The Making of LoL
Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 11:47 pm
I am going to echo posts on TL I am posting over time that are basically blogs of my current work.
Couple of people have asked what my current project is, so today I'll tell you a little bit about it. Then maybe, on another day, I'll tell you a little more. I think we should start off by knowing how it is I got to this point.
Loladins of Legend: 2042
[imgwh 640x480]http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/3325/81969960jj1.jpg[/imgwh]
This is what happens when you get a guy who can't use photoshop to make a splash screen that he doesn't have anyone else to make. A calamity that, for but a moment, humors me.
Inception
Back in 2008 I was working on one of the largest projects I had ever attempted: a total conversion for Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic. A turn-based game with 15 playable races.
[imgwh 606x663]http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/6274/86371626.jpg[/imgwh]
From a workflow and operational perspective, AoW2's default sprites are extremely similar to sc1's, with a few more framesets worth of animations and no East and West directions. However, there the similarities end. The game supports up to 1920x1200 resolution, variable size frames in a single sprite, 16-bit sprites, and possesses a particle engine that requires major hex work to do anything in. The default graphics do not take advantage of what the engine can do, doubtlessly because the game and company were fairly small scale and low-budget.
[imgwh 640x480]http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6423 ... yhires.jpg[/imgwh]
[imgwh 640x480]http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3898/f ... dhires.jpg[/imgwh]
Note that these shots appear to be from a beta or alpha and the ui graphics are different.
The game is most comparable to Heroes of Might and Magic 4 with a totally different battle system than those familiar with the franchise.
However, the most notable thing about this game is the inclusion of an editor who in many ways is more intuitive than any commercial-grade editor released for an RTS game. At the same time, though, the editor predictably has several key limitations that fundamentally affect how a modder can approach this game from a design standpoint.
[imgwh 640x453]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5097 ... thires.jpg[/imgwh]
[imgwh 640x767]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5532/edg1.jpg[/imgwh]
From a community standpoint the game has always been the few, the dedicated. Those who have made major mods or maps have been around forever. Tightly knit but friendly, the community is centralized around one website, just like with Diablo 2's.
Though several individuals in the community are at the very least adept in programming there is virtually no one adept in graphics, again just like diablo 2 and most other games like this. It is no surprise then that the community's custom graphics are largely dependent on conversions from other games, but what really struck me as curious was Kirky's graphics from World of Warcraft. A game whose engine is 3d, the manner of converting these graphics to a sprite-based format is considerably more painful than you might expect.
Additionally, although Blizzard is hosting and thus endorsing Warcraft 3 maps containing World of Warcraft graphics on battle.net's website, there is a degree of risk involved with using their graphics outside of the Blizzard circle. I had struck a deal with Kirky to gain permission to use his graphics in my fledgling project. I had something important to consider, though - I was a lot more public in my development and a lot more well-known than these modders. I could not deny the possibility that there was a risk that if I released the project at some point that Blizzard might decide to try to shut it down. Thus, I decided to keep it a private project like all of my future works, especially after I discovered how much the hand-made custom content from AO was being stolen without permission.
I mod for myself, and only myself, so this decision was natural. Keeping in contact with Kirky, he told me of his methods to convert WoW graphics to AoW2's format and, frankly, I was shocked.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 5-03AM.jpg[/imgwh]
Mixing AoW2's graphics with those from other sprite-based games and 3d graphics like WoW doesn't work - it's either one or the other. I chose the other. I am damning myself to years of work.
Kirky uses the model viewer's ability to generate avi files. Yes, he manually orients the viewer camera to a pseudo-isometric angle and does each animation one by one. Then, after he has a set of avi's, he cuts out the frames from those and begins the sorting and conversion process. This doesn't SEEM like a lot of work, but when I attempted it, despite previous experience in handling framework, it took me nearly 6 hours nonstop for just one graphic - largely attributed to getting a good angle and not accidentally zooming in or out and having to redo it.
There are a few major implications of this process.
The first and foremost major implication is that you cannot disable Depth of Field in WoW's model viewer - extremely apparent on large characters. Also, it has anti-aliasing that can make the models appear blurry. As a rule of thumb, you never render something with heavy edge AA for a sprite-based game - it makes blurry edges. It's not immediately apparent because it's subtle on the viewer, but a trained eye like mine can see it.
Also, it's hugely tedious and is a lot of manual grunt work and labor.
Although I tempted fate and tried his conversion method several times I knew it wasn't going to work out for me. I had to bring things down to my level of expertise to get my own pipeline flowing. If I was to attempt a project of this scale I wouldn't be just contending with 3d graphics, I'd be also bringing out Diablo 2, my hidden ace, to the table.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 2-40AM.jpg[/imgwh]
The amount of work Kirky has put into his graphic conversions for his project is admirable indeed. However, out of the hundreds of conversions he has done, only an extremely tiny portion fit into my world. Because he hasn't played WoW, he doesn't have a sense of consistency or relationship between the appearances of items, and I am much more strict on what I want things to look like. Thus, I am using only a minimal number of his graphics, in a mod that needs only graphics to get moving. This is the conundrum of modding. So, I had brought out everything and the kitchen sink to bring my mod to life.
Design
Loladins of Legend is my youngest universe. I conceived it originally for an AoS (think DotA but larger scale) for, again, a private audience. The AoS and the AoW2 mod both had the same major problems with graphics, however.
The Warcraft 3 community is largely devoid of tool developers, especially those experienced in 3d work. The only mdx importer to exist for 3ds max only supports max 4 and 5.1 - extremely ancient versions that don't function on Vista or Windows 7. To get WoW models into the wc3 format you have to use a Russian tool, admittedly the best and most powerful tool ever made for wc3, but the creator had long since jumped ship and things like Lich King-format models are only a pipedream.
The AoS had become extremely dependent on a complex physics engine that was responsible for controlling a large number of the heroes. After an exceptionally harrowing and painful journey through building and rebuilding a series of upgrade and creep spawning triggers I was to discover that everything had to become JASS to make progress in the project. I am not a programmer, and learning JASS was beyond my damaged mind. Although I dealt with JASS on relatively basic levels, handling a physics engine when its developer jumped ship was far too great a task. As a result the AoS died, but the world never died with it.
Loladins of Legend is the most basic of my universes. It is a fantasy world that aims to abuse every cliche and trope humanly possible, and then some. The Earth is flat, the sun is a frozen wasteland, and the moon is made out of (delicious) holy Cheese. The primary protagonists are the ale-hungry Humans which largely consist of doe-eyed pilgrims with the environmental awareness of a turkey, the Loladins, who are the embodiment of holiness and righteous fanaticism for Pie, and the Elves, who are tree-hugging faggots. The antagonists are the forces of the Doom God, ranging from cliche green-skinned Orcs to dragons and true demons.
As far as history is concerned Sir Lol, the paragon of all that is good and sanitary in the world, defeated the Doom God in a game of chess and, as a result, turned a large majority of the demon forces into feces and trapped him in a block of MAGICAL ICE on the Sun. The Doom God can only be freed by tasting the blood of righteousness and goodness. That is to say, only the death of good men can strengthen him. With the forces of Evil scattered they either retreated to the Sun itself, the Underworld on Earth, or the heavily fortified battlefortress of Mars. Even Pluto was converted into an enormous, highly inaccurate MEGA SPACE GUN.
