[Role Playing Game] TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG

[InfernalTater]

At first, I was going to try to complete the game before releasing it, but then I decided to go ahead and put it here and update it continuously. Please do not judge this as though it is a complete map; everything in it will be improved in the future. A lot of things in it are temporary placeholders that were quickly made to be later replaced with things that are better made; such as leaky trigger systems and terrain areas with no pathing.

It is nowhere near complete, so keep that in mind! I haven't even named it yet!

I work fast, so you can expect this to be significantly improved at least every week. Including the quality of this post.

It's 480x480, so keep that in mind when judging the size of it based on the mini-map.

My two main objectives in creating this are to produce an RPG where players can flexibly and uniquely build their heroes, and also not have to grind the same enemies for more than a few minutes at a time.

TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.06 ~15 Hrs Development - July 4th, 2015
TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.09 ~ 20 Hrs Development - July 5th, 2015
TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.10 ~ 23 Hrs Development - July 6th, 2015
TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.11 ~ 26 Hrs Development - July 7th, 2015
TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.12 ~31 Hrs Development - July 8th, 2015
TLI's InfernoQuest ORPG v0.13 ~35 Hrs Development - July 10th, 2015

Changelog

InfernoQuest 0.13.00 Updates

--Very slight changes to Satyr & Spider terrain.
--Improved terrain of Kobold area (more to be done in the future).
--Replaced Kobold King with Rat Rider
--Changed visual effect of Shadow Strike & its DoT
--Updated tooltips of many abilities to fit the new format. (Color-coded & including info like cooldown and mana cost)
--Rebalanced some abilities
--Added mana & new abilities to some creeps.
--Added combat sounds to many abilities.
--Increased level count of all abilities to 20 (Except Summon Skeletal Mage & Summon Skeletal Archer, which remain at 15 for now)
--New Rogue Ability: "Lacerate"
--Deleted Paladin Ability: "Frost-Enhanced Attacks"
--New Paladin Ability "Frozen Strikes" (No, I didn't just rename Frost-Enhanced Attacks. It's a totally different ability, check it out)
--New Hunter Ability: "Flurry of Knives"
--Deleted Old Junkyard Area.
--Created & Implemented New ability learning system (trigger-side, no gameplay impact)
--New Mage Model
--Removed level requirements from most abilities.
--Fixed some bugs.
(4H)

Here are some screenshots. I won't yet have screenshots to represent everything in the game; I'll take a couple at a time.

Screenshots

Skill Screens

BarbScreen

MageScreen

Base

Waterfall

Fountain

Base

Creep Areas

Satyrs

Spiders

Wolf

Nerubian

If anyone wants to join this project, let me know. I am currently working on it alone. I can use any type of help, and you don't have to commit to a long-term investment in the map if you don't want to. Even if you have no skills, I can teach you how to do things that you can help me with.

This list will start out rather incomplete, but I'm going to update it with things I need; you can either make it and contribute, help me to create it, or send me something made by someone else that could help. If you're interested in making a resource for me, ask me before you make it; if I already have a custom texture imported in my map that would work for the model, then you could conveniently wrap that texture to it. If you could wrap your doodad to a terrain tile, that would be awesome, because then it could be used with other tiles as well.
But here's what I need:

Custom Cliff & Rock Doodads - High quality, but the cliff model needs to be 50 KB or less, and the rock models should be under 20 KB. Preferably with in-game textures, but a custom texture could be used. Multiple variations would be great but not imperative.
Bush/Plant/Shrub/Underbrush - No custom textures used.
HQ Trees - Aside from pine. No custom textures (or very small ones).
Custom Inventory & Item Generator (with controllable affixes based on the item) System.

Info for Playing:
You spend your skill points (lumber) in the top left! This is temporary.
-str/-agi/-int/-acc to spend your stat points (food)
Left/Right to switch between heroes, Up to choose
Currently broken abilities: Precise Attacks & Fire Strike. Avoid wasting points on these.

 

[Hantoo]

Good Luck Subscribing~~

 

[Arad MNK]

Seems Fine! I Like ORPG's! I'm Kinda Experienced in them...

 

[InfernalTater]

Seems Fine! I Like ORPG's! I'm Kinda Experienced in them...

Great! I hope you'll enjoy this more and more as I update it! What you see now is only a blueprint! It's only 12 hours of work! Most great RPG's took a hundreds, if not more than a thousand, hours of work between multiple people working on them. So expect this to be a lot better by the time it's done.

But even already, it's becoming fun and provides a decent length of playtime.

 

[APproject]

It would be cool to see some screenshots before downloading. A bunch of text really does not attract an eye. But I suppose you will be adding those soon. Subscribing.

 

[Arad MNK]

Most great RPG's took a hundreds, if not more than a thousand, hours of work between multiple people working on them. So expect this to be a lot better by the time it's done.

But even already, it's becoming fun and provides a decent length of playtime.

