DotA Allstars 6.59 AI+ (20090227)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ntonnlyk1oc

Mini-changelog:

-Fixed a serious bug that would cause the game to crash on group creation
-Changed Lord of Avernus's model to the one introduced in 6.59
-Gave Bat Rider an air-to-air attack while flying, which should remove the bug where he would permanently gain damage upon flying down
-Removed warning message for incomplete AIs when playing Deathmatch (or new Formless Mode)

*Formless Fixes
-Formless can now learn Quill Spray, Bristleback, Warpath
-Fixed a bug with Formless not being able to reset Clockwerk's abilities

And...

-Added new single-player mode: Formless mode (-formless, -fm), which will allow the player to play as Formless and cause the AI to cycle through heroes as they die. No limitations on duplicate heroes picked by AI (except Meepo, who has been disabled). Abilities are not lost when Formless dies, this may change in future versions. -fm can be combined with non-gamemode switches (like -fr, -st, -ne, etc.).

Enjoy!

Formless Mode!

Got bored yesterday and decided to try to implement this new single-player game mode. Provided that there is one human player (and any number of AI players), Formless mode will make the human player play as Formless, and every time an AI bot dies it gets assigned a new random hero (no limitations, so any hero is fair game and heroes can show up multiple times). Every time the player dies, Formless loses all of his abilities after he revives.

Kind of a semi-dm type deal, except that Formless is a constant. With the cycling AI players, this should significantly increase the number of combos that one will experience in a single game.

Currently only in the incremental map, which I'll post later after some fine-tuning to prevent some leaks. If it's popular enough maybe I'll pop it in the release as well. =)

Was going to post it today but I found a pretty serious bug in the mode, it'll take a while to fix and I'm a bit busy today. Guess you'll all have to be patient. =P

Minor update

Still on break, not worrying about the map is treating me good. =P

Some marginal progress with the new AI, bots are currently EXTREMELY basic, having similar attack patterns to creeps, with the exception of being able to retreat to the nearest allied tower if no allied creeps are nearby (i.e. the wave is killed off), and the ability to retreat back if damaged. This will take a lot of working on before it's anywhere near presentable. =P

As for the AI+ map, made some of those graphical fixes that Overflow pointed out, but I don't anticipate releasing anything until 6.60 at the earliest. I kind of want to put Old Storm Spirit and Old Undying (6.57b) and maybe -er into the map, but we'll see how busy/lazy I am.

And Happy Valentine's Day, for those of you who celebrate it. My girl doesn't read this blog but she should know that she's been one of the biggest blessings of my life. =)