[Altered Melee] The Withering Kind (Working Title)

[Michael Peppers]

Working title as in "The Withering Kind" is the name of the planned Blood Elves campaign, not the whole project's name, I always think I wanna call all this "Beyond the Throne" as it's meant to be my own continuation of TFT's story but that name's already taken so... chuckles

Credits are in the Quest Menu.

Release Dump (Downloads)

Features: (v0.1b)

• Blood Elf custom race
• 'F' Factor custom mini-race
• Draenei Tribes WIP custom mini-race, no research score, the 2 casters and 2 heroes are placeholders atm
• Working AI for the custom races implemented so far
• 2 extra Neutral Heroes for the Tavern (from @Kyrbi0's old "Neutral Hero Additions" project)
• A bunch of new cheats to experiment with
• Race Handicap selection system (which means handicap is disabled)
• New units and heroes with new (and somewhat original) custom abilities, most of them coded in old-timey vJass
• Research score support for custom races, for those of us who like scores
• Fully unprotected and unoptimized (so I don't lose all my progress again in case of an HDD failure)

Mod specific features:

• Play any standard melee map with the additional custom content/races
• (Only works in 1.31) Now contains a version of Monolith that has been modified to be fully compatible with the custom races
  (WARNING: assign AIs their own slots in the Monolith Creeps group or else they'll be braindead)
• Custom (recolored, ngl) classic menu UI (TFT, 1.31-only)
• Code (blizzard.j) is based on patch 1.31.1, Unit balance (Object Data) is based on 1.27b due to personal preference
• The mod is TFT-only, I don't remember if it even manages to load maps in RoC mode

About the Race Handicap selection system:

Both map and mod use Archmage Owenalacaster's Custom Race System to assign each race to a race + handicap combination, thanks to that race selection is done in the pre-game lobby as per vanilla melee but handicap is actually disabled.

This is way clearer if you play the mod version on 1.31 as race selection will look like this:

v0.1c Dev race selection:

Handicap/Race	Human	Orc	Undead	Night Elf
100%	Blood Elves
90%		Draenei Tribes 95% WIP	Alterac Felsworn 20% early WIP
80%
70%	'F' Factor
60%	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard
50%	Random	Random	Random	Random

Blank spots still give standard races, they also affect how actually random the 50% option is.
Early WIPs (and cheat races) cannot be played by AI, don't keep track of research score and don't preload basic models/textures at startup.

Version Compatibility

v0.1c dev (current): Reforged 2.0.4 (Testmap full, Mod version on hold), Reforged 1 is untested but probably works, 1.31 and lower are incompatible as they miss some of the newer natives used.

v0.1b: 1.31 (Full), Reforged 1 up to 1.36 (Testmap full, Mod has minor bugs), Reforged 2 is untested but probably works.

v0.1a 2022 to v0.1b-: 1.31 (Full), Reforged 1 up to 1.36 (Testmap only), Reforged 2 is untested but probably works to some degree.

v0.1a 2010 is compatible with versions 1.26c/1.27b, the SEMPQ of that build plays in 1.27b with no issues.

Screenies:

(Mod v0.1b, 1.31.1) Ladies on a trip to Andorhal

Setting up a 2v2v2 with the AI on Andorhal, Team 1 is me as 'F' Factor and a Draenei ally, Team 2 is Blood Elves and a random Humanoid race, Team 3 is made of random vanilla races
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I decide to bring the mine north of my base next to the Tavern to have some friendly competition
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I soon discover Team 3, I'm next to the undead and this 2v1 wasn't going so well at this point, my Draenei allies fortunately joined a little after I lost my 2nd hero
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My allies then end up being next to the Orcs, Wc3's team positioning is plain weird sometimes.
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They then neutralized an Orc counter-raid pretty effectively ngl
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I bump into one of Team 2 killing off the Undead as I was coming to do the same. Turns out the random human in the team ended up being 'F' Factor as well
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Then I meet the other half of Team 2 on a bridge and pursue
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Another bloody 2v1 starts at the Blood Elf main
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At this point I barely manage to save my Faerie Queen and fall back a bit, my allies are coming to continue the push soon
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Draenei managed to arrive soon after with a sizable army to then be hit at their rear by the Orc AI
----------------------------------

After I rebuild an army of mostly Boutique Raiders I go and sweep the Blood Elf bases, in the meantime both Orc and Draenei smell blood and head toward Team 2 as well, then meet almost immediately but decide to ignore each other along the way. Peak Wc3 AI
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Literally, what could they possibly do about an army of black knightesses coming in and smashing all of their buildings?
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As I'm wiping the last Team 2 buildings Orcs and Draenei suddenly remember they're enemies and start fighting
----------------------------------

Then they ded

(Mod v0.1a 2022, 1.31.1) Testing around with a round at Round Village

Setting up a 3v3v3 with the AI on Round Village, my allies are going to be a Blood elf in red and a standard human in pink, the rest are more or less random
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Checking to see if my AI Allies are working properly
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Red team in the dark blue base
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A bunch of skirmishes vs team green
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A peek at my Blood Elf allies' base
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Team red (crab) with a mean pincer maneuver
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And a small break at light green's base
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Post-game scorescreen at the Heroes tab to show off the hero scorescreen icons

 

[Michael Peppers]

Mod Install instructions:

Using the mod:

1. The easy way: get Wc3 Mod Manager, unzip the mod as is (all directories intact) in Wc3 Mod Manager's "mods" folder, point the program to 1.31/Reforged's base folder in "File > Settings" (ie. "C:\Games\Warcraft III", in Reforged it'd be the \_retail_\ folder), make sure "Allow Local Files" is enabled, select the mod, press "Mount", launch the game through its own executable (as Wc3 Mod Manager's game launch feature doesn't work for 1.31 and later Wc3 versions)

Note: Wc3 Mod Manager has to be run with admin permission to work

2. The manual way: unzip all the content of the "TWKMod" folder that's inside the .zip file into 1.31's base folder or Reforged's \_retail_\ folder then launch the game

If this doesn't work you're probably missing "Allow Local Files" in the Windows Registry entry for Warcraft III (More info here)

NOTE: Both methods assume your install's base folder has none of the folders included in the mod already

In case any of these are already present in wc3's base folder the mod is very likely not going to work properly. If this is your case I suggest moving those folders somewhere else before using the mod.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Changelogs:

v0.1b (Buxom Beauty)

Changes since 0.1b-:

1) New content:

• A WIP version of the next race inclusion, Draenei Tribes aka TFT Draenei, including an AI for them, for the Orc 90% / Tribal Mini1 slot. Buildings (& Relevant Units) 100% done: Halls, Warhall, Salamander Den, Hut, Mill, Tower, Stash. Casters and Heroes are placeholders. No tech score for them yet
• Faerie Queen, a new hero for 'F' Factor
• Started work on a cheat interface:
  • "-nagamein" cheat to turn the player into the Campaign Naga Race
  • "-oldchaps" cheat to turn the player into the Campaign Draenei Race
  • "-felme" cheat to turn the player into the Campaign Fel Orcs Race
  • "-workersunite" cheat to turn one of the neutral Goblin Labs in a map into a Workers Union building (for mercenary workers)

2) Balance & Graphics/Polish:

• Moved test/devmap to Cherryville
• (mod only) New names for all racial groups to better describe what kind of races they (will) contain: Humanoid, Tribal, Corrupted, Natural
• Now 100% handicap is for custom races, 90-70% handicap are for custom mini-races, 60% handicap is for vanilla races
• Added a "Random" sub-race selection option at 50% handicap
• (mod only) Fixed some messed up Neutral Hero hall and altar strings
• Tweaked a bunch of unit priority values around so they make more sense overall
• Changed all custom spell descriptions using gendered pronouns to non-gendered ones so they can be potentially used on more units
• Made Tavern Naga Sea Witch amphibious
• General tooltip check and fix

Blood Elves:

• Simulating training finished / unit ready sounds for: Fiery Eagle, Occult Invoker, Farstrider, Spellsealer, Shieldsman
• Hall costs more in line with standard
• Fixed some attachment issues with the town hall's model
• Gave Force Field 50% transparency, +armor on affected buildings (because the teleport thingy sounds OP but is quite underwhelming in practice), code improvements
• Gave Altar of Revenge the same cost as standard Altars (180 G / 50 L)
• Lowered Delicious Meal range to 600 (from 900), fixed an issue where it was active on Dwellings still in construction
• Arcane Tower now uses the same missile as standard one, lowered damage from 18-22 to 16-20 and attack speed from 1.0 to 1.2, increased projectile speed, removed Arcane Workshop requirement
• Replaced icons for Orb and Staff with icons from Darkfang
• Lowered Staff of Clarity's cost to 225, changed salve to regen scroll as they have enough good heals already
• Some unit soundset changes
• Doubled Mark of Revenge's duration on Blood Sorcerors (from 30 seconds to 60), lowered its cost to 50 mana, improved its code a bunch

Blood Elf unit rework:

• Turned Fiery Phoenix into Fiery Eagle, keeping Wildfire
• New ballista, named Ballista Launcher. New upgrade, Launcher Mode, gives the ability to morph the ballista, switching from line artillery to splash magic damage
  
  Swordsman:
  
  
• Renamed Ranking System to "Rank Up", changed cost to 125 G / 125 L and made it work just like Berserker Upgrade, now requires Magefire Forge and Enchanter's Stash
• Swordsmen now become Shieldsmen directly through Rank Up
• Shieldsmen now have Magic Defense, which reduces incoming pierce damage to 75% and spell and magic damage to 60%.
  
