Stalk on the Borderlands Readme Notes: Stalk v1.1 was released on 1/27/01. Fixes: Fences would often not allow dwarves to throw over them. Now they can throw past them fine, but you can also walk through lone posts... this time around we'll err on the side of ghost posts and normal dwarf response. I've knocked back the points on the Deceiver by half, he was too hard to kill. "Breakable" walls actually break now. Fixed the reflection map so that water no longer "pops". Moved a couple BoP balls so that they are at the owners' starts. Moved flags off of walls due to public's view of them as "silly". Altered the units received originally on the 6 team mesh so that new players "get the idea" that it's okay to take only a couple types of artillery and not ALL of them. Traded mortar dwarf heroes for regular mortars on the 4 team mesh. Mortar dwarf heroes tend to suicide, and do an amazingly large amount of damage. People complained. Problem solved. Traded bre'Unor for brigands as stampede units on the 4 team mesh. bre' were too fast and suck too hardcore to be any fun. Alas for their cheering though! Relocated some soulless and thrall so that they were no longer over (or under) water. Altered the overhead to show the venice walls (also known as "the fort"). One team on the 6 team mesh didn't have its jman labeled as a target for assassin. Fixed. Renamed some of the meshes. Lowered the meshes a bit. What a pain. Added CTF to the 7 Team mesh. It's not a fair game exactly, but with those units, who cares? It's just something else to do if you're looking for a ranked game. :) Added an extra maul to trading on the 6 way ffa to make trading "fit" better. Stalk v1.0 was released 1/18/2001. My primary goal with "Stalk on the Borderlands": to extend the glories of Creep on the Borderlands to a similar arena, without going overboard on "improvements" and "updates". KISS. Creep's beauty comes from having plenty of room to fight, very few strategically useful vantage points, and multiple choke points to fight at. Credit for the name "Stalk" goes to Mars of ÇfsÈ. Several people were on fshl thinking of names, his had the right elements. Certain attributes of the map were altered to accomodate the title. Some people can't stand pus on creep/desert. For them, they're able to turn the difficulty to timid or simple on the light mesh, where wights are not available. World knots perform two functions: on Heroic/Legendary, the broken world knot can be rebuilt to allow transportation knot to knot (on Light and Dark only... other meshes there is no need to rebuild the knot). On Legendary, the knots serve as convenient points for reinforcements to beam in (on Light only). I borrowed Leadfeater's Knot scripts, which allow presets to remain in place after a teleportation. You lose your selected units, but I know I can deal with it. :) I don't like "free" reinforcements on netmaps, and think that one team getting reinforcements only is terribly unbalanced. So to get reinforcements on legendary, you need to rebuild the knot first. Then where they come out... best be prepared in the event of an enemy force piling out of the knot. :) The 6 Way FFA mesh is a little stew that I cooked up for people (like myself) who like artillery more than melee in Myth 2. You essentially get to choose your weapon of preferred choice. Heroes fire faster than all but fetch, fetch can take out lock fireballs and dorf cocktails, arcs and souls can take a fetch and even a lock, arcs and souls can take eachother... and the rock paper scissors theme holds true. Choose your weapon... and let the best player win! The 4 Team mesh is loosely based on Death in the Dire Marsh. Spiders didn't make much sense on this map, and dwarven heroes have small varierty in hills to arc cocktails from and are thus replaced with Herons and Dwarven Mortar Heroes, respectively. The 7 team mesh is simply a unit set stolen from "I'll Dance on Your Grave", with the addition of an assassin unit and stampede units. "If you're going to copy something, might as well copy the best." The