It doesn't play for everyone, I use Internet Explorer and it plays for me every time and yes its kind of annoying, eats up my limited bandwidth 8(. A friend of mine told me I should download and use firefox instead and get a adsmasher addon or something like that I have to ask him again tonight before I download it but apparently that will stop those things cold.
Thanks man, yeah life crisis I like that lol, well tbh it wasn't me who didn't let it get in the way, the doctors who saved my life did, I thought i was powerless to do anything about my situation when I was paralyzed, but when your heart tries to kill you its a whole other ball of wax.
I wasn't necessarily going to ever bring this up, I didn't expect people to sound so disappointed at the time it took to make the game. About 2 or so months into the project I am not sure exactly I could look at my medical records though if I knew where they were, I had a full on Heart Attack, a 100% blockage and had to be rushed to the hospital and had minor surgery to stint the blockage. This had me away from TMA for a little over a month, and for the first week Dogmai had no idea what had happened to me or why I just disappeared like that, and this was at a point where the game was just starting to accumulate some heroes, maybe 6 or so of them prolly less. Heck I didnt even get to talk to Dogmai for over a week, and it was not certain that I would be able to return to the project at all, but I recovered and here we are today showing a Promo Video aka a Teaser. That was of course one of the biggest set-backs we suffered, and now TMA is nearing being able to be released to the public, and I for one am certainly glad to be alive to see it.
This of course led to a few 16 hour days, but I would probably have done that anyway, I don't know about the rest of you but I have almost as much fun making maps as I do playing them. Especially when I am ten feet deep in a new hero and I have a ton of inspiration for him/her I can't put the editor down till I have seen the ability in my head working on the screen. Now I personally am disabled I cannot just go out and work a normal job, because in 2006 I was paralyzed from the face down, but that is another story for another time, it just explains why I have 16 hours a day to put into Tofu.
Now just so everyone knows, we didnt clone some old sc1 map, or some old wc3 map, like a lot of mappers have done. I am not saying anything is wrong with it some of them are fun, and its cool to see them available with the power of the sc2 editor at their disposal. But those maps have everything they need to make already done for them, their mechanics are already defined, their terrain is even designed already, all the mappers have to do is put it into sc2 and in some cases put their own little twist on it. I am sure more goes into it than just that, but I think that puts it in a nutshell rather well. TMA takes ideas we liked about other games we have played in the past and puts them into our game, along with a myriad of other gameplay mechanics and such.
It is not easy introducing something like the portals into the game, of course you could just make them and stick them in the terrain, remove the ramps and call it a day but in that scenario you have set yourself up to fail because you haven't considered at all the impact it will have on gameplay. We do not do that, we consider everything we can think of then we test, and test to make sure that by the time it gets to the end user they can play a balanced, well designed and thought out game that will provide hour upon hour of non-stop action.
In the end we chose quality over speed, SC2 will be around for a long ass time, and we will only have missed the first year of it, IMO it is worth it to be able to put my name on something that I know we didnt skimp on or take shortcuts with, something I can be proud of.
Currently the only portions of a Behavior that you cna alter with an upgrade are its duration and the time scale I think, it's only 2 things though and behaviors are one of the most powerful tools of the Data Editor. Any ability, passive buff, or any of the other 1,000,000 things you can do with them that you want or need to alter at any point in the game you need a completely new Behavior for and often at least for me there are simple to very complex systems of validators that control these behaviors and for each new Behavior you need another validator etc... it would relieve a lot of stress if Behaviors were fully supported by Upgrades.
The new addition to the text editor for making equations and stuff does not work properly, for instance you cannot even get the value from a damage effects Amount - field with it, you can get close you end up with <d ref="Effect,EffectName"/> which does nothing, and you cannot choose any fields from the effect to get values from either, the whole thing is blank.
Please ohh please ask them to add more tooltips to the data fields which have no tooltips. Especially things like flags for units, effects, abilities etc..
A validator to check the level of an Ability, currently you can count this with a requirement but not a validator.
Currently you can use a behavior to create an effect from a source each time the bearer of the behavior deals damage, for instance launch a missile at a target each time the bearer of the behavior deals damage, and you can do it the other way around also whereas each time the bearer takes damage the behavior can create an effect. However only when the behavior is responding to damage taken can you alter that damage, it would be nice if it could reverse that part also.
I am sure there are a lot of us who would love to see another field added to Damage Effects - "Armor Reduction Factor" wherby you can adjust the percentage of damage that 1 point of armor would lower the damage by, you can do this already for unit Attributes such as Light, Biological, Massive, and so on in exactly the same fashion so it doesn't seem that far of a stretch to be able to do the same with armor.