Of course Thousands of hours Soloing... Unless you have a Team. On my Only map and ORPG I soloed and it was Hard! (My ORPG is in My resources)
I just say Making one is Hard but Fun(?).

 

[InfernalTater]

Of course Thousands of hours Soloing... Unless you have a Team. On my Only map and ORPG I soloed and it was Hard! (My ORPG is in My resources)
I just say Making one is Hard but Fun(?).

It's definitely fun! Which is why I have faith that this will be the first map I ever finish. Also, I'll check out your RPG.

It would be cool to see some screenshots before downloading. A bunch of text really does not attract an eye. But I suppose you will be adding those soon. Subscribing.

Definitely.

I've updated the map. It still has the same terrain; that is something I will add a lot of detail to in the future. But this update was simply 5 hours of gameplay work done on it, adding abilities, items, etc. Quests may or may not work. Don't buy them until you complete them, you turn them in buy grabbing them, and you can only grab them once. I'll fix that with a whole new system in the future. The abilities will also be more advanced in the future.

 

[InfernalTater]

Updated! I lost a lot of progress yesterday, sadly, but I'm not letting it discourage me from continuing to work on it. I'll just have to recreate what was lost from losing power, and the editor crashing twice.

The first thing you'll probably notice is the new ability screens. These use no imports aside from a simple square with replaceable textures to swap icons to, along with a simple background I created with BNet textures. The black boxes will eventually be filled with text based on which ability you have selected.

 

[InfernalTater]

Updated! There are many changes, but the most noticeable ones are probably the waterfall I made (not finished adding detail to it yet), and the new hero selection/ability screens.

 

[PurgeandFire]

Seems promising. I know things are incomplete, but I'll just report things as a checklist for you to fix later:

• Rusty Grieves has no DISBTN
• Rusty Sheild should be Rusty Shield
• Do all mobs drop items 100%? I would rather have only a small chance of dropping an item. Otherwise you end up with huge bags of crap that you have to dump to a vendor constantly.
• Be sure to add at least a game message or something to inform the user on what to do at the hero select screen. I know you put it in the post, but be sure to put it in game too!
• On the hero select screen, I can freely move the camera. You should lock it so that the person is more immersed. Also, you should add a fog modifier so that the hero selection screen areas are revealed.

 

[Arad MNK]

Cool screenshots! but I think you should resize them... They're too big...

 

[InfernalTater]

Rusty Grieves has no DISBTN

A lot of items are going to be without DISBTN icons in the future. There are already 200 items. There are going to be hundreds more. I can't afford 7KB a pop (which would add up to MB's) just so it looks better when you pause the game or click someone else's hero. I want to save space for when you're actually playing the game. When I get closer to the limit, I'm even going to start removing the DISBTN's that are currently in the game.

Rusty Sheild should be Rusty Shield

I'll fix that.

Do all mobs drop items 100%? I would rather have only a small chance of dropping an item. Otherwise you end up with huge bags of crap that you have to dump to a vendor constantly.

Their drop rate is nowhere near 100%. If you were getting drops that consistently, you must be very lucky. I've had people complain about not getting enough items.

Be sure to add at least a game message or something to inform the user on what to do at the hero select screen. I know you put it in the post, but be sure to put it in game too!

Of course. There will be information in-game telling users how everything works in the final release. I'll go ahead and put some info in for the current systems.

On the hero select screen, I can freely move the camera. You should lock it so that the person is more immersed. Also, you should add a fog modifier so that the hero selection screen areas are revealed.

Already planned on it. There are a lot of things I plan to do that don't get done immediately because I'm too busy doing other things that I also planned to do. I used to work from the back of my head, but yesterday I started writing a list, so I should be able to do a better job of getting all the little things done.

Cool screenshots! but I think you should resize them... They're too big...

Your screen is too small. I'm not going to shrink them down to fit in a tiny monitor. Then people with larger monitors (the majority) will complain. Right click the screenshot and click "Open Image in New Tab". Most browsers will automatically resize the image to fit the boundaries of your screen in the new window (unless you click the image to magnify it to its full size).

Edit: The next Update is here! It's got lots of terrain work and some new abilities and bosses! (Of course, as always, lots of trigger-side work that people won't see. Each patch will be replacing shitty triggers with pissy triggers, which will eventually be replaced with decent triggers)

 

[Arad MNK]

Cool new screenshots! But I must say that the Creeps don't fit the HQ Terrain. But Really, Really, REALLY AWESOME!

 

[InfernalTater]

Cool new screenshots! But I must say that the Creeps don't fit the HQ Terrain. But Really, Really, REALLY AWESOME!

You're right, but I plan to have so many areas by the time this is done that I can't afford to import too many custom creep models. There are some, but they are limited.

It looks a lot less weird in-game while everything is moving. Have you played it yet?

 

[Arad MNK]

Have you played it yet?

... No...
I don't like/download WIP's. That's why I like screenshots. However I'm planning to download t when it reaches 50 hours and give a detailed review!

 

[InfernalTater]

... No...
I don't like/download WIP's. That's why I like screenshots. However I'm planning to download t when it reaches 50 hours and give a detailed review!