Deceiver can be pussed (as shipped in M2:SB), but it lasts 1/10 of the time a normal paralysis does. Thus, as he is used solely for assassin, this time has been increased a bit to 2/5 of normal in this plugin. Now he'll at least stun for a second. Fetch Magi: Fetch with cloudkill as a special attack. It's a spell that isn't terribly effective most of the time, but that can be used well in certain situations. They work the same as fetch otherwise. Poision Soulless: Have a "special" attack that is a poison spear (causes paralysis). They only have 1, and this is to counter the value of a flame arrow. Weren't soulless spears supposed to be tipped with poison anyway...? Bowman Captains: Since M2 Hero Bowmen are so terribly unbalanced, I created "Bowman Captains", a unit in-between a hero and regular bowman. They're not the ammo sluts that Heroes are. Favorite Beta Testing moment: the Deceiver was running endlessly from packs of assassins, and Blade couldn't stand it. He yells out in jest: "Contest the Deceiver!" Minor Bugs that will go unfixed until a second release or until someone comes up with a fast way to alter 5 meshes at once: 1.) Units can sometimes become stuck on the fences. This only happens if you've already blown up part of the fence already (to my knowledge). My only advice is to finish the job. 2.) I kinda screwed up the water in some places, so you may see it flicker or seem to see ground sticking up out of it at times. My bad, but I don't want to bother over it now. 3.) Oddly enough, there's a small area near the arena that dwarves sometimes get stuck on. Looking at the passability it seems fine, so all's I can say is be aware. Someday there will be a Myth 3 and no one will care about the stuck dwarf. :) Room for Improvement: There are a few things I'd like to add in the future, if I do a second version. First, I'd like reinforcements on more of the meshes. There's really no barrier other than time stopping me now, but that is limited by school, alas. Second, the mesh could use some more water. Not much, but some, most likely to the mid North to North West. Also, I need to learn to cut rivers off at the edge of the map, rather than showing the faults of the engine near map edges. Someday I'll learn. Stalk Design Documentation: World Knots function on Heroic&Legendary settings (may need repair). If Reinforcements are available on a mesh, the difficulty must be set to Legendary. Triple Fireball staves available for locks on certain meshes on Legendary. Light Mesh ------------- Journeymen 3/4/6 Bowmen (flameless) 12/24/3 Dwarves 6/9/6 Thrall 30/45/1 Warriors 18/27/2 Ghols 6/18/2 Wights 3/6/3 Stampede unit: Pigs 12/15/3 Assassin unit: Deceiver 1/-/20 Simple difficulty turns off wights (They still show up in trading though, not sure if you lose the points or not). Dark Mesh ------------- Trow 3/3/24 Soulless 12/24/3 Dwarf Heroes 6/12/8 Fetch 4/6/6 Warlocks 2/6/8 Myrmidon 30/45/2 Berserks 18/27/3 Stampede unit: wolves 15/20/3 Assassin unit: Shiver 1/-/16 4 Team ------------- Trow 1/1/24 Thrall 20/30/1 Myrmidon 7/12/2 Heron Guards 5/8/3 Fetch Magi 2/2/8 Dwarven Mortars 2/4/10 Bowman Captains 4/4/5 Berserks 11/16/3 Stampede unit: brigands 12/-/2 Assassin unit: Myrk Giant 1/-/32 6 Team ------------- Dwarven Heroes 2/2/8 Fetch Magi 0/2/8 Warlocks 1/2/8 Bowmen 8/8/3 Soulless (poison) 0/8/3 Heron Guards 8/12/3 Maul 6/9/4 Stampede unit: Chickens 20/-/3 Assassin unit: Journeyman 1/-/6 7 Team ------------- Ghols 2/6/2 Wights 1/-/3 Dwarves 2/3/6 Warriors 4/8/2 Bowmen (flameless) 4/6/3 Journeymen 1/2/6 Thrall 8/16/1 No Stampede No KoTH Assassin unit: Baron 1/-/2 Stalk Credits: THIS PLUGIN IS ©1998 IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY BUNGIE SOFTWARE PRODUCTS CORPORATION. SINCE BUNGIE SOFTWARE NO LONGER EXISTS, CHANCES ARE IT'S ©2000 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE. Created by Jason Beach (Stinger) using Bungie's Fear & Loathing, Amber, Tag Extractor, Photoshop, Graphic Converter, and Fireworks. Inspiration and testing by the great guys in the Fellowship of Stoneheim.