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Yeah, so back to working on this map, it's been a work in progress for awhile now. If you have suggestions, comments, or found a bug, I'd like to hear about it. Thank you all for playing.

Some issues brought to my attention by GodzFire:

- Dwarf animations in Mort mode are about half speed to what they should be

- Dwarf in Mort mode doesn't pick up dud splash shells. Zoso says this previously worked in rc25

- Warrior General doesn't seem to get his 2nd and 3rd special as he vets, which he does in previous versions (Power Strike and something else)

- A glow effect or something to identify the Warrior General's Throwing Swords would be nice, to help identify for picking up

- Heron Guards are not able to be removed during Unit Trading time

- Allow for the HGH to be deselected as well

- Enemy Sorcerers and Ghost Archers run away after attacking instead of staying in place

- Myrks in DoD Dark don't heal through damage like HGs do

- The Wraiths when using their "Noobify" spell drains all a player's vets instead of just a set number. I highly recommend that be changed, as I think that's a bit overpowered.

- The sword that the peasants drop (the Balmung) is not able to be picked up by any units (to my knowledge)

- Make the Healing Arrow the Light Archer has able to be used on herself.

- Maybe combine the Light Sorcerer's unit spells into the Warlock's, and remove the Sorcerer from the Light version, since it's traditional an enemy player.

I don't think sorcerer and ghost archers retreat after attacking is a bug at all...just some extra AI that ghost gave ghost archers and souless in his original rotd plug. I think its fantastic, since it's more difficult to hit those units than if they were static in place. Mb u could make them "run" less further adjusting attack recovery time, together with mana recharge rate.

What?? I loved playing that sorcerer dud!! don't even think about removing him from light...mb use a different color permutation for the enlighten one, or mb even a conversion.

I don't think its a good idea neither, to allow healing arrow heal archer that has it, since its a special item...tell me, how is he supposed to do, shoot himself in the head? i think DoD has auto-healers enough, like hg, hgh, white mage, that i know of...

i remember playing it a lot with rabican,
and if i remember correctly, the biggest "bug" is that, the game becomes incredibly easy when more than 4 players are in it (I think it activates the mighty invincible white mage).
Havent plaed it in mb 2 years so I'm sorry I don't remember any bugs ! Good to see that you're still working on it !

Alrighty, rc27 has been released and here's some notes from it:

- There's something in the PC version of 1.7 which causes DoD to crash when Libs dies. We can confirm it's okay with OSX, and 1.6.

- I was only able to get the mortar up to 152 kills at the end of the game, and was after even after sacrificing all the other missile units. I HIGHLY suggest you merge the dwarves back together, or at least combine the Strider/Demo, and Pathfinder/Mort

- Warrior General got up enough kills to reach level 4 of his inventory. I saw Power Strike, Defensive Stance, and Stun Revolver. Not sure exactly what Def Stance did besides make him go slower, but I did try Stun Rev which, no offense, was rather corny, with the warrior doing the hokey pokey.

- Zerk did not level at all, and I believe he was maxed

- The sides of the building we're protecting, when the statues are blown away, have a bad habit of screwing up units and causing them to get stuck in the cracks. That happened numerous times to me. Maybe just leave the statues in?

Hi Gleep,

I've been able to enjoy this map quite a few times, beating it on leg a few times and even getting to mazz on leg dark. Here's my feedback:


- All units available no matter how many players in game.

This is IMO what's holding this map back from being played more than anything else. It's fun to play with new specials (ie. general, lib, and white mage), and 6 players that have rc whatever just aren't around when you want to play with them. If players want to play with only 3 units, they should be allowed to decide (ie. suicide) if they wish.

edit: i just realized what you were trying to do, I think. I guess the idea is that you want to promote a 1 unit - 1 player coop experience for as long as possible (hence the 'replacement' units in dod dark). Problem is I just don't think it's a good experience for too few or even a sizeable amount of players (in other words 1 unit - 1 player shouldn't be forced, that's like forcing people to divide up the demos in mazz. I'd rather it'd be players choice to divvy up the roles). Too few players means a limited selection from not very interesting specials, and even a bunch of players just means people are pigeonholed into roles for which they often have less work on their hands than time (hence, it's kinda easy/boring with a full crew).