  Archer & Dragonhawk:
  
  
• New icon for the Archer, adjusted requirements for Improved Bows and Boiling Blood
• Replaced Blood Eagles with Dragonhawks, can be mounted by Archers to make Dragonhawk Archers
• Blood Eagles are now campaign units with their own custom skill and no training requirements
  
  Wrenchman:
  
  
• Complete rework. Model is johnwar's Blood Elf Runner + Wrench and some standard elf villager portrait animations added to it. New icon for Engineering Proficiency
• Can now build Watcher Eye, has and requires True Sight, 40 G / 10 L, 150 HP, 5 Build Time, lasts 600 seconds
• Moved Mobile Fortresses to special units, made them buildable only through Wrenchmen and removed the Fortress Blades upgrade (but not the attack), reverted icon, changed stats
• Added Magic Sentry upgrade for BElves that requires Spire
  
  Spellsealer:
  New anti-mage unit to replace the Crimson Guard, now a campaign unit, with the following new/reworked skills:
  
  
• Abjurating Bolts, autocast, 5 mana, purple projectile, +20 damage on summons and ethereal and 20% chance to dispel magical buffs on all non-resistant units
• Arcane Brace/Arcane Backlash, Defend-like skill, 60 mana, +3 armor and -10% movespeed on activation, when deactivated -80 mana on non-spell immune organic enemies with mana, which get banished for 8 seconds (3 on heroes), 160 damage to enemy summons, 400 range, needs upgrade
• Based a new skill on Crimson Guard's Silencing Lance, Silencing Bolts, a passive which requires an upgrade and provides a 20% chance to silence targets for 10 seconds.

Blood Elf hero changes:

Tracker:

• Arcane Ball now looks less off when bouncing off flying targets, it's not perfect yet but it looks better than before
• Sneak Attack now uses BlzPauseUnitEx() instead of PauseUnit() so it shows the command card even if the unit is paused. Normalized Sneak Attack's damage floating text (in other words it's like Critical Strike now)
• Hunter Instinct no longer uses a spellbook

Occult Invoker:

• Tweaked stat gains and starting stats a bit
• Lowered Fire Barrage's casting time to 2 seconds, made it so the unit is paused while casting it so the casting time has an actual meaning to it
• Changed Death Sentence's base to Lightning Shield, lowered countdown to 5/4/3 seconds
• Reworked Steel Soul Aura because my new dummy recycler b0rked it
• Remade parts of Scorching Flash so it doesn't require a dummy unit/can be used fine in the middle of trees (game/pathing might not like the lack of visibility at times when trying to do that though)
• Changed Scorching Flash's base to Cloud, made it so destructables in the center of the AoE get destroyed when the effect starts and those close enough to the FX get destroyed when it ends

Farstrider:

• Multishot damage increased from 40/60/80 to 50/75/100, various improvements to its code/effects
• Teleport Strike no longer uses a spellbook

Scarlet Enforcer:

• Tweaked stat gains so they add up to 6, like most standard heroes
• Removed backpack from Angels of Wrath

'F' Factor:

• Simulating training finished / unit ready sounds for: Pretty Girl, Gunsprayer, Good Puppy, Holy Nurse
• Hall costs more in line with standard
• Removed Antique Barracks requirement for Drier Tower and Slaves Burrow requirement from Shiny Rook
• New icons (by NFWar) for all their weapon/armor upgrades
• Chic Altar: Removed Crystal Ball, added T2 potions, moved Orb to 0,3 and made it require Shiny Rook instead of Cozy Cottage
• Changed Maiden Inn model with Gilneas one from here and made icon
• Various fixes to the Inn and related mechanics
• Better Shiny Rook description
• New model for Pretty Girl with team color and portrait team glow
• Amazon Sentinel's Curved Sword is now part of the model, this fixes the weapon showing up if the unit is Poly'd/Hex'd.
• Removed backstab (Windwalk) damage from Scout, changed its hotkey, research cost lowered to 100 G / 50 L, mana cost lowered to 35, has a new icon
• Removed annoying sound from Pepper Spray
• Boutique Raider's siege damage now applies to Mechanical units as well
• Changed Good Puppy texture and icon with this one. New icon for Get The Bone!
• Imported Makeup Launcher (old Steam Tank) icon and model for better Reforged compatibility
• Makeup Launcher now has Large armor instead of Fortified
• New icon for Charming Damsel, fixed an issue with using Captivating Touch not applying any debuff at long range

'F' Factor hero changes:

Templar Maiden rework:

• Tweaked stat gains so they add up to 6, like most standard heroes
• New skill - Bonding Exercise, heals + yoinks the unit towards the caster
• Better code for Striking Poses
• New skill - Defiance, passive, gives a chance to reduce damage and retaliate when hit in melee range
• New skill - Leadership, ultimate, friendly units in 600 range of the hero have 50% damage reduction for as long as the hero is visible, lasts 30 seconds

Faerie Queen & related skill changes:

• Lowered Love Potion's duration from 20/30/40 seconds to 18/24/30, fixed some severe bugs with it
• New skill - Call of the Fae, a bunch of thematic summons for the new hero
• Renamed Fortifying Aura to Faerie Aura
• Better code for handling Voracious Butterflies' debuff

Neutral Heroes:

Archon:

• Tweaked stat gains so they add up to 6, like most standard heroes, fixed its training hotkey
• Call Thunder's paralysis effect now actually works as intended instead of always lasting 10 seconds, paralysis on heroes has been set to 3/6/9 seconds (from 5)
• Supercharge is no longer hardcoded to them
• Increased Electrocution's cost to 130, it being at 75 was probably unintended, it's such a low mana cost for an ultimate

Grim Rider:

• Tweaked stat gains so they add up to 6, like most standard heroes, now has "horse" movement, adjusted lumber cost to standard neutral hero one (135)
• Decrepify's missile is now faster on startup (still pretty slow however, as it's an intended property of it)
• Aura of Decay now stops working as soon as the hero's dead, its life loss no longer affects invulnerable units, fixed tooltips
• A bunch of performance improvements to Whirlwind's code, its summons are no longer considered suicidal units

3) AI Changes:

'F' Factor:

• Was attacking with lumber harvesters if they didn't have many units to attack with
• Was using the wrong attack behavior

4) Code Changes:

• Made a system for handling and recycling dummies, should help a whole bunch with performance/map overhead in long games
• Removed xe and migrated all of the older missile spells from xemissile to Relativistic Missiles, this improves their performance and looks
• Reworked preloading so it mirrors the standard one (by using .pld files), added "call Preloader("scripts\\SharedMelee.pld")" directly into the init code
• Changed all dead/alive unit checks, now they use common.ai's UnitAlive() native
• Changed all player variables into integers that store player IDs, functionality is identical and code is more efficient this way
• Switched a bunch of dummies from player-owned to Neutral Victim

v0.1b- (Buxom -Beauty)

Changes & notes since 0.1a 2022:

1) "New" content:

• 'F' Factor, a new (but also very old) mini-race for Human 60% (map) - Elf / Human Mini 3 (mod)

2) Hero/Unit/General Balance & Skill Changes:

• Some costs have been tweaked, mostly for buildings
• Orb of Blood: Buffed from 5 damage / 2 lifesteal to 6 damage / 10% lifesteal on damage dealt (this way it doesn't even need code)
• Scarlet Knight: Increased life to 900, updated cost to 300/40, lowered hp proc for Holy Smite to 225 hp (25% of total hp)

Tower Rework:

• Sentry Tower -> Archer Tower (arrow, needs Forge) & Arcane Tower (the upgraded tower in previous versions, needs Mage Spire)
• Arcane Tower: lowered building & repair costs, lowered damage from 24-32 to 18-22
• Costs tweaked on the Portable Sentry Tower item

Blood Sorceror:

• Buffed Blood Stain from 20% to 33% movement speed decrease
• Blood Stain and Mark of Revenge now actively avoid targeting invulnerable units and all wards

Tracker:

• Arcane Ball now avoids targeting most wards and all invulnerable units, its stun effect won't target units with Resistant Skin
• Sneak Attack now makes the hero target with her next attack the same one she targeted with the skill if still alive and still close to the Tracker
• Fixed an oversight with ATTACK_TYPE in Sneak Attack's code that resulted in higher damage (like 50% more) than intended (bugfix and nerf at the same time basically)
• Prey of Despair now avoids targeting stationary wards
• Prey of Despair's first effect (enemies randomly attacking) now exclude ethereal, invulnerable units and invisible wards from the target search
• Fixed a typo in Prey of Despair's code that would prevent units under the first effect from attacking their target in case they were given orders by the owning player

