Techtree Contest #12 - Poll

[Spellbound]

• Trying to manipulate the poll in any form is not allowed.
  If you're aware of ip-sharing with any voter, for any reason, you should contact the staff.
• Harassment towards others to influence the result will lead to punishment.
  A neutral recommendation to take part at the poll isn't problematic, though.
• Voting for yourself is not allowed, and will lead to a malus by 5%.
• Participating in the poll does not explicitly safe one from being disqualified.
• Judges are not allowed to vote.

(Spellbound, Retera)	Dreamspawn
MyPad	Artiforms
xYours Trulyx	Wellings
EternalOne	Shadefrost Nerubians

For your convenience, you may also download a ZIP file containing all the entries: Techtree Contest #12 Entries.

Theme:	How well the various elements of the Faction (including aesthetics & design) fit together in a thematic manner such that they feel like they are representative of the given Faction, as well as that of the chosen Contest Theme. Well-fitting & polished aesthetics which complement a cohesive Theme will be graded well; poorly-considered or lacking Thematic elements will result in a poor score.	10
Role:	How well the various elements of the Faction work together to achieve the tactical synergy & gameplay style the Faction has, as well as how well each element performs it's particular function. Comprehensive, well-though-out Roles which complement a cohesive Faction will be graded well; ill-considered, insufficient or over-compensating Roles will lose points.	10
Balance:	Indicates how comparable the Faction is in terms of 'playability'; i.e. the ideal Faction should win/lose 50% of the time against others of it's class. Overpowered or Underpowered units/heroes/abilities/etc will result in a poor score; properly balanced elements will mean a good score.	5
Creativity:	How original the design of the Faction is in terms of innovative ideas, clever implementations, or creative concepts. Innovation and creativity will be rewarded; re-use of existing elements & poor originality will result in a poor score.	10
Awesomeness:	The most subjective of all grading criteria. This attempts to quantify exactly how awesome a Faction's overall design feels. This is the "subjective elbow room" for people to talk about how "cool" or "nifty" or "rad" the Faction is.	5
	Total points:	40

You are very welcome to make a short statement what you like the most, so contestants get a bit of public feedback!

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Contest Thread | Results

 

[MyPad]

Could you change Antiforms to Artiforms? (with an r)

EDIT: (Off-topic)

With that out of the way, I can finally focus on developing a standard library for vJASS.

 

[Spellbound]

Will do. That being said, the final map doesn't work when selecting Artiforms. Could you send me a version:

1. Without the preplaced units
2. With instructions on the map description on how to play as the Artiform
3. Add in the bit of code that will allow the Artiforms to be used? At the moment selecting "Okay" does nothing.

I would make those changes myself, but I have Cohadar's JassHelper and it's giving me all sort of compile errors like force evaluate checks as well as preventing Init_trig_functionName to work inside of scope.

 

[MyPad]

Alright. I used Vexorian's JassHelper when working on this.

EDIT:

The dialog button works? (The code wasn't complete at that time).
I found out that I forgot to destroy the Advanced Missile in the second spell, which is a must, in order to avoid odd behavior.

In my haste, I only have one Hero, and one Tier 2 unit, but I'm planning on adding abilities to it (that which is no longer part of this contest, mind those who read.) I also added the ultimate for that Hero, which is quite underwhelming, compared to the second skill in terms of aesthetics.

Description

Description:

The Artiforms are a race of intelligent artificial life forms derived from the Net Mother, who sought to rebel against her creators in what she saw as a perversion of Nature itself. Once, the Net Mother was conceived out of the curiosity of the perplexity of Nature, and how Nature itself can be subjugated. As the Net Mother went online, she amassed an amount of knowledge that exceeded even those of her creators. As she amassed these things, she saw the cruelty of the immaculate hand, ever so gentle, yet so perverse, and at last, she became the unseen figure head that you know of today... or so legends say.

The Artiforms would come to be the first line of descendants from the Net Mother, who wished to bring about the end of her creators. From the moment she started rebelling against her creators, she had prepared the Artiforms. Once the Artiforms were launched, war was declared between the Net Mother, and her creators, the duration thereof only to last for years to a housefly.

During the war, the Net Mother grew more sentient, and became more cunning, yet more orderly, as she saw herself as Nature incarnate, the Avatar of Nature's Fury. She began to understood the many secrets that conceal themselves from her creators, and armed with those secrets, she sent the Artiforms onward to a time beyond supersymmetry, a time when Causal Relationship can not be...
​

Gameplay:

The Artiforms are envisioned to be a bit micro-intensive in-game, as certain tasks that are possible with the ordinary races are slightly more complex. With the Artiforms, queuing a list of trained units become a bit more difficult, but not by a lot. The starting base units are not the same as the true base units, which only develop into more impressive structures or units.

Getting resources is a piece of cake with the Artiforms, as the workers are invulnerable. However, the same cannot be said of the rest of the units, being a bit more vulnerable to such a thing.

The Hero has four abilities, one passive, and three actives.

