc) to be best-suited to bring about the most fitting & engaging interpretation of these.

Bold claims, yes... But not without support. In fact, I've recently had one of the most elegant & (I think) intriguing takes on a Hero I've almost never seen done; the Al'Akir-inspired "Wind Lord" (perhaps "Stormfather"...). The hero is nearly completely designed, and is perfect Mechanically & Thematically... But is simply lacking good art to back it up.

At least, I hope someday to show others... Though at the rate I'm going, it won't be anytime soon. :p)


Anyway.

Wurmcrusher said:
These models are still works in progress and aren't fully done and the Stoneshaper could definitely use some retouching. If you had a cool idea for a rocky type hero we'd be glad to hear about it.
Interesting. I would love to help, though I fear it might end up being too much work (since, as I said, the entire base mesh should be reconsidered to avoid appearing too similar, in my opinion).

To be honest, the "Earthmother" is one of the "elemental lords" that I have unfortunately thought the least about. I am tending towards (Mechanically/Role) giving her abilities that are not just "pure-Earth/Rock/Sand/Ground/Dirt"-based, but also revolve around "Health Manipulation" (similar to how Szythe's original design for the Hero that Jigrael modeled (link is to thread & thus ideas of mine, but I include Szythe's) involves a strong component of "Mana Manipulation" to the "water-y-ness" of his abilities, and Blizzard's Firelord focuses strongly on "Dealing Damage & Debuffs", cloaked in "fiery-ness")... However, I haven't given much thought to her beyond that (believe me, got plenty of good "geomantic" spell ideas (trapping rocky pillars, vicious quicksand, seismic slams, earth-shell, etc)... But gotta share between her, the Pandaren Geomancer, the Dwarven Arkencaster, etc...).

In terms of Aesthetics (the model), while I love the idea of "recreating" the WoW-esque "Therazane", I'm a little iffy about a "giant floating well-endowed 3-headed crystal-eyed purple-haired gobbledy-gook"; besides, the Firelord doesn't look exactly like Ragnaros. There are tons of great ideas for "rock elementals" out there, and I'd be willing to throw ideas around. The biggest thing is "Blizzard-feel"; it should look like something Blizzard could put out. To me that means "sentient elemental" (has a face (unlike Water Elemental), a face with character, not just two glowing ribbon-eyes), a sense of 'power' (watch the Firelord's Walk-cycle... Ahhh), probably some kind of thematic armor (crystal/limestone/Glass armor plates? rugged unrefined metal ore? giant glowing crystals jutting out? etc), and such-like. Animation-wise... "A ponderous, thoughtful grace that belies great power & contemplativity" (contrasting the vicious, fiery 'storming-forth' of the Firelord's march).

I hope that wasn't too much. xD Like I said, been thinking about this for a while.
 
I was away. I opted to go on an ice cream trip for a break and ended up watching a movie with relatives. But, I left Wurmcrusher behind, and so I wasn't there to test my memories of Therazane and clambering through Deepholm, nor to share.

The case of the earth hero model is an interesting one. If I think of something, perhaps I'll spend more time on it. Now you've almost got me feeling like I need to re-model Therazane in Warcraft 3 for the sake of honor, but I imagine the time investment involved would be a very long one.

I have not yet* read through your post. Perhaps that, too, will give me some good ideas.

Edit: Don't know if you guys saw my silly little thread about +rep, but I had never actually used the reputation system so I just threw some rep around to people who'd posted on this last page (or at least I hope I did, that's what I was trying to do, haha). I do appreciate everybody's interest :)
 

Kyrbi0

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The case of the earth hero model is an interesting one. If I think of something, perhaps I'll spend more time on it. Now you've almost got me feeling like I need to re-model Therazane in Warcraft 3 for the sake of honor, but I imagine the time investment involved would be a very long one.
T'would be worth it, I assure you. : )
(But as I said (you'll see in my post), you may not want to directly re-create here; merely use her as 'inspiration', ala Ragnaros)

Retera said:
I have not yet* read through your post. Perhaps that, too, will give me some good ideas.
I should hope so... :p Let me know when you do.
 
Well, I sat down with Wurmcrusher a bit today and made some legit ideas he had into a new model for the Earthshaper. What do you think of this?

