Iv been kinda wondering how long does it take you to make a complete hero and what kind of process do you go trough? I seem to be rather slow at doing it, yet I feel quite saticfied when I create a good hero.
I start with thinking of abilities. Mostly I want to make a theme for hero. Synergy for some spells and every ability should be equally useful. The thought process might take anywhere from 1min to several weeks...sometimes ideas just wont come. I have become quite customed on mind mapping process for hero creation. I write things down I feel like the hero could do even if the ideas arent good. Sometimes I draw pictures to make even better idea of the ability im looking for.
After I get the idea I proceed on making it. This usually takes around 15mins to 1day/per ability. And this is just for visuals. I always start with the visuals (and functionality if its a complex spell). Sometimes I might even give up on the idea if the visuals are not to my liking.
After the visuals are done. All is done is the polishing and I neglect this stuff too much...I just throw in random sounds and the tooltips are quite basic too. I could seriosly improve on "finishing" the abilities part.
This week iv been able to make visuals for 9 abilities. They still lack sound, icons and tooltips. Took yet again several hours to get this far and still not finished.
This is btw one of the reason why I tend to avoid making pure Dota map, it would just take too much time to get the results I want...yet Im doing my own AoS (just for fun :) ).
Depends on the type of hero, but it usually takes me a couple of hours to get the hero planned out, a couple more to get the abilities and stats set up, and then about double that to set up the actors and visuals correctly. So in total, for me, it takes about 6-10 hours to make a fully level-able hero with 4-6 abilities.
Depends on the type of hero, but it usually takes me a couple of hours to get the hero planned out, a couple more to get the abilities and stats set up, and then about double that to set up the actors and visuals correctly. So in total, for me, it takes about 6-10 hours to make a fully level-able hero with 4-6 abilities.
In the old days of WC3: It took you about 1-2 hours.
Well, I've got learn abilities and veterancies set up in advance, I just change a handful of values for each hero, so I don't really count that. And when I do change those, I do it all the way in the end and up to then use the veterancy of another hero. (I actually have some heroes using the same veterancy, since you can buy attribute points during the game which makes it pretty much impossible to notice some heroes use the same veterancys)
So, how do I start... I get an idea for a hero. I usually dont think about it much, I just get the ideas. Like Maiev for example. I was just like "I'll do Maiev. Blink as default, fan of knives as it used to be, the ultimate will be as similar as possible, shadowstrike will have to be a linear AoE, and I'll think of something else, maybe a crit passive." I then spent 2-3 hours collecting and importing assets (got all her wc3 icons, the WoW models required, converted wc3 sounds, and made my own wireframes), stopped for the day, next day I worked on abilities, got all of them done within a few hours, and it turned out way better than I expected.
A few days later I got a better idea for the Fan of Knives visuals, so I worked on that for some time.
So, when creating the hero, this is sort of how I usually do it:
Get Assets if needed
Create a basic unit (Lots of health and energy), slap a random veterancy on em and other hero behaviors I have
Start working on abilities
Effects, behaviors, other mechanics related stuff
Actor work (Visuals, attachments for missiles or heroes, sounds, etc.)
Double check and fix target filters
Finalize hero
Learn Ability
Upgrades for leveling abilities and triggers that apply them (I dont make seperate chains of effects for each level, too messy and too hard to add new levels)
Veterancy
Unit stats
Test, fix what needs fixing
If I dont get all ideas at once, I dont start making a hero or think too hard about it. When I do get enough ideas, it takes 1-2 days to finish the hero (depending on how much I work, I can do it in one usually but i end up dividing the work on 2 days)
Hmm..
I think first comes a theme. Who will he be and what role he will play in created world. Spells/Abilities then characterize hero. Something cool, something interesting. Also abilities usually need to serve a purpose. Ability to deal with masses of units, hard hitting ability, defense ability, some unique abilty..
All this remembereing makes me want to go back to one of my first projects which involved heroes. Damn, it would be so cool to pick up that map again.
