I have been working on Custom Hero Arena for a while now; and wanted to look at other "Hero Arena" style maps to make sure I am not making anything too similar to existing games. "Smashcraft" is the only game of the sorts that I can find, and that is more of a "Gladiator" arena, where it is just fight-fight-fight. I know I am far from that. WC3 had a lot of reasonably popular arenas through the years though. Angel Arena was a major one; the closest thing I could find to it was an alpha of a map that looks like it was worked on for a month, a year ago. The search function on here doesn't... work.. too.. well... So I hope I am overlooking something.
For those of you who have no idea at all what a hero arena is; it is a healthy combo of farming and fighting. there are creeps you need to kill, as a team, to get money of sorts, and experience. That makes you stronger. While doing this, you and your opponents might randomly fight each other in the field; take each others creeps, and speak mean-mean words to each other about how whatever they are using is completely overpowered, because they are losing. Usually, there is also a timer that forces players into an enclosed area, to fight it out until only one team is alive. Victory is generally set on a number of kills. There is a hint of RPG to game play, in that as you progress there are usually bosses who are intended as a team effort, and offer bonus money, items, quest status, ect along the way.
Are there any existing examples of this type of game out there, and completed for SC2? or, close to it? Similar in a non-DoTA way?
Im working on one right now. Its based off of League of Legend's dominion tho. The difference between dominion and regular LoL or dota is that the main objective is different. instead of killing the enemy base by attacking it, you kill the enemy base by capturing and holding towers with the heroes.
Cant wait to see how ur project turns out. good luck :)
edit: also, check out the map Storm of the Imperial Solstice. its a dota map for sc2. you can even test it out my going to Custom Games in sc2. its in the most popular list.
I have never been big on DoTA style maps; but have tried a few. Is "Hero Attack" one? something like that? I played that one more than once. And what all of them have in common is that, me, being a noob at that style of game, but better than most gamers at most games, was better than a lot of my allies. My ability to read tooltips set me above. the noob/pro scale ratio was insane, with very little built in learnings for the game type. I guess with a copy/paste+purple of DoTA, you don't need to explain too much. Overall, they were all lackluster games, and did not offer power to players, so much as power to team pushing. I do like teamwork, but when a game is based entirely on momentum that is easy to achieve; it throws the balance off for the common game.
ANYWAY, I looked up what I could about TOFU on the forum, and watched the videos. Very impressive game. I wasn't entirely sure how the leveling system worked in it (Maybe I didn't read something). Are you still working on the project, or is it on hold still? The arena style/setup is very unique and impressive. Portals to everything. The video was catchy, but didn't really show much, in terms of how the game is played. Just abilities being cast. The fighting system, as you said above, is sort of based around the classic "street fighter" style of arcade game. I would much like be given a walkthrough at some point.
What interests me, and I will look up in tutorials anyway, is the Custom UI. How are they made? do you just hide the UI, and create dialogs and such to replace them? That is the idea I was thinking of going with; but then, showing a players life bar move when they take damage would be tricky, and possibly laggy. If 12 people are being attacked by 30 things in a given half second... A short answer of "A custom UI is a massive undertaking and not suggested for the weak of heart" would be acceptable, if that is the case.
Lastly, none of the maps above seem too much like the arena styles of the classic, cut/paste arena styles of WC3. After searching more, I found a lot of requests, and a lot of topic about them. What seemed to be a game ender for most of them was the massive amount of abilities and items needed to support that style of hero arena. to me that seems more like no serious editor has taken on the task. Grinding out easy, but painstaking work in the data editor shouldn't be so demotivational as to end a project, or kill off a map style.
this post was all around; if anyone new checks this and knows of a working, hero arena, lem'me know. If anyone has attempted and failed and has words of advice, that will do also.
You should always know your "competition", or even just other popular maps to know what the community is playing and what they are seeking to play.
That is it, it is finding the hard balance point between "pro" and "casual"; kind of like Starcraft II with Blizzard's infamous saying ... easy to learn, impossible to master. With Tofu we reduced the curve a shitload compared to Dota, but I believe that advanced tactics such as timing and combos will still allow pros to exist ... cause as you said, just reading the tooltips puts you above most players. I can introduce all the tutorial systems I want but if someone doesn't read them (or listen to them) then it is a waste of my time to introduce them.
The project is actually very very close to being released as an open beta, we are just finishing up the custom art ... ability icons, item icons etc ... it actually takes quite a long time to do, because you need to get everything matching right and looking good. At the same time the reason we "waste" so much time polishing is because we only get one chance at a first impression. Dryeyece and I have been playing it for months, even Sixen and Prozaic amongst others got in on the action back in July - October during the first round of closed beta, in which we tested all the code. So the basic "game" is finished, its just adding all the little things, aka, polishing it up.
