The Ancient Frontier (2-4 player AOS/DOTA)

i figured i should use hive's picture hosting ability in order to make my map descriptions better.
so...i'll be working on this first post for a while now and get it looking good.

i'll bump it periodically ofc

why don't i describe each of the heroes that will be in the map?
now guys, please credit me if you go stealing my stuff, lol...
some of this stuff is definitely subject to change, especially some of the stories/descriptions of the heroes, since i'm not really done with those...
i'm aware the following name is not apprpriate. i just haven't figured out a name yet.


what's done so far?

Terrain:
Main part more than 1/2 done. details not started yet
Heroes:
In a constant state of flux, a half dozen are nearly completely done while a dozen others or more are halfway finished.
Items:
got a long ways to go
there will be many item exchange points since there are going to be a lot of
items on the map.
Forest Monsters:
overall about 10 percent done(they will be big part of the map)
the creep respawning system is complete but many more custom abilities need
to be done, and they need to have item drop lists.
Subheroes:
it's just in theory phase right now
Mercenaries:
it's just in theory phase right now

what's the goal in the game?
it's starting to look now like a hybrid aos/rpg/arena...
there might be multiple ways to win the game, for now i haven't decided on anything.
i want to develop the arena, rpg, and aos aspects of the game and as i do that, eventually i'll come up with some clever ideas for the players to acheive victory in a fun way.

who would play the game?
it's a 2 team game. there is some aggression from forest monsters and there is the allied forces in the aos part of the map. each team consists of 1 or 2 players.

what is the game like?
there will be a number of neutral item exchange points, where you can buy and sell items. the forest monsters will respawn, also note they are randomly selected. so there will be a lot of creeping, like a normal warcraft 3 game. there will be a lot of custom items, even recipes. you will have control of 3 heroes. each hero will respawn at a mobile respawn point automatically. a timer for the respawn is included in the scoreboard. also included on the scoreboard is a kill and death count for each hero.

what about subheroes, mercenaries, etc?
well, i haven't decided if additional units would be a welcome thing to the game or not...i might reserve some custom abilities for forest monsters or i may decide they should go to some subheroes or mercenaries. so far it's unlikely that i'll add them, but if i add something so simple as the ability to purchase a courier, reason would say i could take it a step further with mercenaries of some sort. for now, i'm just going to try to get hte items and forest monsters done before worrying about whether or not we will be including those extra units.

anything else about the map?
yes, a lot of stuff but it's better just to check it out for yourself when you have the time. for now, the map isn't ready for major testing but once i've completed a base for all the items and forest monsters then it should nearly be.

i'll take some screenshots of terrain and forest monsters and whatever else may be of interest soon.

Looking at the screenshots, it looks like you have a lot of wide expanses of terrain that uses the same tile, making it look kinda flat and a little boring (particularly in the screenshots that feature a lot of green grass). It would help to vary that up a little bit (such as with small patches of green grassy dirt spaced throughout). It looks like you did that in the last screenshot and it really does help. Try to apply that throughout the map. Adding more small doodads, such as shrubs and avoiding using such straight lines of cliffs might also help to improve the terrain.

EDIT: Both times I tried to boot up the map, War3 lagged out, or at the very least, the map took so long to load that my computer said that War3 was unresponsive. I'm not entirely sure what would cause that, but even if there is no issue and the map just takes a long time to load, people on Battlenet are going to lag out before the game even starts.

i don't think it takes any longer than youTD to load
i am looking into ways to reduce the loading time.
as with any warcraft 3 map long load time or not you can close warcraft 3 before the map loads.
just because your computer thinks a program is unresponsive doesn't mean that it actually is.

I have no idea how long youTD takes to load. But if it takes long enough to load a map that it gets to that point, there's a problem, even if the map loads eventually.

there are tools one can use to decrease the loading time of the map, but that would mean disabling the map editing program from editing it. i don't care if you want to do that, so go for it. it's just in design stages so you can do anything you want to make testing the map easier, like what i do sometimes is make teal be a comp so i can play on purple when i run test map. you could also make some cheat codes for the heroes, like i already have "-lvl" for leveling all heroes up to 25. and -tstr for the tester hero(tstr abilites are changed whenever i feel like in object editor, he's rawcode of TSTR, fyi.) feel free to copy each of the neutral heroes in the corner and just paste them for player teal and test the map that way if you like. i'm not cutting your hands short. the map is not protected.

if you keep on complaining about the load time i will begin to ignore you.

Well, alright, then. But you need to realize that there's a difference between a valid criticism and someone attacking you. And if you can't take criticism, then there are going to be very few people willing to put any effort into testing your map.

uh huh. and by implying that i'm the bad guy here, that's exactly what you're doing, attacking me. so knock it off. I EVEN GAVE YOU PLUS REPUTATION FOR YOUR INITIAL POSITIVE REACTION TO THE MAP FOR CRYING OUT LOUD AND NOW YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST GO ON AND ON AND ON...

