WarCraft
3 CounterStrike Plugin - Newbie Guide
By [SEMNI]-LobsterMaster
"Omg, why that fella's
hp is 1000?!"; "Why can't I kill him? I aimed at his head and
emptied a whole clip?!"; "What is that lightning thing that
struck me!?"; "I can't move, that spiral thingy got me?!?!"
Aint we all heard these
in-game? LOL. I myself belted out a couple of these too when I first
experienced the WC3 CS plugin. Fascinated, curious plus constant nagging
from BornAgainst =P led me to write this WC3 CS Plugin Newbie Guide. I do not profess to be a good WC3 CS
player, but hopefully this newbie guide will help someone become one.
Sections in this guide are:
WarCraft III - Reign of Terror
WC3 CS – Key Bindings, Alias &
Scripting
WarCraft
III - Reign of Terror
For the benefit of some, WarCraft III is a single or
multi-players Real Time Strategy (RTS) game published by Blizzard
Entertainment. In missions (SP or MP), players choose 1 race of 4 races,
namely the Humans, the Orcs, the Night Elves and the Undead to play. They
compete with each other (or with the computer in SP) harvesting gold and lumber
to build towns and different kinds of buildings (town hall, lumber mills and
etc), do research to upgrade skills and weapons, train armies, spawn
"Heroes" and etc. Heroes of each race have their own unique
skills and abilities. Heroes will lead their armies to fight against
other heroes (of other players or the computer) and creeps of the land. Heroes can "level up"
after gaining enough experiences (XP) through these fights, making them
stronger. Heroes can pickup items like "Tome of Experience",
"Boots of Speed", "Claws of Attack", "Cloak of
Shadows" and etc. These items give Heroes ability to cast offensive
and defensive spells, heal units, utilize special abilities or gain bonuses to
specific statistics.
So What Is WC3 CS?
WC3 CS plugin is an AMX plugin
for Counter-Strike written by SpaceDude.
The Dude got bored playing CS at the time of the release of CS 1.4,
which also coincides with the breakup of his CS clan. He was introduced to WarCraft III by mates and that kept him
happy for a few months. With his
flair in C++ programming and the challenge of writing a plugin for CS led to
the birth of WC3 CS plugin – a “WarCraft III and CounterStrike” CounterStrike
game (What a mouthful LOL). See
below for some of the WC3 CS in-game screen shots from SpaceDude’s website,
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WC3 CS – Game-Play Basics
At the start of the game you are given a choice of 4 different races. Each race has 3 basic skills to choose from as well as an ultimate skill. To gain access to these skills you must get experience (XP) by killing enemy players and completing objectives (such as planting/defusing the bomb, rescuing hostages/preventing rescue). When you have sufficient XP to gain a level, you will be able to select a new skill at the end of the round or when you die. Your XP is usually displayed somewhere near the left-hand bottom of your screen while you play. It tells you how much XP you have at the current level and also gives you an idea of how much XP you will need before you can level up. The basic and ultimate skills of the 4 races are,
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Gives you (15%, 30% or 45%) of
the damage you do in attack back as health, i.e. If you shoot someone and do
100 hp damage, you will get back either 15, 30 or 45 hp back depending on the
skill level. |
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Gives you a speed boost, also all weapons make you go at the same speed i.e. Running with knife will not make you move faster than running with AWP. |
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Allows you to jump higher, basically reduces your gravity to reach high places you wouldn't normally be able to reach |
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Player will explode when he dies, killing enemies around him |
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You become partially invisible |
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Gives you more heatlh at the
start of each round (115, 130, 145) |
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When you shoot someone you
have a (15%, 30% or 45%) chance of rendering them immobile for 1 second. (Their max speed is set to 0 for a
second) |
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Ability to teleport to team
mates (10 second cool-down time) |
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Gives you a 15% chance of
doing (2, 3, or 4) times normal damage on each shot |
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Will ALWAYS do (2, 4 or 6)
times normal damage when you hit someone with a grenade. |
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Gives you a (33%, 67% or 100%)
chance in re-spawning with the equipment you had before you died last round. |
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Ability to cast lightning
jumping from player to player harming them, damage decreases by 2/3 each
jump. |
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Gives you a (10%, 20% or 30%)
chance of evading a shot, i.e. you will not lose any health over it but it
will still seem as though you where hit. |
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Does (10%, 20% or 30%) mirror damage
to the person who shot you. |
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Does (15%, 30% or 45%) extra
damage on each of your bullets. |
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Immobilizes enemy for 10
seconds. |
You will notice some players glow in different colours. Colours explained:
Red:
Extra damage done to the player who glows (Critical Strike/Grenade or
Thorns/Trueshot Aura)
White: This is when you get bashed, player
glowing can't move for 1 second
Green: You will glow green if you have vampiric
aura and do damage to another player.
