[Altered Melee] Murloc Race Creation

[Kyrbi0]

Can I tell you how quickly I mashed the "Check First Unread" button for this one?? : D

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Hermit!! It's great to have you back. Gotta say, my only disappointment is that you came back before I could finish my Big Ol' Responses to this glorious thread... >_<

That being said, I think I speak for everyone here when I say

re: Hard Drive Loss. Literally making me shudder with anxiety & fear... It has been the Ultimate Fear of mine that I could just lose all the years and years of documents & organization & work, without a moment's notice. Saving up for an external Hard Drive that I can stick in my fire safe was one of the best things I've spent my money on; I hope you can find a solution yourself. :<

Seriously, though. Mashing 'F' over here for ultimate respect; you came back! I completely understand the crippling, debilitating effect that 'lost progress/information' can have on a guy/modder, so believe me when I say "take your time". We'll be waiting for the wonders you get to cooking up.

(Especially sorry about losing that post. Something about writing; I can often get good thoughts on paper but only once! I try to rewrite it or remake it from memory & I'm horrible).

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There's no way this is necroposting; heck, you're the Creator and it's your thread about your project. This was very relevant news from the most-relevant person.

Also, if there's one thing I can point out to convince you that there's no better time to start, consider this: There have been several Patches, all with interesting changes. A Patch or so ago contained, like, a hundred new trigger natives (all available for GUI) that have done lots of cool things.

But most importantly!... As of Patch 1.30, BUFFS CAN STACK.

You heard me right. Now anytime you make a custom Ability with it's own fitting custom Buff, it no longer ignores the new one, look to the old one, & disable the Stacking. It considers every Buff with a certain unique Buff ID a... (wait for it)... *separate* instance of the spell (as it always should've), and so they stack as if they were different cells.

So yeah! The artificial constraint we worked so hard for so many years to ignore/fix/live with, and it's finally get

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Hope to hear more from you. : )

 

[Hermit]

Thanks for your sympathy and the warm welcome back, Kyrbi0!

I can't believe we'll finally have buff stacking after all these years! (Now if they only allowed custom UnitAckSounds.slk to be used all my dreams would come true).

As for my plans, I stopped being so stubborn about the demo campaign being my main (and pretty much only) source of inspiration and decided to make some fundamental changes to the race. Many of my murloc units are really similar and that's not good; not just because of the Silhouette Principle, as you called it, but it also looks monotone compared to the standard races, which have a greater unit diversity because of the lesser/minor races (sub-races or however you want to call them): the Alliance is a conglomeration of humans, elves, and dwarves, where humans are the prevailing race. The Horde is made up of not just orcs, but also trolls and tauren. Similarly, nerubians and various scary creatures are allied to the undead (Scourge), etc.

I'm trying to increase racial diversity (and maybe also giving myself more creative freedom) by replacing some murlocs (probably Flesheater, Tidecaller and Mutant) with makrura units. I chose makrura because they are also amphibious; commonly found on coastlines and speak the same language as murlocs, as stated on WoW Wiki (Well, according to WoW Wiki, murlocs and makrura are mortal enemies, but I can disregard the enmity since it isn't seen anywhere in Warcraft 3).

 

[cleavinghammer]

People who hate each other having to work together against a more powerful enemy isn't exactly unheard of in Warcraft.

 

[Mister_Haudrauf]

I'm trying to increase racial diversity (and maybe also giving myself more creative freedom) by replacing some murlocs (probably Flesheater, Tidecaller and Mutant) with makrura units. I chose makrura because they are also amphibious; commonly found on coastlines and speak the same language as murlocs, as stated on WoW Wiki (Well, according to WoW Wiki, murlocs and makrura are mortal enemies, but I can disregard the enmity since it isn't seen anywhere in Warcraft 3).

How about making them (the Makrura) enslaved Makrura? It would give a reason why they are with the Murlocs. It would almost work with any other Sub-Race you use.

People who hate each other having to work together against a more powerful enemy isn't exactly unheard of in Warcraft.

Yeah, but as soon as the threat is gone they begin to kill each other.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Making them slaves is a good one, though you'd have to limit them to the lower-tier units (or maybe some kind of breakaway mechanic where they flee or turn hostile).

