[Role Playing Game] Acheron

[Heinvers]

Breathtaking vista AP

 

[Molaf]

I didn't write anything about an helipad in the scenario ! Oo

Just kiddin' It looks awesome of course .. godamit !

 

[Duke]

you are the king of playable terrains man

 

[APproject]

Thanks, guys. Currently dealing with the lighting and The Black. This time I will try to make a directional omni light across the map that is very weak, giving that neat dark and blighted feeling, but not pitch black as it was before. I will try to combine black, gray and blue as the main colors for this area. Perhaps some candy blue light sources from palce to place. I will involve another color later on. Will post more once I will have a firm grip to the environment.

 

[A Void]

Thanks, guys. Currently dealing with the lighting and The Black. This time I will try to make a directional omni light across the map that is very weak, giving that neat dark and blighted feeling, but not pitch black as it was before. I will try to combine black, gray and blue as the main colors for this area. Perhaps some candy blue light sources from palce to place. I will involve another color later on. Will post more once I will have a firm grip to the environment.

Cool, did you know that you can change the environment lightning using triggers? It's one of the custom script codes.

To make a new environment lightning you will have to edit the existing one using Magos Model Editor. There are a couple of preset environment lightning models from different tilesets such as: Ashenvale, Lordaeron, Cityscape, Northrend, Dungeon, Underground.

These are located in War3.MPQ/Environment/DNC.

 

[APproject]

Not sure if that is what I did, but something similar. I simply gave a model a Directional omnilight which affect entire map immediately, works just like those DayNight models. So I disable DayNight models with the ("","") script and place the model with that omni light. Omnilight settings are set to nearly black with low intensity, making entire terrain lighted, but weakly, feels like big eclipse. May send screenshots soon.

EDIT1: Here it is, looks cool.

Terrain Ingame Screenshot

jokes, will attach it once I am done

EDIT2: So here is the screenshot. I must say it does look more like an underworld now. And no, that's not snow, those flakes in the air are floating, animated, it doesn't fall. Also a decent ambience music adds to the cake.

Terrain Ingame Screenshot

 

[A Void]

Not sure if that is what I did, but something similar. I simply gave a model a Directional omnilight which affect entire map immediately, works just like those DayNight models. So I disable DayNight models with the ("","") script and place the model with that omni light. Omnilight settings are set to nearly black with low intensity, making entire terrain lighted, but weakly, feels like big eclipse. May send screenshots soon.

EDIT1: Here it is, looks cool.

Terrain Ingame Screenshot

jokes, will attach it once I am done

EDIT2: So here is the screenshot. I must say it does look more like an underworld now. And no, that's not snow, those flakes in the air are floating, animated, it doesn't fall. Also a decent ambience music adds to the cake.

Terrain Ingame Screenshot

I hope you know what's best, the first screen-shot was way better. In the first there was actually darkness just like real underworld, with all of that redness and blackness merged. The second image looked like it was a poorly lit hollywood movie set.

Those flakes are way out of the place.

 

[APproject]

a poorly lit

Haha, this one nailed it.

I know it looks not that good in a screenshot, but I do really like those flakes (floating little stars), because it add that neat feeling of 3D space while you move, also I felt like something is really needed, some thing to be added, this makes things looks better in my opinion, because of those flakes slowly bursting into existance, turning slightly blue from white and then back to white it fades away, it looks like snow in the screenshot, hehe. It just gives so badly needed animated environment effect. I was experimenting a lot with the colors, amount, intesity and so on, it may still change though, as on ground there are 50% of flakes and over alpha tile there is twice more.

Basically I try to experiment with different environments, because the atmosphere of the game must be constantly changing, I do not wish to get out all the best of the underworld at start, I would have it fade into it gradually.

 

[A Void]

Haha, this one nailed it.