Occult Invoker:

• Fire Barrage now doesn't target units with Resistant Skin, invulnerable units and invisible wards, while summons and visible wards will only be targeted in case no other valid targets are found (summons are not affected by its secondary effect so it's kind of a waste when they're targeted)
• Death Sentence's BOOM! doesn't target invulnerable units anymore (probably couldn't damage them anyway but better to be safe)
• Steel Soul Aura now removes the dead unit's corpse if it's spawning an Helm Terror

Farstrider:

• Increased his attack speed, increased his agility gain per level a bit, lowered the other attribute gains
• Multishot now doesn't target ethereal or invulnerable units, also will prioritize non-ward targets first and target visible wards (like the Healing one) only if no other valid targets are found
• Fizzling Arrows doesn't target units with Resistant Skin or, again, invulnerable units

Scarlet Enforcer:

• Healing Bolt won't heal any wards unless they're the actual target of the spell
• Magebane Aura now grants a 1:1 burn/damage ratio, it still doesn't seem to do much even tho it obviously works
• Angelic Wrath can no longer sacrifice invulnerable units for its effect, units affected by Love Potion can't be sacrificed either

Archon:

• Overload's aoe effect now only damages hostiles, the damaging code doesn't target invulnerable units anymore (probably couldn't damage them anyway but better to be safe)
• Overload is no longer hardcoded to them and can work on any hero

Grim Rider:

• Increased Decrepify's explosion range from 280 to 300 because 280 was a weird number to just have in there when it comes to Range (20 Range doesn't make that much of a difference)
• Aura of Decay is no longer hardcoded to them and can work on any hero

3) General fixes:

• Now the game keeps track of research scores for custom races, it does so by giving the player the equivalent upgrades from the standard race, obviously this could be a tiny balance concern because Dark Rangers exist

4) Graphics / Polish:

• Changed weapon/armor upgrades' names to keep them closer to the standard ones, changed icons to some of those in here
• Fixed Force Field not showing up on Mage Spire and Enchanter's Stash (lack of attachment points)
• Fixed/Made Tower model Portraits and icons, fixed their overhead attachments
• Renamed: Eversong Monk to Scarlet Monk, Phoenix Knight to Scarlet Knight, Sanguine Sorceror to Blood Sorceror
• Renamed BE tower item to Portable Sentry Tower
• Town Hall: Removed ground tiles, now uses a single model that's been fixed (by Retera advertising his own magnificent tool)
• Scarlet Monk: New icon from a pack of icons found in a thread here, credited to Heinvers and Eagle XI
• Occult Invoker: New screenshot icon
• Farstrider: Recolored icon's eyes for consistency
• Scarlet Knight: Fixed Holy Smite's proc animation (the same animation had different names in the old and new model used)

Workers:

• Recolored eyes in their icon from blue to green for consistency
• Switched to Ujimasa Hojo's model so they don't have that ugly mug, kept the original portrait as I prefer it over the optimized one
• Building icon placements and hotkeys adjusted to match standard ones more

Swordsman:

• New icon from a pack of icons found in a thread here, credited to Heinvers and Eagle XI
• First Class Swordsman: New icon for Defend

Blood Elf Archer:

• Redone Object Data from scratch with a mix of Night Elf and Campaign Elf Archer values, gameplay-wise they're the same but should have better values for their animations
• Renamed Range Training to Improved Bows, changed icon to the one in this pack (I think keeping this upgrade consistent with the NE one makes sense and helps with theming)

Blood Sorceror:

• New model
• New screenshot icon
• Fixed bugged tooltip on Blood Shield

Scarlet Enforcer:

• New model
• New icon by SgtWinter

5) AI Changes:

• Includes a fix for the "AI doesn't allocate hero skill points" 1.31 bug
• Better starting build order for custom AIs
• No longer stops working if it's given a lot of resources through cheats at the start of the map
• Fixed a bug with Fire Barrage that made the skill not work properly for AI users
• In-progress investigation on AI using custom skills shows they handle all of those tested well enough to be effective (the untested ones are a small handful atm)

6) Code Changes:

• Removed xepreload as no abilities seem to need preloading at least in 1.31.1
• Modified SimError's way of displaying error messages, before it filled chat logs with empty spaces as usual but that way of simulating error messages and their placement got broken by widescreen anyway
• Tons of code improvements (efficiency, readability etc.) to the already existing code
• Better code to deal with dummies, some code to deal with wards as well as s bunch of new utility functions (these are basically just good things for me in general)

Performance improvements:

• Now preloads some custom race starting stuff (models, textures and shadows for workers, heroes, halls, altars, houses and barrackses(?)) with Preload() during map init (if they've been selected by anybody) kind of like how standard races do, this reduces startup lag (in other words there's still a bit of startup lag but it's less than before and some of it might actually be due to the Custom Race System)
• Optimized the way code handles trigger events by having one global trigger per event
• Removed most of the "always-running" periodic checks in the code (iirc now there's only one) and used more performance-friendly alternatives
• Built a system from scratch to handle a bunch of custom buffs and auras efficiently
• Massive leak... hunt and fix

v0.1a 2022 (Anemic)

Changes & notes since v0.1a 2010:

1) "New" content:

• Neutral Hero Additions

2) Skill Changes & Balance: (Object Editor/Code/Both)

Sanguine Sorceror:

• Blood Shield (Both): changed from Spellbook to 2 hidden passives

Tracker:

• Sneak Attack (Object Editor): Now uses Neutral-Hostile Cripple as a base to account for 1.31 necro changes

Occult Invoker:

• Death Sentence (Code): Now checks for summon life at every bomb tick, hugely simplified unit ownership storage thingy
• Steel Soul Aura (Both): Armor increase buffed from 1/1.5/2 to 1/2/3, changed base Helm Terror dummy spawn from Raise Dead to Neutral-Hostile Feral Spirit to account for 1.31 necro changes/make it work in case unit has Parasite debuff or leaves no corpse (Object Editor), make the summon Code fire on death instead of on decay which had some weird delay, this removes the need for a corpse (Code)
• Scorching Flash (Both): Changed base from Stampede to Death and Decay to show aoe before casting (Object Editor), deals up to 250 damage to mechanical units/buildings/ancients (previously they were not affected), range increased from 600 to 700, made lightning effect fixed since it was bugging out (Code)

Farstrider:

• Multishot (Both): Damage increased from 40/45/50 to 40/60/80 (Code), cost increased from 75 to 90 (Object Editor), startup time changed from 1.1 to 0.8 seconds (Both)
• Cloaking (Object Editor): Changed base from Roar to Windwalk so AI can use it properly (in theory)

Scarlet Enforcer:

• Shield Of Faith (Code): Range increased from 300 to 300/400/500
• Magebane Aura (Both): Mana burn increased from 4/6/8 (2/3/4 on heroes) to 4/7/10 (2/3.5/5 on heroes) (Object Editor), changed from Spellbook to hidden passive (Both)

3) Unit Balance:

Blood Elf Archer:

• Buffed hp to 280 to account for the lack of Elune's Grace compared to the NE ones
• Now requires a Magefire Forge (Mill/Blacksmith)

4) General fixes:

• Tiny Great Hall: Now works with custom races, (bug) when used with a custom race and hero got more than 1 in their inventory, will remove one based on inventory slot order instead of the one used

5) Graphics:

• Removed Blood Elf interface icons
• Replaced the Archer model with an updated one
• Replaced the Phoenix Knight model with an updated one
• Replaced HE Buildings by SinisterX with BE Buildings of the same author (note: the old buildings were used together with in-game building models to keep the map size below 4 megs. 2010 limitations)
• Updated Tracker's model to the latest version
• Replaced the Hunter Instinct icons with better ones

6) Polish:

• Fixed tooltips and descriptions for Sanguine Sorceror, Silencing Lance and a few others
• Renamed Simurgh to Fiery Phoenix, renamed Ivory Tower (item, standard HU name) to Portable Arcane Tower, renamed shop into Enchanter's Stash
• Fixed some icon interface placements having changed due to patches
• Updated credits

7) Code changes:

• Added globals to more easily modify most of the skills
• Removed some useless variables/structs/functions, optimized code a bit
• Replaced AbilityPreload with xepreload
• Added function "IsTWKDummy" (TWKInit) to exclude all the dummies from being affected by some spells (instead of just the standard TWK one)
• Improved readability
• Bugfixes

8) Code Requirements: (systems etc.)

• JassHelper (duh)
• Most spells require either TimerUtils or Table, often both.
• All spells that use dummies, check for dummies or use AbortSpell require parts of TWKInit
• Some spells require xecollider. (that also means xebasic and xefx at the very least, BoundSentinel is not required but it helps)
• Some others require AbortSpell. (and LastOrder and SimError)
• SoundUnits is required on a couple of spells. (uses Stack and TimerUtils)
• FadingText is used quite a bit, TerrainPathability is used, like, once, FindUnits is used twice.

