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Soul's Footmen War

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Well, as you guys can see, v6.4 has finally been completed. I pulled a full 24 hours of mapping just to get it done, no lie. I've revamped the whole terrain and expanded the playing field. I also did a nice chunk of balance changes so everything should be smoother now. Feel free to grab the map and drop me some feedback on what ya think. Sorry if I don't have enough details, keeping a changelog kinda slipped my mind due to lack of sleep. You can ask LiekPwn on the Azeroth gateway if you don't believe I blew 24 hours just to update a map, he spent most of that time on AIM with me lol

Soul's Footmen War v6.4
 
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Yea well, I didnt know, but thanks for the heads up. I'll keep that in mind next time

EDIT: And btw, this is only my second topic about the map, you made it sound like I've done it a dozen times before o_O
 
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Heh, last thing I want is people hating me for doing the wrong thing, I prefer they hate me for doing the right thing ^_^

Start playing the map people, I want this to be the reason you guys sit on war3 24/7 and cant sleep LOL!
 
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Alright guys, a friend and I have noticed a few minor bugs and glitches in v6.4. Those of you that play it, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep a note about any problems you find and post them here. As I'm typing this, world editor is already opening the map and I'm starting to debug things for v6.5. I'll try to post a note when I read a bug report so you know I've checked it, if I miss a post about something you could always toss me a PM about it and I'll check the map. I think this covers things for now, happy ownage!

EDIT: I'm considering doing a remake on the default heros similar to what I did for the paladin, remaking the whole skillset for each hero or altering it to make them better. If anyone feels like suggesting some skill ideas, feel free to post'em or drop me a pm.
 
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I released Soul's Footmen War v6.5 yesterday, just kinda forgot to link it here for you guys to snag. I expanded the map even further, pushing it up to a medium playing field. Theres now a path leading around the rim of the map with openings that can be used for a tactical advantage. Theres a total of 6 paths into each base now, though the path around the map is a bit cramped, so you'll only be able to take a team of 12 units back there at most with a hero to lead an ambush or whatever your battle plan is. I did have two of my shamen, LeikPwn and I3arf on AIM with me while I was updating, they aided by helping to point out problems, bugs or imbalances I forgot to take care of. As an example, Shooting Star for Light Elementalist has been nerfed. The casting range and area of effect were reduces by 200 each. Some heros, as I've noticed during many games, are too hard to use and usually end up giving the player a major disadvantage. So I setup some special bonus triggers for those heros, which will make them a lil more worth using. As an example, the footmen elite was pretty much a royal pain to use when it came to taking on experienced players. His new triggers will give him bonus gold for unit kills and a higher gold bonus plus one point to each stat per hero kill. I3arf had pointed out an overlooked fact about the Mammoth Tank, it wasn't actually "tanking" anything. So, I altered the stats on chaos damage and divine armor then applied them to the tank. Dispite the tooltips for the damage and armor, their not as default settings. Divine armor will take almost no damage from all attack types but it has a weakness against spells, double damage to be exact. Chaos damage, dispite ignoring armor reduction, deals full damage to most armor types, but I did tone it down enough verses fortified armor. This way you won't have some random noob massing tanks to rip your base apart. Both the tank and glaive thrower have been given food costs to disable the useless need of massing them. The tanks cost 10 food each and the glaives cost 20. I did reduce the glaive's damage a bit and increased the cooldown so it won't kill off towers and other structures as fast. If anyone has any concerns about the updates or suggestions for the next version, post them here and I'll check them when I'm on.

You can download Soul's Footmen War v6.5 at http://www.epicwar.com/maps/12165/ if your intrested in playing it. Those of you who are new to the map should take a moment to visit the SFW page on my clan site to read a few details about the map that may help during gameplay. You can find the clan link in my profile, I don't feel its needed to be posted here since this thread is for the map and not the clan.
Anyways, have fun and Happy Ownage! :infl_thumbs_up:
 
