(10) Wolf Packs Alpha

It's the moment of truth for me. Since I started this map about 2 years ago, I've wanted to submit it here, and I finally feel it's ready to be reviewed.

Wolf Packs Alpha
Author: Darkwulfv (and Clan BFaC)
Players: 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5 works best.

Gameplay:
The game's objective is easy. Simply kill off the other pack by removing all the players. To do so, a wolf must lose all of its 5 lives.
2 lives are lost for dieing to an enemy wolf, hunters, or humans.
1 life is lost for dieing to prey of any sort, potential teamkills, starving, or suicide.
On top of killing the enemy pack, you must sustain yourself by eating and replenishing your food (mana), and keep moving to gain levels and find more food. If your food (mana) reaches 0, you slowly die until you eat.

Features:
-8 Unique wolves. All their abilities are either custom, trigger enhanced, or well-modified blizzard.
-Sufficient terrain which provides multiple areas in which to fight.
-A secret wolf to replace your current one with (upon finding said secret wolf)
-Optimized triggers for minimal (if any) lag, all triggering done in 100% pure JASS
-"Humor", if you want to find it.
-Tight-knit teamwork gameplay. Soloing will get you killed or at least hinder your pack.
-Scaled-size terrain and units; That means trees that are bigger than the units, not the same size as them.
-Tooltips provide instant access to all important information.
-Diverse prey for the killing, ranging from deer to dragons to mutants
-Each wolf has a role in the "pack". For example, the Alpha Female is a healer, while the Demon wolf is a good tank and spellcaster.
-Easy to learn gameplay that rewards teamwork.


Various enemies:

• Deer (Bucks, does, and fawns)
• Hunters
• Bandits
• Dragons
• Mutants
• (And more)

Wolf types (and role):

• Alpha Male (support caster and tank)
• Alpha Female (healing)
• Fighter (Damage and speed)
• Demon (Spell casting and tank)
• Werewolf (Debuffing and wolf killing)
• Blade (tanking, some decent spells)
• Scout (Locating and hindering the enemy pack)
• DragunWulf (Spell casting) (Secret wolf)
• Dire (All around wolf)

3 more wolves are planned for later versions, as well as another secret one.

Special Thanks to:

• My clan, Clan BFaC, who has helped me for over a year now.
• Wc3campaigns, where my skills started and grew
• The)Tidehunter(, who helped me with JASS when I was just new to it
• Pyrogasm, for continued support, especially with JASS
• Rising_Dusk, for more recent JASS support, as well as a thorough beatdown of the map (with his clan), which was the major turning point of its quality (for the better)
• TopWolf, WTFish, and Ba1100n_Drag0n for their interest and lots of ideas
• Vexorian, for his map optimizer. (And helping me to fix the major bug caused by the optimizer.)
• Maestro_Rage on Newgrounds.com for his song. (used in the map)
• CollegeHumor.com for Powerthirst, which I referenced in a couple of items.

Also: This map is technically hosted on 2 other sites (not counting Hive), but due to a screw up with one site that has me wondering whether it's worth keeping, and inactivity and general lack of interest on another, I'm considering removing them. My clan's forum will stay up, due to pestering by, well, my clan.

Okay, I think that's everything. I take critique best when it's in a Pro/Con format, but whatever I get is what I get.

I'd put "gameplay" before "features", personally.

Oh, and seeing as it's probably not smart to try testing this solo, who wants to organize a game of this to play sometime? And when?

I'm free from 18:20 PST (GMT -8:00) 'till whenever, which is usually around 7 hours later.

Curse you and your military time. That would be 21:20 for me, then. That's 9:30ish for me and beyond. I'm free from then on.

Moving post around.

Most of the world uses a 24-hour clock...

You forgot that I debugged that.. I forgot-wolf. Bah I just know I exploited a bug that I discovered when we were playing.


Grand idea. I'm free during:

12:00nn - 6:00pm (GMT + 8:00 Hong Kong)
9:00pm - atmost 3 am GMT + 8 aswell.

Well, I played two games yesterday, public. The game plays well, no major flaws... no flaws at all really (bug-wise). The only problem I had was that in one game, one of our allies was a complete idiot and ran around randomly. By the time we were almost level 6, he was still level 1. It didn't really matter though, we beat the enemy pack.

In the second game, we lost, but it was only a 3on3, so the differences in wolf choice were crucial. The game was pretty close though. Lots of ambushing.

My only cons right now are that if the players are noobs and don't have an experienced player on hand, they will probably not go for the enemy pack, and the game will drag on. I also noticed that the "special areas" (Village, gnoll camps, dragon mountain) were almost never even looked at... At least, not on my team. But since I'm an experienced player, I was moving my pack around to get experience and get the enemy pack in as short of time as possible. Perhaps removal of dragon mountain and the village will happen some day? I hate the thought, but they seem more along the lines of random additions rather than key points.

