[Role Playing Game] Acheron

[Duke]

it looks nice, my only complain would be that long sword as greeks used short swords afaik

 

[APproject]

Thanks, guys.

I agree with you, Zwiebelchen. Even though visuals are not as good as WoW's, it also gives unique charm to the game, it feels more natural this way. I would not want to reveal other sets, it would bee too much of spoiler, but who knows.

Yes indeed, these were shortswords, but I made it quite longer just for the sake of visuals, it will be used in one hand anyway.

 

[A Void]

Thanks, guys.

I agree with you, Zwiebelchen. Even though visuals are not as good as WoW's, it also gives unique charm to the game, it feels more natural this way. I would not want to reveal other sets, it would bee too much of spoiler, but who knows.

Yes indeed, these were shortswords, but I made it quite longer just for the sake of visuals, it will be used in one hand anyway.

Since you've moved to a new direction towards character look, I am wondering what are you going to do with NPC's characters that use older models? Surely they wouldn't fit together..?

 

[APproject]

I will change them as well. Only two characters will need to be changed: current two companions. One is the starter companion - wife, another is gained after a quest as one of 3 reward choices.

As for the wife, I will still be going for female sorcerer look, but not norse-look of course. And as for a male campanion, I will be going with spartan look I suppose, will see.

Perhaps you got some suggestions towards it? Your take would be appreciated.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

For the sorceress, maybe try to catch that white greek toga style and give her a bay-wreath? It would look out of place to have a generic fantasy sorceress mixed with the gladiator/300 style.

Unfortunately, it would be hard to find any suitable model for that in the WoW database. Nothing particular "greek-looking", maybe except for a generic human model in white robes. You could apply some changes here to match it to the toga-look?

Alternatively, you could go for the cleopatra style... which isn't greek by definition, but most people can't tell the difference anyway:

 

[APproject]

I see changing the female model apepars to be challengeing indeed. There is no good option in WoW database for sure, but I am still looking. I found Freya with Night Elf animations, but it needs a complete and high quality retexturing. I also wish to avoid human female model as it is overused, same goes with bloodelf female. Unless a well dressed female bloodelf with proper ears.

I do not wish to bring egyptian style, it just offer too much of coloring. I am thinking of some light armor and basic greek clothing. White robe may poke an eye in the dark surroundings, but it could be grey to certaim extent indeed.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I see changing the female model apepars to be challengeing indeed. There is no good option in WoW database for sure, but I am still looking. I found Freya with Night Elf animations, but it needs a complete and high quality retexturing. I also wish to avoid human female model as it is overused, same goes with bloodelf female. Unless a well dressed female bloodelf with proper ears.

I do not wish to bring egyptian style, it just offer too much of coloring. I am thinking of some light armor and basic greek clothing. White robe may poke an eye in the dark surroundings, but it could be grey to certaim extent indeed.

You could add some purple-ish cloth to the mix if pure white is too extreme:

click

This could work well with the wc3 succubus animations, as it already has bones for the cloth attached to her arms.

click

alternatively, some olive-green:

click

Also, here's a scene from 300 that features almost the same color scheme you have for your main hero; I don't think the color clashes that much:

click

 

[APproject]

The 300 female clothing looks very decent looking, it might work indeed, will see what can be done with currently available material. I just fear it may look like some kind of priestess which may not be good.

On another note, I am progressing with the content and moving forward with the quests. I am done with Jason and his Argonauts quest. I can reveal what type of questing I will be trying to achieve in this game. Basically all quests will start normally, but in the long run after dialogues another side of the quest will be revealed, meaning that players almost in every quest will have a choice to make. To follow one path or another. Mainly 2 different paths will emerge, and usually there also will be a third path / small trick to go with, hidden outcome to enforce players to explore. This method really requires lots of time and thought just for one quest as it is like several quests in one, but I hope players will like it and this will motive them to replay the map on a higher difficulty and go another path. Currently in 25% of game content there are 3 big side quests of this kind, other also involves choices, but less. I could reveal one quest completely just for the sake of proper example, I don't think that it may do lots of harm in the early development though.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Quests with choices more or less only matter if they build upon each other. Otherwise, it's just an illusionary choice for the sake of getting a different reward.

So basicly, for quest choices, you have to build a decision tree.

Obviously, to keep it under control, you can implement bottleneck events at certain stages. But if you really want to implement this choice thing, there is no way around having a decision-tree, or it will just feel cheap.


Also, a golden rule of choice & consequence design is to also have long-term consequences that aren't immediately obvious. For example, killing a bandit lord in one quest leads to a power vacuum much later in the story, causing multiple other bandit groups to wreck havoc in the town the former lord resided.

