I am the editor of custom hero arena for WC3, and have finally decided to jump to SC2. There is a lot of information I am trying to learn, and quite frankly, all of the tutorials on this site that have anything to do with heroes, abilities, and items, are severely outdated. Outdated to the point of them being unusable. That is, the very few that dont simply display a 404 error. I have read and followed almost all of the hero creation threads, and all of them have been... problematic. After finding an "updated" tutorial on youtube, it became simple and fast.
So uhh, does anyone know where there might be UPDATED tutorials? Most sites and searches redirect me here. "Here" is clearly the wrong place.
Help?
- - - - - THE GAME - - - - - - - -
The Short:
You start by picking a hero skin, then its attributes and skills. Yeah, you create your own hero. Then you and your teamates are allowed free from your base to roam the countryside and kill monsters for gold and experience. Your opponents will also be doing the same thing. You can head over to your friendly neighbor opponent and kill him with a toothy smile. Because a lot of people are afraid of PVP though; there are periodic arena fights. Teams are put into a pit, and not allowed out until someone is dead. The game is based on a kill count; so scoring kills outside of arenas is a good way to secure victory for your team. This means that teams, or individuals (because teamates rarely communicate beyond low throat noises) have to play their builds in a way that will allow them to excel in various aspects of the game. Selecting all pvp skill, or later game skill will mean that your opponents get more levels, giving them more stats and items, and they will head over and kill you. If you only have skills that are best for killing creeps, you may have those extra levels, but if you do not take advantage of the situation fast, there is a good chance your opponent will become to strong for you to kill; as their pvp skills scale up.
BYO Mode:
For those who have no idea what that means. "Build your own hero" is exactly that. You pick a skin that you want, and from there, customize stats, stat gain, move speed, range, base attack speed, armor. I have to find out how limiting this is in SC2, but from what I read, "anything is possible". Of course, for new players, there will be a dozen or so pre-made heroes, so you dont have to spend too much time thinking up a build. Of course, through testing, starting stat points and all that will have to be balanced.
Advanced stat systems: (will take ideas on)
Rather than 3 stats, and adding all different abilities onto items, I was thinking of just using a higher stat system. Of course, balance help is needed here, and creative ideas. My first thoughts:
Strength: How much damage you deal
Stamina: Your Life
Armor: Uhh, armor, damage reduction as a value that increases your EHP (like in wc3)
Agility: attack speed
Spellpower: added to heals and spells
Spell defense: spell damage reduction
Intelligence: Mana
Constitution: both life and mana regeneration (in uneqyal values)
Speed: move speed
Shield: The value of your shield
Creep/Terrain layout:
my 3rd idea that is a big change from WC3, but might fix a long standing problem, is that of terrain layout. I am a terrible terrainer, so have no idea how far this will go... I would like to have "random" creep camps. Rather than 5 camps, 5 creeps each. Various sided camps all over the map. Heavy casters could bump from big ones to big ones, no problem. Melee passive farmers would also be able to pick up the stray creeps they find. This would allow passive farmers not to be overwhelmed if their opponent gets 2 levels on them; and it would also allow newbie players to kill a few creeps without getting rocked by 5 hard creeps at once. On this entire list; managing to do this in a balanced way honestly seems like the most difficult...
Creeps:
Wc3 offers very many creeps, hundreds in fact. Sc2 has almost none; and even non-creep units are... battlecruisers. I will be lucky to find 15-20 usable skins for creeps. With that in mind, It would be very silly to copy/paste each creep and set its stats individually, to call it a different level. Why? Because SC2 editor can do something wc3 cant... Trigger changes to the base of units. ...the skinny of it is:
- - I can simply make creeps able to level! I can make it so creeps level up based on the average hero level (same method used in CHA, except I dont have to make 350 creeps). I can set things to increase on the creeps as they level; damage, attack speed, life, armor, mana, shields, ect. I can even add and remove abilities for various levels. Once a creep hits 5, I can give him an ability that burns 20 mana. At level 7, I can replace it with one that deals 50. Though this is all POSSIBLE in wc3; it is much, much easier to do on sc2. On top of that, I can change the EXP rewarded for killing them, the bounty, and their scale size, so they get bigger as they level. Again, technically possible in wc3, but much easier now.
ITEMS:
Everyone wants to know about items. They are a major part of CHA, and a big part of what makes the game complicated. Learning starting items is painful, having a new player on your team who spends the first 7 minutes looking through shops to see what items he wants later, and how to make them now.. dear god... Well, with the help of wrath, yiffs godlike voice saying "sounds much better than what we got" I present you with:
Upgradable items, and set item slots.
That is, there will be set items that you have. Boots, armor, gloves, amulet, ring, helm, weapon, shield. you will START with all of these items in their basic form.