...Oh wait. This is my map. I just wrote a review for my own map. D'oh.
Okay, we need to organize a game. I'm free from about 9-10pm onwards, GMT -4.

Malf +1
//sry I forgot u fixed werewolf ^^ he was so bugged TT.

I'm going to have to wait until... Next Friday before I can test. This coming week is destruction for me. Nice to see you posted it, though.

Curses. I was looking forward to your critique though. Oh well. Then I'm gonna release a new version in that time, my primary tester found some things to be changed.

Updated the first post with some afterthoughts. I'm working on 1.4c, which will include a large number of minor tweaks and prods. I've started a changelog which I'll update daily.

I ran around a little by myself, and I still have a feeling a lot of the things I had mentioned earlier may just return.

PROS (So far)
-I like what you did with the terrain. The tree variations are interesting.
-I'm sure that Scout Wolf will come in handy.
-The teleporters as well I think are a great addition.

CONS
-The tooltips were hard to get information from. Just write them like Blizzard does.
-The abilities that I noticed seemed a bit overcomplicated.. One of my abilities even had a chance of hurting me. Chances are bad.
-Those places where special effects happen (light = healing, blight = death) are making things over complicated.

A lot of things I cant say for certain, but I have some strong predictions based off of what I saw.

Just as a general suggestion, I think it would make things a lot simpler, and in fact even assist gameplay, if you removed the "Lick Wounds" ability and made it so that if your HP was not full, your mana would drop even quicker and replenish your health automatically. On that note, why does my HP fluxuate so much?

1: If your mana is at 0, your health plummets. You can't use Lick Wounds to increase your life (since it costs mana), and you can't sleep. Health does replenish on its own. However, I do like the idea of making your mana drop quicker when your health was low. However, due to the fact that when both your health and mana are low, you're almost too vulnerable to defend yourself, the increase in drop won't be too huge.

=P.

It'd help if i knew what wolf you were. The only ability I can think of that has a chance of 'hurting' you is the Alpha Male, and that just reduces your strength. And on that note, the ability doesn't even work properly (in that you can lose strength).

I actually disagree. The clearings (light) don't have a massive influence; they're just more of a helper. And the Blight (Radioactive Facility) has roots with the game, including a wolf. I can't just tear it out. Plus, losing health over time in there makes sense, doesn't it?


Thanks for the initial critique, I'm looking forward to what you have to say when you actually play a full game.

That made me smile. Later I smiled again when I thought about how much sense a nuclear waste facility made. :P I'll get back to you on this later. (Note that sluge monsters are affected by glory of nature as well.)

So if I understand your system correctly.. You have a negative HP regeneration and if you have mana, it decreases and HP increases. If that is the case, I was thinking making twice as much mana be taken and twice as much HP increase. Numbers should be adjusted properly. While HP may regenerate on its own, obviously Lick Wounds is the only real way to get HP back.

I was the Alpha Wolf, and you should probably get on that if its broken, as well as making some petty but constant effect.

If the clearings dont have a massive influence, you can just rip them out. As far I understand, the only reason the nuclear waste facility is there is to explain the roots of the secret wolf and provide a place to redeem your knowledge if you have it. I'm sure you know what I am thinking.

More notes:
-Why do you have "Sleep" and "Lick Wounds"? Is there a real difference?
-I'm not sure Fishing is neccesary in the slightest.
-On those notes, just to make things simpler, pings and amount of lives shouldnt need an ability. My total intent here is to see if that spell book is actually neccesary, because I am pretty sure it isnt. Provided it isnt, things would be a lot simpler.
-I really like the "Wounded" mechanic. I havent messed around enough with a lot of the things, but I noticed that at the least, deer cannot be wounded. I think they should be able to be wounded.


Also, I would personally like to play with you in a game if we could arrange it. In one respect, just to see how it should be played and also to point out things as they occur.

I'm sorry, I was at my girlfriend's house when I responded so I was a little 'distracted' when I was posting and forgot to address an issue.

Your HP consistently fluctuates from about 3 hp to maximum because "Eat" is based directly from Cannibalize. While I've rigged it so that it does not restore health (unless you're the werewolf, which is a different story), it still requires that your health be below max, or else it won't work. This was a major flaw in the original Wolf Packs (by Xaer_Qwickblade), and this was the only way to fix it. I didn't want it to constantly be changing, but due to healing and regeneration, it will. I know it's not perfect, but it is the best solution.

