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| Thread: GK's HotA Maps |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted January 14, 2024 08:49 AM |
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Ad Nauseam (XL) - Download
 
Four ancient Elemental Lords have crashed into the world and taken over the underground.
Threatening to destroy all life, they have to be stopped.
Who will succeed, and what will they do once they seize the power of the lords?
Inspired by great maps like Element Land, Purgatory and crapcore.
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It is here. A map many years in the making, finally ready for release following the latest 1.7.0 HotA patch. I could not be more relieved that it is actually finished. This map has everything I personally love about the game; huge world to explore, powerful armies to amass, tough opponents to beat, and a major quest to beat the special victory condition, with multiple strategies to go for in pursuit of the win. And the most important part, great fun in hotseat! Some major selling points:
[+] 108 custom heroes
[+] 70+ handwritten quests
[+] 6 playable factions
[+] 4 bosses (1 main, 3 mini)
If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making and playtesting it!
Would love to hear any and all feedback, thanks for checking it out.
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yogi
Promising
Famous Hero
of picnics
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posted January 14, 2024 09:15 AM |
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 14, 2024 09:22 AM |
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Man, those minimaps 
We now have pointilism in Heroes design. Gnollking is the next H3 Van Gogh.
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted January 14, 2024 09:33 AM |
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Haha, thanks 
I feel minimaps are the most important part when people look for maps to check out at maps4heroes, so I take special care in painting them out. Also, they're just fun to make.
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted January 14, 2024 02:43 PM |
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I can't wait to try it out! Thank you for your hard work!
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Centurion
Hired Hero
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posted January 15, 2024 02:41 AM |
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Awesome man!! Happy it's finally here I'm gonna give it a rip tonight!
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted January 21, 2024 08:55 AM |
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Ad Nauseam 1.1
Version 1.1 is now released!
After hearing a lot of great feedback, I realized that most people play the game very differently to myself. The map was designed from the start with multiplayer in mind, with each color trying to beat the special victory condition as fast as possible. Slow playthroughs in single-player where you go around defeating the other colors was never even tested. The map is understandably very easy if you grind it out for more than ~3-4 months. So, the real challenge of the map that all playtests were played with does not actually exist, which is completely my fault.
That is no longer the case. Introduced in the update, there is now a *real* time limit. This brings an actual challenge into single-player runs as well. You will not have time to wander around wasting days. You *will* need a plan, and you will need to go for it fast. There are myriad ways to accomplish the main quest, and I hope to hear what route people take to beat this new (hopefully challenging) version!
(Included with the download are two difficulties, in the easier one you have an extra month of time.)
Full changelog:
[+] Introduced time limit.
[+] Added events to tie the time limit into the story.
[*] Adjusted some quest timers to fit the limit.
[-] Removed Necropolis starting Black Knights.
[-] Removed all army boxes from Necropolis's area.
[-] Lord Haart starts with Vampire's Cloak instead of Dead Man's Boots.
[*] Changed the contents and guards of some Pandora's Boxes.
[*] Changed some pre-built buildings in neutral towns.
[*] Changed friendly creatures to instead always join for money.
[*] Made Black Tent also reachable with DD.
[*] Fixed a misplaced AI Boost event.
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted January 31, 2024 12:29 AM |
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Hey gnollking,
I found the message you left in the map events for the curious ones.
Once again, congratulations on a map with an incredible amount of details and carefully designed landscapes. Outstanding!
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted February 24, 2024 10:49 AM |
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Ad Nauseam 1.2
The (hopefully final) version 1.2 is now out.
The Elemental Lords have started their invasion, this time for real. The tight time limit for 1.1 was a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the feedback received for version 1.0. In 1.2, there's no longer a normal and an expert version, but one definitive scenario with 5 months of time. There is now a new, more organic push for the players to chase the victory condition, in the form of powerful Generals of the Elemental Lords. Late game, they will start to appear and roam the land, bringing chaos to the world with their powerful spells and great armies.
In addition, endgame powerstacks of some new creatures are now possible. These include Green/Gold Dragons, Red/Black Dragons, Sandworms (properly now) and Storm Elementals. Azure, Crystal and Rust dragons are also easier to get into the ~50 range, making them as plentiful as Faerie Dragons were before. AI opponents are given Scrolls of Summon Boat at the start. This allows some of them to get into the waters easier, but also gives another reason for players to attack the AI for a little reward. Overall the map is a little bit easier, but more varied with these new options on the table.
Full(ish) changelog:
[+] Added 4 minibosses that eventually start roaming the world.
[*] Buffed Elemental Lord armies (balanced for longer games).
[+] Added boxes of Green Dragons, Red Dragons and Storm Elementals.
[*] Adjusted the contents of various other boxes.