From there, with your gold, you upgrade them. Say, you need to upgrade their base forms twice. Example: Worn boots 1: 30ms, pay 200g to upgrade them, worn boots 2: 40 ms, 200g to upgrade, worm boots3: 50ms. From there, you can pick which "tree" you want to gear towards with that item. Once you have your rank 3 3 boots, you can upgrade to say, "armored boots" which give armor, but little move speed, "lightweight boots" which give higher MS, or "agile boots" which offer a little evasion and medium movespeed. you upgrade them 3 times, say, 1000g per upgrade, and there might be a new tree, or new, final class of that item.
Items of course will offer various stats, and have an upgrade tree that would fit any build type. If you decide you no longer want to be invested in a certain item/tree you can sell it; and the item is set back to rank 1. Essentially, you will never be buying items, only upgrades.
Reasoning behind this? well, uhhh... No one would ever really be stuck in base for too long trying to make recipes or figure out which items they want. "shield shop" upgrades your shield! You have 3 shields to look at, and once you have one, you are set in your ways, unless you plan to sell. When in doubt, you can keep upgrading the same piece of armor, because it seems to be working for you. The concept here is that noobs can learn the game much more easily, but great players cannot easily master an item set.
Starting Gold:
Also, open for debate, is starting gold. It is my opinion right now there there is NO STARTING GOLD. Because you will be able to build your own hero, I can simply allow players to start with enough stats to not be useless. If you got a few levels before an ally decides standing in base looking at all the pretty colors, well, you can handle yourself a little better than being level 1 in the same situation.
*I understand that in the above some units (30ms) are wc3 units of measurement. My following crowd is from WC3, and my game is from wc3, so, habit of using terms I am familliar with.
I really dont like to be a negative nancy; but the "search" function is entirely too broad; and I would rather not be the guy who asks how to do.. everything; especially since I am sure it has all been answered 40 times, and I simply cannot find it. Thank you though ^_^ I have found a few youtube walkthroughs, for just general things in the object editor. err, data editor. that is the biggest thing kicking my ass; the triggering system is great, a huge improvement over wc3.
I will edit my OP to include the general outline of my game. Once I start creation, and can make a catchy post, I will make a map development post that is full of win. Any feedback on the map idea will be taken seriously; right now this is an "idea factory" grinding away. I plan to have a well thought out plan before I start adding stuff.
I am the editor of custom hero arena for WC3, and have finally decided to jump to SC2. There is a lot of information I am trying to learn, and quite frankly, all of the tutorials on this site that have anything to do with heroes, abilities, and items, are severely outdated. Outdated to the point of them being unusable. That is, the very few that dont simply display a 404 error. I have read and followed almost all of the hero creation threads, and all of them have been... problematic. After finding an "updated" tutorial on youtube, it became simple and fast.
So uhh, does anyone know where there might be UPDATED tutorials? Most sites and searches redirect me here. "Here" is clearly the wrong place.
Help?
- - - - - THE GAME - - - - - - - -
The Short: You start by picking a hero skin, then its attributes and skills. Yeah, you create your own hero. Then you and your teamates are allowed free from your base to roam the countryside and kill monsters for gold and experience. Your opponents will also be doing the same thing. You can head over to your friendly neighbor opponent and kill him with a toothy smile. Because a lot of people are afraid of PVP though; there are periodic arena fights. Teams are put into a pit, and not allowed out until someone is dead. The game is based on a kill count; so scoring kills outside of arenas is a good way to secure victory for your team. This means that teams, or individuals (because teamates rarely communicate beyond low throat noises) have to play their builds in a way that will allow them to excel in various aspects of the game. Selecting all pvp skill, or later game skill will mean that your opponents get more levels, giving them more stats and items, and they will head over and kill you. If you only have skills that are best for killing creeps, you may have those extra levels, but if you do not take advantage of the situation fast, there is a good chance your opponent will become to strong for you to kill; as their pvp skills scale up.
BYO Mode: For those who have no idea what that means. "Build your own hero" is exactly that. You pick a skin that you want, and from there, customize stats, stat gain, move speed, range, base attack speed, armor. I have to find out how limiting this is in SC2, but from what I read, "anything is possible". Of course, for new players, there will be a dozen or so pre-made heroes, so you dont have to spend too much time thinking up a build. Of course, through testing, starting stat points and all that will have to be balanced.
