Soulchess119epic

2006-11-25

here it is, 1.18 epic. while wc3sear.ch is still fixing their ressource-submission issues, feel free to download it here isntead.

to sum it up:
• replaced sudden death with a dynamic movespeed bonus for melee & short ranged units: the speed increases every second and is reseted after the battle
• player red can change the tileset of the board on-the-fly
• board abilities (like field attack but dont require a target: soul release, fortify and meditate)
ive done quite some balancing & fixes too... major memory leaks were fixed and the breaks between turns are a lot shorter now.

Laosh'Ra

2006-11-20

wow, that surely is a long post... i suggest u give some structure to posts like that.

anyway, im very grateful for this feedback although ive found most issues myself making 1.18.

this angelic armor issue was totally unknown to me, i guess i simply misinterpreted "C) Data - Mana per Hit Point" as i set it to 0.2 instead of 5. thx a lot for this one

the bonus dmg dealt by seraphies soulpower already has a maximum delay of 2 seconds (reached at 6 bonusdmg per hit).

all poison abilities have been buffed too, same goes for cocktail bomber's field attack and bio tinker's dmg.

sudden death has been replaced as it was... a bit bugged ^^" after several versions and attempts to fix it i simply scrapped it. instead, melee & low ranged units gain a dynamic movespeed bonus (increases every second) which is reseted after every battle. this also prevents the run&regen-abuse.
btw, others already suggested a "draw" function. but imo this might turn out being a bit lame. not to mention the trigger-problems to show up if both units survive the battle.

as for the "floating" board and the fadefilter, those are actually great ideas. no objections, ive done it right away

is for the boundairy tinting during cinematics, ill see what i can do...
however id prefer not to limit camera boundairies as players sometimes want to see whats going on the other parts of the map (selection area, board, other arenas). i might still change my oppinion on that though.

thanks a lot for this constructive feedback.

i'll whitelist you if you tell me your case sensitive accoutn name. no additional priviledges, just honourable ingame recognition

1.18 is actually done now... ill test it a few more times this week, expect a release very soon. sorry for not having working on it for such a long time, i was busy with another porject: Blood Mirror Semi-RP

