Satyr Saturday Replays Week 71 and up

[IskatuMesk]

Alright. I didn't realize there was already a Furion, but one of the heroes I was thinking of was a mage/nuker Furion that had a Divine Rapier that summoned a floating sword above a target location that waited for a second or so, and then descended into that region and did damage/effects in 3 quadrants of radius. At the innermost impact point it would stun and deal damage. At moderate radius it would have a slow and deal less damage. At max radius it only did damage. The other ability was a Bird Shuriken that was a relatively short cooldown skillshot-like ability that functioned a bit like Sivir's glaive in that it functions like a boomerang (a straight wild axe) that did less damage to each consecutive target it hit.

Following that, here's another. The letters are for hotkeys. I don't remember any vanilla hotkeys in wc3 so they may not work. Address as necessary.

Long Dong Silver -
Uses Hydra. Primary stat is INT, but his stat growth is somewhat balanced.

The hydra is ranged and relatively slow moving. Like the Crab, he has a special passive ability that activates on Death - Triple Threat. Triple Threat summons 3 smaller hydras. The hydras refuse player commands. When those die, 3 tiny hydras spawn from each. The hydras rank up with major breakpoints in player level for a total of 3 passive levels. On their own they shouldn't be super threatening, but perhaps in a big fight they can catch someone off guard. They have a very high aggro radius and relentlessly pursue enemies (e.g. ted turner). They die when you respawn. They give a very small amount of gold when they die.

Q - Assid Spit

Acid Bomb, but the projectile is a ground-targeted ability (skillshot). Projectile speed will be the main balancing factor of this ability, as it is your primary damage dealing skill. The damage is only moderate, but the armor shred will be significant at max level. Only lasts a short while. Has a relatively short cooldown at max level, but is costly to spam. This ability's damage scales with INT.

W - Double Trouble

Prompts the user to select two locations. The locations must be within X distance of each other. The Hydra will then fire a line of small acid projectiles along the two locations. This ability scales with AGI - AGI makes the projectiles travel faster in breakpoints up to a cap, and makes it deal more damage. Levels into this ability increase the cast range and the distance range. While spewing projectiles the Hydra is immobilized. It can be cancelled early, but then the attack won't completely finish. There should be some way to translate distance range visually to the caster. Maybe cloaked wisps and color coding?

E - Dank Memes

The Hydra is something akin to a fat belly dancer. With its Dank Memes, it weathers the storm of privilege sure to annihilate this decadent land. Damage dealt to the Hydra within X seconds is stored as a separate health number (perhaps exposed as floating text to the player). When this ability is activated, the Hydra heals over time for an amount of that health. This ability scales with STR and INT - the amount of health % it heals from the pool benefits directly from STR. INT makes the healing rate faster. While healing and on cooldown the ability no longer holds health.

R - Tentacle Therapy (level 6+)

Summons a Tentacle in a location. The Tentacle lasts for a long time, but there is a cap to how many can be up at once. Ranks in this ability determine the strength of the tentacle and, most importantly, its size. The tentacles get bigger over time and act as body blocking utilities. Their attack is very slow but hits relatively hard. When a Tentacle dies, the caster suffers a small amount of % damage (that contribute's to E's damage pool). Their attack is rather slow but they hit hard. Tentacles can burrow blink with a high cooldown, but there is a short travel time to their blink. STR determines the amount of health damage you take - more STR means less damage. Tentacles will be one of your main ways of actually contributing to a fight beyond spamming abilities. Their cost should be cheap with most of their risk and reward based on the potential health damage of losing them.

T - Asstral Heat - Tentacle Inertia (level 11+)

Ultimate ability. This ability is a two-stage attack. The first stage immobilizes you and begins charging. It charges to a maximum of 3 stages. Each stage will probably require 1-2 seconds to charge. If you are stunned or knocked back, it is interrupted. You can also interrupt by stopping or moving. When you trigger the ability again, it becomes a skillshot that targets where your cursor is (if it's in range). A blob is fired per charge. The additional blobs are fired with a range offset higher than the last of maybe 100-200 units (a small unit shouldn't get bumblasted by multiple hits from this, it's not intended to be snipe). When the blobs hit ground level they deal a small amount of damage and summon a minion hydra from your passive in that location. The summoned hydra functions identically to the ones you spawn when you die, including their reluctance to be issued commands (like castlefight). INT determines base damage for impacts, and STR determines how many hydras spawn in major breakpoints (probably 50 str = an additional hydra per projectile). The projectiles are not super fast, so if you see the attack coming and aren't CC'd, you shouldn't get obliterated. But it seems like a good way to add some positional play potential.



