Game visibility improvements

In recent months certain scenarios of gameplay have highlighted that Warcraft III has some visibility problems. In particular the Banshee’s Anti-Magic Shell and Possession spells have been noted as an issue.

As a result of this, we’d like to make some changes to our maps to improve visibility of some effects in the game to help both players and spectators read the visual language of the game better.

For anyone interested in helping, we would need to add triggers to our maps by editing these scripts:

https://github.com/w3champions/map-updater-scripts

Legend:
- Finished

- In progress / Not implemented

- Not started

- Dropped

Below we have prepared a list of concerns that we will seek to improve:

Idea proposal

Effect

Proposal

Reasoning

Effect

Proposal

Reasoning

Banshee - Anti-Magic Shell

- Not started

  1. Increase transparency

  2. Match the colour of the effect to the players colour

  1. The effect is so opaque and uniform that it totally clouds the unit’s silhouette.

  2. A specific issue is in battles where opposing sides use AMS and so it’s especially difficult to tell which side the unit belongs to.

Banshee - Possession

- Not started

  1. Add a direct line between the Banshee and the unit being possessed

  2. Add an indicator on this line to show the progression of the channelling (how long before it is done)

  1. Often the player hears the Possession sound effect, but is not able to find the unit or the banshee involved. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially considering the high stakes of the spell.

  2. This should allow both players to make more informed decisions on how to react to Possession, if the Banshee should be coiled, the unit should be staffed, etc.

Dark Ranger - Silence

- Not started

  1. Make the silence effect on the unit more visible.

  1. Silence’s effect is usually covered by always-on healthbars, something that was not a feature when Warcraft 3 was originally made. Updating the silence effect to be much clearer should help with this.

Troll Batrider - Unstable Concoction

- Not started

  1. Add a line indicating the target of the spell (similar appearance to Raven’s seeker missile in Starcraft 2)

  1. When batriders use this spell they become locked onto a target, however the animation change is very subtle, and the target is not always clear because it often targets a clump of units. This should help counterplay.

Troll Batrider - Unstable Concoction

- Not started

  1. Add a line indicating the target of the spell (similar appearance to Raven’s seeker missile in Starcraft 2)

  1. When batriders use this spell they become locked onto a target, however the animation change is very subtle, and the target is not always clear because it often targets a clump of units. This should help counterplay.

Experience bar improvement

- Not started

  1. Modify hero bars to add smallest bar with experience.

  2. Might be not possible without hacking game files.

  3. Might be not possible to make it opt in/out.

  1. Feature like this would help to learn how much experience creep gives. Currently you have to click on hero to check experience.

Building placement grid

In progress by: MayDay

  1. Show simple adjacent squares to the building

  2. Show adjacent squares + color squares live where building cannot be placed

  1. One of the player suggestion. This could help new players to learn distances of placing expansions and learning distance between goldmine.

Minimalistic HUD

- Not started

  1. Create or modify reforged UI to be possible to use. This should be implemented as option in launcher or game menu.

  1. Some people enjoyed minimalistic Reforged UI.

Differentiate unit icons

- Not started

  1. Create new icons for Dragons of any type and level - to apply to items that summon them as well (suggestion: add a level indication at the top-right).

  2. Create a new icon for Mud Golem (suggestion: re-color with #966E46 and soft light blend).

  3. Create a new icon for Kobold Tunneler (suggestion: re-color with #ff96b4 and soft light blend).

  4. Create a new icon for Forest Troll High Priest (suggestion: re-color the Ice Troll High Priest icon with #82ff82 and hue blend).