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The 24 hour thing was only done for v6.4, and I'm not gonna be doing another haul like that unless I'm wacked out of my gord. As for how its different, why don't you play a couple matches and have a look? But aside from that, I might as well explain. Unlike most of the footmen maps I see around now, mine isn't some frenzy edit that I claim to have made, its made from scratch based on the old school footmen maps I played a few years back. On top of that it currently has over 70 heros, both default and custom to choose from along with a random option for people that hate picking. Then you've got 8 different spawns to choose from, a hero sanctum for people that hate microing and I believe over 100 custom skills, though I haven't bothered to keep count so thats just an estimated amount. Then theres the fact you've got the usual towers, shops, intresting items and amusing terrain to work with. Atop of all this, I use a unique setup of upgradable heros. As your pouring hard earned gold into your unit upgrades, your hero is getting powered up from the basic ones. (Damage, armor, attack speed, hitpoints and range for ranged heros)

Does that help answer your question MM? I'd pull out a graph, some charts and a detailed grid to help explain more but I'm kinda short on those and I think playing the map would explain everything else alot faster, but thanks for askin, now I won't have to type all this up when someone else asks that question lol
 
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Thanks for the answer, but im not impressed. Which of those features are not already in numerous other footman wars maps?
And your footman wars ,even if made from scratch, is still a footman wars. Atleast from your description, your version isnt offering anything new.
 
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Maybe and maybe not, but atleast it isn't throwin together in some half crap job manner like some of the map that are out there. I never planned to keep a log on everything that makes my map better or worse than any other. But seriously, play it a couple times and compare it to the other maps for yourself, no one plays a map just cuz the creator says "My map has this" or "Go play my map it own!", they give it a shot and keep playing it if they enjoy it. I see your point though, apparently I need to keep a detailed list around in the future to handle these questions better.
 
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Well, I tryied the map.
-The 3mb file size is a real bummer. Hard to get a public game going.
-Related to my previous, there is no AI. When you cant get human players, you should be able to replace them with computers.
-Quite many of the custom heroes had standart blizzard spells, some of then had all 4 blizz spells. I wouldnt categorize them as 'custom heroes'. I would advice to make the excisting heroes a lot more custom in form of spells, maybe delete some of the not-that-great heroes. And atleast some of the custom spells were only slight edits. Imo even 10 good heroes with new exciting spells (some spells triggered) is a lot better than 70 'boring' heroes.
-Your tileset choises were.....well.....disturbing :). Cant say that I enjoyed looking at the terrain.

I didnt have really any good things to say about the map, but you must understand that the competition with the footmen wars type of maps is very tough. I hope you'll continue to improve the map and think about some of the things I pointed out.
 
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Well, I tryied the map.
-The 3mb file size is a real bummer. Hard to get a public game going.
-Related to my previous, there is no AI. When you cant get human players, you should be able to replace them with computers.
-Quite many of the custom heroes had standart blizzard spells, some of then had all 4 blizz spells. I wouldnt categorize them as 'custom heroes'. I would advice to make the excisting heroes a lot more custom in form of spells, maybe delete some of the not-that-great heroes. And atleast some of the custom spells were only slight edits. Imo even 10 good heroes with new exciting spells (some spells triggered) is a lot better than 70 'boring' heroes.
-Your tileset choises were.....well.....disturbing :). Cant say that I enjoyed looking at the terrain.

I didnt have really any good things to say about the map, but you must understand that the competition with the footmen wars type of maps is very tough. I hope you'll continue to improve the map and think about some of the things I pointed out.

Alright, I'm gonna point out or more so, explain a few things.
As you know, using custom imports takes up alot of space. I think its the Sephiroth model alone thats 500kb or 600kb, which I'm not to happy about. If I could compress alot of the imports further, the file size would probably take a major decrease. Don't get me wrong though, I've had my fair share of people who don't feel like waiting to dl, so that'll end up being another issue I'll be working on as I get time.

As for the AI deal, I did talk it over with quite a few friends. We all agreed that an AI would end up negating the need for human players, why play against humans who will fight back when you can play with an AI that always does the same tactics? Theres also the issue of lag when too many conditions for the AI are firing off at once, I believe it was the DotA AI map or whatever its called, thats been having the same issue. I'll keep the AI idea in the back of my mind, I have a feeling I might try adding it eventually so people can learn the map's style of play.

Its true that quite a few spells have been based off Blizzard or Rain of Fire. I tend to find that more useful when your a caster stuck behind a wall of units and need to deal out some damage. This will probably become a serious issue if I don't reapproach my spell designs soon. Ironic enough, I was thinking about how to remake the default heros' skillsets to customize them more. Just buffing or nerfing the current spells doesn't cut it anymore due to the power of the custom spells. So I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks they need a remake.