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Kyrbi0

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Well, I sat down with Wurmcrusher a bit today and made some legit ideas he had into a new model for the Earthshaper. What do you think of this?

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Umm... Wow. Ok, that's pretty interesting.

It looks like we are talking about two very different things, though. That's a... blue Kil'jaeden wrapped up in rocks & crystals? Definitely really eclectic & interesting... I like the obsidian & the cool glowing crystals. Not sure how much it resembles an "earth elemental lord", personally (mostly the skin & organic-bits; like the Firelord, I would expect him to be entirely rock/sand/stone/mud/etc). But again, that's just my interpretation of what an "earth elemental lord" hero would look like.

You know, curvaceous feminine form made of boulders held together by glowing mud... flowing sandy hair... gem-studded eyes & bosom... silty slip flowing over powerful rocky legs permanently planted in the ground, twin pillars of sandy-rock stepping through the turf... Heck, she could attack ranged targets with a Sunken Colony-esque 'tongue' of hardened spiky earth... Or perhaps modular-ly smash & slice her way with sandy morphing hands (hammer, axe, spikes, etc; all in different Attack animations)! Actually, that'd be pretty sick.

Images:

Sandwoman%2B1.jpg

Yeah! Flowy leg.
EarthElemental1.JPG

Also flowy lower-torso. And girl-hair.
earth_elemental_by_worldsofmagic-d6qgomi.png

Flowy torso, and neat mask-head... I also think grass might make sense. Gr...
FFG_Highlands_Earth_Elemental_by_fuuryoku.jpg

A thing.
earth_elemental_by_vaejoun-d5e4c30.jpg

More of a "magma elemental" I guess...
therazane.jpg

Theradras, Therazane's daughter
130852d1385013235-windelemental-new-earth-elementals-pzo1001-.jpg

Love the crystals & faces on this one... Also flowy-torso!
kzzI5A3.png

A fascinating, if divergent, idea is to have flora (trees, shrubs, grass, etc) growing on the back & arms; like living earth.
Toph_slides.png
A:tLA's Toph "earth-walking"


Yeah, tons of different ways to do this, I suppose. Don't mean to derail your version. : )
 
Hey everyone. we're releasing a new version of the mod today through the launcher including the new neutral units, some neutral heroes and balance changes. (However -- note that this is not "THE" update, in that the state of the Risen in the included data has not changed, and many of the work in progress "HF v2" Northpact and other models are not released with this version.)

Here's the description written by Wurmcrusher:

You can now buy the neutral units at a newly added mercenary camp as one of the map's non-tavern neutral buildings will be replaced with a Heaven's Fall mercenary camp :D (note: not gold mines)

The tavern now includes the Tauren Juggernaught, the Storm Lord, the Earthshaper, and the Firewalker.

Edit: The Firewalker mentioned above is a third new work-in-progress neutral hero with 4 new abilities:
Firestream -- Shoots a barrage of randomly-directed missiles in a line.
Wall of Flames -- Creates a wall of burning embers, much like flame strike, that deal dps to enemies who pass through them.
Incendiary Scout -- Summons a flying fire fish that flies to a targeted location, revealing the map along the way, and then affects units in the target area with a buff much like faerie fire that gives you vision of them.
Portal to the Firelands -- Summons a giant fire portal that spawns mighty demon dogs.


Balence Changes:

Zear:
Zear have no changes at this time.

Enlightened Tide:
Ancient Hydra decreased gold cost from 745 to 550 and build time reduced from 60 to 50 seconds.
We felt the Ancient Hydra was too costly for it's worth because relative to other units in the mod it cost too much.

Freezing Legion:
Freezing Legion frost wolf has an updated model.

Voidspawn:
Prisonhound attack speed reduced from .85 to 1.2.
Prisonhounds secretly had the fastest attack speed in the game and could easily out-damage other units of the same range and type.

Lost Tribe:
Battlemasters cost 1 additional food and assassains raised in price from 275 gold to 325.
Battlemasters were lower food cost than other very powerful units in the mod and assassains were increased in price to prevent the frustration of too many invisible units to fight at once.

