[Defense / Survival] Helm's Deep /Reforged

[Blarto]

Official download & screenshots Page (pages are still WIP): Helm's Deep Reforged
(zip password is 2 letters -> "hd")

What is Helm's Deep Reforged
In light of the upcoming Wc3 Reforged, and my admiration of LOTR, I decided to finish and release this project that have been sitting idly on my hard drive for years now. Note that I do not wish to claim the name "Reforged" to this map alone, so if anyone else wishes to also make a "Helms Deep Reforged", please refer to this version as "reforged /obsidian", and let me know so I can rename future versions going forward. (the word "reforged" in the map loading screen has this colour).

History
Back in 2012-2013 days, after getting tired of substandard Helm's Deep maps hosted in wc3, I decided to do something about it. Myself, and a terrainer by the name of raydude714 decided to compose a new map that will encompass the epic cinematic experience of the now famous LOTR battle. During the development time we overcame many challenges regarding map scale, as well as making it run smoothly, while retaining the feeling an epic siege was in process. Eventually life got in the way and development paused with raydude714 and myself going on our separate ways. A big factor in this decision was my trust in the HD-TW series (another Helms Deep map) to carry the dream, which kinda fell flat on my expectations now that I look back on it in hindsight. Now in 2019, I decided to complete this work and publish it so that people have a chance to see my vision of what Helms Deep in Wc3 should look like, and hopefully like it!

Features
- "Cinematic" terrain
- Carefully crafted balance with feedback gathered from over 200 test games
- Unique heroes that have different roles, strengths, weaknesses, and thus play differently
- Hero focused map, with proper skill use taking precedence over raw stats
- Morale system that heavily punishes retreating (and thus eliminates the archer "kill-zone" problem that plagues all other maps to my knowledge)
- Fault tolerant White-Hand (i.e. attacking faction), that has Auto-Production, as well as a basic AI to take over, should they press that dreaded Alt-QQ.

Play this map if you like
- LOTR
- Casual gameplay
- Control heroes over units
- Enjoy defending or breaking a fortress
- A Balanced Helm's Deep map

Don't play this map if you
- Like heavy micro
- Want Resource management and control over every single aspect of your army
- Is bad as strategic & tactical decisions
- Don't enjoy a prolonged siege simulation, and want to feel immediate gratification upon every action you take
- Want to have overpowered heroes that make or break the entire battle (*cough* *cough* Battle Troll *cough*)

I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the beta tests. Including the drooling unwashed trolls~~ Who knew that Rohan, Lothlorien, and the Uruk-Hai are all overpowered, nice feedback guys xoxo <3.

Legal Disclaimer
This map is using a custom music pack taken from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (Howard Shore), strictly for the non commercial nature/use of Warcraft 3 custom online play. While these music tracks tentatively fall under Fair Use clauses, redistribution of these for any other use is definitely prohibited, as I do not own the copyright.

 

[Blarto]

This post is about explaining the rules of the game for anyone unfamiliar with the Helm's Deep "genre" (if you can call it that) for Wc3.

There are two factions, attacker (Orcs and Uruk-Hai of the White Hand) and defender (Humans of Rohan, Elves of Lothlorien, and a single very ill tempered Dwarf).

- The defender's objective is to delay the attacking force for a set period of time using any means they have at their disposal.
- The attacker's objective is to destroy or breach a final point to claim victory.

In a sense, it's a race against time for the attackers, and a delaying (but a hopelessly losing battle) for the defenders. Typically the offensive force can bring about 4000-5000 troops to bear versus a relatively weak and small force of about 600 defenders. With these stacked odds, the defenders have only to rely on their walls, and carefully drawn positions and hero (a special unit) placement, and knowing when to retreat to preserve their forces. Everything is a resource in the purest of terms of war. Your troops, your mana and abilities, and your hero's life bar itself. All used to trade for time. Failure to trade properly will cause the defense to be broken and the fortress easily overrun.

Morale is a critical resource in any war, and losing ground will cause the defenders troops to panic and flee, simulated by losing the reserve formations, should the attacker breach the fortress before those reserves are deployed. If such a catastrophic event happens, the defenders can find themselves losing a hundred troops without them even being deployed. Morale is obtained or lost by controlling (moving units to and capturing) several points in the fortress, signified by a flag.

