- Joined
- May 17, 2023
- Messages
- 5
This might be a bit of a rant/traumadump but please bear with me...
INDEX
1.Explanation/Context
2.AoS Sample Map
3.Warfare
4.Entitling
5.complex unit system
6.Warlords Battlecry Experiment
7.Roleplay Heroes
8.Warcraft Total War
9.Kings and Empires
10.Medieval Dynasties
11.The lost ones
1. [EXPLANATION/CONTEXT]
I started gaming at 4 years old.
At six I knew how to read quickly, do divisions, I knew what it meant to kill or die and I was interested in people's motivations. I probably owe all this to Warcraft 3. At 10 years of age I started doing my maps using its editor, and this made me realize "If I could do this as a job I would be happy", hence me becoming a full stack developer. <3
From then until a few years ago I have always done Warcraft maps
But:
-Most of my projects I lost them either with blackouts or with my brother formatting hard drives with no notice, including two of the best ones, both with a campaign in the works.
-I had no one to talk to IRL about them because it was already so much to convince them to try the game, let alone test my mods
-I saw the online community as something elitist who alienate you if you dare not respect their standards of perfection, prompting me to never put them online.
At one point I simply stopped. </3
Now that I have opened the chest of Pandora again, I would like to return, finish what I started, follow my teen dreams and have maps that could become so famous they could eventually found their own games... but with a full-time job, social life, engagement, and these already forcing me to compromise, if I EVER had more time, it should be for my actual videogame projects, or restoring my fiancee's farmfields, something concrete that would help me financially in these times of crisis.
I talked about it with backupyouraccdaily AKA Cat Lives Matter AKA Shiny on Discord, and he kindly asked me to pass him my whole folder.
I feel like the owner of a cat or dog, forced to give away the animal because I cannot keep it at home and cannot look after it, but relieved to know that someone else will be able to do it.
Holy mother of yap, if you read all that you are a Champion of Azeroth, thank you, wholeheartedly.
Below is a documentation of the maps, how the systems work and my original plans for them.
If anyone else is interested in continuing them PLEASE, let's talk about it, I'm open to giving permission but I still want credit for the original ideas and recognition in the community. I will send you the zip with my projects (you'll see how old these are too) and we can also voice chat about them.
2. [AOS SAMPLE MAP]
A simple map meant to be opened in the editor and studied. It was meant for new people experimenting with triggers for the first time.
Every trigger is heavily commented with an explanation of why a certain trigger is there, so someone with no programming experience can understand it.
It was also one of the few maps I ever tried uploading on hiveworkshop. I tried uploading it as a map but it was highly criticized because it was too bland of a map, and denied by moderators. Then I put it in spells/scripts, but even then people said "it's too simple/it's meant to be played so it shouldn't be here".
Was making a "Not Sample" version with slightly better stuff but then dropped it, thinking "what's the purpose, they already said it's not good".
3. [WARFARE]
An experiment I did with a "shooter system", all the projectiles are real and can be dodged, other than that it's a very plain map.
4. [ENTITLING & COMPLEX UNIT SYSTEM]
I tried to make some sort of "API" for custom units: every unit gets put in an array, and these arrays also function as an index to store custom values. This way you can trigger your way out of making custom names, custom titles, custom descriptions, custom abilities etc. for every unit. The system automatically deletes values when a unit is removed (not just killed) so the pile is unlikely to get full and crash the game.
5. [WARLORDS BATTLECRY EXPERIMENT]
The Entitling system eventually evolved into this: you can save your heroes and retiue of troops with a chat command, and then load them in another match! I included a Booty Bay version of this, I had several maps to enjoy this system to the fullest.
6. [ROLEPLAY HEROES]
The WB system eventually evolved into this: custom everything, commands for everything, achievements for every single unit, etc.
This was mainly inspired by Starcraft II's Cortex Roleplay, and along with the save and load mechanic it gets pretty close, but due to the sheer amount of work and models to import I never finished it. I was also planning a campaign to a)advertise a character from one of my actual videogame projects and b)showcase the mod's potential.
7. [WARCRAFT TOTAL WAR]
Using a script called "Detachments", I had a lamp turn on above my head: what if I made Total War, but in Real Time Strategy? So I was working on this and planned a few original features of my own, while also thinking about Medieval Total War: captains and generals having perks and aging, some units having random traits etc.
But I also made Champions that are units you can individually select, are slightly stronger and can equip stuff. I was planning to have them participate in jousts and expeditions(dungeons), but again this never happened after a blackout made me lose progress on the management part of this map.
8. [MEDIEVAL DYNASTIES]
This is one where I wanted to put my heart and soul, and eventually motivated me to just learn actual game development. It's a grand strategy/4x game where aside from gold and wood you have happiness, food, gems, crystals, every unit aging and every unit having randomly generated names, traits and inheriting their parents' stuff (traits, last name & dropped equipment). It was meant to feature many different unit types alongside an age tech tree which goes as follows:
rural
|
feudal
/ \
steam magic
Some other mechanics would include: neutral color bandits you could use to attack people without them knowing it was you, being able to "knight" units/make them noble unlocking other troop types at the expense of their demands, marriages between players to "unite dynasties" (you couldn't just "ally" with people).