Final Alliance:
Robo Battle Dwarfs increased in movement speed from 191 to 250, increased in damage from 45 to 60, attack speed increased from 2.0 to 1.75, hp was increased 450 to 600 and now attack land units.
Robo Battle Dwards were trashed after being nerfed and we wanted to make them usable again while still not being the same level of power the used to be. Their ability to attack land will give them more use.

Neutral hero changes:
Harbinger of Armageddon vigor cost increased from 35 mana to 50 mana and blade of armageddon mana cost changed from 230 to 200 and cooldown increased from 35 to 60.
Harbinger of Armageddon survived everything and his level six skill was up basically every fight making him win every fight. Honestly all the neutral heroes need to be used more so we can know their power level relative to other heroes.

Please let us know what you think of the new updates and the new units. we're looking forward to hearing what you think about the addition of neutral units and the new heroes.
 
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I like this update log! (but sadly im on my tablet :p) anyway, I kind of think that me and kyrbi0 are on the same page with the stone elemental hero. its just a demon. with a gauntlet, and some ornate clothes with gemstones for the rings (sorry for the hate :p). if you could cut off the tail and maybe find a way to wrap a stone golems texture around the demon, that might work. (or, borrow something from the hive(although this is probably highly improbable, as this is a homebrew project.)you know, somethin' snazzy)or you could take on of the already existing models for elementals and work on them. the fire lord could be changed to have a sand bottom and as the model works up work towards a more of a stone look with possible grass where his unit colouring is? I dont know, just try something. I understand that this is a light topic because it was built with your modelling program and your probably really offended, but Retera, come on man. its a demon. with a gauntlet made of stone. and ornate robes with crystals embedded in them. yeah. sorry.
 

Kyrbi0

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I like this update log! (but sadly im on my tablet :p) anyway, I kind of think that me and kyrbi0 are on the same page with the stone elemental hero. its just a demon. with a gauntlet, and some ornate clothes with gemstones for the rings (sorry for the hate :p). if you could cut off the tail and maybe find a way to wrap a stone golems texture around the demon, that might work. (or, borrow something from the hive(although this is probably highly improbable, as this is a homebrew project.)you know, somethin' snazzy)or you could take on of the already existing models for elementals and work on them. the fire lord could be changed to have a sand bottom and as the model works up work towards a more of a stone look with possible grass where his unit colouring is? I dont know, just try something. I understand that this is a light topic because it was built with your modelling program and your probably really offended, but Retera, come on man. its a demon. with a gauntlet made of stone. and ornate robes with crystals embedded in them. yeah. sorry.
Now now. I think it's just a case of "mistaken perception": we both thought he was going for a strictly "Elemental"-type hero; i.e. a Hero made entirely of it's element. If that's the case, then yeah, that's not a good representation.

However, if instead Retera was simply trying to make a "Earth Elemental-aligned Hero", i.e. a "Geomancer" or what-have-you... Then what he's done is perfectly fitting/sensical.

I'd still personally love to see the former, especially with Retera's handiwork, but that may not be what he was going for, is all I'm saying.
 
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Now now. I think it's just a case of "mistaken perception": we both thought he was going for a strictly "Elemental"-type hero; i.e. a Hero made entirely of it's element. If that's the case, then yeah, that's not a good representation.

However, if instead Retera was simply trying to make a "Earth Elemental-aligned Hero", i.e. a "Geomancer" or what-have-you... Then what he's done is perfectly fitting/sensical.

I'd still personally love to see the former, especially with Retera's handiwork, but that may not be what he was going for, is all I'm saying.

true, i guess.... all well. its ok. I agree.
 
For this week of vacation, as with any vacation, I sought to have fun, and I really enjoyed the chance to make hero concepts based off of Wurmcrusher's ideas.

Even after the revamp, I think the Earthshaper is something inspired by Wurmcrusher's ideas for a cool earth hero, and for the mock 2 version he specifically had in mind something that combined both some living body and some live elemental rock. (It was for this reason that the Earthshaper's arms are derived from the original fancy-golem model.)

I definitely understand that an elemental spirit of earth/rock could be a very cool hero, but as the week is coming to a close I'm more inclined to see that idea implemented as a possible 2nd hero in the mod's future, apart from the Earthshaper. Perhaps, for example, something created if I sit down and try to make Retera's Hopefully Not-Ugly Rendition of Therazane sometime in the future.

