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Blade Artist -> Blade and Gore?

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TKF

TKF

Level 19
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Nov 29, 2006
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1,266
Well done. One of your great maps is a hosted project at hive and you got a nice subforum for people to post suggestions. Nice stickies you put up here.


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Anyways I remember Blade Artist which If I don't recall wrong, was a surpising map which showed the ordinary WC3 players that you can actually create a nasty PvP close combat map in blade warrior style, which is 7 years old, which is probably the main inspiration of this map. It just happened to be the first map I opened to learn from Other peoples work, although I didn't learn much of it at that time as the code intimidated me.


(Btw my avatar icon is from Blade Artist map, I just slightly edited to map to get a cool panda hat on blademaster)
 
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Anyways I remember Blade Artist which If I don't recall wrong, was a surpising map which showed the ordinary WC3 players that you can actually create a nasty PvP close combat map in blade warrior style, which is 7 years old, which is probably the main inspiration of this map. It just happened to be the first map I opened to learn from Other peoples work, although I didn't learn much of it at that time as the code intimidated me.


(Btw my avatar icon is from Blade Artist map, I just slightly edited to map to get a cool panda hat on blademaster)

Actually no.

Time for some history!
"Blades 'n Gore II" is a complete remake of "Blades 'n Gore".
"Blades 'n Gore" was a complete remake of "Combat Tournament", which was lost during transfer from wc3sear.ch to hive.

I do remember seeing Blade Artist in the wc3sear.ch map section and briefly trying it out in singleplayer at some point.
I think it was the first map I saw that had animated loading screens, so I could say that it inspired me to do my own animated screens.
I also remember it having very cinematic-like abilities that would lock your unit for a relatively long duration. This is a complete opposite of the Blades 'n Gore design philosophy.


The first map (Combat Tournament) had only 3 abilities (slash, defend, blade beam) and the playable characters were based on the captain/swordsman model with shield.
It was a very simplistic map that was designed with the goal to have more immersive combat: Instead of autoattacks and long cooldown abilities, the players would have direct control of their unit, allowing them to fight in their own style.

Next came Blades 'n Gore.
"Blade beam"-ability, being a ranged missile, did not fit very well in a melee combat game. Thus it was replaced with "Dash", which was a very long range strike that would also move your unit.
"Power Slam" also made it's appearance, bringing the ability count to 4 (Block, Dash, Attack, Slam).
"Block" ability was also upgraded to knock back enemy attackers.
The character models were also replaced with a villager model. Instead of having a preset character model for every race, this map supported attachment armor and weapons.

Finally, Blades 'n Gore II was created. The models were once again upgraded, now to a blademaster based one that had more realistic proportions.
Custom animations allowed the ability count to be doubled to the 8 that are currently in the map.
The overpowered and overused "Dash" from the previous game was replaced with "Lunge", that has nearly the same function but considerably less range and deals slightly less damage.
Also, the completely useless "Attack" ability was replaced by "Slash", which has a wider range and more power behind it.

These maps have always been developed with the central idea of having simple and fast, low-cost abilities, that the players could combine and chain up according to their own fighting style.
Blades 'n Gore has never been about "pressing a button, sitting back, and watching your character perform a preset combo/fancy move"
Blades 'n Gore has always been about "constantly reading the situation and chaining up abilities accordingly".

The inspiration for the very first map came from the simple fact that every wc3 map that focused on a player controlling one hero seemed to inherit numerous unfitting RTS gameplay elements. Autoattacks, long cooldowns, slow mana regenerations, and high health amounts are an easy way to destroy any immersion from the combat when you are controlling only one unit.
 

TKF

TKF

Level 19
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
1,266
I thought you had some inspiration of Blade Artist when making BnG because it kinda reminded me of that map.


As far as I can see its same concept, but made in 2 different ways, although BnG is much more improved, Blade Artist actually has an simple but well done AI which instantly kicks in when players leave or they are set as computers at start which kinda impressed me and seeing how simple scripting that is made for it.

Making an AI for this map if you plan to do so in near future shouldn't be so difficult as for my AI designs for Cruiser Command is completely different. Spending 2 months is like insane amount of time just making the AI able to support the human players, and still they cannot make independent decisions because its extreme difficult to make a dice based AI based on random decisions or counters.


As for removing the element of auto-acquiring attacks is quite smart concept in this map which makes it quite unique. I made a Battleship map based on pure manual attacks, which is actually inspired by your Uncharted Waters map cannon feature.'


But if you consider making an AI, it must be mostly scripted and its extremely timeconsuming in the way you designed the map to be manually triggered in many ways.
 
I thought you had some inspiration of Blade Artist when making BnG because it kinda reminded me of that map.


As far as I can see its same concept, but made in 2 different ways, although BnG is much more improved, Blade Artist actually has an simple but well done AI which instantly kicks in when players leave or they are set as computers at start which kinda impressed me and seeing how simple scripting that is made for it.

Making an AI for this map if you plan to do so in near future shouldn't be so difficult as for my AI designs for Cruiser Command is completely different. Spending 2 months is like insane amount of time just making the AI able to support the human players, and still they cannot make independent decisions because its extreme difficult to make a dice based AI based on random decisions or counters.


As for removing the element of auto-acquiring attacks is quite smart concept in this map which makes it quite unique. I made a Battleship map based on pure manual attacks, which is actually inspired by your Uncharted Waters map cannon feature.'


But if you consider making an AI, it must be mostly scripted and its extremely timeconsuming in the way you designed the map to be manually triggered in many ways.

Yes, I'll start looking at AI design after the combat system has been upgraded to the next version.
 
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