Facts
Project Title: Southfury Banks
Project Status: Completed
My Responsibilities: Everything
- Scripting
- Mapping
- Unit Design and Balancing
Project Description
Southfury Banks is a Team PvP (Player versus Player) total conversion for Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft 3 loosely based in the Warcraft universe. Players can choose to fight for the Horde of Orcs, Trolls and Ogres or the Alliance of Men and Elves. Both factions strife to control both sides of the mighty Southfury River that divides the territory of the Stormfist Clan and thier sacred burial grounds in the north from the village of Silverdale in the south. In order to put a final end to the constant skirmishes and force one side to withdrawal, their general must be eliminated!
The map features heavily team-based PvP skirmishes in a lush and living fantasy environment:
- Players start with a basic unit that can be freely developed to fulfill one of many specialized roles, such as melee or ranged combat, healing or support.
- Players can capture flags in order to gain additional spawning points and income, leading to a tactical advantage in the overall campaign to vanquish the general of the opposing faction.
- Upgradeable NPC units patrol captured flags, provide healing, mana regeneration and teleportation to strategic key points.
- Players can eliminate faction officers in order to destroy guard towers and allow for faster advancement to the enemy base.
- Players can collect and hand in special magic items in order to summon their faction’s secret weapon: A mighty NPC unit that will slowly plow its way towards the enemy base in order to attack their general.
For more information about my motivations for developing this map and a comparison of Soutfury Banks with other existing Warcraft III PvP maps, see “SfB - Yet another DotA Clone?“.
While the development started in December 2006, the overall development time of the map sums up to 4 to 5 weeks, because I was only able to work on it sporadicly.
Unit Development
Southfury Banks employs a new and unique unit development system: Instead of choosing one hero unit at the beginning that cannot be changed throughout the entire game, the players of Southfury Banks start with a basic unit that can be upgraded into different specialized roles, depending on their preferred play style and needs of the team. Every unit has a different role and therefore different abilities. The units can be upgraded over three ranks, each rank providing more powerful abilities and improved stats.
In order to upgrade a unit, players have to collect special items, called Tomes. Tomes come in three different kinds: Tomes of Earth are required for melee combat specialization, Tomes of Wind are required for ranged combat specialization, and Tomes of Light are required for (healing) magic specialization. When a player’s unit is killed, they respawn as rank 0 unit and have to upgrade their unit again. Players can also downgrade their unit back to a rank 0 basic unit at any time, which allows them to fulfill different roles, when required.
For more information about the unit development system, you can read “SfB - Unit Upgrade System“.
Map Overview & Description
While the geographic layout of the map is not 100% symmetric, players from both factions require the same amount of time to reach the River Bank Flag. The Alliance Starting Position is farther away, but Alliance players can use a shortcut trough the trees, whereas Horde players either have to take the route around the trees or over the cliff.
Each faction has a secure path trough/over the river, guarded by faction towers and leading directly to the first flag of the opposing faction. The towers are also guarded by the factions lieutenant. Once the lieutenant is killed, the towers guarding the strategic bottleneck are destroyed.
The faction’s general is located in their main base, which is also secured by guard towers and the faction’s captain. Within each main base, there is a small safe zone, where players of the opposing faction can rest and regenerate health and mana. When the faction’s captain is killed, the towers guarding the main base are destroyed. If the faction’s general is under attack, the officer’s will come to his aid, when still alive.
Inside each faction’s main base, there are located two more quest NPCs: The Armorer/Blacksmith NPC, where players can purchase upgrade token to upgrade their faction’s NPC guards and the Witch Doctor/Arcanist, where players can hand in special quest items that are dropped by creeps. In order to collect the required quest items (Flasks of Mojo for the Horde and Arcane Crystals for the Alliance), Horde players have to travel to the Satyr Camp on the Alliance side of the river and Alliance players have to travel to the Goblin Lumber Camp on the horde side of the River.
Once a faction has handed in 20 quest items, they can ask their qeust NPC to start summoning a powerful titan NPC. The Horde Witch Doctor summons the two-headed ogre Oglu the Destroyer, the Alliance Arcanis summons Ancient Protector Woodfist, a gigantic treant. After being summoned, the titans will slowly advance over the river, into the enemy factions base, where they will attack the faction’s general.
Download
Since v1.1, there are two versions of Southfury Banks, one with a cinematic introduction, and one without the cinematic. Choose your preferred download below:
Additional download mirrors:
Player and Critic Comments
AMAZING terrain!!!!!! The map was amazingly beautiful and definitely added a sense of authenticity and environment to the experience.
Approved. Excellent map. Very much attention detailed, very well terrained, and involving gameplay. Players build their classes up from their peons/peasants and assault each other’s bases. Great work.
The map is beautifully terrain’d and extremely well thought out, in fact; it’s one of the only real Strategic maps left on battle.net. You are guaranteed to have countless games figuring out new strategies and little tips and tricks that you can do to gain the upper hand.
Nicely competitive, I loved it! We had some big fights near the lumber mill.