You will also glow green at the start of the round if you have Weapon
Reincarnation.
Blue: You glow blue when you evade a shot with
the Night Elf Evade ability.
WC3 CS – Magical Items
Similar to the WarCraft III game, WC3 CS allows players to shop (not pickup as in WarCraft III) for magical items. The Items Shop works in the same way as buying weapons and equipment, except you can buy anywhere in the map. However, you can hold only 1 magical item at a time, with the exception of the “Tome of Experience”. You can buy as many as these as you want without losing your current item. If you buy an item while already holding another, your previous item will be lost. Another thing to note is say, if you have $1600 and you spent $800 for a “Cloak of Shadows” before you buy a CS weapon, you will not have sufficient fund to afford a MP5 even though it still shows $1600 in your bank. This can either be a bug or in each round you can buy CS weapons and equipment and shop for magical items as long as you can afford within that round. Buying magical items does not have an impact on your bank “literally”. I would love to think that the latter reason is true, don’t you? LOL.
In order to buy items you must bind a key to "shopmenu" for example, type “bind i shopmenu” in console without the “”. Brief descriptions of each available item are,
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If you die you will retrieve your equipment the following round |
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Allows you to run faster |
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An additional 6 hp will be removed from the enemy on every hit |
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Makes you partially invisible, invisibility is increased when holding the knife |
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You will receive health for every hit on the enemy |
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You will be immune enemy ultimates |
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Slows your enemy down when you hit him |
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Receive extra health |
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Automatically gain experience, the item is used on purchase |
Boots of Speed
Claws of Attack +6
Cloak of Shadows
Mask of Death
Necklace of Immunity
Orb of Frost
Periapt of Health
Tome of Experience
WC3 CS – In-Game Commands
There are a few commands you will need to know in order take full advantage of the plugin. I have listed the relevant Client’s command below. You can also find these commands in-game by typing /war3help.
"say /changerace" - Allows
you to change race during the game if server’s "mp_allowchangerace"
is "1"
"say /selectskill" - Allows
you to select skills before the start of the next round
"say /playerskills" - Shows you
what skills other players have chosen
"say /skillsinfo" - Shows you
what each skill does for the race you have selected
"say /itemsinfo" - Shows you
a list of items and what they do
"say /level" - Displays
level, race and skill information
"say /war3help" - Displays
info about the plugin
WC3 CS – Stored XP
XP should be stored if the server is set to "mp_savexp
1". XP is saved for each race
independently, this means that you can play as one race and then switch to
another race starting from 0 XP.
When you switch back to your previous race, you will regain the XP you
had for that race. However, XP is
not stored forever though. Once
per day the server’s war3users.ini is updated removing any inactive
entries. This means if you don't
connect to the server for a certain number of days you will be removed and your
stored XP lost. There are two
server cvars for this:
"sv_daysbeforedelete"
(default 1)
"sv_dayslevelmodifier"
(default 3)
With the above cvars and a
pre-defined formula, SpaceDude illustrate how this works with the default
values (1 and 3):
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Race Level |
Days |
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0 |
1 |
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1 |
1 |
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2 |
1 |
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3 |
2 |
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4 |
2 |
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5 |
2 |
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6 |
3 |
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7 |
3 |
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8 |
3 |
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9 |
4 |
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10 |
4 |
This prevents the war3users.ini
file from getting too big, while allowing higher level players to keep their XP
for longer period.