Mechanically, the LoL universe allows me to randomly invent any event or action with the capacity to justify it. The world is extremely open and leaves a lot open to mystery or "magic" in terms of characters and reasoning. Unlike the universe my novel takes place in, there is no need to justify anything at all. This allows me to abuse as many tropes and cliches as I possibly can and bring about a level of absolute ridiculousness.
However, LoL takes itself completely seriously. The undertone is dark and realistic, despite the gooey, pants-on-head silliness. This mixture of exceptionally dark storytelling and characters in addition to ludicrous, sometimes offensive, humor has offered a unique prose to the world. One I fully intended to use inside Age of Wonders 2.
The design of the mod from the vanilla game is one of my more dramatic alterations. The game plays completely differently. As a basic summary of the vanilla game;
- In AoW2, "Defense" is actually "Avoidance", just like Defense Rating in diablo 2 - the higher the defense, the higher the chance to miss the unit (relating to your Attack, aka Attack Rating. I am unsure of the exact math behind it but presume that an exact Defense and Attack rating have a 50/50 chance to hit.) In AoW2 units sport extremely high defense values (the game goes from 1-20, most units have 10+ and some have as high as 16). This meant that it was extremely hard to get consistent hits to land on units. As units went up in tier so did their defense, making high-tier units, especially the abominable Chaos Lord, able to completely decimate low-tier units. Additionally, most ranged units except cannons became very weak as the game progressed.
- The spell system offered an enormous exploit through a Cosmos build. By taking 1 of each Elemental sphere type you gain access to nearly every buff in the game. Buffs often raise stats, and plenty of buffs raise Defense. One even gives Static Shield - the unit will stun other units who attack it or it strikes for a whole turn. See where this is going? It's easily possible to render even low-tier units virtually indestructible. Buffs can push attributes past the editor cap of 20.
- Without Cosmos builds, heroes are most often not that strong in comparison to high-tier units.
- There are a lot of ways to lose control over one's units, temporarily or permanently.
- The races are not very unique from each other. Neither in appearance nor in Gameplay. Everyone has a catapult, everyone has a t1 archer, everyone's heroes are the same except for resistances and the like.
When I set out with my project the first thing I intended to do was totally change how the game played. Admittedly, the game is extremely hard to balance as you cannot change the minimum damage value which is always 1. My major changes took immediate effect.
- I massively nerfed Defense values either by 1/2 or 3/4 on comparative level units. This made battles far more predictable, controllable, and enjoyable. Suddenly, "micro" and placement had a much greater value because actions were more immediate and produced more tangible results. Battles are less about dumb luck and more about strategy, tactics, and preparation.
- I moved all buffs to level 3 for their perspective spheres and enormously raised their cost and upkeep. No, buffs are still ludicrously strong, you just can't make your dudes indestructible killing machines anymore (I was prompted to do this after one of my friends demolished an entire army of high-level units and heroes of mine with a single Chaos Lord that was buffed up.. for the third time).
- I revised heroes. There are now three "types" of heroes in my mod.
Standard heroes - The most abundant, a standard hero is generally equivalent to a level 3-4 unit (The mod goes up to level 10 in units, the vanilla game only goes up to level 4).
Heroic heroes - Equivalent to a level 5-6 unit.
Legendary - Intended to be the most powerful units in the game except for Veteran high-tier units or tier 10 units.
Heroes have a big limit, though. Through a third-party editor it is possible (and necessary for my design) to give units ~90 health, from the default cap of 50. However, Heroes do not share this functionality and always cap at 50.
Balancing the game became a challenge unlike any I had ever attempted before. All of my experience with Starcraft had virtually no meaning in a TBS on the kind of scale I was attempting to produce.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 6-24AM.jpg[/imgwh]
In this screenshot there are two Legendary heroes at play - Captain Planet (The guy with a glowing hammer top right) and Leonidas (should be obvious). It is considered a far greater investment to level up and gear out a Legendary hero than to acquire an equivalent unit, but as a result the Legendary heroes generally have many more abilities and scale far better. The randomness in acquiring either a Standard hero or a Legendary hero adds a level of complication to balance I had to suck up and accept. The game will never be perfectly balanced, but I felt this decision made the game more fun from a "casual" perspective. In terms of serious play this adds a huge level of luck factor - if I start with two Legendary heroes I can rush anyone and be nearly guaranteed victory. To help combat this problem I massively buffed Tower Guards which now possess the capacity to solo-kill most units in the game if you kite them with your Wizard. Wizards also got a major buff; most mods nerf Wizards because the computer does not "creep" (kill neutral camps) with them, but human players can and at no risk to them (the Wizard respawns at your tower if he dies). I chose to buff Wizards to counter the issue of lone Legendary rushes that sometimes occurred by the hands of, ironically, other computer players who can see under the fog of war AND to buff computers as well, since they needed that strength to help defend themselves as they are not so intelligent about keeping their cities protected.)
For a time I massively struggled with the overarching balance design. I had chosen to enormously boost the number of units in the game for several reasons, not the least of which because games could last 10 hours and I wanted players to always be experiencing new things throughout this timespan, and because of the inability to make new or custom abilities or change minimum damage values. I was entering the most difficult balancing gauntlet of my modding career.
As I struggled to understand how to best approach the balance, I predictably had major issues in terms of graphics. In my Game Elements Concepts, aka my game design theology, there are four elements to making a good mod or game - Graphics, Gameplay, Sound, and Computer AI. All hold equal value to each other - good gameplay but no new graphics or sounds feels lackluster and lacks impact, a mod without custom AI is shooting itself in the foot, and all flash and no drive offers no lasting substance.
Luckily, two things I had immediately covered from the start - music and sound. As an experienced voice actor and sound engineer who already possessed a huge SFX library, both from commercial CD's and from various games and community-made packs, I could handle anything thrown at me in this particular battlefield.
As for gameplay, I'd eventually work it out. Even if it will never be perfect, as long as I enjoy it that's all that matters to me.
Computer AI was always going to be a losing battle - it's totally hardcoded. However, unexpectedly the game offered a level of dynamic AI I had never encountered before. If the AI wasn't as advanced as it was I would have never even attempted this mod, regardless of the availability of other resources.
* The AI immediately takes any new units you give to a race and it has some kind of internal balancing algorithm that determines the value of cost-effectiveness on any unit. This even serves to assist me in balancing; if the AI is spamming too much of one unit this probably means it's too cost-effective in comparison to the other available units.
* The AI can weigh battle difficulties reasonably well, not perfectly, with my new units. Only in a few rare instances has it chosen to fight battles it has no hope of winning, and that's because it underestimated the potential value of stuns/disables.
* I cheated my way through the hardcoded AI by taking advantage of its hardcoded cost-effectiveness algorithm. By allowing Wizard Towers and Teleportation Gates to give a tiny bit of resources I suddenly made the AI build these structures and as a result become far stronger. Additionally, I gave Pioneers Archery to defend themselves and fake attack stats - the AI automatically builds towns with pioneers but, previous to these changes, never built pioneers. Now the AI builds towns regularly.
