miniDotA 1.04 nearly ready for release

As usual tenletter is one of the first places to hear about miniDotA developments – and as it turns out, I’m nearly ready to release 1.04 – there are only two (major) issues still outstanding.

First is a new loading art in development by Ambra-Lioness (find her on http://ambra-lioness.deviantart.com/ ) who is creating an outstanding image that really is looking promising at this stage (line art). And may I add that she’s in recent weeks developed and mastered the technique to increase bust size on the girls she draws. A very important feature that.

The second issue is that I’ve had a fair amount of contact with them Chinese DotA fans. Apparently the scene is so big there, that they have enough space for a miniDotA project. As I found out they had enough energy to go and crack the protection on 1.03 and change the strings to Chinese to make the map more accessable to their non-english-speaking countrymen. Well, not one to ignore such efforts – I’m hoping to get the strings officially translated into Chinese and have an actual CN-version of the map available.

So – you ask – what is new?

Map-wide changes, many balance fixes, and a new hero!

Dawneyes, the Spiritmender

Who possesses these wonderful abilities:

• Peaceful Departure – enemies you kill gain you a 10hp/s healing and immolation aura for 4/8/12/16 seconds. The magnitude stacks, so if you kill 10 creeps using cleaving attacks, you’ll have 100hp/s regen and immolation for a duration.
• Ghost Evasion – when Dawneyes is dealt damage, she has a 15% chance to gain “Ghost” for 1/2/3/4 seconds. In “Ghost” mode the hero is invisible but can STILL attack without losing invisibility.
• Spirit Force – on target point cast an AOE spell, the area increases with every passing second for 6/8/10/12 seconds. Enemies inside the area of effect are dealt double damage (from all sources). The AOE is very small initially and grows for its duration.
• Soul Scar (Ultimate) – target enemy has its soul ripped from its body. This has the effect to give Dawneyes “Ghost” for 5 seconds, but also, the further the enemy moves from his soul, the more armor he loses, and the more the Spiritmender becomes empowered (increasing movement speed). The rate is -1/-2/-3 armor lost for every 100 units away from soul and 5% movement speed gained. Caps at -10/-20/-30 armor and 50% movement speed bonus.

I’ll let you know when the final map is released, but it shouldn’t be more than a few weeks from now.

minidota 1.03 open version

As always, tenletter gets to hear of developments in the land of miniDotA

…the open version of miniDotA 1.03 is now released – meaning if there are any Warcraft programmers out there that would like to use a DotA-esque environment to do development, balance testing or demoing, then this map is for you. The open version is full-featured like the closed version, with two major differences: no DotA heroes are included (only 9 custom heroes); and the map is unprotected, meaning it is easy to load the map into WorldEditor and create your own ideas.

JASS knowledge (the Warcraft programming language) is helpful, but not essential.

minidota 1.03 released

Can’t have tenletter miss out on my most recent (closed) release of miniD0tA (now at version 1.03). This version introduces two new heroes that both play very well. I feel I’ve found a nice balance between depth of skill complexity with simplicity of design for these two characters. The first, Freya, plays a fantastic offensive support caster role who can even influence battles that she’s far away from. The second, Geophrey, is a nasty piece of work that is especially lethal in 1-on-1 situations. Geophrey, too, can affect the whole game board with his ultimate that acts globally.

I hope I won’t need to release an emergency patch to the map to fix something major.

If you play DotA, give miniDotA a try at: http://www.minidota.com

(PS – my next plan is to release the next open version of miniDotA – which will be readily editable by other map makers.)

Freya Rawland, Veil Mistress Freya had her mortal flesh stripped from her while she was used as a conduit for a demon summoning. What little was left of her was syphoned beyond the veil that separates this world from the void beyond – though instead of ceasing to exist those ethereal remnants of Freya reshaped themselves into a vague semblance of her former self. She now haunts this world in search of her former masters to inflict a fate worse than death upon them. Veil Fire – enemies in target area suffer damage to life and mana Drape – enemies around Freya are stunned and have reduced magic resistance for a short duration Sadistic Revelry – a passive ability, Freya thirsts for the pain and anguish in others – when other units (friend or foe) near Freya or her Focal get dealt damaged a small portion of the suffering increases Freya’s life Focal (Ultimate) – creates a permanent Focal at target position (recasting moves the Focal to new position). The Focal mirrors all of Freya’s abilities: if she casts Veil Fire or Drape, then a copy of the spell will occur at the Focal, and any damage near the Focal is gained in life (Sadistic Revelry). Freya has to be within range of the Focal for it to copy her abilities, the range grows and the cooldown decreases with level

Geophrey, Mindflayer Ancient Named after the child he first devoured, the Mindflayer is an abomination to the living. His very presence is indistinct, changing and twisting as his crippled soul attempts to fit into a vessel that can manifest in this realm. Geophrey is driven by a blinding need to consume and little tastes sweeter than the minds of innocent. Mind Sanctum – passively increases Geophrey’s max HP per point of Intelligence. Additionally knows direction to closest enemy hero Psionic Barrage – gain 3 abilities (similar to Shadowraze on Nevermore, the Shadow Fiend). Each ability targets a random group of nearby enemies and deals low damage and stun to them. The abilities vary from long range but hits few targets, to short range but hits many targets. Unimpeded Feast – passively deals damage continuously to enemies that are stunned near the Mindflayer Ancient. Rapture (Ultimate) – global spell, affects every enemy hero. Over the course of 5 seconds the total life lost by each enemy hero is recorded and afterwards he or she is stunned for 0.5 seconds for every 100 HP lost (capped to 3/4/5 second stun). Additionally a small amount of damage is dealt to each enemy hero over the first 5 seconds.

minidota

Me and j have mentioned creating our own games a couple of times – and to some extent this has happened already (see the posts on Dreadnaught for example).

Now I want to introduce a game (map) that I’ve created a while back that has gone through a number of revisions and updates and is now kinda play ready. The game in question is an adaptation of DotA Allstars called miniDotA. As such it is a custom map for Warcraft III (with Frozen Throne expansion).

miniDotA's loading screen

You can find the map and try it out on the official site: www.minidota.com

miniDotA has two purposes:

• be a small simulation of the DotA Allstars game – allowing playtesting of hero ideas (and to that end an unprotected, slightly limited version of the map is available)
• be a short fun game for small groups that don’t want to play a whole game of DotA.

The map is very small in size and allows up to 3v3 play. Due to the small size the game is very intense with constant hero-on-hero action and a typical game should last between 20 and 30minutes.

The map currently features 15 heroes taken from the actual DotA Allstars map (with kind permission from IceFrog) and 7 additional custom heroes. You’ll be able to find a short description of these 7 heroes and their abilities on the main miniDotA site.

Top view of miniDotA map

A friend of mine, Jeeva, is hosting the map on a dedicated site www.minidota.com and has been promoting the current map (version 1.02b) to such an extent that on last check 900+ downloads for the map have been made. Needless to say I’m thrilled

I’m sufficiently motivated to do some additional work on the map again – and people can expect two more heroes in the next versions. Freya and Geophrey. If you’re interested, have a look at their current suggestion profile on the DotA forums. (You can use these links for Freya and Geophrey.)

Naturally all commentary, ideas, critique and bug reports are welcome – be it here on tenletter or elsewhere.

Gamet, one of the new heroes facing some creeps