Believe me, it's more than most RPG's already in its current state. It has 6-9 abilities per hero with 20 levels per ability, 170 droppable items, ~20 playable areas with 1-3 bosses per area; it already has more to offer than your typical "complete" RPG.

But if you're waiting until this RPG is done, that's going to be a long, long time, because this is a 480x480 map. The part that's done is already the size of a full RPG.

 

[Arad MNK]

Believe me, it's more than most RPG's already in its current state. It has 6-9 abilities per hero with 20 levels per ability, 170 droppable items, ~20 playable areas with 1-3 bosses per area; it already has more to offer than your typical "complete" RPG.

But if you're waiting until this RPG is done, that's going to be a long, long time, because this is a 480x480 map. The part that's done is already the size of a full RPG.

As I said, I'll check it out when it's 50 Hours.

#peace

 

[InfernalTater]

Updated. I'll try to write changelogs from now on, but they'll be summarized; I'm making way too many changes to list every individual change one at a time.

InfernoQuest 0.13.00 Updates

--Very slight changes to Satyr & Spider terrain.
--Improved terrain of Kobold area (more to be done in the future).
--Replaced Kobold King with Rat Rider
--Changed visual effect of Shadow Strike & its DoT
--Updated tooltips of many abilities to fit the new format. (Color-coded & including info like cooldown and mana cost)
--Rebalanced some abilities
--Added mana & new abilities to some creeps.
--Added combat sounds to many abilities.
--Increased level count of a few abilities to 20 (All are now 20 Except Summon Skeletal Mage & Summon Skeletal Archer, which remain at 15 for now)
--New Rogue Ability: "Lacerate"
--Deleted Paladin Ability: "Frost-Enhanced Attacks"
--New Paladin Ability "Frozen Strikes" (No, I didn't just rename Frost-Enhanced Attacks. It's a totally different ability, check it out)
--New Hunter Ability: "Flurry of Knives"
--Deleted Old Junkyard Area.
--Created & Implemented New ability learning system (trigger-side, no gameplay impact)
--New Mage Model
--Removed level requirements from most abilities.
--Fixed some bugs.
(4 hours development)

 

[Xonok]

Your rate of development reminds me the speed that I had when I started developing Rise of Carnage. The first 10-20 hours were fairly well-used, but then it kinda fell off due to a weak vision.
I assume you've planned your project quite thoroughly that you can keep this pace.

 

[InfernalTater]

Your rate of development reminds me the speed that I had when I started developing Rise of Carnage. The first 10-20 hours were fairly well-used, but then it kinda fell off due to a weak vision.
I assume you've planned your project quite thoroughly that you can keep this pace.

I'm doing it as I go. I've made a lot of maps (none ever finished, and most quit nowhere near completion), but usually, my time is spent less efficiently after the first 10-20 hours, like you said. This time, after 30 hours, I'm still making content very quickly. I'm able to because I'm coming at it with a different mindset this time. I used to get too worked up. I'd have so much in my mind that I'd want to make that I couldn't decide what to do first, and every different thing I wanted to do would need to be done a certain way to work well with something else.

So I decided to just not worry about making everything perfect. I can always make temporary systems to work with other things so that I can continue producing content until I later make better systems to integrate that content into; and the same for the content; I can continue to replace existing "blueprint" content with more developed content as I go. I'm not planning everything in advance because that is too limiting, however I do jot down a quick list of things to do before I start working each day, just to have something to look up and do whenever I'm having trouble committing to a task. But I won't limit myself to doing what's on the list; I stay in my head, thinking of things to do, and doing them, resorting to the list only when I'm stuck. It all boils down to going in with a different mindset; I have to look at it as just a fun hobby, which it is, and is what I want to keep it as.

I've got a really good feeling about this map. I am absolutely sure that I am going to commit more time to this map than I've ever put into any map before. I even expect to spend more time on this than I've spent on all mapping combined over the last 9 years (It's always just been a hobby; my total mapping experience is probably less than 300 hours). The only thing I'm sure of is that I'll never spend as much time on this map as I've spent playing Warcraft 3!

In fact, I've been playing my own map so much that it's impacting how much time I spend developing. That's why my last update took 2 days instead of the usual 1. Instead of trying to appeal to others, I've been making the RPG that I want to play, so it's already starting to be really fun to me. No joke, I played it for 5 hours straight yesterday with a couple of friends. Usually being the developer of a map causes it to be boring to play for me.

 

[Arad MNK]

Cool changelog! 15 Hours remain...

 

[Binsu]

I've always liked playing RPG maps and seeing this tickled my interest. udging from those screenshots, the terrain looks amazing, well-done as expected from the teacher (remember the past days about the Terraining Class?). As for the features, it's quite good to see that enemies are not repetitive and changes basing from your first post and where you can freely build your hero to your heart's content.

Nothing more to say because it all comes down to actually playing it to give an actual feedback or review. Downloading it and will give my feedback soon!