I'm not gonna lie... this is a monumental task if you don't want to go Telltale-style and bottleneck almost everything.


As I dealt with this before (I once coded a decision tree for a dating sim kind of game), here's my advice:

Build the decision tree in reverse. Start with the end of the game in all possible outcomes, then slowly work your way backwards until you reach the beginning of the game. Have 3 major choice chokepoints affecting the main story; one per act (if we take the classical drama as an example). Once this is done, add side-branches to your tree until you are satisfied with complexity.
Make sure you flesh out your whole decision tree before starting any coding for your quests - otherwise you will find yourself in a situation in which you constantly have to fix past shortcomings. Careful planning ahead will save you a LOT of time. Keep all decisions stored in simple global variables; this will make it much easier to build your quest dependencies, as you only have to check for the variable, not if a certain unit is alive, etc..

Also, don't be afraid of "dead ends" in your tree.
A number of "points of no return" are the bread and butter of narrative RPGs. For example, you might find yourself in a situation in act III, in which - no matter what you do - one of your companions dies permanently. Had you decided otherwise in act I, that choice wouldn't even exist and the companion would live.
Obviously, you'd have to compensate the player with something that makes up for the character dying, like a powerful item that can summon a minion.
Such a dead end could be even more devestating:
Instead of just killing a character, you could basicly have a sub-ending of "sorry, evil wins this time!".

Bioware was afraid of this in Mass-Effect. This is why the Mass-Effect ending sucked giant balls. They were afraid of the possibility of screwing the players over their decisions by saying "Sorry... you failed! Reapers win; start over from Game 1 and play it serious this time!"

 

[APproject]

Very good advice, Zwiebelchen. This certainly opens lots of possiblities. Choices already will influence the future, but only in a small way, currently it is more for the loot, but choice also determines the difficulty of the quest, as one choice is harder then the other, those 3 major side quests also has humane-factor which I like. For example, you are asked to do something kind for a character, but you are presented with a choice to completely screw things up for that character, so then that character begins to curse you, yell and so on, sometimes there is simply no good option and sacrifice has to be made no matter what. Or you wish to free some guys, but you are rpesented with a choice to kill them instead, so then they beg for their lives (all voice acted), and scream in tremendous pain when killed, it gives that slight shock of inhumanity, calling player a monster and so on.

Surely those choices could build up indeed, that would be cool. I and Molaf actually already planned this kind of thing when choices influence the future, but not to this extent. What could be done additionaly, is that the choice of quest leads to one outcome of another quest, this is not complex to achieve and would give a better grip that choices are important. Also there will be 3 types of end game in the last act, choices could also indicate on what side you are on and promote one ending among the rest.

Thank you for your input.

 

[A Void]

Very good advice, Zwiebelchen. This certainly opens lots of possiblities. Choices already will influence the future, but only in a small way, currently it is more for the loot, but choice also determines the difficulty of the quest, as one choice is harder then the other, those 3 major side quests also has humane-factor which I like. For example, you are asked to do something kind for a character, but you are presented with a choice to completely screw things up for that character, so then that character begins to curse you, yell and so on, sometimes there is simply no good option and sacrifice has to be made no matter what. Or you wish to free some guys, but you are rpesented with a choice to kill them instead, so then they beg for their lives (all voice acted), and scream in tremendous pain when killed, it gives that slight shock of inhumanity, calling player a monster and so on.

Surely those choices could build up indeed, that would be cool. I and Molaf actually already planned this kind of thing when choices influence the future, but not to this extent. What could be done additionaly, is that the choice of quest leads to one outcome of another quest, this is not complex to achieve and would give a better grip that choices are important. Also there will be 3 types of end game in the last act, choices could also indicate on what side you are on and promote one ending among the rest.

Thank you for your input.

This is getting more interesting, if this goes well then the level of replayability will be huge.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Very good advice, Zwiebelchen. This certainly opens lots of possiblities. Choices already will influence the future, but only in a small way, currently it is more for the loot, but choice also determines the difficulty of the quest, as one choice is harder then the other, those 3 major side quests also has humane-factor which I like. For example, you are asked to do something kind for a character, but you are presented with a choice to completely screw things up for that character, so then that character begins to curse you, yell and so on, sometimes there is simply no good option and sacrifice has to be made no matter what. Or you wish to free some guys, but you are rpesented with a choice to kill them instead, so then they beg for their lives (all voice acted), and scream in tremendous pain when killed, it gives that slight shock of inhumanity, calling player a monster and so on.

Surely those choices could build up indeed, that would be cool. I and Molaf actually already planned this kind of thing when choices influence the future, but not to this extent. What could be done additionaly, is that the choice of quest leads to one outcome of another quest, this is not complex to achieve and would give a better grip that choices are important. Also there will be 3 types of end game in the last act, choices could also indicate on what side you are on and promote one ending among the rest.