WC3 CS – Key Bindings, Alias
& Scripting
Other than the bind for
“shopmenu” mentioned earlier, you will need another key binding to use the
“ultimate” skills. SpaceDude
suggested binding the SHIFT key to ultimate, ie bind SHIFT “ultimate” in
console. The problem with this is
players usually use the SHIFT key as “walk” in the regular CS game. Binding the SHIFT key to “ultimate”
will cancel the command for walk, thus rendering you with no “walk” key. You will have to find another key to
bind for walking. With “alias”,
you can walk and execute “ultimate” at almost the same time, hence providing a
workaround. Let me show you how in
the following steps,
- Open Notepad or any ASCII text editor and type in the
following
//Bind
Shift Key to WC3 Ultimate skills and Walk
alias
+ulti "+walk; ultimate"
alias
-ulti "-walk"
bind
SHIFT "+ulti"
- Save the file as “MyWC3.cfg” in your “cstrike” folder
- Open or Create an “autoexec.cfg” file with Notepad or any
ASCII text editor in your “valve” folder and type in the following
exec MyWC3.cfg
A foolproof way will be just
copying and pasting the above (in yellow) instead of typing it to avoid typo
error. Every time you run CS, the
“autoexec.cfg” will auto execute “MyWC3.cfg” which contains the required
binding. If you have problem
understanding this, you may need help in CS Scripting. The respected CS-Nation provided a
tutorial on CS Scripting if you need coaching.
WC3 CS – Last But No Least…
I am not going to dedicate a
section of this guide of WC3 CS individual strategies. Why not? ‘Cos I’m currently a noob in WC3 CS? Well…yes and no. Most importantly I don’t want to start
a debate on this. If you need to
indulge yourself, please make constructive use of the Sabaki Forum.
Every race, skills and magical
items have its own strength and weakness.
Ultimately it is up to the “nut” behind the mouse and keyboard. An already good CS player will gain XP
and level up much faster than a mediocre CS player. If you are a mediocre CS player, don’t be disheartened. It just means you rise up the ladder
slower, but you will still get there someday. Just like using an AK or Colt, you will need to learn to use
these WC3 CS skills and items effectively. Some player will do well in some skills and not in
others. Understanding the different
race-skill-item and CS weapons combo is important. Obviously if you don’t like and not good in throwing nades,
having Orc’s “Critical Grenade” skill will be useless to you. If you don’t like rushing, Undead’s
“Suicide Bomber” ultimate skill will be less effective. There can be so many combo set for you
to ponder on. Here’s an example of
relatively good combo set to get you into your thinking hat,
You are good at sniping.
You are race Human with high
invisibility skill (almost invisible)
You hide around in some dark
corner and start sniping.
Opponents will most likely not
know where you are sniping from till they die LOL.
That’s all folks and hope you’ve
enjoyed reading it.
Always fragging joo,
Lobbie
Useful Links
1. On SpaceDude and his WC3 CS Plugin
SpaceDude
Interview by LorDard
2. On Metamod, AMX and Small
3. On CS Scripting
4. Gamers Underground Forum
5. GU – Sabaki
6. Semnibytes
7. On WarCraft III by Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment - WarCraft III
Disclaimer
Many of the resources mentioned
above are not of my own creations.
Credits belong to the original creators listed in the “Useful Links”
section. These respectable
creators are accredited and recognized for their time and effort in making CS
and WC3 CS fantastic. I have
merely collected, compiled and added some of my own comments in this
Guide. Views and opinions
expressed here are those of mine and do not reflect those of Sabaki and
Semnibytes. You are free to use
part or whole of this Guide only if you acknowledge the credits of the creators
and for some part, me. However,
you may need to seek written permission from the creators before using
them. Put it simply, whatever you
do is none of my business whatsoever and you are responsible for your own
actions.