 

[InfernalTater]

Judging from those screenshots, the terrain looks amazing, well-done as expected from the teacher (remember the past days about the Terraining Class?).

Sorry about abandoning that class. Real life events kept stopping me from working on it, and then my father borrowed my laptop and broke it. Atm I have no computer, and the one I use to map when I can can't use a microphone, sadly.

I do want to add, though, that I'm actually a complete noob. I'm learning as I go, and my skills are rapidly improving. When I started that class, it wasn't to teach people how to make the best terrian; it was just to teach people how to be quite good with easy techniques.

As for the features, it's quite good to see that enemies are not repetitive and changes basing from your first post and where you can freely build your hero to your heart's content.

Nothing more to say because it all comes down to actually playing it to give an actual feedback or review. Downloading it and will give my feedback soon!

I hope you have fun!

 

[Arad MNK]

BUMP.

any new news?

 

[InfernalTater]

BUMP.

any new news?

Sorry, my allergies have been hitting me very hard. Certain times of summer they will hit like hell for 1-2 weeks. I cough so much that I can't concentrate on things for long, especially since I get sleep deprived because it's difficult to fall asleep when coughing so much. But that doesn't mean I'm not doing things related to the map; I've still been looking through THW's resources for things to use in it, speaking with the creators of those things, getting their permission, and editing those resources to do things in my map that I don't think I've ever seen done before (there are others who know how to do this, however I have yet to see it used to its potential). It's a simple trick, and I link to other people's tutorials relating to it, in a tutorial of my own available here on THW.

Things like that don't take as much long-term concentration. But to work on terrain, I would need to focus on my idea of what it's going to be, from start to finish; coughing nonstop would interrupt that thought. And to write triggers, I would need to know what my program is doing, how much of it I've written, and what parts I'm still planning to write; coughing my ass off constantly would make me occasionally forget things relating to this.

Yes, I could still work on the map anyway, but it would be a hassle and the amount of progress made would be very inefficient compared to the time spent, so I would rather simply take a break from the map until my allergies clear up, and in the meantime still be preparing things so that I will be able to quickly add lots of content to the map when I get back to working on it. I'm still working on the map, but not as much; most of what I'm doing is preparing models to be used in future updates. I have also made a few new abilities in the map which you'll be seeing in the next update, but that update will not be ready for a while.

I know it may sound like I'm giving up, but I'm not; it's only been a week since the last update, lol! You just got used to me adding so much every day.

 

[InfernalTater]

My allergies are going away; whatever was messing with me must be out of season now. I'll work on the map tomorrow and I promise I will spend enough time to produce an update.

But I warn you that after this update, I may again cease or slow down development of this project temporarily as I am about to help Misha by making terrain for his project. The theme he wants me to use is something I haven't done before and I'm very interested in getting started as soon as I have the doodad models that Blood Raven has been kind enough to produce specifically for Misha's project.

Although it's unrelated to my own project, if Misha will allow it, I will post screenshots of the terrain I produce for him here just so you folks know I'm not giving up on mapping like so many of us do shortly after beginning a project. You'll also have a sneak-peak at the future of my own RPG as I expect that I will inevitably use whatever skills I learn in creating Misha's terrain to create something similarly themed for my own map.

Edit: I'm sorry to disappoint, but the update is not yet ready. However, I assure you this is not because of laziness; I have produced new content today as promised, and the update will contain new abilities, however a couple of them are not working as intended and I'm finding it difficult to determine why and fix them. The update will have to wait until tomorrow to be ready.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I am absolutely sure that I am going to commit more time to this map than I've ever put into any map before. I even expect to spend more time on this than I've spent on all mapping combined over the last 9 years (It's always just been a hobby; my total mapping experience is probably less than 300 hours). The only thing I'm sure of is that I'll never spend as much time on this map as I've spent playing Warcraft 3!

Hahahahahahaha... you have no idea what is ahead of you, my friend...

Let me just tell you that I have thousands of hours, if not days invested into WC3. And yet that is just a tiny fraction of the amount of time I put into Gaias. Making a multiplayer RPG is a monumental task, especially if you are a perfectionist.
I probably spent more time refactoring the scrappy dated systems I wrote when the game was still young in its developement. I spent so much time on fixing mistakes I did in early developement, like not making my spells modular by using extensions or not using a powerful buff system right from the get go.

Take this as a word of advice for your project: if you can't make it modular or extend it at ease, don't bother with it.
If your registry for anything (items, creeps, AI, quests, area specific code) takes up more than a single line of code, optimize it until it does. And yes, this includes AI scripts.
Hardcoding anything in a highly dynamic environment as RPG development will bring you nothing but pain. You will always come to a point eventually at which you want to extend your old content. Better make sure it is ready for that when the time comes...

Also, I spent to much time on art stuff these days. I'm just a sucker for visuals, but most of Hive's models are poorly optimized in terms of filesize, so in the end you have no other choice but importing your own modifications of these models (or even model stuff from scratch).