When you make a new Action type actor and just about every other similar actor that I have used anyway, which have token fields at the top where you can link in damage effect, launch missile effects, abilities etc... no longer automatically add themselves in to the actors events like they used to. The (i guess its a text key?) text is still there inside the events like Effect - Impact and such but nothing adds itself to there when you add it as a token anymore, really its not a huge deal but it certainly nullifies the whole point of having the token field...
Add filters to range actors to control for whom the actor is shown, possibly add this for all actors?
Add a flag to Behavior type Abilities "Passive" would really make passive abilities easier to show to the player and update as well.
Add functionality to "Learn Abilities" the actual ability type, to individually adjust the amount of ability points each ability costs at each level as well as the veterancy level required to purchase it.
I would love to see custom combat resources (aka energy) become a data type you can create. Currently in order to make your own you need a system of behaviors being able to create one in the data editor and have it become available in the Cost - fields of abilities and such would be awesome.
Abilities interrupt orders and cause the unit using the ability to AI acquire a target, the target found is based off a lot of different things but what I would like to see is a flag on abilities that will make it so the unit using the ability is also ordered to attack the target of the ability.
Currently cloaked units are in reality smudges that aren't all that difficult to see, making a seperate "cloak" flag for example "TrueCloak" whereby enemies do not see the unit at all would be greatly appreciated.
You are assuming that when you are picking your hero you can in real time see what the other guy is picking but that is not the case if it were then yes there would be a major flaw there, but like in regular old rock paper scissors you dont know what your opponent has chosen until its too late to change. So in TMA you cannot see what the other team has chosen until you have chosen yours and they have chosen theirs. During Beta testing we are going to see what kind of impact being able to change your hero will have for example in between rounds during Team Deathmatch it may be possible to change your hero, however if we allow this then you must know the other guy can do the same thing and you still will not know what he/she has chosen until the round begins, it embodies the essence of Rock Paper Scissors beautifully I think. Do not bank on the hero change being possible though as we need to test that part
Let me explain. The one hero owns another one does not exist in TMA, yes there is an intrinsic rock, paper, scissors, counter system between the heroes but, their abilities and how they work, along with how the player uses them, and in general plays his/her hero are just as big of a factor. Myself and my partner have 1v1 matches constantly for internal testing and balancing as each hero is created etc... and I can tell you I have stomped his arse with a Light hero such as Morbius even when he had an Armored hero such as Moomba. This raises the obvious that ok that Light hero was IMBA so we swap and I get on Moomba and he gets on Morbius and I kick his ass again, clearly demonstrating not only are the two classes balanced but also that how you play it, what dps rotation you use, what items you have, and so much more are just as important as what type of hero you chose. This same occurence has happened in reverse as well where he was the one kicking my ass, its about 50/50 when the two of us fight regardless of hero choice. Now items come into play and can drastically change the playing field. Think of items like a build order, will you make this unit or that unit first, or get this upgrade or that upgrade first, It will all come into play when you meet your opponent on the battlefield.
That is going to happen very soon, we have to get the UI done first though, which was done before the patch but as you have heard by now it brokded our UI. Now I do not do code, I suck at coding so im not doing the UI my partner is, I just give input on design when and where I need to but he does most of it and he is very good. So you should expect to see some vids in a few days, We are talking about it right now actually and we have agree'd that before Friday we should have some vids going up.
Zantai wussup bro! Yeah I have been quite busy, I can't wait for you to see what I have been working on. In all truth it was a post you made on your site that originally inspired me to take up the Editor and see what I could do with it. You had posted a bunch of tutorials and said something along the lines of now get out there and make some custom maps I can play! or something like that anyway, I decided if you coukld do all you had done with ZHRPG with the editor then surely I would be able to do what my imagination could come up with also. Glad to hear from you and that you are following my project at least somewhat 8-)
Actually none of the abilities are useless without their counterpart, the one I explained is very powerful even without someone to root the target, as the target has to A. realize the debuff is on them, B. conciously decide whether or not to remain stationary. C. execute whatever decision was made in B, all because you used one little ability. However if there is a root available it gurantees you get all the damage out of that ability, but if it isnt you either get 5 seconds of your opponent unable to attack you, or they may just run away completely, or you get to take out a nice chunk of their health, so you can see how this 1 ability can have several different functions but they are not forced, no one is forced to stand still or forced to move it is instead the players decision, so its like a fear that instead of forcing the target to run away makes them choose whether or not to run away. Personally I think its one of the awesomest abilities and in practical use during testing has proved to be almost overpowered, more testing will decide. Now obviously an ability as strong as this one is on a healthy cooldown, and can't be used all that often but she has other more frequently used methods of producing DPS quite nicely. what this ability is, is a push over the edge depending on how its used.
Like I said I only ever played 1 round of Smashcraft so I didnt realize we had so many similarities, but you are right they are mostly balance mechanics which are pretty global anyway in a LOT of games.