 

[Daffa]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The Withering Kind! I remember this title when looking at Kam's list. I am happy to hear it's back!

 

[Kyrbi0]

Seeing you bring back TWK is a breath of fresh air, man. You've put a lot of work into making it functional on v1.31 & I'm really happy to see it.

Can't believe you stole my neutral Tavern heroes ya BUM ; )

 

[Michael Peppers]

You know guys, I feel kind of bad not having posted here for a bit, truth is I would love for this post to be presenting some huge update and stuff, instead I'm just going to say next update is coming sooner than I would've liked because I discovered 1.31 has a bug with AI not assigning hero skills that obviously affects my mod and, well, I can't live with a bug that big on a release of mine.

Anyway, about the next update, some of the things you can expect from it are: a fix for the AI bug mentioned above, a "new" but actually very old mini-race added to the mod with some questionable design choices (we'll see if I can make a working AI for them in time) and a partial rework on some of the Blood Elf units/stuff.

My initial plan was to release an update after I completed the Blood Elf rework I have in mind and call it version 0.1b but that rework is going to take a bunch more time and as I said I'm just not comfortable with a big bug affecting my "stuff".

Stay tuned!

 

[Michael Peppers]

It took longer than expected but I just updated the main post with version 0.1b-, it's a b minus because, as explained above, this version doesn't include all the changes I originally planned but it's still a big step forward for this project imo, 0.1b- contains:

• A "new" custom race for Human 60% (Map) - Elf / Human Mini3 (Mod) + their AI (actually a remake of an old race I did once for a contest)
• A ton of improvements for Blood Elves, from new models and model fixes to a better building menu layout, remade towers, some changed icons, some tooltip reworking, some different hotkeys, some balance changes and some pretty important bugfixes for their spells and their AI
• 1.31 AI fix included, better starting build orders for custom AIs
• A lot of code improvements and additions to improve performance and reduce lag, preloading custom models and textures before the game starts is one of the most notable ones

The actual full changelog is something huge that will be added to the third post at a later date. Still, even after all these changes there's a bunch of things that are not quite right yet:

• Games can have lag spikes at times, seemingly at random, it might be related to the custom AI or to some Blood Elf custom ability (though the latter is unlikely as I spent the last few days working on making sure the code is good and efficient)
• AI is not nearly as good as it could be, at times they do questionable choices or change their mind about attacking stuff, the new race's custom mine has also brought a bunch of new issues for their scripts and they might build expansions where they shouldn't (like, the player's main). I have put a couple of fixes in them but without any extensive testing I can't say the AI is working 100% ok right now.

Things missing before actual version 0.1b:

• Planned rework of about 6 Blood Elf units, some minor, some major
• 2nd hero for the new mini-race
• Better AI

 

[Kyrbi0]

Things missing before actual version 0.1b:

• Planned rework of about 6 Blood Elf units, some minor, some major
• 2nd hero for the new mini-race

Gimme that sweet, sweet Techtree Write-Up

 

[Michael Peppers]

Gimme that sweet, sweet Techtree Write-Up

Yeah, I guess I should do that huh? Making posts showing up the "actual" race and what's due for change not just talking about current changes.

Speaking of which, I just updated the changelog in the third post with what's new, next I should probably make new screenshots to show off this version and then make some pages about what Blood Elves and 'F' Factor actually do... that last part sounds like a whole bunch of work, boiling it down in readable form (and viewable since... that would need images) to people that never touched this thing.

 

[Michael Peppers]

(Outdated WIP Blood Elf techtree post)

Blood Elf Buildings/Items:

Notes:

• Units trained, upgrades shown and misc stuff in this image are not final and will eventually change for Mage Spire, Arcane Tower, Force Field.
• the 10% chance on Force Field is rolled once every 3 seconds per unit per building, in other words every unit only risks teleportation once every three seconds unless it attacks another building with the same ability.
• Delicious Meal's mana regeneration doesn't stack with itself. (and yes, I've given houses Brilliance Aura - Brilliant, I know)
• Staff of Clarity is an AoE effect and its armor buff doesn't stack with itself either.
• Orb of Blood is 100% an Orb Effect so it doesn't stack with other Orbs and Mask of Death (it is a mini Mask of Death anyway)

Blood Elf Heroes:

TODO

Blood Elf Units:

TODO

 

[Michael Peppers]

Neutral Hero Additions "stuff":

Notes:

• Whirlwind's summon is dependant on corpses in the area, you get a different summon for 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 corpses, corpses used also explode. (but don't deal damage, it's only a visual effect)

 

[Kyrbi0]

(WIP Blood Elf techtree post)

Blood Elf Buildings:

View attachment 395854

sets up IV
pipes this directly into veins

//EDIT// - Wait what's the T3OD Barracks? The Flying-thing one?

(WIP Neutral Hero Additions "stuff" post)

View attachment 395855

View attachment 395856

... Rarely have I been so conflicted with excitement & rage. xD

 

[Michael Peppers]

//EDIT// - Wait what's the T3OD Barracks? The Flying-thing one?

Blood Elves were originally meant to replace Humans so their techtree mostly reflects that one, there's no specialized barracks for T3, Blood Elves get their T3 from Scarlet Knights and Fiery Eagles, the latter of which is the first (and the smaller) rework I had in mind:

In short, this is just a model change on the Fiery Phoenix as that unit, just like the Blood Sorceror, was one of those who were stuck with an in-game model. Back in the day I had to work around the 4 MB limit a lot as I would reach it pretty fast throwing custom models around, so since at the time Blood Elves were meant to be a Human replacement I just re-used the Blood Mage and Phoenix models. Now however Humans are meant to stay as a choice for players so I have to take care of all overlap in resources, this was the last major one.

Now, to be fair, I had bigger plans for the flying units rework, I would've liked to go Riderless Dragonhawks and then combine them with archers, melees and spellcasters to have different units so the siege air unit could've been a caster channeling a fireball or something similar like the Drows on drakes in Shadow over Mystara:

Buuut.... there's no actual model around for that, not to mention it would have to be the same model both on and off the dragonhawk so I have to be realist and say an eagle in flames is still a pretty cool unit to have. (Also I think the dragonhawk rider is one of the ugliest classic models around so I'd rather skip using it)

Anyway, this is to get into the rest of the flying unit rework, in other words deal with this cute little thing:

This is your typical small anti-air unit with an upgraded attack that can slightly inconvenience ground with a small chance of AoE. This is what needs to go to make space in the techtree for Riderless Dragonhawks and Archer-mounted Dragowhawks. This also means I have to get rid of General Frank's Archer model and go for a more standard one to have an unified look on both Archers. This is, like, the only texture for the job here, I have seen no other decent Blood Elf Archer texture which is a pity because as good as 67chrome is I don't think his style falls in line with Classic Wc3. (I'd prefer a simpler modification on the basic High Elf texture with some Blood Elf features)

Aaanyway, back on track, and this is where people could chime in, the unit above is, aside from the Towers (and Dust of Appearance in the Shop), the only real source of True Sight for Blood Elves. Currently, fyi, True Sight is also "free" for Blood Elves but I do plan on removing an upgrade of theirs to give them the "Magic Sentry" one.

In other words I have to give Blood Elves some new source of True Sight if I am to remove the current one and, since I'm bringing in an upgrade for it, I can justify making some cool ability become available with it, I'm currently weighing 3 options:

1. Just give Dragonhawks and Dragonhawk Archers True Sight, very simple but hard to justify looking at Dragonhawk Riders not having it
2. Give Dragonhawk Archers the ability to summon a stationary ward with True Sight, either like a Sentry Ward or, more likely, like the Sentinel ability, with either limited uses or a pretty long cooldown (a couple minutes?)
3. Grant Dragonhawk Archers an actual summon with True Sight, either like PotM's Owl or a low hp low damage output aa-only version of the Blood Eagle just above, in this case the duration would be limited to something like 20 seconds and have either limited charges or some ludicrous cooldown like 5 minutes
(Truth is, I fear the game doesn't track mounted/dismounted units that well to actually make abilities with limited charges work on them but we'll see)

I personally think I'll go with #3. Any thoughts on that?

EDIT: Added Archon Abilities to the previous Neutral Heroes post.

... Rarely have I been so conflicted with excitement & rage. xD

It's a cool bonus having them in there for sure, I for one am just glad I found them something to do, they've been basically rotting in a testmap for a decade now

EDITEDIT: I still think Overload is OP but I don't care, Grim Rider as a whole is even more OP.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Blood Elves were originally meant to replace Humans so their techtree mostly reflects that one, there's no specialized barracks for T3, Blood Elves get their T3 from Scarlet Knights and Fiery Eagles, the latter of which is the first (and the smaller) rework I had in mind:

In short, this is just a model change on the Fiery Phoenix as that unit, just like the Blood Sorceror, was one of those who were stuck with an in-game model. Back in the day I had to work around the 4 MB limit a lot as I would reach it pretty fast throwing custom models around, so since at the time Blood Elves were meant to be a Human replacement I just re-used the Blood Mage and Phoenix models. Now however Humans are meant to stay as a choice for players so I have to take care of all overlap in resources, this was the last major one.