Anonymous

2006-10-11

Well here goes my feedback... to be honest I didn’t really think that I would actually comment on your map, but since I play it a lot and have been around from the very first version I just keep noticing some thing that just didn’t change at all, even thou it is already at version 1.17.
To start I am amazed that you still have not fixed the 3 skill of the angels, namely, angelic amour. In the description it says that it absorbs a part of the dmg while negating every 5 dmg for 1 manna point (you based it on mana shield) but it is actually the opposite it absorbs 1 dmg for 5 mana and as such it is only good for one hit then it will leave your unit whit zero mana. Please fix this so it actually becomes more useful.
Secondly the angels soul power is somewhat stupid, when I first saw it I though I would do extra dmg on every hit but instead the dmg is done after a second or two when the actual hit is landed so it really doesn’t help you that much in arena fights, what makes it even more useless is that if the opponent wins they will have the curs removed due to becoming invulnerable, please delay the battle ending a bit so that even if you lose the curs and other abilities can take full effect.
Next thing that bothers me is that poison is basically useless, even if a unit has 10 poison counters if he stands on a soul field it hardly matters, and if the unit is level 3 it will be countered by its regeneration, but generally field attacks are really used because they deal too little dmg (whit a few exceptions like the nova druid) but whit poison it is even worst since you actually need to wait for 4 for the enemy to take 30+ dmg (not counting regeneration) and if you are already performing a field attack that means you are close to the enemy and in most such situations you cant afford to waste time. So in short poison needs to be buffed.
Also about the feature you call "sudden death".... let me just make an example of my first encounter whit it: I was fighting whit and archbone archer against common melee unit (forgot what race it was) and did the usual micro of attacking and then running away and if I got hit I just waited for regeneration to get healed to max hp, when suddenly I get the "sudden death" message... at that time the opponent was about to die, I was at near full hp when he only needed to hits but when sudden death kicked in I got killed by one attack, after all the trouble of microing my archer this is just not fair. What annoys me even more about it is the fact you don’t even know when its going to activate, I was playing a cocktail bomber in an arena fight and blocked the main path whit goblin fire, so the enemy didn’t attack (he was a newbie) and like this we just sat for about 2-3 minutes and no sudden death occurred, so it isn’t even explained how it works. I suggest to completely remove the whole "sudden death" idea and replace it whit a Total War type mechanism: so in every battle the will be a time 4 to 6 minutes (you can decide on the time) and if by that time both units are still alive then the defender automatically wins, this will work great since attackers advantage will not let the defender run around in circles to draw out the battle to a win.
Now a few balance issues.
First on the list is archbone warrior, the weakest melee unit of all the races, yes I know that all units in the green death are weak at the start but the warrior stays weak even on level 3 and is not able to stand his ground even against a level 1 unit (unless its a mage-type). Here is what I suggest: his dmg is clearly too low and he doesn’t have a very fast attack to compensate for it, so buffing his dmg by 50-100% would be nice, and at the same time reduce his base movement speed by 10-15% to keep him weak in the early game so that archers will not have no problem killing him. Next you should rework durable bones, the extra 25 hp are really not worth it, instead give him a 10-15 dmg reduction from every attack, that would fit the ability and also make him stronger, but if you do that then it should be counted as a level 3 skill.
Second, the rotten bone dragon. He is pretty decent overall but he probably has the worst attack speed in the game so make him attack a little faster if you can since at this level a full hp dragon sometimes loses to a basic melee unit in a 1 vs. 1 fight.
And thirdly, the goblin alchemist... he has the worst dmg in the game making him lose even to archer types although he receives bonus dmg against them! So please buff his minimum dmg since 1-17 dmg is just underpowered.
And finally a few suggestions that have nothing to do whit the actual game play but whit the way it is presented. For instance it would be nice if you could do the terrain to be just like in the loading screen so that the board would look like it hovers over water. Next, find a way keep the black fog of war during the soul power cinematic since it kind of gives the effect of the board hovering over emptiness (so even if you cant make the board look like in the loading screen you can still have the fog of war as a replacement). Thirdly you should find a way to limit the camera movement to the board only to create a better feeling of immersion, and if there is an arena fight instead of just dragging the camera to the battle why don’t you have it zoom into the board, and at the same time have the screen go more and more white and when both players cant see anything the cameras get moved to the arena. So it’s something like the Final Fantasy games where the game basically splits up into battle mode and adventure mode. (P.S: also limit the camera movement during arena battles too; this will also include the minimap).
Okay this turned out to be a rather big post I know, but I really tried to avoid making unnecessary suggestions and only concentrating on making a point whit those I have written here, so that is the main reason for the long post. Now I hope this will help you make the map perfect since these are the only major flaws I have been able to detect while playing it a few time.

Laosh'Ra

2006-07-22

Changelog for 1.17
-increased damage of pyro master's "combustion"
-reduced cold armor alpha's base damage
-units are no longer paused during the countdown for an arenabattle: they are invulnerable instead. this increases the amount of time the players have to read the tooltips of the abilities.
-added Kyro Emission as level3 ability for Gelidus The Cold Foci
-Player Colors fixed
-double-levelup-info fixed
-auto-attack order for Computer units
-if a player leaves during a fight, his unit in the arena is killed instantly now
-misc changes

note that 1.16 wasnt released. its changelog applies for 1.17 as well.