Well you can stop wondering, because I am the Data Editor behind TMA, I was recruited onto the team by my mate (who still wishes to remain anonymous which is fine) around November, since then I have finished 18 Heroes, and completely redesigned, with my partners help, the gameplay mechanics from top to bottom, and added many cool features I think most of you are going to be really happy with, especially as far as gameplay and "fun-factor" are concerned. I am ready to start answering most questions you guys may have concerning TMA, obviously I will not answer literally any question but most I will be happy to.
To Mephs, I personally have only ever played 1 round of Smashcraft against Dogmai another friend of mine and I kicked his ass with Storm or Rush one of the two is his name, its the one with the jerk beam and stun, with the ulti that is like a starburst of some sort I cant remember it was a while ago. In that 1 round though i had a ton of fun you did a great job with it. I understand that we both used a Firebat and named it Pyro, I am really bummed about that but I am not changing his name sorry 8-). I haven’t ever seen your Pyro actually but I am certain ours will be nothing alike except in name. Some people are saying that our games are going to be competitors but I disagree for the most part, I mean obviously we are in some way or another as all custom games are, but I really think our two games are light years apart as far as mechanics, style, hero make-up etc... the only thing we do have in common is that each of us have more than one "Arena" to be played on, and we both have Heroic units killing each other. That isn't really saying much as far as similarities so I therefore my stance on us not really being competitors. Personally I will probably play a few more games of Smashcraft once I am not so busy with TMA, but as it is, it consumes literally all of my time.
p.s to the guy with a Reaper hero named Grim, I saw it on the front page a while back, sorry about that coincidence too it really ticked me off cuz if I have to change a heroes name I have to change a LOT of stuff and I just don’t have time so like Pyro it will stay 8(. Really though I don't think it will ever cause much of a problem.
To Keyes, I wrote that information that Dogmai posted, I thought it was going to be posted alongside the hero images on the front page but alas it was not O.o.
Every single heroes abilities interact and combine differently with their own abilities some are almost ineffectual without the strategic use of another ability previously so on and so forth. But by Interactive abilities what I mean is that many of the heroes abilities interact with other heroes abilities, I will give you one example. Wydow has an ability called Rotting Sludge, that applies a powerful debuff to a single target, which if they remain stationary does an inordinate amount of damage to them, but if the target moves they take no damage, and 5 seconds of movement will remove the debuff completely so it can often not do any damage at all to a relatively informed opponent. However some other heroes have abilities that either stun, or otherwise immobilize an enemy which can be combined with Rotting sludge to get a very large amount of damage out of it. So with the right allies around it can do devastating damage, but the nature of it works well if you are alone too as it causes your opponent to either A remain stationary and take tone of damage but still be able to attack you, or move around to stop the damage but at the same time not do damage to your hero. This is one of the more simple examples of how they can be interactive of course there are many more intricate interactions that can be made its all on the players.
I read somewhere else someone mentioned the big hero images look like they follow a warrior rogue mage setup which is partially true, its actually rock paper scissors in my head when I’m in the editor making cool stuffs, basically the icons are a visual aid to help the player recognize at a glance what he or she is up against. They stand for from left to right looking at the images above, Armored, Light, and Psionic, the way it breaks down at the molecular level is that Armored heroes do 20% additional damage to Light Heroes. Light heroes do 20% more damage to Psionic and Psionic do 20% more to Armored. This is intrinsic to the damage each type of hero deals. Additionally there are items available in game to specifically counter that weakness or even make it worse, so you can purchase a Titanium Hardener, which reduces the Light damage you take by 5%, effectively closing the gap between your Psionic hero and that Light hero thats spanking your monkey for you, but that same Light guy can do the same thing further decreasing the damage he or she takes from Psionic Heroes, so the entirety of the game is a power play for balance. Now even though it seems rather elementary the design of the abilities allow for a Light Hero for instance to be able to overcome an Armored hero despite their handicap towards them. It will all come down to how well you know your own hero, how well you know your opponents hero, your item choice, their item choice, the type of hero you chose vs the type of hero they chose and the list goes on, all of these factors help to balance the game, but also allow for the players to un-balance it. Accordingly the area for variance is large, and should create many a heated argument about who should have won what fight and such. I am very excited to see the game go into Beta and further tune and balance the heroes and their abilities before public release.
