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More innovative spell ideas to make.

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Here are some more spell ideas I want. You guys seemed to like my other ideas pretty good. I figured I should make a new thread so its easier to focus on them.

Rock Prison (Area Targeted, Summoned)

Creates a bunch of boulders surrounding and trapping any units in the targeted area. These rocks should be like the rocks blocking areas on some maps which you can attack to clear away. I imagine the best way to do it would be to create a summoned unit that looks like those rocks, with no attack and no movement. The spell trigger could create a large number of these "units" in the area you specify. If nobody is there you should end up with a circle filled with rocks, if units are in the area then the rocks will automatically be placed all around them, trapping them. That's my theory anyway. At the lowest level the rocks should have very low HP, like 1. With increasing level the strength and duration of the rocks would increase. It should have some rocky sound effect when it is summoned. :wink:


Condemn (Unit Targeted)

Like Taunt, except the hero gets to specify an enemy or neutral unit as a victim! And it should only last for X hits, or repeatedly for X seconds, where X increases with the level of the spell. The order to attack should be applied to allies of the unit and neutral hostile units. Optionally it could also apply to the casters fellow units as well, as a means of focus-firing with your own army.


Artillery (Ultimate, Morph)

Has the effect of Seige Mode for Seige Tanks from Starcraft, but really powerful and long range. So it immobilizes the hero but gives him, say, double the range of a mortar team, with some crazy attack. It would be nice to have a realistic effect showing the hero transform into artillery mode, but I'm not sure what could be done.


Mechanical Mojo(Unit Targeted)

Creates a buff that gives a building or mechanical unit temporary invulnerability and gradually repairs it over the duration of the buff. I would also like it to include a feature that it increases the build speed of a building, like multiple human peasants building.


Lightning Ward (Summoned)

Creates a ward with a weak auto-cast Purge ability. It should also do a bit of damage and it should have the effect of an arc of lighting going out to the victim. Maybe it would look cool for it to also have a beam of lighting come from the sky, like a lighting rod, maybe not. Cooldown on the Purge would decrease with each level.


Fever (Unit Targeted)

This one could be a lot of fun but/because its quite elaborate. When an enemy unit is struck with Fever they will begin to get slower and slower and lose health. They will also stop attacking (trigger should periodically order them to stop if the player re-orders them) and start wandering around like a critter. Eventually they will come to a stop and go to sleep. When they wake up they will quickly recover their health speed and usability. That could be fun and elaborate enough right? But there is more! Feverish units will develop an aura while they are afflicted, units around them that recieve this aura would have the chance of becoming sick themselves. If played right, and the victim player doesn't dispell, their whole army could end up sick! This might be an Ultimate but I think it would be too easy to dispell before it becomes an epidemic, maybe if it wasn't dispellable, like Disease cloud it could be an Ultimate. Otherwise if it is a standard spell I think you could simply increase the recovery time of the feverish unit with each level. The health loss should work like lose 5% of their current health per second or something, so they will never die from the fever.
 
Level 9
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Jun 10, 2004
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More great spell ideas:
Rock Prison: Already done by Darky
Condemn: Good Idea. I have a couple spells on my "to do" list now, so I won't be able to get to it for a couple days, but if nobody else has done it by then, I will.
Artillery: I doubt I'll do this one, but I'd use Robo-Goblin Form.
Mechanical Mojo: I like that idea. Not much else to say.
Lightning Ward: Very simple. I doubt that you'll even need trigers for this.
Fever: Great idea! I might do this one!

Once again, great ideas. Keep it up!

~The_Raven
 
Level 3
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Thanks guys. I tried out Darky's Rock Prison and it is very cool, amazing fx, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind for a rock prison. I just want a jumble of rocks to grow up in the area you specify and around any units in that area. And the rocks should be attackable. Maybe I will try my hand at this one if nobody else wants to.

Now I have a question that might be very dumb or maybe it is a good one. So you make a hero, right, with all his groovy custom spells, and those spells have custom triggers with custom variables and they summon custom units using custom models...now how do you transfer all this crap into new map? Please don't say by hand. :cry: Is there some utility or technique for packaging all this stuff up for easy sharing and importing?!
 
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Ugh. So I have to copy and paste units, spells buffs and triggers one by one between maps? You can't even copy variables from one map to another, so you have to recreate them by hand? It takes like 10 seconds to toggle between maps on my pc so even at the fastest it would take...a long time to transfer a hero with 4 abilities using umpteen triggers and other stuff. :x

Anyway, is anybody interested in making these spells for me? Besides whitenights who is on vacation...
 