  1. Dragon Roosts allow you to purchase level 3, 6 and 10 dragons of the same type, but they all have the same icon.

  2. Mud Golem (purchasable as a mercenary) has the same icon as Rock Golem and its related item Stone Token.

  3. Kobold Tunneler has the same icon as Kobold Taskmaster, and they are both hireable at the very same mercenary camp.

  4. Forest Troll Shadow Priest and High Priest are hireable at different mercenary camps but they share the same icon.

Map timer

In progress by: MayDay

  1. Add time to the map with triggers. You could toggle this by -clock command. This was a thing on w3arena.

  1. Helps new player to learn timeings of various things.

Hotkey shortcut visibility

- Not started

  1. Add in-game option to see hotkey shortcut without hovering on it.

  1. Most of the people are visual learners. This helps learning new hotkey setup easier.

Destroyer Team Color Skin

- Not started

  1. Edit model or texture to increase space of team color.

  1. In big teamfights in 4vs4 it’s impossible to know which destroyers belong to which playaer.

Change Weather And Water

- Not started

  1. Adding commands to changing weather like in DotA 1 map

  2. -weather rain - Switches weather to rain.
    -weather snow - Switches weather to snow.
    -weather moonlight - Switches weather to moonlight.
    -weather wind - Switches weather to wind.
    -weather random - Switches to random weather each game.
    -weather off - Turns weather off.

  1. Pro players probably would appreciate turning off rain weather on maps like AZ

  2. New players would probably have fun with picking random weather each game, to vary their experience.

Tips Command

- Not started

  1. Add -tips command to the game.

  2. Gives you various helpful pointers about your race or gameplay throughout the game.

  3. Or write at the start game random tip from the loading screen.

  1. The tips on the loading screen are hard to read, because the game loads to fast. Adding random tips in map could increase awarness.

Game Start Countdown

- Not started

  1. Add transparent countdown at the start of the game with sound where you can prepare to do first actions.

  2. This should count down “3, 2, 1” and show healthbars and start the game after.

  3. The whole sequence shouldn’t take real 3 seconds, more like 1,5-2s.

  1. After game loads we instantly are thrown in to the game without any transition. New players could have more time to prepare their actions, write glhf, etc.

Extended tooltips

In progress by: HomelessMan & MayDay

Update ability tooltips so to include relevant data.

Now: “A magical hammer that is thrown at an enemy unit, causing damage and stunning the target.”

Proposal: “A magical hammer that is thrown at an enemy unit, causing 100/200/310 damage and stunning the target for 5 (3) seconds.

Basic quality of life from most modern games.

Item Drop Indicator
In progress by: MayDay & Kenshin

Add indicator to creep which carries the item.

Options:

  1. While hovering on it, show some icon above

  2. While clicking on them, show their inventory with some random item. (Backpack)
    Maybe books could be shown in different way.

  3. Show all the time, maybe some custom aura.

Decent players already know which monster drop items, but it would be easier to learn which creep is most important.

Implemented

Effect

Proposal

Reasoning

Effect

Proposal

Reasoning

Minimap icons

Done by: MayDay & Bogdan & Kenshin

  1. Create new icons for neutral building

  2. Change shapes for camp difficulty

  1. Currently it’s impossible to tell what building it is on map.

  2. New icons for creep camps could be more saturated, it’s problematic to tell difference between small camp and medium camp.

Differentiate item icons

Done by: MayDay & Kenshin

  1. Create new icons for Claws of Attack and Ring of Protection to differentiate stats given.

  2. This could be fully new drawn icons or simply adding some text on it with +stat.

  1. All items with +stats are the same, creating new icons would help to read what item it is, without hovering on it.

Worker Count
Done by: SnailBeast & Gab

  1. Create counter on goldmine which shows how many workers are in.

  1. Human and Orc struggles to tell visually how many workers are in, the only way is to group select spam.

Deny Creep Indicator

Done by: Phil-ZXX

  1. Add indicator to show if creep is denied.

  2. Indicator can look same as in DotA by simple “!” after killing creep.

  1. One of the way to check if creep is denied is by clicking on hero and tracking experience.

Dropped ideas

Effect

Proposal

Reasoning

Tower Range

Dropped by: MayDay

  1. Show range of the tower while single tower is selected.

  2. If possible, show range of the tower while building/placing tower.

  1. Small visual addition that would help to learn what’s the real tower range.

 

Drop Reason: is not possible in a way that would operate well for ladder maps, you'd need a lot of fake things to simulate it, if this is something you really want, and do not care how it happens, I could return back with the answer for it