Myth: TFL (Beta Phase)

[Bleedthrough]

Myth: The Fallen Lords
!! Updated from 2.1 Beta to 2.3 Beta !!

What is it?
It's a map, based off the premise of the multiplayer action found in the Myth series (primarily Myth: The Fallen Lords, and Myth II: Soulblighter). Up to 8 players compete FFA style to complete various objectives based one of 4 gametypes that can be voted for.
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What do I do on it?
The map kicks off with a voting system; each player may choose which options they want to play. There's 4 game modes, 3 game times, and 4 cash options to pick. Depending on what mode is voted for, your objectives may vary significantly, depending on the time you may have as little as 5 minutes or as long as 15 to complete those objectives. The starting cash merely gives you some variation in which units might be available and how big an army can get.
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Game Modes
As mentioned, there's 4 game modes, each as follows.
Body Count - Unlike many maps that use kills as a scoring method, Body Count revolves around the raw damage you deal.
Assassins - This is similar to chess, you must protect your king while killing other players' kings.
Capture the Flag - For it's namesake, you capture other players' flags and turn them in for points.
King of the Hill - Players fight for control of the pit at the center of the map to gain points.

Each of these game modes has a handful of other rules, detailed in the map via a -rules command.
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The Units
Without any base to build units, a question I get asked any time there's a newbie is how you get more. And the answer is (drumroll)... you don't - at least not in that match. One of the biggest factors in Myth was keeping units alive, through strategy & careful usage. Not throwing a whole company to it's veritable death knowing you could just train replacements from a never ending supply.
The only way to get more units is to start a fresh match; in each game there are 3 matches (I might be looking to add more, or make the number of matches a voted option).

In all, there's (so far) 15 custom units. In no particular order, they are: Thrall, Warriors, Ghols, Berzerks, Archers, Soulless, Dwarves, Fetch, Journeymen, Wights, Trow, Myrmidons, Forest Giants, Stygian Knights, and Mahir. So far the only glaringly unbalanced ones are Trow & Forest Giants (despite a major weakness of turning to stone permanently at 25% HP.)
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Some guy who got wiped out won (or) I blew myself up! WTF
Depending on the game type, even if you are eliminated, you can still win if your score remains the highest at the end of the match. Body Count & King of the Hill primarily, since in Assassins & CTF, your army is tied to your king//your flag (if someone kills your king//captures your flag, your army is killed off).
As for blowing yourself up, AoE splash attacks are INTENTIONALLY applied to your own units (they were in Myth, so they are in this map). Wight's using their explosion ability HARM and STUN your own units INTENTIONALLY. Use any AoE splash attacks & Wights with CAUTION.
Another "wtf?" moment may be the minimum range on ranged units - again, INTENTIONAL. As it was in Myth, so it is in this map. Might I add that the minimum range of Archers & Dwarves in the original Myth was much more strict.
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What can you do to help the development of this map?
Primarily it needs testing. Not for the features, or the functions, but primarily for the unit balancing. I need to know if you think a unit was too overpowered, with a suggestion to make them more balanced. It would help to get some feedback comparing the gametypes too; if one is in need of getting simplified, or has some as-of-yet unfound bug.
Preferably, I'm seeking people who have played Myth, and understood enough of it's lore//gameplay to give meaningful suggestions for things. But even if you haven't, don't be afraid to voice your opinion.
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OK I got some screenies, sorry they show so little and the quality is a bit off, but only 1 friend was on to help me out with gathering them, and I'm unusually picky about saving as much space as possible with files on the web. (And they're probably massive huge for this forum too, so I'm putting them in as links to the URL they're at.)
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1303/wc3scrnshot080708125215cw1.jpg
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/4503/wc3scrnshot080708124647tj9.jpg
ImageShack - Hosting :: wc3scrnshot080708124830cn3.jpg

In each of these screenshots we see a Trow (Tauren), at times multiple. You may catch a glimpse of what looks like a wisp, but don't be fooled - it's a custom unit (and has no ability to build anything). Berzerks, and Archers too are prominent in the screens.

