Onslaught Beta

Well I am getting impatient to unleash my map on the world. I've been working on it for 6 months already. I thought I would offer it here first as an "almost public beta" version before I actually start trying it on common bnet-ers. I would like some people to try it out with 4 or more players, preferably not with random Bnet players. If anybody would like to play it with me some time you can email me: lomacar at gmail.

Onslaught
Version: "almost public beta"

Summary:
Basically an AoS-style map, inspired by the Onslaught mode in UT2004. Two teams of up to 6 players fight for control of a network of power nodes. You win by draining your enemies base node.

Features:

• 6 Hero classes, based on a combination of Strength, Intelligence or Agility as primary and secondary attributes. Each class comes with 1 non-levelling class ability to help define their role.
• 6 Schools to learn new abilities for your hero. Schools require minimum levels of the 3 Hero attributes.
• Ultimate School to learn one of 15 (not fully implemented) ultimate abilities based on two regular Schools
• A network of 9 inter-connected power nodes with mana as their "energy".
• NPC creeps which spawn behind your base node and filter throught the network until they reach an enemy node and detonate, draining mana from it.
• Player controllable units and associated tech-tree.
• 3 (not fully implemented) tiers of items to craft for your hero.
• Towers which can be built along lanes by your hero. Creeps do not attack the towers, rather like a TD.

Credits:
Created be me, Moss. Also makes use of Vexorian's Caster System.


Progress:

• Heroes: 100%
• Abilities: 60%
• Items: 70% approx.
• Units: 80-90%
• Terrain: 60%
• Everything Else: 50% approx.

Future Plans:

• Lots of game modes/modifiers
• NE units on right side. (As opposed to Human vs Human)
• Of course more items and abilities.
• Some more stuff on the periphery of the map.
• Making the game all around prettier.

I must say that from the screenshots the game looks pretty interesting. However, the terrain is somewhat woeful. I hope it looks a bit better when you finish it ;) .

For sure. Awhile back I scrapped the whole nice terrain I had made because the map was too small. I've been slowly beautifying it since. If people like the concept I will definitely be going nuts with the terraining as well as better spell effects, button art, custom loading screen etc. I am a professional artist. I will make an additional not on the Future Plans section.

- Did you mean that as in you are a [i]good artist[i], or that you are infact an artist who makes a living out of it?

And about that poll of yours, maybe add this (if that's possible)
- Didn't test it yet. (Why?)

This is what I would choose... Why? Because I can't find enough people to play it with and I don't want to ruin the first impression by playing it all alone...

I meant that I in fact make a living doing art. Graphic art and 3D animation.

I don't want people to vote if they haven't tested the map! That wouldn't help me at all. But thanks for your interest, I hope you can find enough people to test with. I certainly haven't been able to test the map as much as I would like. The most I have had playing it is 3v3 with my friends, but I often find it hard just to get 2v2, and 1v1 is kinda boring.

Perhaps I should try to actually coordinate a match. Would anybody be interested and available on some day around 7-9pm Pacific Time on the Lordaeron server? Just 3 or 4 people would do if I could get a few of my friends.

My suggestion: get on mirc, join #Wc3C and start shouting :D Join b.net, join #Clan Wc3C where there might be some people as well.

Btw, when is pacific time? :S Please make it in GMT+0 (b.net time). And, was PM like.. the last part of the day? :P

Thanks for the suggestions. I am not familiar with mirc, and I am not exactly sure how to go about joining a bnet clan but I will look into it.

Pacific time is normally GMT-8 but I believe it is currently -7 because of Daylight Savings Time. Are you saying you aren't sure what PM means? PM is between noon and midnight. 19:00-21:00 if you prefer.

Ah, good to hear . Rarely have I spared interest for AoS maps but this one has caught my eye. My only suggestion is to make it unique; add game twists, exciting gameplay and... uhh... just try to make it as different from DotA as you can .

Your terrain needs a quite extensive overdoo, cause as it is it looks plain ugly (I know you didn't work on it but still...). Also try making some sort of portal that allows you to teleport to your nod, not to your base, and start all over. BTW I noticed some spawning iregularities. Some path had 1-2 units moving, while others had like 30-40 that really debalances the game. Not bad heroes, while I guess they need a bit more exciting skills (especially eye candy). Speaking of which it would be great that captured nods give you something in return lik hp, mp refill, gold etc...

Yeah, I don't care so much for AoS myself, but I realized that making something based on UT Onslaught would basically equal an AoS. The thing I don't like about DotA is it is all about the Heroes and the only way you can improve them is through items. Items don't really excite me and I get bored controlling just one unit for such a long game. So I have added towers and other controllable units to the game so there is more to do.