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Thanks Raven! That must have been a lot of work... Now I hope you don't mind if I do some nitpicking. :p First I wanted the health to decrease by percent, thats not really a problem, I can change that myself real easy, but also I wanted the health to go back to normal, or near normal when the unit has recovered. The way you have it set up currently the unit could die from fever which I didn't intend. I approve of the disease cloud effect...I didn't want the fevered unit to not be able to attack exactly. What I was thinking was that the unit should be constantly (like the every 2 seconds your trigger fires) ordered to stop, so the effect would be a poorly performing soldier, wandering around and forgetting what he is supposed to be doing!

Then I have a technical issue with your set-up. :? I notice you used the unit custom value feature. That is such a handy thing but I was thinking, if you use custom unit values in one spell trigger what's to stop you from using them in another...do you see where this could lead to a problem? If, as my dream is, I designed many heros with many abilities and these abilities were all modifying units' custom values then they would all start interfering with each other and really screw things up wouldn't they?! That is why my theory is that custom unit values should only be modified by map-specific triggers. What do you others think about that?

Unforetunately not using custom values would require a massive rehaul of the trigger wouldn't it. :(
 
Level 9
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1) Health decreasing by percent - will fix in next version.
2) I decided not to make the unit recover hit points to force the owner of the target unit to move him away. The first time that you catch the Fever, it probably won't kill you, but if the afflicted unit isn't moved away, it might catch the Fever repeatedly, killing it. Besides, this ability is an ultimate, after all.
3) I'll change the attack idea. How does targeting the unit with an ability like Drunken Haze sound?
4) I'm going to try to use substrings in the custom values in the next version. This will solve that problem.

~The_Raven
 
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Alright, I would still like the health to recover, and I do want it to be an ultimate. I think it should not be dispellable and should be more contagious, then the victim player would still want to seperate his army from the fevered unit to keep his whole army from being debiltated. But I want it so that the player who casts Fever will have to wait for the opportune time to strike, when units are sleeping, before they recover. Also, it's too bad that wander is so slow, because it lets the wandering unit pause in one spot for a long time. I wonder if there is a way to make wander more active.
 
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Right on. For Mechanical Mojo I decided it should just be really high armor, not invincibilty, and the duration of the spell should increase with spell level. I was worried that you need to properly increase build time as if an extra peasent were building, as opposed to just increasing the build % with triggers, because some buildings take longer to build and as a result would benifit more from the spell. But I don't think it will be a problem. That will just be a feature of the spell some buildings will benefit more than others.

Raven, I am going to comment on your Fever and Zergling Swarm posts in their respective download areas.
 
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Nice action! It is definitely lacking a visual effect on the unit though. Players need to see what units are under the effect of the spell just by looking at them. I couldn't cast the spell on Ancients! They are considered organic. :? But they should also count as a structure...My last issue is just a matter of balance, but I suppose I should balance my own spell ideas! I think it is only necessary to increase the duration of the effect per skill level, not armor amount and build boost. We will see...

Thanks again!
 
Level 3
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Raven - nice job on all of those spells. As for visual effects, I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, but I would suggest Glaive Thrower or Gryphon Rider under Units - Special (because of build boost) or maybe create barrels every 15 degrees (because of armor), or Staff of Sanctuary (target, under buffs)

I don't really know...
Lomacar - any other abilities? The others are ez enough that you could create them.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions wn. Staff of sanctuary could work, Wisp under Units - Special might look nice too if the animation can be looped. Or maybe I will try to make a custom skin on an existing effect model.

As for more spells, I can make the rest of the spells I've mentioned but who knows when or how long it will take me. I always end up getting stuck on something and I have a tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be...I do have more ideas though, I will post them in a third spell idea thread soon.
 
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I don't know, perhaps that is a question for the models forum.

P.S. Raven I made some comments about the Zergling Swarm and Fever spells on their download pages.

P.P.S. What were you talking about using custom substring values??? That sounds very usefull...
 
Level 1
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Jul 27, 2004
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To make a model loop you could use a trigger that turns on a trigger with the event:

Every XX seconds of game time

Actions

Make UNIT play {Death, Stand, Attack etc.} animation

That would make it keep doing it over and over again, until another trigger tells it to stop... Just an idea
 
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