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[Strategy / Risk] Project dark ages

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Based on my comic world, Dark Ages, inspired by Medieval Europe, Tolkien's Middle Earth, GRRM's Game of Thrones, WoW: Cataclysm and Demon Souls/ Dark Souls. The plot is quite intricate, in short images the Europa world of Middle Earth becoming cataclysm-ed sundering the continent into pieces. From the sundering, demons spawned and attacked the major civilizations at that time. The attacks, wars and crusades destroyed all major cities around the sundering and left many of the Human Kingdoms in a Dark Age for hundreds of years afterwards- which is when the story takes place... demons have reemerged from the sundering after a foolish lord tries to mine the ore from the area, reopening the gates of hell to the world.

I've decided to make the populous of Dark Ages much more Fantasy based. Here are the current playable and neutral races/cultures/kingdoms... Names will probably change for uniqueness and distinction from other games and fantasy story stereotypes. Not gonna go into too much detail or history- you'll have to wait until my comic for all the great lore animations with voice over and music, Game of Thrones style. This is just a summary of things relevant to the wc3 game.

Players

1) Light Elves- High Elf models + Dalaran Buildings, Arcane Magic. Dragonhawks + riders. Once, the elves were one people but they disagreed on foreign relations with the dwarves and the growing populous of humans so they split, the group that later became the Light Elves went north. The group that later became the Dark Elves went south. The descriptive terms Light and Dark also hint at thier appearance, because of the thousands of years spent new environments, Light Elves become light skinned and light haired blonde or white, now living in a colder north landmass inspired by Iceland/Greenland. Dark Elves become dark skin and dark haired, now living in a more temperate and dark forest inspired by the Amazon. This stratification also applies to their magic... Navy. No Cavalry.

2) Dark Elves- Night Elf models, Mounted Panther Army, Dryads, Tree Ents, Nature Magic. Hipogryphs + riders. No Navy

3) Dwarves- Best Architecture, weapons, and armor (best overall crastsman), and richest in metal recourses, runic magic= mostly enchantments which is used in the creation of Golems. Also has the best Navy due to the high quality crafted ships, inspired by Viking ships- the best of their time. + Series of hidden tunnels that span throughout all lands- inspired by prehistoric tunnels found across Europe, Eurasia, and Africa which link parts as far west as spain, as far east as romania, and as far south as present day Iraq, was Egypt back then... the ancients keep astonishing me. No cavalry. Gryphons + riders.

4) Irish Parish - Humans with Angel elites. This order of holy warriors and priests has broken off from the main church, now seen as corrupt, forming a Schism of religions in the Human Kingdoms. Thier righteous deeds and orderly justice EARNED them the attention of the Divinity of Heaven (not exactly God, but a network of divine consciousnesses that are mostly Angels and light-being, counterweight to the underworld). Unique architecture inspired by Elves, floating city reminiscent of Heide DS2. Navy. No cavalry.

5) France- Human Kingdom with a long history of nobility, this Kingdom is well defended by mountain top castles and is a crossroads among the varying geography of the lands. The capital city was a commissioned project built by dwarves, one the most stunning castles of the lands to remain after the Cataclysm. Heavy importer of Swiss mined metal and would've formed a secret alliance if the princess promised to the Swiss Tyrant had not run away into the dangerous Black Forest after being told of the forced arrangement... Navy.

6) Spain- Humans with Unique Naval units. It's lands torn asunder by the Cataclysm, resulting in the western part of it breaking off and crashing into the southern continent. Although their landmass is quite limited, major castles on the eastern side of the land remain defending it from the Swiss and French. Hundreds of years have past since the Cataclysm and a bay has formed around the land from the surrounding ocean now closer to the capital. It's people now turn to the sea for sustenance and TRADE routes around the other Human Kingdoms, which frequently war against each other.

7) Old Swiss Confederacy- Humans occupying an Old Dwarven City, abandoned after the Cataclysm. They now have better armor than the other Human Kingdoms after studying the dwarven tech... after hundreds of years, they've explored the old dwarven tunnels and found ancient golems (elite units), these constructs are artificial beings imbued with souls by unknown means and now serve the Swiss Tyrant King who is bent on launching a crusade into the underworld, in search of power, and waging war against other Kingdoms who do not pledge their support. This Kingdom is somewhat reminiscent of Dark Souls 2's Drangleic and the Old Iron Kingdom in how they had secret experiments, pursued the power of the underworld, and how they treated past Kingdoms, like of Heide, Alken and Venn (sp?). No navy.

