(5v5) TaxSeason, "tag" type map. I seek a few testers.

Tax Season: The Hunt Begins
Current Version: v.26 Beta
5v5, "tag" type map
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OK i edited this post rather than make a new one. Its a pretty good rundown of what I've got in the map. I worked out most of the big bugs and as far as I know the server splits gone. I'd like to test more full games to make sure but i cant atm so ill leave that to beta testers. If indeed the server splits still there ill just fix it for beta 27. All in all, the game runs great. So far 99% of the people I've had play it pretty much really enjoyed it. It's not overly balanced yet but hopefully enough people will play it and send me suggestions. I can only do so much alone :mtk:
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FEATURES::

This is a tag type map but its not another lame tree tag, sheep tag, kodo tag, virgin tag, tag your momma type map (i'm not saying all those maps are dumb, the kodo one was pretty cool, but im just saying its not another tag clone). The basic story for the map goes like this.

"A small farm has been neglecting their tax duties and now the Internal Revenue Service has come to collect. Of course all farmers are dirt poor so they cant collect the money. However, the collections agent sent to collect is a diabolical maniac who orders the extermination of every farmer who works the farm. A renegade military unit controlled by himself is sent in to exterminate them all (dont ask why, like i said hes a maniac). A small group of the farmers manages to escape by fleeing to the outlying forests. There they must survive a set amount of time by outlasting elite agents who have been called upon to find and destroy them".

I know, it sounds a bit corny, but all in all its pretty damn funny. I did the cinema in a very simple (yet entertaining fashion) using very few cameras, but lots of panning, and lots of action to keep things moving. This intro "may" be removed in the future if it proves to be more a hinderance to gameplay than an asset. The intro features a skip feature at the map init. It's all user friendly.

If you've seen or played BioShadows Hunters vs Farmers than you have a general idea of how my map is played. This map is designed to be played with 10 players, 5 to each team.
Think of "Farmers vs Hunters", but instead of a rip off, a totally new project. Picture all new terrain featuring rivers, more forests with better pathing, a mazed mountain, etc. Instead of having a "base" unit for the "hunter", I use actual heroes that will gain exp and level up, gaining access to skills like a normal hero. The skills are all normal skills that I've changed animations, added trigger effects, renamed, re-calculated values, .. basically overhauled.

The "farmer" team is no longer limited to just a few buildings, and 3 mercs. I have a whole range of towers that can be upgraded, "farms" that don't pump out tons of laggy sheep and pigs: they just generate a base amount of gold over time that adds up as you build more "farms".
Instead of having 3 bland mercs, there are a full range of units, some normal abilities that have been changed a little bit, and some that have been redone using either triggers, or sfx changes etc. These include light/medium/heavy melees, 2 types of spellcaster, 2 types of ranged, a spy unit, etc.

Team 2 isnt just limited to a couple simple items, and a few bland mercs. They have access to three different "shops". One for consumable items, one for "permanent" items, and last but not least, a mercenary "shop" where can hire a small but very useful amount of mercenaries. One of the big faults I saw in Farmers vs Hunters was that once a Hunter took a significant amount of damage he was pretty much guaranteed dead. There was no real way to heal the damage. In my map the "hunter" type units have access to a "renewal well" that will heal their mana and hp, as well as potions that arent ungodly expensive, and a "regen ring" type item that can be bought.

Some other features include a votekick system, selectable camera zoom, an introductory cinematic that "can" be skipped, a unique and easy to use "tutorial" system for team 1 (because team 1 is definately THE hardest for a noob, team 2 simply has to find and kill team 1).
This map also has a fully functioning dynamic leaderboard that lists player numbers ( for votekicking ), their names, and for team 1 the amount of "lives" they have left. Same for team 2 but lives is replaced with a kill counter. There is a 60 minute (might be changed after more testing) countdown timer that gives the Team 2 units a deadline. In "Farmers vs Hunters" , if the timer ran out the Hunter class units would win. I reversed this concept and if you wonder why, the "story" behind the map which is played in the starting cinema will explain it for you.

There are a few more "unique" features that have been added, largely due to suggestions from a few close friends who have until now acted as my alpha testing team.
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This is indeed my first map, so its not perfect. I started out using this as a learning tool, but with an idea for what I ultimately wanted to achieve. At one point I scrapped 100% of what I had, and rebuild the whole map from the ground up using new and better ideas. I think MOST players will enjoy this map. It's simple, yet not dull. Its easy to learn, yet still challenging. It can be very intense at times as well. It still needs much tweaking and balancing but that will come with beta.

