Hero Attack v2.27 has been released!!! - November 7th, 2011

Version 1.5 has been published. See the first post for more details.


Also, it is really annoying that I cannot change the thread title. Is this a bug with the forums?

 

I'm not quite sure. If you keep telling me what to change it to I'll change it for you. I would tell you to bring it up in forum questions and feedback, but the admin(s) don't do anything.

 

Version 2.0 has now been released. It includes many changes including a choice of 4 playable maps.

EatmeReturns, could you change the title to HERO ATTACK version 2.0 has been released

 

@ EatmeReturns Let me know when you are done your phone call.

 

The phone call evolved in to several applications and pdf files, which flowed seamlessly in to dinner.

 

Hello everyone,

After version 2.0 pretty much completely failed to attract enough players to gain enough popularity for Hero Attack to be playable (i.e. it is still impossible to get enough players to get a game going at any given time), I have taken a short break from map making. I needed a break because it is extremely frustrating to continuously work on a map and to continuously fail to get results despite attempt after attempt. Anyway, I'm going to continue developing Hero Attack and will try to update Hero Attack every week (starting next weekend). I'll also try to buy a new computer this month as well as start a website for Hero Attack.

 

Indeed that's very offputting. Sorry to hear this despite the considerable size of the RPG/DOTA community. Maybe you'll be able to look back on the project after the break and see why it didn't gain popularity.

 

It's my guess that Sotis has already drawn the majority of players interested in DotA-likes. Most prefer to stick with the map they started with because they feel it is more worth their time improving gameplay in a DotA-like that they already know rather than playing something that offers a similar experience.

More bluntly, Sotis beat you to the punch. I don't think any DotA-like will manage to gain substantial popularity without being clearly unique and defined differently than Sotis. Just to cover my *** in case I'm entirely wrong, I haven't compared your map to Sotis at all. I haven't even played Sotis.

 

Hello everyone,
Sorry that I have not updated hero attack in nearly a month, I promise I will be much more frequent with my updates from now on. Version 2.1 has been released on the North American server. It includes a number of changes that hopefully makes things better. Here is a changelog:

- The lighting has been changed and each of the 4 maps has a different lighting setting. A few people suggested that I change the lighting a bit, so hopefully things look better.
- The sizes of some dialogs such as the in game timer and the periodic message that have been reduced so that they take up less space. This was done because some people complained that the dialogs objects were too large.
- Removed a large number of triggers that were made obsolete by patch 1.2. As a result the file size for hero attack is significantly smaller.
- The ‘leaver bonus’ or bonus that a team with less players receives when someone leavers the game has been significantly increased. Hopefully the result is that a team with less players still has a very good chance to win the game.
- Units spawned by the computer now deal 50% less damage to heroes. This was done partly because the units did a bit too much damage to heroes and partly because I want to make melee heroes like the zealot hero or the zergling heroes more viable.
- Players now have push priority over the computer player, so you can now push aside computer controlled units with your hero.
- The vitalities of the main buildings (command center, nexus, hatchery) have been increased to 2000 so that it is harder to sneak into the enemy team’s base and kill it.
- Changed the victory conditions slightly so that if the enemy team has 0 human players left (i.e. they all left) then your team wins and you don’t have to kill the enemy team’s main building.
- Made it so that your screen moves to the location of your hero whenever your hero respawns. However, I have intentionally made it so that this does not work if you have either the zergling heroes or the baneling heroes (since you may be busy controlling your one hero when the other respawns).
- Increased the energy cost and cooldown of the mutalisks hero’s summon mutalisks ability by 33%. This was done because the ability was too strong.
- Fixed a really annoying actor bug that was caused by patch 1.2 and prevented the zergling hero from playing his cliff jumping animation properly. Also fixed actor bugs for the spine crawler and the spore crawler that were caused by patch 1.2.
- You can no longer use a teleport item (Nydus worm, drop pod, warp out) if you have taken damage in the past 2 seconds. This was added to prevent abuse of teleport items.
- The computer controlled marauders that are in the computer controlled bunkers no longer attack the enemy base when the bunker dies and instead they hold their position.
- The Nydus canal item now costs 25% less minerals and can be casted with a range of 12. This item wasn’t used very much so it needed a buff.
- Fixed an Issue where ursadak sounds would play from half way across the map if someone is killing an ursadak.
- The siege tank hero now takes 20% less time to siege and unsiege and has 1 more range in siege mode. This was done because the siege tank hero was a bit weak.
- The spore crawler hero now has less life but more armor (so has the same amount as the spine crawler hero), to compensate the spore crawler always has detection.
- Added range actors to the spore crawler hero and the spine crawler hero similar to how the siege tank hero has range actors to indicate its attack range.
- Hopefully fixed an issue where tomes sometimes do not work.
- Tinted the defiler hero buttons because someone requested that I tint them. If you prefer them un tinted or would like me to tint other buttons imported from SC1 please let me know.
- Several other minor changes that are not worth mentioning.

