(Bizarro-Springer head shake)

I read the OP and was blown away by the wording. It’s a perfect 10/10 if only it were a troll.

I have been looking at the beta calculators a bit and theorycrafting some builds. While at first I was assuming a seemingly obvious Ass/Combat build for raid damage, I soon began to ignore Hunger for Blood because Cut to the Chase wasn’t that interesting to me. A Mutilate/Prep build seemed interesting and I think that it would be very fun for 5/10 mans and their Heroics. I much prefer Mutilate and all sorts of Gouging, lightning fast CPs, precise Kidneys, Vanish CS, etc.

Rogue Fun: 42/0/24
Raid Backstabs, Combat Potency, Seal Fate, AR: 30/41/0 or 30/41/0

Worked on custom spell damage delay matching the spell missile. What I mean by this is say I use Storm Bolt as a base ability for some custom triggered spell. The damage I create via trigger will fire as soon as the Hero casts the bolt, which looks awkward because the SFX and damage will execute before the spell’s own damage fires. This is not acceptable. The problem in simply delaying the triggered damage is that the references to “target unit of ability being cast” get reset after any wait action. The solution to this is to set the target unit to a variable (hero_spelltarget[i]) and then I can target it properly after the wait. The waits are custom calculated based on the distance between the two units and the missile speed. For example the wait on a 1000 missile speed bolt is (distance between target and casting unit / 1000) which creates a delay of about .5 on a standard casted bolt. The timing matches up nicely and for now this is working cleanly. I hope it stays that way.

Added the Dreadlord to the Classic Hero tavern. I always was a big fan of him and I think his abilities will work nice in an upgraded setting and think there is a lot of options for ultimate modifications and his super.

Added “birth” SFX to each Hero when it is selected and moved to the center of the arena. Also I now force select the Hero for the player so they can immediately run to their spot or shop instead of manually selecting their Hero first. These types of changes are pure polish, and add up nicely.

Added the level 5 special portion of the Dreadlord’s Carrion Swarm. It spawns a batrider (“Carrion”) with chaos splash damage that is designed to clean up some of the CS low hp survivors. Each Carrion is given an expiration timer so that the player cannot mass them in the corner. I just changed the splash damage to “line” damage so stick with the thin line skill theme of CS.

Cleaned up the MK’s selection panel and adjusted his stats. He no longer has infinite mana and fast hit point regen. His only modification now is that he comes with 10,000 HP. I made these changes so that he can be more effectively used as a test Hero (stat-wise) throughout the leveling curve.

I am now setting the level of the Boss Hero to the proper level when they enter the map. Previously I left them at level 1 and adjusted stats to match the level. Now that I have formulas for everything I can set their base stats and then set them to the level via trigger and everything will match up. As of right now the max level I can set them to is 99. This means if I make 99 levels the Heroes past that will either be 99 with all stats set ahead of time in the editor, or I can up the gameplay constants maximum level to 150. That is a long ways off…

Gave the Dreadlord “Ghoul Frenzy” as his super. This spawns a mass of frenzied ghouls to attack the enemy. It is a mass summon and at first I made it spawn 30 ghouls. I felt that although this was more correct in terms of how ghouls were massed with a dreadlord in old war3, a better method would be to spawn 11 ghouls for a total of a 12 unit selection group. In the casting trigger I add each ghoul to the player’s selection group so when you cast this spell you are instantly given the DL + 11 ghouls and can immediately run or surround something. This is very cool in execution and I am liking this automation of selections. I noted that perhaps if the DL player is grouped with a DK (if I add him to classic tavern) and they have both level 5 auras the ghouls will become super powered via triggers.

Added random select to every tavern and changed the max inventory of the choice to 1 instead of 10. I changed the restock delay from 1 second to 0 so that people can now rapid fire random select and the max stock of 10 (which allowed this feature before) is no longer required.

I forget if I mentioned this before but I changed the level skip requirements of all abilities down from 3 or 4 to 2 I believe. I think that my method of using demanding level skips to delay the powered up versions of spells was perhaps ok in theory, but it is no longer is viable and I dislike limiting players from power-leveling an ability of their choice early. Since I am now only leveling up Heroes for the first 5 levels and then slowing things down, I can let players pick whatever they want. Perhaps in the future I will make the level skip requirement nothing so a player could level an ability to 5 before learning any other skills. There are checks in place to attack this behavior, such as the sharp scaling of mana cost from 1 (LV1) to 5 (LV2) and 25 (LV5). Having a few 1 mana abilities is powerful early, etc.