Ah, the classic "started as a Faction Replacement --> turned into a Faction Addition". You love to see it. : )

I thankfully largely avoided that vis-a-vis the Shadow Hunter, Headhunter, and Witch Doctor, but holy SMOKES did I have the hardest time coming up with a different kind of Batrider (because of course I had to have a Batrider clone).

Aaanyway, back on track, and this is where people could chime in, the unit above is, aside from the Towers (and Dust of Appearance in the Shop), the only real source of True Sight for Blood Elves. Currently, fyi, True Sight is also "free" for Blood Elves but I do plan on removing an upgrade of theirs to give them the "Magic Sentry" one.

In other words I have to give Blood Elves some new source of True Sight if I am to remove the current one and, since I'm bringing in an upgrade for it, I can justify making some cool ability become available with it, I'm currently weighing 3 options:

1. Just give Dragonhawks and Dragonhawk Archers True Sight, very simple but hard to justify looking at Dragonhawk Riders not having it
2. Give Dragonhawk Archers the ability to summon a stationary ward with True Sight, either like a Sentry Ward or, more likely, like the Sentinel ability, with either limited uses or a pretty long cooldown (a couple minutes?)
3. Grant Dragonhawk Archers an actual summon with True Sight, either like PotM's Owl or a low hp low damage output aa-only version of the Blood Eagle just above, in this case the duration would be limited to something like 20 seconds and have either limited charges or some ludicrous cooldown like 5 minutes
(Truth is, I fear the game doesn't track mounted/dismounted units that well to actually make abilities with limited charges work on them but we'll see)

I personally think I'll go with #3. Any thoughts on that?

So while it's true (ha) that True Sight is one of the few abilities that is repeated between the factions, I would encourage you to consider the more original approaches. #2 is decent but still meh; perhaps a combination of "mobile" & "casted" by having them bestow True Sight on a target friendly unit? #3 I dislike out of habit because I don't believe regular units should have summons you also have to take care of (Necromancers notwithstanding).

Alternatives might include a channeling ability that reveals a big area at the cost of mobility (like "reconnaissance" or "eye in the sky"), or an upgrade that gives True Sight + some random side passive ability (oh wait that's what I'm doing for my Jungle Trolls ;P), or...

 

[Michael Peppers]

a channeling ability that reveals a big area at the cost of mobility

This is a good one, the model also has an animation for it ("Stand - 3" is very similar to Dragonhawk Riders' channeling animation), though I wonder if there's any channeled base with similar properties so the AI can use it. Guess I'll experiment a bunch with Far Sight and similar stuff and see where that goes.

Btw the post on Neutral Heroes is done now.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Neutral Hero Additions "stuff":

View attachment 395855	View attachment 395856
View attachment 395909	View attachment 395926

Space is very limited in those panels so I'll add it here: Whirlwind's summon is dependant on corpses in the area, you get a different summon for 1, 2 and 3 corpses, corpses used also explode.

So... Beautiful...

 

[Michael Peppers]

The Blood Elf Buildings techtree image has been completed with a side-panel that includes the buildings' abilities and the 3 (more or less) custom items for the race, I've also added a couple of notes to better explain how some stuff actually works. Next up is either the Blood Elf Heroes or the 'F' Factor Buildings, there's a couple of cool surprises in both of them so be prepared. If you prefer seeing one of these two in particular first let me know so I prioritize that.

...or maybe I should actually play my thing a bit and add screenshots of the newest release to the main post, that takes way less time than all of this image editing ngl.

Is anybody interested in plans for the future btw? Like, what's actually planned for v0.1c (Campaign Start) and beyond?

 

[Michael Peppers]

The Avian Nest (Flying Barracks) rework has been done for a bit now so here it is:

Completing the flying units rework hasn't been much of an issue on the game side (had issues with the models though), Dragonhawks and Dragonhawk Archers mirror their Night Elf counterparts, mostly:

You can notice some slight value changes but the base is the same, Dragonhawks have less damage and hit points but faster attack speed while Dragonhawk Archers also have slightly higher movement speed than Hippogryph Riders, small things like that. Dragonhawk Archers also require their own upgrade and gain Boiling Blood from the usual Blood Elf Archer we got:

Boiling Blood was designed to be a replacement for both the Marksmanship upgrade and Elune's Grace, it works like Frenzy, granting a 25% increase in both attack and movement speed at the cost of 3 hit points per second.

"...and what about that True Sight thing?" You may ask, I decided a channeled Reveal isn't the best idea for a race that already has Dust in the shop and the Reveal from the towers, so I decided to go with #2 with a twist on a unit we'll talk about in another post. Magic Sentry is now an upgrade that's researched in the Arcane Workshop (Siege Barracks).

"But now you have 13 units, right?" Yes but no, we'll talk about it when I'm done with the Arcane Workshop rework.

Btw, the Buildings Techtree image has also been updated with the new stuff and with new icons by Darkfang for the custom items.

Anyway, about the version currently posted: (0.1b-)

Well, I played a bunch of it some days ago to take screenshots I'm not sure I'll use and I've noticed some glaring issues that I have worked on a bunch and will continue on monitoring:

- Maiden Inns spawning all the starting mines on death: Looking at the code I finally found the core issue and solved it in the development version I got.

- Lag spikes at times during matches: when it happens I always notice there's either a bunch of Arcane Symbols thrown around, Perfume Clouds or both, although the lag could be related to none of these. Crimson Guards and Arcane Symbols will be GONE because they're bad fake Spellbreaker trash and will be replaced by a proper Spellbreaker counterpart unit. Perfume Cloud was already ok on the code side (I think) but has been improved a bunch and I tested with 11 Make-up Launchers and noticed no slowdowns (things could be different ingame after a bunch of gametime)
If it's neither of these things then I'm doing a goof somewhere in the code that's making some spell or effect leak a bunch. Or there's something in the AI scripts that's causing it.

- AI acting weird with Maiden Inns: while it's not good news, I'm relieved to see that even standard races' AI seem to look at Maiden Inns as goldmines, so as proper expansion spots if there's no Halls close to them. On one hand I need to code the fix directly into common.ai, on the other hand it's not my own AI's fault so Yay I guess.

 

[stein123]

. This is, like, the only texture for the job here, I have seen no other decent Blood Elf Archer texture which is a pity because as good as 67chrome is I don't think his style falls in line with Classic Wc3. (I'd prefer a simpler modification on the basic High Elf texture with some Blood Elf features)

Nightelfbuilder's blood archer skin is pretty good, and kinda matches general franks módem too: nightelfbuilder's deleted textures and icons

 

[Kyrbi0]

"But now you have 13 units, right?" Yes but no, we'll talk about it when I'm done with the Arcane Workshop rework.

.> : (

 

[Michael Peppers]

Nightelfbuilder's blood archer skin is pretty good, and kinda matches general franks módem too: nightelfbuilder's deleted textures and icons

There's pretty cool stuff in there so I'm glad you put the link here, I won't be using the blood elf skin that's there now because that talk about skins was me thinking about how to put archers on dragonhawks while keeping them consistent in their look, the Dragonhawk Archer model I got is totally fine for that, the request I made gave me a model that was mostly good for that but needed a few tweaks I found the time (and ways) to do, thankfully.

.> : (

Lol, alright, since I don't feel like working on the Ballista rework today either let's talk about the last rework I did, which I think is pretty cool, the oh-so (previously) unfinished Wrenchman, and the unit count after adding the Dragonhawk Archers is a good starting point for that.

So, basically, I was there with 13 units, counted, while looking at the units in-editor the Hippo Rider is one of the 12 Night Elf units and most of the races have 12 units, Undead got 11 but they have Destroyers in the special units for some weird reason so they get a stink eye.

It took me no time to decide the potential cut, the best candidate for elimination was the Mobile Fortress:

Yes, it's the Blood Elf Wagon, still.
It's basically a moving mechanical Burrow that (currently) costs 140 Gold, 80 Lumber, 1 Food, built from the Arcane Workshop in 0.1b-, with a melee siege attack on structures and a pretty underwhelming ranged attack for everything else, attack speed is pretty slow even in the dev version where I buffed it, it allows max 2 Wrenchmen inside (5 food total) and ofc can't attack if not loaded.

I haven't touched it much, still, I just tweaked a whole bunch of values for it. I would love to get me some detailed model with a big chair, some levers and some sort of steering wheel at the back, a ram and a mobile turret gun with a seat at the front, Wrenchmen models present in alternate states so it actively shows when it's loaded and how many of them are in there. Also proper attack animations. Should probably try to do that myself eventually.

Easy removal, right? Not really, without them I would've removed functionality from Wrenchmen too and, looking at their 0.1b- state (so basically untouched since 2010) they were already lacking, an overstatted 2 food cost unit with bonus damage on mechanical units through an upgrade, some mana and a heal for mechanical units disguised under a repair icon, since Wrenchmen are my own take on the campaign's Blood Elf Engineers if I don't give them some kind of machinery to work with what's the point, right?

