Sesamia's Hero Line Wars (Alpha)

[Ian]

I'm re-opening this thread because I've begun to work on this hero line wars map again.

I'm looking for some testers to provide feedback (3ICE, your input would be especially appreciated).

When I have more done, I'll upload a test map in this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CFNr3jnD64

[3ICE]

Commands quest missing first half.

[3ICE]

This map has been removed. We are sad to see it go.

[Ian]

I was learning vJass when I was making this, so the script is a giant mess. Maybe I'll continue this map someday, but I'm working on a different Warcraft 3 map now as well as several Warcraft 3 scripts. Hero Line Wars is pretty dead anyway. It's nearly non-existent in TFT.

[Ian]

I'm a necromancer now.

[BugMeNot]

I'm re-opening this thread because I've begun to work on this hero line wars map again.

I'm looking for some testers to provide feedback (3ICE, your input would be especially appreciated).

When I have more done, I'll upload a test map in this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CFNr3jnD64

Cool! Thanks for keeping us up to date.

[3ICE]

-speed 999999 crashes the game :D


[20:02:20.575] <From 3ICE[GHost]> Game [Sesamia's HLW : Sesamia : 0/2 : 21m] is over.
[20:02:36.466] You can't whisper to that user.
[20:02:38.294] -- Sesamia [16ms] has joined the channel using WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne (Level: 0, icon tier Random, peon icon, in clan 3ICE).
[20:02:39.700] <3ICE> /w sesamia sorry about that
[20:02:42.888] <3ICE> eh
[20:02:42.982] <Sesamia> lol
[20:02:47.263] <3ICE> speedy crash
[20:02:59.919] <Sesamia> 99900% extra projectile speed
[20:03:08.325] <Sesamia> surprised it didn't crash immediately

[Ian]

Code: Select all

Some notes for 3ICE (and people):

-Instead of a fixed amount of lives (150 per team, each creep takes off 1 life), give each team a life value and have each creep that enters the circle take away from that life value based on the creep's life (or some relevant attribute)
-Players that stay inside the circle of power can aggro creeps, which means that melee monsters may step into the circle when trying to attack the player
-(done) Add an AoE stun around the circle of power when players respawn
-Shrines are player owned buildings which hold powerful spells and exist to aid teams in dire situations, in previous iterations of HLW these buildings would either offer no exp or no gold (bounty) when killing creeps, and new players would spam these spells and not realize their mistake in doing so.  Test these buildings with no mana costs for spells and no penalties for using them, but with long cooldowns on spells instead.
-Shrines should get new tiers of spells as a player's creep summoner is upgraded, and old spell tiers should either be removed or leveled up.
-(Preload Notes) Abilities, Units, Special Effects

-Game Starts:
  -Lock Camera
  -Show Game Mode Boards
    -The Host (player designated to select game modes) will have a different board than all the other players
  -Activate Game Mode Selection Triggers
  -Game message to Host, and a different one to players
  -Auto-start timer in case the Host takes too long to select modes
  -Allow game modes to be selected via chat messages
  -Add a start game action to the board
  -Add a start game chat command
  -Once the game starts, activate hero selection
    -create the altar and add the selection menu to the altar
    -display an info. message
    -start a 1-2 minute timer for a grace period before any creep sending can happen
      -this ensures that players have enough time to select their hero
      -once every player has selected his or her hero, end the grace period
    -disable messages during any hero selection except for the info. message

-change the projectile system to have a single projectile struct of which other structs can extend
-keep the projectile system modules since they're used to create specific behaviors for projectiles
-the custom buff (aka custom attributes) functions should be made to be more user friendly at the cost of minor performance hits
  -currently, these use arrays to store the amount of an attribute a unit has, and units need to be registered in the system before attributes can be applied/removed
  -since unit registration can become a pain to manage, just allow the modifier functions to check if a unit is registered, and to register units that need to be
-add projectile recycling
  -add timer delays for projectile recycling for any projectile with a death animation that needs to play
  -save the death animation time in the ObjectTable hashtable


[Ian]

Code: Select all

Some notes on exp, bounty, uneven teams, and bad players in HLW:

-HLW suffers greatly when games are played with uneven teams, or if a team has some bad players on it.  While this certainly is a team game, the game is usually made far too difficult for the good players because of how much the bad players will influence the game.
-In 2v2 scenarios, it was not uncommon to let one player on each team get all the kills to boost that player's income substantially
-In a game with even teams and players of equal skill level, heroes will gain the appropriate amount of exp, and teams should basically be even in income, bounty gained, and levels
-Problems occur when this is not the case:
    Consider these games as ten minutes into each game, with players of equal skill level:
      -1v1, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 10,000 gold in bounty, and each player has 8,000 income
        -this will be considered normal for this example
      -5v5, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 50,000 gold in bounty, and each player has around 8,000 income
        -this means that each player has gained about an equal share in bounty from creeps, and that no one player was fed kills
      -2v2, each hero is level 16, and each team has gained 20,000 gold in bounty, but one player has 10,000 income while his teammate has 5,500 income, the other players have 8,000 income
        -this means that, while each team has gained the same bounty, the 10,000 income player took most of the kills on his team, and his teammate suffered for this
        -income is one of the most important things in this game, so preventing income imbalance is important, but not something that other HLW maps really address
      -1v2, the solo player is level 24 and the team of 2 are each level 12, the solo player has 10,000 income and the team of two has 5,000 income, and the solo player has gained double the bounty of the team of two
        -a scenario like this is almost inevitable with uneven teams
        -creep exp and bounty greatly influence hero levels and player incomes, so uneven teams produce results like this

Bad players will influence the game differently, in that bounty and exp is SO important that bad players can actually give advantages to their team through rather unexpected ways.
  Consider this scenario:
    5v5
    Team 1 has 1 person sending creeps
    Team 2 has 5 people sending creeps
    Team 2 is only getting the exp and gold from the sends of one person, but must be shared among all five players
    Team 1 is getting the exp and gold from the sends of all five players of team two, which means team one is getting 5 times the amount of exp and bounty as team two
    This clearly creates imbalance in favor of the team with 4 bad players that aren't sending any creeps.  That team will gain more gold from bounty, and more exp for the levels of their heroes.

     The only saving grace for the good team of 5 people is that those 4 bad players won't be much help in defending their side, forcing the one good player to do most of the work.  Unfortunately, that good player will have been fed so much gold and exp from the team of 5 that the good player won't have any trouble soloing his entire side.

From this information, we can find out a few things.  The one person that was sending on team 1 needs to have his/her creeps reward more exp and gold to balance out the loss of gold and exp from his useless team.  This allows team 2 to have a fair shot at competing against team 1, since team 1 won't have a mega-fed player.

Since the 4 bad players won't have any income, we can now base exp and gold rewards from each individual creep on the sender's income and the team's total income:
A unit that gives +50 income is sent, with a base reward of 100 exp and gold,
the sender now has 6,000 income, and his 4 teammates each have 40 income,
this means the entire team has 6,160 income (6,000 + 40 + 40 + 40 + 40),
now adjust the exp and gold reward of the creep based on the sender income and the team income (100 * (6,000 / 6,160), which is 97.402),
the creep now gives 97 gold and exp when it dies

After that, a bad player sends the same creep!
The unit gives +50 income, and it still has a base reward of 100 exp and gold,
the sender now has 90 income,
now add the sender's income together with the rest of his team (6,000 + 40 + 40 + 40 + 90 = 6,210),
this means the entire team now has 6,210 income,
now adjust the exp and gold reward of the creep based on the sender income and the team income (100 * (90 / 6,210), which is 1.449),
the creep now gives 1 gold and exp when it dies

Since the good player has been doing all the sending, he gives nearly 100% of the exp and bounty to the opposite team while the bad players give close to no reward (until the bad player sends more)

The team of 5 good players will give similar amounts of exp and gold, but each player will give about 20% of the exp and bounty to the opposite team, adding up to 100% for all five players

Exp is already shared globally with each hero, so now we just need to share bounty in a similar fashion and balance can be achieved.


[Ian]

Possible Game Modes:
-All Random (-ar), gives every player a random hero
-Same Teams (-st), gives each team the same heroes as the other team (only works with -ar enabled)
-Custom Heroes (-ch), each player can choose any abilities with any hero
-No Shrines (-ns), disables shrines
-No Creep Upgrades (-nu), removes the ability to purchase attribute upgrades for creeps

-Sort players by team on the multiboard
-Sort players by income as well