I know it looks not that good in a screenshot, but I do really like those flakes (floating little stars), because it add that neat feeling of 3D space while you move, also I felt like something is really needed, some thing to be added, this makes things looks better in my opinion, because of those flakes slowly bursting into existance, turning slightly blue from white and then back to white it fades away, it looks like snow in the screenshot, hehe. It just gives so badly needed animated environment effect. I was experimenting a lot with the colors, amount, intesity and so on, it may still change though, as on ground there are 50% of flakes and over alpha tile there is twice more.

Basically I try to experiment with different environments, because the atmosphere of the game must be constantly changing, I do not wish to get out all the best of the underworld at start, I would have it fade into it gradually.

instead of those flakes, you could try - earth dust falling from the ceiling of the underworld. or .. lost souls flying around.

 

[Molaf]

ahhhh maaan, where does this roof comes from ?? there is NO ceilling at all Oo ! But it could be lost souls indeed. some kind of.

(Remember AP you'll probably have to use similar burning flakes once you reach the fire river so...)

 

[APproject]

I was thinking about this soul idea, it would be cool to have some inactive wandering souls, especially before Asphodel Meadows, because in Erebus souls becomes trapped without the guidance of Charon. But I wonder how to make it more natural, I do not wish to add Wander ability to a Locust unit, it would be cool if those souls would be just flying by.

As for the roof, there is some sense in that, because after all the underworld is located deep beneath the ground, but I would like to stick with a VERY high roof or no roof at all.

 

[A Void]

I was thinking about this soul idea, it would be cool to have some inactive wandering souls, especially before Asphodel Meadows, because in Erebus souls becomes trapped without the guidance of Charon. But I wonder how to make it more natural, I do not wish to add Wander ability to a Locust unit, it would be cool if those souls would be just flying by.

As for the roof, there is some sense in that, because after all the underworld is located deep beneath the ground, but I would like to stick with a VERY high roof or no roof at all.

Well, in Greek mythology underworld is in the core of the earth, inside earth. And usually by logical thinking, dust and earth does fall from the ceiling of the surface.

Lost souls are way better than flying flakes of snow.

 

[APproject]

I would rather have them both. But will see how it will go. Perhaps I will reduce the amount of those flakes, making it just a slight effect. I need some neat lighting effects though. All that rubble and dust falling would make things rather dirty.

 

[Duke]

I don't think that falling dust and rubble is such a good idea, after all so far everything in your underworld is made of stone so one would assume that the ceiling is rocky as well

 

[A Void]

I don't think that falling dust and rubble is such a good idea, after all so far everything in your underworld is made of stone so one would assume that the ceiling is rocky as well

Well, not entirely everything. It's a mixture of man-made and underground natural caves. The ceiling is where the earth, grass, dirt and all that material reside, it's impossible build a stone ceiling upon a large surface inside earth. That would have catastrophic consequences, natural factors = underworld caved it.

Underworld

In almost all greek art, Underworld is just like a cave in the deeps of the earth. But it is much larger than a cave, it covers a veeeery wide area. It consists of some water pools, man-made buildings and usually caves..

 

[APproject]

I could make some dirt and dust falling, but it must be occasional, like from time to time it is a random quake, some sound effects, screenshake, falling dust for a moment. But constant dripping would not make sense as well, it would look like it is all slowly collapsing.

 

[A Void]

I could make some dirt and dust falling, but it must be occasional, like from time to time it is a random quake, some sound effects, screenshake, falling dust for a moment. But constant dripping would not make sense as well, it would look like it is all slowly collapsing.

Yeah, thats a great idea.

 

[APproject]

Another update, this time model update. Spent some time today and made Hermes model, anything to be improved? Lower clothing has bad shading, not sure how to fix it though. Feet also has wings, not so visible from this angle.

 

[Fang]

Looks awesome!

 

[APproject]

Here is the terrain part, river Styx looks, this is basically the river texture, how it looks. Ingame it is a little bit darker. These underwater souls are animated, they flow slowly to one direction forever, looks kind of neat.

River Styx

 

[A Void]

Here is the terrain part, river Styx looks, this is basically the river texture, how it looks. Ingame it is a little bit darker. These underwater souls are animated, they flow slowly to one direction forever, looks kind of neat.

