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Zephyr Challenge #7 - Poll

Vote for your favourite entry!

  • gaby-boy - [url=http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/arena-226/zephyr-challenge-7-a-170461/index7.html

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • InfinateAnswers - [url=http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/arena-226/zephyr-challenge-7-a-170461/inde

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Spencenator's [url=http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/arena-226/zephyr-challenge-7-a-170461/index6.h

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Beast(trOg)'s [url=http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/arena-226/zephyr-challenge-7-a-170461/index7.h

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Scorpion182's [url=http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/arena-226/zephyr-challenge-7-a-170461/index5.h

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    39
  • Poll closed .
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Contest Theme: Nature


Contestants created a spell which fits the theme of nature, meaning the nature element was incorporated into their spell somehow and it must be fairly obvious. An example of a blizzard made nature spell would be "Force of Nature", where it turns surrounding trees into treant summons.

Hey look, it took me less than a week to get the poll up! :D

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  • Each user can only vote once in the poll.
  • You cannot vote for yourself. If a voter has the same IP as the author then the vote will not be counted and it may result in the disqualification of the entry.
  • You cannot create multiple accounts to vote for an entry in the poll. If a voter has been found to be using multiple accounts none of the voters votes will count in the final result.
  • You cannot bribe users for votes. Contestants who break this rule will be disqualified and given negative reputation.
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  • First Place: 40 reputation points and a special award icon
  • Second Place: 30 reputation points
  • Third Place: 10 reputation points

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  • Berb
  • Deaod
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Coding
Is the code leakless, organized, MUI, multi-level supporting?30/100

The Big Idea
Is the spell balanced, unique, and useful in game-play?30/100

Visuals
Do the visual effects match the spell? Do the effects provide unnecessary clutter (too many), or are the not enough? Do the visual contribute in a positive manner?15/100

Presentation and Polish
Is the spell bugless; does it work? Is the tooltip well-written, and is a fitting icon chosen? Does the spell fit into WC3?15/100

Legal
Does the spell follow all contest rules?10/100

70 % of the winner shall be determined by the contest's appointed judge(s).
30 % of the winner shall be determined by the results of a public poll.​
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Inviting your friends to vote for you, bribing random members with rep and otherwise cheating with the VB poll system will get you DISQUALIFIED, BANNED from future contests, -REPPED, and possibly INFRACTED. So don't do it!

This includes, but is not limited to, sending PMs out to various users, getting other people to send those PMs, advertising this contest on other sites with the intention to gain more votes (whether it is explicitly stated or not), and so on. If you are suspected of cheating, the staff will notify you and interrogate you (hopefully) over PMs. <3​
 
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Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
I will vote. I just got a few days back in schedule of what I am suppose to do. I have browsed through about 6 of them, and I am not planning to stop checking. Don't expect it today though :7 maybe when I have waken up later.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
Okay, here is my small review and what was plus and minus on the spells (short speaking what I accepted and what I somewhat did not accept as much, and some which is kind of neutral are excluded). I wont be saying much about the code unless it is something specific.

Disclaimer:
*I do not think spells should have overlong tooltips. Thus all spells here which I thought is having so, is given a comment about it.
*Since the judges aren't supposed to penalize GUI over Jass, I will not do so either. But there is a difference if I see inefficient code in both of the cases relatively their standards.
*I hope I have been objective enough. Nothing is personal at all.

Klingo
[+] The overall idea seems to work, though abit relying on chance.
[-] The tooltip was overall long, and contained grammar and typo mistakes.
[-] Somewhat the novaeffect does not always seem to be at the same position as the projectile when it dies. I could be wrong.
[-] The parabola effect do look abit croppy still, and the projectiles does not look well showing partly above ground once they die.

xD.Schurke
[+] Fitting tooltip, no complaint on that.
[+] Although the "effect behind unit while moving" is not original in itself, together with the idea and the visual appeal it is pulled of great.
[+] Well thought, would work strategetly well with microing and such.
[+] Love the overall graphical effect, looks really nice.

Maker
[+] A pretty cool idea, with the raccoons and all.
[-] The learning tooltip could provide much more information that it does, and the actual cast tooltip could be smaller.
[-] Not sure I personally think the visual appeal is enough for me.
[-] The raccoons do seem to have issues, as they are not entirely obeying what they are suppose to do. That is usually a case with units owned by neutral players.

gaby-boy
[+] Effects are nice.
[-] The spell is not balanced enough in my opinion. Despite the chance, the projectiles move so fast, that the odds of a tree spawning is high enough anyway to make it imbalanced.
[-] Grammar and line break mistakes in your tooltip. And I don't like the tooltip color in general (and the variation of colors, it do look abit unserious).

hvo-busterkomo
[+] Liked the idea, and well smooth dynamics in it (uh yeah something like that)
[+] Matching tooltip.
[-] Was less appealing in visual aspects. The lightning you added since last time was much better, but it looked like it had the wrong Z-height for me.
[-] Small typo next to the hotkey in the tooltip. I do also think that the final third rows of the tooltip (the revolve, radius and speed of the effect) is something I would have left out, they seem to be more of describing the mechanics/constants, and might be irrelevant for the user.

