Heroes - what to do with them?!

[zwzsg]

Here is a tiny mutator showing how I'd like heroes to be like:
CursedHeroes_1.16.sd7

Instruction:
- Get cursed_116.sdz
- Get CursedHeroes_1.16.sd7
- Play Cursed Heroes 1.16h (against hard zombie AI for exemple)
- /cheat
- /give tc_sarge
- /luarules hero
- You now control a single unit with buffed hp.
- Move with arrows or wasd, aim with mouse, fire primary with LMB and secondary with RMB
- Press CTRL D to suicide
- You can also exit hero mode by typing again /luarules hero
- Other cool units to try: tc_belial, tc_mancubus, euf_tank, tc_bonebeast, ...


Note: The gadget used in this mutator is actually mod-agnostic.

[azaremoth]

Hehe - that is fun. You should try the euf_destroyer for some starship rumble. It should be included as a game-mode imho: hero survival with some randomly dropped med-kits and a leveling system (as soon as I get some time to write it).

Some notes:
- the hero unit is shooting all the time (no matter if I press any mouse key or not)
- it would be cool to be able to use the jumping ability of the sarge (by pressing the bound key for example)

Anyway - great work!

[zwzsg]

- the hero unit is shooting all the time (no matter if I press any mouse key or not)

That one was hard to debug, but I found out the issue: It happens when you lag and there is less unsynced frames than synced frames.

Other times it fires while it shouldn't:
- When you leave the unit, it starts attacking whatever spot you were looking at. But a true hero never surrender, dying on the spot is the only honorable way out.
- If you click-spam, then the reloadtime is skipped. But let's pretend it's not a bug but a feature aiming at increasing weapon power without touching the weapon def.

It should be included as a game-mode imho

Sure. Building a whole game mode out of this would be great. It's actually my final goal. But then I got the idea to use your Cursed models for it in 2009, yet haven't done anything since.

[azaremoth]

I am currently reworking/optimizing the heroes. The most important changes are:

- level cap increased to 10 (was 5). However, the actual impact of fully leveled heroes is not twice as strong

- leveling will happen more often with less increase in power

- rebuilding heroes will cost time but not resources anymore

- both heroes do have very powerful point and click weapons ("ulti") now beginning with level 6. The Sarge has a BFG ("Brute Force Gun") and the Shade has a D-Gun like weapon

- for the Sarge the different weapons will be indicated by the visuals. You may recognize that I was making the weapons look doomesque (no copy&paste, but close enough) plasma-gun (Doom 1/2) and BFG (doom movie). Also - the minigun is now should mounted...

- the cursed Shade does not change weapons throughout levels. However, the increased in power is indicated by different visuals for weapons (two-handed sword -> double scythes -> double katana) and additional gimmicks (mask, hat, ...)

[raaar]

Energy blades would make more sense in these contexts where melee attacks are used against armored targets like tanks and such. Ingame the shade's swords have a glowy effect on them, that helps, but could be more intense when attacking.

Asian conical hat is weird.

The melee attack animations are also weird, they feel wrong. Shade spins too much, in my opinion it'd look better if it cycled between a few different forward swings instead.

[azaremoth]

If you take a close look, all blades do have a glowing plasma edge. At least for the swords I did also keep the distortion effect that was there before.

As far as the animation is concerned - the circle attack is a feature of the unit. Thus the animation should fit. I did clean some stuff in the script though. The Shade will now circle faster and without being interrupted - it is actually a nice blade dance

I totally love the hat. Would would you suggest as helmet?

[raaar]

something that would fit a sith lord!

I'd change the armor also.

[azaremoth]

Sith Lord? I actually had a undead ninja from hell (think of Scorpion) in mind, when creating this unit. Thus the Asian hat fits quite well.

[PicassoCT]

Heroes, there abilitys create what they are used for.
You are entering DOTA country there.

There are buffs for close-combat units or ranged-units, which specify the location the hero will be.

The same goes for weapons.

The most interesting combos are heroes which have orthogonal abilitys.
Like a sniper, who can heal himself by devouring fresh corpses.
Or a melee-buffer, who needs to recharge while not under attack.
Some abilitys can be game deciding so need to be selected carefully. Lets assume a hero can drag a enemy towards him- or blow a formation up, by shoving everyone away.
There is lots of things, but what did you imagine for them.
How much budget for micro did you allocate for this hero.
For the value of invested micro-time, must be worth the sacrifices of not invested in macro time.