One of the reasons I see that as a possibility is that one future goal for HF is to create a new tavern hero system ("tavern" could also mean other hero building, if it gets renamed/a new model theme), where different heroes rotate in and out at different times randomly. If I ever get the out-of-game functionality to do it, I may even add seasonal heroes that would be injected into the mod if the launcher detected it was a certain time of year. (Santa and the Elemental Snow spirit during the winter, anyone?)

Over a game of cards with others here on vacation, I made the joke that "Those guys on the hive said the Earthshaper's just a blue Kil'jaeden with rock armor, but if they really knew the Warcraft 3 stuff they'd know that the source of the blue texture in the model can't be Kil'jaeden, because it has a colored (goldish-yellow) armor and Kil'jaeden's models and textures are notable as the only Eredar textures in the game that don't have color on their armor (it's all silver-grey). So they're just stereotyping!" That is, of course, omitting the Kil'jaeden portrait models that blizzard messed up on and textured like the red Eredar creep. The funny part was that while working on the model, Wurmcrusher and I had never encountered nor considered this peculiarity and so I literally only knew it as one of those things memorized in the back of my head from years before.

We can all make our silly cracks at each other, but I think I'll probably keep the current Earthshaper hero unless Wurmcrusher would like to see it done otherwise. The neutral heroes, known to come from far and wide, in my mind are something fun to add to the spirit of the mod that are not always well connected to the lore. Like with Blizzard claiming that burning legion Pit Lords would hang out at a Tavern and fight alongside your Night Elf army, the reasons for the neutral heroes are a bit less focused on lore. The Blade Warrior, for example, with silly abilities like "I Keeeeel You" and "Cats and Dogs", exists because I told someone that I'd give them a tavern hero if they won at super smash bros, or some such competition that I've now somewhat forgotten (might've been an FFA mod game, but needless to say I was trying to promote the mod at the time). The Blade Warrior was literally made between the hours of 1 and 3 on that particular morning.

So lorewise, the Earthshaper may really be a geomancer more than an elemental earth spirit, but the Storm Lord isn't much of a made-of-storm fellow either. Primarily, the three are just a trio of Storm, Earth, and Fire heroes released together in the name of fun and Heaven's Fall!

Edit: We played some local games of HF today with windows' "ad-hoc networking" that I'd never used before, which worked really well (we had no router). Found some things that could use fixing like Horn of Honro being incredibly frustrating when it stacks with other hero abilities. This will probably be addressed, whether by reconsideration of the existence of Horn of Honro or by finding a Base Order ID for it that is more unique.

Edit: In other news, the concept of "templating" was found to work spectacularly today, and so I'm happy to announce another special feature I plan to implement in HF v2 -- "templating". In the current implementation of Heaven's Fall, the mod data is filled with countless extra and bizarre custom units that are never encountered while playing the mod, all due to the mod's history and previously existing races (i.e. the Halloween race, supposedly "Forsaken", and High Elves that were 90% renamed human units). To avoid this for HF v2, each race will be implemented in its own data set, then bound together at the end. The new neutral heroes, for example, were created in this way, and were only added to HF 1 for the sake of simplicity of distribution. They could also appear in HF v2 simply by running unit data merge/import scripts, and the unit data will not clash because the unit types all have custom unitIDs.

Basically what that will mean is that if you wanted to produce a map of HF v2, you could add in Northpact and Enlightened Tide units, for example, leave out the others, and possibly skirt into the realm of something that could just be released as a map due to less art assets being imported. In addition, if I open source Heaven's Fall to the community and encourage campaign map contributions on the road to a HF v2 campaign, new custom units could be made with a mod editor without the risk of 2 units both being code-named "u000" and clashing, or the like.

This also means I could pretty easily tack together a "HF v1 vs HF v2" mod, just to see how it would play, because HF v2 will have all custom unit codes that can import to any other data set without clashes (well, almost any, anybody deep into understanding that knows you could have another set of unit data made with the same custom codes in an effort to be unique, and then there'd be a problem again).
 