Changelog for 1.16
-souledge now has a maximum of 100 damage
-fixed a zoom issue which appeared when Divine Recreation was used in "-fast" mode (shortened soulpower animations)
-fixed an issue wich prevented the name of the voidsphere target from being displayed
-removed player 1's control for ashgan (how on earth could i forget that... didnt affect gameplay at least ^^")
-changed tooltip of force field (yes it also denies spells!)
-fixed an issue with vacuum grenade trapping the enemy in an unpassable area
-reduced maxhp of Melth the Leviathan of Kel'Nar by 5
-reduced maxhp of Meteoric Critter by 5
-reduced maxhp of Hydra Spawn by 15
-reduced maxhp of Terra Fiend by 25
-reduced maxhp of Submarine by 7
-increased maxhp for Blooded One Warlock by 8
-reduced maxhp of Rtyeta the Duke of Pergatiry by 10
-increased attackspeed of Rtyeta by 1/6
-reduced maxhp of Guardian by 5
-hopefully fixed a certain "defiled soul" issue
-changed some tooltips
-fixed flashbang aoe to affect the whole arena
-changed icon of "Final Curse"
-raised manacost of "Flamewave" by 2
-moved "Soul Drain" from Holy Guard to Unholy Lady
-added "King Of The Hill" as new ability for Holy Guard

Laosh'Ra

2006-04-08

im finally done with my 13-damn-years-of-school-end-exams. celebrate with me by downloading and playing 1.15 EPIC.
as for the content, there are several custom music tracks, a new board (you can still use the old one), several new abilities, rebalance&misc changes as well as new modes like random events.

the full changelog is available in a forum thread

Laosh'Ra

2006-01-29

the bar is 100% made of default models. bookcases tables etc. as for ashari's soulpower: the curse lasts till the VERY end of the game. if you cast it with about 70 sp each hit against an opponent is amplified by 5 points of damage. if you cast it once more later, it stacks directly and theres no way to get rid of it. this can really turn the tides of battle imo.

some good news: i finally found some time to continue with 1.15

Preskooldude

2006-01-25

yeah, the archangel has a sorta cheap Soulpower too, provided she lives long enough to use it. Anyhow, the main thing I'd like to know is where I can DL the tileset for the bar battle scene... d'ya know where it is if its on the net?

Laosh'Ra

2005-12-29

ill consider rebalancing bash. but remember: blood orcs have no field attacks and are therefore stronger in arena. besides that the unit which pwnd ur king seems to have been under the special effect of blood rage dealing bonusdamage if their hp drops below something like 25%.
thx for feedback

1.15 will contain some new modes, a new board (you can still use the old one) and custom tracks. this will increase the size of the map a LOT though. i might consider doing a lite version of 1.15 too.

Kramy

2005-12-23

I really like SoulChess, but I kinda have to agree. My king as the Leviathan of Kelnar died extremely quickly to a lvl 3 basic orc unit. They got lucky with bash 3 times in a row and slaughtered me.

Suggestion:
Bash is unfair because not only is it like 2x or 3x damage(extra attacks during stun time), but it also prevents damage to the bashing unit. You should either have bash lowered down to around 0.25s in order to preserve attack and spell disruption, or replace it entirely.

The HP thing suggested would also be nice, since then totally horrid luck would not screw you. The chances of getting 3 bashes in a row and preventing attacks for almost 10 seconds is much higher than the chance of getting 6 or 9 or 12 bashes in a row.

Another option is to lower the bash % aswell as the stun time, perhaps adding a slight damage bonus.

Aside from that(and Orcs being incredibly strong) I think this map is great. Twice I've owned 3 people NOT fighting eachother using the orcs though, so something should be fixed there.

Keep up the great map developement. Soul Chess is really fun! =D

Laosh'Ra

2005-12-16

thx for feedback!

to increase the length of a battle try the following modes:
-fu (fortified units: removes attackers advantage)
-ns (no souls: battles should last longer without additional levelups or soulpowers)

however, maybe ur right about the average damage-to-maxhp ratio of the units. gonna ask in the thread and make a poll @modforge to get a picture.