I kind of miss the days when everything was still "rushable" and fast to create. Once you established a certain standard for yourself, you will become extremely critical and will start to redo lots of your content over and over again. And then you change a core game mechanic and will have to change all other related content because of that.

Making an ORPG is a bottomless pit of work. Be prepared to spend hours scratching your head, effectively doing nothing at all thinking about refacturing everything. And then you'll eventually do it. And you'll be satisfied with the results. But then you also notice that you achieved nothing for the end-user with that...

It's horrible. I wished I had made a MOBA game instead.

 

[Xonok]

Well, that's the joy of it really. If it made you work so hard, it's either been worth it or you're just way too persistent

 

[Zwiebelchen]

It's more like being a masochist...

The amount of work-in X stands in no relation to the amount of satisfaction-out Y of having players play your map online when creating an ORPG.

Because people tend to play it once, mostly alone, then scrap it. Whereas they play thousands of hours of cheap maps like Wintermaul that looks like it was created in less than a week...

 

[Xonok]

It certainly resembles masochism in my case as well, but that's how it is with hard work of any kind - even and especially if you love it, it's still hard work. I've noticed that actually making maps can be more enjoyable than playing them. It's art.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

It certainly resembles masochism in my case as well, but that's how it is with hard work of any kind - even and especially if you love it, it's still hard work. I've noticed that actually making maps can be more enjoyable than playing them. It's art.

Yeah, that's probably the only thing that helps you staying on track. And the feedback from the players. I would have never kept this up if it weren't for the players begging you to go on.

The one thing that really sucks is that creating a map destroys all the fun of actually playing it yourself. You know everything; every corner, every bug, every quest. It becomes a mechanical thing instead of a thing you do for fun. You only play for bughunting and for collecting feedback. At least with MOBA games you have the joy of PVP to compensate for that.

And also, the grass is always greener on the other side. You play a different map for a change and instantly think it's SO MUCH BETTER than your own even if that is just your own oppinion because you start to build up a love-hate relationship to your own creation.

But, eh, ranted enough now.

Back to topic!
I like the screenshots so far... I love the warcrafty-look, though it sometimes clashes a bit in those areas with realtexture terrain. Especially on the buildings. Might want to improve on that.

 

[InfernalTater]

Hahahahahahaha... you have no idea what is ahead of you, my friend...

Let me just tell you that I have thousands of hours, if not days invested into WC3.

I've played Warcraft 3 for 10 years. Even longer if you include the demo, which I literally kept playing for a year (I was a child so it took me longer to go through the demo campaign than it would now, and I would repeat it after beating it). I wouldn't be surprised if I've played Warcraft 3 for 10,000 hours. And even as I work on my map, I'm going to continue playing Warcraft 3, both for playing other maps, and for testing my map. So yeah, I'm sure I'm not going to spend more time on this map than I've spent playing Warcraft 3. But I am definitely going to spend more time on this map than I've ever spent in the World Editor in my life.

Take this as a word of advice for your project: if you can't make it modular or extend it at ease, don't bother with it.

I've been making my systems in a way that they're easy to add new content to. The ones that aren't, and need new code for new content, are only temporary; but the rest are designed in a way that all I have to do is register new content into them and it will do the same things with it as it did with similar content before (such as quests, abilities, items, etc). My map is 480x480, so I'm always going to be adding new content, and I'm certainly not going to allow anything to get in the way of that; I'm making it in a way that new areas are easy to implement.

Also, I spent to much time on art stuff these days. I'm just a sucker for visuals, but most of Hive's models are poorly optimized in terms of filesize, so in the end you have no other choice but importing your own modifications of these models (or even model stuff from scratch).

Yeah, I've made a lot of my own doodads. Most of the higher quality ones available are simply too absurdly huge to be worth importing into a map. I prefer to build everything out of parts, so I just import small but good-looking things like rocks, bricks, logs, roots, branches, leaves, pieces of water, and build things out of it.

I kind of miss the days when everything was still "rushable" and fast to create. Once you established a certain standard for yourself, you will become extremely critical and will start to redo lots of your content over and over again. And then you change a core game mechanic and will have to change all other related content because of that.

I've gone through this a few times with my map already; I just soldier through it and try to do it as quickly as possible without wasting time stressing about it. It's amazing how much you can get done in little time when you already know what you're going to do and you actually dedicate yourself to that task.

It's horrible. I wished I had made a MOBA game instead.

Haha, yeah, I already know, RPG's take more time than anything else to make well. They simply need so much content. MOBA's aren't really my style, but I've always wanted to make a Hero Siege type of map. I'm probably going to figure out a way to appropriately mix elements of a hero siege map into the RPG.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of perfectionism, though. Before I do anything, I think about how much time it will take and how much of an impact it will have on the player, and I'll do things that will be more important or take less time to do. Anything that takes a long time for something unimportant will just have to wait until there's nothing better to do. While my map plays completely differently from yours, your RPG is largely an inspiration to it; not in terms of how it's made, but rather to make it in the first place. Your "Gaias Retaliation" is an incredible RPG, but you spend so much time perfecting it that you rarely get to add content to it. I aim for my end result to be 80% as good as yours, but with a lot more content so that players can play for hours upon hours without ever having to grind the same area. That last 20% of perfection takes more time than the first 80%.

