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- Nov 26, 2006
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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.
Well this contest kinda flopped. The only results I have are Berb's top 2 and then the poll results.
Here's some judging though it doesn't have points and was written by a contestant.
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.
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.
Also Berb's top 2:
POLLINATION
General Theme
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* Fits well with the contest theme. The idea appeals to me as original and satisfactory.
Presentation
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* Effects well executed. Fade on the flowers is excellent. The buff that is shown on affected
enemies is a little off, however, in my opinion.
* The secondary effect on enemies that die while under the effects of "Pollination" is a good
touch, adding the perfect amount of "complexity" to the ability without being over
complicated.
* In terms of the theme, this spell as a whole fits very well. It is what I would call a "nature
nova" in other words. It does not appear to have any serious problems with being casted
in repetition, or in other bug-prone areas - performs properly, as it should.
SCORE 8.5/10
- The 1.5 points were lost because the spell lacked an inspiritational aspect,
and because I did not really like the model that was given to the buff/ability.
Internal
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* Documentation at the top is very informative and useful, and presents the script well.
* A little more commentation throughout the code could have been added on the longer,
more complicated methods/functions.
* The code is well separated modularly into divisions that represent different aspects or
components that make up the ability. This makes the code very easy to follow and
simplifies things as they should be. Very well done.
SCORE 10/10
- I'm not going to dock you any marks for your script. As much as this contest
is concerned, this is exactly how this type of ability should be scripted.
General Theme
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* Fits well with the contest theme. The idea appeals to me as original and satisfactory.
Presentation
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* Effects well executed. Fade on the flowers is excellent. The buff that is shown on affected
enemies is a little off, however, in my opinion.
* The secondary effect on enemies that die while under the effects of "Pollination" is a good
touch, adding the perfect amount of "complexity" to the ability without being over
complicated.
* In terms of the theme, this spell as a whole fits very well. It is what I would call a "nature
nova" in other words. It does not appear to have any serious problems with being casted
in repetition, or in other bug-prone areas - performs properly, as it should.
SCORE 8.5/10
- The 1.5 points were lost because the spell lacked an inspiritational aspect,
and because I did not really like the model that was given to the buff/ability.
Internal
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* Documentation at the top is very informative and useful, and presents the script well.
* A little more commentation throughout the code could have been added on the longer,
more complicated methods/functions.
* The code is well separated modularly into divisions that represent different aspects or
components that make up the ability. This makes the code very easy to follow and
simplifies things as they should be. Very well done.
SCORE 10/10
- I'm not going to dock you any marks for your script. As much as this contest
is concerned, this is exactly how this type of ability should be scripted.
TOUCH OF NATURE
General Theme
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* The idea of the ability is very original, and fits the contest theme perfectly.
* The flowers that grow out where the target walks (and the flowers heal allies) is a very
nice touch; provides enough complexity to make the spell fun to use over again.
Presentation
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* The growth of the flowers is perfect, though the flowers will heal allies even if they have
not fully sprouted yet. I'm not going to consider this of any consequence to the spell.
* The damage reduction is a little bit irrelevent, and since it only factors out 5% of incoming
physical damage there really isn't any point in it being there. A secondary effect for the
target unit was a good idea, but I think you could have made that second effect better fitting.
* The Abolish Magic effect is a little out of place. The flower simply exploding is enough to
indicate that the unit has walked through the flower, I think that the effect was a little bit
overkill.
* The death effect on the flowers lasts a little too long, a good 5-10 seconds after the spell
is completely over there is still "dust" flying around.
* I find it strange that the flowers can be consumed by enemies and give positive effects, it
makes the secondary effect just as useful as it is crippling. You don't want your opponents
to be able to use your spells against you so easily.
Internal
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* Documentation is satisfactory, and the configuration constant section is pretty well laid
out and easy to navigate. Towards the bottom of the script it seems that the documentation
falls off quite a bit, though, and the lack of white-space makes it harder to read in detail.
* Other than that, I don't see any poor coding practice everything seems to be satisfactory in
terms of efficiency, the spell does not appear to have any problems being casted multiple
times simultaneously.
General Theme
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* The idea of the ability is very original, and fits the contest theme perfectly.
* The flowers that grow out where the target walks (and the flowers heal allies) is a very
nice touch; provides enough complexity to make the spell fun to use over again.
Presentation
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* The growth of the flowers is perfect, though the flowers will heal allies even if they have
not fully sprouted yet. I'm not going to consider this of any consequence to the spell.
* The damage reduction is a little bit irrelevent, and since it only factors out 5% of incoming
physical damage there really isn't any point in it being there. A secondary effect for the
target unit was a good idea, but I think you could have made that second effect better fitting.
* The Abolish Magic effect is a little out of place. The flower simply exploding is enough to
indicate that the unit has walked through the flower, I think that the effect was a little bit
overkill.
* The death effect on the flowers lasts a little too long, a good 5-10 seconds after the spell
is completely over there is still "dust" flying around.
* I find it strange that the flowers can be consumed by enemies and give positive effects, it
makes the secondary effect just as useful as it is crippling. You don't want your opponents
to be able to use your spells against you so easily.
Internal
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
* Documentation is satisfactory, and the configuration constant section is pretty well laid
out and easy to navigate. Towards the bottom of the script it seems that the documentation
falls off quite a bit, though, and the lack of white-space makes it harder to read in detail.
* Other than that, I don't see any poor coding practice everything seems to be satisfactory in
terms of efficiency, the spell does not appear to have any problems being casted multiple
times simultaneously.
Poll | Contest