I am not as busy creating TMA as I have been for the past 6 months so any questions you guys have about the game I should be able to answer the same day most of the time, as I check SC2 Mapster all the time, and my friends help me too cuz sometimes I just plain forget. We had our UI broken to little bite size pieces by the patch so we haven’t been able to make any video's or take screen shots, but I can promise you all they are coming as soon as we are able, the UI should be done now in a couple of days so expect the vids or screenies within the week probably. I promise you will not be disappointed O.o
Man I can't believe I forgot to add this. As I figure this post will get read by a lot of people I wanted to give my thanks to SC2 Mapster, Sixen and the whole Crew who run and maintain the site for all of their effort and the tutorials and everything. Special thanks to ProzaicMuze who helped me get a missile to launch, and a beam to connect to a target, his tutorials were the best I learned sooooo much. One+two_WINNING you are the man I loved all the vids most of what I learned from you I used in my RPG which was put to the side at the start of TMA, but still I used your vids constantly and wanted to say thanks publicly. Thanks to all the guys writing those tutorials and sharing their knowledge without you guys what I have done with TMA would not be possible.
Yeah you have to either import a smaller image or export the image you want shrink it in a program like Photoshop or Gimp and then import it back into the editor albieit smaller. Whatever size the image is is exactly how big it will be on the minimap so if you use a 72x72 it will be 72x72 etc... I usuallly use between 12x12 and 16x16 and 16x16 is actually still quite large on the minimap.
OK I get it and thats easy too, provided the created units belong to the player who owns the building and also the unit that created the building. Put a behavior on your hero called "Ghoul Follow Target" that lasts forever and is hidden. Then create a validator that validates unit behavior count and change the behavior field to the Ghoul Follow Target beh we made change the compare field to greater than or equal to and the value to 1. Then make use that behavior to validate the target of the issue order effect. So your issue order effect will just issue move order to target target unit with no reference to any effect, and in the validator field add the Ghoul Follow Target validator, also change the Target field that refers to the unit recieving the order and change it to source, as source will refer to the bearer of the behavior, this is handy for any time you use behaviors caster and source become seperated when a behavior is involved i.e when a behavior is applied its applied from the caster but if that behavior uses say a search effect to launch a missile then those things are launched from source as the behavior denotes source from that point on. Then make a search effect and have it do the issue order effect in whatever radius you want the ghould to be able to find and then follow their master, and use that in the periodic effect of a behavior, make sure to set the impact location of the search to source point. The key here is using the behavior and validator to isolate and target the caster@aczchef: Go
Some people might say you can check off a stupid unit flag on the tree like Hover for example and validate unit filter Hover on the effect that does the targeting but its much easier and doesnt take up a unit flag that can mayb be used later. I would make a Behavior named "Tree" duration 0 that is hidden and add it to the Tree unit, then use a validator to compare unit behavior count, so that it validates target has behavior Tree GTE 1 , put that either on the teleport effect, or whatever effect is in the abilities Effect Field so if its a set or a persistent or the teleport either way make sure the effect targets units only so the Target Target field of that effect will be "Target Unit" only and the validator just add the Tree one we made and Vio La that ability can only target tree's. Using this method you can invent unit types to your hearts content with noting more than a behavior and a validator the two of which prolly take up less than a kilobyte, and only take a couple of seconds to make.
Actually this one is simple, I havent read all of the responses so if this has been resolved im sorry bro 8-)
The coolest thing about this method is that if the owner of the created units isnt moving they are free to acquire targets normally acording to their weapon and basic unit acquire response, but if the host starts moving then they move to him until he stops moving then they can do their thing again, however you cant take control of them and move them about whenever you want unless you set up a seperate ability which I could explain also if you wanted.
What you need is 1 App Behavior Effect, 1 Issue Order Effect and 1 Behavior. So just like a timed life or other such buff added to a created unit via the Effect - Spawn field you can add this behavior it is absolutely important that this behavior be added via that field in the create unit effect because this is like a giant trigger and the issue order effect will draw its target from the create unit effect. Any time you do this with an effect i.e use another effect to give it a target you must use an effect from the effect chain that the effect you are wokring on is in an example is what we are doing here.
In the issue order effect all you need to change is:
Ability - Ability Change this field from None to Move ( will issue the move order)
Target - Target + This is the juicy part. Change this field to caster unit, and above that where you can choose an effect choose the effect that creates the units. This way the issue order effect issues the move order to its target, to move to the caster unit of the create unit effect which created the unit it is ordering to move
Next make the App behavior effect and dont change any fields
Then make the behavior and its handy to name it the exact same name as the apply behavior effect it belongs to that way the editor will automatically add the Beh to the App Beh effect 8-). In the Behaviors periodic effect field add the issue order effect, change the time scale according to your preference and leave the duration at 0 which will make it last forever and leave the period count at -1 but change the period durations field to 1, I use 1 second some people may argue with that but the unit recieving the move order once per second is plenty I dont like using permanent persistent things like this with tiny little periods like .1 secs and such unless I have to as it may not slow the game down but it does make for more traffic one way or the other so I dont needlessly create data traffic if it can be avoided.