To address your concerns Belphegor,

Terrain: my terrain needs an do-over or it just needs to be filled in? I don't really have any plans to drastically alter the main playing field but the bases and the sides are pretty plain right now I know. I didn't think people really cared about nice terrain, judging from some other popular maps, but if you think it is a real turn-off I can spruce things up some more before the public beta.

Teleporting to nodes: I have experimented a fair bit with teleporting to nodes. Originally I had it like UT Onslaught where you could teleport to any node you owned (that wasn't being taken over). For reasons I won't get into right now the current setup is the nicest, I feel. We can discuss it more if it is an issue.

Spawning irregularities: you are exagerating the 2:40 ratio right? By the way, spawned creeps don't work correctly if you run the map with only 1 player. Well I realize there are irregularities, but I think over the course of the game it will even out and I actually want things to be "lumpy" because teams need to be able to push all the way to the enemy base node occaisionally, unlike DotA where it only happens towards the end of a game.

More eye-candy-licious spells, check...

Node bonuses: this is another area I have put a fair bit of consideration into. Originally I had them as an extra source of income but that seemed to make the game snowball too easily for whichever team got the upper hand. I think if you could teleport to any of your nodes that would be plenty enough of an advantage. Why are you suggesting the bonuses, do you actually think it would improve gameplay? Perhaps I could make a game mode that makes nodes do extra stuff (in fact I could probably have modifiers for most any feature that people have different preferances for), but I think it is better to just let the nodes be the means to get to the other side and win the game and not something to help you do better when you are already winning.

This post is already quite long but what the heck...

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

I will go into a little more detail about two game modes I am excited about.

"Powerball mode"
A creep camp is placed at the center node which drops a special item (using that glowing green spinny rock model), the "power ball". With this ball you can quickly drain enemy nodes. But to do so you will have to drop the ball on the node, making it possible for anyone to pick up. Also, when a hero dies they drop the ball and to make things even more crazy the ball or the hero carrying it is pinged on the minimap at intervals so they can't hide!

"Mega-Creep mode"
Yes it is a lot like super-creep mode in DotA, I think, I've never actually tried it. But maybe it is cooler on my map. Each team would have a sort of counter and when it reaches a certain threshold a Mega-Creep would be unleashed with the next creep spawn. This creep would be perhaps 10x in every way to a regular creep and they wouldn't detonate on just any enemy node, just the base nodes, and they would have a 10x bigger detonation. Since creeps randomly trickle across the map you wouldn't really know quite where it will go, but that will definitely be the place to be. To increase that counter I mentioned teams would be awarded points for certain activities which I haven't fully thought of, like killing enemy heroes and stuff. Players could also just spend money to bump up the counter and maybe it would slowly go up with time as well. Additionally, every time a Mega-Creep is released it would be bigger and badder than the previous MC.

Man, this forum doesn't get a lot of traffic does it. And I guess it won't be as easy as I thought to find beta testers. Well I have made a logo for my map, attached below. Made it in Photoshop. I should probably put some clashing swords or something below the lettering, what do y'all think?

Extra Suggestions:

- Very unstable at present; automatic spawns basically worthless.
- Brought units > Items?

Hmm. My friend Caleb who is a very good player and will exploit any game if it is exploitable was the one that managed to get all those bought units. I haven't seen anyone be so good as him with units. It is very likely though that the item to unit balance will take awhile for me to figure out. I need to add some tier 3 items to the map which should be ridiculously powerful, so 1 hero could hopefully take on 6 Cavalry with a few good items. The idea with command badges is that they are supposed to prevent you from having an army and a bunch of items, and they are basically very expensive farms, so it should be hard to get a large army.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying about the spawned units? They are too few and too eractic? I think they may just be a matter of preference. I do want this to be less about spawned units than a typical AoS style map. In fact I originally never planned on having spawned units at all.

Hahaha, wow. I just realized that by recently switching the creeps spawns on my map to Neutral Extra and Victim I caused the creep XP reduction table to affect them so heroes weren't getting any experience from killing spawned units after they reached level 5! I don't remember being warned about that side effect! I was wondering why I was having to adjust the XP rate so high and why nobody was getting Ults on my beta tests...

Now the XP rate will be totally out of balance until I get some more testing done.

Looks and sounds very unique and intersting, but the terrain from the screenys looks like garbage. You need to add doodads and elevation differences.

Quick way to make terrain "not flat":
Using the noise tool, set the size you want (the larger the faster) and go around the flat terrain making it very choppy.

Using the smooth tool, set the size you want (the larger the faster) and go over where you did the noise. The more you use it the less rugged the terrain is.