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Water's Footmen Wars - Beta
By WaterKnight
Foreword
Preview/Minimap
Game Principle
Data and Facts
Features
Market and Mercenary Camp may be swapped due to randomness
Townhall
Here do your spawns originate from. Each spawn has food costs and there is a maximum, so the max army size is capped. Was neither good for performance nor for gameplay when half of the map was stuffed with units.
Your base (townhall) comes with three spells. One is like a rejuvenation for heroes that is cancelled when taking damage, a healing aura for units and the possibility to increase your spawn rates while constantly spending money until you stop it again. This building can sell the so-called Reserves, see below at -->Mercenaries.
Tiers
The townhall you choose in the beginning can be upgraded up to three times, this makes four tiers. Each tier features another unit spawn but you can also train the previous ones if you click it and wait for its progress bar to fill. The automatical spawn will then be adjusted, you do not need to constantly queue your desired type except if you want to change it frequently. In general, the spawns of a higher tier are stronger but there are some rock-paper-scissors concepts among the races and mixing up a bit could be useful. Another ingrendient of this mix can also be the caster type spawn, every race has one starting at tier 1. These have some special spells that should find their use throughout the game. Other spawns also have abilities/half of them are passive/automatical but they need to be researched and just have other effects.
Higher tiers also enable some higher researches and increase the maximum of food.
Research Center
When your townhall is finished a Research Center will immediately appear next to it. This contains some upgrades for your units, your heroes and other stuff.
Races
Presently, Human, Orc, Undead, Night Elf and Naga make up the races. Apparently, there were already enough resources for them to not import unfitting stuff
. They differ in spawns and appearances. The Master Wizard, that has its own paragraph further below, is able to downgrade your townhall, so you can repick your race.
Heroes
Aside from unit spawns you can have a hero... or two. The first one is for free, a second one can be bought via research. Each hero has two abilities from the beginning (one of them must be unlocked via a research though) and can learn up to four other, levelable skills, one of them an ultimate. The hero levels up by gaining experience points from battles. Each stage gives him additional attribute points and a skill point to spend. The maximum hero level is 20. Most hero spells benefit from hero attributes, so you can specialize/boost your abilities a bit by selecting the right items but I do not know yet whether I decrease this because high level heroes can get very strong at the moment in comparison to lower ones, maybe I limit this feature to depend on bonus values only or change something at the attribute augmentation.
Items
Your hero can carry items, indeed up to five ones (+3 with research). The first hero gains the commonly known Town Portal item as well as a healing potion. A second one gets nothing but all heroes that are chosen by random are rewarded with a delicious Lollipop item, a little life and mana regeneration boost.
There are various shops, a Goblin Merchant, that trades charged items, and a Workshop, that provides mechanical gadgets are located in each of the base corners. You can find the Secondhand Dealer in the sideways that connect said bases. It's stuffed with all sort of things but mainly has items that are used in item sets. The last item shops are the Market (2x) and the Fountain/Wishing Well and are situated in the focal point. They have - well - items that I thought should better be bought in the center, items with unique effects, medium to high prices, some are for sets but there are also usables for a quick purchase when being in a brawl.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are units that you can buy in shops for money. There is a mercenary camp in the center that houses most of them. You can find the mechanical Glaive Thrower and the Siege Tin in the Workshop, though and Spider Egg and Chimera Egg are items that conjure summons with a limited time span or the Illusionary Staff from the Secondhand Dealer creates illusions. Most of the mercenaries have at least one ability, indeed the map is higgledy-piggledy.
One more special mercenary is a group of gnolls, called Reserves, that can be bought at the townhall. They are for defensive purposes or a fast attack since they highly jam the food supply that is needed for normal spawns and of course they are usually weaker than normal spawns. To get rid of them again, they can execute their Suicide ability to leave the battleground.
And then there is a one-time summon per team, the Unit Shredder 3000 yearns for its assignment. It's located right in front of the Workshop, can be usable to deny your units while standing there but hopefully finds its final destination in a climax.
Fountain/Wishing Well
The central located Fountain, maybe I rename it to Wishing Well, functions as a shop and restores mana to nearby units and heroes. If there is no enemy around, it also grants your heroes experience points. This was necessarily implemented to adversely affect base bunkering, to reduce the focus from the sideways a bit and to turn it more into a King of the Hill-style.