The tileset was just redesigned for v6.4. During production the desert tile reminded me of my Starcraft days when I used to play on a desert style map, sorta figured it would be cool to use for a while. I'll end up working a new one out, either for the next version or I'll wait til its time for v7.0 to be made.

If you have anymore helpful tips MM, feel free to lemme know, I'll throw these down on paper so I can refer back to the things that need to be done while I'm working on the next version.
 
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As those of you that have played my map know, the default heros are overdue for a skillset remake. The paladin seems to be fine since I did give him a remake based off the WoW paladin skills. So, if anyone wants to help by posting ideas or suggestions to update the default heros, feel free to and I'll check back every now and then. As you've probably guessed, I am starting work on v6.6 so theres not alot of problems piling up on me.
 
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I think your going on about this the wrong way. Instead of haveing a whole bunch of Heros, I think you shoul narrow it down to eighteen or so. It would lower down the map size greatly and it would be easier to balance them off. Also it would let players have a better grasp on gameplay.
 
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Since I've been working on v6.6 for 2 or 3 days now (lost track of time), I figured its time to post some of the updates I've done so far. I'd also like to point out that thanks to Mini-Me, theres been a few skillset updates and hopefully alot more to come if my mind keeps producing new ideas. Anyways, for your viewing pleasure, heres a few of the new changes.

Hero Updates:

Buzzwad - Bandit

First Spell: Net - Throws a net on the target enemy, preventing it from moving for a short time.

Starts at 2 seconds on level one and increases by 2 seconds per level, caps off at 12 seconds. I figured this would be useful to take down enemy heros and it also works well with his next two spells.

Second Spell: Axe Assault - Proving hes not all talk, Buzzwad uses his brute strength to bash his opponent with an axe. During this time, the opponent is unable to move and will take damage every second.

Level 1 - Buzzwad uses his brute strength to bash his oppoent with his axe, dealing 35 damage per second and preventing the target from moving for 5 seconds.

Basicly this spell gains 25 damage per level and always lasts 5 seconds. I see it as a useful spell if your gonna gank a hero or powerful unit with your allies. Use AA to hold the target still and deal damage while your allies attack or whip out their spells on it. Using this with Net on a weakened hero might give you an easy kill as well.

Third Spell: Track - Like anyone that lives in the wilderness, Buzzwad has learned how to track his prey. This skill will show where the targeted hero is until the duriation runs out. If the hero is killed while Track is in effect, the killer will gain bonus gold.

Level 1 - Reduces a target enemy hero's armor by 10 and gives vision of that unit. If the tracked hero is killed while Track is still in effect, the killing player will recieve 250 extra gold. Lasts 8 seconds.

This will probably be one of the most useful spells against heros that use abilities like Windwalk or Hide. It gains 10 armor reduction and 2 duriation per level, maxing out at -60 armor and 18 seconds. The gold bonus is ment to give a double bounty off most heros, though there are some who give more than 250. To avoid problems and bugs, this skill will only target heros, just incase someone was to put it on auto cast by mistake.

Ultimate: Bandit Slam - Every bandit knows theres always a chance they'll have to fight someone off during a heist. Thus, all bandits have learned how to damage large areas around them; the ability has been dubbed, Bandit Slam.

Level 1 - Slams the ground, dealing 300 damage to nearby enemy land units and stunning them for 2 seconds.

If I recall correctly, this skill has been part of Buzzwad's skillset since I added him way back in v4.5. The damage increases by 300 per level and the stunning effect gains 2 seconds. The AoE is a constant 600 for all 3 levels which is sometimes useful if your opponent has a weak army and you don't wanna kill all of it off. The most I felt I had to change with this was the learning tooltip since it sounded a lil corny, though I might tweek it eventually or even replace it if I come up with something better.

Sage Spellhammer - Battle Mage

Since v4.5, the Battle Mage has had the name Sage Darkhammer. But I felt he needed something closer related to magic instead of darkness. His attack has been changed from missle to instant so the lightning effect looks better. Almost his entire skillset had to be remade since it was using mostly default spells, with the exception of Entangling Roots which is a customized version but was far too powerful at higher levels.