River Styx

fascinating! Are these 2D plates?

 

[APproject]

Thanks. Yes, kind of, these are particle emitters that are very big and has big extents, so it is visible from far. It has no polygons, so it doesn't cause any lag. Souls fade in from a side slowly into existence and slowly disappears after almost a minute of movement in one direction.

 

[Heinvers]

Great looks, is that the new water model from xgm.guru btw?

 

[APproject]

Yes it is. I made this by using this water plate set to rather dark color, making it more transparent, then I placed a layer of white animated texture fog beneath it, on this layer I placed the same fog, but black one, there is less black fog than white. Then another layer is blueish cloud, it is even more scattered and two layers of different soul particle emitters across the surface, and so the upper layer is the water plate.

What I will also do, is imitate a boat flowing to another side with Charon rowing it. This will be something familiar with defense minigame, when the dead and souls will be literally jumping and emerging from the river Styx and attacking the living flesh. It will rise all sorts of problems for visual effects as I want to make the boat feel like it is moving, visually it will be a challenge to do I guess.

 

[Sclammerz]

Ooh, creepy. I like it.

 

[A Void]

Yes it is. I made this by using this water plate set to rather dark color, making it more transparent, then I placed a layer of white animated texture fog beneath it, on this layer I placed the same fog, but black one, there is less black fog than white. Then another layer is blueish cloud, it is even more scattered and two layers of different soul particle emitters across the surface, and so the upper layer is the water plate.

What I will also do, is imitate a boat flowing to another side with Charon rowing it. This will be something familiar with defense minigame, when the dead and souls will be literally jumping and emerging from the river Styx and attacking the living flesh. It will rise all sorts of problems for visual effects as I want to make the boat feel like it is moving, visually it will be a challenge to do I guess.

How and why would souls want to attack the passengers? Especially if they are with Charon? I dont get it.

 

[APproject]

Well, first of all, Charon carries only souls that has come from the living world, also only when souls meets his demands of proper burial. But this time, it is not souls, it is the living beings who are crossing. So I guess it would be natural in this warcraftish environment for the dead to seek to rob them of life.

 

[A Void]

Well, first of all, Charon carries only souls that has come from the living world, also only when souls meets his demands of proper burial. But this time, it is not souls, it is the living beings who are crossing. So I guess it would be natural in this warcraftish environment for the dead to seek to rob them of life.

And how will they rob a life? They are dead, shouldn't souls rest already? But yes I understand this is not some realism copy.

 

[APproject]

What I meant by robbing of life is basically kill, hehe. They will attempt to draw the living into the river, because those souls in the river are not resting, those are the lost souls who got stuck in the current forever, I haven't done my research about that of yet, but I will try to look up for something from the mythology and base it all on that. But of course there will be a fight, I expect to bring some nice visual effects as the dead will be emerging from the water.

 

[Wietlol]

I dont want to be very mean but I can see that projects like these can be very much ruined because of bad triggerers.
Who is the triggerer of this map?

 

[Sclammerz]

I dont want to be very mean but I can see that projects like these can be very much ruined because of bad triggerers.
Who is the triggerer of this map?

Don't worry it won't be. Iceborn was big too but still it was very great and successful what will be their difference? they have the same author.

 

[WhiteFang]

Why haven't i noticed this before?
Subscribing
Good luck AProject!Your work always amazes me.

 

[bethmachine]

I'm awaiting this map. Keep up the good work

 

[Molaf]

I dont want to be very mean but I can see that projects like these can be very much ruined because of bad triggerers.
Who is the triggerer of this map?

Don't worry about him

 

[APproject]

Thanks, guys.

As for the triggering, yes it can get ruined indeed, but I try to do the coding as best as I can. Surely it is GUI and still contains few minor leaks, but it already has a much better coding than Iceborn had, leak-wise and efficience-wise. I know it should be vJass because of this project's size, but I will take my risk. Molaf tested the map and faced very few problems concerning coding that has been already fixed.