With a few simple changes I turned the AI from a pantywaist into gods-damned Chuck Norris. The top difficulty AI's get free money, atypical of TBS and RTS games, and my high-tier units are super expensive. Put two and two together and the AI gets top-end units very, very fast, further closing the gap between it and humans.
Ultimately this meant that the big factor of this mod would be custom graphics. If I could get custom graphics I could add more units and heroes. If I didn't have custom graphics I couldn't add more units or heroes. Graphics are the only thing I typically lack in any given mod, and in this mod they are critical to progressing because they are the only factor missing from the GEC.
That's what the mod work eventually drums down to - making custom graphics.
Devastation
I worked on the mod off and on for around a year, largely remaining quiet about it until I had reasonable degrees of completion done. I had several internal players, people I knew, who I had regular games with. The mod had grown exceptionally large and many races were more or less playable, not necessarily balanced.
However, something began happening that concerned me greatly.
At some point the game started failing Random Map Generation. While many mods are built on maps that come with them, I didn't have the time to learn the arcane Event system much less make some massive maps. Plus, I enjoyed RMG's just like I did in HoMM. The mod was built for RMG's. I had never before seen the game fail to generate RMG's except when I broke structures - the game is VERY picky about certain things. Despite all of my precautions, the game would randomly stall during the end of generation and sit and do nothing, forcing a process kill.
Even more concerning were random crashes cropping up - the type that gives any modder nightmares. They occur anywhere and everywhere - battles, at the beginning of the game, 10 hours into a game looking at nothing on the mapspace.
I spent an enormous amount of effort into hunting down the cause of these crashes but to no avail. The game is even more difficult to debug than Diablo 2 if you are unfamiliar with it, and I was still very unfamiliar. The game was not designed to be modded despite the intuitive and user-friendly editor, there's quirks and limitations that are not readily apparent until you break them.
However, despite research and questionnaires with other modders I had only one major conclusion to reach:
The mod data had somehow been corrupted.
The editor has a log window of some kind at the bottom that would randomly display access violations or "range" errors. For the most part they are harmless, but I hypothesized that these could have been in fact affecting the game data itself.
Though I continued to press on for a time I became greatly demoralized by the prospect that the mod had become unstable. I had already previously had to deal with Armageddon Onslaught and ITAS (two Starcraft mods), which were unstable because of the limit expander necessary for their survival. After a point I decided to painfully discontinue my longest-running project, despite having written over a hundred pages combined of history and descriptions for the units, heroes, and abilities/races. Despite having gone through the game's strings and correcting each and every single line containing incorrect grammar and punctuation, despite all of the energy I had put into getting my wc3-format WoW models into 3ds max in a format I could bring into the game at long last.
It was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made. I usually do not hesitate to let projects die if I feel continued work on them will not bring me any enjoyment. But I felt a sense of obligation to a project of this magnitude, even if it was never to be made public.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 5-09AM.jpg[/imgwh]
I never forgot about LoL:2042 nor the potential it had.
Armageddon Onslaught's Revival
A year later I decided to revive Armageddon Onslaught and complete it, despite knowing I could not correct the plugin crash. Its programmer wasn't even sure how it worked at all, it's quite possibly the biggest hack ever made for sc without being an actual "hack" hack. After a time I largely completed the mod save some portraits and effects, and released the final version.
It wasn't long after the release that I was made aware of people stealing graphics from both AO and my older mods. I follow a modder's code of conduct to the letter - Always ask for permission to use a resource if permission is not granted outright. In every mod I always release a statement and a readme saying that their content cannot be used in another project except under extremely specific circumstances (I typically let those who assisted me in some major way to use some of my resources). These individuals did not ask for permission, and furthermore one of them decided to post about his project on Campaign Creations. After politely letting him know that he was using the Afterburn explosions from AO and remastered d2 conversions I did not want other projects using, he agreed to remove them, and in return I helped him find some alternate graphics to use.
Then he vanished from CC and I found more recent images from his projects surely enough using the exact same graphics he had claimed to remove.
I decided to never release another project to the public again as a result.
Return to LoL:2042
I was hoping for Starcraft 2 to be a way to start fresh in modding, but with the editor being such a huge disappointment I decided to forego any plans to make custom content for the game. It's possible that if the dev team listens to the info I had forwarded to them internally and that they update the editor I will think about making a project, but at this time it is folly to attempt anything on the scale I produce in something so disorganized and inefficient. It would not be pleasant, it would be boring, agonizing grunt work.
The hype of Sc2 died out immediately for me in beta. I was bored of the game a week in, continuing to commentate only out of my obligation to people I had told I'd be producing such content for. As the beta neared its end I announced I would retire from commentating sc2, and so I have.
Other than writing my novel I have nothing in life. No future, no present, only the painful past and how circumstances and coincidence have ruined me. I needed a way to spend my time, time that could not easily be spent. Time travels extremely slowly for me. A day lasts a lifetime. Prior to sc2's beta I had been modding Sins of a Solar Empire, until I discovered that the game had a poly limit of 25k quads. This, on top of a number of already ludicrous limitations, encouraged me to drop my private project for the game, which I did without hesitation as I was already fed up with it and had sc2 commentating to worry about. Post-commentating, though, I had nothing to do.
I decided to revive LoL, despite the crash. Just like I did for AO. Except, unlike AO, I wasn't working to finish it. I'm working to burn time. I'd like to finish it, but the journey will be long and most challenging.
Somewhere near the death of the project I had attempted rebuilding the mod's data, splitting it apart, and trying to isolate the crash. As a result I had created a huge fucking mess of the resource folders for game data and ended up with 5-6 versions of the mod. When I returned to the game I had forgotten I had done this, and was immediately met with uncertainty and confusion. I found one resource I presumed was the most recent and chose to use that.
However, this version was indeed one of the rebuilt versions lacking some custom resources. I opted to rebuild those from scratch, most notably custom structure data. I wasn't losing a lot, anyway.
I've only failed to generate a map a single time since then, and have yet to crash. I do not entertain the faint hope that somehow the crash was related to the files that didn't get copied over. No. That's a good way to be disappointed. The game has an autosave feature; crashes are extremely irritating, especially amidst a huge battle, but what countermeasures can be made are already made.
I still faced two big challenges I'd have to overcome if I was to see this grand work completed, however.
Balance.
Graphics.
Approaching the balance from a new perspective
Two years had passed since the mod's death, two years to grow and evolve. I've only lived eight of my twenty-two years; everything else was spent in mental dormancy while I endured the harsh trials of society. Two years is a long time to harden understanding of my craft despite inactivity. Over time I had conceptualized how I would approach the game's balance if I had the opportunity to do so. Now was the time to test my concepts.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 9-35AM.jpg[/imgwh]
I would balance this game - Epic units, Legendary Heroes, spells and all. Or I'd die trying. Probably the latter, but at least I'd have something to brag about.
I posted this on CC to convey to a few individuals what it was my intentions were.
Blizzard has always been a bit edgy, though predictable, when it comes to mods. Mods as a whole violate the EULA and are considered "illegal", but so long as they don't impact the experiences of other players, Blizzard has turned a blind eye. They've only intervened in very specific cases - LoTC was told to make aware that it is a user-made project and not an expansion because of the level of quality it had, Infoceptor's SCtoWc3 mod was forced to shut down for, at least as far as I was told, using art from wc3 pre-release that it shouldn't have had. It's also possible that Blizzard just wanted to destroy any competition they had for wc3 when it came out, even though a mod cannot compete with a commercial title. Even the very name might have set them off. They're weird like that.