 

[anderf]

It would be nice to see some pics, and some more information about the gameplay. Is it like footies? Will it be more focused on heroes or units? Is it altered melee? Do you build things? etc.

Aside from that, from the vague information you've given..Sounds awesome

 

[Bleedthrough]

Any pics wouldn't be anything pretty to look at, no imported models/skins/spells (yet, time & luck permitting they'll make it in somewhere), but I'll see what I can do to get a few screens up.

I don't really think it's anything like most other maps on battle.net, at least I know I've never encountered any maps that throw kill counts out the window and opt for a different method of scoring (Body Count, basing it off raw damage you deal to each other).

Heroes vs Units
In the current version (the attached one, and the one I've uploaded to the map resources), there are no heroes. It's 100% units. I've got a private version in the works that introduces bonuses for your units as the accumulate kills (simulating the experience system of Myth, which granted greater combat prowess for having more kills).
The problem with doing a conversion like this is working with & investigating the material in the original Myth - in the case of Heroes, most of them in Myth had only 1, if they were lucky 2, special game-breaking abilities. As much as I'd want to have a hero capable of obliterating entire legions of enemies, it wouldn't be balanced (not mentioning ALL of them in Myth were found in the single player campaign, none were used for multiplayer).
So not only is there the balance issue, but coming up with 2-3 abilities for these heroes from thin air, that fit the lore of that universe.

Altered Melee?
Kind of, sort of. Imagine a melee game, with no base management, or resource management. It's focused entirely on your squad/army, and how well you can complete the objectives.
It almost fits in with a mini-game classification, but borrows from melee quite a bit in the actual gameplay.

Do you build things?
99% no. You don't have any peons, or workers of any type - again, emphasizing the combat & using your army well. The only exception (the 1%) is when you are deciding which units for your army, in which case you purchase them (a la merc tavern style) from barracks which get spawned for you. You have limited time to make use of your barracks, however, as they get taken away, leaving you with only your army.

 

[Bleedthrough]

Changed the attachment; it is now 2.3 Beta.

Fixes - an Assassins game type bug that would prevent players' kings from spawning. Also a CTF bug that would do the same just with CTF flags instead of kings.

Balances - nerfed Trow//Forest Giant damage a bit, fixed Archer & Soulless weapon type to Missile instead of Artillery (they would miss alot before if a target was moving).

New stuff - Added a voting option for enabling/disabling Trow & Forest Giants. Added a system to give bonuses to units who score multiple kills.

 

[Bleedthrough]

Well I'm too lazy to upload it to two locations and waste more of Hive Workshop's harddrive space.

There's a new version uploaded - please direct any future posts to this map resource link...
Myth TFL 2.4 Beta(P) - The Hive Workshop - A Warcraft III Modding Site

 

[Gallin]

omg i loved myth tfl i used to play it all the time i must go find it does it still have multiplayer i dotn rember ever playing it and if it does and u still got your myth ill play wiht you also that blowing yourself up fits perfectly i can remember THE MANY MANY times i killed my whole army because i wasnt paying attention

it would probly be really cool if you could get custom models that look like the real myth guys

 

[Bleedthrough]

AFAIK there are still servers being hosted for Myth - the server source code was released as open source.

Do a google search on Project Magma, and Marius.net

Doing custom models might be tricky - all the units in Myth were sprites, so aside from skinning, the models themselves would need to be built by hand.

 

[Gallin]

yo can u host because i was going to grab a look at the map in we but u protected it and i cant host and i want to see it



O NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY MYTH WONT WORK!!!!!!

 

[Bleedthrough]

I had some issues installing Myth 2 to rip some of the sounds in that game out (though my mic sucks and it sounds kind of weird).

If you're on Vista, all I can really say to help is try changing the compatibility mode for the installer (Win 95/98 should work - XP might work too).

What I had to do to actually install it was *not* use my normal account, but the backup account I use for 2boxing on D2Expansion (at first, under my normal user account, the installer would lock up, but the backup account ran it just fine. bizarre.)