8.0 So far

On the topic of the 4 Item abilities, might i suggest adding another "folder" or abilitys, akin to the Local Skills, with all the Item abilities in there. I know this will make it slightly more difficult to access, but this will allow all 4 to be used w/o a loss of anything, and simply becoming familiar with the hotkeys can solve the ease problem. This is onlya suggestion, and i don't even know if its possible.


On second thought, are you sure there are only 3 slots?

(Patrol) (Hold Pos) (Stop) (Attack)
(Move) (Locals) _______ (Hero abilities)
(Spells) ______ _______ ___________

There are Four?

eh i think there is four... because there is 7 slots that are free after you add move, patrol etc etc.. and only three are taken by spell books and such... unless im forgetting something i think there is enough slots

Once you hit level 35 there are 4. Before level 35, that fourth spot is taken by the ability that lists the elements you can choose. I believe at level 62 a fifth slot opens up.

An easy way to solve this, is to make sure that all items of a certain type only have abilities if their requirement is level 35 or above. For instance, you could make staffs only give abilities if your level 35 or higher. Problem solved.


I do have a couple of questions about things. First of all, I am concerned about the balance of these huge changes. You will likely see me posting MANY topics complaining about EVERYTHING in the near future after the version is released. Please do not take this personally, as it is nothing against you. I will likely just have an opinion on everything that I feel the need to share.

Secondly, I am curious if there will still be low level items. My understanding was that you only implemented tiers for the higher levels. If you did that for the low level items as well, that is even better.

I also think -anns should get a significant exp increase as well. I have never maxed a mage in it, and games usually end around level 40. I think that the game should end about the time you finish your M-book. There should also be item shops in the main war area, I am not sure if this will be taken care of with the new tier system, but I think -anns people should have access to elemental items without using a crow. On that note, those crows should be removed entirely. They are the cause of many exploits.

I will trust you to choose the correct things for Water, and I am glad you took our opinions into account. I do however think that the morph and Geyser need remaking as well as Silence. In addition, many of the suggestions for minor buffs to almost all of Water's spells seemed very logical to me. I would appreciate if Water was remade more than just Silence before 8.0, as this is the easiest time to do it without messing up anyone's strategies. (Once the Water morph is removed, the Earth morph might as well be also. It would simplify the game and the coding, and then you could give Earth some kind of new spell. It seems a little underpowered right now anyway, and could probably use something new and interesting.)

I am willing to wait on 8.0 as long as necessary, and would prefer having even more M-spells added even if it meant waiting another week. But, that decision is purely up to you.

move
stop
patrol
attack
defend
Attribute Yellow Cross thingy
The Blue eye that gives info
the purple icon for increasing stats that looks like two hands touching each other in the clouds, just purple not blue and white
the spell book


9 of 12 slots taken

The blue eye that gives info disappears at level 35 opening up another slot.

just get rid of the info thing and make a command called -info that gives the same information without taking up a slot... problem solved

First. Demonic excellent suggestion with the info command, I like it.

Second. I didnt even realize that dragon. I had not even considered imposing requirements on the gear, I mean its there as a balancer we should take advantage of it.

Both suggestions will easily solve the issue at hand, thanks to the both of you!

Everything that I think needs to be said, pretty much was. Though I would like to make it clear I 100% agree on that.

Quote :

I will trust you to choose the correct things for Water, and I am glad you took our opinions into account. I do however think that the morph and Geyser need remaking as well as Silence. In addition, many of the suggestions for minor buffs to almost all of Water's spells seemed very logical to me. I would appreciate if Water was remade more than just Silence before 8.0, as this is the easiest time to do it without messing up anyone's strategies. (Once the Water morph is removed, the Earth morph might as well be also. It would simplify the game and the coding, and then you could give Earth some kind of new spell. It seems a little underpowered right now anyway, and could probably use something new and interesting.)

i agree that mixing up the animations would be nice.. but i wouldn't make it top priority for now.. i would focus on 8.0's current work then work on this for like 8.1 or 8.2 because i really dont want 8.0 to be delayed longer than it NEEDS to be as i am very much looking forward to this release!