[*] Adjusted the rewards of various Seer's Huts (notably, from the Jailer).
[*] Adjusted the armies of a few prison heroes.
[*] Adjusted the timing of various events.
[+] Peasant dwellings are flagged from day 1.
[+] AI opponents start with a Scroll of Summon Boat.
[+] Enchanters for Inferno tell about the Fire Elemental gates.
[+] Inferno AI gets Fire Elementals to pass the gates.
FdgK said:
Hey gnollking,
I found the message you left in the map events for the curious ones.
Once again, congratulations on a map with an incredible amount of details and carefully designed landscapes. Outstanding!
Haha thanks, there's a few of those messages all around
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted March 11, 2024 04:55 PM |
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Ad Nauseam 1.2.1
Update 1.2.1 - Emergency patch!
The previous version had a massive error, which I profusely apologize for. I had forgot to run a script to generate the guards for certain new boxes, which meant you could get the rewards without any fight. This is now fixed, with a couple more balance changes included. Sorry to everyone who downloaded 1.2!
[!] Forgot to run a script to generate guards in some boxes. Now fixed.
[*] Fixed the quantity of a guard in front of the Jailer that was set too low.
[*] Reordered the Jailer rewards. (Rust Dragons as the first reward was a bit too much.)
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted March 17, 2024 04:04 PM |
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Hey gnollking,
I have two questions for you:
- regarding "Ad Nauseam": How did you manage to have the Seer’s Hut next to the Conflux town in the middle of the underground look like the Market of Time?
- regarding "Stitch in Time" (Which I replayed today and had great fun doing so): May I ask why you decided to give the Castle player a Portal of Glory while the Rampart player does not have a Dragon Cliff in his underground? I know that you made that map a long time ago and maybe you don’t remember but I was curious to ask you this.
Cheers and have a great Sunday,
FdgK
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted March 18, 2024 01:25 AM |
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FdgK said:
- regarding "Ad Nauseam": How did you manage to have the Seer’s Hut next to the Conflux town in the middle of the underground look like the Market of Time?
For making any object look like any other object, I just add a new line in Data/EdObjts.txt with the specifics I want. The file specifies all the objects available in the editor and is very easy to modify. I keep my fully custom EdObjts in my GitHub, updated to the latest HotA version. (I know I promised to write a guide for editing the file a long time ago, but in truth I just haven't bothered.) The file is pretty self-explanatory, one line corresponds to one object, you can figure out what the bits mean with some experimentation and comparing different objects with each other. Just place the file in the Data folder, remove when you want to go back to HotA's default.
FdgK said:
- regarding "Stitch in Time" (Which I replayed today and had great fun doing so): May I ask why you decided to give the Castle player a Portal of Glory while the Rampart player does not have a Dragon Cliff in his underground? I know that you made that map a long time ago and maybe you don’t remember but I was curious to ask you this.
Looking at the map, my only answer is I don't know . One thing I do remember is that Castle won that game pretty much every time. Looks like the underground quest for Castle also wants Leprechauns, but it should probably be Satyrs. If I get motivated to update the map some day (which I actually really want to do, and get the maps up on maps4heroes), I'll fix the imbalances and other small stuff. I like the theme of the map, there's some stuff I can think of to make it better now.
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted March 18, 2024 10:51 AM |
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Interesting. I would not have thought that a player who hasn’t changed any of the values in their game files, could play maps with objects that were are used in a way that was not inteded by the game.
Yes, it is a really enjoyable map with a nice concept and I don’t mind the imbalance since I played against the Castle AI and it was a nice challenge to have them have more level 7 creatures. If you want to use it for multiplayer it’s a different story, obviously. Anyway, I was just curious if there was a special reason for that.
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted March 18, 2024 12:30 PM |
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FdgK said:
Interesting. I would not have thought that a player who hasn’t changed any of the values in their game files, could play maps with objects that were are used in a way that was not inteded by the game.
Yeah, the way map files work is actually pretty genius. The provided objects in the editor are pretty much just "suggestions". When an object is placed in the map, the entire definition of what that object is is saved in the map file itself, in lines that work exactly line the lines in the EdObjts text file. The game doesn't look at that file when loading a map, it's the map that tells the game what the objects are.
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted March 18, 2024 03:15 PM |
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Wow, I did not know that at all! That opens so many possibilities. *mind blown*
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted March 23, 2024 02:08 PM |
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I recently opened the repository for my custom h3_map_editor. Without it, Ad Nauseam would not be what it is. A few examples of what I used it for:
- Generate guards for Pandora's Boxes with specified AI value.
- Make Seer's Huts that want you to bring War Machines.
- Make Seer's Huts require 200k gold or thousands of creatures.
- Change the pink starting hero visible in the game to Pyrannaste.
- Much more that I can't even remember!
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