Warhammer - Hammer of War

[UnsanctionedMagic]

Okay okay, some ideas require full attention... as such, I abandoned my other project to present...

Warhammer
HAMMER OF WAR

Hammer of War is a Warcraft III custom map inspired by classic 5th to 8th edition Warhammer Fantasy battles, focused on heroes, regiments, formations, morale, and modular army-building rather than standard Warcraft micro-management.
Quick 15–20 minute 1v1 battles, or longer 2v2 / FFA games. Supports up to 4 players, with many custom terrain scenarios to choose from, There will be no resource management and no base building.


The map is inspired by my own work many years ago with Riotz on Warhammer: Reign of Terror, a map for which I designed two scenarios and am proud to say it's the only thing I've made people played on! But my terrain work is showcased in my other project thread here.
Players build an army using a points-based roster. They purchase units, traits, equipment, and upgrades for their heroes and army using the point limit set for the scenario.
This will be done in pre-game army camps where we intend to also showcase the models with their credits due directly when purchasing as a nice nod to all the talented people who made the amazing models that kickstarted this project.


You play as your hero, or a few heroes if you purchase more than one. They are the only directly controllable units. Your regiments, special units, monsters, and war machines are computer-controlled players which you command directly through your commander by issuing orders.
It is a delicate battle of planning your army loadouts, commanding regiments into war, and micro-managing your hero like you would in a good WC3 map.


There will be many additional features for regiments beyond the standard WC3 traits. For example: morale, breaking from combat and running away, size bonuses that determine how other skills interact with your units, and many more modular features that make every loadout and every fight feel different, chaotic, and fun.
These things are unique to each unit. For example, Goblins have lower morale than Knights.
For the first release, I plan to include 1 scenario and 2 small rosters: Bretonnians and Orcs & Goblins.
Every update will add more units, more factions, and more scenarios. Hopefully, more game modes will be added in the future as well.


A few examples of current abilities:
Lances
Grants bonus damage based on distance closed, from 200 distance and 200% bonus damage down to 50 distance and 50% bonus damage. It only works on the first attack after closing distance and does not grant a bonus below 50 distance.
Currently available to Knights of the Realm and Knights Errant, and in the future, other units as well.

Trample
When chasing down morale-broken units, you deal extra damage to them and knock them back based on size.
Currently available to Knights and Orc Boar Boyz.

Fanatics
Allows Night Goblins to store hidden Fanatics that they send out when approaching enemies. Causes a lot of chaos.

Lightning Deployment
We are planning to introduce Stormcast as well, despite them not being in older editions, simply because they are cool and we have some sick models. You can see this one in the videos.

Sweeping Blow
A cleave damage bonus that also grants knockback to your attacks, scaling against unit size. The smaller the target, the more damage and knockback it takes.


Your own size also counts for the bonus. For example, an Orc Warboss will have a bigger sweep than a Paladin using the same ability.
In the gameplay video below, you will see Orc Boar Boyz with Trample, Knights with Lances, Fanatics, Sweeping Blow for the heroes, and morale breaks.
You will also notice the Orcs mowing down Goblins that are running away. This is due to the Orcs & Goblins hierarchy:
Black Orcs, Giants, and Trolls > Orcs > Goblins and Snotlings


So if morale breaks and they flee into the ranks of the upper class, they will get attacked. You can, of course, stop them from fighting — but only for so long.

Spoiler: Watch

In this video, you can see a quick display of a different deployment method that will be available for Stormcast, as well as other shock-deployment units such as flying units.
Stormcast will be one of the first army releases after the initial release.

You can also see our Codex system. This is how we will showcase unit abilities beyond what is displayed through normal WC3 stats, as well as some lore.
The double Codex issue and some UI problems still need to be fixed, and the current spawn system is only for testing.

Spoiler: Watch

 

[Kikinsin]

Looking forward to release!

 

[UnsanctionedMagic]

I'd like to show some of the current progress made on the map as it is going very well.
We have a stable version, playable online! yay, but it is bare-bones, mostly a "freemode" that lets you spawn whatever and test whatever - it also has a built in "Unit Balancer" - which is a test feature I've added so that we can balance units on the go.

The final plan is to have 17 armies that are very modular - meaning two players can play the same army and have very different armies.
Because of that, balancing will be the longest stretch.

So here are somethings currently happening
Note in the top-right is the "freemode/debug" stuff, not part of the actual game.
Important notice - I am testing this map both on my oldass PC and a bit more modern Macbook air M1.
All the videos were taken on the PC and the fps isn't the best, on my macbook I average around 60-100fps depending on how many units
sadly no editor on Mac! I bought this laptop just for editing.


Here you can see our fire system! there are many sources of fire in the game and they all contribute to fire chaos.
As long as fire is burning units or being fed - it will spread, otherwise it will die out.
a strong enough fire will sustain smaller fires around it until it itself dies out
You will also see that when the knights charge in - the Bretonnian archers shaft the fire arrows and switch - to, well, rifles - because I havent bothered to edit the base rifleman they are based on yet so ignore the lack of arrows at that point haha.

