"Then again, you could spam the good items, could you not?"

No, there is a limit of 1 item per hero for most items (there are a few exceptions such as for consumable items). If you try to buy more than 1 it says cannot buy more than 1.

After playing this a second time (as Payne.. which was rather lulzy)
I believe I have come up with a solution to your map's problem.

The thing is... you yourself seem to be confused.
Do you want this to be a full blown AoS with unique abilities and heroes
or Do you want this to be about simple heroes making a difference?

First, make up your mind.

Now... from what I've seen, I know you're leaning towards the latter option.
This is clear from heroes such as the Reaver hero, the Reaper hero, and many others.. as they are almost identical to the actual SC units.

So hear me out.
Make this a "Special Forces/Squad Support" map.
Special forces I'm sure you have played. It is an RPG where heroes have 1 innate ability that's mostly similar to normal SC2 units, and 1 additional ability that fits the hero's gameplay.
Squad Support is about having players control Squads of specialized units that help defend and assault 3 computer bases, while one player is the "main base" and is constantly being assaulted.

What you can do is that you can keep the heroes like they are now (still try to balance them better)... while making the main bases Player Controlled, where buildings continually spawn Groups of Units (much like Nexus Wars).
This way, there is an actual interaction between the base and the heroes.
You can continue to build on this by having Vespene=extra money/upgrades, but are out in the open and must be defended (much like what I did in Temple Siege).

This way, the heroes don't need to support themselves. Rather, the heroes support the base to push.

I see this as really the only way your map can progress. You're too stubborn to change the heroes, and you tend to dismiss all suggestions about the way the heroes are constructed. Therefore, if your heroes are to stay the same, then the game design must change.

Hello everyone,

After version 2.0 pretty much completely failed to attract enough players to gain enough popularity for Hero Attack to be playable (i.e. it is still impossible to get enough players to get a game going at any given time), I have taken a short break from map making. I needed a break because it is extremely frustrating to continuously work on a map and to continuously fail to get results despite attempt after attempt. Anyway, I'm going to continue developing Hero Attack and will try to update Hero Attack every week (starting next weekend). I'll also try to buy a new computer this month as well as start a website for Hero Attack.



Actually at the moment there is a limit of one item per hero for most items (there are a few exceptions such as consumable items), so you cannot really spam a single item. Anyway, I will consider upgrades for the future.


I have never played special forces. Sorry.


Wait, so are you suggesting I make it so that players can control the units that spawn from the buildings? That is an interesting idea. My main concern with that is that some units are significantly more effective when they have critical mass and when they are microed than others (i.e. marine). As a result it might completely destroy any balance between the 3 races that I currently have and might result in terran being significantly more cost effective than the other races.


I have never played temple siege either. You are going to have to elaborate more so I can understand what you are trying to suggest.

u haven't played spec forces? jeeeeze

it's basically you start off with 1 Special Unit which has 1 ability.. you mostly try to upgrade stuff and try to get enough money to either get a 2nd ability, or get more Special Units. And you and ur allies try to kill the enemy computer

@Player controlled base
you can always make it like Nexus Wars, where the units spawned cannot be controlled.

So are you suggesting I should add something like a mercenary system?


Balance is still a problem with this because some units are better as you get more. Marines vs Zerglings is a very good example. In very small numbers zerglings own marines but as the number of units increase the marines become significantly stronger. If I were to keep the current unit balance but half the number of zerglings/marines then the game would become very zerg favored. Similarily, if I were to double the number of zerglings/marines then the game would become very terran favored.

No no no.. no mercenaries

You need to play Squad Support.

what I'm suggesting is more like Squad Support, except use heroes instead of squads.
and the base can continue to spawn stuff.

Units like Marines and Zerglings get better as they increase in numbers, but that also means it can feed the other team.
There're always ways to balance things out by build-time/cost of buildings... but w/e... do what you want. It's hard to explain it to you when you haven't had the experience b4.

Read this entire thread from start to finish, and implement 1 idea from each page of posts, each week.

My two cents.

Hello everyone,
Sorry that I have not updated hero attack in nearly a month, I promise I will be much more frequent with my updates from now on. Version 2.1 has been released on the North American server. It includes a number of changes that hopefully makes things better. Here is a changelog:

- The lighting has been changed and each of the 4 maps has a different lighting setting. A few people suggested that I change the lighting a bit, so hopefully things look better.
-The sizes of some dialogs such as the in game timer and the periodic message that have been reduced so that they take up less space. This was done because some people complained that the dialogs objects were too large.
-Removed a large number of triggers that were made obsolete by patch 1.2. As a result the file size for hero attack is significantly smaller.
- The ‘leaver bonus’ or bonus that a team with less players receives when someone leavers the game has been significantly increased. Hopefully the result is that a team with less players still has a very good chance to win the game.
- Units spawned by the computer now deal 50% less damage to heroes. This was done partly because the units did a bit too much damage to heroes and partly because I want to make melee heroes like the zealot hero or the zergling heroes more viable.
-Players now have push priority over the computer player, so you can now push aside computer controlled units with your hero.
- The vitalities of the main buildings (command center, nexus, hatchery) have been increased to 2000 so that it is harder to sneak into the enemy team’s base and kill it.
-Changed the victory conditions slightly so that if the enemy team has 0 human players left (i.e. they all left) then your team wins and you don’t have to kill the enemy team’s main building.
- Made it so that your screen moves to the location of your hero whenever your hero respawns. However, I have intentionally made it so that this does not work if you have either the zergling heroes or the baneling heroes (since you may be busy controlling your one hero when the other respawns).
- Increased the energy cost and cooldown of the mutalisks hero’s summon mutalisks ability by 33%. This was done because the ability was too strong.
- Fixed a really annoying actor bug that was caused by patch 1.2 and prevented the zergling hero from playing his cliff jumping animation properly. Also fixed actor bugs for the spine crawler and the spore crawler that were caused by patch 1.2.
- You can no longer use a teleport item (Nydus worm, drop pod, warp out) if you have taken damage in the past 2 seconds. This was added to prevent abuse of teleport items.
- The computer controlled marauders that are in the computer controlled bunkers no longer attack the enemy base when the bunker dies and instead they hold their position.
-The Nydus canal item now costs 25% less minerals and can be casted with a range of 12. This item wasn’t used very much so it needed a buff.
- Fixed an Issue where ursadak sounds would play from half way across the map if someone is killing an ursadak.
- The siege tank hero now takes 20% less time to siege and unsiege and has 1 more range in siege mode. This was done because the siege tank hero was a bit weak.
- The spore crawler hero now has less life but more armor (so has the same amount as the spine crawler hero), to compensate the spore crawler always has detection.
- Added range actors to the spore crawler hero and the spine crawler hero similar to how the siege tank hero has range actors to indicate its attack range.
- Hopefully fixed an issue where tomes sometimes do not work.
- Tinted the defiler hero buttons because someone requested that I tint them. If you prefer them un tinted or would like me to tint other buttons imported from SC1 please let me know.
- Several other minor changes that are not worth mentioning.

Well payne posts on pretty much every page and I have generally implemented most of payne's suggestions so I have already done that.

@UnholyUrine - Could you maybe provide a link so I can understand what squad support is?

If you have sc1... tell me a time to go on and I'll let you DL it.

As a side note, I believe I've seen this map up around page 5-6.

I have an ICCUP account.


Yeah, that's because I played a bunch of games on saturday and got some helpful feedback. Unfortunately there was a reset so all those hours have been lost.

Also, the fact that heroes take less damage from creeps has made things much better. Not really sure why I was so stubborn in making heroes die easily.

I played this by myself the other day, and thought it was pretty good. The terrain was a little bland but I liked what you had done on the jungle(I think jungle) map with the lanes splitting off. It seemed extremely fast paced, although I was playing on a sucky computer which lags, which would have made things more difficult than usual for me. I see what the others have been saying about the heroes being quite similar to their SC2 counterparts (E.G ghost hero had snipe, EMP, and fit the same basic role of long range sniper with fairly heavy damage). I personally would prefer a break from the SC2 story and units, with more custom spells and roles.

For example, the ghost could be a quick moving unit with low HP that attacks fast, and has average range. It'd be a Gunslinger kind of unit, and would have something like a shotgun spell that would blast back units near it, but take a little while to channel, perhaps. Snipe could stay, but be a higher tier spell and do more damage. Then there'd be a SHOWDOWN spell where both yourself and the targeted unit/hero would both freeze and face each other for a few seconds (like a stun but with a negative effect to you. Neither unit can attack or cast spells while in Showdown).

Version 2.2 has been released. It includes mostly balance changes and a few bug fixes. I would like to thank those who have played games with me over the past week because their advice definitely influenced the content of this patch. Here is a changelog:

- Reaper Hero no longer has the Stimpack ability. Instead the Reaper Hero has a new ability called Berserk. Berserk is a spell that causes the Reaper Hero’s attack speed to drastically increase for a short period of time. Also, while the Reaper Hero goes berserk you lose control over the reaper hero and the reaper hero attacks any nearby enemies so be careful with this ability.
- Reaper Hero’s Jet Pack ability has been improved. In addition to providing passive cliff jumping you can now actively use this ability (hotkey T) to jump to a nearby point within a radius of 5. You can use this ability to jump over units, buildings or cliffs so it is very useful if you get surrounded.
- Similar to the Reaper Hero, the Zergling Hero’s wings ability can also be used to jump to a nearby location in addition to providing passive cliff jumping.
- The Colossus Hero’s cliff walk ability now provides a small movement speed increase (10%) in addition to providing cliff walking.
- Hopefully fixed an issue where the reaper hero’s actor would sometimes disappear when the reaper hero jumps over a cliff leaving the reaper invisible. (this was caused by patch 1.2)
- Fixed an issue where the medic hero would sometimes heal at a rate of over 100 life per second with her heal ability.
- The medic hero’s heal ability and the scv hero’s repair ability now cost slightly more energy.
- The medic hero now deals 20% more damage had has a slightly increased movement speed.
- Fixed an issue where the medic hero would sometimes not play her attack animation. (this was caused by patch 1.2)
- The rate at which the team’s beacon heals nearby heroes has been doubled.
- The high templar hero’s psionic storm ability no longer affects allied units and its AOE has been increased significantly.
- The defiler hero’s dark swarm ability only provides a 95% damage reduction from ranged damage rather than a 100% damage reduction from ranged damage because it was a bit over powered.
- Fixed an issue where the queen hero could not unburrow.
- Fixed an actor issue where the Thor Hero’s actor would not be created if the Thor Hero uses immortality protocol. (again, caused by patch 1.2)
- The Baneling Hero’s quick death ability has been decreased to a 75% reduction in respawn time rather than a 100% reduction.
- The energy cost of the probe hero’s photon cannon ability has been increased by 33% for balance purposes.
- The SCV hero’s missile turrets now provide detection at levels 1 and 2.
- Fixed an issue where the Ursadak Critters would get stuck on the fire map.
- Critters now provide 25% more experience and minerals so hopefully killing critters is more worth while.
- Fixed an issue where the Nydus Worm’s Leap ability would damage units before impact. The Nydus Worm Hero now has a slightly increased movement speed to make this hero stronger.
- The detection range of sensor towers have been increased significantly from 12 to 20. Hopefully this makes it easier to detect enemies as terran.
- The cost of the overseer has been decreased to 35 minerals from 50. This is to make it easier for the zerg team to detect enemies.
- Reduced the ‘Leaver Bonus’ to a value halfway between version 2.0 and version 2.1. In the last version the team with less players generally had a slight advantage so hopefully things are more balanced now.
- Added text messages that indicate that when a player leaves the game and the teams become even then no team benefits from the leaver bonus.
- Increased the amount of time players have to vote on the game settings.
- Removed parts of my triggers on items that become obsolete since patch 1.2 fixed a bug where heroes would drop items on death. Items are no longer randomly permutated when a Hero respawns as a result!
- Various other changes that I have forgot to add.

Right now I have to work within the limits of the map editor which means that I am stuck with 8 textures, 10 megabytes of space and a limited number of doodads. There isn't much I can do to make the terrain more exciting until blizzard releases a new patch which removes many of the restrictions that are impeding further development of the terrain. Anyway, the jungle map is definately one of my favorite maps.


Interesting idea. For the past while I've been mostly refining what I currently have (i.e. making things more balanced, removing bugs, adding various features), but I intend to start adding more content in the near future (probably in march). I'll be looking to add a 5th ability to each of the heroes, increasing the level count and possibly add more heroes or items. I'm going to try to create a Hero Attack website this month, so if you have more ideas for what you would like to see in hero attack you should definately join the site.

Actually, how do you do the multiple-maps thing? I'm guessing you use terrain deformation or zoom the map on a certain area or something. Anyway, I was under the impression there's a 10000 doodad limit, which should be plenty. Plus, you can make the terrain less straight lines, and add a bit of random variation to terrain height, and path straightness, that sort of thing.
Sure, will do

You need to improve the terrain...

Version 2.3 and the creation of the hero attack website/forums are going to be delayed a bit since some issues came up. However, I'll try to get these two things done as soon as possible.


See my last post.

Incidentally, if you need any help with website creation the tech forum here can help a lot, and plenty of people here know a fair bit about website creation.

The editor isn't that limited when it comes to terrain and it doesn't have to be full of doodads to look good. I think its funny that you mention being limited with 8 terrain textures when it seems like you don't even use more than 3. With some good blending of the 8 textures you can use (which, of course, you can change if need be), the terrain can look really snazzy and realistic, which is what I think most people look for. The rood tool and lots of white unblended snow looks dull. You could easily put some grass in there or another colored snow to vary it a bit. For the river map, you can put a darker grass in patches with some rocks. That alone would help it. The forest map is by far the best, but it is also still very bland, unfortunately. As sad as it is to say that good terrain makes a huge difference, its what makes your map attractive and interesting at first glance. Even if a map is complete shit, people will still be impressed with incredible looking terrain. Attention to detail can go a long way.