Advanced stat systems: (will take ideas on) Rather than 3 stats, and adding all different abilities onto items, I was thinking of just using a higher stat system. Of course, balance help is needed here, and creative ideas. My first thoughts: Strength: How much damage you deal Stamina: Your Life Armor: Uhh, armor, damage reduction as a value that increases your EHP (like in wc3) Agility: attack speed Spellpower: added to heals and spells Spell defense: spell damage reduction Intelligence: Mana Constitution: both life and mana regeneration (in uneqyal values) Speed: move speed Shield: The value of your shield
Creep/Terrain layout: my 3rd idea that is a big change from WC3, but might fix a long standing problem, is that of terrain layout. I am a terrible terrainer, so have no idea how far this will go... I would like to have "random" creep camps. Rather than 5 camps, 5 creeps each. Various sided camps all over the map. Heavy casters could bump from big ones to big ones, no problem. Melee passive farmers would also be able to pick up the stray creeps they find. This would allow passive farmers not to be overwhelmed if their opponent gets 2 levels on them; and it would also allow newbie players to kill a few creeps without getting rocked by 5 hard creeps at once. On this entire list; managing to do this in a balanced way honestly seems like the most difficult...
Creeps: Wc3 offers very many creeps, hundreds in fact. Sc2 has almost none; and even non-creep units are... battlecruisers. I will be lucky to find 15-20 usable skins for creeps. With that in mind, It would be very silly to copy/paste each creep and set its stats individually, to call it a different level. Why? Because SC2 editor can do something wc3 cant... Trigger changes to the base of units. ...the skinny of it is: - - I can simply make creeps able to level! I can make it so creeps level up based on the average hero level (same method used in CHA, except I dont have to make 350 creeps). I can set things to increase on the creeps as they level; damage, attack speed, life, armor, mana, shields, ect. I can even add and remove abilities for various levels. Once a creep hits 5, I can give him an ability that burns 20 mana. At level 7, I can replace it with one that deals 50. Though this is all POSSIBLE in wc3; it is much, much easier to do on sc2. On top of that, I can change the EXP rewarded for killing them, the bounty, and their scale size, so they get bigger as they level. Again, technically possible in wc3, but much easier now.
ITEMS: Everyone wants to know about items. They are a major part of CHA, and a big part of what makes the game complicated. Learning starting items is painful, having a new player on your team who spends the first 7 minutes looking through shops to see what items he wants later, and how to make them now.. dear god... Well, with the help of wrath, yiffs godlike voice saying "sounds much better than what we got" I present you with:
Upgradable items, and set item slots. That is, there will be set items that you have. Boots, armor, gloves, amulet, ring, helm, weapon, shield. you will START with all of these items in their basic form. From there, with your gold, you upgrade them. Say, you need to upgrade their base forms twice. Example: Worn boots 1: 30ms, pay 200g to upgrade them, worn boots 2: 40 ms, 200g to upgrade, worm boots3: 50ms. From there, you can pick which "tree" you want to gear towards with that item. Once you have your rank 3 3 boots, you can upgrade to say, "armored boots" which give armor, but little move speed, "lightweight boots" which give higher MS, or "agile boots" which offer a little evasion and medium movespeed. you upgrade them 3 times, say, 1000g per upgrade, and there might be a new tree, or new, final class of that item. Items of course will offer various stats, and have an upgrade tree that would fit any build type. If you decide you no longer want to be invested in a certain item/tree you can sell it; and the item is set back to rank 1. Essentially, you will never be buying items, only upgrades. Reasoning behind this? well, uhhh... No one would ever really be stuck in base for too long trying to make recipes or figure out which items they want. "shield shop" upgrades your shield! You have 3 shields to look at, and once you have one, you are set in your ways, unless you plan to sell. When in doubt, you can keep upgrading the same piece of armor, because it seems to be working for you. The concept here is that noobs can learn the game much more easily, but great players cannot easily master an item set.
Starting Gold: Also, open for debate, is starting gold. It is my opinion right now there there is NO STARTING GOLD. Because you will be able to build your own hero, I can simply allow players to start with enough stats to not be useless. If you got a few levels before an ally decides standing in base looking at all the pretty colors, well, you can handle yourself a little better than being level 1 in the same situation.
*I understand that in the above some units (30ms) are wc3 units of measurement. My following crowd is from WC3, and my game is from wc3, so, habit of using terms I am familliar with.
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
Look in Data.
I really dont like to be a negative nancy; but the "search" function is entirely too broad; and I would rather not be the guy who asks how to do.. everything; especially since I am sure it has all been answered 40 times, and I simply cannot find it. Thank you though ^_^ I have found a few youtube walkthroughs, for just general things in the object editor. err, data editor. that is the biggest thing kicking my ass; the triggering system is great, a huge improvement over wc3.
I will edit my OP to include the general outline of my game. Once I start creation, and can make a catchy post, I will make a map development post that is full of win. Any feedback on the map idea will be taken seriously; right now this is an "idea factory" grinding away. I plan to have a well thought out plan before I start adding stuff.
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
IRC then.