Td Offensive Cross

[Moderator]

17:34, 15th Oct 2009
ap0calypse: Rejected

Post #1 covers everything

 

[ap0calypse]

As a map mod, I feel obliged to say "Welcome to the hive, please enjoy your stay and I hope you will learn a lot from this site ".
Though I don't feel like that right now, so let's just get to bussiness.

I've seen you just entered the site (A message in the chat pops up when someone made a new account, so it was pretty funny to see you post a map here), you probably should know a few basic rules:

• Do not upload incomplete maps (they should be late beta and fully functioning, or an awesome, original map, but this is a very rare case).
• A map must contain a good description (lucky you, I've made a nice tutorial about that, as you can see in my signature).
• A map must contain a valid Type/Category (this map doesn't).

Now you know those rules, you can feel it coming, yet I will test the map and write my review here in a few minutes (by updating this post).

---

Review:

​

For every section, I will give a rating from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest.

Triggers:

The triggers need a lot of work, not only are they inefficient, they also leak.
Leaks create lag and an excessive amount of leaks results in crashes.

Example:

Trigger

• Mechs Copy
  • Events
    • Unit - A unit enters Mech Copy <gen>
  • Conditions
    • (Unit-type of (Entering unit)) Equal to Wisp
  • Actions
    • Unit - Create 1 Mechs for (Owner of (Entering unit)) at (Center of Builder Startt <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Explode (Entering unit)

Note: There are 6 triggers like this and this creates a leak (the location).
It could've been done in 1 trigger without any regions and without leaks, but because you won't understand it, I'll just fix the leak.

Fixed Leak

• Mechs Copy
  • Events
    • Unit - A unit enters Mech Copy <gen>
  • Conditions
    • (Unit-type of (Entering unit)) Equal to Wisp
  • Actions
    • Set loc = (Center of Builder Startt <gen>)
    • Unit - Create 1 Mechs for (Owner of (Entering unit)) at loc facing Default building facing degrees
    • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_loc)
    • Unit - Explode (Entering unit)

See what I've done there?
I've appointed a variable to the location which leaked and destroyed it afterwards...
(I will teach you about both in the tutorial given below).

1/10

Objects:

The objects are also crappy, since you probably don't know the damage formula, neither did you change any damage-data for most towers.
The tooltips are alsy very important, but you didn't seem to care about them, so you left them standard.
There are almost no towers, there's only a marine unit, there is only 1 upgrade, this is really bad.

You need to add at least another 10 towers/race and at least 1 upgrade for each tower.

1/10

Terrain:

The terrain looks terrible, you've used blizzard cliffs for walls, you didn't use the raise/lower-tool, you've only used 2 tilesets, you've spammed a few trees, but didn't add any other doodads, 1/4th of the terrain is empty.
This couldn't have been a lot worse...

General:

The map presentation (description, type/category) is horrible.
The type/category is wrong and the description doesn't say anything about the map at all.

There is no in-game description, no quest log, nothing...

1/10

Overall:

Overall, this game is not suitable for the hive.
Please read some of our tutorials, feel free to post at out forums if you have any questions and try again later.

4/40 -> 1/5

---

Newb Guide Template

---

Triggering (GUI)

​

Basics

One of the first things you need to know is how to fix leaks, though I will go over something else first.
Variables.

You will need variables in every map you make, the only exceptions are melee-maps.
Variables are needed to count kills, remember heroes, fix leaks, basically everything that you need to recall.

The variable editor can be opened by pressing CTRL + B inside the trigger editor (or by pressing the yellow 'X' on top of the screen).
Now you can create variables by pressing the green 'X'-button, after that you can create any variable you wish.
Variables you will need in every map are:
Point variable (name doesn't matter) with an array
Group variable without array
Player Group variable without array
(these are to fix leaks)


Leaks cause lag and can crash your maps, so it's important to fix them.

For information on what leaks, check This tutorial
I would suggest reading this tutorial completely, you will get used to fixing them after a while.