There are no tutorials that exist that covers the work that has been done on Tofu ... I havn't had a chance to write those ones yet, but the UI tutorials above all else are what I want to get out first because other people simply don't know how to do it. But yes, you are right in principle, hide the UI and create dialogs to replace them ... but even then you have to show certain UI frames and edit them through Sc2Styles files. I actually cut up alot of the Sc2 UI to make it work.
In regards to the lagginess of it; you have to think how to code an engine rather than a game ... Tofu has it's own engine that runs almost independently of Sc2 ... that is why we can control the lag, instead of having the life bars update say 32 times a second when their life actually changes, it is updated 10 times a second which reduces the lag by about 68%. There are certain things that are laggy - for instance the health/energy/shield bars on the portraitboards (the left/right hand side team/enemy boards) - but those are automatically turned off for games with more than 6 players (3v3) - this is not something that always existed ... this occured in the last patch when Blizzard updated the dialog system ... because we were having 6v6 before with no lag at all, and now, the lag starts with 7 people - even though the code was rewritten after I found the problem and I reduced the load by half (theoritically half of 12 people is 6 - so a 12 player game should have had the same lag as the old 6 player which didn't lag, but it still caused lag) ... so I put it down to something went wrong in the last patch with dialogs.
Custom UI is an incredibly easy undertaking suggested for the newest of mappers if they know what to do (ie - had tutorials), but sadly they do not have this level of tutorials yet ... and I feel bad as being the only one with this knowledge at the moment, and (ask dryeyece or prozaicmuze) it is on my top list of priorities after Tofu is finished to get this information released to the greater community. The reason I am waiting for Tofu to be released is because then they can see it in action, play around with it, and Tofu should spark a whole shitload of new intrest in map making.
Tofu's UI took 2 days to make (In Photoshop) and another 2 days to implement into the engine ... what is taking the long time is all the hero icons/item icons which I do not really include as part of the UI ... they are just bonuses I want to do. Working with custom UI images in dialogs is FAR FAR EASIER and FASTER than working with dialogs ... I will honestly write this tutorial very soon, you have my word, regardless what happens with me and this website.
Wc3 hero arenas were not really copied into Sc2 because of a lack of success in Wc3 ... they we extremely popular before Dota but then kind of quietly got pushed aside. The very closest you would have are the ones mentioned, Smashcraft and Tofu, but even then they are going to really not be anything like the ones you are talking about, simply because they have evolved the idea into a better format.
What is your Sc2 username and ID # ... and which server? I will add you up mate.
I can name a couple, StarBattle, and Hero Attack, 2 very popular hero arena/attack maps
I have played hero attack (it is somewhere in my wall of text) and it is a DOTA style map. Which yes, does involve heroes killing each other; but is a tug-of-war or AoS style map; not really considered a hero arena by WC3 terms.
Dogmai is banned, so no point in writing up a long reply; but I will say that arena games were pushed aside by AoS style games. Arena games still did "alright" there was usually 1 of them in the top 10 hosted maps. Because there are no "classic" hero arena type maps anymore; that opens the door more for my map then. Well, assuming a lot of wc3 players also play sc2. Add the popularity of all hero arena's together, and they would be 2nd or 3rd most hosted on wc3.
@anyone else:
I have heard quite a few times about how important first impressions are with the popularity system. Why exactly is that? I can understand the need to not have a terrible map when you release it; but in terms of spending months working on custom icons and such; is it needed to give your map enough push to be noticed? Personally, I was planning on just getting my game running; 20 or so heroes, 35 or so abilities, and the basic "hero arena" gameplay going. Then, once it is balanced and bug free in my eyes, letting the public play it in a beta, while I work on making pretty graphics and icons. No game can be released as a "balanced and bug free" product. Once thousands of games have been played by people who do not think like you, something will pop up. I haven't released any sc2 maps, and haven't played a lot of them; so am pretty new to the map system. When you re-release a map, is it given the same popularity as an older version? Do you have to start over from zero and hope the updated version of the map is seen enough to replace the older version?
just saying that there are "tons" and giving no examples, does not in fact mean that there are tons.
Have you any examples that ARE NOT a DoTA-style map, and not smashcraft?
What I am asking for in this thread is examples, so I can look at them, test them, see how they work; learn my competition, and create something different.
so, examples please? 3-4 of your "tons" would be enough.