 

DANG that's a lot. I wanna play this again with you sometime.

 

"More bluntly, Sotis beat you to the punch. I don't think any DotA-like will manage to gain substantial popularity without being clearly unique and defined differently than Sotis."

Well Hero Attack is very different from SOTIS. SOTIS is pretty much a DOTA clone (though a fairly made one), where as I tried to diversify Hero Attack as much as possible from the genre. Hero Attack is very different from other games of the genre because it has 3 unique races, 4 playable maps all of which are very different and do not have the boring 3 lane setup that most games of this genre have, 3 different types of special terrain, easy to learn heroes and no confusing item combining syste, A large number of very unique and interesting abilities and items, micro from SC1, etc. Because Hero Attack is so diversified, I can definately see it coexist with SOTIS and other SC2 custom games of this genre.

Hero Attack will definately take off the moment it gains enough popularity for people to get games going without waiting days. The problem is that I haven't managed to reach the critical mass of popularity and visibility for it to take off.

"DANG that's a lot."

Actually 2.1 only took a day to do (Saturday), and every thing I have done up to know would have been completed months ago if I had a better motivation to work on Hero Attack. Expect a lot more updates this week.

"I wanna play this again with you sometime."

If I am online in the future and I see you online then I will definately ask you for a game.

 

LoL and HoN both have multiple map setups involving different numbers of lanes.

Anyway. Like I said, I am not in the best of positions to compare the two; however, much of what you listed as unique is opinion/conjecture. If you are confident that it is sufficiently unique, than kudos to you; I would still suggest you take a critical look at comparing it to Sotis and/or other DotA-likes.

 

Yeah, I definately understant your point about HoN and LoL. Though I think I can differentiate Hero Attack enough that it can coexist with these other games and hopefully I can get a small community going. The main problem right now is getting people to trying it out because It is hard to play a game that isn't on the first few pages. Speaking of which, I managed to play alot of games of Hero Attack on Sunday and everyone seemed to like it (got 30+ hours of playtime), so the map is around page 5-6 for custom games. I tried to invite you, EatMeReturns, but you seemed to always be in a game.

Anyway, if you want to get a game started, use the chat channels. If you create a game and then ask people from the 'Looking for Custom games' chat channel to join then you will definately get players.

 

Version 2.2 has been released. It includes mostly balance changes and a few bug fixes. I would like to thank those who have played games with me over the past week because their advice definitely influenced the content of this patch. Here is a changelog:

- Reaper Hero no longer has the Stimpack ability. Instead the Reaper Hero has a new ability called Berserk. Berserk is a spell that causes the Reaper Hero’s attack speed to drastically increase for a short period of time. Also, while the Reaper Hero goes berserk you lose control over the reaper hero and the reaper hero attacks any nearby enemies so be careful with this ability.
- Reaper Hero’s Jet Pack ability has been improved. In addition to providing passive cliff jumping you can now actively use this ability (hotkey T) to jump to a nearby point within a radius of 5. You can use this ability to jump over units, buildings or cliffs so it is very useful if you get surrounded.
- Similar to the Reaper Hero, the Zergling Hero’s wings ability can also be used to jump to a nearby location in addition to providing passive cliff jumping.
- The Colossus Hero’s cliff walk ability now provides a small movement speed increase (10%) in addition to providing cliff walking.
- Hopefully fixed an issue where the reaper hero’s actor would sometimes disappear when the reaper hero jumps over a cliff leaving the reaper invisible. (this was caused by patch 1.2)
- Fixed an issue where the medic hero would sometimes heal at a rate of over 100 life per second with her heal ability.
- The medic hero’s heal ability and the scv hero’s repair ability now cost slightly more energy.
- The medic hero now deals 20% more damage had has a slightly increased movement speed.
- Fixed an issue where the medic hero would sometimes not play her attack animation. (this was caused by patch 1.2)
- The rate at which the team’s beacon heals nearby heroes has been doubled.
- The high templar hero’s psionic storm ability no longer affects allied units and its AOE has been increased significantly.
- The defiler hero’s dark swarm ability only provides a 95% damage reduction from ranged damage rather than a 100% damage reduction from ranged damage because it was a bit over powered.
- Fixed an issue where the queen hero could not unburrow.
- Fixed an actor issue where the Thor Hero’s actor would not be created if the Thor Hero uses immortality protocol. (again, caused by patch 1.2)
- The Baneling Hero’s quick death ability has been decreased to a 75% reduction in respawn time rather than a 100% reduction.
- The energy cost of the probe hero’s photon cannon ability has been increased by 33% for balance purposes.
- The SCV hero’s missile turrets now provide detection at levels 1 and 2.
- Fixed an issue where the Ursadak Critters would get stuck on the fire map.
- Critters now provide 25% more experience and minerals so hopefully killing critters is more worth while.
- Fixed an issue where the Nydus Worm’s Leap ability would damage units before impact. The Nydus Worm Hero now has a slightly increased movement speed to make this hero stronger.
- The detection range of sensor towers have been increased significantly from 12 to 20. Hopefully this makes it easier to detect enemies as terran.
- The cost of the overseer has been decreased to 35 minerals from 50. This is to make it easier for the zerg team to detect enemies.
- Reduced the ‘Leaver Bonus’ to a value halfway between version 2.0 and version 2.1. In the last version the team with less players generally had a slight advantage so hopefully things are more balanced now.
- Added text messages that indicate that when a player leaves the game and the teams become even then no team benefits from the leaver bonus.
- Increased the amount of time players have to vote on the game settings.
- Removed parts of my triggers on items that become obsolete since patch 1.2 fixed a bug where heroes would drop items on death. Items are no longer randomly permutated when a Hero respawns as a result!
- Various other changes that I have forgot to add.