The only other instances that Blizzard has intervened is when stuff like a C&C General SC mod appeared, which was predictably shut down. If you use the proper terminology you can basically do anything you want. At the same time, though, Blizzard does not acknowledges modders exist and does nothing to support them - offering their editors only to mappers. Modders are usually left out in the grand scheme of things, relying on third party tools to fill the gap between map editor and mod environment.
With Blizzard hosting wc3 maps on their site that contain WoW graphics, and Diablo 2 being as massively modded as it is, one can confidently presume that as long as you stick to your guns and keep cool about your business you can do whatever you want. With the lack of support, though, things like porting graphics from one game to another is extremely difficult business, especially with a community as split and largely inept as wc3's. The Russian modeling tool was abandoned by its creator over a year ago, the MDX importer for 3ds max is the only functional one of its kind and lacks major features. On top of that, the versions of 3ds max it supports don't work on vista or windows 7 - I'm running windows 7 now and my friend is running vista, we cannot use our old method to port graphics from WoW to 3ds max anymore. We were effectively cut off from our only means of getting new graphics into the game.
Putting Blizzard-made graphics into another game engine is a business I am not wholly confident about. If it were my way I wouldn't be using anyone's graphics but my own. However, my modeling skills are juvenile at best and do not even touch the talents necessary for creating characters, much less texturing, skinning, or animating anything. There will be a time I can use my 3d capabilities to make graphics for the mod but only for a few, very specific things. Until then I have to bite the bullet and hope no one minds a private project. Kirky's mod isn't private and it's been out for years - not a peep from anyone so far. Give credit where credit is due and take everything in stride. Infinity engine and diablo 1 graphics have been used in various mods for aeons and no one's lost any neck to that yet.
With desire comes desperation, however. Politics mean nothing when you can't get anything.
I have one hope for the WoW side of things - someone on sc2mapster has a m2 plugin for 3ds max he created. I've asked for him for it, but it's been weeks since he said he'd get back to me "soon". I am starting to lose hope. If this doesn't work out I'll be forced to again try Kirky's method, as much as it kills me to do that kind of work.
However, one must count his blessings.
Through research and investment I've been able to figure out a means of converting community-made graphics from Civilization 3 to Age of Wonders 2, and relatively speedily. This doesn't offer much besides a plethora of mechanical units; tanks, aircraft, and ships. Only two races in my mod can make use of these graphics, but I'll gladly take them. With the Civ3 user-made resources I can totally complete one of the mod's races given time.
With the existing scenes we used for the few WoW conversions we made 2 years ago, I can put any model I have into 3ds max and create a sprite out of it after an arduous, agonizing manual frame renaming process. For one who has severe carpel tunnel from 3d modeling earlier in the year, the process of clicking dozens of dialogues in irfanview for a single unit graphic is physically painful and exhausting. I've contacted one of my buddies I had doing some scripts to batch rename stuff for AO back in the day, hopefully he'll get back to me soon; it's also been weeks.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 9-17AM.jpg[/imgwh]
In a mod so grand in scale it seems folly to become so dependent on something so small and so difficult to acquire. Yet, at the same time, one acknowledges that this one thing, this one object, is all he needs to take a step forward. It is the last cog in the machine, the last stone in the brick road. So one must do all he can to get this thing, even if it means risking everything else. For nothing else matters if it is not all it can be.
I decided to, again, try to use some Diablo 2 graphics to fill the gaps. But diablo 2 only has a few graphics I can make use out of. I'll take them.
So I've started looking elsewhere. Deeper, into more arcane means of getting what I need. I'll stop at nothing to reach my goals. So long as the spirit burns strong I'll keep trying until I get what I want. This will in turn encourage me to try things I've never tried before. This will mean I will become more familiar with subjects I am unfamiliar with. I'll grow.
Everything is a learning experience. Every failed mod, every successful mod, every venture and every battle for understanding. Even if you do not reach the end of the line you have still moved forward.
[imgwh 640x400]http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8793/14163115.jpg[/imgwh]
I did not get where I am by allowing fear and uncertainty to destroy me. I got where I am by allowing fear and uncertainty to destroy me only after I exhausted all other options.
Age of Wonders 2 - Dividing By Zero
Couple of people have asked what my current project is, so today I'll tell you a little bit about it. Then maybe, on another day, I'll tell you a little more. I think we should start off by knowing how it is I got to this point.
Loladins of Legend: 2042
[imgwh 640x480]http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/3325/81969960jj1.jpg[/imgwh]
This is what happens when you get a guy who can't use photoshop to make a splash screen that he doesn't have anyone else to make. A calamity that, for but a moment, humors me.
Inception
Back in 2008 I was working on one of the largest projects I had ever attempted: a total conversion for Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic. A turn-based game with 15 playable races.
[imgwh 606x663]http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/6274/86371626.jpg[/imgwh]
From a workflow and operational perspective, AoW2's default sprites are extremely similar to sc1's, with a few more framesets worth of animations and no East and West directions. However, there the similarities end. The game supports up to 1920x1200 resolution, variable size frames in a single sprite, 16-bit sprites, and possesses a particle engine that requires major hex work to do anything in. The default graphics do not take advantage of what the engine can do, doubtlessly because the game and company were fairly small scale and low-budget.
[imgwh 640x480]http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6423 ... yhires.jpg[/imgwh]
[imgwh 640x480]http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3898/f ... dhires.jpg[/imgwh]
Note that these shots appear to be from a beta or alpha and the ui graphics are different.
The game is most comparable to Heroes of Might and Magic 4 with a totally different battle system than those familiar with the franchise.
However, the most notable thing about this game is the inclusion of an editor who in many ways is more intuitive than any commercial-grade editor released for an RTS game. At the same time, though, the editor predictably has several key limitations that fundamentally affect how a modder can approach this game from a design standpoint.
[imgwh 640x453]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5097 ... thires.jpg[/imgwh]
[imgwh 640x767]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5532/edg1.jpg[/imgwh]
From a community standpoint the game has always been the few, the dedicated. Those who have made major mods or maps have been around forever. Tightly knit but friendly, the community is centralized around one website, just like with Diablo 2's.
Though several individuals in the community are at the very least adept in programming there is virtually no one adept in graphics, again just like diablo 2 and most other games like this. It is no surprise then that the community's custom graphics are largely dependent on conversions from other games, but what really struck me as curious was Kirky's graphics from World of Warcraft. A game whose engine is 3d, the manner of converting these graphics to a sprite-based format is considerably more painful than you might expect.
Additionally, although Blizzard is hosting and thus endorsing Warcraft 3 maps containing World of Warcraft graphics on battle.net's website, there is a degree of risk involved with using their graphics outside of the Blizzard circle. I had struck a deal with Kirky to gain permission to use his graphics in my fledgling project. I had something important to consider, though - I was a lot more public in my development and a lot more well-known than these modders. I could not deny the possibility that there was a risk that if I released the project at some point that Blizzard might decide to try to shut it down. Thus, I decided to keep it a private project like all of my future works, especially after I discovered how much the hand-made custom content from AO was being stolen without permission.