I have been working on Custom Hero Arena for a while now; and wanted to look at other "Hero Arena" style maps to make sure I am not making anything too similar to existing games. "Smashcraft" is the only game of the sorts that I can find, and that is more of a "Gladiator" arena, where it is just fight-fight-fight. I know I am far from that. WC3 had a lot of reasonably popular arenas through the years though. Angel Arena was a major one; the closest thing I could find to it was an alpha of a map that looks like it was worked on for a month, a year ago. The search function on here doesn't... work.. too.. well... So I hope I am overlooking something.
For those of you who have no idea at all what a hero arena is; it is a healthy combo of farming and fighting. there are creeps you need to kill, as a team, to get money of sorts, and experience. That makes you stronger. While doing this, you and your opponents might randomly fight each other in the field; take each others creeps, and speak mean-mean words to each other about how whatever they are using is completely overpowered, because they are losing. Usually, there is also a timer that forces players into an enclosed area, to fight it out until only one team is alive. Victory is generally set on a number of kills. There is a hint of RPG to game play, in that as you progress there are usually bosses who are intended as a team effort, and offer bonus money, items, quest status, ect along the way.
Are there any existing examples of this type of game out there, and completed for SC2? or, close to it? Similar in a non-DoTA way?
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
Im working on one right now. Its based off of League of Legend's dominion tho. The difference between dominion and regular LoL or dota is that the main objective is different. instead of killing the enemy base by attacking it, you kill the enemy base by capturing and holding towers with the heroes.
Cant wait to see how ur project turns out. good luck :)
edit: also, check out the map Storm of the Imperial Solstice. its a dota map for sc2. you can even test it out my going to Custom Games in sc2. its in the most popular list.
The most similar to what you are discribing would be Tofu and you are welcome to play that if you are on NA/SEA ... hit me up ...
Edit) To clarify a bit more for you; Tofu is more like an arcade hero arena, rather than the classic wc3 hero arena.
I have never been big on DoTA style maps; but have tried a few. Is "Hero Attack" one? something like that? I played that one more than once. And what all of them have in common is that, me, being a noob at that style of game, but better than most gamers at most games, was better than a lot of my allies. My ability to read tooltips set me above. the noob/pro scale ratio was insane, with very little built in learnings for the game type. I guess with a copy/paste+purple of DoTA, you don't need to explain too much. Overall, they were all lackluster games, and did not offer power to players, so much as power to team pushing. I do like teamwork, but when a game is based entirely on momentum that is easy to achieve; it throws the balance off for the common game.
ANYWAY, I looked up what I could about TOFU on the forum, and watched the videos. Very impressive game. I wasn't entirely sure how the leveling system worked in it (Maybe I didn't read something). Are you still working on the project, or is it on hold still? The arena style/setup is very unique and impressive. Portals to everything. The video was catchy, but didn't really show much, in terms of how the game is played. Just abilities being cast. The fighting system, as you said above, is sort of based around the classic "street fighter" style of arcade game. I would much like be given a walkthrough at some point.
What interests me, and I will look up in tutorials anyway, is the Custom UI. How are they made? do you just hide the UI, and create dialogs and such to replace them? That is the idea I was thinking of going with; but then, showing a players life bar move when they take damage would be tricky, and possibly laggy. If 12 people are being attacked by 30 things in a given half second... A short answer of "A custom UI is a massive undertaking and not suggested for the weak of heart" would be acceptable, if that is the case.
Lastly, none of the maps above seem too much like the arena styles of the classic, cut/paste arena styles of WC3. After searching more, I found a lot of requests, and a lot of topic about them. What seemed to be a game ender for most of them was the massive amount of abilities and items needed to support that style of hero arena. to me that seems more like no serious editor has taken on the task. Grinding out easy, but painstaking work in the data editor shouldn't be so demotivational as to end a project, or kill off a map style.
this post was all around; if anyone new checks this and knows of a working, hero arena, lem'me know. If anyone has attempted and failed and has words of advice, that will do also.
thanks!
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
@Greendude120: Go
is it like custom hero arena for sc1 only better?
I can name a couple, StarBattle, and Hero Attack, 2 very popular hero arena/attack maps
You should always know your "competition", or even just other popular maps to know what the community is playing and what they are seeking to play.
That is it, it is finding the hard balance point between "pro" and "casual"; kind of like Starcraft II with Blizzard's infamous saying ... easy to learn, impossible to master. With Tofu we reduced the curve a shitload compared to Dota, but I believe that advanced tactics such as timing and combos will still allow pros to exist ... cause as you said, just reading the tooltips puts you above most players. I can introduce all the tutorial systems I want but if someone doesn't read them (or listen to them) then it is a waste of my time to introduce them.