It's more like being a masochist...

The amount of work-in X stands in no relation to the amount of satisfaction-out Y of having players play your map online when creating an ORPG.

Because people tend to play it once, mostly alone, then scrap it. Whereas they play thousands of hours of cheap maps like Wintermaul that looks like it was created in less than a week...

I've been creating content so quickly in my RPG that the time it takes to try every hero and ability up to its maximum level, despite the fact that you don't even have to grind the same creeps and are constantly moving from one area to the next; you are still able to get more playtime out of the map than I've even spent creating it so far. If I can keep the same content to time invested ratio, it's going to end up providing players with a whole lot of fun. Since I'm working to make the heroes very customizeable with a wide variety of skills, players can even play the same hero multiple times and build it in completely different ways. But yeah, RPG's are still less replayable than TD maps or hero defense maps. I think the big reason there's so many terrible maps, with so many very skilled developers, is that the skilled mappers never finish our maps, because we're too busy trying to make everything as good as we can make it, whereas people who are less skilled have less capability, and can meet their maximum potential and release their map in much less time.

It certainly resembles masochism in my case as well, but that's how it is with hard work of any kind - even and especially if you love it, it's still hard work. I've noticed that actually making maps can be more enjoyable than playing them. It's art.

Sometimes it's work. But sometimes it can get really fun. When it stops being fun, I go through a certain process in real life that changes my username into TwiceBakedTater, and it's usually less of a grind afterwards (although I make slower progress in the altered mindset).

The one thing that really sucks is that creating a map destroys all the fun of actually playing it yourself. You know everything; every corner, every bug, every quest. It becomes a mechanical thing instead of a thing you do for fun. You only play for bughunting and for collecting feedback. At least with MOBA games you have the joy of PVP to compensate for that.

This is because most RPG's, including yours, have rather linear progression, so if you already know what everything you're going to see is going to be, it will be boring for you to play. I actually have fun playing my RPG because every time I test it, I'm combining a different set of abilities and stats and equipment to use the hero in a way that I haven't used it before, and I plan to continue adding abilities to the game so I hope it will always have something new and interesting for me to play with. Eventually there will be dozens of abilities for each hero to choose from.

And also, the grass is always greener on the other side. You play a different map for a change and instantly think it's SO MUCH BETTER than your own even if that is just your own oppinion because you start to build up a love-hate relationship to your own creation.

But, eh, ranted enough now.

Back to topic!
I like the screenshots so far... I love the warcrafty-look, though it sometimes clashes a bit in those areas with realtexture terrain. Especially on the buildings. Might want to improve on that.

Yeah, many resources in the map are temporary. Eventually I'm going to make my own wall and roof models to build the houses myself; I'll be improving their quality and reducing the file size at the same time. For now I'm just using some houses from THW that conveniently used the same roof.

On the topic of the map, I'm sorry that I have not updated it yet! I've begun working on something for Misha. It's temporary, but it means spending less time on my RPG for the next few weeks. I'll try to still squeeze an update out; I have one that is nearly ready, and it includes several new abilities.

I'm glad you're interested in my project. While I'm already self-motivated right now, knowing you're interested is going to provide motivation in the long run when I know I'll inevitably need it.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Why not use Sword & Stone for the houses? Spending previous KBs on house models is a waste of space if you can build them out of modular components for endless variability. You can build everything from houses to castles to dungeons with it, given some creativity (or a good reference image).

It takes a bit of extra time as you can't just drop houses and be done with it, but it's absolutely worth it.



And the reason why I take so long to create new content isn't because I waste too much time on perfection (that is a problem though, but since the map is mostly feature-complete already, it's not that much time), it's because I just don't have much time for mapping these days.

Other than that, I feel you are stepping into dangerous waters with your "content first, optimization later" approach... like for example your comment about reworking the terrain or replacing the houses at a later point.
This is basicly what I did when I started. Create content, then worry about improving it later... and to be honest, it went into a horrible direction. There is nothing more demotivating than working on old content or redoing old content. Take my advice on that: slow down and make the content you already have great. Make it so good that you won't ever feel the need of coming back later.
You will hate your guts if you realize after 50% of the map is filled with terrain that you need to optimize the filesize and have to remove some models and replace them with something else...


PS: Btw, what grass model is that? It looks amazing!

 

[InfernalTater]

Why not use Sword & Stone for the houses? Spending previous KBs on house models is a waste of space if you can build them out of modular components for endless variability. You can build everything from houses to castles to dungeons with it, given some creativity (or a good reference image).

It takes a bit of extra time as you can't just drop houses and be done with it, but it's absolutely worth it.

