(6) Swarm 2

Swarm 2 is really a mix of several genres, but I guess it is most similar to Footies (although I hesitate to say that, considering its bad rep). There are several key features that differentiate it from other maps.

Genre: Footmen Wars
Teams: 3v3
Point of the Game: Destroy the Bases of the other team's players.

Capture Points/Towers: To get units, you need to build Capture Towers on Capture Points scattered around the map. There are 12 Capture Points, and 6 players, so you're going to have to fight for them. This feature centralizes the combat around key points, rather than just random encounters.

Attributes: Your spawns may be upgraded with up to 3 Attributes. You research how many Attributes may be applied at your Base, and then choose which Attributes are applied at individual Capture Towers. There are 16 different Attributes, each adding something to your units. This means you can play tons of games without ever using the same strategy twice. Also, different Attributes may be applied to each Capture Tower, allowing for you to customize an army how you want it. You could have 1 Capture Tower spawn units with Bloodlust and Command Aura to buff your other units, while a 2nd Capture Tower spawns units specialized for pure Damage. Then, combine your Attributes with those of your teammates for even more powerful combinations.

Powers: Powers are special, global abilities used from your Base. You start with 3 random Powers, and each one does something to either hinder your enemies or help your units. The Powers are mostly tactical abilities, so if you use them intelligently you'll get more out of them than someone who doesn't. Every time you use a Power, there is about a 2 minute cooldown then it is replace by a new, random Power. This adds an element of surprise and randomness to the game, forcing players to be ready to counteract any assaults. However, I have done my best to make sure none are too strong to the point where skill is no longer the dominant factor.

Addons: Addons may be attached to your Capture Towers, and they increase the effectiveness of units spawning there. For example, one Addon gives units spawning there the Bash ability, another one simply increases their damage. However, if a player destroys the Capture Tower it is linked to, then builds their own Capture Tower on that Capture Point, the Addons are now theirs. This allows for more strategy, as Addons give bonuses for cheaper than Attributes, but may be stolen, and only apply to 1 Capture Tower.

Other Features:

-Coded in pure JASS, and is pretty much leak free (I'm sure I missed a couple here and there but I tried to get them all).

-To get gold, your team has to kill units, not you. That means you can pick support Attributes like Bloodlust or Heal and not be punished for it. It also allows new players to simply tag along with their more experienced team and keep up, until they can figure out what's going on and contribute more.

-Unit cap of 60 per player so the game does not devolve into simply massing your enemies with all your units at the end.

-All Move and All Attack functions are usable from your Base at any time, simplifying things (even with a unit cap of 60 it's often easier to simply move everyone than do it by hand).

-Rally Points actually work from your Capture Towers. Seems like a simple enough feature but most maps don't implement it. Allows you to focus on combat rather than spending all your time moving your units to the fight.

I'm sure I'm missing something but..whatever, that's enough information =P. Any suggestions or thoughts are welcome, and if there are additional things I should do before being accepted I'll be willing to. Also, I'd recommend playing it with a full house (3v3), although 2v2 can be fun too. 1v1's can be kinda slow, but with two smart and skilled players are very fun and tactical. Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry the icon's so bad =\.

Haha, if you think that icon is bad you should take a look at Stand of the Peons (in maps section) XD

Anyways, this map sound really interesting, ill try it as soon as some other people get online!

Tonight let's test. Remind me :)

I think this sounds very much like footman frenzy but it seems you have put very much love in this map so it seems interesting.

I've tested it, and i think it was quite a nice map. However:

* The terrain was horrible. Just grass and trees, very boring.

* You had way too many units. If every played had about 12 units that would be fine, now you had 30-40 per player.

* The super creature spell was bugged; i tried combining a 3000 hp super creature with like 50 horses (the 3000 hp one had been like 25 horses) and i was expecting a 10 000 hp one or so. I got a 1300 hp creature, and lost my 3000 hp one. Powers were cool, but this one was bugged.

* The whole map could use "higher quality". The tooltips, models, icons etc. They just didn't look nice together. Specially the animals you started with was ugly. I mean, dogs fighting horses when neither of them have an appropriate attack animation?

Thats the most important problems imo, i'm not gonna go deeper into the problems because i allready know this map is not getting my approval in its current state.

I agree with GaDDeN. The idea was good, and the map itself was also quite good, but it needs some work. It does not get my approval yet.

Here are my pros and cons.