Reminds me that I used to imagine scenes with heroes battling each other or against the world. Ah that was great.
Good Job, off with bomberbot, you just made me go back and redesign one of my older projects.
Since I'm just a terrainer and have no idea wtf veterancies are (and never make any heroes in-editor), I'll be answering this from my designer point of view.
When creating a hero, there's always 2 main aspects that come into play; gameplay (how does my hero play, what does he do?) and lore (written backstory), of which the latter can be ignored.
I tend to start on the gameplay, beginning all the way at the model. Generally, I take a look at a model and see what comes into my head. Is this some kind of robotic ranged brawler (Immortal) or a fast, harassing scout (Reaper)? Depending on the model used, I first decide what I want the main 'playstyle' for this hero to be. What he will feel like, so to speak (tank, assassin, ranged sniper, summoner archetype, etc). Then, once I've figured out a playstyle, I come up with the age-old three-skills-plus-an-ultimate.
DOTA-style hero abilities are generally a categorized in an interesting way. Nearly all standard abilities provide one of the following:
Mobility
Instant Damage
Damage over Time
Survivability (this includes survivability for allies, aka healing or 'support')
Crowd Control
Then there's the list of possible ways to target spells:
Point
AoE (Large Point)
Aura
Enemy hero
Direction
Direction from Point
No target (Point that is the hero itself)
Then, you combine any given number of stuff from the first list with one from the second;
Instant Damage + Survivability with target: Enemy hero = An attack that leeches life (Warwick's 1st ability, for LoL players)
Mobility + Crowd Control with target: No target = Speed boost + AoE slow or such ('Absorbing heat from area'?)
Damage Over Time with target: AoE = Pool that DoTs everyone in it (Morganna's 2nd ability)
Survivability + Mobility + Instant Damage with target: No target = Stealth with + damage on your next attack (Evelynn)
Instant Damage + Crowd Control with target: Direction from Point = Some kind of CCing wave shot from target location (Janna's whirlwind)
And the list goes on; if you want to, you can find 90% of all spells ever made up for a DOTA-style game.
For my hero, I tend to choose a couple of interesting feats from the first list that tie in with the playstyle I have in mind. If I'm making a support hero, I'll forego Instant Damage and Damage over Time a lot, and make sure pretty much every spell adds Survivability and/or Mobility. For a pure tank, I'll focus on crowd control. Nukers will have a lot of Instant Damage in their arsenal. I then pretty much randomly combine these elements with targets from the second list and see what comes up. For example, for the earlier named Reaper I might come up with something that has Instant Damage and Mobility. If I combine that with the target 'Enemy hero' I'll end up with something I can dress up like "The Reaper throws a bomb and gains an adrenaline rush if it hits, increasing his speed by X".
Once I've got these basics all down, I go into the lore and write a character behind the playstyle. I try to create lore-based explanations for my ability. If my Reaper is a crazed psychotic killer, he'd definitely get a kick out of watching his bombs hit mark.
I reckon this whole thing works the other way around as well; you can write up a storyline for a character and come up with abilities for him through that. As an example, I'm fairly confident that Blizz came up with Rory Swann's turret ability in that sense - I'm thinking that by the time they developped the 'The Belly of the Beast' mission they had already written Swann down as a mechanic that battles MacGyver style. I have never personally tried the lore-to-abilities approach, but I reckon it would be fun.
Iv been kinda wondering how long does it take you to make a complete hero and what kind of process do you go trough? I seem to be rather slow at doing it, yet I feel quite saticfied when I create a good hero.
A single hero I usually conceptualize when I get ideas, so the development of a hero design itself can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, to weeks to finally polish and get the right synergy between abilities going.
Quote:
I start with thinking of abilities. Mostly I want to make a theme for hero. Synergy for some spells and every ability should be equally useful.
This is the best place to start. Think of a theme. I'll use Smashcraft as a reference point.
