The defend the field quest is complete! well, as complete as the other quests anyway. i also managed to make it not freeze the computer every time you tried to complete it. in the end i used a loop system which repeated up to 40 instead of creating a lump sum of just 40 rats. this gave a much better look and stopped the screen freeze. Colin has also finally starterd to decipher how to link levels. Yay! i'm worked on the Graveyard quest now but this time trying to make it work on the main map not just in a minimap. I am currently having problems with rally points, but i will succeed! here a picture of the new "bob the quest giver" renamed Elizabeth for obvious reasons

The Evil Genius in all his Glory

Quest List for Starting Map

Deliver Something
Kill something
Protect an area
Escort quest
"Cleaning"

Deliver something
This quest is done and it was some of the first trigger editing I've done. i relied heavily on Colin's code for the Kill something quest and even got it working to a degree. Colin of course spent an hour after me just making it neater, cleaner and more fool proof.
in this quest you have to deliver a rusty farm trough to a farmer and the return to the blacksmith for a reward.

Kill something
This was actually the quests name for a week or so. Colin did all the Code and managed to make a pretty nice quest. All I did later was change the wording to make it sound slightly less idiotic.
in this quest the player has to talk to the Lumberjack in the town square. He asks you to kill off the bandits who have taken over his favourite tree cutting spot. Return to him for a reward.

Protect an area
I'm still working on this one but basically the quest involves killing all the rats that have infested a field. This quest I have nearly done all on my own. This quest was hard because I first had to make a unit, which can never usually attack (the rat) attack. This involved a lot of fiddling in object editor. I then had to make them spawn in 3 different areas on the map (within the field) and not make the computer crash. The game Warcraft 3 has a flaw. When I told it to wait 2 seconds before spawning the next set of rats, it had a fit. This was because it was to activate the trigger when a unit stepped onto the field. Problem was the game kept on activating the trigger and then trying to re spawn again and again. I fixed this by turning off the trigger the moment a unit stepped onto the field. This quest still has bugs. For instance the rats still try run away and do not attack, even though they can.

Escort Quest
This was commented on detail, this was the graveyard map.

"Cleaning"
This quest involves cleaning a house of rats. i have started level design but its not complete yet.

None of the above quests are fully complete. For instance the most complete (Deliver Something and Kill something) do not have cinematics in pace et, meaning you know you have the quest but you don't know where from. Also there are no rewards in place yet.

Colmando and I (Kelicnite) composed a list quests to do on the first map of our RPG. One of these quests was an escort quest where the player had to escort Bob to his Grandma’s grave. To do this, you took Bob to the graveyard where you are warped to a mini map. Apart from the usual creation of terrain this map involved the use of triggers and object editor.

The graveyard map (below)


In object editor I edited three objects. One was the arch near the entrance which I made smaller and darker to suit the mood.
Another was the tombstones. The only thing I did with the tombstones was to make their minimum and maximum size larger.
Finally I edited the ghost who I renamed Grandma Tabitha, changed from neutral hostile to passive hostile, changed the stats, armor type and made it available on all tile sets for future use.



The trigger editor I am not so used to. For trigger editing I first disabled the automatic starting points. This was to make sure that town-halls wouldn’t suddenly appear in the centre of the map when it initializes. Secondly I disabled enforced victory conditions so that you wouldn’t automatically lose at the start of the game (because you don’t have a town-hall).



I then made my own triggers. This trigger makes it so when the map initializes (the event) the daytime is set to midnight (action)


Trigger in effect


Trigger editor

I then went even further and made another trigger where Grandma Tabitha is made invulnerable (action) as the map initializes.


Grandma Tabitha

Glossary

I have finally finished the glossary you can find a link to it at the right hand side of this web page.

Current Work

Not much to tell about this week. Mainly it was fixing up bugs like the fact the hero's looked good (mostly) but weren't heroes. also doing a mini map for a quest. the quest is to help this guy reach his mother's grave. of course you have to pass through a graveyard and defeat the zombies within it to finish the quest.

