Winter Battle V.2.9

[deepstrasz]

1. You cannot choose the race, it's dependable on a fixed start location and player slot.
2. The terrain is cramped and not nice looking.
3. Buildings are chaotically placed in the build menu.
4. The workers can go through units and buildings.
5. The Den can be built over other buildings and doodads.
6. Units and heroes are based on regular Warcraft III ones with no real custom spells or techtree.
7. The Wizard hero can be summoned again for some reason. The previous one gets removed.

The idea is nice but the execution is quite bad.

Substandard.

---

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M A P - D E S C R I P T I O N

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BB CODES
BB Codes | HIVE

MELEE MAPS
Description Guide - Melee Maps
Describing Your Melee Map
Melee Map Description Generator v1.3

MAPS IN GENERAL
The importance of a Description
Description Guide - Maps
Map Thread Guide
Map Description Making: Good & Bad
Map Description - Templates
Map Description Generator [1.2]

How to Add a Screenshot to your Map Description

ADDITIONAL NECESSARY INFORMATION

• A credits list in the map thread description is required where the names of the resource (models, skins, icons, spells, sound etc.) authors are mentioned along with the specific resource. It would be a luxury to have links leading to the used resources. Credits in the Quest Log would be appreciated too.
• A detailed changelog in the first post would be helpful to reviewers and notify fans about the newest implementations to your map.
• Map thread tags are important. Please use those that fit and not more or none.

M A P - C R E A T I O N - G U I D E S

Details

GENERAL MAPPING
A Beginner's Guide to Map Making
The Ultimate Beginners Terrain Tutorial
Advanced Terraining Tutorial
A Guideline to Terraining and the Hive's Terraining Section
Various Terraining Tips!
Basic Mapping Video Tutorial
WE Map Editor for Newbies!
The Path Of Proper Map Making - What to do and what should be avoided

MELEE MAPPING
How to create Melee Maps
General - Melee Maps like the Professionals
Competitive Melee Map
Melee mapping - The reasons behind common aspects of competitive 1v1 maps
Melee Do's and Dont's

PATHING
Pathing - Everything about it
[Terraining] Alternative Pathing Technique

LEAKS
Triggers - Memory Leaks and Custom Scripts

If you're not satisfied with the review and wish another opinion, contact the other reviewers or use the staff contact:
Wazzz
Alexen
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/staff-contact.692/

 

[All_Time_Pro]

Love this game! Super re-playable and easy to learn which a lot of custom games are missing nowadays. I'd want to see one more race added to spice it up, but as of now I thoroughly enjoy the game and the 4 races that there are!

 

[MrFrichyBoy]

1. You cannot choose the race, it's dependable on a fixed start location and player slot.
2. The terrain is cramped and not nice looking.
3. Buildings are chaotically placed in the build menu.
4. The workers can go through units and buildings.
5. The Den can be built over other buildings and doodads.
6. Units and heroes are based on regular Warcraft III ones with no real custom spells or techtree.
7. The Wizard hero can be summoned again for some reason. The previous one gets removed.

The idea is nice but the execution is quite bad.

Substandard.

---

If you want more reviews, you should participate in the The Grand Review Exchange!

R U L E S

Site Rules
Map Submission Rules


M A P - D E S C R I P T I O N

Details

BB CODES
BB Codes | HIVE

MELEE MAPS
Description Guide - Melee Maps
Describing Your Melee Map
Melee Map Description Generator v1.3

MAPS IN GENERAL
The importance of a Description
Description Guide - Maps
Map Thread Guide
Map Description Making: Good & Bad
Map Description - Templates
Map Description Generator [1.2]

How to Add a Screenshot to your Map Description

ADDITIONAL NECESSARY INFORMATION

• A credits list in the map thread description is required where the names of the resource (models, skins, icons, spells, sound etc.) authors are mentioned along with the specific resource. It would be a luxury to have links leading to the used resources. Credits in the Quest Log would be appreciated too.
• A detailed changelog in the first post would be helpful to reviewers and notify fans about the newest implementations to your map.
• Map thread tags are important. Please use those that fit and not more or none.

