- Joined
- Jun 2, 2004
- Messages
- 849
Ahoy! Glad to see wc3 modding is still going strong. I haven't posted on these forums in like 8 years. Anywho, I've been making a tower defense recently and want to show it off. It's something like 4 years in the making, though ~3 years ago I lost interest, then lost all the files, and just recently came across some backups on a friend's hard drive. So here I am!
Premise:
I wanted to make a tower defense where "not leaking" wasn't the win condition. Also, being a fan of mazing TDs like Cube Defense I wanted you to be able to maze to your heart's content around interesting terrain. So, I made Magic Academy TD.
Waves of enemies spawn every ~1 minute and start walking through your area. Each wave becomes stronger, though you can weaken, strengthen, freeze the power of your creeps with a building's abilities. The main form of income is bounty, and of course stronger enemies give better bounty. If you build effective, efficient mazes and spend your money wisely (expensive towers are exponentially better, to reward risk taking by saving money) you can kill creeps of higher power faster. You also get some income at the start of every round; this is intended to keep you from being "stuck" being unable to kill your creeps even with the power frozen. It'll of course take time to accumulate much money through income, so you shouldn't rely on it.
Also you have the ability to summon bosses. There are 6 bosses total, all with simple gimmicks (health regeneration, armor, speed aura, etc). Defeating a boss gets you a nice bounty and also nets you a special tower. Defeating the 6th and final boss wins you the game.
Screenies:
Have an imgur album.
Nifty stuff I wanted to point out:
Terrain and waypoints:
Throughout your area is some terrain that should be fun to build around; it's not flat and featureless. This is a mazing TD, and they don't just go from point A to point B. They go to point C, D, E, F, and G too. There are 6 waypoints in all (8 if you count the start and end points) and you can use the fact they have to reach each one of them to create some intricate mazes.
Philosopher's Stone tower:
One of the most complex elements of the game is the Philosopher's Stone tower. Everyone starts with one in their inventory and only gets one. You can use this to duplicate regular monster abilities (at a small but increasing cost) to turn the philosopher's stone into a tower, and duplicating the right enemy at the right time to fit your maze and be effective against the monsters you want to fight is going to be one of the best ways to boost your time. A list of all the possible tower stats for each monster is in the game's info pane (where quests are usually).
Boss towers:
Boss towers deal little to no damage but have significant support potential if used correctly. Examples include a melee tower that adds a stacking armor debuff and a spirit link tower that helps turn even single target towers into splash damage towers (with a nice bonus to damage on top of course). You get them, of course, by killing bosses.
Tower variety:
I tried hard to make towers interesting and unique. There's no generic frost breath slowing tower, very few bare bones single target towers, very few simple splash damage towers, etc. Most towers use spells and triggers for their effects.
Flavor:
Despite just being a tower defense I wanted to spruce things up when it comes to setting. You're a student taking your final exam at a magical academy... that's kinda racist and run by megalomaniacs on a fantasy planet. The narrator (or whoever is the "voice" is in tooltip descriptions) is unreliable, insulting entire races like elves and referring to people as "natives." Also you have a choice of builders despite this having no effect on gameplay; they essentially act as your cursor so might as well give them some personality. Everything is tongue-in-cheek and full of references.
The game is fully playable though still incomplete. There's little actually "multiplayer" about this map currently. Sorta like Element TD, you don't really interact with your fellow players; you just race to see who wins first. I'll probably add a versus and/or cooperative mode at some point, but honestly trying to do exactly that is what burned me out on making this map last time, so I'll focus on things I have more interest in first. I want a solid single player TD before anything else. As such I'd love feedback and bug reports; tell me what towers you thought were overpowered, which you thought were worthless, which you thought were fun, which you thought were boring. Any typos in tooltips or glitchy spell effects I want to hear about too. I'm also okay with bug reports about pathing AI abuse, but I'd also like to hear suggestions on how to fix it; wc3's pathing sucks and effective anti-block measures that don't get in the way of regular players is a tall order. Currently I think I struck a decent balance of anti block measures and non-interference, though there may be room for improvement.