Now we are just about done all we have left to do is add a couple of validators to disable the issue order behavior when the caster isnt moving so that the created units can perform some other function than following their master =p. It may seem obvious to just use a Unit Compare Movement Speed which is basically a velocity validator but in my experience that doesnt work so good, so my magic recipe for this is Caster not in Combat, and Caster has Orders, these 2 validators are already there for you thanks to blizzard hehe and they work really well for this application, add them to the Behavior - Validators Disable Field dont worry about making a combine validator for it as any validators you add in that field are all by default part of an "and" function only if you need to use an "or" function do you need to use a combine validator here or of course unless you have a whole bunch of validators you want to use here.
These behavior fields work in reverse of themselves so that if the validator fails then it disables the behavior. So Caster not in Combat fails when the caster is in combat so once the caster takes damage, which is how that particular validator works the the caster is flagged in combat and the behavior is disabled and the slave unit is free to perform actions. Also if the Caster Has Orders returns false meaning the caster has no orders then it is disabled and once the owner has entered combat unless its issued a move order any other order is executed pretty much immediately and has no effect on the behavior but if you move the slave will follow you.
All of this is handled automatically by an Arm Magazine ability if you used one of those instead, but I know sometimes an ability that creates a unit just doesnt work good with arm magazines especially if you want to do more than just create the unit and apply an effect to it. Lemme know if this helps 8-)
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It doesn't play for everyone, I use Internet Explorer and it plays for me every time and yes its kind of annoying, eats up my limited bandwidth 8(. A friend of mine told me I should download and use firefox instead and get a adsmasher addon or something like that I have to ask him again tonight before I download it but apparently that will stop those things cold.
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@SkrowFunk: Go
Thanks man, yeah life crisis I like that lol, well tbh it wasn't me who didn't let it get in the way, the doctors who saved my life did, I thought i was powerless to do anything about my situation when I was paralyzed, but when your heart tries to kill you its a whole other ball of wax.
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To everyone wondering wtf took 9 months.
I wasn't necessarily going to ever bring this up, I didn't expect people to sound so disappointed at the time it took to make the game. About 2 or so months into the project I am not sure exactly I could look at my medical records though if I knew where they were, I had a full on Heart Attack, a 100% blockage and had to be rushed to the hospital and had minor surgery to stint the blockage. This had me away from TMA for a little over a month, and for the first week Dogmai had no idea what had happened to me or why I just disappeared like that, and this was at a point where the game was just starting to accumulate some heroes, maybe 6 or so of them prolly less. Heck I didnt even get to talk to Dogmai for over a week, and it was not certain that I would be able to return to the project at all, but I recovered and here we are today showing a Promo Video aka a Teaser. That was of course one of the biggest set-backs we suffered, and now TMA is nearing being able to be released to the public, and I for one am certainly glad to be alive to see it.
This of course led to a few 16 hour days, but I would probably have done that anyway, I don't know about the rest of you but I have almost as much fun making maps as I do playing them. Especially when I am ten feet deep in a new hero and I have a ton of inspiration for him/her I can't put the editor down till I have seen the ability in my head working on the screen. Now I personally am disabled I cannot just go out and work a normal job, because in 2006 I was paralyzed from the face down, but that is another story for another time, it just explains why I have 16 hours a day to put into Tofu.
Now just so everyone knows, we didnt clone some old sc1 map, or some old wc3 map, like a lot of mappers have done. I am not saying anything is wrong with it some of them are fun, and its cool to see them available with the power of the sc2 editor at their disposal. But those maps have everything they need to make already done for them, their mechanics are already defined, their terrain is even designed already, all the mappers have to do is put it into sc2 and in some cases put their own little twist on it. I am sure more goes into it than just that, but I think that puts it in a nutshell rather well. TMA takes ideas we liked about other games we have played in the past and puts them into our game, along with a myriad of other gameplay mechanics and such.
It is not easy introducing something like the portals into the game, of course you could just make them and stick them in the terrain, remove the ramps and call it a day but in that scenario you have set yourself up to fail because you haven't considered at all the impact it will have on gameplay. We do not do that, we consider everything we can think of then we test, and test to make sure that by the time it gets to the end user they can play a balanced, well designed and thought out game that will provide hour upon hour of non-stop action.
In the end we chose quality over speed, SC2 will be around for a long ass time, and we will only have missed the first year of it, IMO it is worth it to be able to put my name on something that I know we didnt skimp on or take shortcuts with, something I can be proud of.
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@DogmaiSEA: Go
Right on mate...ROFL
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Effect - Impactand such but nothing adds itself to there when you add it as a token anymore, really its not a huge deal but it certainly nullifies the whole point of having the token field...Thats all I can think of at the moment.
