(5) Cataclysm Prison

Overview:

Cataclysm Prison follows the story of 5 prisoners who try to escape a notorious prison. After escaping their cells, they realize they must work together if they have any chance of escaping successfully.

Features:

• 5 distinct heroes, with five trigger-enhanced spells each
• over 100 items, ranging from normal to rare
• built with JASS
• exciting bosses that grow more challenging as you move on
• challenging obstacles

Comments:
I'm currently working on a map that's like this, except set in a different environment with new spells, bosses, heroes, and basically I'm trying to improve everything I did in this map. Dungeon-crawler are my favourite types of maps, and I'm constantly working on bringing more impressive maps to the relatively empty genre. If you'd like to help, PM me.

1) Description - The description at this site was alright, but the description inside the map could be improve as there is many informative stuff was missing.

The moment the game started, I have dialog button show 3 difficulty. Easy, Medium and Hard. But what is the difference between each difficulty? Higher hp for enemy? Stronger armor? Higher damage? I seen (20), (10), (5) at each difficulty dialog, what is that?

I only know what is the (20), (10), (5) was upon seeing my teammate dies. You should have said it was the amount of revival chances a player could have.

Item description was missing as well. Look at where the blue arrow point.



How to leave the room where the vault is? No information on how to leave the room, if there is; can you tell me where it was?

2) Bug - I use Blood Elf hero and there is no learning hotkey. You should add a learning hotkey for it.

Lot's of hotkey error, either the hotkey clash with one another, missing, or not working. This screenshot below was 1 of the error.





Blood Elf Blink Strike ability can be abuse to enable a quicker escape. When I escape, it seems like I doesn't get any message of victory.

3) Fun/Replayability - I cannot said I have any fun. Most of the time seems to be hack and slash to kill enemy. Infact, it seems like not all ability was a custom spell such as Defend ability of the BloodElf hero.

The custom spell doesn't look impressive either.

Item all seems to be ordinary warcraft 3 item, but maybe because I play till I stuck at the vault area.

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If I am right, any resources that are submitted to wc3c map database should be open sources but your map was protected.

My vote for this map was 2/5 (Lacking) for wc3c standard and 3/5 (Useful) for hiveworkshop standard.

Can this map be approve at wc3c map database, based on this current condition. I would said NO.

I've seen you say this multiple times, and it's time to fix it. The answer to that is no, protection is a choice. The map maker does not have to protect it or say whether it is protected. Whether it is or isn't has absolutely nothing to do with the approval/judging of the map.

Thanks for telling me about it. Cause there is some site that allowed only a open sources map to be submitted and with hundred of wc3 site flowing around the internet, it was hard to remember which rules applied to which site.

wc3sear.ch was like that. Idk if the hive is or not...

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

I'd have to say that you are a tough critic -- minor things like hotkeys and tooltips. (I personally don't use learn hotkeys, and don't know many people who do) and as far as item tooltips, just pick up the item to see what it does -.- As for the dialog at the beginning, it's not really rocket science - Do you want the game to be Easy, Medium, or Hard. You don't need to know how it attunes to the player -- it's the difficulty you want. I added it anyway though, just to clear up any misconceptions. I'm not really sure about what you said with the Blink Strike ability... right now it can be abused to work just like a Warstomp (just use it on your ground) and I fixed that in the next version so it has a minimum range. Sure it can be used to escape, but that hero is meant to fulfil the tank role, I really haven't seen any players use it to escape and abandon their party members. But since you played it in Single Player you found this an issue.

You also said that you didn't have fun with your hero. You gotta understand that it's a multiplayer game, and it completely revolves around that. It is not a single player game (in fact, it normally will end the game immediately if 5 players haven't been detected (unless in Single Player mode))

Please try it in multiplayer and I'm positive you'll enjoy it more.

Regardless, all your points were valid and they have been fixed in the next version.
(I'll upload the next version in a few moments)

The thing with hotkeys is that while YOU may not use them, someone else might. Personally, for hotkeys, you should use like a 'qwer' setup, so players don't have to fly their hands across the keyboard.

Additionally, item "preivew" tooltips are extremely important. If you have a full inventory, what's the point of taking the time to drop an item and pick that one up if it just turns out to be a crappy item?

Exactly, and hotkey was essential if you are fighting against a strong boss. I always play a map much better and look like a expert because of detail. Without detail, it was tough to play it as you need to test it constantly before you understand what it exactly does.


You obviously doesn't know who is Rising_Dusk and Captain Griffen yet.

New version. Addresses all the issues you stated and more. Added Alexis to the credits too.

Well, we only had 4 people as Deaod was AFK so it kicked us. Meh.

• The game doesn't support less than 5 players, which sucks a lot. This has to get fixed or it just won't be getting approved here. Make the game scale enemy damage/life/whatever to player count if you have to, but support less than 5 players.
• The glaive attack on Ubuntu doesn't give kill credits.
• You should use the actual floating text color and style for gold acquisition on death of a creep. It looks really out of place with it being so small and a strange color. (You know, use that gold color from melee with the style of "+X" where X is the gold amount)
• The bosses felt really lackluster. Their skills, attack-move personalities, and huge attack damage really weren't attractive. The bosses should use moves that can be dodged or must be handled by the players in a specific and intricate way. Right now you just have, you know, them casting stuff. The beastmaster was a terribly lame boss, just stampede. The final boss was boring too, I mean, we didn't even die against her.
  
  It's important for a map like this. The bosses are the biggest part, they are supposed to be the most memorable and the most difficult parts. They offer new challenges that must be dealt with in specialized ways.
• In the top left corner, "Map Information" puts the F9 over the side and it looks unprofessional. Just rename "Map Information" to "Map Info"

I'll give you this, the map was quaint. It had potential, it was an enjoyable expenditure of about an hour of my life, and the heroes weren't lame. Congratulations on that, you've officially made a map that I think with some work could earn a place in the map database. That's a huge first step.

Really, the bosses need the most work. You *HAVE* to fix the player count thing, though. Make the game scale with player count so that it gets easier if you have fewer players, don't just kick players from the game for < 5 players.

The ultimate of the draenai darkslayer was kind of lame, I would much prefer something usable on bosses than a silly sleep spell. I also think the levitate on the dryad could look smoother and be more useful. Items were good enough for my purposes, liked the use of potions for tomes. They weren't imbalanced either, a healthy usage of gold if you ask me.

Keep up the good work. I think if the bosses were more exciting on the whole (the Makrura boss was absolutely lame, he just attacked and crushing wave'd), it would have been a sure hit with me.

It's been nearly a month since my last post and there has been no response from the author. Because of this, I am moving this to the maps and campaigns forum where others can still download and try it.

It's a really good map, though, you shouldn't abandon it like this!