Do you know off-hand how many INT, STR, AGI heroes there are? I feel like there's a bunch of INT and some STR with very few agi?

Also, are waygates some black magic or can you basically have summonable waygates? I was trying to think how to get homm3 Monoliths into an ability...

[Mucky]

allodat forced synergy

I hope you don't take this personally, and I'll spare you the TL;DR rant, but explicitly tacking bonuses/dependencies on one ability based on the usage of another ability is lazy design. If your focus is on ability interactions, I would suggest you rethink some of these concepts so they interact with each other more naturally. This applies primarily to the Q ability, but also between the R and T abilities.

In the meantime, I'm looking into the implementation of that Double Trouble ability. The two main obstacles to tackle:

1. I'm not sure if WC3 has any ability that casts after targeting 2+ locations, so what I plan to do is swap abilities out via trigger. The default ability will set the starting point + create visual radius, then swap to the next ability, which will set the ending point. Casting the second ability will start the channeling animation with a periodic timer. Every interval spawns a projectile + deducts mana. When the spell ends, if the player targets the second ability outside of range, or if some time passes without casting the second ability at all, a trigger will swap back to the first ability.
2. A visual indication of range that displays only for the caster is easy to make with the power of the GetLocalPlayer native. Essentially, I can have the game allocate effects/dummies for all players (to prevent desyncs), but set alpha to 0 for all players except the caster. This way, not even allies will see it. I use a similar method to play team-specific sounds for the flags.

Believe it or not, there are 2 STR/AGI/INT heroes on each team.

Way gates are kind of black magic. I remember trying to have team-specific way gates and finding out that's impossible, which is why I created the backdoor towers. Otherwise, they can be created via trigger like any other building, and their destinations need to be set via trigger anyway. Summonable way gates are doable as long as you're okay with everyone being able to use them.

@Q: Fortunately, I already have the groundwork laid out for greater than 522 movespeeds. Making units "stick" on collision is a matter of setting distance and angle relative to the Buttdozer and calling SetUnitX/Y every interval (these natives, unlike SetUnitPosition, will allow the heroes to attack and cast spells). Flinging units on a sharp turn (perhaps also on a sudden stop? seems consistent physics-wise) can be done by tracking the Buttdozer's facing angle and detecting a significant change, and from there it's a simple knockback.

[IskatuMesk]

Nope, I don't take it personally at all. I had a few ideas I kind of wanted to see pan out and didn't have a way to try it myself. The only way for me to learn how these things can work is if I try them. Most of them are sort of derivatives of League crap, which, yeah, has a huge amount of forced synergies. I'll revise it at some point and reconsider what I want to do. That's why I posted it primarily, I didn't expect something that complicated to be blindly implemented.

That you managed to achieve a balance of hero types does surprise me, though.

/e

The main thing I wanted to avoid is the typical wc3 syndrome where abilities are just rotated on cooldown. Especially with int casters where there isn't really a "bad" time to just push a button and receive full benefit. I think I can perhaps shift buff synergy mostly timing and positional stuff. For example, instead of having abilities synergize with Q through damage, merely use Q's missile speed as its element and make it stronger. But the R would have to be more carefully thought out.

/e 2

Revised skillset. Q is now a skillshot, the Ult is a charged ability, and synergies are removed. This will make the hero mostly based on positioning and prediction and abusing tentacles, which was ultimately the goal. It may also allow hybrid and alternative item builds to shine a bit more due to the mixed scaling being more important than skill priorities.

[Mucky]

I'll be leaving tonight to attend Otakon for the weekend. Didn't get to do a whole lot with my maps, but I'll post what I have.

CFA:
Fixed a bug where Fire Shield couldn't target the destructible cocks created by Earth Wall.

