23rd August 2010, 11:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 24th August 2010, 2:04 AM by A Black Falcon.)
Um, DJ, TD maps date back to Starcraft, not Warcraft III... to SC user maps, not Blizzard efforts from years later.
I'd be pretty interested to know what the first TD map was, but I don't know it, and neither does Wikipedia, evidently. But it was definitely a map for Starcraft, and Blizzard definitely had nothing to do with it. Looking on my hard drive (SC maps folder) the oldest one I can find is from October 2001, but I'm sure the genre is older than that.
Starcraft, pre-WC3 TD maps were seriously hardcore, if you never played them (as it seems you didn't, if you didn't know they even existed). They generally were called "Turret Defense" or "Lurker Defense"; the latter type, as you would expect, put you in control of lurkers, which you would then arrange under the ground in patterns that would hopefully kill the enemies without killing your allies with the spikes. Turret Defense used, well, turrets, against aerial enemies. "Bunker Defense" was probably the other major type. Later on more types emerged, getting more and more complex, but I think those were the major earlier ones. The golem ones were pretty complicated, you could make different types of defensive units by combining things or something... there are a bunch of kinds of SC TD.
Most pre-WC3 TD maps had two things in common, though -- first, they were almost always co-op, so that everyone had to work as a team or they would all fail, and second, you only got one life. If even one enemy got through, you failed, game over. As a result, TD maps were extremely, extremely difficult, and you almost never finished them. The first TD maps I can remember playing with lives were in WC3. I think some post-WC3 SC TD maps did adopt lives, but one life you fail was still common. WC3 TD maps are still often hard, but the versus ones always have a winner, and even the co-op ones are often not as hard as SC maps -- for one thing, you can leak some without losing in almost all WC3 TD maps.
Early WC3 TD maps weren't so great, it took a little while for the genre to figure out what to do with the new map editor... Arkguil's TD wasn't exactly the best (not terrible, but not the best). Finally WC3 TD was figured out though, and WC3 TD maps definitely surpassed SC ones. WC3 TD has an amazing amount of variety, from standard co-op to two or more teams of players facing off to maps where each player faces enemies alone to similar ones but where the players are the ones who send enemies to the next person over, as opposed to just having pre-determined enemy lists coming at you. My personal favorite WC3 TD comes from that last type, and is called Line Tower Wars. I have several dozen versions of that map. :D But it didn't start there, it started with SC. :)
As TD has become more popular in the last few years the multiplayer focus and difficulty of TD maps have both faded significantly. Now most TD games are single player, which completely goes against one of the major points of the Defense genre of maps, which was to force people to work together to accomplish something which they could not do on their own. Single-player TD really loses something. It's still fun, yes... but it's not quite the same.
One other type of map that I remember liking in SC, but mostly seemed to disappear in WC3, were "beacon strategy" maps, as I called them. They generally involved a huge map with many factions, full of units and armies already. Instead of getting money from mining resources, though, you got money by holding control points, wargame-style. You'd then get money periodically for the points you held. Many of these were "WWII" based, such as Axis & Allies. The Diplomacy and Risk maps are variants of this; I remember some WC3 Risk maps, but not much at all of the rest of the stuff, unfortunately. It's really too bad, these were interesting, strategically challenging maps with good depth. I used to love them, in SC.
I'd be pretty interested to know what the first TD map was, but I don't know it, and neither does Wikipedia, evidently. But it was definitely a map for Starcraft, and Blizzard definitely had nothing to do with it. Looking on my hard drive (SC maps folder) the oldest one I can find is from October 2001, but I'm sure the genre is older than that.
Starcraft, pre-WC3 TD maps were seriously hardcore, if you never played them (as it seems you didn't, if you didn't know they even existed). They generally were called "Turret Defense" or "Lurker Defense"; the latter type, as you would expect, put you in control of lurkers, which you would then arrange under the ground in patterns that would hopefully kill the enemies without killing your allies with the spikes. Turret Defense used, well, turrets, against aerial enemies. "Bunker Defense" was probably the other major type. Later on more types emerged, getting more and more complex, but I think those were the major earlier ones. The golem ones were pretty complicated, you could make different types of defensive units by combining things or something... there are a bunch of kinds of SC TD.
Most pre-WC3 TD maps had two things in common, though -- first, they were almost always co-op, so that everyone had to work as a team or they would all fail, and second, you only got one life. If even one enemy got through, you failed, game over. As a result, TD maps were extremely, extremely difficult, and you almost never finished them. The first TD maps I can remember playing with lives were in WC3. I think some post-WC3 SC TD maps did adopt lives, but one life you fail was still common. WC3 TD maps are still often hard, but the versus ones always have a winner, and even the co-op ones are often not as hard as SC maps -- for one thing, you can leak some without losing in almost all WC3 TD maps.
Early WC3 TD maps weren't so great, it took a little while for the genre to figure out what to do with the new map editor... Arkguil's TD wasn't exactly the best (not terrible, but not the best). Finally WC3 TD was figured out though, and WC3 TD maps definitely surpassed SC ones. WC3 TD has an amazing amount of variety, from standard co-op to two or more teams of players facing off to maps where each player faces enemies alone to similar ones but where the players are the ones who send enemies to the next person over, as opposed to just having pre-determined enemy lists coming at you. My personal favorite WC3 TD comes from that last type, and is called Line Tower Wars. I have several dozen versions of that map. :D But it didn't start there, it started with SC. :)
As TD has become more popular in the last few years the multiplayer focus and difficulty of TD maps have both faded significantly. Now most TD games are single player, which completely goes against one of the major points of the Defense genre of maps, which was to force people to work together to accomplish something which they could not do on their own. Single-player TD really loses something. It's still fun, yes... but it's not quite the same.
One other type of map that I remember liking in SC, but mostly seemed to disappear in WC3, were "beacon strategy" maps, as I called them. They generally involved a huge map with many factions, full of units and armies already. Instead of getting money from mining resources, though, you got money by holding control points, wargame-style. You'd then get money periodically for the points you held. Many of these were "WWII" based, such as Axis & Allies. The Diplomacy and Risk maps are variants of this; I remember some WC3 Risk maps, but not much at all of the rest of the stuff, unfortunately. It's really too bad, these were interesting, strategically challenging maps with good depth. I used to love them, in SC.
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