2042 development thread

[IskatuMesk]

Theme of Fire (in general).

Ironically, POST 666 (again)

[Zilla-]

Where have I heard that before? Anyway, I don't know what you are doing with fire but from my gut feeling I don't know how well it will work. It seems too "light".

[Anonymous]

It's an arranged Star Wolf theme from Starfox: Assault. I have the entire soundtrack/gamerip.

With the fire theme I aimed for a sense of everlasting.

edit -

Okay, thanks to someone called RosenMcStern, I now know -

- Adding tiles to tilesets is impossible. I can, however, replace tiles.
- Changing alignment values is not going to happen.
- Changing town distances is hardcoded.

So, my new goal is -

- Modify Wastelands tileset to become Hellfire tileset.
- Add more units for Dread Legion.
- Figure out how exactly attack and defense works, so I can make epic units a bit more manageable (in some footage I just dropped for the video, a Pit Lord killed a Devilwing Drake and two large ranged armies without much effort. Granted, Pit Lords are level 8 but Porch Monkies should be a viable counter for them without 1shotting everything else).
- Add in a slew of new heroes. I currently have a post pending on the AoW2 about the viability of upper-level hero recruitment.
- Add more music to the soundtrack and finalize it.
- Continue customizing the game's UI SFX. Currently I have customized the battle start, win, loss and game win/loss sounds.
- Voice act Lord Dread, Horus, Anubis, Doom, and Isador.

I should have many of these done in a few days. However, the Guild Wars GWEN preview is out and I intend to farm as much gold as humanly possible.

[Grandma]

What program do you use to compose your music? They're pretty damn good.

[IskatuMesk]

I never composed those. I'm retired from composing. When I did used to compose music, I used Cakewalk 2002 and Gigastudio.

[Grandma]

I never composed those. I'm retired from composing. When I did used to compose music, I used Cakewalk 2002 and Gigastudio.

Ahh okay, I guess I'll check 'em out.

[IskatuMesk]

Make note that gigastudio requires hardware GSIF support.

[WB]

Ahhh, cakewalk. I should mess with that program again.

[IskatuMesk]

Alright. The GWEN preview has drawn to a close.

I am preparing my GWEN video for rendering tonight, then I'll process and hopefully be able to render my LoL:2042 video tomorrow. The 2042 video will be long if I decide to render the whole thing, but keep in mind the 1-2 hours of footage I give you will be all you've got to go by for the next month, so appreciate that I went through all the effort of recording and processing it for you.

Mod updates since the last post -

- Minor balancing changes. I can't recall if my nerfs to the Pit Lord actually made it in yet. (In my video you'll note my comments about the Pit Lord)
- I discovered that I had, in fact, overlooked a detail in the editor. It doesn't display values past 19 through thumbnails in ILB files, but it CAN still read them and see them by using the entry counter. So, I discovered that I had over a thousand portraits for heroes and wizards in my resources. With that, I added a whole fuckload of new heroes and am still adding new ones, even to races that aren't workable yet. Most of them lack custom graphics, though. It will remain that way until Kirky releases new stuff.
- Figured out what I want to do with some spells.

I am going to organize the spheres to a new system.

Life = Holy Pie (Light)
Earth = Deep Earth
Water = Water
Air = Energy (As in, electrical)
Fire = Destruction
Death = Darkness/Evil (Doom)

Now, some of these are different, some are not. Allow me to explain.

Holy Magic

Holy Magic contains some of the few summoning spells, as well as most things healing and good-related. It is centralized on the Loladin powers and is available only to races of very pure nature.

Deep Earth

Earth as you know it is now a bit different. It's now the element of the Underworld, and rather, the element of controlling physical energy, such as... earth. It is used mostly by neutral or evil factions.

Water

Water is generally associated with positive energy, and is often associated with healing, mending, and sometimes force. Only good-natured races and a few very unique wizards of other races will have access to it. Water has access to the majority of summons.