While the White Hand is pretty straight forward "zerg rush" strategy, they still have nasty tricks up their sleeves, and one should not underestimate the orc-like races' tenacity. At one point you'll be holding the line just fine, and the next you can be overrun, and thrown off the walls like a broken wooden doll.

Finally there are the Heroes of the defenders, each crafted to have their own unique strengths, and proper use of those strengths will guarantee victory, unless the White-Hand shows up with a surprise, which you are too slow to react to.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Can you post some screenshots in this thread?

 

[Blarto]

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Y...3cA550b5aYRxmpzqtrIrrrcu4IL0rYLfwH55jFSujs61Q

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/b...5-MZY0i-AmdnupkiV9bHwEvyz7fiiBpkyu-qjTYnB03JA

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Z...kr5z86GT2g3N7jPbdY0SmH7tKt4dx3VDGZR2tExNY2drA

I'll post more screenshots in the map page with time, I don't want to spam this thread with SSes.
Edit: not sure why it wont embed images. prolly cuz its a janky google drive URL.

Edit2: There is actually a cheese strat discovered by us going a little to hard core as the White Hand and actually using 3 heroes on tandem. So v1.0 is probably tipped towards the White Hand (2 in 3 odds of winning), possibly 100% win rate if this strat is employed. I'll patch it eventually within the week.

 

[Korialstrasz]

Looks kind of nostalgic on the screenshot and I like your approach to a more casual gameplay.
I remember the days when I was younger and played the Helms Deep maps for quite some time. Back then I was always a huge fan of custom lotr models that looked as close to the film as possible.
However, after seeing your screenshots I feel like that this has changed for me. There is almost no overview at all and all units just look like a big greyish army of nothing. It just does not feel like it fits well into Warcraft 3.
It is hard for me to see a difference between orcs and humans or even elves to be honest. That may be different while directly playing the game and just be this big of a problem looking at the screenshots.
If it would be my decision, and of course it is not, I would use vanilla models for the units, maybe even for the heroes. Reforged bringing high quality and new models should even more encourage using them.
Another option to look at could be HerrDaves WotR models which fit more into the Wc3 style but as I said that is entirely up to you.

Whatever your choice will be though, I wish you good luck with your map and I will give it a try once you release it to the Hive.

 

[Blarto]

Thank you for your feedback. Having hard-to distinguish armies is a complaint I've received before in game, I think its a feature of darker terrain (as opposed to the bright default wc3 tiles), dark-armored orcs, and generally dark bandit-based units and the sindar elf model. I was considering making them brighter for contrast but I had to cut it for v1.0 due to time constraints (most units are already at 255/255/255 color, need to actually edit the textures and mess with shading and brightness until it feels good).

I did not have a 3d model designer, and I decided to keep the models consistent. That's why all orc models look like carbon copies with subtle differences. Actually lots of the models you see are actually not models, but just cheap reskins, so reforged models will probably be inherited automatically!

Looking back, there are a bunch of new models I can look at since 2013. However performance is very important to me as having high poly models will start hitting it. Some people with high end PCs will say "looks fine to me", but if 1-2 players per game have garbage FPS, then the entire game is ruined... Cost VS benefit I guess. Lots of the textures for orcs are 64x64 or 128x128 on the assumption that will make rendering them easier, thus less of a performance hit. Another problem with different artists for models is the style becomes mixed and the general feel of the map gets messed up. I do like HerrDaves' work though, I'll look more into that.

I will say having high res models in a siege with over 500 units on the map at any given time is quite pointless in my opinion. No one is going to zoom in to examine the teeth of a select orc. Although this contradicts the casual/cinematic nature, the real stars of the map are the heroes, ambience, and the fortress itself. Not sure how much immersion the detail of generic orcs (or humans for that matter) contribute.

Anyway, I was planning on trying to recruit someone for artistic vision improvements for v2.0 in the future.


Addendum: If one watches the Movie adaptation from bird's eye (especially some of the shots where they actually do that), they'll notice its very hard to distinguish friend & foe as well, so in that sense, this map quite "accurately" simulates the siege. It's not that bad in actual game though, especially once people get used to it and play it the 2nd time.