PSA:
Restored sound volumes to their ear-shattering glory.

kbai

[IskatuMesk]

wut is otakukon?

[Mucky]

So... I'm writing my own knockback system. I've decided the one I'm using isn't flexible enough to really make the kind of spells I want.

Two things that it will have are:
1. Z-axis, with cliff collision etc.
2. Custom-definable events

So, for example, I can have a spell that throws a unit in the air, then have it do AoE damage upon landing based on how long it was in the air for. Or have a knockback spell that damages unit when they collide with cliffs or even other units. Z-axis in general will allow me to define the roles of knockbacks more precisely, e.g. I could have the Torrasque's gore lift a unit in the air while his charging ult knocks units back the same way it does now.

I'm pretty sure it's ready to be used. I just haven't re-implemented any spells for it. Thus, no updates this week. YES

[Xenon]

I did a little testing and got a crash when I went to the normally unpathable south edge of the map and summoned tornadoes and bears just once. I'm guessing the crash occurs when the knockback tries to move a unit outside map bounds. I seem to remember SetUnitX and SetUnitY doing that.

[IskatuMesk]

Quantum_Sleuther

[Mucky]

I suspected as much. Rising_Dusk's knockback system doesn't check for out-of-bounds X and Y coordinates. Just another reason why it was necessary to write my own. The only thing I'm not sure about is that his system uses SetUnitPosition, which is SUPPOSED to check for certain conditions such as pathability. I may need to look at the projectile system too just to be safe.

Speaking of my knockback system, collision detection has seen significant progress. Prepare yourselves for HL1-esque physics. Will talk details later.

[IskatuMesk]

LORD OF THE PHYSICS ROOM

speaking of which there needs to be a hero based on that

[Xenon]

Hmm, summoning tornadoes on the map edge can crash even without bears.

Also, his ult is still bugged. When he runs out of mana, the triggers don't detect it shutting off automatically. You could check for the Quickening buff with each click and shut off the trigger if he doesn't have it.

Edit: does your new physics system use GetLocationZ at all? because it WILL desync due to walkable doodads or the combination of terrain deformation and fog of war.

[Mucky]

Hmm, summoning tornadoes on the map edge can crash even without bears.

It's the projectile system, then. I changed it so map boundaries are enforced, and so far I haven't been able to crash WC3 with the tornadoes.

Also, his ult is still bugged. When he runs out of mana, the triggers don't detect it shutting off automatically. You could check for the Quickening buff with each click and shut off the trigger if he doesn't have it.

Thanks, that's a good idea. Now there's just the matter of Tree runes/Polymorph fucking with the turn off trigger. For some reason, getting hexed/polymorphed counts as issuing an order to turn off immolation-based spells, except the order gets blocked by virtue of being hexed/polymorphed. (EDIT: oh wait, all I have to do is remove the buff when that happens. PROBLEM SOLVED)

Edit: does your new physics system use GetLocationZ at all? because it WILL desync due to walkable doodads or the combination of terrain deformation and fog of war.

Well, fuck me. I was aware of the terrain deformation + fog desync (and Celestial Wang will probably need to be axed at some point), but not of walkable doodads causing desync. I'm not sure what I can do about that, besides remove them from the map. I suppose that wouldn't be so bad, considering it's just the two bridges and two stairs.

[IskatuMesk]

Bridges are kind of fucky in blizzard engines anyways. At the least it gives you the chance to do something a bit more interesting with the terrain.

[Xenon]

I remember walkable doodads desyncing when I tested it years ago; that may have been a Mac/PC split problem like the Aegis projectile bug in Starcraft II.

"I recall it doing so between Mac and Windows users. It also causes a desync when 2 users on the same OS have different visual settings."

It likely includes the volcano as well. Also the terrain deformation includes even things like War stomp and Shockwave; I don't think the map really has spells like those anyway.

It wouldn't matter if you're just using it to adjust the unit heights with regard to the terrain height beneath them, but it sounds like you want it to affect how far units can actually fly, etc.

[Mucky]

According to that thread, the trouble is when they animate, e.g. go up or down, because not everyone may have vision as it happens and clients start reporting different Z values. Since CFA doesn't do this, it might be safe. I would need someone to test this with me over bnet to be certain.