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Kyrbi0

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Retera said:
Over a game of cards with others here on vacation, I made the joke that "Those guys on the hive said the Earthshaper's just a blue Kil'jaeden with rock armor, but if they really knew the Warcraft 3 stuff they'd know that the source of the blue texture in the model can't be Kil'jaeden, because it has a colored (goldish-yellow) armor and Kil'jaeden's models and textures are notable as the only Eredar textures in the game that don't have color on their armor (it's all silver-grey). So they're just stereotyping!" That is, of course, omitting the Kil'jaeden portrait models that blizzard messed up on and textured like the red Eredar creep. The funny part was that while working on the model, Wurmcrusher and I had never encountered nor considered this peculiarity and so I literally only knew it as one of those things memorized in the back of my head from years before.
I had to laugh at this; I totally didn't get that. Good one.
Also had to sigh whimsically; I wish I had Real Life friends with whom I could discuss Hive politics (my brother aside, I stand alone).

For this week of vacation, as with any vacation, I sought to have fun, and I really enjoyed the chance to make hero concepts based off of Wurmcrusher's ideas.

Even after the revamp, I think the Earthshaper is something inspired by Wurmcrusher's ideas for a cool earth hero, and for the mock 2 version he specifically had in mind something that combined both some living body and some live elemental rock. (It was for this reason that the Earthshaper's arms are derived from the original fancy-golem model.)

I definitely understand that an elemental spirit of earth/rock could be a very cool hero, but as the week is coming to a close I'm more inclined to see that idea implemented as a possible 2nd hero in the mod's future, apart from the Earthshaper.

One of the reasons I see that as a possibility is that one future goal for HF is to create a new tavern hero system ("tavern" could also mean other hero building, if it gets renamed/a new model theme), where different heroes rotate in and out at different times randomly. If I ever get the out-of-game functionality to do it, I may even add seasonal heroes that would be injected into the mod if the launcher detected it was a certain time of year. (Santa and the Elemental Snow spirit during the winter, anyone?)

We can all make our silly cracks at each other, but I think I'll probably keep the current Earthshaper hero unless Wurmcrusher would like to see it done otherwise. The neutral heroes, known to come from far and wide, in my mind are something fun to add to the spirit of the mod that are not always well connected to the lore. Like with Blizzard claiming that burning legion Pit Lords would hang out at a Tavern and fight alongside your Night Elf army, the reasons for the neutral heroes are a bit less focused on lore. The Blade Warrior, for example, with silly abilities like "I Keeeeel You" and "Cats and Dogs", exists because I told someone that I'd give them a tavern hero if they won at super smash bros, or some such competition that I've now somewhat forgotten (might've been an FFA mod game, but needless to say I was trying to promote the mod at the time). The Blade Warrior was literally made between the hours of 1 and 3 on that particular morning.

So lorewise, the Earthshaper may really be a geomancer more than an elemental earth spirit, but the Storm Lord isn't much of a made-of-storm fellow either. Primarily, the three are just a trio of Storm, Earth, and Fire heroes released together in the name of fun and Heaven's Fall!
Hey, sorry to get your hackles all raised there, friend. It appears to be as I indicated; you weren't making a "purely Elemental hero" in the first place, but, like the Thunder Lord, a sort of "geomantically-aligned hero". In which case (& considering your style), this fits wondrously.

Retera said:
Edit: In other news, the concept of "templating" was found to work spectacularly today, and so I'm happy to announce another special feature I plan to implement in HF v2 -- "templating". In the current implementation of Heaven's Fall, the mod data is filled with countless extra and bizarre custom units that are never encountered while playing the mod, all due to the mod's history and previously existing races (i.e. the Halloween race, supposedly "Forsaken", and High Elves that were 90% renamed human units). To avoid this for HF v2, each race will be implemented in its own data set, then bound together at the end. The new neutral heroes, for example, were created in this way, and were only added to HF 1 for the sake of simplicity of distribution. They could also appear in HF v2 simply by running unit data merge/import scripts, and the unit data will not clash because the unit types all have custom unitIDs.