Progress so far

Progress

Two maps have there terrains completed. There is a map whish is just a Consept. I have make a set of tigers to make the maps linked together in a way that seems to work but I think I might have found a map with a better way to link the maps (I will have to look in to it). I have make filters work in warcraft 3. I am putting quests in to the starting town map which Vincent decided. Vincent was putting creeps in to the river map on the 19/6/08 (I will have to talk to him about the difficulty curve for them). Hero models done they need to be imported in the campaign editor. The sound sets for the heroes still need to be made. Some of the creep skins are made. There still need to be more maps made. I need to look in to the triggers for respawning of the creeps.

To do list.

Relook into the triggers for linking of the maps.
Look into the triggers for respawning of creeps.
Import maps into the campaign editor.
Work on a glossary.
Design more maps.
Work how to get the heroes spells to work.
Make up sound sets for the heroes.
Make quests for the town map.
Add creeps to the first forest map.
Make the second forest map in the editor with already made concept.
Talk to Vincent about the difficulty curve for the creeps thought the game.
Put the general project mind map on to the computer.
Work out what will be suitable item for the heroes.
Think of more things to do.

Filters testing

To day I made a test map to see if I could get the filters working. I made some images to use as filters. One of then was a white with “this is a filtter” dawn on it. And the other was white with transparent patches in it. I saved them as .tga. I when to use the tool I normally used to turn pics in to .blp format but it want to open. I imported the images as .tga was it the world editor recognised them as images. I made the triggers to display a filter. Then I tested the map and got it to display a filter the entire game crashed with a fatal error. So I when online to look a tutorial about filters (http://world-editor-tutorials.thehelper.net /fading.php). Looked like what a did was right but they used a .blp file and the pic was at the size 512 by 512. I downloaded to file from the site they indicated (http://www.hiveworkshop. com/forums/resource.php?t=62877). But I didn’t work so I changed down to size of the images to 512 by 512. I reimported them in tried the map again. It still had the error. To I looked at the comments of the site I downloaded to toll form and some one eventually got a download link for the tool compressed to a .rar and it worked. Then I imported the imaged now as .blp files. I worked, I just had to fix up some miner details with the applying of the filter with the trigger.

Map joining testing.

Last night I started to make a map that linked to it self but you would start would start in a spot depending where you left the map by. To do this I had to use the campaign editor which I have not used before but what I used if for didn’t take too much to work out what to do with it. Also I had to use cache which I had not tacked before in the trigger editor and that took a while to figure out what to do. This morning I went online and downloaded a blizzard campaign map to look at to see what did with the cache (from http://www.warcraft.org/maps/). It look like that I did was right. After working for about 45 minutes (including what I did last night). I got the map to do what I wanted it to do. There was only one bug which make the game randomly makes the game loses connection with the host and disconnects (This is strange because I’m doing the tests offline with my computer as the host) when the unit at the start is created. I just need to fix up the bug then it’ll right to use the triggers in the maps.

Something New

Today I did something I had never done before. I imported a model into Warcraft 3 world -editor. This may seem simple(and is) but after getting muddled up by Colmando's explanation I figured out how to do it myself. I am most proud that the character I imported worked first time (unlike the time Colmando did it where he had to fix some bugs). I even figured out how to do it again. Another development this week is the creation of two more random units. What amazed me about these units was that I created them entirely (they are done!) in a week. I seem to be getting faster at model making.

The beginning map is based on a comfort feel. It is designed to show order and make the player feel safe. One particular problem that I faced was a section of blank map of no importance. I decided to add a farm to break up the bare ground. A farm is not complete without a house. This house must be connected to a road and so on till I had a curvy path with a pond. This did still not satisfy me so I created waterfall. The problem with a waterfall is that it must come from somewhere. I then did something I had never done before, I added a raised level and put water into it. I then faced another problem for I wanted the map to be as open as possible, going back to that safe feel. To accomplish this open feel I had to make a river that fed the waterfall and the cliff it was on, accessible. I decided to make a ramp that went to the top of the cliff and down into the river before climbing the other side of the river and going back down the cliff. This effect would create two humps with a river running through it with no sign of a cliff. Now the problems started. First I discovered the river had to be at least 4 blocks wide so as to have a ramp go up both sides (added water in the editor automatically has cliffs surrounding it). The heights surrounding the water had to be 2 blocks wide for there to be ramps. These difficulties took me at least half an hour to overcome. Here is the picture of the finished river:

Bowperson Animation

map: river and leprechaun model

the map called the river has been planned out and started. this map consists of a river trip by boat with numerous stops, with their own problems, along the way.
the leprechaun model is finished. this model is based on the Farseer Hero and will also be a mounted magic user. Project CLOUT has considered using the name Magical Trevor for this hero but have decided that this name is too well known. a picture of the Leprechaun will be in the next post.