Xiliger
[+] A plus for the code, it readability was really great, even by just eyeing through it.
[+] Effect was great with a minor complaints
[+] Idea is pulled off well, with a matching tooltip
[-] Did see some weird behaviour when casting the spell multiply times, such as sometimes the healing bolt spawned at times where the caster/cast was affected by no units nearby at all (potentially by themselves?).
[-] It would have been looked great if the projectiles casted from an enemy to the "nova pools" moved more smooth and begun spawning on a higher z-height.

ZIR
[-] The spell concept was too simple, and it has been seen before in Dota for instance.
[-] I don't understand the point in converting the spell to custom script to rewrite some stuff in jass, while you leave all other BJ and the code format left. You also leak a group in your spell.
[-] How should I guess the learn and use hotkey is B? You don't show any indication ingame that it even has a hotkey.
[-] It needs more graphical appeal.

InfinateAnswers
[-] I saw alot of things I didn't like. First of all it could need some polish on the graphical appeal. The "impale" effect didn't look too great, and the splash effect just became a mess all over the place "overspammed". The tree could have some sort of explosion when it died.
[-] The tooltip lacked, both the learn tooltip and the normal one. The learn forgot to mention any level specific details of what effect the spell have, and the normal one lacks in "row breaks" as using backspace as row breaking is not a good choice, since it doesn't result to an actual line break on all computers. Different resolutions and so on makes it useless, so instead, use |n for line breaks.
[-] The triggers had plenty of leaks, and you didn't remove any of them.

Spencenator
[+] I do like your idea, and I seem to not have been able to reproduce the ! mark issue that others had before.
[-] The tooltip is way too long. And telling that the treants have ADD sounds more like the spell is a joke to me. I would use another "language".
[-] While the graphic appeal was overall nice, I would really pull down the final nova explosion effect when the treants land. It is "overspammed".
[-] The code could greatly be improved. Example, an algorithm could be used to determine the countdown text instead of recopy and paste the actions.

Beast(TrOg)
[+] Pretty creative idea, and the terrain assimilation looks nice. All in all I thought they would bug up, but they actually didn't!
[+] Visually appealing
[+] Tooltip looks ok, and the icon fits well.

Scorpion182
[+] Looks great.
[-] (However) I am not sure I like the tooltip being that huge, other than that, it has major flaws lying about the correct data values, (range, dps, amount of targets, mana cost, all of those), see lvl 2 and lvl 3 tooltip and compare it with the lvl 1 tooltip and the learn tooltip.
[-] The spell is in my opinion, needing balancing.

Ash Darkside
[-] Like alot of people here, there seem to be a trend about long tooltips. They don't need to be overdescibable. Either that or the effect of the spell is overcomplex to not be explained well in a few words.
[-] [Apologizing any accusations made, so edited]. The permanent terrain change doesn't look all that nice to me, and does not fit together with the roots.
[-] The way you store the location in a hashtable, to right after load it multiply times in the same trigger, is really not a good way of efficiency. I understand that it gives MUIness to pass it over to different triggers, but inside the same trigger (with no waits anyway) is not the best way to do it.

Cweener
[+] The effects are nice, though...
[-] The spell is too simple as concept and by judging the code itself. You also forgot to null the group variable in your code.
[-] In my opinion, a bad choice of coloring of the tooltip. I also think the tooltip could have been slightly more well formed.

Dubey
[+] The effect is okay.
[-] For me, it doesn't stand out. It looks like a ordinary blizzard spell, modified slightly (let go for the effects, but those are heavily relied on the model imports)
[-] The tooltip is ok, but it do suffer from picky me. There is a line break too much between the "Level specific" lines.
[-] The code could need some polish.

Kercyn and WherewolfTherewolf
Seems like you have been placed on the poll by accident as the spells are unfinished.

Now, if you think that my commenting became too inconsistent (as I am not directly pointing out the exact same things on all the spells), I still had no problem deciding who would get my vote.
My top favorites are made by xD.Schurke, Xiliger and Beast(trOg). If I would have been able to vote on all of you, I would have done so.
xD.Schurke gets my vote however. It was the idea and usefulness of his spell, and the overall effects of it that made him get my vote, and I thought it was the most polished one.
 
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Level 9
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
233
[-] The code could greatly be improved. Example, an algorithm could be used to determine the countdown text instead of recopy and paste the actions.

yeah... I may have left some things overcomplicated. I was in a "massive system mood" when I joined this because I was previously developing a space AOS map with a totally custom combat system. Although that little mistake up there was before I learned the function "run trigger (ignoring conditions)." And of course you didn't get that bug, I fixed it two versions ago :D.

EDIT: And no, my space aos isn't as overcomplicated. I've learned some things since and have gone through and cleaned up. Harr harr, hopefully I'll do better next time! speaking of which, when is the next spell/hero contest?
 
Level 3
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
41
This is a quick review with the most important noticeable things. I didn't look at the coding, I simply tested the spells and gave the results I obtained from the quick testing I did.