M A P - C R E A T I O N - G U I D E S

Details

GENERAL MAPPING
A Beginner's Guide to Map Making
The Ultimate Beginners Terrain Tutorial
Advanced Terraining Tutorial
A Guideline to Terraining and the Hive's Terraining Section
Various Terraining Tips!
Basic Mapping Video Tutorial
WE Map Editor for Newbies!
The Path Of Proper Map Making - What to do and what should be avoided

MELEE MAPPING
How to create Melee Maps
General - Melee Maps like the Professionals
Competitive Melee Map
Melee mapping - The reasons behind common aspects of competitive 1v1 maps
Melee Do's and Dont's

PATHING
Pathing - Everything about it
[Terraining] Alternative Pathing Technique

LEAKS
Triggers - Memory Leaks and Custom Scripts

If you're not satisfied with the review and wish another opinion, contact the other reviewers or use the staff contact:
Wazzz
Alexen
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/staff-contact.692/

Thanks for the review, I feel that it was a fair review for the version of Winter Battle that was out at the time. I used your feedback to improve my game!
Here is my response to each point you made.
1) I agree this is a fair complaint. To give players the option to select their races in-game is a neat idea and definitely has a lot of upside to it. The only downside is to make this possible, I would need to rework almost 80% of all the triggers and for me that is too much work for not enough reward. I do appreciate the suggestion and if I ever decide to do another update, I will add this feature!
2) I fixed this! I increased the map size by a substantial amount and I added more ground texture everywhere, more doodads, and small aesthetic details.
3) I went through every build menu, all of the building's layouts, and every heroes ability layout and cleaned & fixed them up!
4) I increased the collision size of every worker to prevent them from going through buildings and other units.
5) This one was the first thing I fixed. I changed the collision size, the pathing, and I added unbuildable terrain under all the goldmines to prevent this.
6) I added two custom hero abilities & a few semi-custom hero/unit abilities! I also added eight all custom playable units, four of them are new heroes and the other four are new units.
7) This is the only thing from your entire review that wasn't valid to beginning with. I designed it purposely this way, each player can only have one hero (each race gets the choice between two heroes now), so to prevent players from making multiple of the same hero the game randomly kills between the two repeat heroes and returns the gold & lumber cost for one of the heroes. If a player tries to make a second hero that is different from their first hero, then it will always kill the second created hero and will return the cost of the second hero to the player. To illustrate this in-game restriction, each hero says in their tooltip box that only one of them can exist at once. In addition, one of the random hints that can get displayed says you can only have one hero between the two hero options each player gets.

Once again, thank you for the review it was critical for making improvements to my game! I hope you consider giving my map another review. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the changes!

 

[deepstrasz]

1. For some reason the hero is removed after exiting.
2. Many icons turn green when the game is paused.
3. Kris Kringle and the troops engage during the entry scene. Reindeer get trapped down in the fire zone.
4. Some hints should disappear like "Build more farms to acquire more food" when you are no longer able to build anything.

There isn't much difference between this version and the previously tested one. Core issues of gameplay remain, sadly. The map is just too simple.

 

[MrFrichyBoy]

1. For some reason the hero is removed after exiting.
2. Many icons turn green when the game is paused.
3. Kris Kringle and the troops engage during the entry scene. Reindeer get trapped down in the fire zone.
4. Some hints should disappear like "Build more farms to acquire more food" when you are no longer able to build anything.

There isn't much difference between this version and the previously tested one. Core issues of gameplay remain, sadly. The map is just too simple.

I can and will fix all of these, but what do you mean by The hero is removed after exiting? Do you mean that the hero is removed after you reset the game? I’m just confused lol.
Also what do I need to do to get the rating changed for this map (more stars for the rating and being regular approved) ?

 

[deepstrasz]

what do you mean by The hero is removed after exiting? Do you mean that the hero is removed after you reset the game? I’m just confused lol.

The hero is summoned, stays 1-2 secs and disappears.

For me, the map is very simple and not that creative to get in Approved.
It would require much work to get it out of Substandard. You'd have to improve the techtrees (play some altered melee maps to get some ideas), custom abilities and script more things to make the gameplay overall better, maybe even add some game modes. Also, try making the factions non-player slot based. Maybe all players would like to battle with the rats, for example.