Energy

Energy is a purely offensive element. It grants powerful buffs, such as haste, and has some very strong offensive spells, like thunderstorms. Mostly neutral and evil wizards specialize in it.

Destruction

Destruction is the art of destruction, to destroy and let be destroyed. It is the element of fire and chaos, the element that fuels greed and despair. Destruction is the first of two spheres that allow a user to manipulate the populace of enemy cities, an act forbidden by the code of Loladins to prevent people from turning into politicians or lawyers. Destruction is very popular among the renegade and uncontrolled wizards of Evil forces as it allows them to inspire fear and bring down otherwise unstoppable armies.

Darkness

Now, since there are so many evil forces, each with a different origin, I cannot have Darkness specialize on any given canon source of evil energy. Instead, I am going to base it on the powers of the Void, a very generalized evil power. Void has rounded capabilities, similar to light, but generally lacks in any ability to heal or mend wounds. Very powerful darkness-based wizards can even summon units.


Spells that alter landscapes, such as Darklands, will require a minimum of 4 spell level.

Spells that summon units, even the most basic of units, will require a minimum of 4 spell level.

Masteries will of course require max spell level if for some reason they currently do not. They will also be a lot more costly then what they are now.

Some offensive spells will be altered, and some will receive buffs. As far as enchantments go, their cost will be increased, and some effects, especially those relating to defense values, altered.

-If it is possible, some heroes will have some powerful spells such as Fireball.
- Additionally, there are now Legendary-type heroes who are very powerful, but due to the massively increased number of heroes, are very rare. There will also be mid-range heroes as well. Each hero has a rich backstory and history relating to their origins and who they have worked with.

[Anonymous]

Updates so far today -

- Made the Isadorians and the Loladins functional with a few base units.
- Added roughly 10 new heroes and wizards, including a Loladin wizard.
- Fixed some of the existing graphics to include sounds.
- Discovered that Spellcasting can't be used on normal units, defeating my Devilwing Worldeater and many Loladin unit ideas. I am forced to make the Worldeater a glorified flying pit lord in terms of abilities, now, and not sure what to do with Loladins.
- Discovered that Anarchist on neutral heroes = an extremely bad idea. As Lord Dread, my own wizard and racial units suddenly decided to rebel.
- Played an EXTREMELY hilarious game where I had my hero and some units in front of an Emperor computer's main base guarded by 3 defilers, an impossible enemy. He declared war on me, then sent away two of his defilers. I attacked, and killed the one defiler plus his wizard, defeating him.

I then discovered he had a slew of super powerful armies and towns scattered around his main that could have killed me in an instant. Additionally, all of the units/towns could be diplomasized. Marcus, a Baelificus computer I was at peace with, suddenly showed up and starting buying them. Out of the blue, one of the emperor's hero parties, now independent, showed up and shot all of Marcus' dudes, then somehow made it way across most of the map and killed his wizard, defeating Marcus.

Yeah, I know the screenshot got mangled by paint.

It says I defeated 3 units because Defilers can summon Grubs.

[Anonymous]

PRE-ALPHA INSTALLATION INFORMATION
Very important files go into the right place

For internal testers, follow these instructions carefully. I will be giving you the files in person very soon.

Core File Installation

----------
Dict.rar  IGNORE THIS STEP FOR NOW SINCE THE DICT FILES ACTUALLY DON'T DO ANYTHING (damnit)

Backup your dict folder in the aow base directory. Place this folder there to replace the spot of the old one.

----------
Portraits.rar

Unrar this to your Portraits directory. It should create a Requiem folder, and spawn a bunch of ilb files inside the base. Don't move any of those ilbs files around. If you already have some of the ilb files, ie if you installed previous mods, you shouldn't need to replace them, which is why I left them in their base directory to have cross-compatibility in some cases.

-----------
Units.rar

Place these folders into the Units directory,

F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\Images\Units

This should generate two folders in that directory, R and NA2. They should be significantly large when decompressed.