The sniper towers at the spawn location no longer deal damage based upon a Hero level equation. They now damage an amount equal to (current level x 2) so that they will hit summons and other units properly.

Changed the text formatting of in-game hints from “Hint: Yadda.” to “[HINT] Yadda.”.

Enabled the process of spawning random creeps in a level. I borrowed the idea from how I am generating random items and Heroes. At the first level of a set of 10 (1, 11, 21, 31 etc.), I set a unit type array to all the upcoming creep types for that set of levels. I can then randomly create them on a whim. The first use for this will be in level 9, which was designed as being a random collection of all the previous creeps. I didn’t have a good way to accomplish this as of a few weeks ago so I am pleased.

Changed the ghoul multiplication level to spawn 4 parent ghouls (now called ReX.J) and attacking them will generate copies (still called ReX.J’s Young). Attacking the copies will still generate new copies. The parent ghouls are slightly larger to identify them as special, though I may noobify the level even more. The title of the level now has “PUZZLE” in front of the name and I am also working on hint callouts to explain a bit about various key gameplay elements. I will probably fire a hint text callout and sound effect when this level runs.

Removed the Mini Coins from the normal unit drop table. I didn’t like how the model looked on the tiny model coins and they dropped perhaps too frequently to be a random “run to click it” yield. Now there is just a single 1% chance for a 1 gold Coin. This coin was previously worth 2 gold.

Added comment text to level trigger actions to identify any text that is outside the normal template. I enclose the different actions in two comment tags, the first one explains what all is inside it and the second is just a single period (.) to cap off the bottom of the text. This helps me when revisiting old triggers.

Spent a good amount of time in Google working up more finalized formulas to calculate level specific stats for normal creeps, elites, mini bosses and bosses. I am still tweaking things to create formulas that work throughout the largest portion of the leveling curve so that I do not have to muck around with a lot of researched upgrades to fix impurities in the progression transition.

Added a full spawn of dead ghost peasants to the first boss, the DH. I wasn’t sure how to implement the peasants so I decided just to spawn a crapload of them. I will probably enhance their effect at some point.

Added King’s Mask. I wanted to put in an item that would scale up the double attack chains without increasing the chance to land a double attack. I thought about it for a while and solved the problem by creating a new sort of temporary luck variable called adrenaline. This way I can leave the double attack variable be the % chance to land one, then during the double attack trigger I check if the Hero is wearing King’s Mask. If he is, adrenaline becomes 100 (and since the % chance for a double attack is percent + luck + adrenaline, he will have a guaranteed 10 hit combo). When the combo runs out I reset adrenaline along with everything else so the player must then land a fresh double attack proc. This item will be best used by a very high damage slow attacking Hero who relies on added damage to stay competitive. With high weapon damage and crit it looks the coolest.

No longer naming versions with spaces in the name. Details of the version will now just be connected words with capitals.

Changed all of the “Rank” notations for spell levels back to “Level”. Buffs and passives show the level of the buff as “Level” and while I could probably have figured a way to change this I wanted to leave the war3 flavor still in, instead of too much stuff like WoW.

Fixed the Strongman’s glitched skeleton ultimate. Will now properly spawn all levels of pirates and dispose of them correctly.

Added random select to the original Heroes tavern. Was easy to make and I did it in a couple of minutes. I sell a dummy unit and then replace it with a random Hero and do all the other good stuff. This is done by setting a unit type array at the beginning of the map to every playable Hero and then just using a random number as the array ID.

Changed the Elite passive from a base of thorns aura to brilliance. Even while set at 0 thorns damage when testing with a fast attacking hero I saw her taking damage so I assume this ability cannot be set to 0. It should now be fixed.

Cleaned up the Hero select unit columns a lot with text colors and some new information. This was to make the information panel easier to read quickly and it looks a lot more polished now.

Added mana costs to the learn spell tooltips of the Hero abilities. This is so players can judge their upgrade choices beforehand in superior fashion.