 

[Trill]

Consider this:
Makrura units require a Slavedriver or Mind-bender or something like that. A controller.
As long as they are within a certain range of a controller, they are fine. If controller dies or move out of range or something, Makrura units instantly become Neutral Hostile.
This will allow you to makes Makrura units fittingly strong, but they will require careful positioning so enemies don't kill your controllers too fast.

 

[cleavinghammer]

That was going to be my proposal, although with a different mechanic.

Makrura slaves sometimes become passive, so the slavedriver has to use a whip to get them back to work (or to boost their combat ability), and using the whip too often or in too short a time period (ability is autocast, has a low cooldown, the whip buff stacks) makes them hostile. If the driver becomes incapacitated (stun, sleep, etc.), the Makrura will try to flee.

 

[Kyrbi0]

All of those ideas are cool & creative... But are they really necessary? After all, in the standard game, the Naga race is described as having enslaved Mur'guls as a sub race, but there's no token or mechanic of enslavement (i.e. no slave-driver unit, no "rebellion" function, etc)...

Not to say I agree with the addition of Makrura; I'm torn. But I don't see a problem with just including them; the "explanation" could simply reside in the "manual" (description).

 

[Trill]

All of those ideas are cool & creative... But are they really necessary? After all, in the standard game, the Naga race is described as having enslaved Mur'guls as a sub race, but there's no token or mechanic of enslavement (i.e. no slave-driver unit, no "rebellion" function, etc)...

Naga are big and scary, probably swim better (due to body shape), have powerful magics and are smarter and more cunning than a murloc. So mur'gul just keep slaving for them without trying to flee.
Makrura on the other hand are bigger and stronger than murlocs, have natural plate armor, and as such would require constant attention to keep them under control.

Plus extra mechanics to set a race apart are always good, otherwise races turn into mere reskins of each other.

 

[cleavinghammer]

And it could be applied to other marine creeps for more variety. How else are they going to get Sea Giants and Hydras to listen to them?

 

[Liomsi]

I made a map about the murlocs but there only in Russian and there is not yet artificial intelligence for bots

 

[kellym0]

...Mur'loc Mounted Makura?

 

[Pyrogasm]

...Mur'loc Mounted Makura?

???

 

[Liomsi]

...Mur'loc Mounted Makura?

I have no ideas themselves can edit my map

 

[Saelendious]

I have no ideas themselves can edit my map

you meant 'I have no ideas, you can edit my map by yourselves', не так ли?

 

[Liomsi]

you meant 'I have no ideas, you can edit my map by yourselves', не так ли?

No I changed my mind I started fixing bugs so no I changed my mind but you can change the map

 

[cleavinghammer]

^ Every custom tooltip shows up as blank.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Makruras are okay, you probably have to use them anyway for variance.

However, the main reason is probably because I experienced a hard disk failure; I had a backup of some things, but I lost many important files, including most of my recent maps and some resources I intended to use. I regret not backing up more things, like a large excel file with a dozen of worksheets in which I had neatly categorized stats of all melee and custom units, heroes, buildings as well as abilities, spells and my general unimplemented ideas and plans.

re: Hard Drive Loss. Literally making me shudder with anxiety & fear... It has been the Ultimate Fear of mine that I could just lose all the years and years of documents & organization & work, without a moment's notice. Saving up for an external Hard Drive that I can stick in my fire safe was one of the best things I've spent my money on; I hope you can find a solution yourself. :<

A big ol' USB stick, but then again I feel you both, my HDD failed... and the only version I have of my thing is... protected or hard to work with.

But most importantly!... As of Patch 1.30, BUFFS CAN STACK.

Really? Sweet. Was just gonna comment on:

Wither *35
Decreases an enemy unit's attack damage by 35%. Lasts 60 seconds. I'll definitely have to remove this since it's just Inner Fire with negative damage increase. Inner Fire is a frequently used spell and buff clashing is inevitable.

The fact that Inner Fire is a beneficial buff means there's no way an AI would use a detrimental spell based on Inner Fire well. I'm pretty sure you can use some other autocast detrimental spell as a base. Heck, even the buff problem was solvable. There's even ways to code it so the only relevant problem for the base skill is... "is it a detrimental autocast?"

Think about the AI, I made a mass cloaking spell that the AI uses as if it was Roar, it's embarassing.

Is it a good autocast idea tho...? It's ok, could be better I guess, maybe I'd lower the damage decrease and add a tiny bit of weapon speed decrease. You got other good debuffs around, so it's not like it's really needed if something more interesting arises.