- Light is pretty fun but still a little too easy (on leg)

This is especially evident on the rare occasions you can get a 10 player game. I don't know what's possible here, but it seems you could be a lot more evil, either with more units, gnarlier units, or even new units that cause new kinds of problems. As it is, it's pretty routine vetting all the way up until the last wave, and then if I remember right people usually die well enough, though I can't recall why (sheer amount of black thrall? watcher kills everyone? I forget)

- Dark needs major balancing

Some units just plain suck (mgg, ghost path, robot, vamp?, watcher? cant remember what else) and spend the equivalent of a whole game vulching red units for not a whole lot of gain when vetted. That leaves it pretty much up to other units (liches) that have an answer for everything. Here's what I remember from the units:

--Myrk Giant Ghost
Useless. Can't 1v1 for shit until it steals about 80 kills, even then whoopdiescoobydoo it can kill 1 warrior. Also acorns don't do much against warriors or archers or... well much of anything really.

--Vamp
Still don't really understand what this unit does. Does it heal? Does it drain? Does it vet? Seems like it has potential to be a pretty fun unit (could be like a flying (all terrain) draining melee unit that also gets hurt fairly easy and doesn't like arty, ESPECIALLY fire, but that can travel on all terrain, and once vetted can 1v1 win some warrs coming out with positive health), but it doesn't quite feel polished.


Also I should add here that I again don't think it's necessary to withhold units until they beam in as replacements for some units later. Again, why? Getting unvetted reins late in the game is generally unhelpful for two reasons: 1) the reins you get don't seem to vet well in the first place, so the careful effort spent vetting them doesn't seem to do much good and 2) they're so crappy relatively at this point that they just can't kill ANYthing unless it's softened by something else. Vetting units in this way becomes tedious very fast.


--the Robot
This is my favorite unit, although the lightning ring special (or whatever it was) doesn't do anything and needs to be either tweaked, removed, or replaced. The laser beam is AWESOME and would be hilarious/awesome if it got better or bigger or even split off into multiple shots as he vets (of course, this should probably be balanced with either a slower charge time)

The way it is, though, I'm not sure why this unit only heals to about 60%, especially since it does so little good in a fight, especially as a later-game reinforcement.

--Lich(es)
Possibly the most overpowered unit, the liches only really use like 2 or 3 specials (from what I remember), and that's the whirlwind which rapes any and all melee packs, due merely to the fact that it causes flinching, plus range balls for enemy arty. I can't remember really what else is good, if anything. This unit is the only one really that does bulk killing well.


--dwarves
Underpowered. Actually kinda useless, most all melee units withstand at least 5-6 dwarf shots, from what I remember. Could possibly just get rid of dwarves entirely, or just leave 1. Come to think of it, the strider was actually pretty effective, and the fire pee special works really well for it.

Aside of the novelty of ghost airships, however, there's not much to be said for the easy-dead soft-hitting midgets.


--the watcher
I think I'm missing something about this unit because for some reason it seems like a really poor unit at the end game. Maybe needs to vet better.




Basically I think the issue with a lot of units for DoD dark to "work" is that there needs to be better vetting bonuses, either make them better/faster (or even better/faster than they are), or else just enhance their specials.

As it is, the power units seem to be the shade and trow, both of which vet nicely and rape appropriately near the end of the game (although the shade quickly becomes little more interesting than a slower level 2 zerk in mazz by the time its dreams are gone), and the lich which takes care of anything else. Myrks always on healing duty, and the rest is little more than fancy fodder.

What makes Dark so difficult right now is the large amount of melee units with pretty much nothing but melee to kill them. For a map with new, potentially interesting units (lich, robot, vamp, for instance), it seems like there should be a lot more to it than that.






Anyway, that's all I can remember. On the whole, I LOVE the color map + the aesthetic feel of the landscape, I really like, or at least like the idea of all the new units, and I think there's certainly potential for some crazy games. It would be awesome to see something that pushed our heroes off the hill in order to encourage more use of the rest of the map (it's really a shame that you can beat light legendary fairly easily without ever leaving temple. the rest of the map is just too pretty, and the SW/NW map features are just too cool). Maybe not a demon lord per se, but would it be too much to ask for a large tank wave to spawn from behind? I dunno, whatever works.