Due to the sheer scale of the project (and losing a backup to a bullying episode...) I never finished this. I realized it could just be its own videogame, but the artist that worked with me so far wanted to do Visual Novels or RPGs.
The original map is management.w3x then I think I "ported" it onto a template map but some things weren't working?
9. [KINGS AND EMPIRES]
The original one was from Samahp, but after six years of him not responding, hiveworkshop's moderators gave me permission to publish my edits... except I never did. Insecurities.
There's currently two versions, Cappuccino is the default one with some minor differences: optimized code, ex. no longer lagging when allying with someone through chat commands, leveling units, and improved happiness system.
Pannacotta takes this a step further, introducing new heroes, an Academy where you can teach these heroes skills, effectively customizing them, interesting new researches for each unit and some fascinating tweaks to villagers. For instance, now every time you recruit you actually lose a villager, and villagers give you extra income. This means having too many soldiers will stall your income!
This is the one I'm most confident on, and in my spare time, I may actually finish this one, but I'm okay with letting other people work on it.
10. [THE LOST ONES]
All of these were subject to deletion and loss, but there's two of them I lost completely and it left me scarred to this day. There are some events in my life that gave me a constant thought in my head: "no matter how much I struggle I'm going to lose everything". Losing these was one of those events.
You may think I'm overdramatic, but these two were remakes of the game "Battle Realms" in a whole new perspective, with all new models and two different takes.
The gameplay loop was the same: you have rice, water, metal and building materials. The more water you had the faster villagers spawned. Villagers entered buildings which turned them into a new unit. If a unit that entered, say, a barracks, then entered an archery range, it'd get transformed into an advanced unit type having the advantages of both categories.
One, "Pride of an Empire", had close to the same troops and buildings (ex. swordsman, hunter, cannoneer), with the difference that all troops could level up and you had training dummies and random quests to help do that.
The other, "To the Last Lord" was completely accurate to japanese mythology and filled TO THE BRIM with Black Stan's models. To train units into new types you also had to produce the gear they needed, with randomly generated quality according to the smithing unit's intelligence... yes, I thought it all.
I can't stress this enough, these were the passion projects of a 15 year old, they had cutscenes and characters to introduce you to the game mechanics, and it left me completely heartbroken to lose them.
INDEX
1.Explanation/Context
2.AoS Sample Map
3.Warfare
4.Entitling
5.complex unit system
6.Warlords Battlecry Experiment
7.Roleplay Heroes
8.Warcraft Total War
9.Kings and Empires
10.Medieval Dynasties
11.The lost ones
1. [EXPLANATION/CONTEXT]
I started gaming at 4 years old.
At six I knew how to read quickly, do divisions, I knew what it meant to kill or die and I was interested in people's motivations. I probably owe all this to Warcraft 3. At 10 years of age I started doing my maps using its editor, and this made me realize "If I could do this as a job I would be happy", hence me becoming a full stack developer. <3
From then until a few years ago I have always done Warcraft maps
But:
-Most of my projects I lost them either with blackouts or with my brother formatting hard drives with no notice, including two of the best ones, both with a campaign in the works.
-I had no one to talk to IRL about them because it was already so much to convince them to try the game, let alone test my mods
-I saw the online community as something elitist who alienate you if you dare not respect their standards of perfection, prompting me to never put them online.
At one point I simply stopped. </3
Now that I have opened the chest of Pandora again, I would like to return, finish what I started, follow my teen dreams and have maps that could become so famous they could eventually found their own games... but with a full-time job, social life, engagement, and these already forcing me to compromise, if I EVER had more time, it should be for my actual videogame projects, or restoring my fiancee's farmfields, something concrete that would help me financially in these times of crisis.
I talked about it with backupyouraccdaily AKA Cat Lives Matter AKA Shiny on Discord, and he kindly asked me to pass him my whole folder.
I feel like the owner of a cat or dog, forced to give away the animal because I cannot keep it at home and cannot look after it, but relieved to know that someone else will be able to do it.
Holy mother of yap, if you read all that you are a Champion of Azeroth, thank you, wholeheartedly.
Below is a documentation of the maps, how the systems work and my original plans for them.
If anyone else is interested in continuing them PLEASE, let's talk about it, I'm open to giving permission but I still want credit for the original ideas and recognition in the community. I will send you the zip with my projects (you'll see how old these are too) and we can also voice chat about them.
2. [AOS SAMPLE MAP]
A simple map meant to be opened in the editor and studied. It was meant for new people experimenting with triggers for the first time.
Every trigger is heavily commented with an explanation of why a certain trigger is there, so someone with no programming experience can understand it.