Added 3 new real variables for STR/AGI/INT tracking. Since I cannot add .2 Strength to a Hero directly (you can if the fraction amount is hardcoded in the editor for Hero leveling but it fails for normal triggering), this fake method allows me to for example add .2 Strength to a Hero up until the point his STR variable reaches 1. Then I can reset the variable and add 1 Strength to his Hero. I have not tested this yet but it seems to be promising.

Realized that with only 3 5-level abilities, letting players get so many levels early in the game is somewhat harmful towards the long term usefulness of base Hero abilities. I want levels 1-10 to be fast and furious, but not that fast I think. I may instead choose to give the player a quick 5 or so levels, and then scale back in exchange for some triggered upgrading of stats. This will allow the Hero base attack and mana to gain without forcing them too quickly into upgrading abilities. I want each new level of a spell to have a major accomplishment feeling, so delaying them artificially in this manner seems like a good idea. This also fits well with my theme for the map in terms of items mainly upgrading the Hero instead of letting things just be a race to level 99.

Added the Reraise Hairpin, an item that instantly revives the wearing Hero at the point of his death.

The raise item gave me an idea of an item that has an effect WHEN you are revived. Final Fight hit me like a bolt of lightning and I went to work on an item that will perhaps damage or stun everything around the wearer. I originally thought about making it something related to Haggar’s outfit since he is the largest character, then I switched up to using it as a Lead Pipe so that a Hero could save slots and have a weapon that would have a sweet res effect. I then thought though that since weapons may want to be upgraded more often or specifically for power I didn’t want this unique effect to die on a single weapon. I made it into Haggar’s Suspender instead.

Added a bunch of Quests. These function as a README or FAQ basically and inform curious players of cerious key parts of the map’s gameplay systems. Things like player commands, stats, weapon damage etc.

Moved a lot of the new items to the shops so they can be viewed.

Added low level sword Broad Sword, will be perhaps the first weapon used commonly by melee. Weapon Damage of 5, +1 STR +1 AGI and has a 1% chance to permanently increase Weapon Damage by 1 on every attack.

Working on a new stripped down level spawn trigger that will better allow for dynamic spawns and spawning all four locations at once.

Put in various new items related to Double Attack. Also put in a 999999 Weapon Damage item for testing to see big numbers. Millions of damage per second in a frenzy of attacks is handled by the game fine it seems with no lag, and accurately.

Making the level spawns variable so that they change based on how many players are in the game. I originally thought of not doing this and keeping spawns high so that a group of skilled players could deliberately play with less players as a challenge. I may address this again via a different method or difficulty selection. The main reason for me tinkering with this trigger was actually to transform the first few levels from single location spawns into all 4, which is now exciting to see. I condensed the trigger a bit so that instead of using 4 sets of action lines (one for each spawn) I now run a loop with region variables and do all 4 with one swoop.

I just also changed the minimum spawn from a set 10 amount to a variable. Gave me the idea to form a new variable set starting with gameplay_ to identify gameplay constant sort of settings. This way I can set a base minimum spawn of 10 via the editor and then edit it as the game goes on or is modified by the players.

Shrunk the larger center region to help prevent creeps from returning to their spawn spot and getting stuck. There is seemingly no reliable way to redeploy them without ruining future spawn triggers, so hopefully shrinking the region they randomly run to will allow their auto engage to always kick in since they are closer and they will never turn around and go back. Try one was a perfect success, will watch more in the future.

Added a -see command to remove the fog of war during testing.

Added boss item drop main trigger and put in Chest of Gold as a basic drop. Put in related spells for this item so that when a player picks it up, gold and FX are generated for the entire team so there is less bullshit scrambling to click on items that drop.

Moved all the corner shops to a newly cut out area in the top left wall of the map. It is closed off from walking entrance but is reachable by a new teleport system. The portals are in each of the 4 corners and are identified by a glowing green mass. Walking into them instantly teleports the Hero to the shop area, and when he/she is gone and uses the shop teleporter they will be zapped back out into the center of the map. I also put in a library card item for instantly teleportation right to the shop and I can already feel this item becoming very useful so it will probably be added to a couple high level items as a tacked on use effect.

The map is starting to feel polished and is a good feeling. While it is far from even a playable version, I have spent a lot of time on the underlying systems and their standardization. With the recent cleaning up of the item categories, the spawns becoming 4 way and cleaner and the redo of the center tile design plus the new larger visibility circle in the middle, it is looking nice. Next is to add more low level items, work on the starting main crew of Heroes and retool the first 10 levels so they are fun and balanced.

