(12) Sliding Seal Tag

Players: 11 Seals, 1 Undead Hero
Recommended Players: Full House
Game Time: 7+ minutes
Genre: Tag
Current Version: 0.29

Introduction
The Lich King has finally decided to passify the critters of Northrend, that they will no longer disturb his plans for world domination.
To complete this task, he has sent one of his many newly appointed champions to corrupt, cripple and kill these seals.
The seals, being a hearty people, have decided to defend themselves in a closed valley that goes by the name Glacial Flaw. This is where they will make their last stand and survive!

Gameplay
Sliding Seal Tag is based on Tree Tag / Sheep Tag and Vampirism. Like any tag map, main player units that die can be revived by teammates. In Sheep/Tree Tag, they are sent to a prison in the center of the map, and in Vampirism they immediately join the legions of the vampire.

SST combines both in a unique way, that is actually quite common in many non-warcraft 3 games. Seals that die leave a corpse. Other Seals can revive this corpse to return a healthy teammate. However, the Undead can also revive this corpse - but as an undead minion.

To spice things up some more, units standing on slopes will slide down, and the steeper it is, the faster they go. This means that falling into pits will cost you a lot of time, and you might need some assistance in getting out. Walking on ice terrain results in a slide, hence improved speed.

Most tag maps have a victory timer for the escaping team - usually 30 or so minutes. SST borrows elements from racing games, in that you start with 7 minutes on the clock and for each seal that you raise, 2 minutes are added. This way, noobish Undead Heroes will lose quickly and you can have a rematch with a better opponent.

The only resource in SST is lumber. To harvest lumber, seals must build a Tree Refinery and summon wisps to harvest the essence from nearby trees. The undead gain lumber from killing stuff, and some minions have a way to extract lumber from trees.

Another notable difference is that the undead hero isn't always the same: at the start of the game a random hero out of 4 is chosen to lead the assault. Most abilities are left in their ladder format, name and icon for increased simplicity.

The Undead Heroes
Death Knight
The fastest of the heroes, but lacking powerful and effective spells.
Raises Skeleton Warriors. Warriors have the best combat stats and can cast Reveal, but need their master's help to escape pits.

Lich
The Lich is unique in that it is completely unaffected by sliding - whether it is one ice or on a slope. It also have the worst movement speed, but a ranged attack.
Raises Skeletal Mages. Mages have a ranged attack and move very fast. They can cast Unholy Grip and can Blink out of pits.

Dreadlord
The master of zombies and appointed supreme overlord of the undead by the Burning Legion, but this one is under the command of the Lich King. Has a fast attack speed, but moves very slowly during the day.
Raises Zombies. The Zombie is the only minion that can raise dead seals, but they are very slow and lack nice abilities.

Crypt Lord
"From the depths I come," he utters with unflinching hatred. He has the most powerful attack and is the toughest of all the Lich King's champions, but he is relatively slow.
Raises Scarabs. Scarab beetles are the toughest of all the minions, and have a versatile burrowstrike ability for escaping pits and taking down seals.

Special Units and Abilities
Besides the obvious walls, frost towers and such, here are few buildings that only appear in SST (as far as I know about tag-style maps):
Seal Cannon: Inspired by Burbenog TD, but this one doesn't shoot. It launches any seals that right click on it. So basically it's a blinking unit.
Igloo: The early-game wall, but this one has space for your seal to hide in. Skeleton Warriors can use the Reveal spell to check if the targeted Igloos contain any seals.
All other buildings/units produced by the Seals are pretty standard for tag maps - e.g. blockers, slowing towers, healing fountains, ownage units, research centers.

Credits List
Map made by rulerofiron99
Inspired by Tree Tag, Sheep Tag, Vampirism Ressurection.
Uses Rising_Dusk's Knockback System.

Note:
I've done *some* multiplayer testing of this map, but I've always found that the best feedback comes from wc3campaigns. So please, people read though it, add a though, and play it if you can.
Report any bugs ASAP.
Suggestions are always welcome.
Please do criticise, I want to improve this game so that it can also be enjoyed by noobs.

I tried to play a game with my friends, but the undead player kept dropping if he was the pit lord and used the spell that got him stuck in the pit. From what I did get to play, though, I concluded that there wasn't enough sliding and it felt like a massive rehash on a lot of the old tag concepts.