---------
The mod data, Requiem of the White Dream.rar, should be extracted to make the same-name folder at

F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\User\Resources

-------
SFX.rar contains two folders. First off, go to

F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\SFX

And backup "Events" folder.

Then place the two folders from the rar into that directory, being Events and RequiemSound.

Optional Install

The music, Songs.rar, contains a folder called Songs. Go into the base directory and backup the Songs folder, then place mine in the base directory.

Congratulations.

Go into the AoW setup program and select Requiem of the White Dream, which is the fancy codename for my project.

edit -

There will be installation instructions for Portraits as well, which I'll get into tomorrow.


- Edit

Updates this far today -

- Figured out how to do some basic recolors with SOME ilb graphics since the program doesn't open 60% of them. Thus, new whelps and stuff.
- Added some more heroes.
- Added some new units.
- Fixed some custom wizard portraits not displaying correctly.
- Added custom names for races. I haven't tested them yet, but I plan to momentarily. (Edit - ... They don't work.)
- Added even more sounds.
- Hopefully encouraged computers to tech faster.

[IskatuMesk]

New post for internal testers and people curious. This will cover all of the considerable changes I have made so far from the original game.

- Several new races are functional. They all have new units. I would just ignore the units I haven't touched yet since they aren't balanced out (and are probably too weak). Most have some new heroes, and most have fully converted wizards and new wizards. READ THE DESCRIPTION OF EACH WIZARD CAREFULLY TO KNOW WHICH RACE THEY ARE A PART OF SINCE THE DICT CHANGES DID NOT WORK.

Most complete new races -

- Baelificus (Undead) (Has most of their units, by far the most complete race)
- Devilwing (Dark Elves) (Has a lot of their units)
- Deep Hive (shadowdemons) (Has units up to level 6)
- Confederacy (Goblins) (Has units up to level 5, probably overpowered atm)

Playable races (But only 1/4 or 1/2 way complete and don't possess upper-level units).

- Beastmasters (Nomads) (Flushed out lower-levels)
- Loladins (Archons) (Fairly playable, they have a level 4, and may end up getting the extremely powerful elven legendary hero)
- Bloodstone Guard (Draconians) (Strong mid-range)
- Dread Legion (frostlings) (Has a level 5)

Unit specifics

- More expensive they are, higher tier they are. ~1k is typically ~tier 6-7. 2k is typically tier8. Make note that higher tier doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Pay very, very close attention to the attributes.
- You should be able to tell stronger heroes by their HP values. 30 is the normal. 20 means the hero isn't finished yet. 35+ means it's a powerful hero. 40+ means it's a heroic hero. ~50ish means it's legendary.
- Not all heroes are done.
- Most ranged attacks are stronger. Not all are changed yet, however.
- Units generally have less defense. Any unit with a defense higher than 18 is not finished. If somehow the Pit Lord still has 20 defense, we are fucked.
- The Worldeater has 100hp. I ran across a warning in the editor that hp values of 100 on creatures may cause problems with life stealing. If we somehow encounter some kind of a crash or error (I haven't actually had aow2 crash on me yet), and Worldeaters are involved, we know why. Otherwise, if units somehow gain a million life when they hit him, we also know why.
- Some units are fast, some units are slow. Not everything is balanced. Feel free to make suggestions, but remember that every unit DOES have a purpose.
- Some unit costs may be too high. Make suggestions.
- Be wary of resistances.

Town specifics

- Many buildings now provide a mana or gold bonus. This isn't readily apparent. It's to encourage comps to tech faster, but also benefits players.
- Tower Guards are now much, much stronger and building one asap is highly recommended.
- Some towns grow very fast, or faster than normal. Not all towns have been modified yet. These changes are intentional and a part of the racial balancing system. (Confeds and Deep Hive grow very fast).
- Devilwing towns produce research points.
- Some other tower upgrades give mana or gold bonuses. I forget which. I think teleportation gates is one of them.