Pros

• Many ways of improving units
• Fun unique gameplay

Cons

• Capture points was placed too close to the team to left
• You had too many units to control
• The units had active abilities with low mana usage. It resulted in a mass ability use.
• The “quality” was low. Poor terrain, randomly picked units. There was no use of custom models/tooltips/icon to make the map more “exotic”.
• Ugly loading screen taking up space.
• No map preview image

This map is not approved in its current state. It has potential, but it need more work. I suggest you move it to Map Projects, or a mod ^^

I agree with what has been said, if you plan to continue work I will move this to the Project section, else this will be Graveyard'd.

I'm never good at terrain (or any art for that matter) so truthfully I just tried to make it so it had some strategical value, but I see what you mean and I think I can improve it a bit.

Maybe reduce spawning speed by a pretty large amount and change max number of units to 30? I do agree with you, but I've never been able to find a good balance, and unfortunately most of the feedback I get from Bnet leans towards huge amounts of units =\. I think with a max of 30 that would leave enough units to feel like you're not commanding a squad but instead an army, but would still allow you to put that into 3 hotkeys (I find any more than 3 hotkeys is hard to keep track of). Also..maybe I can simply make 3 Capture Points down the middle rather than 6? That would reduce the number of units you get.

I actually did that intentionally so you couldn't get 10,000 hp (like you said), because that kind of power could destroy a Base faster than the other team could kill it. I need to put something about that in the tooltip though, because otherwise that is kind of a waste of units.

Only the Stags didn't have a visible attack animation =P(well they did, but it's almost unnoticable), but nobody thought to tell me that until after release (I always end up playing as player 1, so I never have the Stags). I'll see what I can do about it, maybe make each team have a theme or something. The main problem however, is that each team can be any of the Attributes and can get any of the Powers, so that makes it tough to link things together and make them look good.

After opening up the map and looking at it, they are much closer to the left than the right. I'll change that when I change the terrain and reduce the number of Capture Points.

Having less units will help with this some, I'll also increase mana cost a bit.

I'll try to get something better ^^.

Give me a day or two in here, I'll make the mentioned changes and see what you guys think. If it's not going as planned, I'll post again and let you know.

Then just make it so the other Super Creatures are not included, and only the max units that can be used are taken, the rest remain.

I find the biggest problem in the map the ammount of things the players have at their disposal, and lack of tactical variety within it. A tower can upgrade to a bunch of different towers with rather generic roles (they all have auras that increase troop combat effectiveness in some way, either with more armour or more damage, and some also give a bit of bonus move speed; or they give an additional attack, doesn't matter, it's all the same), then you have a bunch of attachment buildings you can construct, again, more variations of the same theme, then there are the superpowers and the attributes which I didn't have a chance to even look into...

There's just too much stuff that doesn't add much to the gameplay.

The building that allowed you to put troops in to heal them was a nice touch, it encourages micromanagement, that seemed great (a shame there were such masses of troops), but as mentioned, it got lost in all the other generic stuff.

The map could be nice if you cleaned it up a bit (or, rather a lot). As it is, it just has too much clutter. The critterish models don't help the overall design either.

That is very true Anitarf.

But i just have to point out one thing: In the game we played, we won before we had time to upgrade our attributes. I think with a unit limit of 30 units or so (3 hotkeys are easily controlled) and upgrades, this will be much nicer. Imagine upgrading to bloodlust, tauren and demolishers (or something like that) instead of attack-moving with 60 animals without attack animation.

I really think the animals should be replaced by "real" units ^^ footies are fine, just something to make it feel like a battle and not .... uh whatever it felt like :P

Well, things are going a bit slower, once I started terraining I just couldn't stop o.O. I figured I'd just throw in a few doodads here and there, but I redid the entire map and created a theme for each player.

-Each player also has a special feature unique to them (either in the form of a unit ability or a new building).
-Also, each player will have different units based on their theme (so no more horses/crabs being slaughtered). This should help to raise the quality of the map, and I might try to get some custom models/icons, which will also help.
-Only 9 total Capture Points are in now, down from 12, max unit limit is set to 30, and I'll mess around with the spawning rate until I get it to where I want.
-I'm going to redo either the Attributes, the Addons, or both, so that they add more to the game. With a smaller number of units I can add some active abilities and such without making it too hard to manage, so that will be good. I might just take the Addons out entirely...but I'll try things with them first.

So anyways, since I spent more time than I thought on terrain, you might as well move this to the Project section, as it will be a few more days and I want to test the new changes once I'm done.

Oh and BTW, thanks for all the criticism and advice, having good feedback makes it much easier to make a good map. The Bnetters just don't cut it when it comes to testing =P.

Alright, moved.

You just need to push harder at getting clan members to test.