I mod for myself, and only myself, so this decision was natural. Keeping in contact with Kirky, he told me of his methods to convert WoW graphics to AoW2's format and, frankly, I was shocked.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 5-03AM.jpg[/imgwh]
Mixing AoW2's graphics with those from other sprite-based games and 3d graphics like WoW doesn't work - it's either one or the other. I chose the other. I am damning myself to years of work.
Kirky uses the model viewer's ability to generate avi files. Yes, he manually orients the viewer camera to a pseudo-isometric angle and does each animation one by one. Then, after he has a set of avi's, he cuts out the frames from those and begins the sorting and conversion process. This doesn't SEEM like a lot of work, but when I attempted it, despite previous experience in handling framework, it took me nearly 6 hours nonstop for just one graphic - largely attributed to getting a good angle and not accidentally zooming in or out and having to redo it.
There are a few major implications of this process.
The first and foremost major implication is that you cannot disable Depth of Field in WoW's model viewer - extremely apparent on large characters. Also, it has anti-aliasing that can make the models appear blurry. As a rule of thumb, you never render something with heavy edge AA for a sprite-based game - it makes blurry edges. It's not immediately apparent because it's subtle on the viewer, but a trained eye like mine can see it.
Also, it's hugely tedious and is a lot of manual grunt work and labor.
Although I tempted fate and tried his conversion method several times I knew it wasn't going to work out for me. I had to bring things down to my level of expertise to get my own pipeline flowing. If I was to attempt a project of this scale I wouldn't be just contending with 3d graphics, I'd be also bringing out Diablo 2, my hidden ace, to the table.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 2-40AM.jpg[/imgwh]
The amount of work Kirky has put into his graphic conversions for his project is admirable indeed. However, out of the hundreds of conversions he has done, only an extremely tiny portion fit into my world. Because he hasn't played WoW, he doesn't have a sense of consistency or relationship between the appearances of items, and I am much more strict on what I want things to look like. Thus, I am using only a minimal number of his graphics, in a mod that needs only graphics to get moving. This is the conundrum of modding. So, I had brought out everything and the kitchen sink to bring my mod to life.
Design
Loladins of Legend is my youngest universe. I conceived it originally for an AoS (think DotA but larger scale) for, again, a private audience. The AoS and the AoW2 mod both had the same major problems with graphics, however.
The Warcraft 3 community is largely devoid of tool developers, especially those experienced in 3d work. The only mdx importer to exist for 3ds max only supports max 4 and 5.1 - extremely ancient versions that don't function on Vista or Windows 7. To get WoW models into the wc3 format you have to use a Russian tool, admittedly the best and most powerful tool ever made for wc3, but the creator had long since jumped ship and things like Lich King-format models are only a pipedream.
The AoS had become extremely dependent on a complex physics engine that was responsible for controlling a large number of the heroes. After an exceptionally harrowing and painful journey through building and rebuilding a series of upgrade and creep spawning triggers I was to discover that everything had to become JASS to make progress in the project. I am not a programmer, and learning JASS was beyond my damaged mind. Although I dealt with JASS on relatively basic levels, handling a physics engine when its developer jumped ship was far too great a task. As a result the AoS died, but the world never died with it.
Loladins of Legend is the most basic of my universes. It is a fantasy world that aims to abuse every cliche and trope humanly possible, and then some. The Earth is flat, the sun is a frozen wasteland, and the moon is made out of (delicious) holy Cheese. The primary protagonists are the ale-hungry Humans which largely consist of doe-eyed pilgrims with the environmental awareness of a turkey, the Loladins, who are the embodiment of holiness and righteous fanaticism for Pie, and the Elves, who are tree-hugging faggots. The antagonists are the forces of the Doom God, ranging from cliche green-skinned Orcs to dragons and true demons.
As far as history is concerned Sir Lol, the paragon of all that is good and sanitary in the world, defeated the Doom God in a game of chess and, as a result, turned a large majority of the demon forces into feces and trapped him in a block of MAGICAL ICE on the Sun. The Doom God can only be freed by tasting the blood of righteousness and goodness. That is to say, only the death of good men can strengthen him. With the forces of Evil scattered they either retreated to the Sun itself, the Underworld on Earth, or the heavily fortified battlefortress of Mars. Even Pluto was converted into an enormous, highly inaccurate MEGA SPACE GUN.
Mechanically, the LoL universe allows me to randomly invent any event or action with the capacity to justify it. The world is extremely open and leaves a lot open to mystery or "magic" in terms of characters and reasoning. Unlike the universe my novel takes place in, there is no need to justify anything at all. This allows me to abuse as many tropes and cliches as I possibly can and bring about a level of absolute ridiculousness.
However, LoL takes itself completely seriously. The undertone is dark and realistic, despite the gooey, pants-on-head silliness. This mixture of exceptionally dark storytelling and characters in addition to ludicrous, sometimes offensive, humor has offered a unique prose to the world. One I fully intended to use inside Age of Wonders 2.
The design of the mod from the vanilla game is one of my more dramatic alterations. The game plays completely differently. As a basic summary of the vanilla game;
- In AoW2, "Defense" is actually "Avoidance", just like Defense Rating in diablo 2 - the higher the defense, the higher the chance to miss the unit (relating to your Attack, aka Attack Rating. I am unsure of the exact math behind it but presume that an exact Defense and Attack rating have a 50/50 chance to hit.) In AoW2 units sport extremely high defense values (the game goes from 1-20, most units have 10+ and some have as high as 16). This meant that it was extremely hard to get consistent hits to land on units. As units went up in tier so did their defense, making high-tier units, especially the abominable Chaos Lord, able to completely decimate low-tier units. Additionally, most ranged units except cannons became very weak as the game progressed.
- The spell system offered an enormous exploit through a Cosmos build. By taking 1 of each Elemental sphere type you gain access to nearly every buff in the game. Buffs often raise stats, and plenty of buffs raise Defense. One even gives Static Shield - the unit will stun other units who attack it or it strikes for a whole turn. See where this is going? It's easily possible to render even low-tier units virtually indestructible. Buffs can push attributes past the editor cap of 20.
- Without Cosmos builds, heroes are most often not that strong in comparison to high-tier units.
- There are a lot of ways to lose control over one's units, temporarily or permanently.
- The races are not very unique from each other. Neither in appearance nor in Gameplay. Everyone has a catapult, everyone has a t1 archer, everyone's heroes are the same except for resistances and the like.
When I set out with my project the first thing I intended to do was totally change how the game played. Admittedly, the game is extremely hard to balance as you cannot change the minimum damage value which is always 1. My major changes took immediate effect.
- I massively nerfed Defense values either by 1/2 or 3/4 on comparative level units. This made battles far more predictable, controllable, and enjoyable. Suddenly, "micro" and placement had a much greater value because actions were more immediate and produced more tangible results. Battles are less about dumb luck and more about strategy, tactics, and preparation.
- I moved all buffs to level 3 for their perspective spheres and enormously raised their cost and upkeep. No, buffs are still ludicrously strong, you just can't make your dudes indestructible killing machines anymore (I was prompted to do this after one of my friends demolished an entire army of high-level units and heroes of mine with a single Chaos Lord that was buffed up.. for the third time).