Now, to the system: You're wrong, but that might be from lack of complete detail. All wolves regenerate health naturally, some more than others (due to attributes). Mana degenerates at a constant rate for all wolves EXCEPT the Blade Wolf (Blade and Werewolf are 'special'. I'll explain them in a bit). If your mana (food, as it is referred to in-game) reaches 0, triggers start rapidly decreasing your health. Once your mana goes above 0, it stops. It's quite simple.

Now, the werewolf and Blade wolf are special. The werewolf cannot gain food by eating. His eat (Were-Eat, as it is called), restores health instead. he gains food by killing and fighting (through an ability). This ability also restores his health. (Basically, it's Vamp. Attack that regens mana as well).
The Blade wolf, on the other hand, does not lose mana periodically. Rather, he loses mana with each attack (the amount lost increases with levels). He regains mana by "sharpening blades", a slower process that does not require corpses. His spells are hefty on mana, as well.

-I'm removing that mechanic of the spell entirely, and probably buffing it up a bit. (For the alpha male)

-The clearings are a good place to stop and rest, especially after battle since they heal you. I think they're an OK feature and there's no reason to tear them out. They don't interfere with anything or make the game more confusing. The nuclear waste facility is my attempt at, you know, some extra variety. Killing deer all day gets a tad repetitive, even if you battle wolves and gnolls in between. Plus, you get a secret wolf there. And to be honest, it requires no special knowledge. It's not like you have to go there and input a command. Absolutely anyone can get the secret wolf. In fact, anyone can get BOTH secret wolves (not at the same time, of course), although the dragon one is a tad more complicated and requires far more luck of the draw.

-Licking wounds is a mobile, short term fix. Sleeping requires you stay still, but you heal a lot more, and faster.

-Can you recommend a better place to put the pings? Nobody reads the quests (or at least very few do), and probably even fewer read the little blurbs I broadcast periodically. And "Lives" is there for a reason. I wanted on-demand checks of your lives that didn't require a multi/leader board.

-Why does something HAVE to be necessary for it to be there? Are 11 wolves necessary? No. Why not just have 3 wolves and allow people to repeat them? Fishing is a very minor feature. It was far more usable in previous versions, but people camped the river and got nowhere, thus rigging it for the team who was smart enough not to sit at the river and gain no exp. Now, the only place to do it is outside the village (where the place is guarded anyways).

-Yes, the spellbook is necessary. There is not nearly enough room on the command card for the actions. You only saw the Alpha Male; some wolves have other actions (such as the scout, or the Demon)

-I like the wounded mechanic as well, thank you. If you'd been playing with enemy players, they would be pinged when wounded, which helps to give you an idea of where they are. Deer don't need to be wounded at all. They die too easily. However, tougher enemies (like hunters, bandits, wolvens, and villagers) could be up for being wounded. It will require I tweak the trigger some (since the floating text: "The Villagers has been wounded!" looks wrong.), but it's a feasable idea.


I would love to arrange a game. I will try and get some time in, I've been balancing a lot of different things lately. My only concern is that I prefer not to play games with the people who are reviewing (unless they don't mention anything other than asking questions), since I like their critique to be a surprise.

Well, here is my review

Pros
-good terrain.
-Sweet tooltips
-Fun gameplay. Although we dominated since the other team had no idea what to do.

Cons
-too much useless information
-I never would have known that mana = food until someone told me. Maybe you should make that a tip or something
-Maybe that thing that tells you what the different colored pings mean should be a passive ability so i dont keep trying to click it

I played a very short game recently, less than 10 minutes. I learned two things from it:

- Players dont like knowing that they just lost lives. (They all left pretty quick.) I think things would be more fun and enjoyable to new players if the team shared lives.

- A few people on my team didnt know how to Eat, or apparently that you needed to eat as far as I could tell. I'm not sure what I would do about that, but that was basically why I wanted to remove the spell book. Things are overcomplicated.

- When the Guard Scout Wolf kills you, you dont lose a life? At least kill one off.

- Make teleporters look like teleporters in some way. Players dont recognize what they are and dont bother with them.

- I like the pings a lot. Great idea. It's also very nice how the Scout Wolf still has a use with the pings there.


I'm going to keep recommending to keep simplify things. If you ever played Portal, there is a lot to learn from what went on there. I can elaborate more thoroughly if you havent played it / have a hard time seeing.

Just playing again has also given me some idea why things are they way that they are: In all truthfullness, if you removed a lot of the extra stuff and simplified to be be significanlty about simply fighting it would in fact not be fun. Therefore, there was some need to fix that, which I believe you did by adding a lot of stuff to keep us players interested. So, in order to make the game better, we need to actually make defeating the other players fun. Agree?