 

Version 2.3 and the creation of the hero attack website/forums are going to be delayed a bit since some issues came up. However, I'll try to get these two things done as soon as possible.

 

Version 2.3 has been released! It includes balance changes, bug fixes and some new features. I tried to release this version sooner but I was busy with midterms and assignments. Here is the changelog:

- Readded some triggers that I removed in version 2.1 that prevent the energy, shields and life of heroes from being reset when morph abilities are used. I originally removed it because I thought blizzard fixed this issue in patch 1.2 since they claimed they did. But apparently they didn’t fix it properly because vitals were being reset when morph abilities where used when multiple players were playing the game.
- Fixed a large number of issues that were caused because the game was applying too many behaviours to a single unit. Apparently there is a maximum number of behaviours that a single unit may have (max is somewhere between 128 and 256) and if you try to apply a behaviour and you have reached this maximum it does not get applied. I solved this problem by significantly reducing the maximum number of behaviours that should be applied to a single unit at any given them. This problem caused a number of bugs including (but not limited to) the bug where tomes and items would sometimes not work on your hero and the bug where the siege tank hero would sometimes not use artillery barrage.
- Fixed an issue where the leveling bonuses of some items such as weapon items, energy items and the personal shields item were not removed when I player lost the item.
- Fixed an issue where a player would not respawn if they died to a critical strike hit.
- (Hopefully) Fixed a bug where the actor of the dark templar hero’s void prison ability doesn’t get destroyed if the unit dies or the behaviour ends. I fixed this issue before but patch 1.2 likes to screw up actors and remake old bugs.
- Fixed a bug where the stalker hero’s actor would freeze if the stalker hero used evasion too many times in a short period of time.
- The number of tomes that your hero has bought is now shown on the command card of your hero. This was added because a player requested it.
- The cooldown of the thor hero’s immortality protocol has been increased to 60 seconds from 30 for balance reasons.
- The mothership’s planet cracker no longer works on air units and now does double damage to buildings (down from 475% damage to buildings) since planet cracker was too powerful, especially against buildings. The damage per second of the planet cracker has been added to the tooltip on the command card.
- The timed life of mutalisks summoned by the mutalisks hero has been decreased from 60 seconds to 50 seconds and the energy cost and cooldown of the summon mutalisks ability has been increased by 33% (or rather I forgot to do this in version 2.1).
- The infestor hero’s peristalsis ability now allows the infestor hero to cast spells while underground.
- The ghost hero can now cancel his nuclear strike ability.
- The razor swarm item and the grenade item no longer deal damage to friendly units.
- Sensor tower’s radar radius has been decreased to 20 (which is the same as the detection radius).
- The zergling hero’s devour ability and the defiler hero’s consume ability now start with autocast on when you learn them.
- The roach hero’s corrosive acid ability now works on buildings.
- Buildings constructed by the probe hero and scv hero now have an ability that you can use to destroy them. This was added to prevent players from accidently trapping themselves in a corner while using these heroes.
- The siege tank hero’s siege mode ability as well as the spine crawler and spore crawler abilities of the drone hero have been changed slightly. Instead of these being an instant abilities where you click the morph ability and morph at your location, these abilities are now target abilities where you click the location you want to morph at and then your hero will move to that location and then morph. Furthermore, range and placement actors have been added to these abilities such that you can see the attack range of the hero when you are deciding where to morph the hero. This means that you no longer have the issue where you siege up, realise that you are slightly out of range, unsiege, adjust your position slightly and then have to siege up again. Note: when you are deciding the morph location 3 range actors are shown, one for each level of your ability, so if you have siege mode level 1 then use the smallest radius range actor and if you have siege mode level 3 use the largest radius range actor. Unfortunately unit validators do not work with placement actors so I cannot show only the range actor that corresponds to the current level of the ability. I’ll try to find a work around to this issue however.
- Added a tooltip to the loading screen that explains how to sell items (right click on item them left click on shop) since many players did not know how to do this.
- Various other changes that aren’t worth mentioning.