Thank you for your input.

Now the problem with that is that if you base your choices completely on gameplay elements (item rewards, quest difficulty), then players will make choices for gameplay, not out of morality, making the choice mostly irrelevant (it would boil down to be the same as the "pick one of three items" reward in MMOs). This is what game producers call "illusion of choice".

Also, beware of black & white morality decisions like you described with the killing of prisoners. Most of the time, players will just choose the option based on their playthrough (selecting all the evil choices in an evil playthrough or selecting all the good choices in a samariter playthrough) ... which eliminates all relevancy of the choice. You are a Sith or a Jedi. Renegade or Paragon. It's boring, because it usually boils down to "fill the meter" mechanics in which you are rewarded for morality extremes.

Real choices aren't about function or good & evil. They are about philosophy. For all the bad things you could say about Mass Effect, this was the strongest point of the games: Sometimes, you couldn't just say which choice was "good" or "evil". Sometimes, you couldn't even say if a choice was justified or not. It all depends on your personal outview of the world. Will you destroy a robot-race for the sake of saving a city? What if the robot-race actually developed conscience? Obviously, if you have the choice to save lifeless machines or humans, you would save the humans. But what if the robots actually have a soul and self-awareness? Do you consider them living beings? If so, what makes them different from real humans? It's a morality question with no clear right or wrong. It depends on your belief. This is what choice & consequence design should be about.
The alltime-classic of morality questions is: do you sacrifice one for the sake of the many?

Also, don't confuse this with "pick your poison"-choices, in which you have to select if you want to kill innocent prisoners or lose one of your characters with no way to change the outcome.
This is a surefire way to make players hate you, especially if it is played only for shock value and purposely leaves out logical approaches to the problem for the sake of a morality choice.
Remember the Batman movie in which Bruce Wayne has to decide on one of two persons to rescue? He can't reach them both in time; one person dies no matter what. Seems like an interesting decision, but when you think about it, it's just stupid and infuriated the fanbase (rightfully so):
-> With a whole armada of policemen in the city, it feels completely alien that only Batman has the choice of saving the person in question, especially when it's a only a time-bomb.
-> The story disregards alternative options on purpose, simply to play a cheap shock value

Or remember the classic "Wait, I can explain!" situation in romance-comedy, where a character surprises her love interest in a situation - completely out of context and gets the wrong message?
Another sure-fire way to make players hate you, because it disregards all common sense. In reality, you'd have numerous ways of solving the problem. Mostly, by applying logic. It's nowhere near as rigid as in movies.


So, to come back to your prisoner problem:
You pointed out the decision between killing the prisoners or having a character curse you. Which leaves the question: why can't you talk the character in question out of this? If he wants those prisoners dead, isn't he just an asshole? Which, again, makes an obvious Jedi option. And if the character has believable reason to want the prisoners dead, why don't you have the option to tell him "if you want them dead, you will have to do it yourself!", which might convince him not to do it, considering now he has to face the consequences on his own without you backing him up on it.

TLR:
Beware of black & white morality. But also beware of grey & grey morality. Morality is about your personal philosophic view of the world, not about good & evil or right & wrong.

 

[APproject]

Very interesting ideas you got there. But since I did not explain everything in detail just for not to spoil things of the game, you might not know all the details of the quest stories. You certainly have a firm grip to a good quest core and your input is very valuable, I will try to get more deep into this for the future quests. Thank you for your time.

But the thing is, these quests of mine are not completely black and white, it all has certain reasons. And there might not be completely just bad or good, I try to present the situation as every action is justified, but with a different shade of morality. Having a good side and an evil / insane side is cheap indeed. But I will try to give few examples from current quests just to make a better example than previously, hopefully not spoiling too much.

QUEST SPOILERS

In one quest, you find a dead body of a male, and a book, describing how he met a ghost asked him to do something dangerous, quest begins to find the ghost. The book also explain some other good things, puzzle and gives information. You meet the ghost, it asks you to find certain item, it is infected you you must enter into that item and banish the evil spirits (similar to Skyrim quest of Azura Star), and only that stone could resurrect him from the dead. When the job is done, you get back to him and the spirit of the dead male also appears. Previous ghost and the book owner begins to beg to resurrect them and gives their arguments why they should be picked and not the other individual. Item is needed to resurrect, so only one can be resurrected. So player is presented with a choice to resurrect the ghost who asked to cleanse the item, to resurrect the book owner who presented you a book with information, or to keep it for yourself and get a powerful item. 3 choices, no good choice from morality perspective and not much of logic can be done. No matter the choice, at least 1 NPC will curse you verbally. But the most important thing is that arguments are presented from both sides, you get to decide which you deem more important, or just get greedy and resurrect no one.