- I revised heroes. There are now three "types" of heroes in my mod.
Standard heroes - The most abundant, a standard hero is generally equivalent to a level 3-4 unit (The mod goes up to level 10 in units, the vanilla game only goes up to level 4).
Heroic heroes - Equivalent to a level 5-6 unit.
Legendary - Intended to be the most powerful units in the game except for Veteran high-tier units or tier 10 units.
Heroes have a big limit, though. Through a third-party editor it is possible (and necessary for my design) to give units ~90 health, from the default cap of 50. However, Heroes do not share this functionality and always cap at 50.
Balancing the game became a challenge unlike any I had ever attempted before. All of my experience with Starcraft had virtually no meaning in a TBS on the kind of scale I was attempting to produce.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 6-24AM.jpg[/imgwh]
In this screenshot there are two Legendary heroes at play - Captain Planet (The guy with a glowing hammer top right) and Leonidas (should be obvious). It is considered a far greater investment to level up and gear out a Legendary hero than to acquire an equivalent unit, but as a result the Legendary heroes generally have many more abilities and scale far better. The randomness in acquiring either a Standard hero or a Legendary hero adds a level of complication to balance I had to suck up and accept. The game will never be perfectly balanced, but I felt this decision made the game more fun from a "casual" perspective. In terms of serious play this adds a huge level of luck factor - if I start with two Legendary heroes I can rush anyone and be nearly guaranteed victory. To help combat this problem I massively buffed Tower Guards which now possess the capacity to solo-kill most units in the game if you kite them with your Wizard. Wizards also got a major buff; most mods nerf Wizards because the computer does not "creep" (kill neutral camps) with them, but human players can and at no risk to them (the Wizard respawns at your tower if he dies). I chose to buff Wizards to counter the issue of lone Legendary rushes that sometimes occurred by the hands of, ironically, other computer players who can see under the fog of war AND to buff computers as well, since they needed that strength to help defend themselves as they are not so intelligent about keeping their cities protected.)
For a time I massively struggled with the overarching balance design. I had chosen to enormously boost the number of units in the game for several reasons, not the least of which because games could last 10 hours and I wanted players to always be experiencing new things throughout this timespan, and because of the inability to make new or custom abilities or change minimum damage values. I was entering the most difficult balancing gauntlet of my modding career.
As I struggled to understand how to best approach the balance, I predictably had major issues in terms of graphics. In my Game Elements Concepts, aka my game design theology, there are four elements to making a good mod or game - Graphics, Gameplay, Sound, and Computer AI. All hold equal value to each other - good gameplay but no new graphics or sounds feels lackluster and lacks impact, a mod without custom AI is shooting itself in the foot, and all flash and no drive offers no lasting substance.
Luckily, two things I had immediately covered from the start - music and sound. As an experienced voice actor and sound engineer who already possessed a huge SFX library, both from commercial CD's and from various games and community-made packs, I could handle anything thrown at me in this particular battlefield.
As for gameplay, I'd eventually work it out. Even if it will never be perfect, as long as I enjoy it that's all that matters to me.
Computer AI was always going to be a losing battle - it's totally hardcoded. However, unexpectedly the game offered a level of dynamic AI I had never encountered before. If the AI wasn't as advanced as it was I would have never even attempted this mod, regardless of the availability of other resources.
* The AI immediately takes any new units you give to a race and it has some kind of internal balancing algorithm that determines the value of cost-effectiveness on any unit. This even serves to assist me in balancing; if the AI is spamming too much of one unit this probably means it's too cost-effective in comparison to the other available units.
* The AI can weigh battle difficulties reasonably well, not perfectly, with my new units. Only in a few rare instances has it chosen to fight battles it has no hope of winning, and that's because it underestimated the potential value of stuns/disables.
* I cheated my way through the hardcoded AI by taking advantage of its hardcoded cost-effectiveness algorithm. By allowing Wizard Towers and Teleportation Gates to give a tiny bit of resources I suddenly made the AI build these structures and as a result become far stronger. Additionally, I gave Pioneers Archery to defend themselves and fake attack stats - the AI automatically builds towns with pioneers but, previous to these changes, never built pioneers. Now the AI builds towns regularly.
With a few simple changes I turned the AI from a pantywaist into gods-damned Chuck Norris. The top difficulty AI's get free money, atypical of TBS and RTS games, and my high-tier units are super expensive. Put two and two together and the AI gets top-end units very, very fast, further closing the gap between it and humans.
Ultimately this meant that the big factor of this mod would be custom graphics. If I could get custom graphics I could add more units and heroes. If I didn't have custom graphics I couldn't add more units or heroes. Graphics are the only thing I typically lack in any given mod, and in this mod they are critical to progressing because they are the only factor missing from the GEC.
That's what the mod work eventually drums down to - making custom graphics.
Devastation
I worked on the mod off and on for around a year, largely remaining quiet about it until I had reasonable degrees of completion done. I had several internal players, people I knew, who I had regular games with. The mod had grown exceptionally large and many races were more or less playable, not necessarily balanced.
However, something began happening that concerned me greatly.
At some point the game started failing Random Map Generation. While many mods are built on maps that come with them, I didn't have the time to learn the arcane Event system much less make some massive maps. Plus, I enjoyed RMG's just like I did in HoMM. The mod was built for RMG's. I had never before seen the game fail to generate RMG's except when I broke structures - the game is VERY picky about certain things. Despite all of my precautions, the game would randomly stall during the end of generation and sit and do nothing, forcing a process kill.
Even more concerning were random crashes cropping up - the type that gives any modder nightmares. They occur anywhere and everywhere - battles, at the beginning of the game, 10 hours into a game looking at nothing on the mapspace.
I spent an enormous amount of effort into hunting down the cause of these crashes but to no avail. The game is even more difficult to debug than Diablo 2 if you are unfamiliar with it, and I was still very unfamiliar. The game was not designed to be modded despite the intuitive and user-friendly editor, there's quirks and limitations that are not readily apparent until you break them.
However, despite research and questionnaires with other modders I had only one major conclusion to reach:
The mod data had somehow been corrupted.
The editor has a log window of some kind at the bottom that would randomly display access violations or "range" errors. For the most part they are harmless, but I hypothesized that these could have been in fact affecting the game data itself.
Though I continued to press on for a time I became greatly demoralized by the prospect that the mod had become unstable. I had already previously had to deal with Armageddon Onslaught and ITAS (two Starcraft mods), which were unstable because of the limit expander necessary for their survival. After a point I decided to painfully discontinue my longest-running project, despite having written over a hundred pages combined of history and descriptions for the units, heroes, and abilities/races. Despite having gone through the game's strings and correcting each and every single line containing incorrect grammar and punctuation, despite all of the energy I had put into getting my wc3-format WoW models into 3ds max in a format I could bring into the game at long last.
It was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made. I usually do not hesitate to let projects die if I feel continued work on them will not bring me any enjoyment. But I felt a sense of obligation to a project of this magnitude, even if it was never to be made public.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 5-09AM.jpg[/imgwh]
I never forgot about LoL:2042 nor the potential it had.