I was inspired by the double attacks in FF12 and added a double attack system to my general attack trigger. It runs at the end of everything, once the normal hit or miss crit or regular checks have been done and the damage has been fired. It then runs a check to see if the unit is still alive, if the double attack counter will total out to less than 10 and if the random number works out (right now it’s a base 5% chance for a double attack, plus the Hero’s Luck). If the added attack is a go, the trigger is restarted and then I count up which attack it is and the whole thing starts over. The string of added attacks ends when either the player hits 10 or when the random number fails to yield them one. Most commonly at a 25% chance I saw a good amount of doubles and triples with some fours (I create a blue floating text that says DOUBLE Hit!, TRIPLE Hit!, 4 Hit! Etc.). There is no math in right now to increase the chance of a triple and then decrease as the numbers go up. It is a flat percent chance for each cycle. So 25% for a 2 hit, 25% to go on to a 3 hit, 25% on and on etc. This obviously makes the percent chance for a 3 hit not 25% but less, etc. I will probably yield special bonuses and effects if the player gets high enough in the chain to encourage this double attack itemization to be studied, though perhaps only for the really slow attacking high weapon damage characters to yield maximum effect (On a super fast attacking Hero a constant 10 Hit barrage of added attacks loses impact).

Added the Heart Container item, it gives a passive 300 hit point boost when equipped and can be consumed for a full heal (2 charges).

Cleaned up various other items and consumables, including the Explosive Sheep. The sheep now has dual functionality, if the player has a unit selected the sheep will choose to blow up that unit (will select a random unit if multiple units are selected). If there is no unit selected, the sheep will choose to blow up a random living unit within a range of 1000.

Updated the Board of BOWNAGE so that it now accommodates all 10 players. Also added text titles to the columns in addition to the icons and changed the P1 P2 row labels to match the player names. For right now each player’s name will be displayed in white text, I may edit this to match their color in the future.

The Hunter has now gotten Bestial Wrath as an ultimate and Hunter’s Mark has been moved to a normal ability. I am still unsure of what R and E abilities to give the Hunter, though I am still liking the idea of a stacking damage that applies to the target of Hunter’s Mark and then is removed if the Hunter attacks a non marked unit or the target dies. The question of whether or not to buff the stacking damage from party contribution attacks has not been decided.

Most of the current items have been standardized and cleaned up text wise. I also added a full item organization system to the design doc so that every item will have a nicely organized type and level.

The one shot amulet now creates a red floating text saying “ONE SHOT!” when the enemy unit is killed.

Dual-wielding prevention has been successfully enabled. I do not want players to be able to equip multiple weapons and the old trigger I wrote wasn’t the best. Now the game forces any weapon pickup into the 6th slot, sets it to variable and then scans the other Hero item slots, dropping any weapon items that are found. Thus far it has worked perfectly, and is very fast. If there exists an item in the 6th slot it is swapped and once the trigger has completed the Hero is free to move the weapon to any slot they want.

Much like the added weapon damage trigger, the game now contains two added healing triggers. The first fires upon every healing spell (Holy Light for Paladin etc), adding the bonus healing to the target of the spell. So for example you could cast a Holy Light for 200 + your healing variable. This is to help scaling of heals and also give non healer characters a fun way to buff their own healing via potions and items. This brings me to the second trigger, which is the pot and food trigger. It fires when a player uses a healing potion or healing food item. This healing bonus can crit, and it uses the same crit % and multiplier as the melee crit. The concept of being able to up your crit multiplier from 2X to 4X via talents and up to 99X temporarily with some items is a fun thought.

White items have been changed to green quality. There was no good model to use for a white item and I also felt that not enough white items would be used to justify including the classification for a short duration.

Items that both heal and permanently increase stats (such as food) will now likely use the heal as the item ability and have the stat and variable increases boosted via triggers. Use items are unable to function correctly if they are given two active abilities in the editor and it is much easier to trigger +1 STR and +1 stat_attackpower etc.

Balancing the footman’s mirror image such that it changes drastically as you level it up. For example at LV1 I am thinking of 1 copy that takes 200% damage, at LV3 you have 2 images at 100%, LV4 3 images at 50% damage and at LV5 it reverts back to 1 image but it takes 1% damage. This is to give the player creative control over which level to leave it at for multiple tanking options. This layout of values and image numbers is just as an example, I have not thought hard yet about how specifically to balance each level.

