2042 development thread

[Anonymous]

This thread is for a few individuals, such as Ricky and DoW, to keep track of my progress on my Loladins of Legend: 2042 Age of Wonders 2 modification.

If you have aow2, you may be interested in this mod when it's playable.

I am treating this as a side project when I am bored (which is pretty often). I started it a while ago, then it eventually fell off the radar with sc2's release (edit - RELEASE? lerl) and other such things.

Getting graphics for the mod is a very difficult manner. There is only one person in the entire aow2 community who is fluent in converting graphics from games such as WoW to the ILB (similar to grp) format aow2 uses. The process in which this requires is extensive and time-consuming, and it doesn't help the guy is virtually impossible to get a hold of and isn't really active. I did manage to get him to make me an Isador graphic, but that was a while ago; I'm trying to get a hold of him for more graphics.

AoW2 has 15 races. The aim of this conversion is to convert every race to a new race of the 2042 story or other parts of my generally unknown universes that haven't been shown to anyone yet, introduce a plethora of new heroes and wizards, and just generally have fun. Thus, not all of these races are native to LoL, producing a hilarious mishmash of inanity.

Some of the atmosphere is serious, and some is humor-oriented. It somewhat depends on what race you are playing. All of it is fairly light-hearted in the end, though.

Currently, the playable races/conversions are...

Nomads -> Beastmasters (ie Rexxar)
Dark Elves -> Devilwing Dragonflight
Halflings -> Humans (Knight's Guild)
Undead -> Baelificus (Underworld Demons)
Orcs -> Orcs (Underworld Legions)
Shadow Demons -> Deep Hive
Goblins -> Confederacy Mining Operators (MFTG)

Non-playable races I know will eventually be converted...

Archons -> Loladins (and the Ascendants)
Dwarves -> Minotaurs
Elves -> Elven Nation (from a story I never fleshed out past conceptual stages, half-way worked into the LoL universe)
Draconians -> Isadorian Demons/Bloodstone Guard

Races I haven't figured out yet,

Default Humans
Frostlings
Syrons
Tigrans

Additional features -

- Modified spells and abilities
- Heroes are stronger
- Less emphasis on huge defense values; units hit each other much more reliably, Bombard and archery become inheritly stronger, ect.
- Wizards are a little stronger in combat, they aren't completely useless in a big late-game brawl
- A lot of lower-level units have some abilities that make them valuable late-game, such as the Baelificus tier1 Scavenger that has both resurgence, high defense, and life stealing, and strong attacks against cavalry.
- More unique army composition for each races - not everyone has ballistae or catapults for siege weapons, and not everyone has powerful melee units.

Screenshots -

http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9349/hermanrz1.jpg

(Above) Herman, one of the Confederate wizards.

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7893/herman2ew8.jpg

(Above) In Lol:2042, the comps will often spam pioneers and build an absolutely insane number of towns within a very short amount of time. Confederates seem to especially enjoy this. This often results in a symphony of backdooring when attempting to jack them with air units.

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/40/insanevu8.jpg

(above) An absolutely insane army - one of many similar groups throughout the map owned by the same computer. Bloodseekers are technically level 7 type units (retail only goes up to level 4).

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/255/image1kl6.jpg

(Above) Balrog, level 5 Baelificus unit. Baelificus are all about huge demonic strength, capitalized in giant melee units. They are the most upfront and basic of the races.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5610/marcusjpgkj4.jpg

(Above) A Baelificus wizard. He is a part of the storyline tying the Elves to the LoL universe.

http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/5047/image7qv4.jpg

(Above) A Devilwing wizard.

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/56/horusssaf3.jpg

(Above) Defilers, the Hive level 5 unit, and various low-level Devilwing units attacked a higher-class Devilwing base. This is kind of suicidal.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/6281/image8iy5.jpg

(Above) Low-level Hive units. The Deep Hive is all about crowd control and using disables to control your enemy. They have very few strong up-front melee, but a lot of faster or extremely dangerous damage-dealing units, including several very powerful flyers.


I am currently looking for decent art for new heroes and wizards, particularily those of the Elves, Humans, Devilwing, and Confeds. I'll post more screenshots as I get them.

LAVARINTH REMOVE THE IMAGE RESIZE ON THE FORUMS RIGHT NOW JESUS HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO TELL YOU ARGAHGERHGAGHRHGARHGRHGHG

[Lavarinth]

The forum is a preset dimension, you'd break the layout if I do that.

[IskatuMesk]

Get a forum that doesn't suck, then?

[Lavarinth]

I hate you.

EDIT: After further testing, I enjoy the way a scrollbar added. Max size removed.

[TPC]

Reminds me of HoMM5

[Anonymous]

Reminds me of HoMM5

A fan of HoMM, eh? Yes, AoW2 is pretty similar. It's more similar to HoMM4 in the fact that units can wander around by themselves and such, though. Also, combat is quite a bit more involving.

edit -

Update -

Last night I added-

- The first new Elven unit - the Silverblade Warrior, a tier2 DPS.
- A new Deep Hive unit - the Deep Horror, a tier6 Siege/Disabler dps.
- A new Isadorian unit - the Bloodstone Evokar, a tier2 tank/support caster.
- A new Beastmaster unit - the Highland Raptor, A tier3 strike/dps.
- Graphics for a Baelificus or Isadorian humanoid dps hero.
- Bunch of new sounds.
- Configurations for the Porch Monkey's Machine Pistol and Confed airship Autocannons.