Creeps
That's another King of the Hill-aspect. You can get yourself in concern with some neutral creep units that are in front of the central Markets and Mercenary Camps to obtain some gold/experience. Creeps usually sleep all day long until someone wakes them. When being killed, they respawn after a while.
Revaluation
Another little feature: Not only your heroes but also your spawns (and Reserves) can level up. They can reach Silver and Gold State which recolor them and grant them additional attribute values. To get to these states, they need to slay enemies, the amount depending on the own food cost. Silver requires twice the cost, Gold four times. Maybe I change this to depend on the eliminated enemy's food usage rather than on the own one. Food is a general indicator for a spawns approximate strength.
Master Wizard
Each team has their own master wizard that cowers in the very edge of the base corner. He can cast some global spells that should increase the gameplay dynamics. Every player can control it, he has a shared mana pool but because of technical issues only one player at a time can select him, its indicated by the currently controlling player's color. Frankly, the Master Wizard is the most shaky feature for me at the moment. He is not well visible, nor precisely controlled in team and therefore often forgotten but it's not like I could divide his special abilities in separate players' accounts.
Special Drops
Normal drops are gold and experience. What are special drops then? Currently they are runes and gold coins. They randomly spawn when a unit ceases to be at the victim's position. They can be picked up or else, after 30 seconds, just vanish. Gold coins donate some extra money, runes refill life/mana of nearby allied units or buff them with a short invulnerability spell.
Mystical Towers
These are some towers that are stationed in front of the sideway entrances. Their Mystical Attack ability turns attacks to take relative amounts of life - and also of mana. The first player of the team is in charge of them but won gold through kills are distributed.
Screenshots
Download
By WaterKnight
Foreword
This is my other bigger project besides Defend Wintercastle (see signature). It's older and in the beta state. Soon there will be a demo of DWC and I am planning to upgrade my Footmen Wars afterwards. I do not think that I can fix its performance problems too well but I am willing to transform the code with some new techniques I obtained while progging for DWC. The name is currently just plain Water's Footmen Wars because this map does not focus on any special innovation that would alter the Footmen Wars genre nor does it have a serious topic, maybe I should call it Colorful Footmen Wars or Jolly Footmen Wars or something along those lines. However, I use to spend some time into concepts, take different approaches and also change them later on. Another reason for the name is that I as a mapmaker liked it in the old times when they included their name in the map title, gave it an emotional/individual touch and you contemporarily knew who has made it.
Since somebody questioned why I selected the Footy genre, I am willing to give some history:
The reason I chose Footmen Wars is not because I thought it would attract people. There was already the hyped Footmen Frenzy when I decided to start it, that overshadowed other maps, but, including this one, all maps of that genre seemed cheap or imbalanced to me. Furthermore, I found it an easy basic concept for fun or maybe even tournament maps and which could be extended, it is a platform for characters, spells and items that can be implemented more module-wise, similar to AoS. Well, I wanted a direct PvP-map and AoS had better representatives than Footmen Wars, so I selected the second one. However, I am not reluctant to AoS for its more epic and tournament features.
This project also had some prequels over the years. Well, I had breaks in the progress and meanwhile learned more about mapmaking, thus started new from scratch then with complete new concepts. As you can read from the original thread, I presented the current one at the end of 2006, again did not work the whole time but had some waves of effort that shaped and reshaped the map without a new start.
Time is limited and there are also other projects I want to work on. However, this one is a bit special as it is my first big project in comparison to others and at least in the past I decided to challenge it alone, without directly having one changing any of its data or intentionally creating importable material. Defend Wintercastle differs. There I wanted to have a team right from the start, do more of direction work but also participate in everything where needed. Unfortunately, I could not win anybody for a serious assistance, they all eventually had no time/lost interest and since it was up to me then, the techniques now are very custom and directly editing gameplay aspects in objects/triggers would not work for others unless they have a high skill and I do some introductions first.