So I cheated, I reworked the Wrenchman instead to bend the rules on what is and what isn't a proper racial unit to my advantage:

The model is basically the Blood Elf Runner by johnwar with a tweaked Tinker's wrench, based on the Worker by Ujimasa Hojo I've already been using for a bit, in fact I recognized the portrait animations immediately but instead of being lazy like I was with the Worker (by using the standard Blood Elf Worker portrait) I actually imported some of the standard portrait animations into the model and they work fine. I might go back and do that to the Worker as well.

This rework is relatively simple and done through Object Editing alone, aside from a small bit of code to give that blue-eyed thingy in the third ability icon an expiration.

I started experimenting with the idea of changing the techtree in a very subtle way: he's supposed to be an Engineer, right? Let him build stuff! So I moved the Mobile Fortress from the Normal units into the Special units as it's an extension of Wrenchmen anyway, a part of their "toolkit", and made Wrenchmen build them as "structures".

Funny thing is I soon discovered that a unit without Repair can't build structures and since I thought "Arcane Repair" was clunky and had all the delays/effects of Heal I just removed it, got rid of his mana and made Advanced Repair.

Advanced Repair is a faster but less cost efficient version of Human Repair, so it can also help Powerbuild (faster, steep cost) and can actually build (at normal speed) structures that have already been placed by similar builders. Initially the idea was to go further than that and let them also build Arcane Workshops and Sentry Towers but I was soon disgusted by the Tower rushing potential I could've unleashed there and dropped that part. I mean, the fact you could probably use Wrenchmen instead of Swordsmen at Tier 2 and now they can also take over building stuff from Workers is still kind of insane for that anyway.

While doing this I was still thinking about the whole Magic Sentry thing and the lack of a convenient source of True Sight for Blood Elf players since I moved the Blood Eagle into the "Campaign/Extra" bin. Option #2 (recap: replicating Sentry Wards somehow) grew on me as it is simple, intuitive and I could easily turn that into another part of the Wrenchman's "toolkit":

This is a Watcher Eye, it requires Magic Sentry, lasts 600 seconds, costs 40 Gold and 10 Lumber and is built relatively quickly by Wrenchmen. Simple as that. It can be revealed and destroyed and acts in most ways like normal Sentry Wards.

Their last ability is Engineering Proficiency, as it has always been. (passive 2x damage on mechanical units, requires its own upgrade)

So... yeah, now Blood Elves still only have 12 units and Wrenchmen are now more fleshed out units with a more diverse skillset, better theming and a proper model, while Mobile Fortresses take their place among the Wards, the Summons and all other "weird" units and the techtree makes more sense overall. Everybody wins.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Status report:

Finished two other reworks, they're nothing special so I don't feel like talking about them much, in short:

• Ballistas got a new model, their upgrade now lets them switch their standard projectiles to magic projectiles with decent splash damage and back.
• Swordsmen's way of accessing their upgraded form has been streamlined and now works like Berserker Upgrade, their defend now offers significantly less protection from piercing damage but also reduces damage from spells and magic attacks. The way their upgrade worked before was too micro intensive for basic melee units and not worth it in the end.

I changed the Blood Elf techtree image in this thread to reflect these new changes, it is wildly inaccurate for the current public version now btw.

Most of the changes in the last period have been bug fixing, balancing and some big under the hood stuff that may have fixed that lag issue I already mentioned a couple of times. In other words I've recently made a few big changes but none that the normal player would notice in a standard game.

The next release, actual 0.1b, will be ready after:

1 unit rework, 1 new hero, 7 new abilities, 2 reworked upgrades, 1 icon hunt, 1 model tweak and a couple of AI tweaks, maybe 3 AI behavior fixes as well if I can manage those.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Re-opened.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Well, after a whole bunch of bugfixes and improvements and still one Hero away from releasing what I "envision" as 0.1b I decided 0.1b- is so trash (ngl) I might as well release a preview map of what's basically 0.1b minus the new hero, you can find it at the Release Dump located in the first Post link, which has been reworked a whole bunch.
The differences between this preview and the latest "official" version are pretty big, many units have been reworked, especially on the Blood Elf side, functionality added, spell behavior changed/optimized, performance improved, etcetc.

As far as the mod version goes, 0.1b- for 1.31 only is what's going to be for a while still as building that thing is more of a time sink than anything if the thing is still a WIP (& can't be played on Reforged)

Speaking of Reforged: I'm planning on dropping 1.31 along the way, 1.32 might not have been worth it, 1.36 is.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Almost a week later and after a whopping 0 downloads (pepehands) I still am in... well, basically the same situation outlined in the last post, 1 skill rework and 4 more skills before the next major release and you might be asking... "What's taking you so long? You didn't get that much done since in 2022 you were already pretty close to it, right?"

Kind of, but not really. This is my pet project and I often find myself wanting to develop parts of it that are not essential for the new release but can provide some new gameplay opportunities in-game, better performance/code or just help me better replicate (old) Blizzard vanilla standards. Honestly, with enough drive, I could make the necessary stuff in 1 or 2 days, the skill rework is pretty straightforward and 3 out of the 4 new skills planned should be ezpz to make, but... I've been doing other stuff, like:

• While Draenei Tribes are a WIP and will be released as such I wanted to give them at least a little more meat, now I can confidently say they're more than halfway done (but ofc I started out with the easy half ).
  The Hall, Shop, Tower, Mill, Barracks, House and related units are all 100% done, their design is pretty simple (1 coded ability in total so far) but I still managed to do some stuff I think is pretty unique for Wc3 while still keeping them close to their Campaign appearance in TFT. The rest (Salamander Den, mage place and altar) for now only contain placeholder units that are taken straight from their campaign race (even though Akama has a nice new model)
  
  
• Did a little more work on the cheat engine, cleaned up its code after getting more acquainted with chat events and I added the cheat "-felme" to play as the Campaign Fel Orcs, that one had my head scratching for a bit on how to implement it cleanly but thankfully a spark of... I guess genius helped me make that a reality by making only 3 new buildings and tuning some Orc object data a bit without actually affecting standard Orcs, it should be fairly close to how the RoC campaign handles them but not quite. Also added Red Drakes to their unique Roost because why not?
  BTW, other cheats planned at the moment (that will not be implemented any time soon) include a way to play as the Campaign Corrupted Ancients and... "-creepmeout", so you could play Monolith on ANY MAP!!!
  
  
• Some experimentation with Soundsets, I've heard around that adding new Soundsets in Wc3 is basically impossible but, honestly, I wasn't convinced. Reforged did it with female DK and DH afterall so there must be a way to do it, right? Yes but actually no.
  I'll explain: Wc3 Soundsets are defined in an .slk file, "UI\SoundInfo\UnitAckSounds.slk", it is a pretty basic list of all soundsets in the game and defining new soundsets in there is totally possible and working... but only for mods , when I defined a new soundset there and made Wc3 load my modified file via my mod setup it was perfectly working, but when you try and put that file directly into a map the game just blatantly ignores it. Such a bummer, if it was 100% working I could've scrapped all the things I currently do to mask the fact some standard Soundsets lack training sounds or I could've duplicated some Soundsets to remove lines I wouldn't want to hear from certain units (like BE Shieldsmen shouting "For Lordaeron!") just to make a couple of examples on how that would be a "game" changer.

Anyway, new beta is up in the dump! Test it and report feedback if you feel like it!

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Hey @Michael Peppers! I played your map and will share my humble "showcase" video here:

I have small notes about what I had plaed.

• Hero Summoner is OP.
• Why spells aren't QWER? I appreciate that they have proper hotkeys like normal melee races, but I never understood that case in altered melee.
• For what elven farms have mana regeneration? I felt that their casters are strong enough and their caster upgrades provide nice mana regeneration.

After all, looking forward to seeing Draenei and that "F" factor someday - Blood Elves went pretty smoothly and playable race

 

[Michael Peppers]

Nice! Thanks for playing! It helped me find a bug in there too

Occult Invoker (the Summoner hero) can feel pretty OP, Fire Barrage is a very nice spell... until it isn't (does nothing vs Dryads for instance) and her Ultimate is the same deal. It is a very swingy sort of hero but there's strong counterplay to it in vanilla I feel. (Also they're a bit buggy in the last map I posted, I broke a couple things a bunch ago and didn't notice)
About the hotkeys, yeah I am basically following vanilla standards at this point, afaik there's plenty of ways to customize hotkeys, I was hoping we'd have one in-game as well but... oh well, small indie company at work I guess. The extra heroes in the Tavern use QWER though, those aren't technically mine so I have kept them as-is
Regen on farms makes sense thematically and if you start relying heavily on the casters it does end up useful imo, their Priest's heal is more mana intensive and the other spellcaster's basic spell is strong but costly. It's also there for heroes and... I guess also allies if you want to go around building houses

You can play 'F' Factor and the Draenei WIP right now if you want, you just have to change your Handicap before starting the map (it doesn't actually change Handicap), this applies to the AI as well.
Blood Elves are at Human 100%, FFactor at Human 70%, Draenei at Orc 90%, 60% is reserved for standard races and 50% is random
Draenei don't have AI right now and are using a whole lot of placeholder units.
More info on this sort of stuff is in the Quest menu (F9)

I have made significant progress in the last few days btw, expect a new beta map soon-ish

 

[Michael Peppers]

New map uploaded!

