Azura, The Shadow Ranger (implemented)

Overview

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So, in my boredom I strolled around this site, hoping for something interesting. It then occured to me that "how about implementing a hero creation contest winner?"
When I saw that the winner has like, what, 12 abilities? I had just scrapped that idea. It'd take too long to implement, and as far as I know, that hero's ability isn't tutorial-friendly. It has nice concept tho, but I believe Invoker should always has the most spells.

Then I came across this hero, and I thought this is quite nice. It has abilities ranging from simple to complex, and has pretty similar design (programming wise) with my own hero.
This hero is quite nice to be tutorialized. I intended to continue my tutorial into implementing Azura's abilities.

Disclaimer

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I own nothing except for the code. The hero design, icons, and texts all goes into its creator, ChunkyMaru. You are free to look, use, modify, copy, or anything you can imagine of with my code, though.

How to play it

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Simply download the addon (custom games) here

Extract the folder into "<yourdotafolder>/game/dota_addons/"

Launch the custom game

Snapshots

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Comments and differences from original

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Hero

Pardon the bland aestethics; as skillful as I am in programming, I suck in artistry. I'll just using Drow Ranger as the base hero since they both quite similar. The abilities' effects also looked bland, and the sounds are just unglorious.

The ability roles, too, yeah. But this isn't my fault for not coming up with great stories. ChunkyMaru didn't give one, and so did I.

Talent Tree

Currently, Talent Tree is not quite supported for Custom Games, so I'd just scrapped her talent tree.

Black Ethereum

I didn't understand what does it mean to be a cone, so I'll just take Shadow Shaman's Ether Shock and add some twists.

Shadowform

The creator didn't specify how it behave if the ability got refreshed. I'll just assume on second cast, the previous affected units lost their de/buffs.

Multi-shot Crossbow

This ability costs a lot of Lina's life (as the target), but for a good reason; a new mechanic was born. Can only attack if charges available, charge restore based on attack speed, that's quite new and challenging. Great idea.

Technically though, Azura isn't disarmed when no charges available. I think it's annoying when ordering Azura to attack-move, and she simply walks towards target point whenever she is out of charge, so I changed it. I increased her BAT with a big value instead. This way, she will continue focusing on target while waiting for the charge to be available.

The original says that each time Azura attacks, the recharge time got delayed. I just think it's more logical if it's just reset instead (how do you recharge a crossbow while firing tho?).

Dynamic skill icon? Sorry, can't do that. No icons provided anyway.

I was enticed to make this a toggle ability due to waiting for charges, but I had to follow the design.

Gaze of Exile

Another game-breaking ability (literally, my Dota 2 crashed several times) with nice mechanics.

The original says that the target is unselectable only for enemies, which I can't find any API function to do that. Instead, I'll have the enemies stopped whenever they try casting on the target.

As for bonus attack range, it would be granted only if allies ordering to attack the target directly (not attack-move to a point). Though I found it absurd looking at Sven swung his sword at nothing, yet he still hit the target.

Conclusion]

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Well, that's that. I hope this can give insights about lua abilities. Download to enjoy, or download to learn, or do nothing to do nothing; I just do this for enjoyment.

References

• Original Design
• Custom Game Repository
• Lua Ability Tutorial

So I was running around in the system files looking for the dota_addons in step 2 when I saw an old program that I downloaded because I needed it for a school project. I took a detour and went my way on uninstalling the program. Done. Uninstalled. Then I returned to step 2.

Then I saw next was the real... actual... program that I thought I uninstalled, sitting in a folder I created, with its familiar program icon and everything.

I just uninstalled a random program in the computer and here's hoping my brother will never notice. :<

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ANYWAY, I did it. And I played it. And it was AWESOME! There's this totally weird and beautiful feeling of seeing this concept come to life!

I can't enable cheats though. Do I have to use console equivalents of cheats? I can't cast ulti without summoning a hero. (it's google-able but...)

One problem I found is that whenever I attack, the charge replenish time of Multi-shot Crossbow resets. I was thinking that Azura should still gain charges while attacking allowing for up to 6 fast consecutive attacks (at ability lvl 4). But it can't. Attacks resets cooldown.

Whoa, here comes the winner... Peace out, I have no ill intention to your 12-ability hero, ok?

