[Altered Melee] Dragon Bait

[Cheshire]

Anacalagon's slumber heaves the earth beneath your feet, waiting for one reckless enough to disturb his ancient rest. You stand at the brink of destiny, lured by the promise of your enemy’s ruin. As the Dragon stirs, a haunting thought chills your spine: Are you the clever hunter, using others as pawns in your dangerous game, or are you the one being manipulated, walking blindly to your own doom? Who set the bait, and who is the prey? Dragon Bait is an altered melee, where the unique feature is the option of attempting to bait Anacalagon into destroying your enemies for you. Information Progress log Credits Author's Notes In the center of the map lies the sulfurous lair of Anacalagon the black, Dragon monarch of old. besides his lair he displays his most coveted treasure, a fiery crown, stolen eons ago from elder beings long forgotten. This powerful Artifact is coveted by many greedy adventurers. Once stolen, Anacalagon will chase the crown across the map, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. This mechanism adds new strategic dimensions to melee gameplay. 20.8.24 - recently I decided to pick back up this old project (which was my first attempt at creating something with wc3) and do it justice. This is what I'm up to: recreating basic map triggers (now in C#) creating basic functional ai creating enhanced dragon attack system hard resetting map development page redo voice acting for dragon adding hints to code adding voicelines to code creating unique creep and merc biomes with several custom abilities debugging AI and dragon attack creating loading screen modifying multiple blizzard maps to create multiple size options (insead of the giant monstrosity the previois draft of the map was) additional debugging and fine tuning these credits are from the previous incarnation of this idea: Thanks to @Warseeker , @Macadamia , @Planetary, on all the help with triggering on the forums. Thanks to @Rufus for the map description template in his guide. Thanks to @WTii for getting me back into the game, keep up the great content. Last but not least, thanks to @deepstrasz who has been extremely helpful in a bunch of ways since we had a really long and philosophical troll-off based on my username. Hey all, the Idea behind this map is to offer very different strategy than standard melee, while still keeping all the basic building blocks, Thus allowing very natural gameplay, and not demanding a lot of time to "learn" the map. would be happy for any input. thanks!

 

[Cheshire]

oops

forgot to disable one of the testing triggers (starting resources for red player)

here is the fixed version....

Edit: this is the old version of the map. While the general idea is the same, it resembles the map I am currently working on very little.

 

[Map Designer]

is there AI for this?

 

[Cheshire]

I currently don't have any AI that knows how to strategize accordingly, BC I would want to see how real players play around this before trying to program one.

In the "author's notes" tab...

 

[Cheshire]

Looking for a terrainer to re-do this map's terrain. Lots of artistic freedom and will be co-author of map.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Reopened.

 

[Cheshire]

Soooooo, I'm revamping this old project. Soon I'll update the description, for now here's a teaser of the new system for the dragons attack -

 

[Cheshire]

currently altering up some blizzard melee maps so I can release this in multiple sizes. here is me desecrating are some changes I made to the beloved twisted meadows (the greatest 1v1 melee map of all times according to Grubby):

• removed the tavern from the middle and replaced it with the Dragon Lair
• added new taverns where the big statues were
• made the islands reachable by foot. I am aware this may have utterly destroyed the balance of this map (I would be happy for suggestions of countermeasures), but it is necessary for the dragon to be functional. maybe in a few years when I decide to revamp this project again I give him flying capabilities to reach the islands the right way. for now less...

Spoiler: screenshots of desecration in action

The Dragon's Lair in the middle of the map with a nice little pile of treasures to entice greedy mortals to join the dragon for lunch...

islands no longer:

Less statues and more taverns (there is a religious joke in there somewhere...):

and now I have stuff to show for my map development and can pretend that this is what I have been spending my hobby time on the past two weeks and not just fidgeting with my code...

 

[Cheshire]

development update:
- Created and added new voicelines (just oldschool with Audacity) for when the dragon starts chasing the thief. Here are some teaser samples out of a whopping 27 variations taking into account the dragon's "anger level" at that point in the game:

 

[Cheshire]

development update:

Here are some options for the loading screen created with different AI's and Canva. which do you think I should go with?

Spoiler: 1.

Spoiler: 2.

Spoiler: 3.

Spoiler: 4.

 

[AMarkov]

I really like images 1 and 2 for their stylization.

I also conducted a thought experiment regarding the map. Would it be correct to say that a player who steals the crown should rush to the enemy base to deal maximum damage, even at the cost of their life (or perhaps drop the artifact inside the enemy base)? In that case, it would make sense to use heroes like the Priestess of the Moon (Shadow Meld) or the Blademaster (Wind Walk).

Does this idea seem balanced and engaging, or does it turn into a fun "hot potato" scenario? Is the tactical depth of the game still maintained?

 

[Cheshire]

I also conducted a thought experiment regarding the map. Would it be correct to say that a player who steals the crown should rush to the enemy base to deal maximum damage, even at the cost of their life (or perhaps drop the artifact inside the enemy base)? In that case, it would make sense to use heroes like the Priestess of the Moon (Shadow Meld) or the Blademaster (Wind Walk).

Does this idea seem balanced and engaging, or does it turn into a fun "hot potato" scenario? Is the tactical depth of the game still maintained?

I think heroes with high mobility definitely have a small advantage here. Specifically the ones you mentioned maybe less, since whoever is holding the crown is visible to all players (otherwise seems too unfair).

I'm trying to make the crown->dragon change the game, but not be a "golden snitch" scenario, where it renders everything else pointless. currently even if you dump the crown in someone's base, the dragon will only cause major damage if a. it is attacked, or b. if it is blocked. So you have to be a bit more clever with it to really make good use of the dragon.

In general to really balance things I will need to see actual gameplay and feedback, but I'm not quite there yet. But there is a hot potato aspect to it for sure.

 

[AMarkov]

If the idea proves to work well in gameplay, we could collaborate and add the map to my project (an altered melee in the style of StarCraft 2 co-op, where a unique gameplay mechanic and race are built around a significant Warcraft universe character).

At the moment, I’m not considering PvP or FFA modes, but they are still part of my long-term plans. I’m taking note of projects like this for the future (a standard battle with additional game conditions that influence gameplay).

 

[Fleck]

Hey, just droppin to say that I played and liked this map years ago. I liked melee maps with special mechanics like this.

A bit late but I prefer loading screen 1 and 2.

 

[Cheshire]

Hey, just droppin to say that I played and liked this map years ago. I liked melee maps with special mechanics like this.

A bit late but I prefer loading screen 1 and 2.

cool, thanks! I actually ended up using 1 with slight changes. I kind of got tired of my buggy code and took a break from WC3 modding for a while, but I hope to be back to finish this at some point...