Efficient Triggering

If you have triggers like:

trigger

• Melee Initialization
  • Events
    • Map initialization
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 1 (Red) at (Player 1 (Red) start location) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 2 (Blue) at (Player 2 (Blue) start location) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 3 (Teal) at (Player 3 (Teal) start location) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 4 (Purple) at (Player 4 (Purple) start location) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 5 (Yellow) at (Player 5 (Yellow) start location) facing Default building facing degrees

Then you are doing something terribly wrong...
The better option would be:

trigger

• Melee Initialization
  • Events
    • Map initialization
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • For each (Integer A) from 1 to 5, do (Actions)
      • Loop - Actions
        • Set loc[1] = ((Player((Integer A))) start location)
        • Unit - Create 1 Footman for (Player((Integer A))) at loc[1] facing Default building facing degrees
        • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_loc[1])

Where "loc" is a point variable with array.
This does exactly the same, but the difference is that this is easier and it does not create lag (the other trigger does).

For Each Integer X info: this action will set integer X (can be any integer) from the starting value (in this case 1) to the end value (5).
Every time the integer increases, it will trigger the actions in it, so this trigger will activate 5 times, but every time it does something slightly different.
In more general terms, they're called "loops".

As you can see, loops are very useful for efficiency, but there is more...
The If/Then/Else-function is also very useful when talking about efficiency.

I will explain this with dialogs (if you do not know what dialogs are, or how to form them, Check this tutorial.
Note: the tutorial given above is not efficient, I will do it otherwise - the tutorial is just to show what it is and how it's formed!

Dialog-button trigger

I will skip the dialog init trigger and just go straight to the dialog buttons trigger.
Let's just say the dialog is a hero-choose dialog with 3 buttons (Ranger, Warrior, Mage).

• Dialog Buttons
  • Events
    • Dialog - A dialog button is clicked for Dialog
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • (Clicked dialog button) Equal to DialogButton[1]
      • Then - Actions
        • Set loc[1] = (Center of (Playable map area))
        • Unit - Create 1 Ranger for (Triggering player) at loc[1] facing Default building facing degrees
        • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_loc[1])
        • Game - Display to (All players) for 8.00 seconds the text: (|c00444488 + ((Name of (Triggering player)) + '|r has chosen the Ranger))
      • Else - Actions
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • (Clicked dialog button) Equal to DialogButton[2]
      • Then - Actions
        • Set loc[1] = (Center of (Playable map area))
        • Unit - Create 1 Warrior for (Triggering player) at loc[1] facing Default building facing degrees
        • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_loc[1])
        • Game - Display to (All players) for 8.00 seconds the text: (|c00444488 + ((Name of (Triggering player)) + '|r has chosen the Warrior))
      • Else - Actions
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • (Clicked dialog button) Equal to DialogButton[3]
      • Then - Actions
        • Set loc[1] = (Center of (Playable map area))
        • Unit - Create 1 Mage for (Triggering player) at loc[1] facing Default building facing degrees
        • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_loc[1])
        • Game - Display to (All players) for 8.00 seconds the text: (|c00444488 + ((Name of (Triggering player)) + '|r has chosen the Mage))
      • Else - Actions

As you can see, I can combine all dialog buttons for all dialogs into 1 trigger, making it a lot easier to scroll through the triggers...
(Triggering Player is the player clicking the dialog).



Kick-triggers are often done like this by newbs:

Kick-triggers

• Kick
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -kick blue as An exact match
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Game - Defeat Player 2 (Blue) with the message: LOLOL NOOB!!!!

• Kick
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -kick teal as An exact match
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Game - Defeat Player 3 (Teal) with the message: LOLOL NOOB!!!!

• Kick
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -kick purple as An exact match
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Game - Defeat Player 4 (Purple) with the message: LOLOL NOOB!!!!

And this for every player...

