(1) Sauron's Revenge

This is an exciting Shooter-Minigame, which is based on the world of Lord of the Rings. You play Sauron and your task is to exterminate the humans as effective as possible while those and the orcs train new forces and attack each other. There are also some Civil persons, who automatically run to the next blacksmith to get weapons if orcs come next to them, different levels, which always produce more humans then the level before, a complete Highscore-System as you know it from other computer games and so on... test it by yourself.
This map will be included as Bonusmap in a campaign "The Lord Of The Rings", we are currently working on. You find everything about this campaign at
www.dragonblood-creations.de/en/

If you prefer the German version, download it from wc3sear.ch.
You can find some screenshots from this map here (scroll down to bottom of the page).

I'm looking forward to your comments!

First of all, i really prefer maps in english. The only text your translated in the "so called" english-version was the intro cinematic. Everything else was still in german.

The map had an overall low quality. The loading screen used three different colors and the text meant nothing really.

Sauron had a quite slow attack speed, i wanted to click all enemies to death but if i clicked to fast he just kept changing target without attacking. This means he has a too high animation damage point, it needs to be zero or you cant attack. He also shouldnt have any cooldown; after all, its not a game where you watch a hero auto attack. Well it is, but i dont think that is what you had in mind when you made it.

Also, why on earth would you make a defense game where the goal is to keep your enemies alive? If i destroyed the barracks i got too low score, so i was supposed to let as many attackers live as possible and then kill them for score.

There was absolutely no skill in the game; all you did was spin the screen around clicking on everything hostile that moves.

The cinematics were quite nice, but nothing special.

Im not approving this map, sorry.

Not too bad. The gameplay was unique, good learning curve, and a nice way to burn off steam! However there are a few issues I noticed:

• Some units have the Create Building ability when you select them? Fix this please.
• You can still select via highlighting (Drag and click to make a square) Blizzard has added a function a few patches ago that will disable that without disabling selection in general.
• Suron himself should be unelectable. It’s annoying when you accidentally select yourself (Just give him the Locust ability)
• The buildings are called “FAKE small” and “FAKE medium”? That should be fixed.
• Some prompts are still in German (Please insert your name into the chat, for example)
• The load screen is silly. This is an offline game so use an imported image, or make it look more nice.
• The cameras were not smooth at all. Try using iNf and Ani’s Cinematic system instead.
• The game requires no skill, it's just a little minigame you would play once and never again.

As such this map does not meet the standards for this database; you need to focus on making the map have more playability. In its current state I would say it is nothing but an advertisement for your campaign.

I do not approve in its current state.

-Create Building ability?! I'm not sure, thanks for mentioning it, I'll look again at their abilities.
-I didn't hear anything of this function to turn off the drag-box-selection yet. I'll of course implement it, if I found it. If you know it, could you please post it?
-Sauron actually HAS the locust ability. I don't know why, but it seems that he is "drag-box-selectable"
-OK, I'll fix the buildings. They actually are Fake units because the buildings itself are only doodads that become hidden if the Fakes get destroyed.
-Thanks for finding out this thing. I didn't get any new highscores while testing English...
Anything else still in German? I don't see anything... please help!
-Loading Screen... I'll see if I find a nice one.
-I didn't get through infrane's and Anitarf's Cinematic system until now... I don't like JASS very much.
I'm working on an own smooth camera system which will of course be implemented when it's finished.
-Errr... it requires no skill to win, because you can't win at all... but it requires some skill to get good high scores I think and you're one of the first ones saying that you don't want to play it more than one time. What score did you have, btw? If you got more than 5000, you're good!

Really, this was the best and most detailed review I ever got. Thanks, Tim!
And Gadden... you don't seem to have understood it really. And I don't know what wasn't in English, it would be nice if you were a little more precise (I downloaded and tested again, but also everything in the quest dialogue, the explainations, the end, all were English. I don't know which map you played!). The task was not in German so you should have understood that it's not the aim to kill only as fast as possible. It's a shooter, but you should know what you shoot at. I also tried to get Sauron's reaction time a little shorter, but it doesn't work with the model at all. What you saw here is a compomise between acceptable graphics and fast shooting. A short cooldown is not bad, I think - You even don't need to shoot more than you can. And I'm interested to know, what makes this game a defense game... you are almighty and it's supereasy to kill all attackers who actually aren't able to attack you... that's not really what I'd call "defense".
If you personally don't like it, that may be, but that's not definately because it's bad quality. Thanks for the review anyways!

I'll update the map and fix some things and then we'll look at it again.

Its kind of hard to say "what" was in german since im not very skilled at the language, but i got the same german mesage about 3 times total when i played. Also, the ending "write your name in the chat window for highscore" (i could translate that one :D) was in german.

Oh and about the animation thing, i understand you want a nice looking animation. The problem is that when i click on a unit to kill it and then change target (and repeat this), sauron will just run the beginning of his attack animation and then reset it and try again. I have to wait about half a second between each click or he ignores my orders.

Ah i also noticed one more thing, sometimes Sauron auto aquires nearby targets. I didnt click, he just suddenly turned around and killed a nearby unit

I consider it a defense map because the goal is to kill attacking units. Yes, the humans did not attack me but they attacked my orcish allies and their buildings. I assumed the goal was to assist the orcish forces eliminate all humans.

Are you saying i will win the map even if i just go AFK for 10 minutes? I mustve missed something, i dont see the point of playing a map where you cant win? I understand getting as high score as possible might be fun but...

Sorry, i guess i just dont like it. And my job is not to guess if its a popular map, its to state my own opinion and approve / dissapprove depending on my own opinion

Yeah, the point is to get a good high score.

Anyway, I DO like this map, it's fun to play a few times, though I agree with tim. that those things need to be fixed, exept for the skill thing (cause it can be hard to get really good high score.

And btw, You could use some custom trees, adds to the overal atmosphere.

Thanks Tim, I'll use it in the next update.

Answer @ Gaddens last post:
- Yes, the "enter your name for highscore"-message was what also Tim found out. I think the other was the message that the humans got a new hero, this message is yellow and a normal ingame-text message. Or did yours look different?
- I understand your problem, although at the moment I don't know a real solution for it... any idea?
- I think this happens if you succeed in selecting him - I don't know why, but it seems to be so. I hope it won't happen anymore if I implement Tim's actions
- Well, then once more: The goal is to get high score, not just to kill all humans
- Sorry, what does AFK mean? And concerning the not possible win... well, it's a time limit and to give a story to it, I made it an "End of the world"-Timer because evil should not reign forever. Do you know this (I think German) game "Mohrhuhn"? Bounty2 made a map for it... it's just to kill every bird you see and get a high score in a limited time, similar to Sauron's Revenge, but my map has much more features than this original stupid, but popular game.

And olof, thanks for making me feeling better after these hard reviews! You are one of the reasons to continue developing this map!

Thanks for help to make this map better, but the update will take some time, I think, because I'll try to make all fixes at once because I hate updating to often and I don't have much time at the moment because school makes to many tests at the moment...
Just today I had to write an English exam... the war3community is my place to train English, I don't need school!

I understand if you delete this thread until I submit the update; I copied your points of critic to my machine to prevent that I forget them. So until next time, wc3campaigns turned out worth my first try!

Away From Keyboard.

I will move this to the Map/Campaigns Projects. Just bump it when you are ready.