First Spell: Telewave - The Battle Mage casts a powerful shockwave at the target point, dealing damage to all enemy units in a line. During casting the Battle Mage is teleported to the target point with such force that all enemy units around him become slowed.

Level 1 - The Battle Mage casts a powerful shockwave at the target point, dealing 100 damage to all enemy units in a line. During casting the Battle Mage is teleported to the target point with such force that all enemy units around him become slowed by 100% for 5 seconds.

The idea of a teleporting Shockwave came from my friend LeikPwn. The slam part was just something I thought would be highly useful incase theres enemies around where the Battle Mage is teleporting to. The damage is only half that of a normal Shockwave due to the extras the spell provides. It can probably be used not only as an attack but as a means of escape too. Being able to teleport through a small army and damage them while the Battle Mage is low on life can be useful as well.

Second Spell: Mana Burn - Sends a bolt of negative energy that burns a target enemy unit's mana. Burned mana combusts, dealing damage to the target equal to the amount of mana burned.

Level 1 - Sends a bolt of negative energy that burns up to 200 points of a target enemy unit's mana. The mana combusts, dealing damage equal to the amount of mana burned.

This is a customized form of Mana Burn. It gains 200 damage per level, capping off at 1200 mana burned. Not really much to say about it other than its got a different bolt animation, could be useful if you need to disable a caster thats harassing your base.

Third Spell: Entangling Roots - Causes roots to burst from the ground, immobilizing, disarming and damaging a target enemy temporarily.

Level 1 - Causes roots to burst from the ground, immobilizing and disarming a target enemy unit for 5 seconds, and dealing 25 damage per second.

This is the same roots Battle Mage has always had, but for v6.6 I've balanced it out. The duriation will last 5 seconds no matter what level it is and the spell gains 25 damage per level. Probably useful to hold an enemy hero down while you nail it with Mana Burn then finish it off with a few attacks before roots wears off.

Ultimate: 1000 Needles - The Battle Mage throws a flurry of needles around, each one dealing 1000 damage to the target it hits.

Level 1 - The Battle Mage throws a flurry of needles around, each one dealing 1000 damage to the target it hits. 2.5 second casting time. 180 second cooldown.

This was inspired by Final Fantasy, I've based it off Fan of Knives since that seemed the logical choice. All levels will deal 1000 damage, the casting time remains at 2.5 seconds and the cooldown decreases by 60 seconds per level, capping off at 60 seconds at max level.

Jason David Frank - Green Ranger

I haven't done much for the skillset of Green Ranger this time. I did however replace his Shadow Strike with a triggered spell, Blink Strike. The spell was originally used in DotA as far as I know but without access to the map, I had to create my own version, which works pretty damn well if I do say so myself.

Blink Strike: Level 1 - Teleports to the target enemy unit and strikes them, dealing 150 damage. 60 second cooldown.

Dispite what the tooltip says, I think the hero's attack also damages the target along with the spell. Each level adds 150 damage and decreases the cooldown by 5 seconds. 900 damage, 35 second cooldown at max level. I'm not sure if this can be used while Green Ranger is stuck in something like roots. But I'm assuming if it does move him, the game will either crash or he'll teleport but still remain rooted. Chances are, he'll teleport and remain rooted and the game won't crash.

As far as other heros go, I've added Holy Swordsman to the 5th hero tower, the one that has Warrior of Stone in it. Hes a pretty balanced hero until he hits lv 70 and his final form is unlocked. But even then he can be taken down pretty easily with the right hero combo. Anyone using HSM will have access to the Temple of Ice, a spinoff of the Heros' Sanctum. The temple has a frost attack and lets you train an Ice God, for a price of course. Be warned that the Ice God gives a 10k bounty and if used foolishly, will just result in feeding your opponent(s) and giving you a premature defeat.

I think thats all the hero work I have done so far. I think theres more but I can't remember right now what it was, so I'll post it when I find it.

As for the triggers, I did find quite a few leaks that I missed, which would explain why the server split is still clinging to life. Ironicly, almost all of them were caused by "Pick every unit owned by player and do (action)". Thanks to some info I3arf found for me before he went on his trip, all trigger leaks have been patched up and the split should be gone for good, or until I make another half-assed trigger setup.