 

[Wietlol]

Well... GUI triggering is always not optimized... even when only using custom scripts.
But I assume that it also depends on what features you have in your map.
Anyway, I am gonna look forward to it
(Let's see who can finish his project first

 

[APproject]

It is not indeed, but so far I achieved almost all what I needed with GUI, plus the game is single player and I do not aim for complex gameplay systems, because from my personal experience the complexity requires player to learn a lot and a rare player wish to learn, hehe.

Let's not race, race of creativity never ends well.

 

[Sclammerz]

Let's not race, race of creativity never ends well.

......

 

[Wietlol]

Meh,
When complexity (inc. depth) is explained in simplicity, you get an amazing game... ussually.
The problem is that it is hard to do.

 

[APproject]

I have been working for a while on models. Terrain progress is on hold for now, as I have more to show from model side.

There will be 3 images. First one shows a new Charon's boat, this is much more HQ model than a previous one. This boat is actually edited version of the viking boat I found downloadable for free from 3dvia.com website. I animated the boat, it has a simple stand animation that imitates its slow floating on the water. Another image is slightly updated Charon's model with a new staff, Charon has a cool rowing animation that will be used as a visual effect.

Third image is the greek ship, this piece will be particulary used for a side quest that will concern Jason and his Argonauts who went to the underworld in search for the golden fleece, so it is their abandoned ship.

I also got few other very HQ and cool models from 3dvia.com that will be used to improve mainly the quality of cinematics, this includes HQ greek marble statues of characters, marble statue of Pegasus which is simply amazing, columns and so on.

Boats update (3)

1.

2.

3.

 

[Deleted member 238589]

Looks awesome so far, man. Hope it will be as good as Iceborn or better

 

[APproject]

Thanks, Imperator. I am certain it will be much better than Iceborn.

On the update note, here is the terrain update, a bunch of pictures that includes World Editor as well as ingame view of the terrain. This area is more open and not all is revealed in the screnshots, also not all is still developed, more like 70% of this area is complete. This area will feature some nice light effects, the mixture of different light sources merging into the darkness.

Banks of Styx

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

 

[A Void]

This keeps getting better and better, looks stunning. Better than Diablo 3...

 

[Chaosy]

I feel like the textures on the stones looks wrong. I am not sure if it's stretched or what, but it doesn't feel right. But then again, when speaking about terrain I am the last person to listen to.

Looks promising.

 

[A Void]

I feel like the textures on the stones looks wrong. I am not sure if it's stretched or what, but it doesn't feel right. But then again, when speaking about terrain I am the last person to listen to.

Looks promising.

Whats wrong with those textures?

#APProject, why is Charon oversized? I just noticed "

 

[APproject]

Thanks, A Void, it means a lot to hear that from you.

What stones in particular? The big ones? Do you mean the black belt of the stone? Well that is the texture part that is designed to be at the ground level, yet when it is elevated, it is all visible. It could be fixed however.

All of the major characters such as deities will be oversized. Not a lot, but a bit to the current size of Charon. With size I want to bring an illusion of godlike creature, size also gives more detail and highlights its importance. Same psychology goes with big sized bosses or elites. I do not wish to have them sized as the hero himself, they would look tiny and very humanish, also weak, so I prefer this illusion. As for the Charon individually, I need his size in order to make the boat bigger. I need the boat big so that hero may not get stuck in one spot when being carried across the Marsh of Styx. Big boat enables to walk around and react properly to the attackers of the river. So proportional sizes of Charon and the boat are needed. It would look silly if this size boat would be rowed by a tiny folk.

 

[Chaosy]

Hidden

 

[Molaf]

Those will be bearly visible ingame anyways ..

 

[APproject]

Yes, indeed the black belt of the rock. In game it will be almost invisible due to the angle of camera and shading, but it takes minutes to fix that.

 

[sonofjay]

High quality terrain just like what I always expects from you AP! Can't wait to try the map!