In another quest, you meet a mythological woman character (medusa), she speaks how unfairly she was treated all her life, how she was raped and punished for being raped. Then she asks to perform a ritual to have her revenge on those who caused so much pain for her. But later you meet Perseus who killed Medusa, he explains why he did it and why it had to be done and why not to perform the ritual. So player is with a choice once again, with valid reasons presented from both sides, yet still there is no option that would saitisfy both sides. Depends on how player sees the justice. Also there is a third option but not really connected to morality.

And in prisoners quest. You are asked to find the missing crew of the ship. When you find the crew (prisoners) they are captured by the disciple of the God of Death. The disciple calls you a friend and asks to perform a sacrifice for the God of Death and gain the reward, but prisoners begs not to be killed. Disciple also brings arguments why sacrifice is needed, by he deems you a friend and so on. So it also depends on your morality. Should you free the prisoners and get them back to the ship safely, or should you please the Deity with a generous sacrifice and claim his reward. There is also a third option, do the sacrifice and also kill the disciple, just for the sake of loot, but it also involes moral view, as you work together with disciple, help him, please the God and still later you dare to turn against him. Doing the sacrifice you get cursed by the fleet captain, also prisoners scream in pain loudly, giving the shock, but you also might feel good about it, because you do this in the name of a great Deity and he will reward you.

What do you think of these?

On the side note, here is the update of the first companion. I went with more spartan look, as it is melee fighter. Also the old version had a huge axe, which was totally out of theme. I used this human model for Ares the God of Combat, but I will be remaking Ares completely as well, once the development of cinematics will begin.

Companion change

 

[Wietlol]

Quest 1:
You find a dead body and a book called "<name> diary".
The book says that <name> met a ghost who asked him to do something dangerously.

Decision moment 1: Accept the quest and search for the ghost.
A, accept the quest and go search for him.
B, dont accept the quest.

In case B:
You can still meet that ghost in the same area where he is (nothing changed that) so when you talk to him then, you can still do the quest after all.

In case A:
You search for the ghost, when you meet him, you will talk to him. (Face it, you do.)
He explains that there is a magical item that you have to find to bring him back to life.

Decision moment 2, Accept to go and find the item.
A, accept the search for the item (part 2 of the quest).
B, refuse to search.

In case B:
Ghost leaves this place and you wont find him any more, he might be attacking you as well.
(Do some stuff.)

In case A:
You go and find the item.
Once you have done that.

Decision moment 3, bring the item back to the ghost.
A, bring the item to the ghost.
B, tell the ghost you didnt found the item.
C, dont return to the ghost.

In case B + C:
Both think of something. It is your game after all.
In case B, you also find out that there is that other ghost as well.

In case A:
You find out that the other ghost is there as well.

Decision moment 4 (in your story this is the first lol), which ghost should be resurrected.
A, book ghost. (ghost who had the book)
B, quest ghost. (ghost who created the quest)
C, none.

In case C:
You tell them that you dont want to resurrect them.
Other things will happen but as I said, it is your game (I can make it but still).

In any case, you get one thing:
A: a friendly ghost
B: a friendly ghost
C: a powerfull item
Other two things you lose:
A: a friendly ghost (you lose it so he becomes angry) and a powerfull item
B: a friendly ghost and a powerfull item
C: two friendly ghosts

Quest ends.
You might gain another quest from the friendly (non) ghost at this point or later on.
Rewards (except exp) are only given if you resurrect a ghost.
(Seriously, exp can come from nothing, but gold, etc comes from something.)

Decisions come from the smallest of parts.
But if all those parts have optional decisions in-game, and those decisions have several outcomes, your game is good.
(This is also a big topic in Triple-A gaming development.)

Quest 2:
You meet a mythological woman character (medusa), she stuns you.
You lose the game.
Duh.

Option 1, help perseus.
Option 2, help medusa.
Option 3, dont help at all.

To finish the concept of this quest, you have to think about how you could help either of them.
And even in the most fatal part, (where they fight each other,) you get to decide who you will help. (I remember that from a game ofr movie, dont know which.)
Just try to be carefull that those quests will not be all the same.

Quest 3:
"also prisoners scream in pain loudly, giving the shock, but you also might feel good about it"
Ofcourse if feels good... at least... speaking for my own.
You only bring one god.
But how do your gods work?
Are your gods friends who play a "sportive" game (using human lives)?
Or are your gods enemies at war?

If the second, which I assume, then you can also bring the opposite god to the story.
This will give you as player another argument to choose for the crew as you also choose for the God of Life (or whatever.... I fail in greek mythology).
However, this thing is when you save the crew without sacrifice and they will pray to the god of life or the god of the sea (because they are sailors) to give you a reward.