AND HERE NO ONE IS STANDING UP FOR ME AT THIS SITE.

If I come back here time and again and still no one is defending me, then this thread simply doesn't belong at this site. I'm removing the resource. I'm sick of this attitude everyone here is asking me to put up with.

I don't think anything he has said is unfair. You just don't seem to be able to handle any criticism.
He gave you feedback on the terrain, saying he thought it was boring and too flat and even gave you pointers on how to improve it.
He then commented on the load time, which should also be addressed even if this isn't a "release version" and doesn't need to be optimized/widgetized, it's still something to think about for the future. The fact that it also wouldn't load for him is a problem as other people might not be able to load it either and give you more feedback on the game play.

Nothing he said was attacking you.

he was forcibly closing warcraft 3 instead of letting it load the game. you don't know what you're talking about.

so he was blaming me for his own idiocy. i'd wouldn't call his actions sensible.

if you think you know another way to optimize the loading time of a map without optimizing it, feel free to post your own thread and talk about it there. then you can provide a link in this thread to it.

Sounds like totally reasonable criticism. Hell, I wouldn't want my map to take so long to load it's considered unresponsive and people force quit it/it crashes. Yes, he should provide additional details such as what type of computer/specs he has in case that's the problem. I was going to see what the load time was like but then you removed the map.

It could be due to a ton of item/units/abilities, in which case the widgetizer is your best friend. Why can't you optimize the map though?
He could have also been on a mac and had one of the mac bugs that causes wc3 to crash during the loading screen, which should be addressed.


EDIT: So I loaded your versions from hive and they both loaded fine for me. So either he has a really bad computer, or is using a mac and got some bug. Cool, see what not removing the map before other people can test it does?

This is correct.

i'm unaware of mac problems.

i removed it because i was frustrated with the situation.

now that we got that cleared up, it seems i need to find out more about these mac problems, and Shade987, if you would be so kind as to download my demon hunt tournament map @ http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/m...nt-0-96o-94231 to see if it runs on your computer, that would be a great help for me in general. since that map is far more advanced in development, if i can tackle mac problems in that map first then i can then take it a step further and tackle the problems in this one.

digression:

Hidden information: as for removing attachments...i had a really bad encounter with posting another thread about my other map on this site(basically one rude guy posted a garbage post and i gave him negative rep, and then vexorian nullifies the negative rep i tried to give the guy and gives me negative rep and said i abused the report function...and then i'm insulted some more after i explain why i'm so angry and i just think...if the mods weren't hypocritical and they weren't abusing the report system then this site would be a lot nicer, and maybe i would be proud to post my map here). that combined with this previously incomprehensible problem with the loading for this map for Shade987 and no one else entering the thread to comment made me thoroughly annoyed with the site.

i suppose i can put it back up.
so i'll work on preparing some new screenshots(with some more terrain details) and whatever and i'll try to figure out this mac thing and reattach the maps and images and add back the description.

as for the terrain, it hasn't been a priority at the moment, but i can understand the importance of developing it further at the moment in order to appeal to folks who would rather look first and download later. so i'll do a bit more work on it before updating the main post with screenshots.

It could be something like this. I think it's not just icons and can also be other imported textures like custom resources, UI, etc. However if it's not that, it can also be some trigger functions although I think those don't crash during load, rather when they're run.

must be icons since i made those myself...alright, that was simple enough, i guess. for me, anyway. now i guess i'll need to make those icons again.
will send a pm to Shade987 later so he can help me figureout my progress.

update:
i've completed editing some icons for another of my maps. if it did the trick, then i'll fix this one the same way.
mac user(s):
please download the attachment and see if it will load for you.

note: it is not the map this thread is based on, it is just another map i made where i figure mac users cannot load it, and furthermore i'm in the middle of editing one of the triggers, so ignore the part where the green text keeps saying the same things over and over again.

if it loads up just fine, then when i edit the ancient frontier hopefully it will too. let me know as soon as possible, thanks.

for redundancy, here's a linkback to the current map which presumably does not load for macintosh computer players. http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/m...nt-0-96o-94231 if you've no need to confirm the above linked to map crashes your warcraft 3 on your macintosh computer, ignore the link above and just test the attachment here.

this macintosh problem might be difficult or easy, so testing the already completed map will make figuring out the macintosh problem simpler. once the problem is solved on the completed map that i made, then we can return to the ancient frontier to figure out what's wrong there.

I quickly tested out the Demon Hunt Tournament map. It seems to load fine, even with some of the custom icons in it.