Weapon damage no longer fires by default, the Hero needs to first equip a weapon and have a weapon equipped in order for the related trigger(s) to work. This should also smooth out the first few waves where kills are a one shot and the weapon damage trigger appears glitched (the triggered weapon damage actually fires before the hardcoded damage, which can lead to the attacking unit instant killing like 5 things in a fraction of a second).

Added weapon damage is no longer weapon damage + damage range. This second variable was awkward to include in the itemization due to its name and it also wasn’t truly a range (it was basically added damage on top of the weapon damage amount). The attack trigger nows uses weapon damage + attack power instead. I was planning on making the Hunter use attack power in some fashion so I now must be mindful to keep Hero abilities and items that modify attack power in check because if this value gets mucked with too heavily it will imbalance the basic added weapon damage trigger.

Damage range has been removed from the listed stats when a player uses the -stats command, though the variable still exists in the game. I may go back to it later for some other purpose.

I now play the attacking unit’s attack animation when the added weapon damage fires to prevent the awkward looking “standing around” if the unit instantly kills a few things in rapid succession that are nearby.

The healing bonus trigger will no longer fire unless the player has some sort of bonus to their healing. Before it would go with +0 etc early in the game.

I was all prepped to move fast on a tank hero but I kept thinking about a rapid fire attacker ranger that would be good for single target kills. I decided to make this character be from the WoW tavern and be the hunter. Can Tame various monsters, but I am aiming to make her role be single target killing and using items to speed up her attack speed as high as possible. She comes stock with a .5 second cooldown.

Right now her only ability is AotH, which is like a Roar + permanent boosts to base damage and damage range, though today I put Snake Trap in after thinking it up at various times during the past few days. The trap works like a stassis and when it dies I send out however many snakes as there are enemies in the set area. Snakes have fast move speed and rush to a single unit to attack, then move on after killing. They have a 15 second expiration timer and I will add various types of snakes and then randomly create a mix of them when the trap fires. As of right now this is planned on being her Y ultimate, as a departure from the single target killing theme. I have also thought about reworking the trap so that it interacts with solo bosses and elites well, but I am not sure what I will try next with it.

Today I got distracted by putting a bunch of talent-like researched skills in. Things like crit multiplier, crit rate, weapon damage, move speed, mana regen all sorts of nice fun customizable options. Players will be able to purchase these with gold and wood, the wood being the key limiter in preventing people from buying everything.

I have been polishing up various other triggers to but my biggest focus now is on the Hunter and some new items.

I worked on the map a good amount both yesterday and today. I am trying to nail down about 20 levels and a good party of Heroes so that I can feel out the flow. My pattern has been to think about things and add them to the Google design doc first, then run back into the editor and start putting them in. This isn’t how I always work but it is the most efficient way for getting things done and moving goal by goal.

I needed a healer and fast so I put in a Paladin Hero from the WoW altar. The Healadin as he is called will revolve around fast heals, infinite mana for himself, shielding, LoH. His Y ultimate will be Hammer of Wrath I think, not sure how I will modify it. Holy Light will be self-castable at level 3 or 5 and may proc some additional effects if you purchase talents. Bubble will probably have some special effects related to when you deactivate it, and I am still fiddling with how to work the duration/cooldown balance. For now the mana cost is 1. Spiritual Attunement is the means of his personal “infinite” mana, right now it adds back mana when he is attacked and provides a self Devotion Aura. I may change it to work with heals so he can spam minor health pots as a source of regen. Lay on Hands is his ultimate, and functions pretty closely to the real game. Max HP healed to a target in exchange for all his mana. I am going to work it so he can use it offensively on certain targets, and may modify it to heal the entire party if he uses it at the right time. The theme of near death casts providing bonuses for him may become his main gimmick.

I also cleaned up a lot of triggers, put in the code for custom Y abilities. I added in Goblin Land Mines which I think will be a fun item to use for everyone. I need to add in some more low level items and give the Jewel Sword a use ability that spits out a line of coins.

I did put a Warcraft III category in, so I might use this to post about updates to my WoW3 map in order to motivate me to put out a working version.