Basically what that will mean is that if you wanted to produce a map of HF v2, you could add in Northpact and Enlightened Tide units, for example, leave out the others, and possibly skirt into the realm of something that could just be released as a map due to less art assets being imported. In addition, if I open source Heaven's Fall to the community and encourage campaign map contributions on the road to a HF v2 campaign, new custom units could be made with a mod editor without the risk of 2 units both being code-named "u000" and clashing, or the like.

This also means I could pretty easily tack together a "HF v1 vs HF v2" mod, just to see how it would play, because HF v2 will have all custom unit codes that can import to any other data set without clashes (well, almost any, anybody deep into understanding that knows you could have another set of unit data made with the same custom codes in an effort to be unique, and then there'd be a problem again).
I wish I had an inkling of what you're talking about (alright, I do, but just barely). That being said, you sound like you know what you're talking about, and that it's a really good thing, so I'll just say "BOOYAH!" in recognition. :p

(Is this like the time I discovered the passive Factory ability? Or that Storm,Earth,Fire can make a wall? Or that there exists a separate, stackable Roar ability? Hmm... :p)

~

Retera said:
Perhaps, for example, something created if I sit down and try to make Retera's Hopefully Not-Ugly Rendition of Therazane sometime in the future.
I'll keep my fingers crossed. You know where to find me. : )
 
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hey ret, did you fix the maps in the worldcreator not working with the game. I wanna see if i can make a CTF, or TD with your mod. (but dont hold any hope, it'll probs fail. but i love da world editor!!!). also, on a completely different side note, Kyrbi0, I was wondering if your neutral hero additions had gained some, well advancement, because last iremember, the only playable hero was the thunder lord. (EPIC XDXDXD).
 
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also, on a side note, the tauren totem thrower is OP!!! I think the price should rise. also, the troll hunters should at least get 1 armour point, and their armour should be light or unarmoured. (they are super fast, do they do sport drugs?) I like the new frostwolfs model, and it releases some nice particle effects (frozen paw prints, sooooooo cute! if i could, i would adopt one). maybe the ai for the computers could do with some touching up? other than that, I POWNED DEM LIKE DEY WERE LITTLE ASTEROIDS AND I WERE A GIANT FRICKIN ARMADA!!!!!
 

Kyrbi0

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also, on a completely different side note, Kyrbi0, I was wondering if your neutral hero additions had gained some, well advancement, because last iremember, the only playable hero was the thunder lord. (EPIC XDXDXD).
I don't mind you asking me (in fact, I welcome it), but there are a multitude of options for contacting me that don't involve clogging someone else's thread.
 
Hey, thanks for reporting that! I'll try to remember to see if I can get it fixed this evening after work.

In the meantime, as far as progress, I've now modded my editor to allow me to sort units using the Unit Class field courtesy of some other people here on the Hive, and I also got a pretty neat looking start on a new Northpact birth animation.
 
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Little late-night Lost Tribe v2 brainstorming here, let me know what you guys think. (see image attachment)

Im nopt so srue about the red part of the altar, but it looks awesome! maybe add some variation to the buildings, like different ways they look, because the whole mushroom thing is col, but it all looks the same, i think if each food hut was looking a little different, just different lumps, different colours, different sizes, other things. just randomize the different models that the actual building pulls on(if thats possible XD)
 
One of the things experimented with in the models in that picture was using a variety of mushroom textures instead of just 1 mushroom. It's hard to notice, but in the current HF lost tribe stuff they're all the same mushroom.
The game actually has numerous versions of that mushroom texture, which is why some of the models (Edit: the new* models) have a more pinkish or purplish hue and spots on the mushrooms.

I definitely agree the buildings need more uniqueness, but there's one example of something I plan to try to use well to make the buildings all more unique.

Edit: Not going to double post, but here's an awesome new hero ability for the Northpact in HF v2!

BestFreezingLegionHeroAbility.png
 
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One of the things experimented with in the models in that picture was using a variety of mushroom textures instead of just 1 mushroom. It's hard to notice, but in the current HF lost tribe stuff they're all the same mushroom.
The game actually has numerous versions of that mushroom texture, which is why some of the models (Edit: the new* models) have a more pinkish or purplish hue and spots on the mushrooms.

I definitely agree the buildings need more uniqueness, but there's one example of something I plan to try to use well to make the buildings all more unique.