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@Fullachain: Go
You are assuming that when you are picking your hero you can in real time see what the other guy is picking but that is not the case if it were then yes there would be a major flaw there, but like in regular old rock paper scissors you dont know what your opponent has chosen until its too late to change. So in TMA you cannot see what the other team has chosen until you have chosen yours and they have chosen theirs. During Beta testing we are going to see what kind of impact being able to change your hero will have for example in between rounds during Team Deathmatch it may be possible to change your hero, however if we allow this then you must know the other guy can do the same thing and you still will not know what he/she has chosen until the round begins, it embodies the essence of Rock Paper Scissors beautifully I think. Do not bank on the hero change being possible though as we need to test that part
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@Fullachain: Go
Mozarzed is exactly right.
Let me explain. The one hero owns another one does not exist in TMA, yes there is an intrinsic rock, paper, scissors, counter system between the heroes but, their abilities and how they work, along with how the player uses them, and in general plays his/her hero are just as big of a factor. Myself and my partner have 1v1 matches constantly for internal testing and balancing as each hero is created etc... and I can tell you I have stomped his arse with a Light hero such as Morbius even when he had an Armored hero such as Moomba. This raises the obvious that ok that Light hero was IMBA so we swap and I get on Moomba and he gets on Morbius and I kick his ass again, clearly demonstrating not only are the two classes balanced but also that how you play it, what dps rotation you use, what items you have, and so much more are just as important as what type of hero you chose. This same occurence has happened in reverse as well where he was the one kicking my ass, its about 50/50 when the two of us fight regardless of hero choice. Now items come into play and can drastically change the playing field. Think of items like a build order, will you make this unit or that unit first, or get this upgrade or that upgrade first, It will all come into play when you meet your opponent on the battlefield.
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@zeldarules28: Go
That is going to happen very soon, we have to get the UI done first though, which was done before the patch but as you have heard by now it brokded our UI. Now I do not do code, I suck at coding so im not doing the UI my partner is, I just give input on design when and where I need to but he does most of it and he is very good. So you should expect to see some vids in a few days, We are talking about it right now actually and we have agree'd that before Friday we should have some vids going up.
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@Zantai: Go
Zantai wussup bro! Yeah I have been quite busy, I can't wait for you to see what I have been working on. In all truth it was a post you made on your site that originally inspired me to take up the Editor and see what I could do with it. You had posted a bunch of tutorials and said something along the lines of now get out there and make some custom maps I can play! or something like that anyway, I decided if you coukld do all you had done with ZHRPG with the editor then surely I would be able to do what my imagination could come up with also. Glad to hear from you and that you are following my project at least somewhat 8-)
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@ Mephs
Actually none of the abilities are useless without their counterpart, the one I explained is very powerful even without someone to root the target, as the target has to A. realize the debuff is on them, B. conciously decide whether or not to remain stationary. C. execute whatever decision was made in B, all because you used one little ability. However if there is a root available it gurantees you get all the damage out of that ability, but if it isnt you either get 5 seconds of your opponent unable to attack you, or they may just run away completely, or you get to take out a nice chunk of their health, so you can see how this 1 ability can have several different functions but they are not forced, no one is forced to stand still or forced to move it is instead the players decision, so its like a fear that instead of forcing the target to run away makes them choose whether or not to run away. Personally I think its one of the awesomest abilities and in practical use during testing has proved to be almost overpowered, more testing will decide. Now obviously an ability as strong as this one is on a healthy cooldown, and can't be used all that often but she has other more frequently used methods of producing DPS quite nicely. what this ability is, is a push over the edge depending on how its used.
Like I said I only ever played 1 round of Smashcraft so I didnt realize we had so many similarities, but you are right they are mostly balance mechanics which are pretty global anyway in a LOT of games.
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Well you can stop wondering, because I am the Data Editor behind TMA, I was recruited onto the team by my mate (who still wishes to remain anonymous which is fine) around November, since then I have finished 18 Heroes, and completely redesigned, with my partners help, the gameplay mechanics from top to bottom, and added many cool features I think most of you are going to be really happy with, especially as far as gameplay and "fun-factor" are concerned. I am ready to start answering most questions you guys may have concerning TMA, obviously I will not answer literally any question but most I will be happy to.
To Mephs, I personally have only ever played 1 round of Smashcraft against Dogmai another friend of mine and I kicked his ass with Storm or Rush one of the two is his name, its the one with the jerk beam and stun, with the ulti that is like a starburst of some sort I cant remember it was a while ago. In that 1 round though i had a ton of fun you did a great job with it. I understand that we both used a Firebat and named it Pyro, I am really bummed about that but I am not changing his name sorry 8-). I haven’t ever seen your Pyro actually but I am certain ours will be nothing alike except in name. Some people are saying that our games are going to be competitors but I disagree for the most part, I mean obviously we are in some way or another as all custom games are, but I really think our two games are light years apart as far as mechanics, style, hero make-up etc... the only thing we do have in common is that each of us have more than one "Arena" to be played on, and we both have Heroic units killing each other. That isn't really saying much as far as similarities so I therefore my stance on us not really being competitors. Personally I will probably play a few more games of Smashcraft once I am not so busy with TMA, but as it is, it consumes literally all of my time.
p.s to the guy with a Reaper hero named Grim, I saw it on the front page a while back, sorry about that coincidence too it really ticked me off cuz if I have to change a heroes name I have to change a LOT of stuff and I just don’t have time so like Pyro it will stay 8(. Really though I don't think it will ever cause much of a problem.