Current Work/decisions

Colmando and I have decided to restrict our game to a single player campaign. This campaign will have each level linked to keep with a single map profile. this will mean changes from the size of the maps, to the greater detail and other changes. the first map has already been started and consists of a town and farmland.

current work

The skin for Thug is finished (for now) and i have made the first skin for one of the critters in the game (desert satyr) also working on the skin for desert dragon and desert wolf. the Leprechaun base model has been chosen (Farseer) and model modified though skin the same. picture of all of the above models will be up next post

One of the creators in their new skin

13/03/2008 Hero's

Colin and I (Kelicnite) discussed hero abilities. These are our current ideas on the hero abilities.

Leprechaun will have 6 different sections on moves and these will be destruction, healing, buffs, passive, gold and summoning. Summoning will have scout, water elemental and spirit wolfs. Destruction will have Chain lightning, death and decay, fire bolt, fan of knives. Healing spells will be Healing light, healing wave and tranquillity. Buffs will contain steal buff and bloodlust. Gold spells will be transmogrify and spirits of gold. The passive will only have brilliance aura in its arsenal.
The Thug will have a passive menu of spells and a damage menu. We have not decided on the on the ultimate but the passive abilities are life steal, thorn aura, unholy aura, devotion aura and maybe endurance aura. The damage spells will be stomp and storm bolt

Bowperson will have two spell menus which will be passive (true shot aura and evasion) and arrows (ice, poison, fire, explosive arrow (splash), stun (ultimate).

06/03/2008 Work in progress

The first skins of the main characters have been made with one of the creators and Thug skins being finished. Names have also been given to the characters, with the Thug given the name of Ugg, the creators are now Colmando and Kelicnite, Leprechaun is now Magical Trever, Narrator is just Narrator, Evil Genius is Evil Genius and Bowperson will be named Jannet.

level design

Colmando and I had a discussion on the plot after lunch today. We worked out the basic layout of the map and where the action will take place.
So far we are thinking of making the character(s) start in a town, then go onto a forest before heading downstream on a boat. This boat trip will eventually lead to a village. After the village the character(s) will cross a desert, pass through a wall, in to another forest before heading to the main evil fortress. The character(s) will then move onto the demon realm for the final quest.
The voice actors have also been confirmed for the main characters. These include the Bowperson, Leprechaun, Thug and main evil character, which has yet to have a name.

25/2/08 morning team meeting

Today Kelicnite and I had our first team meeting I we had discussed about the plot, the characters.
We decided to make it that you can should out nine heroes to play with. The nine heroes will be divided in to 3 types Ranged, Melee and Magic.
The three Ranged heroes are the “Bowperson” who is an agility hero, the “Gun Fanatic” who is a strength hero and the “Random Creature” who is intelligence hero.
The three Magic heroes are the “leprechaun” who is an agility hero, the “Techie” who is a strength hero and the “Magical Trevor” who is intelligence hero.
The three Melee heroes are the “Drunken Ninja” who is an agility hero, the “Thug” who is a strength hero and the “Pompous Fool” who is intelligence hero.

25/02/08 DIM discussion

Colmando and I had an afternoon discussion. This meeting was not long after our meeting in the morning.
We have now decided not to go with 9 characters, each with their own voice, for this would take too much space. we are now restricting it to 3 playable characters and 3 unlockabes (that is if you know the right codes). This restriction will increase the amount of space we can use on other things such as plot developments.
The characters as they stand are a Magical Leprchaun (magic), a Thug (melee), a Bowperson (ranged), Narrator (unknown) and both creators (ourselfs).
We have voice actors for some of the characters though not all.