OK well thats enough for now, sorry for making this post so long. I kinda get excited when describing all the features (its taken a good bit of work and alot of creative brainstorming on the part of myself and some friends). There are a few "special" features not listed that you can see for yourself if you'd like to help me out. OK well make 'dem replys :ggani:

-Huh

I'll prob. edit this again soon with the features in a slightly more organized layout. It's late and I'm trying to be Speedy Gonzalez here.

OK now for some screenshots. They're nothing overly fancy (im not a good photographer :bgrun: ).
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This one is from when the map inits, you get an option to skip the impending intro:



This is the very beginning of the actual intro. It shows the IRS Collections Agent BoB (pretty much a total lunatic) making his speech to the farmers.



Here you see a small batallion of Marines getting ready to open fire upon the hapless farmers. Theyre meat in a sec hehe.



This is midway in the intro, where the Marines come to slaughter the farmers at Bob's command.



Here's my pretty waterfall (it doesnt come out right in that screen though because of the black mask over the top part of the screen), along with a popup tooltip from one of my "tutorial" items.



Here's a pic of a nice little base i dug out as a farmer, to show what one could look like, along with examples of most the merc units for team 1.



This is a screenshot showing the "Grow Tree" ability, based off of Darky27's "treeseed" JASS spell. Props to him for creating something that worked oh so perfectly in my map =/



Here's one of the Team 2 IRS units along with a Tree Shredder cutting his way towards the farmer base (not seen in screen)



Here we see the IRS agent on team 2 prepping to hire some marines to patrol the map.



Here he moves down some to get the price on the Marine he wants to hire, notice the pretty floating text ^_^



Here's the hired marines making their rounds. Any team 1 units that crosses their paths will be destroyed! (unless its a veritable army)



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Ok thats it for now. Go ahead and DL the map! Even if youre not into tag maps I think you might enjoy this one. Post comments suggestions etc here or email me. I NEED FEEDBACK. Good or bad, lay it on me. I want to make this map even better :ggani:

-Huh

Well, I loved hunters vs farmers, so I should like your map too 8)) ... but one of the fun things about hunters vs farmers was if you were a hunter, running around and killing the farmers sheep... :ggani: Is there anything like that in your map? I understand the lag issues, but maybe there's a way you could have the sheep without the lag.. :bgrun:

And of course if you were a farmer you had to control all those sheep and keep them in hiding otherwise they could give away your base location. (Me, I rarely had any sheep at my base, I always sent them to hide somewhere and told them to hold position. Or I would randomly tell them to go somewhere else on the map (like decoys...)


Anyway, will play your map when I get the chance.


PS. Don't forget, if you want more views/downloads of this thread, put a link to it in your Signature.

Its too bad BioShadow gave up on HvF, do you know who he turn the project over to?

There are no sheep/pigs in my map heheeh. (well not any that you can make via farms). I had alot of friends who complained that that was the laggiest part of HvF. My "crops" generate set amount of gold per 30 sec, for each one on the map. So basically youre encouraged to build MORE farms than you would in HvF but there arent a billion sheep and pigs runnin around laggin ya and blocking up the paths in your base.

If I find out however that the owning of hundreds of thousands of sheep and pigs was the key factor in people likeing HvF, then i might do somethin similar.. maybe make the farms spawn fel boar heheh.

About the link in my sig.. i cant get the VB to display. Its coded right i think but it just wont show. any idea why? ALso, where the heck is the PM option, i have them enabled in my profile. i need to get starcraftfreak to rename this damned thread.

-Huh

PS: oooo000 the VB is startin to show up, i just made some errors in it :P

LOL crazy idea. You did the skins your self. Its rad man.

Great map idea but wouldnt it be hard for the IRS people to find the farmers in such a big map?!?

The story line does make sense. Its like Ivan the Terrible who killed his own people with his secret police to those he accuse of killing his wife.

Ok well its not TOO hard to find them but ya its tough. I just finished playing a game on b.net and i have a little news.

Server split = gone, far as i can tell. Needs more testing.
I'm gonna release v27 in a day or so, quite a few of the farmer units need tweaking, the plasma towers are incredibly overpowered atm :P. Also, IRS agents need an anti air unit. The farmer spy 'copter is unkillable unless you drag them to your marine guards and summon a spy rat with true sight. (or buy the wizards eyes and drag the spy copter to the marines.

I think farmers get too much gold atm. I raised all their values due to a friends advice. then i realize whenever we test/play he ONLY picks farmers.. biased little prick :P So theyre gonna get their gold values nerf a lil bit.

