(8) Ice Festival

Updated 18/4 2008

Current version
2.4b
Click here for a detailed change log.

Description:
In Ice Festival, you compete against other players in different minigames. In the map start, red player (marked as host), will be able to select how many games to play. You can choose 3, 6 or 9 normal games. When the games are over, the winner will be able to select equally as many games freely. All minigames follow the ice theme.

Features:
- 24 different minigames
- Host (red) has the ability to select how many games to play (6, 12 or 18 in including winner selection)
- Many minigames are different from what you've seen in other maps
- No filler games (while you may not like a specific game, no game is made just to increase the count)
- Winner will be able to select games that he/she likes
- Special hidden game in case of a tie
- Host (red) can kick persons from the game
- Custom loading screen.
- All games follow the ice theme.
- Single player mode (the game works in single player, but it is not recommended as the game is designed for multiplayer games)

Credits:
Can also be seen in the credits (quests) menu in game

Creator: Voi

Skins and models:
Ice Mage skin: Osiris(GoE)
Frost demon model: Dark Hunter1357
Ice Elemental model: Mc !
Ice Strike effect: DonDustin
Frozen orb: Daelin
Ice Cube model: Pyritie
Loading Screen art: Mara.Jade

Minigame ideas worth mentioning:
iNfraNe (The Collapsing Room)
Warrior-of-Pain (The Math Class)

Permissions:
The map is unprotected, but you are still not allowed to edit the map without my permission. You are however free to open it and see how it is made.

Screenshots:
See attachments below.

Hey dude, this map was actually pretty cool.
I have several comments though, but it's mostly on theme rather than anything else.

Pros:

• I liked a lot of the games, they were cute. <3
• The visual setup was really nice, I really liked how detailed some of the rooms were, like the math room.
• Math game was awesome, I really appreciate games like that.

Cons:

• Felt a bit too much like Uther Party, really.
• The style was very nice, but the gameplay was terribly slow in a lot of games.
• The map has no real theme. I mean, you call it the ice festival, but so many games have absolutely nothing to do with ice.
• Map has no atmosphere whatsoever. It's just a bunch of things put together and with no real goal or anything.
• What would've been awesome I think is if you gave it a theme, like that one map Pyramid Escape. In that one it was a bunch of survivors trying to escape, so it really blended the games together and gave it an awesome atmosphere. What bothers me about this map is that in every game you're something different, so there's no real cohesion, just a bunch of cute games tossed together.

I mean, considering my last point, I guess it was made to be that way... But still, that's something I've really disliked about Uther Party and maps akin to it. (Like this one) I really can't deny that a lot of the games were cute though, I think you did a good job on the map as a whole.

I'm just a big fan of maps that build cohesion and atmospheres, those that don't feel lacking to me. That's more personal opinion than anything else, though.

Congratulations on being the first person to submit a map in ages! Have a cookie.

I'll give this a run. I like pointless minigame maps... sort of. I read Dusk's post, and I too would probably enjoy some cohesion. And it IS called "Ice Festival". You must have ice! I mean, come on. One of the minigames involves FIRE and TREES!

However, if Dusk enjoyed it then it's probably worth a shot. I'll reply with two sets of feedback. One from single player, and one from after playing w/ some friends.

Heh, I actually started this map loong ago, but I gave it up when it was half done and stopped playing wc3 (and mapping). I went back to mapping like 2 weeks ago and finished it.

Answer to cons:

• Yes it is very much like Uther Party. I just like the game idea behind Uther Party but I think some games are very boring in it. Will see what I can do to move away more from that map.
• The thought behind it was that it is just some kind of competition where you take over bodies of different units ;). I'll see what I can do to give it more of a story.
• I'm aware of the problem that a few games are slow. I've already speeded up some games but I don't know how to make the wave-games faster than they are (I suspect you mean those). There is also a problem with games like Math Class that people don't understand to click the Answer-button resulting in that you will have to wait for the timer every time (it automatically goes to next wave when everyone have answered)
• Some games just doesn't work very well with the ice theme, and I try to just put them in a room or just make a fence with snow outside. Maybe I can find a blue infernal model instead f.ex, but I doubt I can get all games icy. Any suggestions on how to improve games to give them more of that theme without destroying the terrain? I actually had ice under the color game before, but it was just ugly.
• (You didn't say this but a lot of people complain about lag in some games. I will replace some gui triggers with jass natives in periodic events running often. Maybe that would reduce it.)

Most of the ones like color memory are okay, you just need to give each one an answer time limit (I think you already did that though) and make them significantly harder each round. Math and color memory are good examples of the right way to do it, while I think Confusing Waters (Water ele one) is a painfully slow one.

I know what you mean, that's why I recommended checking out Pyramid Escape. That map managed to turn every map into an awesome pyramid theme just by terrain alone, even if some of the games don't make sense at all in a pyramid. Some of them, like the math/color ones I don't know if they can be made icy, might be silly.

You could put color memory inside of a big igloo and have the colors be represented by heavily tinted ice cube models or crystals. That could be really cool, actually.

I have a pretty strong computer, but at the same time we only played an 8 minigame match with all 4 bonus ones from the winner, so maybe we didn't hit some of the laggier ones. From what I could tell, they seemed pretty clean and the map looks really professional for being GUI. Good job on that one.

I played just now.
Unapproved
(But I like it :D)

Pros

• For a GUI map, this one was clean, well executed, and smooth.
• There was some good polish. I didn't see spelling errors or things out-of-place (besides terrain, but that's later)
• A few of the games were really fun.
• The games themselves were all quick and relatively simple.

