Stars of Destiny (RPG)

[Ignitedstar]

Welcome to my (finally) public thread for my map,

Stars of Destiny
Last Update: 8/24/11

Players: 2 - 5 (5 is heavily recommended)
Released Yet? Playable Beta Test Available! See below for details.

Progress
Heroes: 100%
Enemies: 95%
Systems: 98%
Items: 100%
Triggers: 85%
Terrain: 80%
AI: 0% (The Last)

Project Team
Ignitedstar - Everything

Credits:
The credits section will be completed when this map is released.

Summary: This is a Warcraft 3 RPG map that takes its main inspiration from Final Fantasy Forever (abbreviated as FFF, a clan TDG map) and has elements drawn from Final Fantasy VIII, Shin Megami Tensei, Valkyrie Profile, Etrian Odyssey, among a touch from others. From what some people have told me though, this map borderlines on an open RPG. The reason why it has taken me so long to present this map is because I always felt that I was not at a respectable place to consider ever giving a formal launch of the map. Especially because I was restarting it every single year (no sarcasm intended). HOWEVER! This time around, I have to say that I am very happy with how it is turning out and want to share the great news.

Learning Curve:

Hidden information: Exponential. The map starts out relatively easy to ease in new players and to get people accustomed to their hero and how they should build them. At first, you will run into a lot of battles where you can completely curbstomp the enemies. However, as you make your way closer to the second continent, you will notice a spike in difficulty. Enemies will have much more health, more dangerous abilities, and will have many ways of picking on weaker teammates or turning your hero into a helpless wreck unless you are prepared for it. Enemies can also null, absorb, or reflect your attacks back at you, so you can't spam abilities unless you plan on getting yourself killed due to yourself. Your team will need all of the elemental type coverage your party can manifest. There is no such thing as "the best weapon" or "the best armor", because what you need to survive is entirely based on what enemies you encounter. In short, the "Game Over" message becomes your best friend. Just another day in paradise!

Map Features

Hidden information: - Seven playable heroes: the Guardian, Warden, Monk, Astrologist, Magus, Divine Apprentice, and Summoner. There are nine in the screenshot below; the Blademaster and the Shaman are scheduled to be made after the map is released. - Each hero has a distinctive style of play. All heroes start knowing nothing and it is impossible to learn everything, so finding a build that can cover a weakness in your team is essential. - Hero stats are re-worked so all three are significantly important. Strength raises health, Agility increases your hero's accuracy doing physical attacks and evasion against them, and Intelligence raises your hero's ability to deal and evade status ailments. - A simple equipment system. Every hero can wear one weapon, one armor, two accessories, and two consumable items. See the next feature, though. - A comprehensive list of item abilities. There's so many that that's all I can tell you without listing the hundreds that there are. They range from game breaker to completely useless, depending on the enemies you are pitted against. - A resistance system that accounts for all damage that can be used to resist, nullify, absorb, or reflect damage. The archtypes: Physical and Spell and the "lower" elemental types: Fire, Water, Thunder, Earth, Light, Dark, Neutral, and Galaxy. - A wide range of status ailments that are not useless with varying degrees of severity. Level 1 Blind isn't too bad. Level 3 on the other hand... - Enemies are divided into fourteen Creature Types. Each type has strengths they abuse and exploitable weaknesses. - Bosses that provide challenge, instead of being so overly powerful that you have to "cheat" or rely on some overtly maimed strategy to win. - Said bosses are completely optional; you can play the entire map without fighting a single boss, if you wanted. - Enemies drop loot very frequently, so farming for items isn't taxing. Several enemies also have special loot where conditions must be met before the enemy drops it. Rare drops drop even more frequently once you discover the conditions needed to get them. - Store keepers have a "likeness" value when you spend gold at their shop. The more money you spend, the more wares they will sell to you. - Shops hold the item crafting, most of which will require their "likeness" value to be a certain amount. This one of the only ways get the items and equipment necessary for certain cases later in the game.

Teaser Screenshots (This section will get updated as further progress is made)


FAQ

Hidden information: When will this map be finished? Sometime this year. It this is my first and final project and I will be around to update it. This map is basically me saying good bye to Warcraft 3 and leaving a mark somewhere. I WANTED to get it done in 2011, but school is being evil to me, right now. Why did you post this when the map isn't finished yet and you're not necessarily asking for help? I've been at wc3c for many, many years. The only thing I have to show for it is plenty of stories and experimental test maps. No one thinks I've ever put myself behind a real project. I have been working on something; it's just not done yet. It has taken me years to fine-tune the miniscule details so that I have as little regrets as possible when the map is open to the public. I do take game design very seriously; a third of the time was learning Jass and then vJass, the second third was planning the entire map, and now I'm at the last third: actually making it. What's with the corny name? xD lol xD Well, it's a long story. I scripted the general direction of the map first before doing anything else. I had this entire story embedded into the map to enrich the player experience. However, as the map size started climbing up, I realized that I probably did not have the space in the map or the time to integrate all of it. Although the story is non-existent, all of the remnants of the world I made have been left in the map with no real explanation. Such as the planet being called Asver, why there's an element called Galaxy, the "sickness" known as Galaxia, as well as characters, places, etc.

===========================================

A beta release is currently available on the bottom of this post.

Please take these precautions, though:

- All heroes can be used except the Shaman and Blademaster. These two heroes are not done and will not be until the first official version is released. Now's the best time to get yourself comfortable!
- Most of the second continent can be traveled. Except the Cavern of the Shades.
- A good amount of shops have basic inventories available.
- You cannot fight any bosses.
- Quests will activate, but cannot be finished.
- If you get stuck, Player 1 can type -debug to activate special cheat codes for the map. Only Player 1 can activate -debug, but every code works for all players.
- Take good screenshots if you can. >_>

The reason why I am releasing this beta test is because I need to know what will crack the map. I can only test so much testing alone; I have a feeling that the map will run into a lot of issues if five players are playing at once. So please gather up some clanmates or friends and do everything you can to break the map the way it is.

EDIT: Oh, darn. Cursed size limits.

Oh, well. This link will re-direct to The Hive Workshop, where my map can be downloaded.

[Ignitedstar]

Now I'm a bit glad that no one every said anything. Heh.

A playable beta test is now available. Give me a moment to upload it.

This post will also be reserved in case I need it.

[Frostic]

You won't get much feedback here. Maybe at the hive... But not here.

Btw, Im Crazed_seal2 on the hive.

[Ignitedstar]

That's fine. I originally wanted to keep the map release hush-hush, which is why I posted the map project here first. I'm used to how quiet it is on wc3c.net, plus being the moderator of a sub-forum that only I post in (lol >_>), so getting almost no replies is normal.

[2-P]

Hm, I can't play the map, it acts like the pre 1.24 maps that use the return bug (throws me back to the map selection when I press start in singleplayer and gives me the "no map found" message when I try to host it on BN).

[Ignitedstar]

Every once in awhile when I optimize the map, that happens. It's been fixed. Thanks for telling me.

[2-P]

Only tried it in SP....

-It's probably personal taste, but does anyone really care what the stats of the heroes exactly are? (Talking about the hero selection at the beginning).
Something like Health: Strong; Attack Damage: Weak; .... would be enough imo.

-It'd make more sense to spawn the heroes in their home after picking them, since getting spells is the first thing you want to do. I was running around the town searching for the place where I could learn them at the beginning. Not sure if it was mentioned in the -tutorial, I have an astoundingly bad short-term memory.

-The camera should re-focus on the hero after entering/leaving the home.

-You should mention in the item description which heroes are able to use the item. I bought a lot of items that I couldn't use, losing gold every time. =(

-If an enemy runs into the companion of a summoner a fight starts (not sure if intentional).

-The summoner's companions are heroes, which is fine and all, what's totally not cool is that they are being targeted by that stone where you can boost your attributes. I didn't notice it at first and wasted 2-3 points on increasing the intelligence of my companion. >.<

-In the riverbank(?) arena, (the one with the river in the middle) it can happen that an enemy spawns behind the trees in the bottom left corner and he won't see you and you won't see him. I thought it was a bug at first since there were no enemies but the fight didn't end, until I threw an aoe spell in the corner which revealed/killed the enemy.

-Why is there fog of war in the arena anyway? Running around searching for enemies isn't exactly fun. It also creates a rather large variance in the difficulty of the fights, sometimes 3-4 enemies spawn right besides you and sometimes you can take them down one by one.

-It happend twice that I got into an area where the enemies were A LOT stronger, they just one shotted me. (The first time I went through the teleport circle at the top left in the first area, second time was after the gate in the riverbank).

-Lordaeron Summer? Really? Does it have to be the worst tileset ever? :P

-The spell system with the limited mana pool is actually pretty cool, I'm sure (longer) boss fights will be pretty intense!

[Ignitedstar]

Ah. Thanks for this wonderful feedback. I just finished Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. Now I know why people are so into it. So don't mind me if I start blurting out stuff. xD

Originally Posted by 2-P

-It's probably personal taste, but does anyone really care what the stats of the heroes exactly are? (Talking about the hero selection at the beginning).
Something like Health: Strong; Attack Damage: Weak; .... would be enough imo.

I like the precise numbers. I'm OCD that way. >_< Sure, I could leave it all out. That is how it used to look like, but because I like to be a perfectionist, I thought it looked unpolished. Like I didn't care what any value was assigned.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-It'd make more sense to spawn the heroes in their home after picking them, since getting spells is the first thing you want to do. I was running around the town searching for the place where I could learn them at the beginning. Not sure if it was mentioned in the -tutorial, I have an astoundingly bad short-term memory.

Oh! You're right. It's not mentioned in the tutorial. The tutorial pings where your skill vaults are, but the tutorial doesn't tell you how to get there. I'm so sorry. I will fix that. Hmm... I think you're right about spawning at Home. I will do that, too. Thank you.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-The camera should re-focus on the hero after entering/leaving the home.

I knew I forgot about something... I had gotten into the habit of refocusing the camera every time the hero teleports to another destination, but I knew I had forgotten some.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-You should mention in the item description which heroes are able to use the item. I bought a lot of items that I couldn't use, losing gold every time. =(

Hmm, that's strange. The items themselves don't say who can equip them, because I was trying to save as much tooltip space as possible. This is why each hero's tooltip says what they can and cannot equip. Even the first shops in the game have tips on what each hero can use.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-If an enemy runs into the companion of a summoner a fight starts (not sure if intentional).

Yes, intentional.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-The summoner's companions are heroes, which is fine and all, what's totally not cool is that they are being targeted by that stone where you can boost your attributes. I didn't notice it at first and wasted 2-3 points on increasing the intelligence of my companion. >.<

You know, I totally spaced this. An easy fix. Thanks for pointing out this vital error.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-In the riverbank(?) arena, (the one with the river in the middle) it can happen that an enemy spawns behind the trees in the bottom left corner and he won't see you and you won't see him. I thought it was a bug at first since there were no enemies but the fight didn't end, until I threw an aoe spell in the corner which revealed/killed the enemy.

-Why is there fog of war in the arena anyway? Running around searching for enemies isn't exactly fun. It also creates a rather large variance in the difficulty of the fights, sometimes 3-4 enemies spawn right besides you and sometimes you can take them down one by one.

I've also run into those situations when most of the enemies seem to spawn next to you (seems like RNG anger). Yes, the fog of war in the battlefield requires extra work for players and is intentional. There is an item that reveals the map for you; it's just not available in the beta, yet.

Originally Posted by 2-P

-It happened twice that I got into an area where the enemies were A LOT stronger, they just one shotted me. (The first time I went through the teleport circle at the top left in the first area, second time was after the gate in the riverbank).

Erm, I really need to have warning labels in those areas. The first area you mentioned in the Weeping Canopy. The second one is the East Estuary.>_>

Originally Posted by 2-P

-Lordaeron Summer? Really? Does it have to be the worst tileset ever? :P

OBJECTION! xD Lordaeron Summer's tileset is perfect! Because, you know... the forest is always the first dungeon (in most cases).

HOLD IT! But if that's true, why didn't I use Ashenvale's tileset, instead? ... =_=

Originally Posted by 2-P

-The spell system with the limited mana pool is actually pretty cool, I'm sure (longer) boss fights will be pretty intense!

Yes, you've caught on quickly. Mana management is key in longer fights.