12 players with observers (dv- asked in chat)

[normalice]

Unfortunately, a max of 16 players has been hard-coded into the game - that's 12 active players, plus one neutral passive (shops, gold mines..), one neutral hostile (creeps), one neutral victim (recoverable), and one 'extra'. Of course, I've tried turning the 'extra' into observers, with no success - all the code is as right as I can figure and works for any live player, but it does not add an extra player slot in the replay or the game. It's hard coded.

There is some slightly good news, though. Blizzard is apparently adding Warcraft III to the new battle.net platform. This suggests the possibility of them, quite specifically, working on the way custom games are hosted and implemented. I'm sure they've heard this complaint, so if it is at all convenient, we may see that in the future.

But until then, the only way to work around it is to play on 11-player maps. I've stopped making 12-player FFA maps for this reason, in fact, and only make maps for a max of 10 players.

If anyone has a specific map they'd like changed and random heroes added, just let me know. Or, if you don't want to wait on me to get around to it, you can do it yourself as outlined here: http://ffamasters.net/index.php?topic=2145.0

For kicks, I went ahead modified 12 rivers. Basically, I removed the dark green starting location and replaced the mine and creeps with trees. It's attached, if anyone is interested..