Heroes of Newerth, custom maps, would you map for it?

[Techies]

Well for those that don't know, Heroes of Newerth comes with a map editor.

Here's an example of a map which I created using it:
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?411249-Nightmarish

It's a very action orientated basic zombie survival map where monsters come at you from all directions, the direction and which monsters spawn are kinda randomized in the map. It has a modified gunblade, which I've given a chainsaw ability, and you can shoot in direction with the rifle by only pressing D once.

Oh and you can dodge in WSAD directions.

Now I'm very amateur in mapping, and that's what I was able to create, but I'm improving. Mapping for HoN could be considered simple, but complex at the same time. Want to include the DOTA2 mirana model in your map, no problem! What about cloud from Final fantasy? There's many community created/ported models out there for HoN out there already, and getting them into your map doesn't take rocket science. The amount of vanilla content in HoN is just staggering atm, 115 heroes, most with 2 to 3 alts, not including the stuff they can summon.

So why the hell is the HoN map forums dead? Why the hell isn't there hundreds of mappers for it? Why so many author's left? The thing is S2 promised custom maps, but never really delivered on them. The most important aspect like playing them online was left out. I only stuck around because I focused on making a single-player map.

So why the hell am I even writing all this crap for a game with a somewhat "dead mapping community".

Well someone smart went ahead and modified some dll files, with the sole purpose of reviving the mapping community, making them playable offline, and online with other people.

MULTIPLAYER POSSIBLE NOW
ValkyrieWars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hqdnppwQcsU

What's great about this, is only the host requires the files, all the client need is the map and they can join in while logged into the official server.
Heck even one the hosts made an automated server where someone like me who can't forward their ports (3G dongle) could start a valkwars or nightmarish server with a simple console command using his server.

So this is a heads up, if your getting tired of the limitations from war3 and sc2, a new alternative is coming soon, very soon. The creator of the dlls is making them compatible for HoN 3.0 atm.

Don't like HoN, well someone already released a few war3 models for it, just use those, just go nuts, do what you please, no filesize restriction or that bs.

 

[Techies]

btw I'll let you all know when the server files get released. Everyone will be able to host their own server. Dedicated or practice, although it practice you get the Test++ menu and everyone gets access to the debug tools.



Hopefully S2 will then officially make custom maps playable.

 

[Xonok]

This is intriguing.

 

[Blackhole]

I am not into dota-like games, but I am surprised to see HoN even mentioned, like doesn't LoL beat them all? Even SC2 players who are not very successful on the top scene swictehd to LoL. HoN? Is it just for editing cause I see LoL is the better game.

 

[Techies]

I am not into dota-like games, but I am surprised to see HoN even mentioned, like doesn't LoL beat them all? Even SC2 players who are not very successful on the top scene swictehd to LoL. HoN? Is it just for editing cause I see LoL is the better game.

Pros go solely where the money is, when it's the DOTA2 million dollar competition, then suddenly it's the greatest game on earth and everyone "abandons" LoL, only again to "abandon" DOTA2.

Agility, Strength, intelligence you can actually edit the core mechanics in HoN, make it so that agility doesn't give you armor etc. HoN editor is much, much more powerful and flexible than the war3 editor. The items, no problem.
Think it's quite possible to import a few of the LoL models too.

You have an improved battle.net 1.0 at your exposel , with clan functionality and the ability to create your own channels, join a game from those people in the channels.

 

[Techies]

Playing a new small map I made called "pebbles_duel" in 3.0 with a full house.
Although I think you can actually increase the player limit and go 10 vs 10 even.

 

[Skycraft]

Nope it's a terrible mini-game, I'm gonna stick with Starcraft 2 thank you very much.

 

[Techies]

Nope it's a terrible mini-game, I'm gonna stick with Starcraft 2 thank you very much.

Hey, it's a WIP, where you must throw it's other in the air and get midair codex kills. Also working on adding a hook for no apparent reason.
Also not the same without the music, and the cam height was wrong there.

If you don't like it you can try making something better, and probably succeed. Whatever you can do in war3, you do in HoN, just better.

 

[Techies]

Nope it's a terrible mini-game, I'm gonna stick with Starcraft 2 thank you very much.

Those Chaos marines can pass for Terran, no?

That tower looks cool, maybe I should make a tower defense game...