It was also one of the few maps I ever tried uploading on hiveworkshop. I tried uploading it as a map but it was highly criticized because it was too bland of a map, and denied by moderators. Then I put it in spells/scripts, but even then people said "it's too simple/it's meant to be played so it shouldn't be here".
Was making a "Not Sample" version with slightly better stuff but then dropped it, thinking "what's the purpose, they already said it's not good".
3. [WARFARE]
An experiment I did with a "shooter system", all the projectiles are real and can be dodged, other than that it's a very plain map.
4. [ENTITLING & COMPLEX UNIT SYSTEM]
I tried to make some sort of "API" for custom units: every unit gets put in an array, and these arrays also function as an index to store custom values. This way you can trigger your way out of making custom names, custom titles, custom descriptions, custom abilities etc. for every unit. The system automatically deletes values when a unit is removed (not just killed) so the pile is unlikely to get full and crash the game.
5. [WARLORDS BATTLECRY EXPERIMENT]
The Entitling system eventually evolved into this: you can save your heroes and retiue of troops with a chat command, and then load them in another match! I included a Booty Bay version of this, I had several maps to enjoy this system to the fullest.
6. [ROLEPLAY HEROES]
The WB system eventually evolved into this: custom everything, commands for everything, achievements for every single unit, etc.
This was mainly inspired by Starcraft II's Cortex Roleplay, and along with the save and load mechanic it gets pretty close, but due to the sheer amount of work and models to import I never finished it. I was also planning a campaign to a)advertise a character from one of my actual videogame projects and b)showcase the mod's potential.
7. [WARCRAFT TOTAL WAR]
Using a script called "Detachments", I had a lamp turn on above my head: what if I made Total War, but in Real Time Strategy? So I was working on this and planned a few original features of my own, while also thinking about Medieval Total War: captains and generals having perks and aging, some units having random traits etc.
But I also made Champions that are units you can individually select, are slightly stronger and can equip stuff. I was planning to have them participate in jousts and expeditions(dungeons), but again this never happened after a blackout made me lose progress on the management part of this map.
8. [MEDIEVAL DYNASTIES]
This is one where I wanted to put my heart and soul, and eventually motivated me to just learn actual game development. It's a grand strategy/4x game where aside from gold and wood you have happiness, food, gems, crystals, every unit aging and every unit having randomly generated names, traits and inheriting their parents' stuff (traits, last name & dropped equipment). It was meant to feature many different unit types alongside an age tech tree which goes as follows:
rural
|
feudal
/ \
steam magic
Some other mechanics would include: neutral color bandits you could use to attack people without them knowing it was you, being able to "knight" units/make them noble unlocking other troop types at the expense of their demands, marriages between players to "unite dynasties" (you couldn't just "ally" with people).
Due to the sheer scale of the project (and losing a backup to a bullying episode...) I never finished this. I realized it could just be its own videogame, but the artist that worked with me so far wanted to do Visual Novels or RPGs.
The original map is management.w3x then I think I "ported" it onto a template map but some things weren't working?
9. [KINGS AND EMPIRES]
The original one was from Samahp, but after six years of him not responding, hiveworkshop's moderators gave me permission to publish my edits... except I never did. Insecurities.
There's currently two versions, Cappuccino is the default one with some minor differences: optimized code, ex. no longer lagging when allying with someone through chat commands, leveling units, and improved happiness system.
Pannacotta takes this a step further, introducing new heroes, an Academy where you can teach these heroes skills, effectively customizing them, interesting new researches for each unit and some fascinating tweaks to villagers. For instance, now every time you recruit you actually lose a villager, and villagers give you extra income. This means having too many soldiers will stall your income!
This is the one I'm most confident on, and in my spare time, I may actually finish this one, but I'm okay with letting other people work on it.
10. [THE LOST ONES]
All of these were subject to deletion and loss, but there's two of them I lost completely and it left me scarred to this day. There are some events in my life that gave me a constant thought in my head: "no matter how much I struggle I'm going to lose everything". Losing these was one of those events.
You may think I'm overdramatic, but these two were remakes of the game "Battle Realms" in a whole new perspective, with all new models and two different takes.
The gameplay loop was the same: you have rice, water, metal and building materials. The more water you had the faster villagers spawned. Villagers entered buildings which turned them into a new unit. If a unit that entered, say, a barracks, then entered an archery range, it'd get transformed into an advanced unit type having the advantages of both categories.
One, "Pride of an Empire", had close to the same troops and buildings (ex. swordsman, hunter, cannoneer), with the difference that all troops could level up and you had training dummies and random quests to help do that.
The other, "To the Last Lord" was completely accurate to japanese mythology and filled TO THE BRIM with Black Stan's models. To train units into new types you also had to produce the gear they needed, with randomly generated quality according to the smithing unit's intelligence... yes, I thought it all.
I can't stress this enough, these were the passion projects of a 15 year old, they had cutscenes and characters to introduce you to the game mechanics, and it left me completely heartbroken to lose them.