This game is not about "you and the others".
You are trying o bring it to a level far bigger.
And which case, you do need those side events.
All those other things that "can" happen.
The war between the gods, the relationship between countries, the reputation of yourself towards everyone, the global knowledge of humans, everything plays a part in a world.
You are trying to create a world... so do a few steps back to see the whole picture.
Thank me later.

 

[APproject]

Quest 1: I forgot to mention that you can refuse the offer to look for the item when ghost asks to do so, then enemies attacks, but you end up without any reward except for few kills. Ghost disappears, skeletons emerge, you can't kill a ghost after all. And yeah, you are always have a choice not to do anything at all, quest can be skipped, giving that extra option to deny any offering, but of course it won't echo in the future.

But you are right, there was a break point between cleansing the item and taking it to the ghost, I had eliminated the flexibility there, having item not usable before quest is complete, so this gap opens lots of possible interpretations indeed. But having current order of quest it is still possible to have a decent influence on the future as someone is still unhappy. Lying about not finding the item is still a bad outcome I suppose, because result is still the same, ghosts are not resurrected. Logically speaking they could ask you to search better, or even show where it is.

I also fear to go way too deep into all quests, perhaps only few, because it would take tremendous amount of time to set all things up, I also have a fear that WC3 may die before I finish things like that, hehe.

Quest 2: Also forgot to mention that Medusa is dead, her soul is trapped in a stone statue, so her gaze is not effective. (at the moment). It is quite difficult to come up with something that helps both. Because Medusa wants the ritual, and Perseus wants to stop the player. They are ghosts, they see all, lying is not an option when magic is at hand.

Quest 3: Good idea you got here. I did not think about involving other gods in this quest, I might bring it up in the future as the result of the choice. As for the gods player follows, it is up to him, because there are all kinds of nuts. Hero will participate in the important conflict, but I do not force player to follow one path as the goodie, player may also follow the BAD path, but also work in the name of GOOD, masked. All this will be portraiyed in the choices, especially the ending.

I am in the end of the very first chapter / Act out of 3, I may try to bring the influence from previous choices to the Act 2, perhaps each choice may bring completely separate quest in the long run. I am also thinking of promoting certain ending based on what decisions were approached during the entire game. Thank you for your take.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

QUEST SPOILERS

In one quest, you find a dead body of a male, and a book, describing how he met a ghost asked him to do something dangerous, quest begins to find the ghost. The book also explain some other good things, puzzle and gives information. You meet the ghost, it asks you to find certain item, it is infected you you must enter into that item and banish the evil spirits (similar to Skyrim quest of Azura Star), and only that stone could resurrect him from the dead. When the job is done, you get back to him and the spirit of the dead male also appears. Previous ghost and the book owner begins to beg to resurrect them and gives their arguments why they should be picked and not the other individual. Item is needed to resurrect, so only one can be resurrected. So player is presented with a choice to resurrect the ghost who asked to cleanse the item, to resurrect the book owner who presented you a book with information, or to keep it for yourself and get a powerful item. 3 choices, no good choice from morality perspective and not much of logic can be done. No matter the choice, at least 1 NPC will curse you verbally. But the most important thing is that arguments are presented from both sides, you get to decide which you deem more important, or just get greedy and resurrect no one.

In another quest, you meet a mythological woman character (medusa), she speaks how unfairly she was treated all her life, how she was raped and punished for being raped. Then she asks to perform a ritual to have her revenge on those who caused so much pain for her. But later you meet Perseus who killed Medusa, he explains why he did it and why it had to be done and why not to perform the ritual. So player is with a choice once again, with valid reasons presented from both sides, yet still there is no option that would saitisfy both sides. Depends on how player sees the justice. Also there is a third option but not really connected to morality.

And in prisoners quest. You are asked to find the missing crew of the ship. When you find the crew (prisoners) they are captured by the disciple of the God of Death. The disciple calls you a friend and asks to perform a sacrifice for the God of Death and gain the reward, but prisoners begs not to be killed. Disciple also brings arguments why sacrifice is needed, by he deems you a friend and so on. So it also depends on your morality. Should you free the prisoners and get them back to the ship safely, or should you please the Deity with a generous sacrifice and claim his reward. There is also a third option, do the sacrifice and also kill the disciple, just for the sake of loot, but it also involes moral view, as you work together with disciple, help him, please the God and still later you dare to turn against him. Doing the sacrifice you get cursed by the fleet captain, also prisoners scream in pain loudly, giving the shock, but you also might feel good about it, because you do this in the name of a great Deity and he will reward you.

What do you think of these?