Since somebody questioned why I selected the Footy genre, I am willing to give some history:
The reason I chose Footmen Wars is not because I thought it would attract people. There was already the hyped Footmen Frenzy when I decided to start it, that overshadowed other maps, but, including this one, all maps of that genre seemed cheap or imbalanced to me. Furthermore, I found it an easy basic concept for fun or maybe even tournament maps and which could be extended, it is a platform for characters, spells and items that can be implemented more module-wise, similar to AoS. Well, I wanted a direct PvP-map and AoS had better representatives than Footmen Wars, so I selected the second one. However, I am not reluctant to AoS for its more epic and tournament features.
This project also had some prequels over the years. Well, I had breaks in the progress and meanwhile learned more about mapmaking, thus started new from scratch then with complete new concepts. As you can read from the original thread, I presented the current one at the end of 2006, again did not work the whole time but had some waves of effort that shaped and reshaped the map without a new start.
Time is limited and there are also other projects I want to work on. However, this one is a bit special as it is my first big project in comparison to others and at least in the past I decided to challenge it alone, without directly having one changing any of its data or intentionally creating importable material. Defend Wintercastle differs. There I wanted to have a team right from the start, do more of direction work but also participate in everything where needed. Unfortunately, I could not win anybody for a serious assistance, they all eventually had no time/lost interest and since it was up to me then, the techniques now are very custom and directly editing gameplay aspects in objects/triggers would not work for others unless they have a high skill and I do some introductions first.
Preview/Minimap
Game Principle
Four teams à three players clash in a narrow terrain. Each can pick their race by raising a townhall. The townhall spawns units in intervals that can be thrown in battle then. Target is to get rid of all enemies's townhalls.
You can also do a 6on6. It's to be considered then that the group of players in a corner is called a Team and the big union of allied players is called an Alliance. Even if you have a bigger alliance than a team, some game contents/descriptions refer to a team and vice-versa some refer to an alliance.
You can also do a 6on6. It's to be considered then that the group of players in a corner is called a Team and the big union of allied players is called an Alliance. Even if you have a bigger alliance than a team, some game contents/descriptions refer to a team and vice-versa some refer to an alliance.
Data and Facts
Name: Water's Footmen Wars
Map Size: 96*96 (Small)
Tileset: Cityscape
Language: English
Player number: 12
Protection: there is an optimized (and thus protected) version and an editor version for these that want to learn something from behind the scenes
Original thread: http://warcraft.ingame.de/forum/showthread.php?t=143691 (german)
Map Size: 96*96 (Small)
Tileset: Cityscape
Language: English
Player number: 12
Protection: there is an optimized (and thus protected) version and an editor version for these that want to learn something from behind the scenes
Original thread: http://warcraft.ingame.de/forum/showthread.php?t=143691 (german)
Features
Market and Mercenary Camp may be swapped due to randomness
Townhall
Here do your spawns originate from. Each spawn has food costs and there is a maximum, so the max army size is capped. Was neither good for performance nor for gameplay when half of the map was stuffed with units.
Your base (townhall) comes with three spells. One is like a rejuvenation for heroes that is cancelled when taking damage, a healing aura for units and the possibility to increase your spawn rates while constantly spending money until you stop it again. This building can sell the so-called Reserves, see below at -->Mercenaries.
Tiers
The townhall you choose in the beginning can be upgraded up to three times, this makes four tiers. Each tier features another unit spawn but you can also train the previous ones if you click it and wait for its progress bar to fill. The automatical spawn will then be adjusted, you do not need to constantly queue your desired type except if you want to change it frequently. In general, the spawns of a higher tier are stronger but there are some rock-paper-scissors concepts among the races and mixing up a bit could be useful. Another ingrendient of this mix can also be the caster type spawn, every race has one starting at tier 1. These have some special spells that should find their use throughout the game. Other spawns also have abilities/half of them are passive/automatical but they need to be researched and just have other effects.
Higher tiers also enable some higher researches and increase the maximum of food.
Research Center
When your townhall is finished a Research Center will immediately appear next to it. This contains some upgrades for your units, your heroes and other stuff.
Races
Presently, Human, Orc, Undead, Night Elf and Naga make up the races. Apparently, there were already enough resources for them to not import unfitting stuff
. They differ in spawns and appearances. The Master Wizard, that has its own paragraph further below, is able to downgrade your townhall, so you can repick your race.Heroes
Aside from unit spawns you can have a hero... or two. The first one is for free, a second one can be bought via research. Each hero has two abilities from the beginning (one of them must be unlocked via a research though) and can learn up to four other, levelable skills, one of them an ultimate. The hero levels up by gaining experience points from battles. Each stage gives him additional attribute points and a skill point to spend. The maximum hero level is 20. Most hero spells benefit from hero attributes, so you can specialize/boost your abilities a bit by selecting the right items but I do not know yet whether I decrease this because high level heroes can get very strong at the moment in comparison to lower ones, maybe I limit this feature to depend on bonus values only or change something at the attribute augmentation.
