I always liked the old Hero Survival map...4 lanes, 8 players, and 30 waves of creeps that get bigger and scarier with each level. One of few maps where you get to build massively huge heroes...100% lifesteal, over 1000 agility and 300% cleave
But if you ever played this map you know it was not that well-written. Most of the skills were taken right out of ladder with no modification, or with
poorly-chosen modifications and no tooltips. The map was unprotected so several people tried their hand at it, just made it worse and put in "secrets" and "easter eggs" that don't work or ruin the game. So I've decided to give it a complete and total overhaul.
This is my first attempt at creating completely new heroes from scratch, so I got involved with the wc3 modeling community. The skills that I've written so far are at least as complex as DotA (screenshots forthcoming) and I've made
Lich, intel hero, (stats gains per level will be something like 1.8 STR, 1.1 AGI, 2.8 INT)
Snowman ward: summons a snowman that is quite weak but has a very fast barrage attack with snowballs. The snowmen also have a chance to stun by throwing a gemstone hidden inside the snowball...trust me it looks pretty cool to see a sh*tload of snowballs and the occasional green rock flying at high speed with a nice arc.
Hail of chaos: drops a giant bolt of hail onto an AoE that . The sound effects on this one are awesome. The emerging summon has low damage, but an appropriate damage block and useful skills at each level that disable the incoming creep wave. The Ice Infernal model looks neat too
Arctic Pulse: coded to Death and Decay, but fires a single pulse that takes off a percentage of the enemy max hp. The mana cost is the limiting factor here, so that a player has to keep toming Intel and won't be able to kill off a wave using ONLY Arctic Pulse until the very end of the game, when the summons lose effectiveness. The number will also balance for boss levels, so that within 60 seconds the Lich can do a total of 50% of the enemy heroes' hp.
(Ultimate) Thermokarst: Basically the firelord's volcano which is recoded to have an icy, earthy appearance to it...with no fire. It makes sense visually when you see it. Instead of lava chunks, a glacier rises out of the ground and releases rings of ice which slow the enemy and deal damage over time, while simultaneously spewing "glacier" chunks (oversized ice cubes) in random directions which stun and deal heavy damage. This thing was a royal pain to code but I'm really proud of the special effect appearance.
The point is to have synergy on each hero, and to make it more challenging than simply OMG GET AGI HERO AND LIFESTEAL GG. I wanted to bring spellcasting back into hero survival, and sadly the spells in the current versions are lacking. In the example I gave above, a player using Lich is required to constantly use spells which makes the game more fun. Synergy means that the spells make sense in combination: tank with Hail of Chaos, keep the Snowman Ward healthy to dish out the damage, and wear down the enemy with Arctic Pulse. It's also flexible: you can start with either Arctic Pulse or Snowman Ward for your damage dealer, and you can potentially skip Hail of Chaos if your lanemate is a good tank. The numbers with Thermokarst will be set up so that it will be highly effective, but not completely wipe out the wave on its own, and only usable once every 3 waves.
I've completed more or less 3 heroes so far, but need to do more testing, and I have about 9 in the "in progress" pile. Here's some examples:
Blade Sensei (Agility hero): uses a model based on Blademaster with a human appearance. Nice backstory about his ancestor training the first orcish blademasters before the human-orc feud.
Spells I'm working on:
Uberslash (yes similar to Omnislash in DotA, but he simultaneously spins while slashing around and causes an exponentially-increasing AoE damage. Each slash also has a larger stomp special effect.)
Dragoon Strike (a jump effect where he begins spinning slowly, then accelerates until he reaches 5 times the normal spin speed, then flies out of view and leaps down on the target point drawing the enemy to him and dealing AoE damage with a ground-lightning effect).
No more spin-based spells for him, 2 is enough
I just need some nice-looking passives. I was thinking an alternating lightning-fire-chaos effect that the player can toggle, with a special effect that attaches to his blade.
Frost Maiden (Intel hero): uses the Jaina model
Spells I'm working on:
Frost Blast (uses Pyritie's Cone of Cold model
http://fc04.deviantart.com/fs25/f/2008/038/9/5/Cone_of_Cold_v1_3_by_Pyritie.gif, channeling AoE damage that freezes the enemy)
Glacier Aura (gives allied heroes a 100% chance to block physical damage, will
almost nullify enemy waves' attacks if leveled up first)
Polar Bear Morph (turns her into a powerful attacker, will be the only hero with cleave, but drains mana while active).
Frost Blast looks really spiffy coming out of Jaina's Scepter, and when she's in Polar Bear form it will look like a Frost Breath on crack.
Night Elf Assassin (Agility hero): uses a modified warden model, kind of looks like Kerrigan from Starcraft:
Spells I'm working on:
Glaive Throw (sends 8 spinning glaives out in all directions that deal heavy damage and shred the armor of any target. I have them set so that they start out heading away from her in 45 degree increments, and over about 3 seconds they change direction so they end up moving in a nifty spiral pattern. Each one covers a 90-degree pattern before returning to her, and dies on impact with an enemy. Each glaive which returns to her restores 1/8 of the mana needed to cast. My favorite visual effect to date.)
I'm also changing the layout, instead of having the waves come from 4 compass directions, it's going to be creatures spawning near the right side of the map, splitting into 4 lanes, and converging at the center. That will make it so training is obligatory if you want to succeed, and the layout will make shopping, training, and team-organized defense easier, but still most of the game will be spent in teams of 2. If you've ever seen MiniTown Defense on Starcraft I'll be mimicking that setup heavily, but with room for 4 teams of 2.
That's where I'm at now,
any and all all polite suggestions are welcome. My first time designing entirely new heroes from scratch, so I'd like to eventually implement some sort of player-vs-player training mode or perhaps just turn it into an AoS type map at some point, but for now it's just a new hero playground.