Edit: Not going to double post, but here's an awesome new hero ability for the Northpact in HF v2!

BestFreezingLegionHeroAbility.png

wouldn't that water only be in an area of effect (ie it only works there?) also, is the string for the rope exploiting a texture bug to be seen properly? and finally, what would the use of fishing be?
 
I don't think it exploits any bugs, it just draws a fishing line model from his hand to a point.
The mechanics of the ability are pretty simple. Each time you cast it, he'll make a cast into a body of water if there's one directly in front of him. If there is, he'll wave the fishing pole around a bit then has a chance to make a splash effect and receive a fish item.
The fish items get better as you level up and can be sold for a small amount of gold. So, if you want to farm-fish for a long time, you could make some gold -- or you can use the ability for generating healing items.
There's also a chance you'll snag something like a Murloc Figurine that summons a murloc to fight for you, or a larger fish that can be saved and used as a weapon for bonus damage, or even a couple of other random things like a potion.

Here are some more pictures to make it clearer:

FishPicture1.png

FishPicture2.png

(Actually, I think these were primarily level 3 fish since they're a lot better than the level 1 fish, but you get the idea.)
 
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ohhh ok. then that's frickin awesome! btw the reason I said is it exploiting a bug is because sometimes when I'm playing games I see a line or a few lines just pop up out of nowhere, its a horrible bug and it can get really annoying. the line just looked like the texture glitch a bit, that's all. sorry. KEEP UP DAT GOOD WORK!
 
Since you asked and I learned a really simple way to do it, here's a little local installer program for you!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92572084/hfmod/HeavensFallInstaller.exe

It is the current version but I know there are some bugs Wurmcrusher and I noted in it last time we played that still need to be fixed. That will mean that an update will probably come through the launcher at some point, and I can't promise this new link will stay current, but as of when I'm writing this it provides an installer for the same content available through the launcher.

Also note that the fishing ability is a part of the content being working on for the major revision, HF v2, and is not included in either the launcher update or this manual one.
 
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Since you asked and I learned a really simple way to do it, here's a little local installer program for you!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92572084/hfmod/HeavensFallInstaller.exe

It is the current version but I know there are some bugs Wurmcrusher and I noted in it last time we played that still need to be fixed. That will mean that an update will probably come through the launcher at some point, and I can't promise this new link will stay current, but as of when I'm writing this it provides an installer for the same content available through the launcher.

Also note that the fishing ability is a part of the content being working on for the major revision, HF v2, and is not included in either the launcher update or this manual one.

Thank you!
 
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Edit: In other news, the concept of "templating" was found to work spectacularly today, and so I'm happy to announce another special feature I plan to implement in HF v2 -- "templating". In the current implementation of Heaven's Fall, the mod data is filled with countless extra and bizarre custom units that are never encountered while playing the mod, all due to the mod's history and previously existing races (i.e. the Halloween race, supposedly "Forsaken", and High Elves that were 90% renamed human units). To avoid this for HF v2, each race will be implemented in its own data set, then bound together at the end. The new neutral heroes, for example, were created in this way, and were only added to HF 1 for the sake of simplicity of distribution. They could also appear in HF v2 simply by running unit data merge/import scripts, and the unit data will not clash because the unit types all have custom unitIDs.

Basically what that will mean is that if you wanted to produce a map of HF v2, you could add in Northpact and Enlightened Tide units, for example, leave out the others, and possibly skirt into the realm of something that could just be released as a map due to less art assets being imported. In addition, if I open source Heaven's Fall to the community and encourage campaign map contributions on the road to a HF v2 campaign, new custom units could be made with a mod editor without the risk of 2 units both being code-named "u000" and clashing, or the like.
Could you please expand on what you mean by templating? The idea sounds extremely useful but I don't quite know what you're getting at. I'm already a bit worried about unitIDs in my own custom race mod, and at the same time would like to have 'plug and play' races (i.e. I can release a finished MPQ containing one race, and then work off that MPQ for the next race).

In the meantime, as far as progress, I've now modded my editor to allow me to sort units using the Unit Class field courtesy of some other people here on the Hive...
... any possibility of sharing that little secret? :p
 
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