Let me play devil's advocate and respond to that: by publishing early you're also showing your unfinished, crappy prototype map to the entire arcade, and a lot of people may jump into it, decide it's crap, and simply never come back again. This used to be a way bigger problem when the popularity system was still a thing, but that doesn't mean you should disregard this entirely.
Just to point out the dark side of releasing early...
You're absolutely right, it's always a risk. Whether that risk is worth taking boils down to how confident you are that you'll finish your project without that extra bit of motivation, in my opinion!
Release as soon as your map works. The problem with mods and maps alike is that they rarely get finished. Mapmakers get a surge of creativity, but this tends to only carry them so far, and often doesn't last for the length of time that it takes to make a map. Starting a map is fast, fun, and so creative, but that feeling will be replaced by the grind eventually. The grind to finish off all those little details and systems, and suddenly the whole project feels like a complete chore. I'd say that this is where most projects end up lingering.
Why release early? Because seeing your map work and perhaps even enjoyed can refresh the above motivation. Alternatively it can save you a lot of time if you realize that your project isn't as good as you thought it might be.
Redesign each hero based on a familiar WarCraft 3 base, though their abilities are modified to make sure they work in a StarCraft setting.
Increase total hero count from 13 to 21. This includes all WarCraft 3 heroes except Firelord, Beastmaster and Brewmaster, which will come in a future update. All heroes use StarCraft models for now.
Increase variety of abilities available for use, opening up new roles such as focusing on crowd controlling enemies (hex) or weakening them for your allies (banish).
Redesign ability costs to make choosing which ability to upgrade is always a difficult choice.
Add auto-cast for nearly all abilities. The AI is not perfect and it's intended to be that way, but it's sufficient for quick AFKs.
Reduce base stats of heroes, but added stat gain from leveling.
Items have been generally doubled in power.
The remakes are pretty loose and a lot of abilities had to be redesigned in some way. This mostly means that they hit multiple targets. Of course, some abilities had to be replaced wholesale, like Far Sight which would just be redundant in a map like this. Others, like Thorns Aura, are impossible to remake cleanly in this engine as %-based damage return can only be accomplished by intensive triggers!
The general theme of the heroes is still intact though. The hero based on the paladin still has a heal, an invulnerability shield and a defensive aura, while being able to resurrect allies. Just updated.
I'm pretty committed to pushing this to the same level of polish as my Desert Strike HotS map. I intend to do a spawn system update and then a terrain update to try to better capture the feel of the WarCraft 3 version, while making use of all the new features of the StarCraft engine.
All these assets are in a neat mod file and once my heroes are rock solid I'll start producing more WarCraft 3 maps using this shared and frequently updated mod file. The Summoners was testing the water with a relatively unknown map. Hero Line Wars is something a little more serious to really get the ball rolling!
I'm not one to say Curse doesn't give a shit about us or anything, but the mods have already tried pretty much all they can at some point.
Credit to Curse for keeping the site up, though. I seriously doubt they make a profit from hosting sc2mapster and the whole StarCraft 2 map download service.
Sixen still updates the blog too despite having moved on to other things, even after pretty much 2 years of site inactivity.
Yeah nothing is set in stone. To be brutally honest, I'm not happy with any of it. I'm currently redesigning every hero. I plan to redesign the terrain to be closer to the wc3 version. I also have a different spawning system that I'm going to swap with, that is a bit of a mix between my spawn system and the wc3 version. I'm likely going to look into a different income and experience mechanic.
I want to stress the "in development" part. No, really, this map is aggressively unrefined and I'm currently in the process of changing that!
There's a whole lot about this map that I'm not happy with at the moment! I've never made a real hero map before, and there's some learning to be done. It's pretty much in a constant state of flux at the moment while I get the heroes and items into a fun state. I'm probably going to redo the spawn system I have in place too.
Still, enjoy the read if it's to your fancy, and thanks for reading!
Hero Line Wars 4 vs 4 - Team hero survival - Take control of a hero and fend off units spawned by the enemy team, while trying to overpower them with your spawns!
Description:
Hero Line Wars is a game where you pick one of several heroes, and hold the line against incoming enemy units. You have several powerful abilities at your disposal, and many unique items to help you survive. The catch is that these units aren't just a set of predictable waves, but are sent by the enemy team of players. Likewise, you'll also be sending in spawns to assault the enemy base. Eventually, either your team or the enemy will be overwhelmed. You just need to make sure that it's not your team who falls first.
First you'll choose a hero, and then you'll have the option to spawn a selection of units. You can only create weak units to begin with, but each unit you summon will permanently increase your income. Over time, you will build your income and your hero and eventually overwhelm the enemy team!
The idea is kinda nice but I really don't think it has any advantage over just using a small mod file. Instant distribution, fast, and doesn't require you to play a match of your map.
It seems like it'd work better as a tool to allow community members of a given map to make their own broadcasts to spread the message faster. Say, "tournament tonight (dec 29th) 7pm GMT", which would actually be a pretty amazing tool since I don't think many players really bother with the game-specific chat channels.