AI specifics

- I cannot modify alignments, so unfortunately, Lord Dread declaring war on the Underworld will happen a LOT.
- Ai builds units based on hardcoded algorithms. I cannot modify the AI in any shape or form. They tend to spam units according to their attributes and cost. Thus, my modifications to the Pioneers (including fake attack stats) were to both give them a defense (archery) and encourage comps to build them. Comps build towns, but they also will often attack you with them. Regulating this is almost impossible.
- AI will declare war and make peace unpredictably. I urge you not to abuse this until I figure out which of them to make anarchist. Note making neutral wizards anarchist has given me some WEIRD problems (like my own wizard rebelling on me).
- It is impossible to make them more aggressive. I hope they are enough of a challenge for 3-4 of us. We'll be playing on maximum difficulty.

Map settings

- I recommend playing on XL large with underground and shadowlands, with racial limitations, many gold/heroes/towns/treasure, no independents, no misc structures (until I change them), and so on.

Spells

- I plan to greatly increase the research cost of skills but haven't gotten around to it.
- I have partly adapted some spells to my aforementioned system, but not all of them. Thus, some spells have been buffed, and some have not. Make any suggestions you may have.

Misc changes/notes

- Make sure your custom music list is properly set up. It should adopt the playlist settings in the folder but I am not 100% sure on that.
- Most units don't have sounds done yet. Some I don't have sounds for yet.
- Making custom particle effects is impossible.

[Anonymous]

Upcoming changes so far -


- Jacking up the cost of enchantments to whatever I can.
- Changing sphere requirements for enchantments, so it's not easily possible to stack 5 of them on a hero and make it god-like.
- Reduce cost for some Baelificus units (probably Souldrinkers, which are currently around 320, to like 280, and Balrogs down to about 700).
- Pester HKS to figure out max to render graphics
- Add Legendary-type heroes to Baelificus, Confeds, and Devilwing, as well as some of the neutral factions.
- Make the life-sphere ressurect hero require a spec of 5 (I am pretty sure the death sphere variant is already 5... and it can only ressurect one hero, which is random)
- Hopefully think of more Loladin units, although this vastly depends on graphics.
- Make Defilers a bit cheaper (Probably down to 600 cost)
- Global cost reduction of upper-level units

EDIT

- Greatly reduced cost of upper-level units (Pit lords down to about 1400 from 2000, Balrogs down to 660 from 800, ect.), this should make them a bit more accessible, and a bit more balanced as the defense value nerfes limits the "godliness" of these units. I'll still be carefully watching how these units compare to lower-level units and adjust their cost accordingly.
- Fixed a few heroes that had adnormal stats or abilities they shouldn't have had.
- Reduced the cost for a lot of Baelificus units and a few Deep Hive units that should improve their overall ability to adapt and play. I encountered some pretty severe limitations despite having a strong economy in my game vs ricky, who was using mostly only 3 heroes to fend off just about everything I could throw at him including a Balrog. In that situation I should have been able to acquire more than a few units in such a long time.
- I plan to greatly increase the cost of Ressurect Hero and may make it a bit more available (to other spheres) in general, especially since Legendary heroes will be rare and valuable and keeping them in the game should be an option, although a very costly one. It will however require a minimum of 5 spec in a sphere. (Edit - It is now available as a 5-spec for either Water, Earth, or Life. It costs a LOT of mana to use.)
- Fury now requires a sphere level of 3 and has 12 upkeep and costs 260 research.
- Same with Haste^
- Same with Enchant Weapon^
- Same with Dark Gift^
- Same with Stone Skin^
- Same with Fire Halo^
- Same with Static Shield^
- Same with Unholy/Holy Champion^

"Why the huge nerfs to enchants?"

Four reasons.

