Mathias Chronicles Redux

[Med. MapGuy]

Mathias Chronicles

Originally Created by: Savage Potato
Modified by: Med. MapGuy

Summary:

I have always admired Savage Potato's work. His epic tale known as "Mathias Chronicles" impressed me with intense drama and intruiging twists. I took it upon myself to see if I can try to take what is essentially perfect and improve a bit on it.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Potato's first campaign, the story tells of what happened in Lordaeron when Prince Arthas left to pursue Mal'Ganis in Northrend.

Features:

- Fairly nice looking terrain
- Stays true to the original Mathias Chronicles
- Mathias looks like an evil sonavabich
- Licensed music!

Team:

Med. MapGuy. Another one man project.

Progress:

As of February 18, 2007, I have with me the Mathias Chronicles Redux Demo. I must warn you - this campaign is very rough (Especially the last level). If there is sufficient clamor to continue improving this series, I will.

The filesize is fairly big for a demo, even with only 3 maps...

http://staff.samods.org/medmapguy/NewGenWarcraft/Mathias Chronicles Redux Demo.w3n
47 Megabyte Demo

To be perfectly honest, when I look at this campaign I am releasing as of today, I probably won't call it a demo. I would rather call it a "Pilot". If this campaign is successful in that people actually enjoy it, I might continue it. As you know, Mathias Chronicles is a 5-part campaign, I probably won't be able to go through the entire series, but again, I probably would finish the first part if there is some kind of demand for it.

Hope you enjoy it! Again, try not to mind the rough edges in the demo too much!

Please, tell me what you think!

 

[Mechanical Man]

Glad to see you again!

I played this campaign a long time ago, not finished all chapters though (especially in the beginning), as they were very hard and first maps were buggy. I hope you will increase pop cap and raise upkeep limit, since lot of maps consists having big army already in the beginning and starting with small base.

Anyone know if the author is still around (he said he wrote a novel about this)? He is from New Zealand, I think.

 

[tuzec]

Very very nice campaign!

 

[Mechanical Man]

I tried the first mission.

The intro was very cool, nice the book thingy. Mathias model seems very weird to me, is too tall for wc model and have a strange helmet. There is some glitches with model imports in first mission, as I get attacked by untargetable shadows (fortunately units do autotarget them). Rifleman model also seem strange to me, has a large gun at his back and the small one in hand. And his attack sound does not trigger always, I guess you used triggers to play it. Make this the other way.

Soon I will try next mission so then I can tell you more.

 

[Med. MapGuy]

Ha!

Thanks tuzec!

Hey Mechanical Man, great to see you trying my campaign. Yeah, the new Mathias model creeped me out a bit but at least its not another Arthas model anymore, eh? He's kinda tall, but lets blame the armor!

Damn! What bug is that? Oh boy... If I do ever get around to releasing this sucker, it'll be a while before I nail all the bugs. The attack sound of the Rifleman is my bad, it was taken from another game, but I guess it got compressed badly, or it doesn't fit in with the game or something.

I'll see what I can do about the pop cap and stuff. I'm terrible at game balancing, so it'll take a while.

Ehehe... I didn't really contact Savage... Hope he doesn't sue me! Anyway, he gets top billing.

 

[SlurpingApe]

God dammit! Some GREATNESS!! i like those screens, btw where did u get that sky skin? or is it a model? the one which is cloudy.

 

[DoOs_101]

Hey can I have the sky skins too

 

[Mechanical Man]

Ok. Finished the demo (not really, in the middle of last mission wc crashed).

Models:

The model of mathias was not selectable by click on it (i think it is problem with extents), you had to drag a box around him to select. Having collision shape should solve this problem.

Actually, I saw no need to new models for normal units (however advancing the original campaign there are some custom units (dwarves!) where will be pleasant to have custom models for them), skins of footman and knight are a bit blurry (differs from wc standards) and knight was basically footman on horse (having the same portrait). Go more models for heroes instead.

That orc turret models have no death animation and they stayed there for some time even they were destroyed.


Gameplay:

Thing that really bugged me in second mission is when you destroyed the cage where ogres dwelt, the mortar appeared at the other location near the trolls! And if you did not choose divine shield skill in the first mission it became impossible to walk through that minefield. And why the mines had so large area of effect? If I were shooting them with riflemen they got hurt. And mine cleaning operation was so long and annoying.

In third mission when defending with dwarves you get five peasant where one is trapped in a kind of dwarven statue.

Terrain was good, except it is hard to see units under those large trees. Mathias chronicles campaigns had not very good terrain, it is a good idea to make it better.

Otherwise, good work, hope you solve those bugs. I can give even more suggestions if you need. Mathias chronicles was very good campaigns, but needed polishing and debugging.

P.S. That Mathias seemed a little WoW-ish to me