The hero Revolver was meant to be an offensive tank ("offensive tank" being the theme), the gimmick was that his way of tanking was indirect, that is, he himself has no way to force someone to attack him, but he can protect teammates from being attacked by using disruption and displacement. So the idea was to make him a less beefy tank, but stronger offensively, while giving him abilities to displace other characters. He got a reasonably strong chaingun attack, the ability to create unpathable fissures, and swap positions with allies. Essentially filling his role perfectly and creating a very fluid and dynamic experience when playing him.
Quote:
The thought process might take anywhere from 1min to several weeks...sometimes ideas just wont come. I have become quite customed on mind mapping process for hero creation. I write things down I feel like the hero could do even if the ideas arent good. Sometimes I draw pictures to make even better idea of the ability im looking for.
That's perfectly fine for conceptualizing a hero. Many times I'll look over old concepts and re-work them to be more intuitive, or I'll look at something and be like "hey, maybe if it did this instead..." and usually just kind of iron out the details over time before I sit down and actually create the hero in data. No one ever said you have to stick to your idea 100% either, many heroes ended up getting complete reworks when an idea did come to me that would improve upon their design tenfold.
Quote:
After I get the idea I proceed on making it. This usually takes around 15mins to 1day/per ability. And this is just for visuals. I always start with the visuals (and functionality if its a complex spell). Sometimes I might even give up on the idea if the visuals are not to my liking.
I start with the functionality of the ability, which takes all of 15 minutes. The ability->effect->etc. chain is easy. Actors take considerably longer. The whole process of creating a brand new hero from scratch seems to average about 8 hours, depending on complexity of the hero's mechanics, how many abilities they have, and how complicated the actor work is to make it look amazing.
A hero like Ace took me all of 8 hours to build. Planar took me 4 days. It varies, but once you're really fluid with the editor a week long project eventually cuts down to like a few hours. Honestly.
Quote:
After the visuals are done. All is done is the polishing and I neglect this stuff too much...I just throw in random sounds and the tooltips are quite basic too. I could seriosly improve on "finishing" the abilities part.
After you get the spell working itself, go through and polish up the loose ends. You can also just save that for last and do them all at once, that way you get into a groove and it's easier to get the odd stuff done like that all at once since you're just streamlining the process and producing a pattern. I also find it's easier to keep a consistent pattern between things like tooltips or whatnot when you do this, since the process is fresh in your mind and you're not going "er, uhm what other details did I do to standardize this?"
Quote:
This week iv been able to make visuals for 9 abilities. They still lack sound, icons and tooltips. Took yet again several hours to get this far and still not finished.
Welcome to making quality abilities. Something highly lacking among mappers.
It sounds like you got the dedication to make a good hero map, even if it's not a dota clone, making a good hero based game takes an enormous amount of time, and especially making it visually impressive will make your game stand out above the rest. The little details will do wonders for making your map look more professional and polished overall, even if the gameplay itself is pretty basic, you can still get an edge over the competition by providing a product that does it 100x better.
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Iv been kinda wondering how long does it take you to make a complete hero and what kind of process do you go trough? I seem to be rather slow at doing it, yet I feel quite saticfied when I create a good hero.
I start with thinking of abilities. Mostly I want to make a theme for hero. Synergy for some spells and every ability should be equally useful. The thought process might take anywhere from 1min to several weeks...sometimes ideas just wont come. I have become quite customed on mind mapping process for hero creation. I write things down I feel like the hero could do even if the ideas arent good. Sometimes I draw pictures to make even better idea of the ability im looking for.
After I get the idea I proceed on making it. This usually takes around 15mins to 1day/per ability. And this is just for visuals. I always start with the visuals (and functionality if its a complex spell). Sometimes I might even give up on the idea if the visuals are not to my liking.
After the visuals are done. All is done is the polishing and I neglect this stuff too much...I just throw in random sounds and the tooltips are quite basic too. I could seriosly improve on "finishing" the abilities part.