Armageddon Onslaught's Revival
A year later I decided to revive Armageddon Onslaught and complete it, despite knowing I could not correct the plugin crash. Its programmer wasn't even sure how it worked at all, it's quite possibly the biggest hack ever made for sc without being an actual "hack" hack. After a time I largely completed the mod save some portraits and effects, and released the final version.
It wasn't long after the release that I was made aware of people stealing graphics from both AO and my older mods. I follow a modder's code of conduct to the letter - Always ask for permission to use a resource if permission is not granted outright. In every mod I always release a statement and a readme saying that their content cannot be used in another project except under extremely specific circumstances (I typically let those who assisted me in some major way to use some of my resources). These individuals did not ask for permission, and furthermore one of them decided to post about his project on Campaign Creations. After politely letting him know that he was using the Afterburn explosions from AO and remastered d2 conversions I did not want other projects using, he agreed to remove them, and in return I helped him find some alternate graphics to use.
Then he vanished from CC and I found more recent images from his projects surely enough using the exact same graphics he had claimed to remove.
I decided to never release another project to the public again as a result.
Return to LoL:2042
I was hoping for Starcraft 2 to be a way to start fresh in modding, but with the editor being such a huge disappointment I decided to forego any plans to make custom content for the game. It's possible that if the dev team listens to the info I had forwarded to them internally and that they update the editor I will think about making a project, but at this time it is folly to attempt anything on the scale I produce in something so disorganized and inefficient. It would not be pleasant, it would be boring, agonizing grunt work.
The hype of Sc2 died out immediately for me in beta. I was bored of the game a week in, continuing to commentate only out of my obligation to people I had told I'd be producing such content for. As the beta neared its end I announced I would retire from commentating sc2, and so I have.
Other than writing my novel I have nothing in life. No future, no present, only the painful past and how circumstances and coincidence have ruined me. I needed a way to spend my time, time that could not easily be spent. Time travels extremely slowly for me. A day lasts a lifetime. Prior to sc2's beta I had been modding Sins of a Solar Empire, until I discovered that the game had a poly limit of 25k quads. This, on top of a number of already ludicrous limitations, encouraged me to drop my private project for the game, which I did without hesitation as I was already fed up with it and had sc2 commentating to worry about. Post-commentating, though, I had nothing to do.
I decided to revive LoL, despite the crash. Just like I did for AO. Except, unlike AO, I wasn't working to finish it. I'm working to burn time. I'd like to finish it, but the journey will be long and most challenging.
Somewhere near the death of the project I had attempted rebuilding the mod's data, splitting it apart, and trying to isolate the crash. As a result I had created a huge fucking mess of the resource folders for game data and ended up with 5-6 versions of the mod. When I returned to the game I had forgotten I had done this, and was immediately met with uncertainty and confusion. I found one resource I presumed was the most recent and chose to use that.
However, this version was indeed one of the rebuilt versions lacking some custom resources. I opted to rebuild those from scratch, most notably custom structure data. I wasn't losing a lot, anyway.
I've only failed to generate a map a single time since then, and have yet to crash. I do not entertain the faint hope that somehow the crash was related to the files that didn't get copied over. No. That's a good way to be disappointed. The game has an autosave feature; crashes are extremely irritating, especially amidst a huge battle, but what countermeasures can be made are already made.
I still faced two big challenges I'd have to overcome if I was to see this grand work completed, however.
Balance.
Graphics.
Approaching the balance from a new perspective
Two years had passed since the mod's death, two years to grow and evolve. I've only lived eight of my twenty-two years; everything else was spent in mental dormancy while I endured the harsh trials of society. Two years is a long time to harden understanding of my craft despite inactivity. Over time I had conceptualized how I would approach the game's balance if I had the opportunity to do so. Now was the time to test my concepts.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... 9-35AM.jpg[/imgwh]
I would balance this game - Epic units, Legendary Heroes, spells and all. Or I'd die trying. Probably the latter, but at least I'd have something to brag about.
I posted this on CC to convey to a few individuals what it was my intentions were.
The Four Elements At Odds - The Crutch of GraphicsDesign Thought Process
Back in ~2008 when I was still working on this mod I started running into some major balancing difficulties with the engine's shortcomings. Since I can't set a minimum damage value, it's always 1 baseline. So, a Deep Destroyer that can potentially do 30 unmitigated damage might still hit for as low as 2-3. This random, unpredictable crippling of damage output makes balancing top level units very, very hard. In some cases, units like the Deep Destroyer could utterly massacre Legendary heroes and lesser units. In other cases they would die without much of a fight.
Also amongst my concerns is that, despite significant buffs, Archery and other ranged attacks were falling behind in value as the game progressed. Although Archery could still often reliably hit, it just didn't do the kind of damage to hurt high-end units without significant numbers of archers, and worse yet you generally needed to enchant them.
Additionally, Legendary heroes were dying too fast in general. I can't give them any more than 50 hp (I can go as high as 120 or something for a standard unit before the engine breaks).
To address these problems I started dramatically removing or toning down the amount of elemental damage types that units got (these bypass "physical protection", the only thing that actually mitigates physical damage and most upper-end units and heroes had). Most Deep Hive lost poison strike entirely, units like the Deep Destroyer got their once baseline bonus damage pushed to silver or gold. This also makes their veterancy more significant; a Gold Deep Destroyer is far more dangerous than a young one.
Units I intended to be baseline top-tier melee, like the Arch Fiend, had their major DPS abilities like double strike pushed to Gold to encourage using them carefully and devoting some time to feeding them a bit before devoting them to major battles. This also gives Legendary heroes an edge against them until they start getting really strong.
Without so many elemental damage types bypassing the defenses of heroes, I began sprinkling physical protection onto every shield item in the game and every Heroic and Legendary hero. Additionally, most Heroic heroes received protection from most elements, and Legendaries often sport several immunities. Gygias is vulnerable only to magic and death I believe, also having physical immunity, same with Sir Magicpants. Now you don't get totally fucked if you're facing down a Deep Destroyer with Captain Planet. In fact, once decked out, HKS was able to kill Destroyers fairly easily with this hero without double strike. Jaheira is the stronger DPS'er of the two and would probably be able to more readily attack high level shit. I'm not finished with Leonidas yet.
I also began reducing damage values across the board to help control the flow of DPS a bit. This meant battles would be slower and less bursty. I generally kept top-tier the same or close to the same but reduced their abilities and defenses, pushing major stuff like double strike to silver or gold. For units like the Dread Concubine, which I wanted to be strong from the start, I pushed things like Cold Strike to Gold but kept Double Strike at baseline so they could fill the void left behind by Arch Fiends being nerfed in the opposite direction. While this is an overall nerf to Dread Legion as a whole, it was a necessary change and one that I feel widens their choices in units a bit more (You can spam Concubines for immediate DPS if you want, or invest in the much more expensive Arch Fiends if you have time to spare to level them up and bring out their strengths).
Ranged units, however, are much greater of a challenge - especially my concept of adding ranged heroes. The only true ranged hero in the game right now is Iris, and she was largely my test bed for seeing how Archery-based heroes performed. Predictably; not so well. Her damage output was decent in early game but easily outshined by other standard heroes as the game progressed due to the simple fact that Archery is not based on base damage (thus it doesn't improve over time with levels, only with Marksmanship levels that only provide very minor bonuses). This problem is echoed by other ranged units in the game as well.