Trees need a little reworking, i tried making paths narrow but pathable but i made a few too narrow, even with the low obstruction values on farmer/irs agent.

ALl in all, its not half bad for beta but i plan to keep updating to make it more playable.

Allso i need to remove my testing cheats. they came in handy for testing but a couple are bugged and theyre not really needed in a beta (even though theyre only triggered by myself and my alpha team).

Ok well DL this sucker and play it , let me know what YOU think. opinions matter. i gotta log for a bit. ill be back later to check progress.

-Huh

To PM a mod, the easiest way is to goto a thread he posted on and click the PM below his post... (the forums rules for the "Completed Maps" forum comes to mind. Lord Vexorian made it.)


For the "Sheep" idea, don't have the sheep (or pigs if you choose, I say use the minks....) give you the gold and don't produce a lot of them.. Say 1 is spawned when a farm is completed, and more are spawned for each farm every 2 minutes.

Story behind the Sheep/Pigs/Minks:

They are attacked to the farm for the food they can scrounge up, and once they have become acustom to the farm they become loyal to the farmer and will do as they ask, this includes scouting the map. But be warned if they are not given any orders they are known to just wander around, and may give away your base location if they wander out of it.




Just an Idea. But then again, maybe your map doesn't need them, I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet. If you want a "Download Only" game made on B.net with your map, just let me know, I should be home most of today (sunday) so I might be able to make said game for an hour or something.

I might add in something like the spawning minks lol, it sounds funny. Oh ya, if you could host a DL only game on USEast that would be fandamntastic :). The game is quite playable as it stands, it just needs a lot of balancing. Like in my above post i mentioned just a few things I plan to change in next version. Actually i just woke up :P, so I'm gonna crack open UMSWE and start making some changes. I really wish I could get more people playing the beta to help me with ideas, but for now I guess ill just do what I can with a couple peoples help..

Worse come to worse the map dies off due to no interest from others, and I unprotect it, post it, and move onto something else. No big deal cause this was a learning thing for me :gsmile:

-Huh

PS- To AK47, the only skins not in normal TFT are the goblin (i believe its just ripped from the one that goes down the slide at the goblin shop) and the agent. The goblin was a freebie DL at another site, and the agent I got here off an old thread. The guy who made it,i forget his name, but its in my map credits.

Oh yea, I PM'd Lord Vexorian and Starcraftfreak both asking them to rename my thread, hope they do it.

PSS- CRAP CRAP CRAP, I had my buddy host the screenshots on his apache box until we get a webhost for our site and it looks like his damn machine went down last night, as far as i can tell. The sceens wont show and I cant access our forums. Hopefully I'll get that fixed tonight. If anyone knows a good spot to host screenshots (preferably for free.. with outside linking enabled of course) then let me know. Also it needs more than 5 MB BW a day cause im pretty sure if anyone comes here ill get that much easily.

Logging onto War3 now on USEast for download game.

Maybe you (as the maker of the map) should join the game so you can give feedback to others about it and answer any questions...

Any specific title you want me to name the game?

Yea ill do that. Just name it something like "New "tag" map, like farmers vs hunters"... something along those lines. People know that map and if they liked it theres a chance they might enjoy mine. Ill join ya in just a sec to answer questions.

RIGHT this sec im tryin to get my damn friend on AIM to find out why our forums are down.

-Huh

Well, so far no one has tried to download... emote_confused

But I will keep it up for a while longer.

First I named it:

MapName (DL ONLY) - Like HvF

Then I named it

MapName (DL ONLY)

Then I saw one called "Hunters Vs Farmers" and I realized people still play that, so the game name is now:

Like HuntersVsFarmers? DL this



When you get a chance, at least make sure the game is listed in the "Custom Games" list, because normally at least 1 person would join a game, just to see what it looks like, so far not even one person connected to my game, so I want to make sure there isn't something wrong with the way its hosted. If its not listed, let me know and I will try something different.

Good idea dude. Battle.net gamers are kinda fickle. Most the time if it doesnt say something like "maul", "tob","dota","enfo", etc etc it wont get hardly any hits. I "might" rename this map in the next version or so to make it a little more appealing to the ADD retards on b.net who cant join a game if its not oh so sexy uber appealing :mtk:

I'll alt tab back to b.net in a sec. ALSO, I made a NEW thread so lets just let this one die, if you wanna reply hit me up with an email or on the new thread. Thanks.
ALso i changed the link to it in my sig.

-Huh