So, here's my criticism on these in detail:

1) This concept stays and falls with the background intel available on both characters. Obviously, both would want to look as positive as possible to you (the player). A nice twist could be to actually do some optional research on this; maybe you meet an NPC in a town that tells you how her husband went missing and you could trace it back to being the one with the book. Or you could find out the book guy actually killed the character that turned into the ghost. Of course, this should not be mentioned in the questlog, so it can only be found by exploration. In this case, players are confronted with the morality choice of:
a) Do I revive the book guy, as he has a family to return to, despite murdering the ghost character?
b) Do I revive the ghost guy, simply because he provided you with the information to turn the item into a ressurection tool and seems like the overall better guy?
c) Do I keep the item for the opportunity to revive someone completely unrelated at a later point?

Note how you can freely exchange the "greedy selfish asshole" choice with this clever third option, that can be justified both for selfish and altruistic characters? It's a valid choice after all, and provides an awesome long-term consequence: You could allow using that item in a critical story moment to revive another character. But you can never be sure you actually ever come across needing to revive someone, so it's a risk you take aswell.


2) My criticism on the medusa plot:
That rape-as-background trope is overplayed. Don't use it. Instead, just take torture or something generic. After all, it's weird that people differentiate between torture and rape that hard. "Well, it's okay that you got tortured, but I will TOTALLY KILL the guy who raped you!".

Besides that, the old "revenge on men who performed their duty" trope works well. Nothing to complain about that. But I'd add in a third option of trying to talk her out of her revenge plans (not neccesarily forgiving her captors), probably linked to the outcome of another sidequest that has an indirect relation to this character, like you helping her sister or something.


3) The third idea with the priest vs. prisoners seems a little bit flawed to me. It's outright good vs. evil mentality, as you would basicly sacrifice these people for claiming the divine reward. It doesn't really offer a philosophical choice to make. You could improve greatly on this by having the prisoners in a kind of pre-death stasis, so that they basicly already died, but you have the opportunity to give them one additional week to live.
Or you could have the prisoners be former necromancers that experimented with the definition of life themselves.
Basicly, raise the fundamental philosophical question of: is it okay to "betray death" by artifically increasing the length of your life? If so, punishment of the god of death would be justified, right? Basicly, the central theme of this quest could be "You have to repay the god of death for a life you stole from him.".

 

[Wietlol]

"They are ghosts,"
Why so many ghosts?
Is there something wrong with living people?
I thank you for your condolences to us ghosts but bringing them back to life and using too many ghosts in one game might be too much.
Or this chapter is the ghost chapter, or you gotta do more without ghosts.

EDIT:
"You have to repay the god of death for a life you stole from him."
"A man owes three."

 

[APproject]

1) That makes sense indeed, but yet again I bump into certain barriers. I know that the wife idea was just an example, but I could not do this kind of things because of dungeon crawler world, it is too narrow and not so open, unless something may be met on the way, but that quest is simply narrowed into a small space. Surely that's not a good excuse, everything can be solved to certain extent. As for the twists, the only twists in this quest is that characters has the oportunity to tell their story so player can evaluate their situation more closely (as a separate and optional dialogue). But yeah, you are right about it, the selfish asshole guy may appear only at start, it may become useful in the long run, did not think about it as well, hehe.

2) The only reason why I went with the rape thing is because it is mythologically tue that medusa was raped by Poseidon (from the myth), then she was punished because Poseidon raped her, which is really unfair indeed, and Poseidon got away with it. Another argument of unfairness was that Perseus killed Medusa when she was sleeping, just slashed her head off during the sleep (aslo from the myth), proving how terrible as warrior he is, but honestly anyone would not take chances when she is awake. Hehe, torture is not very specific, there can be all kinds of tortures, as rape is a specific torture I suppose. The third option you offered might work, but it would become quite problematic to arrange considering that it is another quest, so which quest is started the first might decide all. But yeah, having another way out is always good, I may try to have these in future quests.

3) Not much philosophy in this quest indeed, but I suppose it can be narrowed down to repaying the God of Death in the long run. I did not mention that, but saving or killing the crew will influence certain part of the game already, but not in mentioned ways.

@Wietlol
It is the underworld, not many living there, very few. Some may have physical bodies, for example, skeletons. But yeah, mainly the dead. The crew are the living though. As everything happens in the abode of the dead, possiblities are quite not as vast as in open world of the living, where you can get cities and so on.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Hah, I did not know about the Poseidon/Medusa thing. If that is truly the case, then it gets a pass just because it sticks to the source material.

The fact that you can do the "optional required" quest before or afterwards is actually pretty neat. It adds a certain element of nonlinearity that you can embrace. If the player hasn't done the other quest before, this option is simply not available. Instead you can have a new option for the other quest, depending on if you select choice 1 or 2 at the Medusa quest.