This week iv been able to make visuals for 9 abilities. They still lack sound, icons and tooltips. Took yet again several hours to get this far and still not finished.
This is btw one of the reason why I tend to avoid making pure Dota map, it would just take too much time to get the results I want...yet Im doing my own AoS (just for fun :) ).
@zenx1: Go
Depends on the type of hero, but it usually takes me a couple of hours to get the hero planned out, a couple more to get the abilities and stats set up, and then about double that to set up the actors and visuals correctly. So in total, for me, it takes about 6-10 hours to make a fully level-able hero with 4-6 abilities.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
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ModeratorsI say make the inventory, attributes and veterancy first since that is the tough part (well more like time consuming).
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
https://media.forgecdn.net/attachments/187/40/Screenshot2011-04-17_09_16_21.jpg
@DrSuperEvil: Go
Do not troll my thread!...you dumb cow :(
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ModeratorsI fail to see how my first steps of hero creation are trolling.
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
https://media.forgecdn.net/attachments/187/40/Screenshot2011-04-17_09_16_21.jpg
In the old days of WC3: It took you about 1-2 hours.
The key thing I think firstly is to have a theme and a good one.
Ability ideas spawn from there, a good theme allows alot of possibilities.
Well, I've got learn abilities and veterancies set up in advance, I just change a handful of values for each hero, so I don't really count that. And when I do change those, I do it all the way in the end and up to then use the veterancy of another hero. (I actually have some heroes using the same veterancy, since you can buy attribute points during the game which makes it pretty much impossible to notice some heroes use the same veterancys)
So, how do I start... I get an idea for a hero. I usually dont think about it much, I just get the ideas. Like Maiev for example. I was just like "I'll do Maiev. Blink as default, fan of knives as it used to be, the ultimate will be as similar as possible, shadowstrike will have to be a linear AoE, and I'll think of something else, maybe a crit passive." I then spent 2-3 hours collecting and importing assets (got all her wc3 icons, the WoW models required, converted wc3 sounds, and made my own wireframes), stopped for the day, next day I worked on abilities, got all of them done within a few hours, and it turned out way better than I expected.
A few days later I got a better idea for the Fan of Knives visuals, so I worked on that for some time.
So, when creating the hero, this is sort of how I usually do it:
If I dont get all ideas at once, I dont start making a hero or think too hard about it. When I do get enough ideas, it takes 1-2 days to finish the hero (depending on how much I work, I can do it in one usually but i end up dividing the work on 2 days)
Hmm.. I think first comes a theme. Who will he be and what role he will play in created world. Spells/Abilities then characterize hero. Something cool, something interesting. Also abilities usually need to serve a purpose. Ability to deal with masses of units, hard hitting ability, defense ability, some unique abilty..
All this remembereing makes me want to go back to one of my first projects which involved heroes. Damn, it would be so cool to pick up that map again. Reminds me that I used to imagine scenes with heroes battling each other or against the world. Ah that was great.
Good Job, off with bomberbot, you just made me go back and redesign one of my older projects.
Since I'm just a terrainer and have no idea wtf veterancies are (and never make any heroes in-editor), I'll be answering this from my designer point of view.
When creating a hero, there's always 2 main aspects that come into play; gameplay (how does my hero play, what does he do?) and lore (written backstory), of which the latter can be ignored.
I tend to start on the gameplay, beginning all the way at the model. Generally, I take a look at a model and see what comes into my head. Is this some kind of robotic ranged brawler (Immortal) or a fast, harassing scout (Reaper)? Depending on the model used, I first decide what I want the main 'playstyle' for this hero to be. What he will feel like, so to speak (tank, assassin, ranged sniper, summoner archetype, etc). Then, once I've figured out a playstyle, I come up with the age-old three-skills-plus-an-ultimate.