Anyways, feel free to comment on the new changes or even offer some suggestions if you guys want. I'll probably be working on v6.6 for a while to get a few more things done.
 
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Soul's Footmen War v6.6 was completed and released today. This should be the last update for a week or two, unless I find something drastic that needs work. I've rebuild and updated a few overdue heros, rebalanced a few units, added a new item and as you'll notice, removed the server split. As far as I know its gone anyways, theres still that slim chance its around. Feel free to play the map and lemme know what you guys think.

Soul's Footmen War v6.6
 
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I'm gonna be blunt here...I'm working on v6.9 while typing this and I wanna know if anyone here still gives a damn about the map. I dont wanna waste my time checking the thread, posting updates, etc if no one cares anymore, I'll just stick to doing my updates and skip posting the info. Sorry if this seems rude but sugar coating will just rot your teeth.
 
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Peace! Not to be rude, but people here mainly care about totally unique awesome never done before map concepts, campaigns about bloodelves, undead or pandas, horror maps or big open rpgs maps...for whatever reason. I suggest you keep up the good work and someday people might talk about how you started here and ended up being the map most played in bnet. Although topping off DoTa is extremely hard, normal average players will care more about AoS/FF/Hero Arena maps than most mappers do; stick it up and let people see how good you are.
 
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Grand Finale

To make this offical and to force myself from turning back later, I'm announcing the end of Soul's Footmen War. Once I get around to making v7.0 and finish it, that will be the final version. If anyone here would like to throw suggestions around or any other ideas, I'm all ears. Since I change the loading and preview screens every 10 versions, this will be the last for both of them. I'm thinking about doing a plain loading screen with the account names of everyone thats helped me with SFW over the past 3 years. I am sorry to anyone whos a major fan of the map, but unlike some mappers I know of, I feel that 3 years for a map is the limit. Thanks to everyone whos helped so far by throwing suggestions around for the map and even chewing me out over a few things.
 
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Alright, I'm gonna start reviving this thread cuz I have a new offer that'll give everyone here a chance to get their name in the last version of SFW. I'm planning to add another set of spawns that'll contain units based off the neutral hostile creeps. So far, as of posting this, HINDYhat has suggested Bandits as a spawn type, which I am currently working on the tiers for. Anyone that wants to have a lil fun and see a new spawn type in a footmen war, feel free to post your suggestions and I'll try to fit most if not all of them into the map. The description for the new spawns structure will be something like this:
Spawns Bandits that were suggested by HINDYhat at HiveWorkshop.com. |n250 Life |n10 Damage |n1.5 Second Cooldown |n2 Armor |n300 Movement Speed
 
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To much stuff to read got bored after reading the first thing of the bandit hero horrible spells just remakes and new names saw one thing that was a DECENT spell and that was the waveform on that mage or w/e Spice it up a bit more take out useless heros put nice custom model/spells and youll have yourself a playable map.
 
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To much stuff to read got bored after reading the first thing of the bandit hero horrible spells just remakes and new names saw one thing that was a DECENT spell and that was the waveform on that mage or w/e Spice it up a bit more take out useless heros put nice custom model/spells and youll have yourself a playable map.
Uhh...dude...the map is packed with custom models, hence why its at 3.95mb now. If all the models I'm using were less than 150kb I'd be able to add more but sadly thats not the case. As for the spells, yea some of them are just things like Aerial Shackles with different effects, but you gotta understand thats how I work sometimes. Instead of importing more models when I dont have the space and making a dozen trigger spells that can easily cause the game to split more than it does, I try to make do with whats there but adding custom effects so they look more intresting. Dont get me wrong, I understand what your sayin but its gonna be a bit difficult to add more models and such with the size limit for Bnet gettin in my way. Thanks for the suggestions though, I'll see what my mind can spit out to liven things up. :infl_thumbs_up:
 
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As for models use mdx squisher, then compress icons and textures. It will optimize map size alot.

Huh, thanks for the tip HT, dunno how that one slipped my mind lol
Guess I'm off to the tools section to find the squisher

EDIT: Well, the squisher isnt in the tools section and I no longer have the program since my system got rebooted a few weeks back so...anyone know where I can snag it?
 
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