So basicly: Quest 1 unlocks a third choice for quest 2. Quest 2 unlocks a third choice for quest 1. You can't have both.

 

[APproject]

Yeah, the more I read about the Greek mythology the more I see how obsessed they were back then about the rape and incest. Kind of ruins that idealistic look of this great mythology. Oh well, they did not have porn back then, rape was casual.

Sounds like a great idea, having quests linked with each other is pretty possible and it would open space for even more replayability. Will keep it in mind.

EDIT: Here is the new wife model. I did not go with bright colors, bright might be too overwhelming I believe, this fits better to the surroundings after all. I had difficulties with the skirt, because all the time when skirt is on, legs are removed, but I am satisfied with what I achieved with the skirt.

 

[A Void]

Yeah, the more I read about the Greek mythology the more I see how obsessed they were back then about the rape and incest. Kind of ruins that idealistic look of this great mythology. Oh well, they did not have porn back then, rape was casual.

Sounds like a great idea, having quests linked with each other is pretty possible and it would open space for even more replayability. Will keep it in mind.

EDIT: Here is the new wife model. I did not go with bright colors, bright might be too overwhelming I believe, this fits better to the surroundings after all. I had difficulties with the skirt, because all the time when skirt is on, legs are removed, but I am satisfied with what I achieved with the skirt.

The model looks abit blocky at some points? I think you may decreased or compressed some quality and geosets (squished). Why?

 

[APproject]

That's the measures I had to take to reduce leg and skirt interaction to the minimum during the movement. I had to widen the skirt in all directions and this caused some blocky look around the hips. Legs still goes through the skirt at some points, but it is just a little and it seems acceptable. Unedited version looks terrible, legs literally becomes visible when running with skirt. Also, this picture is taken from Magos, it looks smoother in Editor / game. Model is just 230 KBs when unnecessary animations are dumped.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Did you add extra bones for the skirt so that it floats naturally?
Asking that because the WoW model default animations are pretty bad in that regard; the skirt will literally stick like glue to the legs, which looks totally ugly, especially when running.


... and good god, I hate those WoW models with a passion. Especially the female models. They look so derpy all around.
Maybe you could browse some 3D asset pages for free non-WoW character models to use? I know I've found several really good ones, but most of them are unanimated - but it's not hard to just import the bone structure and animations from an existing WC3 model and assign the body parts to the bones in MDLVis.

 

[APproject]

No I did not, I only widen its vertices. The way skirt has alpha channel doesn't look that bad when running, but still legs peaks out from the skirt in the back, slightly.

WoW models are overused indeed, but I don't have a any better choice. Recently I also turned to non-WoW 3D art, but not animated. I completely fail to transfer animations to another mesh though. Perhaps any good tutorial on transfering those?

 

[A Void]

No I did not, I only widen its vertices. The way skirt has alpha channel doesn't look that bad when running, but still legs peaks out from the skirt in the back, slightly.

WoW models are overused indeed, but I don't have a any better choice. Recently I also turned to non-WoW 3D art, but not animated. I completely fail to transfer animations to another mesh though. Perhaps any good tutorial on transfering those?

To transfer animations you would need to transfer all the associated bones to a given model for them to work properly. It's much easier to animate the model in Mdlvis.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Btw, If you want, I could add the required bones and animate the skirt if you keep planning on using this model. In return, you could terrain me a small ice-cave.

 

[A Void]

Btw, If you want, I could add the required bones and animate the skirt if you keep planning on using this model. In return, you could terrain me a small ice-cave.

A good deal but I'm sure that he will find a modeler (I think he already has) that will do it without needing anything in return. Besides, he's already busy doing Acheron's Affliction. Any sideways are time consuming..

 

[Zwiebelchen]

A good deal but I'm sure that he will find a modeler (I think he already has) that will do it without needing anything in return. Besides, he's already busy doing Acheron's Affliction. Any sideways are time consuming..

Sure, if he finds someone else, no problem with that. But there's nothing wrong in offering a trade.

 

[APproject]

I do have PROXY who does all the modeling requests, but recently he is busy with Zeus and Cerberus models, so he is already taking care of challenging and important task, I would not want to weigh him with additional requests.

If you are willing to deal with the model properly, I would truly appreciate it, you may use the model attached to the thread of Request section. I remember you mentioned to deal with every animation, I could give the model with unnecessary animations removed.

I could do the ice cave as long as it small, as you said, so I believe there is no problem at all. As for the time consuming, it may, but I would still be forced to freeze the project for a while due to continuation of university practice and later - job.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I do have PROXY who does all the modeling requests, but recently he is busy with Zeus and Cerberus models, so he is already taking care of challenging and important task, I would not want to weigh him with additional requests.