To Keyes, I wrote that information that Dogmai posted, I thought it was going to be posted alongside the hero images on the front page but alas it was not O.o.
Every single heroes abilities interact and combine differently with their own abilities some are almost ineffectual without the strategic use of another ability previously so on and so forth. But by Interactive abilities what I mean is that many of the heroes abilities interact with other heroes abilities, I will give you one example. Wydow has an ability called Rotting Sludge, that applies a powerful debuff to a single target, which if they remain stationary does an inordinate amount of damage to them, but if the target moves they take no damage, and 5 seconds of movement will remove the debuff completely so it can often not do any damage at all to a relatively informed opponent. However some other heroes have abilities that either stun, or otherwise immobilize an enemy which can be combined with Rotting sludge to get a very large amount of damage out of it. So with the right allies around it can do devastating damage, but the nature of it works well if you are alone too as it causes your opponent to either A remain stationary and take tone of damage but still be able to attack you, or move around to stop the damage but at the same time not do damage to your hero. This is one of the more simple examples of how they can be interactive of course there are many more intricate interactions that can be made its all on the players.
I read somewhere else someone mentioned the big hero images look like they follow a warrior rogue mage setup which is partially true, its actually rock paper scissors in my head when I’m in the editor making cool stuffs, basically the icons are a visual aid to help the player recognize at a glance what he or she is up against. They stand for from left to right looking at the images above, Armored, Light, and Psionic, the way it breaks down at the molecular level is that Armored heroes do 20% additional damage to Light Heroes. Light heroes do 20% more damage to Psionic and Psionic do 20% more to Armored. This is intrinsic to the damage each type of hero deals. Additionally there are items available in game to specifically counter that weakness or even make it worse, so you can purchase a Titanium Hardener, which reduces the Light damage you take by 5%, effectively closing the gap between your Psionic hero and that Light hero thats spanking your monkey for you, but that same Light guy can do the same thing further decreasing the damage he or she takes from Psionic Heroes, so the entirety of the game is a power play for balance. Now even though it seems rather elementary the design of the abilities allow for a Light Hero for instance to be able to overcome an Armored hero despite their handicap towards them. It will all come down to how well you know your own hero, how well you know your opponents hero, your item choice, their item choice, the type of hero you chose vs the type of hero they chose and the list goes on, all of these factors help to balance the game, but also allow for the players to un-balance it. Accordingly the area for variance is large, and should create many a heated argument about who should have won what fight and such. I am very excited to see the game go into Beta and further tune and balance the heroes and their abilities before public release.
I am not as busy creating TMA as I have been for the past 6 months so any questions you guys have about the game I should be able to answer the same day most of the time, as I check SC2 Mapster all the time, and my friends help me too cuz sometimes I just plain forget. We had our UI broken to little bite size pieces by the patch so we haven’t been able to make any video's or take screen shots, but I can promise you all they are coming as soon as we are able, the UI should be done now in a couple of days so expect the vids or screenies within the week probably. I promise you will not be disappointed O.o
Man I can't believe I forgot to add this. As I figure this post will get read by a lot of people I wanted to give my thanks to SC2 Mapster, Sixen and the whole Crew who run and maintain the site for all of their effort and the tutorials and everything. Special thanks to ProzaicMuze who helped me get a missile to launch, and a beam to connect to a target, his tutorials were the best I learned sooooo much. One+two_WINNING you are the man I loved all the vids most of what I learned from you I used in my RPG which was put to the side at the start of TMA, but still I used your vids constantly and wanted to say thanks publicly. Thanks to all the guys writing those tutorials and sharing their knowledge without you guys what I have done with TMA would not be possible.
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Yeah you have to either import a smaller image or export the image you want shrink it in a program like Photoshop or Gimp and then import it back into the editor albieit smaller. Whatever size the image is is exactly how big it will be on the minimap so if you use a 72x72 it will be 72x72 etc... I usuallly use between 12x12 and 16x16 and 16x16 is actually still quite large on the minimap.