8) Germany- Kingdom of the Black Forest. Very little access of metal, some stone, wood = plentiful. Bandit models, common for women to fight, dog scouts, and a hunter's lodge. Units are much less armored than the other Kingdoms but their abilities and stealthiness in the forest make up for it. The Black Forest of Germany is big with many paths, dangerous, full of bandits, wild animals, encroaching undead from the north and rouge witches and wizards from the nearby Magic Academy of the border of Hungary. The Academy teaches a Lesser Arcane Magic called idk yet- going to look a lot of Dark Souls magic- Soul Arts Sorcery. No navy.

9) Hungary- Battle hardened culture- defending constant attacks from Moors to the south and the Undead to the north. Close to Dwarven Land, constant trade of metal and stone for food from their abundant farms. Elites - Armored Knights Templar + Dragon Riders... While each kingdom will have a type of dragon (different dragons for each element abundant in the land, IE forest = nature dragon)

10) Egypt - Mix of Blood Elf units and Acolyte models. Elite order of warriors and alchemists. Half elf half human, tasked with guarding what little relics of the Old Elven Cities that remain even in their ruined state- from all the volcanic and tectonic activity from the Cataclysm. Knowledge of the Chasm up north has spurred a crusades to reclaim old ruins and seek power of the underworld, like the Swiss. Magic- Alchemy= Original Alchemy of Thoth and later Mehlin- later known as Merlin in Europe.

11) Underworld- Undead + Demon + Fire models. Won't go too deep into their story, since it's sort of self explanitory. No navy, No cavalry... obviously. Horde of land units and few flyers. Their capital, The Chasm of maybe The Abyss is a passage to the underworld, is just off the mainland, northwest of Poland.


Nuetral Passive/Hostile

Poland- (Passive) The sundering broke apart many lands, especially parts of Norway and Poland. The Polish Kingdom was probably the hardest hit by the Cataclysm, from earthquakes that destroyed many of their cities and castles to the demons and undead that soon followed, pouring out of the chasm ravaging their lands and spreading into Germany and Hungary.

Scottland- (Hostile) Remnant of an old Kingdom. The sundering sunk most of the UK, leaving part of mountainous Scottland and part of hilly Ireland. The Kingdom supports the Old Church of Swiss and is at war with the Irish Parish.

Chinese Monastary- (Passive) Monks with DBZ abilities... DBZ was inspired by stories of the past- you wouldn't believe the degree of chi usage of old Chinese legends... One man, an ex-monk, was said to have massacred a village with energy blasts, there was a wanted poster describing the events (Passive) While this is going to be in my comic, this would be hard to import into the game, IE all the custom abilities and more models- might remove from the strategy version, probably not from the RPG.

Nerubians(sp?)- (Hostile) Inspired by the old and primal culture of Nerubia- reknowned for its brutal combat skills and practices- once mercenaries of the Egyptian army. Models will be orcs and trolls- while not accurate, they have a different skin tone and embody savage brutality and have similar weapons and armor. Capturable by Egypt.

Moores/Ottoman Turks- (Hostile) Alliance of Arabic Kingdoms. Haradrim units- Mumakil and company from hiveworkshop. Constantly raid Hungary- attack wave trigger or uncomfortably close base placement. Capturable by Egypt.

(Hostile) Elementals, Rouge Golems, Dragons, and more.

(Hostile) Undead - Shouldn't they be controlled by the Underworld? Having a hive mind would be op... There are going to be some rouge undead, demons and necromancers causing havoc. #Dangerous roads #Bosses



That's pretty much it for now...

Unit Sets are almost done along with the map lay-in- some areas are already done, like the Black Forest (Germany) and the Swiss Alps (Old Swiss Confederacy). I'll have screenshots in another week- needs some refining and other areas need more work.

As previously mentioned, there will be two games with similar maps, varying due to a time-gap. One will be a strategy based in Azeroth Wars style, the other will be RPG and will be set hundreds of years before the Strategy game (which takes place during the comic's time era)- just after the first chasm when most cities are in ruins while being overrun by demons, will hopefully play a lot like Dark Souls.

PS I really need a modeler- a lot of models I'm using need tweaking for a unique feel when grouped and need compressing or trimming for a smaller file size. The map is hovering around 12 MB and it needs to be almost halved so it can be playable on battle.net.
 
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This seems like it could be a unique and successful epic strategy map. Note the word 'could.'