I've uploaded a mod file named "WC3 Music" that contains all WarCraft 3 music files and custom playlists for each race. It'll shave 71mb off the amount of account space you're using.
Of course, that offer is open to anyone who wants to add WC3 music to their map, too.
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You're absolutely right, it's always a risk. Whether that risk is worth taking boils down to how confident you are that you'll finish your project without that extra bit of motivation, in my opinion!
0
Release as soon as your map works. The problem with mods and maps alike is that they rarely get finished. Mapmakers get a surge of creativity, but this tends to only carry them so far, and often doesn't last for the length of time that it takes to make a map. Starting a map is fast, fun, and so creative, but that feeling will be replaced by the grind eventually. The grind to finish off all those little details and systems, and suddenly the whole project feels like a complete chore. I'd say that this is where most projects end up lingering.
Why release early? Because seeing your map work and perhaps even enjoyed can refresh the above motivation. Alternatively it can save you a lot of time if you realize that your project isn't as good as you thought it might be.
0
Hero update is nearly complete. This update will;
The remakes are pretty loose and a lot of abilities had to be redesigned in some way. This mostly means that they hit multiple targets. Of course, some abilities had to be replaced wholesale, like Far Sight which would just be redundant in a map like this. Others, like Thorns Aura, are impossible to remake cleanly in this engine as %-based damage return can only be accomplished by intensive triggers!
The general theme of the heroes is still intact though. The hero based on the paladin still has a heal, an invulnerability shield and a defensive aura, while being able to resurrect allies. Just updated.
I'm pretty committed to pushing this to the same level of polish as my Desert Strike HotS map. I intend to do a spawn system update and then a terrain update to try to better capture the feel of the WarCraft 3 version, while making use of all the new features of the StarCraft engine.
All these assets are in a neat mod file and once my heroes are rock solid I'll start producing more WarCraft 3 maps using this shared and frequently updated mod file. The Summoners was testing the water with a relatively unknown map. Hero Line Wars is something a little more serious to really get the ball rolling!
0
Credit to Curse for keeping the site up, though. I seriously doubt they make a profit from hosting sc2mapster and the whole StarCraft 2 map download service.
Sixen still updates the blog too despite having moved on to other things, even after pretty much 2 years of site inactivity.
0
Yeah nothing is set in stone. To be brutally honest, I'm not happy with any of it. I'm currently redesigning every hero. I plan to redesign the terrain to be closer to the wc3 version. I also have a different spawning system that I'm going to swap with, that is a bit of a mix between my spawn system and the wc3 version. I'm likely going to look into a different income and experience mechanic.
0
Sounds like a trigger or data effect is repeating endlessly. Is it just this map or does this happen in any map?
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I want to stress the "in development" part. No, really, this map is aggressively unrefined and I'm currently in the process of changing that!
There's a whole lot about this map that I'm not happy with at the moment! I've never made a real hero map before, and there's some learning to be done. It's pretty much in a constant state of flux at the moment while I get the heroes and items into a fun state. I'm probably going to redo the spawn system I have in place too.
Still, enjoy the read if it's to your fancy, and thanks for reading!
0
Hero Line Wars
4 vs 4 - Team hero survival - Take control of a hero and fend off units spawned by the enemy team, while trying to overpower them with your spawns!
Genre: Team Survival
Players: Even Teams
US starcraft://map/1/253710
EU starcraft://map/2/177608
KR starcraft://map/3/93214
SEA starcraft://map/6/23262
Description:
Hero Line Wars is a game where you pick one of several heroes, and hold the line against incoming enemy units. You have several powerful abilities at your disposal, and many unique items to help you survive. The catch is that these units aren't just a set of predictable waves, but are sent by the enemy team of players. Likewise, you'll also be sending in spawns to assault the enemy base. Eventually, either your team or the enemy will be overwhelmed. You just need to make sure that it's not your team who falls first.
First you'll choose a hero, and then you'll have the option to spawn a selection of units. You can only create weak units to begin with, but each unit you summon will permanently increase your income. Over time, you will build your income and your hero and eventually overwhelm the enemy team!
Forum:
http://desertstrike.freeforums.org/hero-line-wars-f21.html
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Oh whoops. I forgot that was even a thing!
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You're using campaign dependencies.
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You got a link on the main WoW fansite; http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/
That's a pretty big deal!
I think it was close to the front page of Reddit too.
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The idea is kinda nice but I really don't think it has any advantage over just using a small mod file. Instant distribution, fast, and doesn't require you to play a match of your map.
It seems like it'd work better as a tool to allow community members of a given map to make their own broadcasts to spread the message faster. Say, "tournament tonight (dec 29th) 7pm GMT", which would actually be a pretty amazing tool since I don't think many players really bother with the game-specific chat channels.
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Well, TIL.
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This was pretty damn fun. Good job!
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I've uploaded a mod file named "WC3 Music" that contains all WarCraft 3 music files and custom playlists for each race. It'll shave 71mb off the amount of account space you're using.
Of course, that offer is open to anyone who wants to add WC3 music to their map, too.