October Project Highlighting

The idea for the project developed from a discussion we had about AoS maps on the forums over a year ago. We were discussing things like the negative effects of hero death and revive times on gameplay and the thought occurred to me of removing this aspect of the game entirely. So it all started with the idea of having invulnerable spirits instead of heroes, and over time I built other ideas on top of that.

I would be worried more if I had kept them. My goal was to innovate, not to produce a popular map. Sure, I would enjoy to see player find it fun and play it, but it won't be a disaster if they don't or even if I don't. However, I believe the map will be fun despite lacking "essential" components like hero experience and items.

As I said, I decided to remove experience, gold and hero deaths from the "standard" AoS design in order to avoid the issues that came with them: boring periods of farming, absurd practice of denying, the loss of time when waiting for your hero to revive... Instead, the game would call for action without pause from the moment it started. You are as strong as you're going to get, so there is no need to play conservatively, but instead you get to push and siege with full power from the start. Relating to your previous question, this kind of gameplay is not all that radical, the concept was already tired and tested in maps like Elimination Tournament.

This, along with the considerably smaller map size than we are used to from other AoS maps, should lead to fast-paced, shorter games. Another area where I feel I have done some innovation is the spell design. Thanks to entirely triggered spells I was able to add new spell mechanics that should make the game more interesting; instead of just being a way to affect physical stats of units like life or attack damage, the spells can interact a lot more between themselves, adding a new layer to the game for players to consider.

You can see some of them from the details on the first spirit that I posted in the project thread. Spells can affect spirited and unspirited units differently, buff spells, called enchantments, can interact with one another and have different effects depending on what circumstances the unit is in, who is attacking it and who it's attacking, adding more interaction between the spells and what the units are physically doing. All these mechanics allow for a much greater variety of spells while not making their tooltips too complicated.

The idea is that players are constantly trying to outmanoeuvre each other. Even the most heavily enchanted warrior that can slice through a whole wave of enemy troops can be stopped temporarily by a spell like Pacifism, which may seem cheap but if you use a spell like Pathway of Faith to move such a warrior behind enemy lines he can easily cripple an enemy's push by slaying reinforcements before the enemy spirits can reach him. Then there is the spirit's mana reserve that needs constant attention, there are many spells revolving around draining and restoring mana that must be used effectively if you want to be able to cast that critical spell in the critical moment, and deny the enemy from doing the same.

There are many abilities that enhance your mobility such as the already mentioned Pathway of Faith, as well as effective mana regeneration abilities such as Aterna's Cloak, so skilled players should be able to maintain their mana reserves high. Failing that, the map is small enough that even normally moving to the main base and back shouldn't take too much time.

I wanted to scale things down a bit: no large scale battles between good and evil for the fate of the world, but a small skirmish between two warlords who have established crude outposts on two ends of a mountain pass. I wanted to give the terrain some flavour and a third dimension; if you look at an average AoS map from afar at an angle, you see that it's basically flat. I wanted my battle to take place among actual mountains, in narrow valleys, in deep forests, on the shores of a pristine lake. I will put a lot of effort to make the terrain diverse, yet coherent; functional, yet beautiful.

When I was considering the spirit design for what was to become EoW: S one year ago, I just couldn't get any ideas because I was lost in the limitless possibilities of what the spirits could be like. I decided I needed a background story to help me narrow down my design space to a point where I'd have something to work with. At that point I remembered some storyline I made up several years back then, I had just completed my first map, which was also an AoS, inspired by maps like Aeon of Six Gods. When designing some items for the map, I gave them the names of some random heroes and long after the map was done, I thought of a story based on those heroes. Three years later, the idea came to me to complete the circle and use that storyline as the basis for my new AoS. I used the six heroes, their ideals and their paths in life as a basis on which I designed my spirits. Just as their items were used in my first AoS maps, so now players get to wield their very spirits.

No, not always. This is the most developed story I ever used, and the reason why it is so developed in the first place is because it was never intended to be a story for a map. Multiplayer maps are not a good medium for telling stories, and that is not my goal; I used the story to help me with the design, not to tell it. If I had enough specific design ideas for the spirits, I wouldn't have used it in the first place.

I always liked modding games, I made levels for games like Quake 2 and Starcraft before. I did start relatively late with Warcraft III, I only got seriously into it when the expansion came. Thus I was spared the troubles of .slk editing and other difficulties of the early days. I originally wanted to make an arena map, inspired by the Advanced Hero Arena from RoC, one of the few good example of the genre. However, realising that I needed to learn more about the editor to be able to make triggered abilities and other fancy stuff, I made the already mentioned AoS map first, as a learning experience. From then on, I stayed in the wc3c community and worked from time to time on a number of personal projects, but never quite finished most of them.

I'd say be original, but that's not so much advice as pushing my own agenda. Everybody should do what they want, if they want more of the same then let them make that.

So, advice... I'd say it's always a good practice to do some planning, write some design documents and the like. I have a bunch of papers littered with more or less detailed design specifications for many of my projects. It really helps when working in the editor if you know what and, optionally, how you want to create.

I think it has a future. Starcraft II may be announced, but it's not here yet and even when it will be, wc3 won't be forgotten right away. I'm sure the community has some more fine moments ahead of itself.

A lot of the game is already finished; basic systems, terrain layout, even some of the spirits. However, I like to polish my maps, and that will certainly take some time. Detailing the terrain, creating the custom spell effect models (I might need some help there) and icons, finishing the spirit models will likely take some time, especially because the project has to share time with my cinematic project and, of course, real life. The map is already playable, but I don't expect it to be releasable before the end of the year.

It's coming along, slowly. Would like for it to go faster, but at least it's coming along. Right now I'm mostly regretting that it has big battles in it, because those take long to script, but I'm sure that once I get the prologue battle done things will move along faster.

Certainly, all the people I've had interesting discussions (and arguments) about map design with, too many to name them all I'm afraid, the ones who come to mind are Karukef, BBDino, Litany, iNfraNe, Captain Griffen... and of course all the people who helped me improve my mapmaking skills over the years.

I have had a great time in this community for several years, and am looking forward to a couple more. It's quite some time, now that I think about it; but that's what it takes. You can't make a great map overnight, it takes months, however, if you enjoy creating, then it's time well spent. So keep at it. We can still make wonderful things.