Like I said before, I'm going to eventually end up making my own walls and roofs to build houses with. The current house models are temporary. I've built houses out of doodads before, so I already have experience. I've even built them brick-by-brick, and their roofs log-by-log, before. It looked wonderful, but I no longer have the models I'd made for that long ago.

Other than that, I feel you are stepping into dangerous waters with your "content first, optimization later" approach... like for example your comment about reworking the terrain or replacing the houses at a later point.
This is basicly what I did when I started. Create content, then worry about improving it later... and to be honest, it went into a horrible direction. There is nothing more demotivating than working on old content or redoing old content. Take my advice on that: slow down and make the content you already have great. Make it so good that you won't ever feel the need of coming back later.
You will hate your guts if you realize after 50% of the map is filled with terrain that you need to optimize the filesize and have to remove some models and replace them with something else...

The difference is that unlike most mapmakers, I don't rush content with the intent of keeping that content. The parts that I do rush, I create quite quickly (my entire terrain, which already just about fills a 256x256 area, I made in only a few hours) already having the intention of going back and remaking it later; so not much time is wasted, and it isn't demotivating to work on it. I've already gone back and redone several parts, and enjoyed it. Also, the file size is definitely not going to be an issue, because I constantly go through the import list and edit things to take less file size or make my own replacements. Most of the imports are less than 10 KB. The larger ones are temporary; I already plan to replace them in the future. Most of the imports I use for terrain are models that I can use throughout the entire map, so I won't be importing as many models later on; I'll be tinting, scaling, and rotating the ones I already have.

The only thing I don't like about most current doodad packs is that they use a whole lot of different custom textures.

PS: Btw, what grass model is that? It looks amazing!

It's a 6 KB model that I found in Eclipse ORPG when I was working on reterraining it for another person. Unfortunately, we both kind of stopped working on it. If he starts working on it again, I'll go back to it and work some more. I used to just tint the first three variations of the River Rushes doodad to look green, and even that looked better than pretty much every grass import I'd ever seen, until I discovered this one.
___

On another note, I'm considering resizing my map from 480x480 down to 256x256. The current terrain already nearly fills up a 256x256 area, and I would only have enough room to squeeze in 6-8 more areas around the edges (in addition to the current 18 areas).

The reason I want to do this is that maps with more than 65,536 squares (the area of a 256x256 map) are more likely to critically error (my 480x480 map contains 230,400 squares). Whenever I play my RPG, games tend to crash after between 2 and 5 hours. I could create an autosave system that automatically generates new .txt's every so often so that players don't lose their progress, but players still might be turned off by the game crashing.

What do you folks think? If an RPG was 4x the size of a normal RPG, would that make it worth dealing with the occasional game crash (usually after between 2 and 5 hours of play), or would you prefer a traditionally sized RPG that does not crash?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

480x480 maps don't crash. Gaias is 280x480 currently and doesn't crash. I once played a 6 hour session on it.
It also was full-scale 480x480 at one point and didn't crash at that time either.
So it must be something else that crashes your map (note: blight tiles are known to cause problems on 480x480 maps, so I recommend not using them; also, I had a weird glitch once with a corrupted ground tile... whenever a unit stepped on it, the game crashed).


Auto-saving becomes a problem when you implement dupe-protection into your game:
- to prevent players from duping items via the save/load, you have to make them character-bound after saving
- auto-saving would bind these items to the player without his knowledge... what if he just wants to pick up an item for another player and then exactly in that moment an auto-save happens?

Not a problem that can't be fixed; just something you should be aware of.

Can I ask you to send me the grass model via a PM please? I'd love to check it out.

 

[InfernalTater]

480x480 maps don't crash. Gaias is 280x480 currently and doesn't crash. I once played a 6 hour session on it.
It also was full-scale 480x480 at one point and didn't crash at that time either.
So it must be something else that crashes your map (note: blight tiles are known to cause problems on 480x480 maps, so I recommend not using them; also, I had a weird glitch once with a corrupted ground tile... whenever a unit stepped on it, the game crashed).

I'm definitely getting rid of the blight, then! Thanks! I had no idea that was what was causing the crashes! I had an entire area with blight!

Auto-saving becomes a problem when you implement dupe-protection into your game:
- to prevent players from duping items via the save/load, you have to make them character-bound after saving
- auto-saving would bind these items to the player without his knowledge... what if he just wants to pick up an item for another player and then exactly in that moment an auto-save happens?

I was thinking of making the auto-saves occur at specific moments rather than every-so-often. Possibly every time you killed a boss; so you'd auto-save before you touched the loot, thus the loot would not be in the save yet and not be bound to your account. I was thinking of making loot as quest rewards in the future so that you would have the completed quest saved and be able to get the rewards for that quest after loading in the next game if you crashed before you saved again.

Can I ask you to send me the grass model via a PM please? I'd love to check it out.

You can download my map, open it, and use any models you want. It's unprotected. The model you want is called GrassGreat.mdx or something like that, and is 6KB. At the moment the pastebin links are expired, but I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow, I'll reupload the pastebin links set to stay up for a month rather than a week.