Beast (TrOg): very nice spell, but a little imbalanced (low mana cost and short cooldown). The tree could be killed easily before it spread its roots (which took it some time).

Xiliger: For some reason, the map didn't work (once I press the start button, the screen goes back to map selection!).

hvo-busterkomo: due to the use of not vary nature like effects, it felt more like a spell for a necromancer than that of nature (especially with the damaging effects –finger of pain and raise corpse). It also affected corpses (if the spell is cast while being near a corpse, it shoes the damaging visuals on the corpse).
It has no mana cost too.

xD.Schurke: not a very practical spell, enemies could consume the blossoms too. The spell looked like rejuvenation with some gardening touch.

InfinateAnswers: The spell is interesting, but not very well made since it bugged a little (the trees didn't die with acorn sometimes and they weren't spawned at all the second time I used the spell). And the casting rang is so short that it is frustrating.

Kercyn: HUH!

Scorpion182: Incredibly overpowered, but very cool. By the way, you have a problem with the tool tip (you don't have to mention what the other levels do in the normal tool tip, that is only needed in the learning tool tip. And there is also a type error in it).

ZIR: a decent submission, even though it was done before, you still did well and you deserve credit. It is simple and nice.

Maker: Funny concept, but not very well executed. The spell isn't MUI (at least not on my PC). The racoons don't come if there is no units which doesn't match the concept (I know that you made the number of racoons= number of targets, but you need to maintain the coherence of the concept).

Cweener: nice idea but highly overpowered on a multitude of levels.

Spencenator: nice and funny spell, a little overpowered (takes health and mana) better choices for the icons and the targeting effect are available.

gaby-boy: Amazing spell, but highly overpowered since you can raise an army for 85 mana every 15 second.

Klingo: Very beautiful spell even if a little unreliable it is well balanced. Only problem is that when the hero dies, the fruits continue to spawn from the ground!

Eccho: I drop my hat for you sir; simple, elegant and beautiful. The only things I can say against it are that you gave the spell to a ranged attacker decreasing its efficiency significantly and that it wasn't as epic as I hoped for (considering the fuss over it here).

In the end, I thank every one who made an extra effort to make testing the spell easy. For everyone else, I hope the judges would punish you for being too lazy (especially some one who bothered to write his initials all over the map and didn’t bother with a trigger to spawn more enemies or put more then one caster).

I'd also like to give salute Werewolftherewolf for his effort, it would have got my vote if you completed it, better luck next time.

I am not voting by the way and would like to ask those who would vote to test every entry and comment on the once they thought were nice, just saying Eccho wins isn't nice for the rest of us who put effort in participating.
Good luck everyone and see you all in the next challenge.
 
Level 23
Joined
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Messages
2,482
The only things I can say against it are that you gave the spell to a ranged attacker decreasing its efficiency significantly and that it wasn't as epic as I hoped for (considering the fuss over it here).
meh:p

And yes, this is a beauty contest poll and I think my doll won it. It is good however, that it only weights 30%.
And yes, I totally agreed that people should learn to have reasonable comments posted before they cast their vote.
 
Level 12
Joined
Mar 18, 2008
Messages
865
I am not voting by the way and would like to ask those who would vote to test every entry and comment on the once they thought were nice, just saying Eccho wins isn't nice for the rest of us who put effort in participating.

Most of the guys who voted for Eccho probably tried all the spells first. However, when I voted I was kind of lazy to comment on the spells, I'll leave it to the judges.
 
Level 18
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
2,552
Ladies I'd like you to participate in a poll. The poll may get larger depending on your participation.

But seriously this poll is very very long; not to mention where the heck is Deaod?
 
I have to ask, how exactly am I supposed to "present" the winner? Do I have to show my reviews of each and every spell or is it simply my decision that counts?

Send it in a PM either to me or TriggerHappy so we can calculate the final results and put everything nicely together in a results thread.
 
Level 18
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
2,552
Okay, but me and Deaod were still supposed to correspond our results so that we could come to an average, not just a potentially bias decision that's entirely up to me. Am I the sole judge of this contest now?
 
Level 18
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
2,552
Yea that's why I'm questioning whether he is still a judge for the contest. In order to get as accurate a judgment as possible it would be necessary for me and Deaod to combine our thoughts and come to a fair decision that has been balanced between both of us. If it's just going to be me then I will still need to consult to the marking grid that is outlined in the first post - so far my reviews are nothing but comments and my own marking scheme.
 
Level 48
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
8,416
Berb, you and Deaod can share completely different opinions. It always happens and that's the most important part of judging. While you can think that a spell is absolutely great and give it full points, he can think it's totally crap and give it no points, at all. All that needs to be done is that both of you judge by the same judging criteria.
 
Level 18
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
2,552
I'm sorry I have been completely occupied with fixing my installation of Windows. I tried to backup as much of it as I could but I didn't have many of the original setup files so I've had to transfer data back and forth through my external drive. I haven't even reinstalled Warcraft III yet, but I've copied all of the documents related to anything recent (and shit like My Pictures and My Documents) so once I've installed/updated all my shit I'll be back in action.
 
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