How about you take that sliding to a new level and do it like in those slide <insert noun>, slide maps? Everyone's sliding around and stuff and you have to dodge and save the seals while surviving the undead baddy boss dude. That would be pretty awesome, to be honest. xD

EDIT:
Just played another game of it with friends. We somehow got epic blue dragons that destroyed the undead player's Lich like instantly. I think really there's not much going for the map in it's current state, I say it would need something spiffy and with more slide shit in it. That would make it really cool if you could incorporate that more into it. I did like the simplistic approach to structures, there were no fillers, so it made a lot of sense. Some of them were a bit pricey though, and the trees didn't exactly hold a lot of lumber either.

Also, apparently the lich's raise dead could only work on air units. (That's what my friend who was the lich tells me)

Well, most of these version are quite buggy :(

pit lord = crypt lord? His impale spell makes a pit so that he can get an easy kill, maybe I should give him the burrow ability so that he can move out of it? (burrowed scarabs dont slide off stuff)

As much as this is a rehash of old tag concepts, that was part of the idea - taking this to a more 'slidey' level would be fun, but that wouldn't be my goal, my goal being to destroy vampirism.

I actually played one of those silly little sliding maps yesterday (maze of the sliding bunnies), and to be honest, I thought it was rubbish. And if the seals were sliding any more, they'd never be caught :/

Blue dragons spawn when the seals win (including if the undead hero dies)

Trees are ment to hold little lumber, so that you can't camp, and if you want to get the ultimate buildings, you need to harvest everything and pool together. I made it this way in contrast to vamps, because in that map trees and harvesters are infinite, and it is way imbalanced (all of the 10 human players are stronger than the 2 vamps, wtf?)

I'm glad you liked the simplistic approach to structures, I spent a lot of time on getting it just right.

I'll take a look again at the lich's raise dead spell, last time I played it, it worked though.

From all the games I've played of this map, I've also noticed the following:
1. It takes people a while to get used to it, that's why in it's current state, it will seem like there is not much going on, it's really hard to prevent that.
2. People don't know how to use stuff, and I'm trying to simplify everything into a right-click-casts-everything system (seals used to have the "use" ability for hiding in igloos and launching out of cannons)
3. Because this map is still in beta, lots of people think that there isn't enough to do after you die, so I'm still in the process of adding new stuff.

For now, I'll take your advice and make the sliding on ice faster, and I'll make more ice around the map. Maybe a spell/building or two that creates ice?

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

EDIT: The lich's revive does work. It says to target air units because I set the seal graves (ankh of re) to air units, I might change this for polish though.
I add more ice everywhere and made the ice sliding a tad faster.
New version uploaded.

The thing is, it won't be that chaotic because most taggers that join this map will be playing it vamp/treetag style - finding a corner to camp and then just building up. But now getting around the map will be a lot faster, unless if you are the lich.

Yes, pit lord = crypt lord. Mah' bad.
We got used to it really quickly, primarily because it's fundamentally so similar to every other tag of it's type. I'm serious, it was predictable. There was absolutely nothing dramatic enough to set it off from the others of the genre, no refinement, nothing special or unique. I mean, the sliding is cool, but it's a total gimmick in its current state, it's just not a dominating factor of the map.. And it should be.

It all depends on how people play it.

In most of the games I've had, people play it like they would play sheep tag or vamps: building up, etc.

That last game I had, however, had me chasing after one seal for a whole 2 minutes: he was sliding for speed, blinking over the snow, backstepping the trees, etc. In all other tags I've played, once the big bad dude has you in his sights, you're basically screwed.

In sheep tag, all you can do is build spaced walls of farms, build up your income, and go revive a friend every now and then.
In tree tag, you hide behind a tree and build up in a similar way, except that the terrain also provides defence.
In vampirism, you build up and somehow the humans can kill the vamps, and they are stronger than the vampires at all stages of the game.

In seal tag, and correct me if I'm wrong, there are many more styles of play:
Build a line of cannons with a space of about 700, when you get chased, it's like a highway that takes a few seconds to go from one end of the map to the other.
Scattered clusters of igloos - hard for the undead to know which one you're in if, and when they kill your hiding spot, just enter another one or launch out of there.
There's more for the dead players to do. In most tags, they are left in the center, and given some spells, but only to prevent campers, but dead seals can actually move around and block people, etc. Also, a dead seal is a wanted substance: undead will try to raise them asap. I might even give them some abilities.
Converted minions now also have more to do than chasing around like creeps, I'm in the process of giving each one their own techtree.

But enough about my attempted explanations, you have a very valid point.

To improve it, I've added more ice and increased the speed, I'll add the momentum and direction factor in soon.

I want the map to be similar to other tags, but just with more to do and such.

How else do you reccomend I make the sliding feature a dominating feature of the map? Stronger gravity slide with a better blink? Even more ice?

Maybe I should host the map on different servers, to see how different people around the world play it.