DOTA-style hero abilities are generally a categorized in an interesting way. Nearly all standard abilities provide one of the following:
Then there's the list of possible ways to target spells:
Then, you combine any given number of stuff from the first list with one from the second;
And the list goes on; if you want to, you can find 90% of all spells ever made up for a DOTA-style game.
For my hero, I tend to choose a couple of interesting feats from the first list that tie in with the playstyle I have in mind. If I'm making a support hero, I'll forego Instant Damage and Damage over Time a lot, and make sure pretty much every spell adds Survivability and/or Mobility. For a pure tank, I'll focus on crowd control. Nukers will have a lot of Instant Damage in their arsenal. I then pretty much randomly combine these elements with targets from the second list and see what comes up. For example, for the earlier named Reaper I might come up with something that has Instant Damage and Mobility. If I combine that with the target 'Enemy hero' I'll end up with something I can dress up like "The Reaper throws a bomb and gains an adrenaline rush if it hits, increasing his speed by X".
Once I've got these basics all down, I go into the lore and write a character behind the playstyle. I try to create lore-based explanations for my ability. If my Reaper is a crazed psychotic killer, he'd definitely get a kick out of watching his bombs hit mark.
I reckon this whole thing works the other way around as well; you can write up a storyline for a character and come up with abilities for him through that. As an example, I'm fairly confident that Blizz came up with Rory Swann's turret ability in that sense - I'm thinking that by the time they developped the 'The Belly of the Beast' mission they had already written Swann down as a mechanic that battles MacGyver style. I have never personally tried the lore-to-abilities approach, but I reckon it would be fun.
A single hero I usually conceptualize when I get ideas, so the development of a hero design itself can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, to weeks to finally polish and get the right synergy between abilities going.
This is the best place to start. Think of a theme. I'll use Smashcraft as a reference point.
The hero Revolver was meant to be an offensive tank ("offensive tank" being the theme), the gimmick was that his way of tanking was indirect, that is, he himself has no way to force someone to attack him, but he can protect teammates from being attacked by using disruption and displacement. So the idea was to make him a less beefy tank, but stronger offensively, while giving him abilities to displace other characters. He got a reasonably strong chaingun attack, the ability to create unpathable fissures, and swap positions with allies. Essentially filling his role perfectly and creating a very fluid and dynamic experience when playing him.
That's perfectly fine for conceptualizing a hero. Many times I'll look over old concepts and re-work them to be more intuitive, or I'll look at something and be like "hey, maybe if it did this instead..." and usually just kind of iron out the details over time before I sit down and actually create the hero in data. No one ever said you have to stick to your idea 100% either, many heroes ended up getting complete reworks when an idea did come to me that would improve upon their design tenfold.
I start with the functionality of the ability, which takes all of 15 minutes. The ability->effect->etc. chain is easy. Actors take considerably longer. The whole process of creating a brand new hero from scratch seems to average about 8 hours, depending on complexity of the hero's mechanics, how many abilities they have, and how complicated the actor work is to make it look amazing.
A hero like Ace took me all of 8 hours to build. Planar took me 4 days. It varies, but once you're really fluid with the editor a week long project eventually cuts down to like a few hours. Honestly.
After you get the spell working itself, go through and polish up the loose ends. You can also just save that for last and do them all at once, that way you get into a groove and it's easier to get the odd stuff done like that all at once since you're just streamlining the process and producing a pattern. I also find it's easier to keep a consistent pattern between things like tooltips or whatnot when you do this, since the process is fresh in your mind and you're not going "er, uhm what other details did I do to standardize this?"
Welcome to making quality abilities. Something highly lacking among mappers.
It sounds like you got the dedication to make a good hero map, even if it's not a dota clone, making a good hero based game takes an enormous amount of time, and especially making it visually impressive will make your game stand out above the rest. The little details will do wonders for making your map look more professional and polished overall, even if the gameplay itself is pretty basic, you can still get an edge over the competition by providing a product that does it 100x better.