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OK I get it and thats easy too, provided the created units belong to the player who owns the building and also the unit that created the building. Put a behavior on your hero called "Ghoul Follow Target" that lasts forever and is hidden. Then create a validator that validates unit behavior count and change the behavior field to the Ghoul Follow Target beh we made change the compare field to greater than or equal to and the value to 1. Then make use that behavior to validate the target of the issue order effect. So your issue order effect will just issue move order to target target unit with no reference to any effect, and in the validator field add the Ghoul Follow Target validator, also change the Target field that refers to the unit recieving the order and change it to source, as source will refer to the bearer of the behavior, this is handy for any time you use behaviors caster and source become seperated when a behavior is involved i.e when a behavior is applied its applied from the caster but if that behavior uses say a search effect to launch a missile then those things are launched from source as the behavior denotes source from that point on. Then make a search effect and have it do the issue order effect in whatever radius you want the ghould to be able to find and then follow their master, and use that in the periodic effect of a behavior, make sure to set the impact location of the search to source point. The key here is using the behavior and validator to isolate and target the caster@aczchef: Go
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Some people might say you can check off a stupid unit flag on the tree like Hover for example and validate unit filter Hover on the effect that does the targeting but its much easier and doesnt take up a unit flag that can mayb be used later. I would make a Behavior named "Tree" duration 0 that is hidden and add it to the Tree unit, then use a validator to compare unit behavior count, so that it validates target has behavior Tree GTE 1 , put that either on the teleport effect, or whatever effect is in the abilities Effect Field so if its a set or a persistent or the teleport either way make sure the effect targets units only so the Target Target field of that effect will be "Target Unit" only and the validator just add the Tree one we made and Vio La that ability can only target tree's. Using this method you can invent unit types to your hearts content with noting more than a behavior and a validator the two of which prolly take up less than a kilobyte, and only take a couple of seconds to make.
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Actually this one is simple, I havent read all of the responses so if this has been resolved im sorry bro 8-)
The coolest thing about this method is that if the owner of the created units isnt moving they are free to acquire targets normally acording to their weapon and basic unit acquire response, but if the host starts moving then they move to him until he stops moving then they can do their thing again, however you cant take control of them and move them about whenever you want unless you set up a seperate ability which I could explain also if you wanted.
What you need is 1 App Behavior Effect, 1 Issue Order Effect and 1 Behavior. So just like a timed life or other such buff added to a created unit via the Effect - Spawn field you can add this behavior it is absolutely important that this behavior be added via that field in the create unit effect because this is like a giant trigger and the issue order effect will draw its target from the create unit effect. Any time you do this with an effect i.e use another effect to give it a target you must use an effect from the effect chain that the effect you are wokring on is in an example is what we are doing here.
In the issue order effect all you need to change is: Ability - Ability Change this field from None to Move ( will issue the move order) Target - Target + This is the juicy part. Change this field to caster unit, and above that where you can choose an effect choose the effect that creates the units. This way the issue order effect issues the move order to its target, to move to the caster unit of the create unit effect which created the unit it is ordering to move
Next make the App behavior effect and dont change any fields
Then make the behavior and its handy to name it the exact same name as the apply behavior effect it belongs to that way the editor will automatically add the Beh to the App Beh effect 8-). In the Behaviors periodic effect field add the issue order effect, change the time scale according to your preference and leave the duration at 0 which will make it last forever and leave the period count at -1 but change the period durations field to 1, I use 1 second some people may argue with that but the unit recieving the move order once per second is plenty I dont like using permanent persistent things like this with tiny little periods like .1 secs and such unless I have to as it may not slow the game down but it does make for more traffic one way or the other so I dont needlessly create data traffic if it can be avoided.
Now we are just about done all we have left to do is add a couple of validators to disable the issue order behavior when the caster isnt moving so that the created units can perform some other function than following their master =p. It may seem obvious to just use a Unit Compare Movement Speed which is basically a velocity validator but in my experience that doesnt work so good, so my magic recipe for this is Caster not in Combat, and Caster has Orders, these 2 validators are already there for you thanks to blizzard hehe and they work really well for this application, add them to the Behavior - Validators Disable Field dont worry about making a combine validator for it as any validators you add in that field are all by default part of an "and" function only if you need to use an "or" function do you need to use a combine validator here or of course unless you have a whole bunch of validators you want to use here.
These behavior fields work in reverse of themselves so that if the validator fails then it disables the behavior. So Caster not in Combat fails when the caster is in combat so once the caster takes damage, which is how that particular validator works the the caster is flagged in combat and the behavior is disabled and the slave unit is free to perform actions. Also if the Caster Has Orders returns false meaning the caster has no orders then it is disabled and once the owner has entered combat unless its issued a move order any other order is executed pretty much immediately and has no effect on the behavior but if you move the slave will follow you.
All of this is handled automatically by an Arm Magazine ability if you used one of those instead, but I know sometimes an ability that creates a unit just doesnt work good with arm magazines especially if you want to do more than just create the unit and apply an effect to it. Lemme know if this helps 8-)