Changes include:

Blood Elves: a bunch of bugfixes on Occult Invoker, an overdue rework of Death Sentence, her aura got fixed, fixed display bug with Rank Up as well.

'F' Factor: The new hero is finally here! The Faerie Queen is an Int hero focused on deception and summons that has taken 3 of the Templar Maiden's skills.
The Templar Maiden now has a new set of skills to rework her into the half-Paladin, half-Blademaster of sorts she was always meant to be.
Updated AI.

Draenei Tribes: The Salamander Den, its units and upgrades are complete, at least feature-wise. Icons will probably change, models are not final as well but the units themselves are done and all abilities are functional. Also added a placeholder for the 2nd hero by using Paladin abilities. AI is also done and untested.
Currently their placeholder units are the casters and the heroes, which are basically rehashed vanilla stuff.

I'm calling this upload pre-release and not beta because I'm doing a feature freeze. Object Data is done, Scripts are done, AI should be done, the map only needs a couple of rounds of testing before I'm sure everything works and I start working on the mod part. After that it's new release time basically.

 

[Michael Peppers]

New release time! Compared to the preview there's been some polishing going on and a new model for the Salamander Mule. Mod version is up and somewhat running, this time the Mod can actually be played in Reforged as the invisible trees bug is gone, unfortunately Reforged just has to add some extra issues on top of it:

• It refuses to load the custom version of Monolith
• Some attack sounds and unit missile origin data are lost for some reason, you'll see units fire missiles from their bellies (or other weird angles) and melee attacks lacking impact and being hard to acknowledge due to missing sounds

So Reforged compatibility is not perfect yet.

You can find the release in the dump, Mod install instructions in the 2nd post here and some info on how to use Wc3 Mod Manager to load it in this post. the project changelog in the 3rd post has been updated as well.

Have fun with it and don't forget to report any bugs I might've missed.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Draenei casters are done, here's a picture of them hanging out with their vanilla brethren.

Here are the stats at Initiate and Master for both.

So, in order to make these 2 casters (and the whole race in general) I looked at what's available for Draenei both as mercenaries and in the race that's played by the AI in that TFT mission. The 3 casters Draenei have in the game data are Disciple, Harbinger and Seer, with the following skills:

Heal
Bloodlust
Ray of Disruption
Healing Wave
Slow
Brilliance Aura

We have 2 heals, a buff for friendlies, a debuff on enemies, a dispel and some mana support. When starting them out I included all of this but I ended up scrapping the mana skill at some point because it was boring and uninspired.

Anyway here are the Seer's skills:

Spoiler: Skills

So these ones cover all the healing and the buffing and the dispelling.
Mend is a Heal that Rejuvenates, 'nuff said.
Stoneskin as a unit buff unlocked at Adept is not as strong as an Inner Fire and is more geared defensively than the original's Bloodlust but overall my Draenei (and vanilla ones afaict) are a race geared towards defense, resistance, guerrilla and all that jass.
Cleansing Winds is here to cover the dispel slot, being at Master it has a bigger aoe than the standard dispels at 300 and includes a buff on visible friendlies and partially covers for their need for True Sight stuff. (idea is: the race is good at sneaking but bad at detection, their only other source of True Sight is their towers)

After this, if you've been keeping count of the spells I was drawing inspiration from you will notice I worked on the second spellcaster, the Harbinger, with a whole lotta Slow and nothing else:

Spoiler: Skills

So... Chilling Touch is Slow for movement speed only that also decreases armor, Tremor Trap is Stasis Trap but it Slows using the dizzy debuff and Concussive Wave is a 300 aoe Stun (which is another form of Slow if you think about it real hard) around the caster (and yes, only stuns heroes for 1 second)

Next up are the Draenei heroes, which will be nothing mindblowing if you tried the WIP version.
After that it will be time to move on to the other Outland race I planned, where the shamanistic Draenei Tribes rely on subterfuge and a strong defense this new race will be demonic, direct and generally aggressively-minded. Y'know, foils and the making thereof.

 

[Michael Peppers]

Alright, I've been silent for a month on this thread so I guess it's time for some kind of update post...
I haven't touched the Draenei heroes, like, at all, it's not like most of the planned spells for them are hard to make or anything, maybe aside from a couple of things I'm not sure how to implement, I just didn't feel the drive to start working on them.
Most of my modding efforts lately have gone towards the other new race, which is slowly taking form, with a decent chunk of units and buildings already working and mostly ready.

Truth is, recently my life has turned into some sort of high-speed rollercoaster and is demanding a whole lot of attention from me, I have no intention of abandoning this pet project of mine but realistically I just cannot dedicate as many hours weekly to it as I could just 1 month ago.

Even though the version of the map I'm developing has a bunch of improvements over 0.1b that release is actually pretty solid so I don't feel the need to start posting new dev maps before the changes actually become significant enough to warrant it. I will start posting new devmaps as soon as the Draenei Tribes are 100% done, and even then I might delay it just a smidge more to get the other race to a more finished state first.

Stay tuned for more... eventually

 

[Michael Peppers]

Real life caught up to me again in the last months so I might as well officially declare that the project is on hiatus. Nothing has changed since the last few posts, Draenei still lack their custom heroes and that demonic race I've been teasing for a while is about half-way done but isn't packing anything unique as of now, so you're not really missing much compared to 0.1b.

In other news Reforged 2.0 is a thing I guess, I wanted to eventually migrate this project to Reforged to try and fix some compatibility issues so if this new Reforged turns out decent enough I might do that when I come back to code some more.

(Also posting this to prevent a thread lock)

 

[Kyrbi0]

Glad to hear from ya again Peppers

 

[Owenalacaster]

Honestly surprised my code is still used by any projects.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Honestly surprised my code is still used by any projects.

SREG??

 

[Michael Peppers]

Honestly surprised my code is still used by any projects.

Pretty wild isn't it?
There's other custom race selectors around but they still mostly use in-game UIs while pausing the game, just like when CRS was first made.
After all these years I still believe selecting races before the game via handicap values is the better approach and, after some touch-ups, CRS still works great for that, simple as.

(Project is still on hiatus, but wanted to say hi to Sreg)

 

[Kyrbi0]

Pretty wild isn't it?
There's other custom race selectors around but they still mostly use in-game UIs while pausing the game, just like when CRS was first made.
After all these years I still believe selecting races before the game via handicap values is the better approach and, after some touch-ups, CRS still works great for that, simple as.

(Project is still on hiatus, but wanted to say hi to Sreg)

PEPPERS?

Join the "hiatus" club

 

[Michael Peppers]

Since I'm participating in the new techtree contest I've set up my environment again and I am done migrating what was the latest dev map to Reforged 2.0.3.

I'm also bringing back dev builds in the Release page. As announced before they include the new Draenei spellcasters and a couple more fixes/tweaks.
The map also has a very WIP new race in it. So WIP it's disabled. You can peek at it in the World Editor if you want, even activate it if you know how.

Changelog for people who like changelogs:

Spoiler: 21/01/26 Dev Changelog

Changes since 0.1b:

1) New content:

• Seer, the support caster, and Harbinger, the trapper caster, added to Draenei Tribes

2) Balance & Graphics/Polish:

• Added Sundering Blades back into the Human tech score calculations
• Misc string fixes

Blood Elves:

• Buffed Staff of Clarity from +1 armor for 15 seconds to +2 armor for 20 seconds
• Reduced Blood Shield cooldown to 1.2 seconds, lowered cost to 40
• Better timing for Fizzling Arrows' effect
• Fixed Teleport Strike having Berserker Upgrade as a requirement in Reforged

'F' Factor:

• Minor code improvements for the Maiden Inn
• Better attack coordinates on Drier Tower, projectile now displays properly, normalized building time and day sight
• Rewrap, additional texture & new icon for Holy Nurse
• Lowered Cunning Inspiration cost to 30

Draenei Tribes:

• Moved some units from Neutral to Orc so they show the Orc's target circle for AoE abilities
• Moved all buildings from Neutral to Orc so they have Orc's building sounds, rally point icon and AoE target circle
• Draenei Hut data oversights fixed, lumber cost is now 25 and repair time is the same as build time
• Implemented tech score

Neutral Heroes:

Grim Rider:

• Changed unit type to Undead, changed hp regen from 0.25/sec always to 2/sec on blight on them and on Whirlwind summons

3) AI Changes:

• Removed custom common.ai after dropping 1.31 compatibility

'F' Factor:

• Make AI always hold enough resources to build an inn after basic init (for "safety reasons")

4) Code Changes:

• Improved code for DummyDealer (my dummy recycler)
• Removed PowerupSentinel, the tome leak it was solving has been fixed in 1.32

Edit:
I forgot I added another way to test WIP stuff in 0.1b

And yes, part of that tooltip is a lie atm, the current Pit of Souls is just a placeholder.