If you are willing to deal with the model properly, I would truly appreciate it, you may use the model attached to the thread of Request section. I remember you mentioned to deal with every animation, I could give the model with unnecessary animations removed.

I could do the ice cave as long as it small, as you said, so I believe there is no problem at all. As for the time consuming, it may, but I would still be forced to freeze the project for a while due to continuation of university practice and later - job.

Yeah it would be good if you would delete all unneeded animations first, because the process is very time-consuming, especially if you care about the details.

 

[knight26]

APproject, you truly make the impossible to I'm possible.
What you're doing with this engine is insane to say the least. You're a god among modders. Right now I'm playing Iceborn since I never got to finish it due to obligations. Good luck love it so far, especially the dark theme in this one.

 

[APproject]

@Zwiebelchen
Private message sent.

@knight26
Thank you. I definitely would not call myself like that, because I lack many skills that other modders are so familiar with. I am very limited when it comes to modeling, proper texturing, 2D art, interface hacking and most importantly - coding flawlessly, I just can't do any Jass. Many gaps still remains, but I try to improve within each work.

 

[frb97]

I did not take my time reading though the comments.
Anyways, game looks nice so far.

Just one thing... A lot of people do want voice acting, just don't if you can't give personal voices to nearly all characters. I played iceborn about 1 hour, never played it again after as of the annoyment of all starting characters having the same voice. In my opinion, it makes the game less epic overall.

Good luck on the project tho

 

[APproject]

Thanks. Yeah, this time the project will feature much more voices than in Iceborn. But that sounds odd, not playing the game because of similar voices, hehe.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Thanks. Yeah, this time the project will feature much more voices than in Iceborn. But that sounds odd, not playing the game because of similar voices, hehe.

Just because you might not know; there is a neat message board for people offering and searching for voice actors (most of them offer their services for free). I've found some really great ones to work with there.

http://voiceacting.proboards.com/

 

[frb97]

Just because you might not know; there is a neat message board for people offering and searching for voice actors (most of them offer their services for free). I've found some really great ones to work with there.

http://voiceacting.proboards.com/

http://voiceacting.proboards.com/thread/29507/requesting-voice-over-warcraft-iii

 

[Arad MNK]

*Look at the terrain screenshot 5.*
WOW! Your project is AWESOME!
I have already posted that this project is very good, but now it's getting perfect!

 

[APproject]

Thank you, Zwiebelchen, I will post a thread there once I will get more free time.

Screenshot 5 should be removed, because I completely deleted that terrain, I will remake that into better. But I will keep it there as long as there is no alternative.

 

[Arad MNK]

Screenshot 5 should be removed, because I completely deleted that terrain, I will remake that into better. But I will keep it there as long as there is no alternative.

What? why did you so? (No offense BTW)

 

[APproject]

Because it wasn't good enough, I will be making something much better.

 

[Arad MNK]

If it's gonna get better, then That's Ok

 

[btdonald]

Hmm any new progress ??

 

[APproject]

Sorry, no updates. Project is on hold for a while due to my summer job, it consumes up to 12 hours per day and in the end I am not feeling motivated, but quite exhausted. I will have a free week this month though, and studies begins in september, so I may get more free time in the long run for sure, but not for now.

 

[btdonald]

Sorry, no updates. Project is on hold for a while due to my summer job, it consumes up to 12 hours per day and in the end I am not feeling motivated, but quite exhausted. I will have a free week this month though, and studies begins in september, so I may get more free time in the long run for sure, but not for now.

Try your best ^^! I'm hearing from you.

 

[Shadow Fury]

I usually don't comment projects but this is just too marvellous and I'm really looking forward to playing this one day. You got one of the best terrains I've ever seen, it doesn't even seem to be Warcraft tbh. If you need suggestions about the storyline I may always think of some and propose them to you. You have my support on this.
Good luck!

 

[APproject]

Thank you very much for your support, Shadow Fury.

On the side note, I am having a free week this month, getting back the project for now.

 

[kakuzu]

Thank you very much for your support, Shadow Fury.

On the side note, I am having a free week this month, getting back the project for now.

Thats great , keep it up

 

[btdonald]

On the side note, I am having a free week this month, getting back the project for now.

Perfect ^^!~

 

[Lord Marcus XVI]

Good terrain. Are those all in the screenies, walkable and playable by units?

 

[APproject]

Thanks. Everything is playable here.

Just to give a slight update, I am almost complete with the second part of Erebus area, so by gameplay, game is 33% done. Cinematics of this part are still missing, so let's say 30%. I will try my best to finish this in an upcoming year despite the last year of studies. I and Molaf are getting back on track after a break.