[Thalraxal]

I loved AoW1, never got AoW2 though.  I really should look into hunting down a copy of it.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Just as a quick side note, Mesk's mod is for AoW:Shadow Magic rather than AoW2 although he's used to say AoW2 since both games are very similar. AoW:Shadow Magic can easily be considered as a stand-alone expansion of AoW2 for a lot of people.

[IskatuMesk]

Updates so far tonight -


- Got a message back from Kirky, and now have a graphic for epic-class Devilwing units and Devilwing wizards.
- Figured out glows, movement sounds (going to take a LOT of work as I need to redo all of my original data to get it working with them), and how to make comps spam pioneers even further
- Balancing changes to Deep Hive; removed the Shadow Demon Harvester as it is retardedly overpowered when it can 1shot $2k pit lords.
- Added a new human hero.
- Added a new unit - the Gargoyle, tier2 flyer for the Baelificus.
- Figured out "special" animation handling; Thunderers now use the proper animation for Hurl Lightning.
- Doing some screwing around to make some units glowy and some racial towns glowy.
- Discovered some extremely hilarious oversights like some hero still possessing the confed's Autocannon attack ability where they can 1shot most units with it.


(Above) The new Devilwing Dragon graphic, converted from WoW by kirky.


(Above) Part of a huge expansion operation enacted by the Doom God that had much of the overworld and shadow land under his control.

[Anonymous]

Updates thus far today -

- Found a bunch of cool tracks that conclude the quest for battle themes. Therefore, the soundtrack is nearly complete.
- Started converting a few of the graphics so they have movement sounds. First up - the Searscale Drake.
- Added the Devilwing Drake as a level7 heavy air dps to the Devilwing.
- Nerfed fucking scythewasps - they don't have strangle anymore (so when my video comes out, ignore my comments about scythewasp strangle - it's way too overpowered on that unit. Bladewasps still have it, though.)
- Lots of balancing changes for Confeds, Baelificus, and Deep Hive. I like to think they are fairly balanced right now but some units may still see cost reductions. I'll need to play with actual people to get some feedback on this.
- Wish I had someone who was active to make graphics.
- Figured out I want to convert Dwarves to Minotaurs, but have no graphics besides the only default graphic which certainly won't fill out an entire race. Refer to above.
- Wish the aow2 modding community was more alive so I would get answers to my questions on the same day I ask them (I tend to post very early in the morning).
- Wish I had someone who was active to make graphics.
- Currently deciding on whether to turn Baelificus towns into giant volcanos. Currently I gave them a rather tame lava overlay but am seriously considering just going the extra mile. The only drawback is you might have a hard time positioning units in or around them since you can't really see any details save the shaded units themselves.
- Wish I had someone who was active to make graphics. Gods, I even made a bunch of .chr files for the wowviewer in the vain hope I'll find someone.
- Added two Baelificus heroes.
- Looks like customizing tilesets is out of the question since I don't believe I can even edit doodads let alone how the RMG handles things.

[Anonymous]

Updates last night and this morning -

- Accelerated the attack speed of several units.
- Removed the Headless Horseman from the Baelificus as it is redundant. Removed skeletons as well since they don't quite fit with Baelificus (Underworld Legion). Looking for replacement tier1.
- Dramatically increased growth rate of Confederate (5x) and Deep Hive towns(3-4x). This will promote faster expanding, faster teching, and overall faster gameplay.
- Slightly increased the growth rate of Devilwing, Baelificus, and other playable races. Slightly as in considerably, around 2-3x.
- Devilwing towns now produce research points.
- Dicking with the Wizard Tower to hopefully encourage computers to build them in additional towns. I know it's possible... I just don't know how, yet.
- Added a cool overlay effect to Devilwing towns.

- Attempted to extract more recent video footage off of my last minidvd to finalize my gameplay video. However, somehow this video became corrupt. I worked several hours to try to retrieve my beloved footage but most of it is gone for good. I was, however, able to retrieve some footage of exploding scorpies and some Devilwing units although the battle is cut off pretty fast. This video also demonstrates some of the custom soundtrack and sound effects in the final bit.

This is not the full video, just the parts that I recovered from the last recording session.

http://www.staff.samods.org/iskatumesk/ ... 222222.avi

As usual it's encoded in h264. Enjoy.

[IskatuMesk]

Updates so far tonight -

- Added a new functional race that replaces the Frostlings - Lord Dread's Dread Legion.

Dread Legion - hailing from the freezing sun, Lord Dread's demonic forces have begun their efforts at turning the entire planet into a giant ice cube.

It is well-known that on the opposing side of the earth, which is flat, there resides a frozen empire circulating an enormous structure called the Stormspire, from which demonic forces commonly transport supplies from across the star system. Lord Dread, the most powerful of all Demon Kings, seeks to build a second Stormspire - inside the human capitol of Lome. To accomplish this, he has enlisted a variety of horrific creatures and strange creations that strike fear into both men and fellow evil-doers. Beware, humanity!

- Some more balancing changes to Deep Hive, Confeds, and Baelificus. Also made some minor changes to Devilwing.
- Added a new unit - the Devilwing Worldeater, the level 8 unit of the Devilwing. Very powerful unit.
- Added additional tracks to the Soundtrack.

Here's an example of one of the tracks I have added -

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Damn good choice for the loladin music ... to me, the music gives the loladins serious attitudes and intentions yet in the concrete of events it ends up hilarious and non-serious. Like it should be.

[Mucky]

doom

[Zilla-]

Damn good choice for the loladin music ... to me, the music gives the loladins serious attitudes and intentions yet in the concrete of events it ends up hilarious and non-serious. Like it should be.

I agree 100% with ricky on this, it adds an epic feel that takes itself seriously however knowing what I do of 2042 this is the exact opposite of the project. Kick ass music.