So I had to make a compromise. Balancing these units was never going to be perfect. If I buffed them a lot, they'd dominate early game and only even out in end-game when their abilities were matched by top melee and disablers like Destroyers and Fiends.
I've opted to give all magical-based ranged abilities a significant damage bonus while leaving their attack rating as it was. This has resulted in fairly significant damage output at fairly unpredictable periods (HKS lost a significant battle with two reasonably leveled Legendaries when the ranged guys turned holy bolts on him, although these units also had maxed marksmanship as well), but makes these units actually dangerous and warranting respect.
I've opted to go the Glass Cannon route with these units. In addition to reducing mana costs on offensive spells, I've introduced two additional types of Archery - Advanced and Legendary. Heroes like Iris are receiving the tier2 archery - Advanced - instead of base Archery. This will make them very strong early game, but no stronger than Legendaries or Heroics of the DPS type. I suspect situations will arise where they will be even more powerful, but this is a price worth being paid for their extended usefulness throughout the game.
Legendary archery is being reserved for specific heroes and races. Loladins and Minotaurs will have Legendary archers for example, but Humans and Bloodstone will not (Bloodstone will have the most powerful air units in the game next to Devilwing instead). Minotaurs will have a tier 7 unit with a massive mechanically-assisted bow and will be fairly durable. Loladins will have a tier 8 ranged unit that is less durable but has baseline buffs instead (Holy Strike).
However, these units will probably be waiting for new graphics before they arrive.
Another major concern right now is the serious lack of ranged or air available to the Baelificus. They have three units capable of hitting air - all of them low level and very weak. Gargoyles, their only flying unit, Thunderers, which only have Hurl Lightning, and White Hunters, which are extremely frail (though have other uses). They need at least one mid-range ranged and a high-end flyer, otherwise they are way too easy to dismantle with certain other races.
I like the balance I have with Confederates. I was worried about having a range-dominated race but right now they're playing out pretty nicely. I haven't seen any top-tier battles between their gundams and airships vs high-end units or heroes from other races yet, but their mid-range is working exactly as intended. Super Marines are also extremely hilarious and add a little risk with the potential of enormous burst damage. Combustable Scorpies and Atomic Penguins remain useful throughout the game due to their high damage potential, becoming more dangerous as more units enter the battle.
Confederates need a few melee mecha, though. I'll probably have to model them myself. I think Kirky has one or two gnomer bots converted, I'll have to check again, which I could use. Right now they have the Penetrator but I haven't properly rigged him yet.
Blizzard has always been a bit edgy, though predictable, when it comes to mods. Mods as a whole violate the EULA and are considered "illegal", but so long as they don't impact the experiences of other players, Blizzard has turned a blind eye. They've only intervened in very specific cases - LoTC was told to make aware that it is a user-made project and not an expansion because of the level of quality it had, Infoceptor's SCtoWc3 mod was forced to shut down for, at least as far as I was told, using art from wc3 pre-release that it shouldn't have had. It's also possible that Blizzard just wanted to destroy any competition they had for wc3 when it came out, even though a mod cannot compete with a commercial title. Even the very name might have set them off. They're weird like that.
The only other instances that Blizzard has intervened is when stuff like a C&C General SC mod appeared, which was predictably shut down. If you use the proper terminology you can basically do anything you want. At the same time, though, Blizzard does not acknowledges modders exist and does nothing to support them - offering their editors only to mappers. Modders are usually left out in the grand scheme of things, relying on third party tools to fill the gap between map editor and mod environment.
With Blizzard hosting wc3 maps on their site that contain WoW graphics, and Diablo 2 being as massively modded as it is, one can confidently presume that as long as you stick to your guns and keep cool about your business you can do whatever you want. With the lack of support, though, things like porting graphics from one game to another is extremely difficult business, especially with a community as split and largely inept as wc3's. The Russian modeling tool was abandoned by its creator over a year ago, the MDX importer for 3ds max is the only functional one of its kind and lacks major features. On top of that, the versions of 3ds max it supports don't work on vista or windows 7 - I'm running windows 7 now and my friend is running vista, we cannot use our old method to port graphics from WoW to 3ds max anymore. We were effectively cut off from our only means of getting new graphics into the game.
Putting Blizzard-made graphics into another game engine is a business I am not wholly confident about. If it were my way I wouldn't be using anyone's graphics but my own. However, my modeling skills are juvenile at best and do not even touch the talents necessary for creating characters, much less texturing, skinning, or animating anything. There will be a time I can use my 3d capabilities to make graphics for the mod but only for a few, very specific things. Until then I have to bite the bullet and hope no one minds a private project. Kirky's mod isn't private and it's been out for years - not a peep from anyone so far. Give credit where credit is due and take everything in stride. Infinity engine and diablo 1 graphics have been used in various mods for aeons and no one's lost any neck to that yet.
With desire comes desperation, however. Politics mean nothing when you can't get anything.
I have one hope for the WoW side of things - someone on sc2mapster has a m2 plugin for 3ds max he created. I've asked for him for it, but it's been weeks since he said he'd get back to me "soon". I am starting to lose hope. If this doesn't work out I'll be forced to again try Kirky's method, as much as it kills me to do that kind of work.
However, one must count his blessings.
Through research and investment I've been able to figure out a means of converting community-made graphics from Civilization 3 to Age of Wonders 2, and relatively speedily. This doesn't offer much besides a plethora of mechanical units; tanks, aircraft, and ships. Only two races in my mod can make use of these graphics, but I'll gladly take them. With the Civ3 user-made resources I can totally complete one of the mod's races given time.
With the existing scenes we used for the few WoW conversions we made 2 years ago, I can put any model I have into 3ds max and create a sprite out of it after an arduous, agonizing manual frame renaming process. For one who has severe carpel tunnel from 3d modeling earlier in the year, the process of clicking dozens of dialogues in irfanview for a single unit graphic is physically painful and exhausting. I've contacted one of my buddies I had doing some scripts to batch rename stuff for AO back in the day, hopefully he'll get back to me soon; it's also been weeks.
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In a mod so grand in scale it seems folly to become so dependent on something so small and so difficult to acquire. Yet, at the same time, one acknowledges that this one thing, this one object, is all he needs to take a step forward. It is the last cog in the machine, the last stone in the brick road. So one must do all he can to get this thing, even if it means risking everything else. For nothing else matters if it is not all it can be.
I decided to, again, try to use some Diablo 2 graphics to fill the gaps. But diablo 2 only has a few graphics I can make use out of. I'll take them.
So I've started looking elsewhere. Deeper, into more arcane means of getting what I need. I'll stop at nothing to reach my goals. So long as the spirit burns strong I'll keep trying until I get what I want. This will in turn encourage me to try things I've never tried before. This will mean I will become more familiar with subjects I am unfamiliar with. I'll grow.
Everything is a learning experience. Every failed mod, every successful mod, every venture and every battle for understanding. Even if you do not reach the end of the line you have still moved forward.
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I did not get where I am by allowing fear and uncertainty to destroy me. I got where I am by allowing fear and uncertainty to destroy me only after I exhausted all other options.
Age of Wonders 2 - Dividing By Zero