Dragonheart91 wrote:

[color=darkred]Vapor Shield should have some kind of animation that looks like a force-field or bubble around the user. Some way to let everyone know they have a shield on them without clicking and reading a buff. The whole devotion aura thing just doesn't quite work out for me. It would also be nice if the yellow bar with the shields hp % showed up like it does in other games. (See Impossible Bosses and WOW maps.)

Lightning Strike should show the Chain Lightning animation when fired. That way, you know where your shot went, and whether it hit or not. I believe this is being worked on, so this is just a reminder.

Thunderstorm should in my opinion show the animation of every Lightning Strike it fires even if they miss. If this lags the game or something, then the issue must be dealt with some other way, but right now I don't feel the spell conveys properly the pattern at which the Lightning Strikes are fired. A good animation would go a long way there.

P.S. Even though animations are usually low priority, I feel that these things are actually eye sores in the map right now, and should really be at least middling priority.

Awesomeness is never a low priority as far as I'm concerned, and everything should look spectacular. There are a couple problems with your suggestions, however.

First: I love the idea of a % bar for the vapor shields, the problem is that it would be the only spell that utilizes such a bar Even though it should be special, since its an M-Spell, when I play a map in which there is a special user interface implementation for one spell, my mind usually goes to the "unprofessional". I think an obvious model to attach to it would be the big bad voodoo target animation, but some people may disagree with me on that.

Second: I went through about 4 hours attempting to get a chain lightning animation to show from the source of the strike to the target, there were many problems along the way, the first of which was that lightning strike animation only played when the target lived through the strike, because of the need for the casters to turn to face the target. Next the castersystem casters wouldn't actually target other castersystem casters with the chain lightning, and when I solved that problem, it just looked superlame, because the lightning wasnt actually attached to the target unit.

I don't see a problem with thunderstorm showing the same animations on every strike, as long as someone can think of a way to make them not look stupid without making a fast periodic timer (10 times per second at least) that updates the position of the lightning as the target moves.

The only other maps I have seen that % bar for shield moves use it only for a single ability as well. I don't think it is unprofessional to attach an additional animation to an M-spell. And yes, I think the voodoo animation would at very least hold us until something more awesome was thought of.

I understand your having problems with the Chain Lightning animation, but hopefully you will find a way to solve those. Warlock has no problem with theirs, maybe that could help you even if they don't use the caster system.

I think you misunderstood me on Thunderstorm. I wanted the Chain Lightning animation to happen on every strike even the ones that missed. With that, anyone with the buff would essentially look like one of those toys that has lightning flashing all over it rapidly. That is why I feared it would lag and be impractical. It would pwn, but probably won't work. Failing that, hopefully something else can be devised that better showcases the pattern the lightning uses to pick it's targets, to help people learn to use the spell more effectively and make it look more awesome.


P.S. Getting some kind of animation on Lightning Strike would be nice, even if it doesn't work if they die. Better to have something than nothing while you work out the bugs. It is just so strange to see it happen without an animation.

P.P.S. Please don't be discouraged by my bitching or feel as thought I just gave you more work. I'm just happy your doing anything.

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P.P.S. Please don't be discouraged by my bitching or feel as thought I just gave you more work. I'm just happy your doing anything.

Not discouraged and I don't view it as bitching or griping. A Vast majority of the additions being made will need to be balanced. I attempt to balance what I can but seriously with so many variables to consider we almost need a balancing team to deal with it all. Ive always felt my strong point is in Balancing, however with the Item Spells I have in right now I can tell you they are most certainly not balanced, I simply have no time other then to generally neuter the effects and buff them later. Some may be strong, some may be weak. I certainly hope Dragon that you have 32 threads open, one for each magic gear piece, moaning and complaining about how each is over powered or under powered.