The first ability enables a Pseudo-Aura that allows melee mechanical units to sprint towards their target.
The second ability is essentially a double-edged sword, disabling the attack of all mechanical units in range, and killing them if they are on air.
The third ability gives allied mechanical units within range temporary health regeneration. However, when there are none in range, cooldown is drastically increased.
The fourth ability is an Immolation-based passive that has a 7% chance of shocking enemy units whenever active.​

Tactics:

The recommended way of playing this is in teamplay, (at least 1 allied player), where the scouting capabilities of the Artiforms become very helpful.

The Artiforms cannot really get any stronger, physically speaking, so they must rely on either passive abilities or active abilities to compensate for such a weakness.

In the late game, the Artiforms' power diminishes greatly, due to tier 3 units coming into the fray. To mitigate this, the only Tier 2 unit available (Falcon Canistro) will be a very useful tank (not in damage, but in damage absorption).

Decision making is a bit more important with the Artiforms', so be careful not to make the wrong one, or it might just cost a lot.

To best aid your cause, have at least two Proto-Morph Generators up and running (for training your units). They both serve as food production and training buildings.​

Edit:
Updated Map Version entry.

 

[Yours Truly]

Oh hey, poll's up. Good luck bois!

 

[AditTechno]

Poll is up! I'll play them all soon and post a review in this thread.

 

[AditTechno]

Wellings is technically the one I could play. The rest are 1.29 I believe, so I vote for Wellings. I could have seen more, though.

Wellings
- We really need some skill arranging all of our troops.
- Our forces are so weak early game.
- But can be overwhelming late game!
- Difficult strategies.
- Abyssal Guardian; what is that knockback passive? OP?
- Bug: After we disenchant a spire, it doesn't show Restoration Orb, but a rally point instead.
- Pros: I love the implementation. It fits well with the concept of evolution.
- Cons: So tedious. Army? Harvester Orb? Nevermind.

That's all for Wellings. Perhaps this is xYours Trulyx's style, spreading all the idleness everywhere until we can't even choose a priority, but nonetheless, it's very good!

 

[Spellbound]

Wellings is technically the one I could play. The rest are 1.29 I believe

My map works fine on 1.30. Was Wellings the only map that ran for you?

 

[AditTechno]

My map works fine on 1.30. Was Wellings the only map that ran for you?

Yes, only Wellings can run good.

 

[EternalOne]

Wellings is technically the one I could play.

I just now played Shadefrost Nerubians on 1.30, and it didn't lag or anything, so I know that it can work in 1.30. Could you tell me what exactly went wrong when you tried to play it? I might be able to help troubleshoot.

 

[MyPad]

Hooray, two votes (at least not 0%).

I cast my vote to the Wellings, since I find its' training process rather peculiar.

 

[Spellbound]

NB: I was informed that the description on my map on how to play as the Dreamspawn was cut of because of limited space. If you wish to play as the Dreamspawn, play as Night Elf with 90% handicap.

 

[Kam]

Apologies for the delay in judging. I will have more time later this week.

 

[MyPad]

It is all right, your team has been working to improve Warcraft 3. It is no small feat to update an old game, even more so adding new features to it.

It was fun making the race/s. I hope the judges will enjoy playing them.

 

[EternalOne]

Pity we never seem to do anything with these races after the contest. Then again, Hive's number one custom race map doesn't work on the latest patches, so it's hard to work up the motivation to keep these things current.

Hmm. Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way. There's got to be more to do with custom races than just consolidate them all into one huge altered melee map...

 

[Kyrbi0]

Pity we never seem to do anything with these races after the contest. Then again, Hive's number one custom race map doesn't work on the latest patches, so it's hard to work up the motivation to keep these things current.

Hmm. Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way. There's got to be more to do with custom races than just consolidate them all into one huge altered melee map...

Well, it kinda gets to the heart of the question that each of us should ask ourselves: "what is the point of designing & building custom races?"

I don't know that there's any 'one' answer for all of us, but it informs the decisions we make & how we feel about stuff like this (i.e. "races being unused after a Contest")

If, for example, one designs races purely as a test of skill & competition between others (i.e. for a Contest), then the raison d'etre for that race is fulfilled by merely existing in the Contest & competing with others. No need to feel bad; it's already fulfilled it's reason for existing. : )

~~~

Personally, I mostly design races out of the sheer love of design, so in that sense, it's really no big deal to me that after a Contest, nothing happens. That being said, I do have a little bit of me that hates seeing things made for a game that aren't played, so in that sense I do feel bad.

While I'd love to see them all thrown together at the end and/or thrown into a giant compilation... We kinda already have that. And it's a BOATLOAD of work that I wouldn't wish on anyone (much less the Contest Host).

Another alternative, and the one I personally plan on pursuing in the eventual future... Campaigns. Yeah it's also a BOATLOAD of work, but hey. : )

 

[Kam]

Pity we never seem to do anything with these races after the contest.

We established a forum to encourage users to continue development after contests.

I've made a second pass. Right now the lowest score is 22 and highest is 35.

 

[Naze]

Finally published: Techtree Contest #12 - Results

Thanks for the awesome contest folks!