 

[edo494]

thats still vulnerable to item duping

 

[InfernalTater]

thats still vulnerable to item duping

You can't duplicate items if they're bound to your hero when you save. If you save before you pick up the items, then they're not in the save, thus they're not duplicated. If you save after you pick up the items, then they're in the save, and they're bound to your account, thus they're not duplicated. If you let someone else pick up the items before you pick them up, and they save, then they're bound to their account and thus you cannot pick the items up, thus they're not duplicated.

If you don't understand this, I can't think of any more logical way to say it.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I guess that would work; it's still a bit unpredictable, as it basicly binds unbound items to the player without their input... so there might be some corner cases in which players do not want that auto-save to happen, even if they are rare. Especially new users might be put off with that.

This is a solution I came up with after some brainstorming; haven't had the time to implement it yet, though:

The autosave actually ignores unbound items in the savecode. So when you load an autosave, it will only load those items you saved manually, but will restore everything else properly (abilities, xp, etc.) ... if you rename the feature to "backup save" instead of "auto save", then people would not complain about the missing unbound items, as "backup" implies that it is only meant for emergency situations and does not replace manually saving.

 

[edo494]

if I save, go to quest dude who hands out items, I can dupe them indefinately.
I save after boss kill, I get items, give them to someone, reload, and voila I can get the item again, and the dude I gave it to has it too, unless of course all items are untradable, but then you dont need to give a shit about trading

 

[InfernalTater]

I guess that would work; it's still a bit unpredictable, as it basicly binds unbound items to the player without their input... so there might be some corner cases in which players do not want that auto-save to happen, even if they are rare. Especially new users might be put off with that.

This is a solution I came up with after some brainstorming; haven't had the time to implement it yet, though:

The autosave actually ignores unbound items in the savecode. So when you load an autosave, it will only load those items you saved manually, but will restore everything else properly (abilities, xp, etc.) ... if you rename the feature to "backup save" instead of "auto save", then people would not complain about the missing unbound items, as "backup" implies that it is only meant for emergency situations and does not replace manually saving.

Sounds like a good solution.

if I save, go to quest dude who hands out items, I can dupe them indefinately.
I save after boss kill, I get items, give them to someone, reload, and voila I can get the item again, and the dude I gave it to has it too, unless of course all items are untradable, but then you dont need to give a shit about trading

The quest rewards would be specifically for your class (there are no class requirements, however the gear would be designed for their class) and bound. The ground drops would be random, unbound (until saving), and of course because they're random, would be shared.

 

[Arad MNK]

Is the Project dead?

 

[Xonok]

The last post was yesterday, so no.

 

[InfernalTater]

Is the Project dead?

No, of course not. I haven't updated it because I haven't spent as much time on it lately as I did when I first started. This is not because of losing interest in it; I am still quite interested in my project. It's just that many temporary factors have been taking my time.

First, my allergies started fucking with me so much that I couldn't concentrate on doing anything with the map because I would cough so hard that I would forget whatever thoughts were in my head that I was about to implement (this happens every summer for a couple of weeks). Then I finally got windows on the computer I'd built long ago. So I've been really excited to use my computer as it is far more powerful than any PC I've ever had (I'd been using my dad's computer which is 9 years old). I've been downloading a lot of different free to play games that I always wanted to try but never had a computer capable of running.

The map isn't dead; it's just going to be on the backburner for a bit until inevitably get bored of the free games on steam and come back to Warcraft 3, as I always do.

I've still been working on the map; the next update already has a lot of new content ready to be added, but instead of spontaneously releasing updates with incomplete, untested content, every day, as I was when I first started, I'm going to wait until new content is in a more playable condition for each update; a lot of my previous updates contained new abilities, some of which would work, and some of which wouldn't. From now on I want as much of the new content as possible to be functional for updates.

So far, here's a summary of what you can expect in the new update:
Rebalanced prices of dozens of items (more to be done) & added a ton of items to shops so that you finally have something to spend your gold on (there are dozens of purchaseable items).
Added several new abilities focusing on the Rogue, Hunter, and Paladin (the Mage and Barbarian had been getting more attention at first).
Created terrain for many parts of the map that were previously "blueprint" terrain.
Created a whole new area (this area may or may not be playable by the next update).

And more.

Don't worry, it's only been a month since the last update; plenty of maps go for much longer. You just got used to the crazy massive updates every day that were coming out at first. My involvement in Warcraft 3 varies, so while sometimes I may spend a few hours every day on the map, other times I will be spending a few hours every week; but I'll still be getting things done. I cannot promise that I will pursue this map for thousands of hours to the fullest extent of what I imagine for it (although I plan to), as there's no telling what will happen in the future, but what I can promise is that I will not stop until this RPG is good enough to get a 4/5 from myself, and that's saying something because I've never created anything worthy of a 4/5 from myself before. And as long as I'm still interested in working on the project, I won't stop then either; I'll continue working on it.