Upcoming changes to skills and character models & new abilities

[Shamu]

Would it be a possibility to change or remove the bishop rezz, or rework death penalties? Having druids crippled by something that isn't even relevant until after an encounter seems wrong, and if you want druids to have a battlerezz, you can look to change bishops instead.

 

[TooMuch]

Shamu, their are bishops that already battle rez because they have sufficient haste. giving the druid a one time b-rez during a whole fight doesn't make it special. and with the new stat system zwieb is going to implement, bishops would be able to have a faster rez if they want to.

Zwieb, I don't want to remove the battle-rez purpose. I was just wondering if the druid would be able to revive more than just one ally at a given time?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Zwieb, I don't want to remove the battle-rez purpose. I was just wondering if the druid would be able to revive more than just one ally at a given time?

Nope, just one person. But I'm thinking about removing the cooldown and instead applying a debuff penalty after using it that lasts until you leave combat and prevents you using it again in the same battle.

 

[TooMuch]

That's a good modification. But would the druid only be able to use it during combat? Or is the debuff applied only when you are in combat?

And since we're here, I gotta ask. You said in the past that the monk would be a single target tank, like the one handed berserker. So why did you gave him aoe potential? just wondering.

 

[Ihazdialup]

the aoe potential is probably just so it can keep up with berserker/crusader in usefulness, its only one aoe spell, while both Crusader and Berserker in the next version will have atleast 2 AOE abilities each, and I'm not counting provoke as an aoe since it only lasts 3 seconds (not very long at all)

 

[TooMuch]

Well an aoe taunt is very useful. the monk can group them up and then shattering strike them. And even though the berserker has 2 aoe abilities, he still has to sacrifice tankiness (a shield and tank sword) to dish it out. Besides, I remember zwieb saying that he wanted to keep the monk and berserker single target tanks.

So considering a one-handed berserker and a monk, the serker has a small threat demo shout while the monk has some viable aoe aggro generation. See where I'm getting at?

Don't get me wrong, the serker has awesome aoe abilities. And you can very well hold aggro and tank with them, but I don't think that was the intended purpose. Either way I'll be waiting for zwieb's reply and see what he is planning.

Oh and I forgot to ask this earlier, but what are we expecting from the new talents you have planned? Or do you still have yet to work on them? thanks in advance

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I haven't planned any updates on the talentsystem for 1.2B. Just some minor changes and bugfixes. With 1.2C, the talents will be expanded by 2 levels each and the whole talent lines get adjusted to fit the new abilities.

Monk is, yes, intended to be a single target tank. However, I wanted to not gimp the monk group tankiness ad absurdum, so I added the AoE taunt to at least give it some utility when there's an AoE situation.

The shattering strike ability does not have any bonus threat applied (aside from the bonus threat applied to all elemental attacks from steel body), so it does help generating a good amount of aggro, but not more than any other AoE attack does, so it probably won't last long vs. a mage AoEing. It works fine to get initial snap aggro when pulling mobs, but that's about it. Also, the AoE radius is rather small. Comparable to Berserker 2H splash radius.

The shattering strike ability is actually meant for DPS build monks.


EDIT: Almost finished the magician model remastering. I also fixed some animations of the mage while I was at it.

 

[Ihazdialup]

So no more derpy staff holding for the Magician?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So no more derpy staff holding for the Magician?

I fixed what I could; but the actual animation didn't change, just some vertices disconnecting and weird twisting of faces.

Unfortunately, I don't have time remaking the herpderp anims completely.
However, I'm currently thinking about replacing the magician model with this one (with cloak removed): http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/...e-231160/?prev=search=mage&r=20&d=list&page=2
The animations are a lot cleaner and the walking anim looks more believable.

However, having a female mage kind of causes problems with my intended approach for armor design in 1.2B:
-> Squire: cloth body textures (male) + armor attachment models on top
-> Cleric: cloth body textures (male)
-> Mage: cloth body textures (male)
-> Ranger: leather body textures (female)
-> Thief: leather body textures (female)

As you can see, a female mage model would basicly either require unisex cloth body textures, which means I would have to work with transparency, increasing the per-texture filesize, or would require me to create a third set of textures, which would also be taxing on filesize.