Apparently getting models into SC2 is hard...
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/modeling-animation-276/starcraft-2-modeling-why-failing-215026/

Not so with HoN

 

[Blackhole]

^ Not hard at all, esp if you have the tools, Blender, Max, SC2 and the cool graphics all the way, begone HoN, but anyway not gonna spoil your thread. Just saying go SC2 terraining..

 

[Techies]

^ Not hard at all, esp if you have the tools, Blender, Max, SC2 and the cool graphics all the way, begone HoN, but anyway not gonna spoil your thread. Just saying go SC2 terraining..

Then explain to me why that thread exists in the first place, and why when I click Starcraft2 resources I can barely find anything. Also In SC2 you cannot even host a game yourself anymore. They removed "open to public" option for some reason.

Not to mention new maps never getting played because they keep being pushed to the bottom. After ALL these years one would think they would get the simple things right, for instance why doesn't a lobby get auto-refreshed every 3 minutes, putting the game on top of the list again so that it won't disappear into some random page forever and never get filled.

btw, I didn't Hydralisk model showed in the pic(obviously), but I literally just copy pasted it into a modified caldavar map. That file took up 2.6 Meg and you can edit the mdf that comes with it to give the model any animation you desire, heck you can even choose the fps at which is should run, all without 3rd party tools.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<model name="hydralisk" file="hydralisk.model" type="K2" >

	<anim name="idle" clip="clips/Stand_full.clip" fps="30" loop="true"/>
	
	<anim name="portrait" clip="clips/portrait.clip" loop="true"/>

	<anim name="bored_1" clip="clips/Stand 01_full" fps="30"/>

	<anim name="item_1" clip="clips/Attack cover_full.clip" fps="30" loop="false"/>	

	<anim name="taunt_1" clip="clips/Attack cover_full.clip" fps="30" loop="false"/>

	<anim name="ability_1" clip="clips/Attack 01_full.clip" fps="20" loop="false"/>

	<anim name="ability_3" clip="clips/Attack cover_full.clip" fps="45" loop="false"/>

	<anim name="ability_4" clip="clips/Attack 01_full.clip" fps="20" loop="false"/>

	
	<anim name="attack_1" clip="clips/Attack 01_full.clip" fps="20" loop="false">
		<frameevent frame="10" cmd="PlaySoundLinear /heroes/ebulus/sounds/attack_%.wav 500 2000 .6"/>
	</anim>

	<anim name="attack_2" clip="clips/Attack 01_full.clip" fps="20" loop="false">
		<frameevent frame="10" cmd="PlaySoundLinear /heroes/ebulus/sounds/attack_%.wav 500 2000 .6"/>
		<frameevent frame="10" cmd="PlaySoundLinear /heroes/ebulus/sounds/attack_grunt_%.wav 500 2000 .6"/>
	</anim>

	<anim name="walk_1" clip="clips/Walk_full.clip" fps="33" loop="true" blendtime="150">
		<frameevent frame="3" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/waterhack#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
		<frameevent frame="8" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/waterhack#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
		<frameevent frame="16" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/waterhack#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
		<frameevent frame="21" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/waterhack#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
		
		<frameevent frame="3" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/footstep_r_#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
		<frameevent frame="16" cmd="StartEffect /shared/effects/footstep_l_#GetTerrainType()#.effect"/>
	</anim>

	<anim name="death_1" clip="clips/Burrow_full.clip" fps="30" loop="true" loopbackframe="-1">
		<frameevent frame="1" cmd="starteffect effects/death.effect"/>
	</anim>

	<anim name="stun_1" clip="clips/Stand_full.clip" fps="30" loop="false" loopbackframe="1" numframes="1"/>
	
	<anim name="knock_1" clip="clips/Stand_full.clip" loop="true" loopbackframe="-1"/>
	
	<anim name="getup_1" clip="clips/Stand_full.clip"/>
	
</model>

 

[TheNisse]

Huh, I didn't know you were able to create your own maps and game modes. But yea I figured some kind of editor were available with those hero introduction videos lying around.

Personally I'd play the custom maps if they were like hero defenses (x hero siege, enfo's, etc) or pudge wars.

Tbh I don't think there's enough players playing HoN to keep a custom section active
But then again, did the hen or the egg come first?