I guess i'm picking up on the animation for LS and TS (and I have about 3.75 hours of sleep right now so forgive if post < lame). Well, there's the cheesy thing to do which would be to have actual doodad looking lightning bolts fly out from a TS'd or LS casting mage that stop when they hit a target and/or disappear when they reach their range. I suppose the second equally cheesy option is to have the mage be somewhat like a lightning caller. He fires a single bolt that, when it hits, calls down a strike - the animation would be obvious and, thus, somewhat cheesy... silly really. The chain lightning animation, I think, would work with LS but not TS because the nature of the thunderstorm is random and very powerful thus having it shoot bolts of lightning that look as though the emanate from the mage would be blah in my opinion.

Some already in WC3 examples of easily (maybe) implementable models (as per the lightning caller idea) would be Far Seer projectile, Couatil projectile (it looks like Gargoyle but is blue), Blighted Gold Mine (the circle the Acolytes stand on for gold harvesting, again just painting a path), Chain lightning (target animation), Purge (target animation), Orb of Lightning (special animation, the slight electricity thing that stays on the target momentarily), and the last I'll mention is the Lightning Bolt doodad (which is essentially the old effect of TS and LS). This is just a quickly thrown together list of crap that may or may not fit the needs of whatever. Take it with a grain of salt and the knowledge that I have no idea how the animation system works in this map, and, thus, if any and/or all of the suggestions listed above have already been tried and/or won't work then, heh, oops.

Just in case I don't make sense: all of the above suggestions are models for a "placemarker" so to speak for where the spell is being aimed or randomly strewn about as for the case of TS. To reiterate, the model would fly along until it either hit something (in which case a lightning bolt would fall from the sky and smite the poor SoB that was in the way) or ran out of range and simply disappeared. Make sense? To me it does, but that's about as meaningful as emotions to a psychopath.

Read: None.

What Aqua seems to be suggesting is that I scrap the way I made lightning strike (Which I specifically made to be unique in that it is instant, as opposed to a missile) And instead make it a firebolt without the stun.

Here's a quick description of what I got to happen as far as lightning coming from the caster

Spoiler:

I solved the problems with the chain lightning effect coming from the caster, the new problem is that when you have the lightning detached from the target unit in a game that ISN'T Warlock and DOESN'T have knockback, it just looks stupid.

Having a dummy chain lightning cast every 2.5 seconds wouldn't lag or be impractical, at least not any more impractical than having thunderstorm hit something once every 2.5 seconds. It would work perfectly if someone has any ideas on how to get lightning strike to not look stupid when it comes from the caster

Could you simply make the lightning animation fade very quickly? Have it appear for like .2 seconds. Just enough to be a flash, that makes sense with what it is anyway.

Wait, wait. No, no stun. I never suggested stun. But, if the strike is instantaneous, then having any sort of model would be inefficient, right? I mean, the only thing I can think of is putting a 1250 range piece of lightning down on the map and have it fade away incredibly fast (like dragon says up there) but it'd look beyond hokey if it went through a unit.

I think that spells like Siphon Mana and Life Steal use unique lightning effects that are target to target... maybe that effect is usable in some way? Might have to find a differently colorized model for it though.

Pythagoras wrote:

without the stun

I guess I could just release it so you guys can say it looks horrible and ask for the old animation back.

Hopefully you will figure it out. Until then, something is better than nothing.

What if instead of using the Chain Lightning, you used the old version(the doodad) and used that as a projectile, and it actually moved at the target, quickly, but slow enough that you can see it?

Lagger09 wrote:

What if instead of using the Chain Lightning, you used the old version(the doodad) and used that as a projectile, and it actually moved at the target, quickly, but slow enough that you can see it?

I'm not sure where this doodad idea came from, but the old MM&M lightning effect (Still being used in current versions) is simply a chain lightning fired from a unit that has a 2200 or so fly height.

I have another suggestion for 8.0. Bubble Aura should get it's animation back. I don't know why it was removed, but I don't think it should have been.

there is a Lightning doodad, I was suggesting you use that as a potential projectile, like Firebolt, just w/o a stun, and moving alot faster.