How many yet to come?

[Hemlock]

My question (As a very very huge fan of your games) is:
- How many campaign maps will there be coming?
- Are you going to produce anything else than the dwarf campaigns?

Well i hope that you might have the answers, if not I still thank you for your time.

KEEP UP THE DWARVEN SPIRIT!!

 

[Tommi]

1. There will be at least one map. It depends on player interest and how much time it takes to create the chapters. Idea creation and plot design are by far the most time consuming parts. The two first chapters were rather easy to create storywise, because we could use our long experience from roleplaying games where we had long played a party of dwarves (the uber race in D&D 3rd edition). We combined it to one year of experience of Warcraft III. For Temple, we had to do some serious work, which we are doing now, too, for Chapter 4.

2. It depends on what we get inspired to. If we get some great ideas, then yes, but at the moment we are using all our story creation efforts on making Chapter 4. Of course, it depends too on player interest. We are not going to waste our time on projects people don't play, especially when WoW is out now.

Btw, you said you didn't like Temple in another thread. If you played the original version, you should check out the release 5. We added several nice features to the new releases. The latest release has a really nice rune translation puzzle, which we are quite proud of at the moment. We also removed some unnecessary dialogues to make the game smoother, and there are going to be some new revisions (rather minor ones) in an upcoming release 6.

 

[Hemlock]

Thanks for your reply tommi.

Well for as chapter4, i really am gonna like it.
I was reading in another threat that you might have it ready in Q1 or Q2 2005.
well if so i can wait, but i just where wondering what you briljant guys where up to.

Well as for temple: i give my excuse, cause I meant that it is the greatest of all, I think that temple, is better than seven mithril golems or defenders of the dwarvenkind.

Thanks for sharing!
greets
/Warnicro/

 

[Tommi]

Oops. I misread your comment. Great that you liked it too!

 

[Hemlock]

well don't mind it everybody make mistakes.
but you and janne are brothers right?
did you have beta testers as well in temple if i may ask, if so how did you orginaze the whole party.

 

[Tommi]

No, we did not have beta testers. We did all the debugging work by ourselves. Not many people are willing to spend hours and hours hunting for bugs.

On the other hand, we did have a playtester, to whom we showed an early version of the scenario. We carefully followed how he played the scenario (without instructions) and listened to how felt about it. It is a great way to find out how casual players like to play the map and how its playability could be improved. A bit like a usability study. :roll:

And we have also listened carefully to player feedback and improved all the scenarios based on them. The majority of good improvement ideas are from players.

 

[Hemlock]

well i can't say i disagree, but i have a new map that is to be submitted very soon and i was just wondering on how to do that exactly.
I am open to any suggestions .

 

[Tommi]

You need to try everything out once by yourself. Make good debugging triggers for yourself (they help a lot), and then it's good to play the game normally several times to catch more bugs (usually from trigger interactions). It also helps you to find annoyances in playability. Finally, you learn the rest of the bugs and imbalances from player reports. Then, update the map with fixes.

 

[Hemlock]

well actualy (what i didn't mention) is that this map is a cinematic , but i wanted to see if my terrain could be improved or dialogs could be better.

 

[Tommi]

:lol: I don't think cinematics need much testing. Just show it to your friends or other people, who could point out what you could improve. Face-to-face discussion would be best.

 

[Hemlock]

That might be the best solution for a cinematic.

By the way i am now paying the defenders of the dwarvenkind (actually to whole campaign ) but i hadn't played the update yet, and i must say i am really liking it.
I might really hope that your work isn't about to stop cause it's just a great pleasure to play your maps.
BTW are you playing maps lately?

 

[Tommi]

Yes. It is essential to have time to play games. I've played most tops maps on wc3sear.ch (RPG/campaigns only), and Janne has played some that I have not (including the Wanderers of Sorceria campaign). Unfortunately, I've not encountered a map that would have impressed me as much as King Klear's Zombie Island - Curse of the Lost City, and it still stays as my favorite map (due to its originality).

I would be interested in single player tower defenses that would be the same quality (or better) than Blizzard's TD. I tried Skibi's TD, but its learning curve was horrendous for beginners.

Janne is playing HL2 now, and I spent some weeks playing Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal through (the game had been three years on the shelf; still got NWN there :roll: ).

---

I'm not saying that we are going to stop creating maps, but it is pretty self-explanatory that the campaign development takes a lot of time. It's almost like a second job now. :roll: Unfortunately, there is no economic income and little other benefits for the job done. Any more time devoted to campaign creation would mean that we would need considerable donations (something like $200,000 a year), which is most likely not going to happen (considering the sum, Blizzard license agreements, etc.). I hope it could be otherwise. We love creating the adventures, too.

Of course, the community could come up with other ideas how to support our work... we need all support we can get.

 

[Hemlock]

Nice to hear you play some warcraft maps as well, but have you tried my sugestions already?

For as maping, indeed it takes a long time to create a well designed and balanced game, especially when you start creating a Rpg.
i now am busy on my sequal of the little bit old, rare and not good, The Retake of Bugenhelm.
I am now busy on the intro scenes and creating the basics of the terrain.
Compared to my first Rpg it will defently an improvement, and can advise any one to play it that love a little bit of darkness when ready.