 

I'm excited for this website. How has the popularity contest that is the custom games list been going?

 

"I'm excited for this website."

I bough the domain name and 1 year of forum hosting on Sunday. But I haven't gotten around to actually making the forum/website. I don't have any experience in website creation so hopefully it isn't too difficult.

"How has the popularity contest that is the custom games list been going?"

Actually it is going quite well. More people seem interested in playing it and I'm getting lots more playtesting now. In general I can actually find enough players for a game by using chat channels such as the looking for custom games chat channel. If you want to play a game and I am not online then you can just create a game yourself and then ask on various chat channels if people would like to play. It might take several minutes and you might not get a full game but you can get games, which is good. Also, whenever I create a game almost always I will have people tell me they liked it alot and they would like to play another so once you get a few people to play the first game it is not that difficult to play several games consecutively. Another way to find games is to use the sc2mapster map night (friday evenings starting at 8pm EST, go to sc2mapster chat channel) or to use the staredit.net map night (saturday evenings starting at 6 pm EST, go to the SEN chat channel). You can also use this advice to play other unpopular maps.

 

Version 2.4 has been released. It includes balance changes, bug fixes and a few minor changes. I would like to thank everyone who helped me play test things yesterday because it helped me find the causes of some bugs. Here is the changelog:

- Fixed a bug where heroes would sometimes not respawn. This was actually caused by the interaction between changes I made to item triggers in version 2.2 and some features I added in version 1.2 which prevented players from gaining life by dropping and picking up certain items life enhanced cellular life.
- Fixed a bug where two respawn timers would occasionally appear instead of one.
- Fixed a bug where the Dark Templar Hero’s void prison actor would not disappear. This one is fixed for real this time.
- Fixed a bug where the Stalker Hero actor would freeze if the stalker hero used evasion too many times in a short period of time.
- Fixed a bug where team 2 would receive 100 times the leaver bonus if team 2 had less players.
- Fixed a bug where the thor hero’s life would be reset when it used immortality protocol.
- Fixed a bug where the spore crawler hero could morph into the spine crawler hero without learning the spine crawler ability and visa versa.
- Added slightly more terrain variation to the snow map, though it isn’t that noticeable. I know that the terrain isn’t the best but unfortunately I cannot do much until blizzard lets me use more textures or change the texture set with triggers.
- Made the ice sliding animation (when ground units are on ice) look smoother.
- Heroes (other than baneling and zergling heroes) are now automatically selected when they respawn.
- The mutalisk hero’s actor now pauses when the mutalisk burrows so it no longer looks like the mutalisk is flapping its wings while underground.
- The morph range of the siege tank’s siege mode ability and the spine crawler and spore crawler abilities of the drone hero have been changed from 0.5 to 0.
- The siege tank’s siege mode ability and the spine crawler and spore crawler abilities of the drone hero now only show 1 placement range actor instead of 3 and the placement range actor shown corresponds to the range of the hero.
- The hydralisk hero’s lurker aspect has been changed slightly. Instead of the lurker hero’s burrow being an instant ability it is a target ability where you choose where to burrow. Placement range actors corresponding to the range of the lurker hero’s attack range are now shown when you are deciding where to burrow the lurker hero.
- The zergling heroes now have 1 life armor (up from 0) for balance reasons.
- The defiler hero’s plague now reveals cloaked units.
- The stalker hero’s wormhole transit now requires vision of the target location because it was too powerful when a player would teleport instantly to the enemy team’s main building.
- The movement speed of battlecruisers has been increased to 1.75, hopefully more people use the scv hero now.
- Reaver capacity has been nerfed slightly. Stored scarabs now deal 80% damage rather than 100% damage.
- Timed life of scourge that are created by the spawn scourge item has been increased from 20 seconds to 50 seconds.
- The plasma surge item now restores 75 shields instead of 50.
- The protoss energy crystal item now restores 25 energy instead of 15.
- The terran med pack item now restores 40 life instead of 25.
- Various minor changes that aren’t worth mentioning.

 

You know you can combine textures from different tilesets in to one tileset. You just can't use more than one tileset at a time for a map, and you can't use more than the allotted number of tile types for each tileset.