As you can see, there are 2 mistakes:

1. You will need a lot of stupid triggers for this
2. "LOLOL NOOB!!!!" makes the map look like crap

I prefer one of these methods:

Method 1

• Init
  • Events
    • Map initialization
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Set Color[1] = blue
    • Set Color[2] = teal
    • Set Color[3] = purple
    • Set Color[4] = yellow
    • Set Color[5] = orange
    • Set Color[6] = green

This sets up the colors... obviously (it's best to merge this with an already existing map init trigger)

• Kick
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -kick as A substring
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • For each (Integer i) from 1 to 6, do (Actions)
      • Loop - Actions
        • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
          • If - Conditions
            • (Entered chat string) Equal to (-kick + Color[i])
          • Then - Actions
            • Game - Defeat (Player((i + 1))) with the message: You have been kicked
            • Game - Display to (All players) for 7.00 seconds the text: (|c00444488 + ((Name of (Player((i + 1)))) + |r has been kicked))
          • Else - Actions

And this is the kick-trigger, if the message is -kick + (color defined in map init), then the player matching that color will be kicked.
Easy and efficient...

Method 2

This method is even easier, but a bit different: red will have to say -kick X (where X is a number)

• Kick
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -kick as A substring
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • For each (Integer i) from 1 to 6, do (Actions)
      • Loop - Actions
        • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
          • If - Conditions
            • (Entered chat string) Equal to (-kick + (String((i + 1))))
          • Then - Actions
            • Game - Defeat (Player((i + 1))) with the message: You have been kicked
            • Game - Display to (All players) for 7.00 seconds the text: (|c00444488 + ((Name of (Player((i + 1)))) + |r has been kicked))
          • Else - Actions

That's it... the entire kick-trigger, that's easy, right?

Objects

​

Units

I shall start with perhaps the most annoying thing: tooltips and hotkeys.
If your tooltips/hotkeys are insufficient or wrong, the game won't progress smooth.
A good tooltips contains all necessary information without it being too long, TD's are the best example: those hotkeys really need Damage, Attack Speed, Range, Abilties (and additionally DPS, Ground/Air).
Tooltips are meant to provide information, not te be a part of the story/lore!.

Hotkeys should be easy to use and to remember.
In my TD, I have used:
E - R - T - Y - U - - - P
D - F - G
C - V - B

This is the same on both QWERTY and AZERTY!
The main block (left) is used to build towers, Y is for spells, U is for upgrades and P is to Sell towers (the other side of the keyboard).
Randomly using hotkeys is better than nothing at all, as long as they do not override eachother and they must be correct.

Important: use structure!
Put all units that belong together in the same race (e.g.: all heroes in human, all creeps in orc, all neutrals in Night Elf, ...).
If you ever need to change an object, you'll know exactly where to find it, this will save a lot of time (believe me... it will).

Spells/Buffs

About the same as units: the tooltip and hotkeys are important for the spells.

Do not use standard spells in a custom map! Change them as much as possible - or just so it fits in the map!

When you change the name of a spell, change the name of the buff as well!
e.g.: If you cast 'Ghost Form' (based of Wind Walk) and the buff says "Wind Walk: This unit is..." - that's just painful.

Terrain

​

Basic Info

Do not abuse the cliffs, WEU and JNGP have a better terrain-tool so you can use the terrain height-tool to make cliffs.
(Note: only use WEU for terraining purposes)
Use the terrain height tool a lot... a flat terrain sucks (don't overdo it, when you notice you're overdoing it, use the smooth tool).

When creating cities, make it look like a city...
A city is not a place where houses have been randomly placed, nor does it contain any other random props... a city is structured, thus you must also do so.

Doodads

Spammed cinematic doodads do not look good, avoid using them.

Use environmental doodads and don't be afraid to use too many of them... they're meant to be used more than other doodads.
When creating a forest, you will really need to use a lot of them: shrubs, rocks, fallen trees. hollow tree trunks, flowers, ... all of these are very common in forests, then why not use them in a forest in warcraft?

Description

​

A description is highly important, it will attract people to play your map and bad descriptions make the creator of the map look like a beginner.
To learn more about this, read my tutorial about it.

 

[thebigwaller]

umm so im gonna keep fixing it so it is better thx for the help