Items
Your hero can carry items, indeed up to five ones (+3 with research). The first hero gains the commonly known Town Portal item as well as a healing potion. A second one gets nothing but all heroes that are chosen by random are rewarded with a delicious Lollipop item, a little life and mana regeneration boost.
There are various shops, a Goblin Merchant, that trades charged items, and a Workshop, that provides mechanical gadgets are located in each of the base corners. You can find the Secondhand Dealer in the sideways that connect said bases. It's stuffed with all sort of things but mainly has items that are used in item sets. The last item shops are the Market (2x) and the Fountain/Wishing Well and are situated in the focal point. They have - well - items that I thought should better be bought in the center, items with unique effects, medium to high prices, some are for sets but there are also usables for a quick purchase when being in a brawl.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are units that you can buy in shops for money. There is a mercenary camp in the center that houses most of them. You can find the mechanical Glaive Thrower and the Siege Tin in the Workshop, though and Spider Egg and Chimera Egg are items that conjure summons with a limited time span or the Illusionary Staff from the Secondhand Dealer creates illusions. Most of the mercenaries have at least one ability, indeed the map is higgledy-piggledy.
One more special mercenary is a group of gnolls, called Reserves, that can be bought at the townhall. They are for defensive purposes or a fast attack since they highly jam the food supply that is needed for normal spawns and of course they are usually weaker than normal spawns. To get rid of them again, they can execute their Suicide ability to leave the battleground.
And then there is a one-time summon per team, the Unit Shredder 3000 yearns for its assignment. It's located right in front of the Workshop, can be usable to deny your units while standing there but hopefully finds its final destination in a climax.
Fountain/Wishing Well
The central located Fountain, maybe I rename it to Wishing Well, functions as a shop and restores mana to nearby units and heroes. If there is no enemy around, it also grants your heroes experience points. This was necessarily implemented to adversely affect base bunkering, to reduce the focus from the sideways a bit and to turn it more into a King of the Hill-style.
Creeps
That's another King of the Hill-aspect. You can get yourself in concern with some neutral creep units that are in front of the central Markets and Mercenary Camps to obtain some gold/experience. Creeps usually sleep all day long until someone wakes them. When being killed, they respawn after a while.
Revaluation
Another little feature: Not only your heroes but also your spawns (and Reserves) can level up. They can reach Silver and Gold State which recolor them and grant them additional attribute values. To get to these states, they need to slay enemies, the amount depending on the own food cost. Silver requires twice the cost, Gold four times. Maybe I change this to depend on the eliminated enemy's food usage rather than on the own one. Food is a general indicator for a spawns approximate strength.
Master Wizard
Each team has their own master wizard that cowers in the very edge of the base corner. He can cast some global spells that should increase the gameplay dynamics. Every player can control it, he has a shared mana pool but because of technical issues only one player at a time can select him, its indicated by the currently controlling player's color. Frankly, the Master Wizard is the most shaky feature for me at the moment. He is not well visible, nor precisely controlled in team and therefore often forgotten but it's not like I could divide his special abilities in separate players' accounts.
Special Drops
Normal drops are gold and experience. What are special drops then? Currently they are runes and gold coins. They randomly spawn when a unit ceases to be at the victim's position. They can be picked up or else, after 30 seconds, just vanish. Gold coins donate some extra money, runes refill life/mana of nearby allied units or buff them with a short invulnerability spell.
Mystical Towers
These are some towers that are stationed in front of the sideway entrances. Their Mystical Attack ability turns attacks to take relative amounts of life - and also of mana. The first player of the team is in charge of them but won gold through kills are distributed.
Screenshots
Download
0.81e Beta
Old Versions:
0.81 Beta (Editor)
There are some more old versions in the original thread.
Old Versions:
0.81 Beta (Editor)
There are some more old versions in the original thread.
Last edited:
