Spell Making Session #10 Voting

[Rising_Dusk]

These are the entries for the 10th Spell Making Session in order of submission.
The entries are pretty freakin' sweet this time around, no surprise there.

Spell Making Session #10:

Entrant/Download Link

(Spell Making Session #10 Submission Topic)
(Spell Making Session #10 Discussion Topic)

I think I got everyone in, if I forgot someone please let me know via PM. 19 entries, which is one hell of an awesome turnout. It seems you guys are still motivated to be in on this stuff, which is great!
Nice job all who participated!

Note If you're one of the people that didn't post a screenshot, just post it in this topic and I'll update this post accordingly.

The winner is decided by public vote because trying to go through and read each person's reasons and figure out who voted for what in text is damned near impossible. Please list your top 3 with reasons why, then vote for your favorite in the poll. Ultimately the poll decides the winner, though, so at the very least go through all of the entries before submitting your votes! The poll closes in one week from the moment this topic was made.

All Entrant's Testmaps: Spell Session 10.rar

Masda's Entry Formal Explanation for his Disqualification: All of the admins convened together in the sanctity that is MSN Messenger and we discussed long and hard whether or not I was justified on the disqualification of masda's entry. We came to the conclusion that it is absolutely beyond the scope of the contest for several reasons. If you remove the fact that it latches to an owl, creates a rope, and swings you, functionally the spell reduces to being able to attack and cast spells while moving. In this sense, it is more akin to the entries necessary for the second spell session and not this one. In addition to that, it is likely my fault that this misunderstanding occurred. I was not specific enough in the spell contest theme, and I did that because I did not want to limit users to just projectiles or just simple conic sections or whatever, I wanted them to be able to think outside of the box. However, I think that in doing so I didn't specify how big of a box we were working in, and masda simply jumped out of the box and ran off with the theme. Not that this is bad, his skill submission was absolutely phenomenal in every single regard, but I feel that for what I had in mind for the contest it does not fit. In the future I'll try to be as specific as possible in themes so that confusion and resultant disqualification such as this is not encountered. Thank you for taking the time to read my explanation.

Best of luck to all the entrants!

[Alexander244]

Same number of entries as #8, nice.

Some pretty good spells in that list, might be tricky to pick a winner :)

[Rising_Dusk]

might be tricky to pick a winner :)

I know, right? I was thinking the same thing as I made the topic!

[Toadcop]

masda70 wins :P. and after my Stone Crusher and after... xD there are several interesting spell for the 3rd place as for me... so about ~4 spell are almost equal.
so anyway what i does think =) masda70's spell is most interesting, impressive for me. aka have the most fun of testing it. (to be fair from my side i don't review my spell.)
and i will NEVER forget how did you figured out 1 of the reasons than the free handle stack may be corrupted !!! :pray: +1 BEYOND GODLIKE. so gratz !

[moyack]

Holy.... shit!!! too much entries!!! I'll try to get some free time and do a review.

[TheSecretArts]

I'm gonna have to thank you dusk for capitalizing my name right even though when I made this account I capitalized it wrong, lol.

[bomber7]

Originally Posted by Toadcop

masda70 wins :P.

Hmm, I took a look at the spell.
The spell idea is... odd? Its not bad, just odd.
200+ lines of premade code (mostly PUI) I'd prefer not to attach the unit to the data. Instead attach the data to the unit. Also the use of PUI could have been optimized. Like cohadar suggested, simply call it once at the beginning of the spell then use GetUnitUserData to grab the index. The terrain collisions weren't amazing. All in all, I believe there are better spells, but this was a very nicely made spell.

Next I checked out moyack's spell. First of all, I don't believe it entirely fitted the theme. It wasn't exactly a target ability. I'd also like to say it would be a bit funner if it was a target ability. Owning my allys with my enemies was a bit annoying, but I can't complain because my spell effects allies as well. Truthfully a fun looking ability, would deffinitly be an improvement if it was targetable.

After that I looked at Szythe's spell. First off, whats up with using functions like constants? There not even constant functions. Learn how to use constant globals, its a lot faster then using [non-constant] functions. The spell looked good, but it could be better if the knives were a bit more obvious. At first I couldn't tell what was happening. Also the use of gamecache could have been avoided, but isn't really a big factor. A pleasant spell, could be improved if the graphics were enhanced. (Perhaps have two sets of knives curving in opposite directions!)

Once that was complete I looked at Toadcop's spell. I liked the effect, very nice looking. Its MUI, but the mui will only be enjoyed by the richer of us do to the high computer power requirement. Hard to balance, but still very fun to use. Theres a lot of I2S which will cause memory leaks, especially if a lot of it is unique strings. While most of it won't be unique strings (so the memory leak will be negligable) some of it will be. Very nice and clean physics. I would recommend everyone to take a look at this spell if you have a good comp. (Might as well look at mine while your at it, lol)

As my next to last spell I decided to look at Fireball by ADOLF. I'm sorry to report that the spell did not meet my hopes. The range is rather glitchy, especially if you aim far away. The description is much larger then it needs to be and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The spell is also missing any form of adjustable constants. The spell also appears to have been obfuscated with only a few function names remaining. (Many variable names/function names are like P_w_R and all the numbers are in hex 0x00 0x0A0B) This spell still needs to be worked on.

[Pyrogasm]

Lovely. I forgot to include the code for my spell because it will most certainly be all retarded in the editor. If possible, could you stick this in the .rar file?

[zen87]

oh lord... can we have more than one winner...

[ADOLF]

The description is much larger then it needs to be and doesn't make a whole lot of sense

well, on such logic after first cast all should blow up to devils =)

Many variable names/function names are like P_w_R and all the numbers are in hex 0x00 0x0A0B

TT, i perfectly understand in my code and all variable/function are understand to me)
though to name my code understand for general public impossible, i agree ;)

and as for me is the most important as all works, instead of as looks... (its about code)

[Toadcop]

anyway masda will win xD

I2S which will cause memory leaks

- lol ... it's needed memory allocation. (and as you know (i think) strings are stored in a hash table so same string "can't be" (seems so) allocated twice.) the "strings leaks" story is really funny xD

[emjlr3]

i do not think 1 week is enough time

even if i just judge on looks and playing testing, it may take me a few days, with my current schedule, if i take time to actually go through the code....blah who knows

anyhow, hope I get a chance to test some of these in the coming days

[Andriejj]

Why should masda70 win? His spell seems offtopic, at least the way he presented it. If you could damage units by "roping" on them, it would be good, but that presentation map has nothing to do with aiming. It's a freestyle fun with a rope spell. But voters seemed to look only at the flash :/

I'm not decided yet, I'll edit my post later. For now I have a Top 4: Fissure, Moon Glaive, Rain of Arrows and Piercing Knives. Now to sort them in some order...

[Toadcop]

well it's much LESS offtop than the moyack spell imho...
anyway everyone have own taste. (thats why user votings sometimes suck)

[Andriejj]

Spear of Longinus could have some aiming, if it was a cooldowned passive. Then you would care how you throw it with passive on. But still- there's some point in "aiming" there, you stand in such a way, that you hurt as mmany enemies as you can with the thrust.