The project is actually very very close to being released as an open beta, we are just finishing up the custom art ... ability icons, item icons etc ... it actually takes quite a long time to do, because you need to get everything matching right and looking good. At the same time the reason we "waste" so much time polishing is because we only get one chance at a first impression. Dryeyece and I have been playing it for months, even Sixen and Prozaic amongst others got in on the action back in July - October during the first round of closed beta, in which we tested all the code. So the basic "game" is finished, its just adding all the little things, aka, polishing it up.
There are no tutorials that exist that covers the work that has been done on Tofu ... I havn't had a chance to write those ones yet, but the UI tutorials above all else are what I want to get out first because other people simply don't know how to do it. But yes, you are right in principle, hide the UI and create dialogs to replace them ... but even then you have to show certain UI frames and edit them through Sc2Styles files. I actually cut up alot of the Sc2 UI to make it work.
In regards to the lagginess of it; you have to think how to code an engine rather than a game ... Tofu has it's own engine that runs almost independently of Sc2 ... that is why we can control the lag, instead of having the life bars update say 32 times a second when their life actually changes, it is updated 10 times a second which reduces the lag by about 68%. There are certain things that are laggy - for instance the health/energy/shield bars on the portraitboards (the left/right hand side team/enemy boards) - but those are automatically turned off for games with more than 6 players (3v3) - this is not something that always existed ... this occured in the last patch when Blizzard updated the dialog system ... because we were having 6v6 before with no lag at all, and now, the lag starts with 7 people - even though the code was rewritten after I found the problem and I reduced the load by half (theoritically half of 12 people is 6 - so a 12 player game should have had the same lag as the old 6 player which didn't lag, but it still caused lag) ... so I put it down to something went wrong in the last patch with dialogs.
Custom UI is an incredibly easy undertaking suggested for the newest of mappers if they know what to do (ie - had tutorials), but sadly they do not have this level of tutorials yet ... and I feel bad as being the only one with this knowledge at the moment, and (ask dryeyece or prozaicmuze) it is on my top list of priorities after Tofu is finished to get this information released to the greater community. The reason I am waiting for Tofu to be released is because then they can see it in action, play around with it, and Tofu should spark a whole shitload of new intrest in map making.
Tofu's UI took 2 days to make (In Photoshop) and another 2 days to implement into the engine ... what is taking the long time is all the hero icons/item icons which I do not really include as part of the UI ... they are just bonuses I want to do. Working with custom UI images in dialogs is FAR FAR EASIER and FASTER than working with dialogs ... I will honestly write this tutorial very soon, you have my word, regardless what happens with me and this website.
Wc3 hero arenas were not really copied into Sc2 because of a lack of success in Wc3 ... they we extremely popular before Dota but then kind of quietly got pushed aside. The very closest you would have are the ones mentioned, Smashcraft and Tofu, but even then they are going to really not be anything like the ones you are talking about, simply because they have evolved the idea into a better format.
What is your Sc2 username and ID # ... and which server? I will add you up mate.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Aww, poor Dogmai was banned :P
I have played hero attack (it is somewhere in my wall of text) and it is a DOTA style map. Which yes, does involve heroes killing each other; but is a tug-of-war or AoS style map; not really considered a hero arena by WC3 terms.
Dogmai is banned, so no point in writing up a long reply; but I will say that arena games were pushed aside by AoS style games. Arena games still did "alright" there was usually 1 of them in the top 10 hosted maps. Because there are no "classic" hero arena type maps anymore; that opens the door more for my map then. Well, assuming a lot of wc3 players also play sc2. Add the popularity of all hero arena's together, and they would be 2nd or 3rd most hosted on wc3.
@anyone else: I have heard quite a few times about how important first impressions are with the popularity system. Why exactly is that? I can understand the need to not have a terrible map when you release it; but in terms of spending months working on custom icons and such; is it needed to give your map enough push to be noticed? Personally, I was planning on just getting my game running; 20 or so heroes, 35 or so abilities, and the basic "hero arena" gameplay going. Then, once it is balanced and bug free in my eyes, letting the public play it in a beta, while I work on making pretty graphics and icons. No game can be released as a "balanced and bug free" product. Once thousands of games have been played by people who do not think like you, something will pop up. I haven't released any sc2 maps, and haven't played a lot of them; so am pretty new to the map system. When you re-release a map, is it given the same popularity as an older version? Do you have to start over from zero and hope the updated version of the map is seen enough to replace the older version?
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
There are tons, don't know what you're talking about.
@tordecybombo: Go
just saying that there are "tons" and giving no examples, does not in fact mean that there are tons.
Have you any examples that ARE NOT a DoTA-style map, and not smashcraft?
What I am asking for in this thread is examples, so I can look at them, test them, see how they work; learn my competition, and create something different.
so, examples please? 3-4 of your "tons" would be enough.
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418