Oh *lol* noticed someone already have made an enfo map, I guess I'll try it out later.

 

[rulerofiron99]

That's amazing; why didn't I hear of this sooner?!

Quick question: is there offline LAN?

I have seen regularly updated offline HON clients, but I've never heard of custom maps for it before.

 

[TheNisse]

What would you need offline clients for? It's F2P. But yea I guess you could need a local server.

 

[Techies]

Huh, I didn't know you were able to create your own maps and game modes. But yea I figured some kind of editor were available with those hero introduction videos lying around.

Personally I'd play the custom maps if they were like hero defenses (x hero siege, enfo's, etc) or pudge wars.

Tbh I don't think there's enough players playing HoN to keep a custom section active
But then again, did the hen or the egg come first?

Oh *lol* noticed someone already have made an enfo map, I guess I'll try it out later.

HoN can have peaks up to 120k concurrent players, that more people then they are on the official war3 servers I think. It also beats all Steam games apart from DOTA2. So the potential of custom maps are huge, but that will never be realized until it's actually official...

Think enfo gonna have some problems, been year/years since it was last updated and with the way it hides heroes, there's gonna be dozens of new ones that shouldn't be playable. Dev wars, the one the author gave away unfortunately isn't really playable, but is still good as a resource and the hook can actually bounces of the wall when it hits it. The problem comes with upgrading the hook, which is set to DFGR. But there's this 15 modifier key rule that messed the whole upgrade system up. In short that map needs a lot of work, rethinking.

Most of the old mappers unfortunately is nowhere to be soon, so only a few maps are really being played/updated atm. And a lot of changed since they left so most maps need a bit of love first.
But there's quite a few people hosting servers atm with up to 30 people in the channel during the weekend so Valwars, Pebbles, WTF are at least gets played a lot.

The good news is that's there quite a few new mappers who've been working on their maps so new maps are coming, and the things they manage to do is is quite impressive, from a fully custom textured map, to one where teams, heroes/items are randomized each round in a elimination deathmatch arena.
HoN allows you to do things that you cannot do in war3, so expect some originality in the future.

That's amazing; why didn't I hear of this sooner?!

Quick question: is there offline LAN?

I have seen regularly updated offline HON clients, but I've never heard of custom maps for it before.

You can host your own severs, you can do offline LANs too. Only recently was the dlls released, and the person who released them is close to a prodigy when it comes to programming so nothing this functional existed until now.

What would you need offline clients for? It's F2P. But yea I guess you could need a local server.

 

[Techies]

New valk wars
http://en.reddit.com/r/HeroesofNewerth/comments/18927t/would_you_like_to_see_this_in_hon/

And slightly improved version of pebbles and valkyrie. Pebbles now has a back hook...

 

[Techies]

If you wanna see what all the fuss is about just join channel "valkwarz" in HoN.

There's normally 40+ players in there atm. Hey it's a start, people only now begun to really map for it.

 

[Techies]

Small update, we slowly but surely moving over to channel "custom maps". There's now more than a hundred players in the channel, lot of new mappers etc.

Also some cool new maps have been released, in one everyone spawns as martyr, everytime you die you get a random skillset, which can consist of basically any skill in HoN basically, can even have multiple ulti's from multiple heroes.

Here's another one called arena. Basically it's deathmatch/elimination type game where everyone starts with a random hero + items.

Archers is also playable etc. Other popular war3 maps like pudge wars are also in the making.

Essentially the mapping scene in HoN has been revived.

 

[Edhel-dur]

Does the editor provide the tools necessary for a single player?

 

[Techies]

Does the editor provide the tools necessary for a single player?

Elemental Tower Defense is singleplayer

You can either login, host a practice game with the map you want to play (the hero select screen and choosing team screen is skippable if you want).

Or you can skip the login by typing into the console:
StartGame "practice" "Game Name" "map:caldavar"

Someone made a GUI accessible, from the main screen where you choose a map you want to play so a console command can also be "bypassed". True offline including LAN is indeed possible.

If you mean multiple levels where you keep your inventory from last game? Well that is uncharted territory, no one tried it yet.

PS.
This is what a real environmental mapper can do with the engine (unfortunately it was never released).
[YOUTUBE]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6ymIe-WyRY[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Techies]

WoW Arena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3h7GWLXLU