Spoiler: Watch

In this example, you will see a Goblin Shaman (playable hero) using Brain Bursta (old-school greenskin spell adapted to this game!) to create a wave that deals damage to enemies and pushes everything (including allies and fire) in its way - Useful for getting your units into the enemy ranks and changing the direction of fire into the enemy.
Note that its based on carrion swarm right now - I still need to make my own version to fix the way the "wave" reforms at the end of the range.
Another note: My units talk a lot! here I still haven't fixed the offset for the text when he casts spells but it is fully visible now

Spoiler: Watch

Here you can see a bit how the actual fire spreads with my debug overlay - Fire has levels from 0 to 5, sources of fire will spawn level 0 fires and feed nearby fires, fire damaging units feeds fire as well - Fire starts with low hp and has negative regeneration, the lower level the faster it dies but all fire has 100 hp. when a fire heals up to 100 it levels up. level 5 fires also heal nearby fires below level 5.
I only interact with fires via script so in the future water spells and other things will be able to put out fires and of course you'll be able to buy items to grant your hero and units fire resistance.
you can see also what level of fire deals what damage - as its color coded

Spoiler: Watch

Here is an example of Orc Animosity with a debug overlay - so all the text is not part of the actual game.
What happens here is that orcs will periodically have to test animosity and if they fail they will either squabble or chase smaller stuff away - your leader can hit them to return order or you can wait it out. it happens if they don't move - and if they don't fight after a while they get extra checks.
Another part of animosity is that bigger orcs will hit smaller orcs that run away, and orcs will hit goblins and snotlings that run away - because you don't directly "Micro" control your army, it is inevitable that your orcs will kill your goblins in certain scenarios.

Spoiler: Watch

Here you can see a troll with Terror - a skill that makes units around him break morale sooner in combat depending on how much size difference there is between him and the units. Size is used for many things - also for calculating shove and push forces from spells like brain bursta.
you can also quickly see me making the troll strong enough to actually test with - as I said, most of the units are not actually made yet - just placeholders, so i had to buff him up to fight the night goblins - which are actually just peons haha.

Spoiler: Watch

Heres just a fun escape spell for the shaman - always teleports him away from danger - so away from the enemy mass.
Keep in mind that in this game - you only control your hero, your units you issue commands to but they fight in the background with their own AIs and abilities - so I plan to make heroes very fleshed out and have many different abilities to choose from and items.
You can have more than one hero though, they just cost a lot of points.

Spoiler: Watch

Here is an example of an ability you can buy for Night Goblins, if you play a Goblin only army - this is Madcap Changa, they basically smoke some mushrooms (why not, I mean who does that by why not) - start tripping balls. they become very hard to kill but basically do random shit like talk with themselves, attack thin air or just wander off - they also periodically smoke which taunts up to 3 units nearby, this causes a heavy choke point for goblins to mess around as enemies will keep trying to kill these high bastards.
Note - skills like this you will be able to activate by clicking the regiment or any unit within and clicking a popup button - so not with text like now.
Goblin only armies will have access to Nightgoblins who are either addicted to madcap or to warpstone dust (new flavor from me!) - they will hate each other, causing a lot of chaos - but more about this to come later.

Spoiler: Watch

Here we can see a Warpstone Fanatic, these are special fanatics available only when you get warpstone addicts. Normal fanatics will always be available but these come in when you have goblin only armies and you buy the opposite of the changa goblins.
Unlike normal fanatics - they are very well hidden - they trigger when their health falls below a certain point.
They deal warp damage - currently the nightgoblins don't resist it well but I plan to give the addicts damage resistance (not full) to warp, and also an explosion will trigger the units addictions, they will break loose and snort warpstone - something you can either command them to do when you want like with the changa goblins or...well, when one explodes and they start snorting without control.
warpstone addicts will be the opposite of changa goblins - highly unstable, murderous amphetamine goblins - They will also always kill changa goblins if they see them tripping - but you can have them both in the same army for sure.

Spoiler: Watch

In this Image you can see how warpstone fanatics are stored randomly in a unit and have a random detonation breakpoint, you can have a max of 2 in a unit, they will cause a chain reaction if hitting each other (so the second explosion will have a delay of a few seconds) but in the video we have 3 regiments - so up to 3 explosions can happen at the same time.

Spoiler: Watch

Here you can see part of the command scheme you will be able to use, apart from being able to click regiments and move them like normal - you can also use text commands, for example writing r1r2r3r4 selects those 4 regiments, r1 to r4. you can then say charge r5 and they will charge - or you can say r1 charge r2 etc etc.

I plan to make it broad, but also simple - and also include normal click commands, the idea is your army is not there to be micromanaged - they provide the pressure and heat in the background as your heroes tear the battlefield apart.

Spoiler: Watch

Little preview of how the pre-scenario army builder will look like, still need to make the UI of it better but the general idea is this.
A place where you buy units, equip them with stuff - buy your hero, buff him up. Also figured a great way to do model credits is straight up when you buy the units! so the credits will show there right now the layout is just a trial.

I also plan to re-use my terrain for this because every scenario will have an army theme and a center piece I can borrow for the concepts - in this case, the background castle still needs decorations as i've been neglecting terrain!

Spoiler: Watch

I hope you all enjoyed watching, whoever did bother This is turning out to be a very fun project to make.
once again sorry for the fps! this pc is junk but it runs very nice on my m1! yay.