Cons

• In the fishing game, the fish were so small that it was nearly impossible to catch ANY. I think the most anyone caught was like, 3. Plus, they moved, were hard to see, and even harder to target. I didn't like this minigame. At all.
• Too many games felt like mini-mazes. As in, "Go here, but avoid X Y and Z!"
• The game ended too plainly. Once all the free games were done, you just put up a black filter and said "The End". I was a little confused. It needs a little more flare at the end. Nothing special.
• The game descriptions didn't stay long enough, which made me clueless for a couple of them.
• In "Horse Race", players refused to finish (or they'd act like idiots) after someone won. So we were forced to wait it out. I think that players should explode in a huge firey burst if they don't move for X seconds.
• You didn't mention that infernals could cause chain explosions (one blows up then another and another). I also wasn't sure what the goal was: Kill more infernals, or kill the other players by blowing up infernals. The game's description wasn't on the screen nearly long enough for me to tell what to do. I also didn't know the difference between uprooted and rooted. Also, as the game progressed, it became very very hard to target a single infernal 4 times to make it explode (due to the sheer number of them)
• Like Dusk said, the game needs some cohesion. More ice/snow theme.
• In "Black Hole", I was able to run through, 'under', and around the 'dust' without taking damage, but somehow I got hit by like 7 at once and died instantly.
• Sometimes, the 'enemies' you had to avoid didn't do anything (like in Escape the Snowlands), but other times they would kill you even if you weren't that close. (In EtS, the polar bears would ignore people who ran through or in front of them most of the time, but I was just near one and it killed me.)
• There were too many "Reach Point X before everyone else" games, even if you didn't directly say it. Any game where everyone is competing to reach a target point is categorized here. If you look back, most of them are like this. These games get boring fast, and they don't offer as fair of an outcome as games where you have to, say, accumulate points somehow. They also tend to be kind of slow... or just boring.

I liked this game, however. With improvement, I think it could be really superb... for a minigame frenzy, that is.

• Fishes: This is intended. Maybe not your favorite game (and not mine either) but that's kind of the point of the minigame. I've actually managed to catch 14 fishes once though, normally around 8.
• Descriptions: Yes, I know the game descriptions are short, but people are generally very impatient. I am trying to shorten them and maybe I could increase the length a little. One thing I've considered is removing all hotkeys from the descriptions, what do you think about that?
• Horse race: That has never been a problem for me. I think you were just unlucky. I've seen people run wrong way but they usually don't just stop.
• Ice theme: Working on it.
• Black hole: Actually the dusts have a permanent immolation which ticks every 0.10 sec or so. Maybe I could fix it with some kind of unit comes within range of unit, but then I'd need to block the players to take damage from the same dust infinitely. Maybe I could fix that with custom values or something similar, I'll see what I can do.
• Enemies: I've tried to make it realistic. In games like ESl the bears patrol and attack anyone within their acq range. If they stop to kill someone, it can be possible to run through them, or if you run in at their back. I've thought about this myself but I don't know a way to fix it without making them just kill within range. Would you rather have me do that?
• Reach point x: I personally like these games, but I agree that it's a tough penalty for dying. Maybe I should treat dying players as shared losers, thus giving them points equal to what the last player running to the portal would get?

Hotkeys are pretty important though, dude.
Oh and in the Black hole game -- Walking in the black hole should kill you.

This is one of those maps where you design yourself into a figurative corner. There's really not much you can do to give it a more engulfing and cohesive theme short of redoing half the games, which more than likely just isn't worth it.

I keep recommending Pyramid Escape and I constantly will, that map would get accepted here in a heartbeat because of its cohesion. I think that's the biggest and most prevalent thing keeping me from approving this. I mean, the quality is there, it just needs to feel like more than just a 'minigame game'. You know?

EDIT:
Your minimap preview (First image in thread) looks really bad. You might consider just making it a black background with some text on it saying "Ice Festival" or something. Keep it simple, it'll look better and far more professional.

Hotkeys are very very important indeed. Keep them.

Most people would be patient enough to wait 10 seconds so they could read how to play the game. Really.

The "Reach point X" games are ok, but a very large chunk of the games are those, and they get boring. Plus, once a person takes the lead they'll almost surely win (unless they die). It's one of the reasons I really don't like mazes.

Do as you will. For now, I'll await a new version (I might play a couple more times so I can try some of the differnet minigames.)

I have worked on a lot on improving the ice theme today.

All minigames (except color memory which I will fix tomorrow) now follow the theme more or less. Where it didn't fit at all, I renamed the game too. "The Black Hole" has f.ex been exchanged for "The Magic Orb" where there is a frozen orb in the middle, dragging frost missiles.

On some games I just changed the terrain a little bit to give more frost feeling. Killerball is not changed at all though. I couldn't get frost into that game in any good way, however the game takes place on a dirt field in the middle of a snowy area and I think that is enough.

Here are some screenshots from what I've done so far (and the demon hunter is now also replaced with a Lich in "The Math Class"):

Nice job, Voi. Although for the Tree in the infernal game, give it a slightly bluer tint so it looks "frozen".

Hey man, that's actually looking really good.

It has a blue tint, can maybe give it a little more but it looks bad with too much.

Just a hint more. I looked in the screenshot and it didn't look blue enough :D

Ok, new version (2.3a) released.

Changes:

• All games follow the ice theme.
• Games that didn't fit at all have been replaced with similar games that do fit.
• Points in "first to do x" games are now distributed to losers - they get points equal to what the last player to win would have gotten.
• Terrain improvements in a few games.
• A new cinematic will play when the game is finished.
• Some heavy triggers are remade with jass natives to improve performance.
• Minimap preview replaced.
• Description messages now stay longer.
• (Bears in "Escape from the Snowlands" now have a slightly longer acquisation range)