Dark-Revenant

2005-12-10

Great map! I've been thinking on making a board-style map for some time, and this game really makes me want to do it today. I won't steal any of your ideas when I do it, though. There are only two things that can be improved with your map: Some races have a small variety of abilities. I don't really have to worry, as you are working on that now. Also, most arena battles are VERY short. A tripling of the unit health and therefore the corresponding increase of ability strength would be really nice. If you can find a more creative way than mine of lengthening battles, that would be great.

10/10, except when people leave.

LoneSlayer

2005-12-09

Anything that reminds me of Archon, then makes me relise that this is soooooo much better is good in my book. HOST IT MORE PEOPLE!

Laosh'Ra

2005-12-02

thats a good question... its so good that even i dont know the answer

guess its a display bug; there are actually only 61 sounds atm - some custom, some not.
beware as i'll probably release 1.14 today

Cosmonaut

2005-11-15

how do u get 260989 sounds in a map???

Pyrotics X

2005-08-28

I've played a game very similar to this on Playstation (Brigandine). And this is actually much better!

-VGsatomi

Brigandine? I LOVED That game, and if you think it is like/better than it, I have to try this game

Laosh'Ra

2005-08-18

1.12 released.
check out the link in the post below to signup for a tournament.

Laosh'Ra

2005-07-11

thanks a lot

here's 1.10... check http://www.wc3sear.ch/viewtopic.php?p=79306#79306 for info (changelog etc.)
as for the "bug" it was just a singleplayerissue which happened for the first row of spawned creeps: didnt affect gameplay in multiplayer. i fixed it anyway of course

VGsatomi

2005-07-07

I'm going to go ahead and award this the Director's Choice Award, Its level of originality is unmatched. I've played a game very similar to this on Playstation (Brigandine). And this is actually much better! Very, VERY fun.

I'm gonna warn of a real big bug you might want to fix. When its your turn, you can select enemy units and it will bring up the circles...and order them to attack. In short, you can send your enemie's units to the battlefield, leaving him with nothing to do but either wait for the time to run out or kill his own stuff off. You can also make his units attack you (i.e. they may be weak and you want to finish them off, but don't want to advance your units forward). This bug can seriously effect gameplay. I'll award this even with that bug, but you seriously might want to fix it soon.
-VGsatomi

Laosh'Ra

2005-07-06

as for the first one: some duels ARE supposed to end in draws. as for usual fights both players gather 5 souls (unlike 3 for winner and 5 for loser). there are two reasons for this: a: i just like the possibilty of a draw (although they happen VERY rarely) b: some effects are added after the fight anyway and i dont want them to be ignored (like the curse of the seraphie or the touch of decay). therefore enabling invulnerability and pausing the winner is delayed: this is NO bug.

as for the second one: i dont know which version u played, the third person cam is only applied on those who WATCH the battle. the others have a normal cam. the centering of the cam on the selected units makes it much easier to follow the progress of the game and you might just miss something unless ud search for the currently selected unit all the time. however thanks for the suggestions of a cam with more overview for the board.

as for the last one: i got a problem with the minimum wait time in multiplayer. theres a minimum of 0.1 seconds in singleplayer but the minimum wait for multiplayergames is about 0.5 seconds (although the trigger still says 0.1)... however i've recognized that and ill try to shorten some uneccessary stuff.
thanks for feedback.

Saiyuki

2005-07-06

yeah good game, played it before in bnet
but i found a bug
if a hero (or king) dies pls pause all his units.
reason for this: I was killed 1 second after i (king) killed another king, but he has summoned a creature that kille me 1 second later. ...

also i think the camera should not alway be locked during the fights (for all players) and it should not always be moved to the selected unit. (but u could make a higher camera, so u cann see all your units)

last: perhaps u can make all the special cinematics faster (sometimes u need 1minute for 1)
in all i would rate it 4/5 (i`m not so good in detail, this may others do)

Soulchess119epic

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