 

[All_Time_Pro]

Yes an UPDATE. This is gonna be good

 

[Villagerino]

@Rhapsodie, man, our models are fighting each other

 

[Wazzz]

Having taken a look at this, this is a fairly fun premise. Some areas definitely need improvement, but the core gameplay is entertaining.
There are some good improvements, such as being able to choose your race independent of starting location. When it comes to limitation of structures, however, the current execution allows you to build additional structures and the newly built structure dies upon completion. Instead, you can set the limit for certain structures and units per player to 1, which will avoid players spending resources on structures and/or units they can't get more than one of.
The Banners probably shouldn't be heroes, seeing as they presently siphon experience away from your selected hero(es) without providing anything beyond the aura they get at level 1. Nothing is really gained from these being heroes outside of being able to select them from the top bar.
At present, I am unable to get past the gates in the early game to try and take on more enemies in prep time - I do not know what I am doing wrong here, so I might be missing something.
The terrain is very basic but for this sort of gamestyle, I don't think that's so much of a problem. It can be exploited, but again I like that it can be exploited (such as using the Frost Fury's "Lotus Ice" ability to pull enemies closer to me where my roided out Ice Trolls can hit them, or using the Skaven Sniper's ability to summon clanrats right up against the unpathable terrain to force the summons out on the other side where they can act as bait).
I don't really like the randomized repositioning of the Winterland Magic Shop, although I think I get why you did that - so players are forced to be more dynamic in trying to get items and it's less competing over the same area.
Games are very quick in this, too, where even playing with extra prep time it's relatively fast paced. My main criticism of this style would be that in the early game, once you wipe out the creeps near your starting position, the game is mostly resource collection and building as much army as possible with as little lumber as you can get away with so you can maximize how much gold you have to purchase tomes and items at the Winterland Magic Shop to become as powerful as you can as quickly as possible. As it is, though, it is an enjoyable experience with some unique races.

Other minor criticism is that in some instances, there are icon errors, and in others the skin texture for a model is used as the icon. Something I haven't done for a long time myself but I can certainly relate to doing that lol. Hopefully there are better options to pick from for those

 

[MrFrichyBoy]

Having taken a look at this, this is a fairly fun premise. Some areas definitely need improvement, but the core gameplay is entertaining.
There are some good improvements, such as being able to choose your race independent of starting location. When it comes to limitation of structures, however, the current execution allows you to build additional structures and the newly built structure dies upon completion. Instead, you can set the limit for certain structures and units per player to 1, which will avoid players spending resources on structures and/or units they can't get more than one of.
The Banners probably shouldn't be heroes, seeing as they presently siphon experience away from your selected hero(es) without providing anything beyond the aura they get at level 1. Nothing is really gained from these being heroes outside of being able to select them from the top bar.
At present, I am unable to get past the gates in the early game to try and take on more enemies in prep time - I do not know what I am doing wrong here, so I might be missing something.
The terrain is very basic but for this sort of gamestyle, I don't think that's so much of a problem. It can be exploited, but again I like that it can be exploited (such as using the Frost Fury's "Lotus Ice" ability to pull enemies closer to me where my roided out Ice Trolls can hit them, or using the Skaven Sniper's ability to summon clanrats right up against the unpathable terrain to force the summons out on the other side where they can act as bait).
I don't really like the randomized repositioning of the Winterland Magic Shop, although I think I get why you did that - so players are forced to be more dynamic in trying to get items and it's less competing over the same area.
Games are very quick in this, too, where even playing with extra prep time it's relatively fast paced. My main criticism of this style would be that in the early game, once you wipe out the creeps near your starting position, the game is mostly resource collection and building as much army as possible with as little lumber as you can get away with so you can maximize how much gold you have to purchase tomes and items at the Winterland Magic Shop to become as powerful as you can as quickly as possible. As it is, though, it is an enjoyable experience with some unique races.