 

[Michael Peppers]

A new Dev version is up on the Release dump, of course this one will not have a changelog as big as the last one since that one contained all WIP work I had ready just after 0.1b.

I'm done hiding the Alterac Felsworn, yes, they are super-duper early WIP of course but I'm not willing to cripple a cheat command for it and it's mildly annoying having to disable them just for dev previews which are meant to be WIP either way.

You can try them out by starting as Undead at 90% handicap. They have no AI script so CRS will not load them in for AI slots. Needless to say their research score is not processed atm as a lot of upgrades are not done and I haven't made a basic preload script for them yet (to load textures/models of starting/early units and buildings) but I technically could do that as the resources it'd process are all present.

Here's a sneak peek:

These are the buildings, the only ones fully done are the Hall, the Mine (duh), the Item Shop (with a couple of custom items) and the Tower (it's a really basic one but it's on purpose, the race isn't big on defense)

As for model choice, I'm glad I could find a lot to work with at the Hive to achieve a consistent visual theme, even if it's not too different from standard undead.
The buildings use the Demon birth animation and the ubersplat below them was handed to me by fellow custom race creator @Wa666r ages ago. He'd probably say it's just a crappy recolor but it fits so well that I couldn't really resist.

You may notice the blight and the fact it generates from just the Pit building. This is on purpose, this race is not Undead, it's a take on a demonic race, but the twist is that the Pit is meant to give them (in the future) access to a couple of Undead units, which will require Cultist sacrifices to summon, along with standard resources, so having some limited form of blight creation makes sense.

These are the completed units at the moment, the base worker (sacrifice mechanics aside obvs), the T1 melee (an Imp, not too dissimilar from standard Ghouls tbh), T1 ranged (Fel Mistresses - the upright succubi) and a T2 melee (Doom Brutes - those fel guards)
In order to make them at least a bit playable their Altar offers the Firelord and Pit Lord and their Gate building allows summoning some of the gnarliest vanilla demons (all of these are placeholders ofc)

Ok, now that I'm done with the technical stuff it's time to spill the beans on the design behind this. As the name suggests these are meant to be former humans from the city of Alterac who fled to Draenor during the Second War (iirc this is all plausible within Warcraft II canon) and became twisted by demonic influences and recruited to be a part of Magtheridon's forces. As such, the idea is (and always has been) to make them foils to the Draenei Tribes, so while the Draenei have many skills and things that work well for defensive situations and guerrilla tactics, the Alterac Felsworn are going to be hyper-aggressive and straight in your face, with no mind for defense or self-preservation, hence the crappy Tower they got (and the very scarce/inconvenient healing sources they'll have - now they have none aside from items that only affect Hero health, in the full race they'll have 2, both based on sacrifice mechanics). I do believe these characterizations are also in line with what we've seen in TFT.

Now, after completing the Doom Brute, which I had left 90% done in my earlier dev builds, I'm going to focus on finishing my work on the Draenei Tribes, I'm not expecting to finish both of their heroes before the Techtree Contest starts but I'll try and get at least my take on Akama complete.

The contest will probably take away most of my modding time once it starts, but fret not: I already plan on integrating my contest race into this project once I'm done participating in it.

Tiny changelog:

26/01/26 Dev Changelog

Changes since 21/01/26 Dev:

1) New content:

• Doom Brute, the T2 melee unit for the Alterac Felsworn

2) Balance & Graphics/Polish:

• Fixed some broken Hero skill learn tooltips
• Removed colored hotkeys from tooltips as Reforged takes care of showing them now
• (Mod-only fix) Fixed Hero scorescreen icons for Reforged (extract the WebUI folder from the map and put it in the base game folder\_retail_ folder while having Allow Local Files enabled if you want to enable them for the map, no other way in Reforged )

Blood Elves:

• Scaled up Occult Invoker to match the other BE heroes' size
• Changed Holy Smite's code to use hp percentages instead of flat numbers (this way the spell is not tied to a single unit)

'F' Factor:

• Made Make-up Launcher use the internal old wagon model instead of importing it
• Renamed Shiny Orb to Orb of Glamour

Draenei Tribes:

• Fixed a bunch of Salamander tooltips

3) Code Changes:

• Improvements to AuraMake
• Updated Relativistic Missiles to the latest version (2.8)

 

[Kyrbi0]

"Alterac Felsworn"?? Just when I thought I'd heard of them all... You got me there. That's a new one.

 

[Michael Peppers]

The Draenei High Sage is finally done!

His skills are now 100% complete. As earlier with the casters and other pieces of the race I decided to stick very close to the original design, trying to replicate the original's skillset in some way. Some of you may call this lazy and that would be 100% correct. Anyway, as a reminder, here's campaign Akama's skills:

Chain Lightning, Feral Spirit, Shadowstrike and Reincarnation. Not the worst kit, not the best.
Here's what I made:

My Chain Lightning is:

Icicle Lance

Missile speed is 1000. As Chain Lightning it can hit multiple targets, but the damage doesn't fall off.
But it's fine, it's less damage than Carrion Swarm and the projectile is pretty narrow and can miss secondary targets easily.

My Feral Spirits are:

Earthen Guardians

These are the wolves, fangs and all, they have more armor, more damage, more hp but are as slow-moving as Water Elementals and only attack at melee range (at 1.6 attack rate) which offsets a lot of the benefits. They are meant as a tank, a more defensively-minded summon than the wolves as they can be kited with relative ease.

This is clearly Shadowstrike:

Toxin Throw

The debuff left by this spell is not dispellable (or it's meant not to at least)

And this is Reincarnation:

Close Call

This one uses a lot of the same code as Force Field. It's also the first skill of mine that uses Exhume Corpses as a base

And here's a family photo between the High Sage, campaign Akama and their respective summons.

I ripped off the game. And I think it turned out great!

Testmap has been updated ofc.

The usual changelog:

03/02/26 Dev Changelog

Changes since 26/01/26 Dev:

1) New content:

• High Sage skills, AI skills usage, some tweaks

2) Balance & Graphics/Polish:

• Renamed a bunch of icon imports to remove all duplicate/unneeded DIS icons

Blood Elves:

• Changed Holy Smite's base to Exhume Corpses to show cooldown + better code

Alterac Felsworn:

• Buffed Fel Frenzy from 20% attack speed to 30%, fixed an item-related bug, lowered tech requirements
• Changed its base to Exhume Corpses to show cooldown + better code

3) Code Changes:

• Changed SetUnitFacing with BlzSetUnitFacingEx in places
• Minor code cleanup

 

[Michael Peppers]

The map has received various updates in the last month, some are minor graphical changes, some affect balance, some fix a couple of "oopsies!" I left (ie. unchanged vanilla descriptions)

The most meaningful change is a partial rework of my AuraDealer system, which now tracks buff levels more accurately and works much more efficiently than before. This is under-the-hood stuff which is hard to notice from the player's side but it does improve performance a good deal.

I also added a new cheat, -supernagame, which allows playing a version of the campaign Naga race that can train 2 Royal Guards from their barracks.

As I'm willing to explore the idea of "Uber" units (powerful, high cost, limited trainable number) for some future race designs, having easy access to (something close to) a vanilla equivalent to toy with will be convenient. Even if that equivalent's cost is totally imbalanced (300G/100L/4F)

01/03/26 Dev Changelog

Changes since 03/02/26 Dev:

1) Balance & Graphics/Polish:

• Rebalanced racial orbs
• Tweaked some spell steal priority values
• Added "-supernagame" cheat to switch to Naga cheat race + allow training 2 Royal Guards
• Misc tooltip fixes
• Reorganized some rawcodes

Blood Elves:

• New icons for Scarlet Enforcer, Blood Sorceror and Spellsealer by Mouseketeer
• Changed Magic Defense's icon with a more appropriate one from the same author

'F' Factor:

• Changed Enslaved Man to SoC's peasant model and icon

Draenei Tribes:

• Lowered Tribehall cost by 20 gold
• Tranquil Shadows: fixed a bug when multiple Cloak of Shadows are worn by a Draenei hero
• Let Icicle Lance secondary damage hit wards as well (even if hidden)
• Reduced Toxin Throw's cooldown from 9 to 8
• Tweaked Salamander Den appearance

Alterac Felsworn:

• Better code for Breaching Curse, buffed duration from 3/1 seconds to 4/2 seconds

2) Code Changes:

• Various AuraMake improvements and some fixes

 

[Owenalacaster]

Alterac Felsworn look lovely.

Also, I forgot I checked in on this topic last year, hahaha.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm on the Hive's discord, if you should ever like catch up.

 

[Kyrbi0]

I was about to geek out to hear you back, but I too looked back & saw you posted almost exactly a year ago here

Well it's still good to hear from you.

 

[IronBladeClan]

And this is Reincarnation:

Close Call

View attachment 573042

Oooh, how'd you detect when a unit is mortally wounded and take action before dying? I was interested in also making something that triggered in time to potentially avoid death.