Background

Today, when one thinks of WarCraft III, they think of DotA or similar hero combat type maps. That single group of maps has really taken over much of the War3 landscape. Yet, a great tradition has been forgot. There was once a time when just about ever third map, you'd see a Tower Defense. There are a few still played, but this type of map has really been taken over. Everyone knew a few good TDs, from things like Liquid TD to Winter Maul to Green TD. These where once king. And back before DotA and Battletanks, Green TD and Winter Maul, and yes, even Angel Arena(Also known as Heaven vs Hell) and even Hero Wars, there was a great map called Hero Maze TD. There are many variations, a few better than others. It was a basic TD with about 30 different towers and around 40 levels. It was one of the first TDs I remember playing on War3.

TDs on StarCraft are very different. There was a take off the most basic Maze TDs from War3 that became StarCraft's Maze D. There has also been the classic Tower Defense 2.9 and such, basically a mod of Maze D. My favorite of the StarCraft TDs has to be Poker TD by T0urmenteur and its 1.13 Patch recreation, Poker Temple by Ahli. These two TDs are the closed to the tradition of War3 TDs, yet they used a unique style to make towers that was unlike the original War3 ones. War3 lets you do so much more than SC, it lets you make custom workers. These custom worker built custom buildings that used other buildings and sometimes unit modles. Anyway, the point is that War3 gave you the ability to build anywhere and use your worker to select the tower you wanted. Maze D used the SCVs Academy, Armory and Supply Depot to do this, but this only gives you three towers. So, I set out to make a TD that would be closer to War3's Hero Maze TD.

The Map

And I succeeded. Hero Maze had multiple workers, so I too chose to use two of SCs given workers, the probe and the SCV. After a brief look over of the probe, I realized most of the Protoss buildings were the size of a Bunker, the required size to make a tower. Sadly, they required Pylons... So, after some thought, I figured out a way of dealing with this, instead of moving the pylons, why not just make it so you can build on top of them! With the simple removal property that many bunker oriented defenses, like Path D and Income D use, the pylons were an issue of the past.

I've worked on the map off and on for about 2 years now. One of the many new features of the map, the bonus system had a terrible bug that took forever to get out. It is what turned a several month project into a 2 year one...

Towers

There are 15 different towers in the game:(Stats are yet to be determined; number of units inside and damage of those units)
Tower order(This is the place where players can check out tower stats before buying a tower): http://clanxbs.scdiplo.com/final/atd3.jpg

Basic Tower(Forge)
Cost: 30
The simplest tower, loaded with ghosts.

Guard Tower(Shield Battery)
Cost: 45
A set up from the basic tower, a bit more money for a bit more damage.

Rapid Tower(Cybernetics Core)
Cost: 75
Has much greater DPS than the first two towers, yet is loaded with the same ghosts.

Shine Tower(Photo Cannon)
Cost: 110
Just a normal Photo cannon, more damage though.

Luna Tower(Observatory)
Cost: 250
The next step up, quite a bit more too!

Fire Tower(Robotics Support Bay)
Cost: 450
As its name suggests, it is full of firebats and does quite a bit of damage.

Mini Gun Tower(Templar Archives)
Cost: 500
This tower is the 1st in a series of towers that are full of marines, thus dealing full damage.

Crystal Tower(Fleet Beacon)
Cost: 600
The 2nd in the Luna Tower line, simply that next most powerful ghost tower.

Sniper Tower(Robotics Factory)
Cost: 800
The slowest firing tower, yet it has a power attack. As its name suggests, it has a regular ghosts, giving it a bit more range.

Rail Gun Tower(Arbiter Tribunal)
Cost: 1000
The next in the line of full damage towers, an all marine build.

Pulsar Tower(Citadel of Adun)
Cost: 1250
The last in the Luna Tower line, most powerful tower built by the probe.

Gemini Tower(Missile Turret)
Cost: 2050
The best anti-air tower in the game, simple as that.

Iron Tower(Supply Depot)
Cost: 5000
The last of the full damage towers, filled with more powerful marines.

Genesis Tower(Academy)
Cost: 7800
A very interesting tower, has marines, firebats and ghosts.

Chaos Tower(Armory)
Cost: 10000
The ultimate tower, best in the game.

Aurora Temple(Gateway)
Cost: 1000
A very simple building, lets you train an SCV(Zealot) for 50 ore.

A Few Features and Details

-This map is 8 players
-This map has a total of 50 levels
-There are Boss levels(4), Air levels(6) and Cloaked Levels(5)
-The player who first complete his/her side gets a bonus in ore
-10 lives per player(More can be bought)
-Upgrades

Not like the advanced RPGs usually seen on this forum, but I hope it will be receive well. Don't have In-game screenshots yet, but those links ARE the few pictures I do have at the moment!

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 1 2009, 2:32 am by LosTZealoT.

Map Production, por favor.

I posted this in Map Production, it got moved. That or it send me to the wrong forum when I hit "New Thread."

It doesn't really matter, it'll get taken care of.

Anyway, I may try this later when people get on, it looks interesting.

Looks like it has a lot of variety; looks fun.

8 players?

I sense somebody will hit the unit limit (1700) and the weapon sprite limit (100 weapon sprites at the same time -> ~12 per player at once).... it still depends on how many levels there will be.
(I guess you already used around preplaced 550 units)

btw, starcraft's path finding system will be a big problem because the units won't follow most of the path and you won't have enough units/locations to fix that problem.

Maybe you should try out my Starcraft-Maul map with 11 towers/turrets (never finished it because pubbies were just to stupid to learn to build towers with my unique building system), if you liked wc3's mauls.

Btw, you misspelled my name and the great mapmaker was called T0urmenteur.
And what's the removal property you are talking about?

GL with your map!

The unit limit so far has no been an issue, but I havent yet tried it on lvl 40 or so with a full house. It possible I will need to cut back on the size of the path, thus the number of pylons used or something to solve this, if a problem arises.

Ive run into Starcrafts bad path early in development. I did have enough locations to fix the problem, but of course, that kinda killed a few features I was planning.

Ill love to try out your map, could you link it to me via PM?

And sorry for the typo in your name and misprint in T0urmenteur, I havent played the original Poker TD in a while and forgot how to spell his name.