Other minor criticism is that in some instances, there are icon errors, and in others the skin texture for a model is used as the icon. Something I haven't done for a long time myself but I can certainly relate to doing that lol. Hopefully there are better options to pick from for those

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this for me! I appreciate your review, it was extremely fair and still provided constructive criticism.
Ahh that is great idea, a complete oversight on my behalf! I will definitely use the set limit trigger for the units, buildings, and heroes!
Absolutely the banners shouldn’t be heroes, I didn’t even consider the fact that they siphon off exp from your main heroes! Thank you for pointing that out !
So with the gates not opening for the other bosses, their is a reason for this! They are bosses designed for two players to beat, so you have to select the game mode 2vs2.
Glad you enjoy the game, that means a lot to me that someone out there enjoys my content! You have any tips for me to improve the terrain and to make the game more interactive after you finish fighting your creeps? Btw when you select 2vs2 with extra time, you don’t have much extra time after you defeat the co-op boss/es, so the extra time isn’t necessarily a problem with these game modes selected.
Any chance you could point out the icons that have issues, so I can correct them?

Once again I appreciate your review! Your feedback will be super important for the next update !

 

[Wazzz]

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this for me! I appreciate your review, it was extremely fair and still provided constructive criticism.
Ahh that is great idea, a complete oversight on my behalf! I will definitely use the set limit trigger for the units, buildings, and heroes!
Absolutely the banners shouldn’t be heroes, I didn’t even consider the fact that they siphon off exp from your main heroes! Thank you for pointing that out !
So with the gates not opening for the other bosses, their is a reason for this! They are bosses designed for two players to beat, so you have to select the game mode 2vs2.
Glad you enjoy the game, that means a lot to me that someone out there enjoys my content! You have any tips for me to improve the terrain and to make the game more interactive after you finish fighting your creeps? Btw when you select 2vs2 with extra time, you don’t have much extra time after you defeat the co-op boss/es, so the extra time isn’t necessarily a problem with these game modes selected.
Any chance you could point out the icons that have issues, so I can correct them?

Once again I appreciate your review! Your feedback will be super important for the next update !

AH, I suspected there must be a reason those gates hadn't opened haha

So Icons that had the Green Icon error were:

Frost

• DEN
• Winter Wizard

Flame

• Chaos Centaur

Human

• SwordMaster

Those were for the BTNs. In some cases, the DISBTNs also suffer from these, which occurs for the Firestarter in the Flame faction, and every unit and hero in the Skaven faction.

 

[MrFrichyBoy]

AH, I suspected there must be a reason those gates hadn't opened haha

So Icons that had the Green Icon error were:

Frost

• DEN
• Winter Wizard

Flame

• Chaos Centaur

Human

• SwordMaster

Those were for the BTNs. In some cases, the DISBTNs also suffer from these, which occurs for the Firestarter in the Flame faction, and every unit and hero in the Skaven faction.

Awesome this will save me a butt load of time, thank you !!
You have any tips for improving the terrain and making the game overall more fun?

 

[Wazzz]

Not too many comes to mind from my end in terms of this sort of playstyle - it is quite different to what I ordinarily work with. At present it is short, relatively simple, and with an option to replay the game after beating it without having to reload a lobby. Those are all good points in its favour, and the terrain is likely to be a function over form sort of deal. If you want to prevent the exploits that I used, you could go for line-of-sight blockers to stop players from seeing enemies they shouldn't be able to get access to.

If I were to optimize the way workers are handled, I might even make them free and cost 0 food. They're limited to 3 at any time anyway, and at present it is a balancing act to try and detonate them before the timer runs out. If they cost nothing to begin with (or you even start out with your limit of three workers and have the option to rebuild them, maybe still for 10 gold to punish losing them to creeps), then that may help the flow a bit. I think even if you don't necessarily pick the extended time, a lot of the early game is going to be collecting resources after you've cleared the creeps to get as many units as you can while saving up as much gold as you can. In that stage of the game it is arguably at its "least exciting", which is fine imo since it still plays into building an army and managing your resources to the best of your abilities.

Outside of that, I would be wary to make sure that the creeps for each player location offers the same amount of experience. Otherwise there will be an optimal starting location where a particular player's spot will be slightly (or much) better off in leveling than the others. That's in the event you haven't already done this, which you might have.