I didn't quite get a grasp of knowledge on what the core gameplay mechanics will be like. There are a plethora of strategy map types to choose from (Classic risk, spawn-based, control point, altered melee, etc). Would you mind describing the core gameplay a bit more?

Not to say that no one cares about the story, but I think having the background lore for each faction to take up most of the space is detrimental to your map getting customers here. What I suggest you do is to add a combination of gimmick with your formatting (colors, banners, tables, charts, and such), like most of the successful map development threads out here, and to emphasize the information you deem as the most important.

TL DR
People don't comment much on maps with a wall of text as its cover.

You can quote others to experiment with BBcode.

Adrian Pinagel said:
Scottland
Make sure to spell that with one 't' next time, especially in game :)

Good luck. By the way, when will we expect a alpha / beta link?
 
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Level 4
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Aug 22, 2014
Messages
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This seems like it could be a unique and successful epic strategy map. Note the word 'could.'

I didn't quite get a grasp of knowledge on what the core gameplay mechanics will be like. There are a plethora of strategy map types to choose from (Classic risk, spawn-based, control point, altered melee, etc). Would you mind describing the core gameplay a bit more?

Not to say that no one cares about the story, but I think having the background lore for each faction to take up most of the space is detrimental to your map getting customers here. What I suggest you do is to add a combination of gimmick with your formatting (colors, banners, tables, charts, and such), like most of the successful map development threads out here, and to emphasize the information you deem as the most important.

TL DR
People don't comment much on maps with a wall of text as its cover.

You can quote others to experiment with BBcode.


Make sure to spell that with one 't' next time, especially in game :)

Good luck. By the way, when will we expect a alpha / beta link?

Thanks for the advice- helpful as always- and good to hear from you again. Oh right! True, that's more valuable to most people than the lore...

Imagine Azeroth Wars- control points (+ mines for bonus gold), unit production, etc + rpg elements, instances, bosses, bonus items weapons & armor, and lots of custom models for unit variety and items- Gathering and Crafting- heroes will be able to go into a forest and gather fruit, or go into a mine and gather different types of ore and gems, then bring the required items to different specialists to craft potions, weapons, armor, & more.

Combat will be very different than most games, units will have a lot less health and more damage so most infantry units will get murked after only 4-5 melee strikes from other infantry units. A well equipped hero will be very hard to bring down and will probably one shot most infantry, like in the movies! Custom weapon and armor types- spears counter cavalry, arrows don't do much to plate armor, etc. Also, if there's a way- no more target attacks- units will attack and any units caught in that area will receive damage, ranged units will have to be accurate and any mage with blink could probably get away in time to dodge a volley of arrows.

Currently the map is floating around 12 MB and I need to do all I can to minimize it to 8MB for battle.net file size cap. I may need a modeler to compress the horde of files I'm using- I'm still looking for one btw if you know any. I tried asking a few through PM but they're too busy or uninterested.

Right, Scotland!

Beta sometime this Summer!
 
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I was wondering- I can cut the file size dramatically by giving each culture only a handful of units and dozens of attatchments to give unique combinations of weapons and armor types along with a need for having a blacksmith and and sources of different metals for a tiered set of armor and weapons- different metals will be would in mines spread across the map and rarer and stronger metals like titanite would be more rare, while ordinary metals like iron would be abundant ... this is gonna spark a lot of alterac valley type skirmishes (WoW reference).... there will also be a way of turning bog bush into iron for the few cultures that don't start off with a mine.

Also, this will benefit having an elite group of units opposed to massing- and this way if anyone did mass- it wouldn't be very effective unless you farmed npcs and upgraded them later on. I suppose it needs to tested out.
 
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^ Wow, this could really work! Map went from 12 MB to 7 MB and I haven't even compressed it yet... Now I have a few questions for game mechanics- how do I give a unit a different attack type based on the weapon equipped, like in orc gladiators?
 

Ardenian

A

Ardenian

Now I have a few questions for game mechanics- how do I give a unit a different attack type based on the weapon equipped, like in orc gladiators?
It is not possible to change the attack type of a unit with triggers.
There is a way to change it with tech, but tech cannot be called back and stays forever.

If you want a mechanic like in Orc Gladiators, I would suggest to create a unit for each weapon.

By the way:
This is NOT a forum to ask questions about the Editor!
Quoted from the section information. If you have questions about the WE, you could post a thread in the WEHZ.

The idea sounds interesting, I am excited for it.
 
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