Anyway, to enable cheat, enter "sv_cheats 1" (without quote) in console. To enter the cheat itself, use chat message (enter).

Type "-createhero <hero_name> <alliance>" (without quote) to spawn a hero. For example, you can type
"-createhero lina enemy" to create enemy Lina. Note that you can only spawn heroes available during pick phase.
Other handy cheat is -wtf to erase all cooldown. To revert back, use -unwtf. Also check out -allvision and -normalvision.

As for charge restore, it was intended. ChunkyMaru (original author) designed that there's 0.5s delay (also modified by AS) whenever Azura attacks. Since it is barely noticed, I'd just reset the charge time instead. It's a matter of design, actually.

Omg, it's happening again! When I submitted La'thaal to the CHP people were like "That's the hero from Angels Arena". I recently updated my concept of Azura in preparation for the next CHP contest and yet again someone have already implemented it. I'm all for you using my concept in your tutorial. You have my approval.

About the changes you've mentioned...

Black Ethereum: Shadow Shaman's Ether Shock mentions a cone as well, so you've already implemented it the way I imagined it.

Shadowform: Didn't think about that. Your implementation is reasonable.

Multi-shot Crossbow:
The cooldown restart on firing is fine, though I would've preferred only the slight delay of 0.5 seconds (modified by attack speed). It wasn't supposed to be noticeable anyway and it's only there to prevent 6 bolts to be fired in a row when the ability clearly specifies that Max Bolt Charges are 5. At a first glance, the ability seems more intuitive this way, even though the specifics might not be. As for realism, doesn't sniper ever have to reload his gun? Not that you have any obligation to do things my way.
As for the dynamic skill icon, if you're interested I can make them. I still have the source file on me somewhere and can easily make them. It shouldn't be that different from Brewmaster's passive to implement.

Gaze of Exile: The bonus attack range is halved for melee units. That should prevent things from looking too excessive.

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I also have to mention that when dealing with low BAT you have to consider the attack point and backswing animation of the hero model. For example, Pudge has a total attack point and backswing animation of 1.67 seconds, meaning that if Pudge gets Chemical Rage in ability draft he won't benefit from the BAT unless he cancels the backswing animation of every attack.

Drow Ranger has a total attack animation of 1.0 seconds, meaning that the lowest BAT she can support is 1.0. Click here to see the full list of attack animations. The unit with the lowest total attack animation in dota is currently the Visage Familiars (0.53 seconds) followed by Wisp (0.55 seconds). In other words, the current implementation of Multi-shot Crossbow is only half as effective as it should be.

I haven't yet got the time to try the mod out (desktop out of reach) and am currently occupied by my masters thesis during the workdays. Maybe I'll be able to test it out next weekend.

I can't help but point out this has been thread #106,000. Now could my brain stop haunting me now, please?

Also thanks for cheats! "sv_cheats 1" was all I need.

Man your whole paragraph about attack animations is... just wrong. Do you really think that Alchemist is unable to reach 0.13 AT at lvl 25? Or Lina with her hideous attack point? The attack animations in Dota adjust to the unit's attack speed.

For example, max AS + Chemrage Alchemist is swinging his blades so madly he looks like a wannabe colibri. That's because the animation is shrinked into that little period of time.

Relax, bud. It's a concept anyway. My own hero is different than yours, though. It's just that some of the abilities' "theme" (mainly programming functions and procedures) is similar, so I can create yours easily (not recreate, this is from scratch).

If you want to continue tweaking, just do that. The code is free for you and anyone to use.

There's a discussion below with Sernyx.


Dafuq did you say? You have free time or something? I barely bother checking that out.... On a bad side, I guess my luck has been spent on these numbers.



This guy's seems right. ChunkyMaru, if you feel any doubt, you can customize Drow's attack point too, and see if that satisfy your desire.

I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. I've done some modding myself long ago where I tried setting Sniper's BAT to 0.1 to make an automatic rifle, but it didn't work as well as I hoped due to the reason I just explained. Base Attack Time and Attack Time are different. Yes, you can increase the speed of the attack animation with attack speed allowing for Alchemist to have a 0.13s AT, but what I've mentioned is still not wrong.



Sorry, got too exited... Ofc, I'll do that if I get the time to.



If it can be customized then naturally there's no problem.