ANYway, I hope you consider one or two of these bazillion comments, and I'm looking forward to see what you can do with future versions of the map! I have enjoyed exploring it thus far. Keep up the good work!


ps- my favorite moments from playing this long ago were:

1) once while trying to neuter a myrk wave, everybody specialled the same group at once -- a group that was a lot redder than was apparent. I think after one hit, it was 2 myrks that were dreamed, nuked, and meteored all at the same time.

2) the day I discovered whatever general's shield special makes that reflective aura thing. that was the same day I discovered you could cast that aura on friendly units. I think I spent the rest of the game casting it left and right on every arty unit I could find, foe or friend, for some serious lols.

3) the day I discovered the robot laser beam! that shit still cracks me up.

Glad for the feedback guys.

GodzFire--

I could merge the dorfs back easy enough, but I just have to see what others think. Maybe demo/mort, strider/pfer? The General's defensive stance makes him block more, and resist more damage. He's ubertuff with that on. Stun Nova is the same as Shield Smite except it hits every unit around him. Useful if he is surrounded. Too bad you didn't get lvl 5. Zerk not leveling is an error on my part.

ducky--

Thanks for the somewhat comical but helpful comments. All units are now available at start. You have the option to taunt any unwanted units away and can taunt Mazz to bring them back later if needed. As for light being too easy, well I have a few more ideas to liven things up before its final. As far as dark well I agree with most of what you said. It just hasn't got enough testing for me to have feedback on the units. I do want to make the playable units more fun. I'm not sure which version u played but I think they are better, but still not near finalized. Hopefully a readme of all the new units and their specials will help.

YAY!


...and I think I saved 1 or 2 films of the legendary DoD dark attempts we did... I think on rc25. I'll try to dig em up when I get back.

ducky might I suggest downloading rc27 and trying that one, since a lot has changed.

Gleep, I just confirmed that in rc28, it still shows Mazz Vs Watcher in the MultiPlayer maps. However if you choose it, and play, it crashes right away.

Probably want to remove the mesh tag.

Sorry Gleep, but there's definitely still some issues with the Wraiths and the amount they devet.

Just tonight we were playing, and I was Libs, and in one hit, he got completely noobed, from 110 kills. Spa and Zoso also had it happen to their characters as well.

I deleted the multi mesh and fixed the devetting issue for next release.

Another thing Gleep, the Peasant threw out a dead arm tonight for the General. You can't tell it's a powerup. Personally, I would just remove the powerups for the General, and let him vet. I also say change that turn-around shield bash at level 4. It's rather corny. I say, if u get it that high, u can get that Convert Unit option.

Yeah there is a new image for the shields he picks up.

Don't like the spinbash huh? Hmm, what could I replace that with? An auto shield bash or something.

What did you mean about the mort's animations being slower?

If you compare your Mort's animations to the one in Myth 2, and in Mazz, he just seems to be moving in slow motion.

Don't like the spinbash huh? Hmm, what could I replace that with? An auto shield bash or something.

Well you have the following for special attacks for General:

0- Shield Bash: Extremely helpful in confusing mini-boss level enemies and in saving other units
1- Magic Sword: Useful for killing sorcerers. That's great to have. I would up it's damage just a bit, as sometimes, I think with the red sorc, he's still alive, but with like 1 more small hit to kill him. Also, increase the throw length JUUUUST a little.
2- Power Strike: A nice power smash to take a unit down quick. Also nice in a desperate situation to shove a unit across the map
3- Defensive Stance: Didn't really like this one until a few days ago when I put it through some runs. You just sit there and kill enemies. You're slow, but you can take a huge amount of damage even being surrounded.

Now 4 would be then the spinbash, but I really feel that it's just a copy of Shield Bash. Instead I suggest changing it to 'Recruit Unit', like the one powerup does. Reason I say that, is because only once in the entire time I've been playing rc28 has the Convert Unit powerup dropped. It's way too rare. I say, if you set the new Recruit Unit ability not to be granted until 150-200 kills, you can guarantee it only being learned at the end of the game, when it's needed most, and also not be able to exploited much, since it's a mana based attack.

Overall, I think the General's learned attacks are good enough, and doesn't need powerups. I'd rather save the peasant from throwing those and instead get crystals for the other units.


PS- I hope rc29 can come out fairly soon, that Wraith total devet issue is really driving people nuts.