Thanks! Enjoy.
Premise:
I wanted to make a tower defense where "not leaking" wasn't the win condition. Also, being a fan of mazing TDs like Cube Defense I wanted you to be able to maze to your heart's content around interesting terrain. So, I made Magic Academy TD.
Waves of enemies spawn every ~1 minute and start walking through your area. Each wave becomes stronger, though you can weaken, strengthen, freeze the power of your creeps with a building's abilities. The main form of income is bounty, and of course stronger enemies give better bounty. If you build effective, efficient mazes and spend your money wisely (expensive towers are exponentially better, to reward risk taking by saving money) you can kill creeps of higher power faster. You also get some income at the start of every round; this is intended to keep you from being "stuck" being unable to kill your creeps even with the power frozen. It'll of course take time to accumulate much money through income, so you shouldn't rely on it.
Also you have the ability to summon bosses. There are 6 bosses total, all with simple gimmicks (health regeneration, armor, speed aura, etc). Defeating a boss gets you a nice bounty and also nets you a special tower. Defeating the 6th and final boss wins you the game.
Screenies:
Have an imgur album.
Nifty stuff I wanted to point out:
Terrain and waypoints:
Throughout your area is some terrain that should be fun to build around; it's not flat and featureless. This is a mazing TD, and they don't just go from point A to point B. They go to point C, D, E, F, and G too. There are 6 waypoints in all (8 if you count the start and end points) and you can use the fact they have to reach each one of them to create some intricate mazes.
Philosopher's Stone tower:
One of the most complex elements of the game is the Philosopher's Stone tower. Everyone starts with one in their inventory and only gets one. You can use this to duplicate regular monster abilities (at a small but increasing cost) to turn the philosopher's stone into a tower, and duplicating the right enemy at the right time to fit your maze and be effective against the monsters you want to fight is going to be one of the best ways to boost your time. A list of all the possible tower stats for each monster is in the game's info pane (where quests are usually).
Boss towers:
Boss towers deal little to no damage but have significant support potential if used correctly. Examples include a melee tower that adds a stacking armor debuff and a spirit link tower that helps turn even single target towers into splash damage towers (with a nice bonus to damage on top of course). You get them, of course, by killing bosses.
Tower variety:
I tried hard to make towers interesting and unique. There's no generic frost breath slowing tower, very few bare bones single target towers, very few simple splash damage towers, etc. Most towers use spells and triggers for their effects.
Flavor:
Despite just being a tower defense I wanted to spruce things up when it comes to setting. You're a student taking your final exam at a magical academy... that's kinda racist and run by megalomaniacs on a fantasy planet. The narrator (or whoever is the "voice" is in tooltip descriptions) is unreliable, insulting entire races like elves and referring to people as "natives." Also you have a choice of builders despite this having no effect on gameplay; they essentially act as your cursor so might as well give them some personality. Everything is tongue-in-cheek and full of references.
The game is fully playable though still incomplete. There's little actually "multiplayer" about this map currently. Sorta like Element TD, you don't really interact with your fellow players; you just race to see who wins first. I'll probably add a versus and/or cooperative mode at some point, but honestly trying to do exactly that is what burned me out on making this map last time, so I'll focus on things I have more interest in first. I want a solid single player TD before anything else. As such I'd love feedback and bug reports; tell me what towers you thought were overpowered, which you thought were worthless, which you thought were fun, which you thought were boring. Any typos in tooltips or glitchy spell effects I want to hear about too. I'm also okay with bug reports about pathing AI abuse, but I'd also like to hear suggestions on how to fix it; wc3's pathing sucks and effective anti-block measures that don't get in the way of regular players is a tall order. Currently I think I struck a decent balance of anti block measures and non-interference, though there may be room for improvement.
Thanks! Enjoy.