- Heroes were not balanced with the idea that you could use buffs to get around low-damage high-attack values (Jaheira, Syrius, ect) to achieve a cap-level of both stats and therefore abuse double attack on a level 1-5 hero and utterly DESTROY units. I mean 1k-2k cost units being rendered virtually useless.
- Comps don't use enchants (in some rare instances they do but nothing to the extent that ricky does, for example)
- Getting rid of enchants on an enchanted unit is virtually impossible, making a small oversight in your general gameplan an easily game-deciding mistake whereas gameplay should be more focused on overall tactical and strategical approach.
- Heroes not having Legendary or Heroic status 1shotting level 3 units is just absurd.

So, with cosmos you can still get a few nice buffs, but not 5-6 without trading between allies. Also, mana has a bit more of a use, since I know that everyone ends up with a gigantic overflow of mana especially with my changes to towns.

- I plan to greatly increase the research requirements for Wizard Skills for the following reasons

* As a race who is supposed to be physically/mentally inept (Confeds) I can easily acquire all of the skills before a 100 day mark while having most if not all of the spells available to my spheres. Only Devilwing and one or two other races should be exceptionally adept in researching.
* Comps don't research much in the way of skills.
* This will promote a more tactically-sound way of thinking than just waiting a few turns for whatever skill to be researched.
* Town attributes will become extremely important. Acquiring the specialized research races will greatly effect your strategy and researches.


EDIT II

- Added Captain William (From the ITAS novel) as a Legendary Confederate hero.
- Added several new heroes and wizards - including Sir Lol.

And some other stuff. I'll see what else there is after we finish our games.

[IskatuMesk]

We're making some progress on the graphics front... the only problem is that we have no idea how ilb's work and how to get these frames into the game currently. I am querying the AoW community but have yet to get a response about it.

[IskatuMesk]

Upcoming additions/plans -

- More units for Dread Legion and Bloostone Guard (Isadorian).
- Additional units and some unique graphics for Devilwing
- Additional graphics in general, including some new Baelificus heroes
- New race - Corruption, replacing dwarves (Using graphics such as that drake above), specced in air and water.

Amon the Corruptor is a powerful God that originally was brought into existence by a story for the Eternity wc3 campaign that has since been shot down by sc2's announcement. As far as the story goes, Amon was in deep dormancy and created by a rogue power surge in the space-time barriers of the Land of Loss. For years his energy defiled the world and gradually began to decay everything, and turned minds wild. Amon inadvertly created the Deep Hive in his sleep, while he was still becoming whole. When he first appeared, he devastated an army of hundreds of thousands of demons with his mere gaze, turning men to fluttering ashes in the wind. He rose dragons from the stones of the earth, and created the two races Corruption and Taint, who will be merged into merely Corruption in this mod, but will sport aspects of both races (Corruption = Blue, Taint = Red)

Corruption units are very strong but painfully slow. Virtually all of them possess strong physical and/or magical resistance. They are expensive. Like Devilwing are for evil, Corruption is the neutral-aligned research-heavy race. They will have small numbers so they will rely heavily on spellpower to reinforce their numbers. By specializing heavily in Energy and Water, they command strong disables and support skills.

Unlike Devilwing, not all Corruption units will be flyers. It'll be more like half and half.

- New Race - Minotaurs, replacing Orcs

Minotaurs are an Underworld race under command by Mal`Gammagan. They are heavily melee and buff oriented, with strong focus in Earth magic. If you need up-front melee damage, there is little superior to the Minotaurs. Unfortunately, this can make them limited in options against races such as Devilwing, forcing players to be creative in both matchups (double gravity comes to mind).

Minotaur units are decently costly but not as much so as the "uber" races. You will find a fair amount of usability in their low-level units, especially veterans who will gain strong buffs with experience.

- Some long-awaited heroes (such as Bill the Emu, a Baelificus hero that steals pies)
- Hopefully working strings. Here's to hoping for my next changes to work.

I should hopefully have some new ilbs tomorrow. We're going to run our first test with that drake tomorrow. If it works, following graphics should be really easy.