 

[Ihazdialup]

Maybe post a suggesiton if you have not already?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Maybe post a suggesiton if you have not already?

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Ihazdialup]

Sorry, i meant to type you should post a request for a model based off of the current magician, but with better animations

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Sorry, i meant to type you should post a request for a model based off of the current magician, but with better animations

The last requests I had in the request section didn't even got a single answer. Such a request would be fruitless. But it doesn't matter; it looks good enough now.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Magician body texture wrap completed. Note that, again, the body texture and the cloth parts are just a placeholder and will be overwritten depending on the item carried.

Magician

 

[Jumbo]

Looks nice Zwie. Can't wait to try it all out soon .

 

[galactcus]

why not use mortar team red beard for the magician??
1 white, 1 yellow and 1 red or black (using the bandit magician beard)

 

[Ihazdialup]

I think the beard will come in all the team colors, hes just showing a couple options, or only has those options completed

 

[Shamu]

You can tell that he's a magician because those abs are really enchanting.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

I want to break the magicians arm so bad..... He just holds it out there.. forever and ever

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I think the beard will come in all the team colors, hes just showing a couple options, or only has those options completed

There will be all team color options available. But not all of them will look good. I just selected a few random ones for the preview pictures that I feel look okay.

I want to break the magicians arm so bad..... He just holds it out there.. forever and ever

The way he spazzes his arm when walking, it's probably not required anymore.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Its more or less to do with how he'll hold a dagger if we ever give him an actual dagger to use . Or a wand. Having his arm like that just unfortunately limits him to really only being able to hold staves without looking completely derpy .

Not that theres anything wrong with that, having purely staves works for a bishop, its just some diversity is always good (hence why thiefs can use swords AND daggers, squires use all sorts of things).

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I can possibly try out some anim transfers (I just don't have the time to make such anims by myself) on the magician model and see if I can find one that I can use as alternates for holding a dagger.

But this is a low priority issue and will probably come in one of the minor hotfix updates inbetween the major releases.


I gotta say the ability for mages to carry a dagger is more trouble than it's worth. Since good dagger models are rare anyway (I usually end up re-scaling swords), I usually use up all of them for the thief;hence why almost all of the mage weapons are staves.

 

[Ihazdialup]

how many do you have left, just Ranger and Thief?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

how many do you have left, just Ranger and Thief?

This, yes.
And then I still need to paint all the actual armor skins. Which might take a while aswell. But probably not as long as the texture mapping.

Also, I still need a solution about the portraits. I can either use the same approach on portraits or just use dummy portraits instead. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Ihazdialup]

i say dummy portraits, already so much work put into the models and its a very minor detail

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I guess I will take the harder route and make extra portrait files with team colored hair aswell (Won't take long the more I think about it, as they use the same texture mapping anyway). I just don't like to do something half-assed.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Probably a good decision. One of the first things someone notices when loading the game is the portraits. So if those look professional then I think it does a much better job portraying the masterful job you've done creating this game.

 

[Malygos10]

Box is right. There's no telling how many RPG maps I've tried in the past looking for a good one, saw some with awesome looking characters and thought it'd be one hell of an RPG.
Unfortunately all of them sucked, it'd be nice to have an awesome RPG map with decent looking characters lol

P.S. I hope someone fixes squire's ugly face

 

[Ihazdialup]

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/models-530/herowizard-255295/

try this guy!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/models-530/herowizard-255295/

try this guy!

I'd say the animations of this model are equally as lacking as the current mage model. Besides I already finished the re-mapping of the magician and I definitely won't do all that work again.

 

[Ihazdialup]

oh, well was worth a shot

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So... back from vacation and supplied with enough powerups to make the last two texture maps...

 

[doubtful]

is there going to be code reset?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

is there going to be code reset?

Huh? Why should it? The save system was made to be future-proof and with the compatibility loading, even when I change things you can still import your old character.

 

[Jumbo]

Zwie gief more screenzhots plEEESE! OKey fanks buy!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Having some trouble with the ranger model currently, but nothing I can't fix.


EDIT: Aaaaand fixed. Also, the re-mapping is coming along fine (finished remapping the head and team-colored hair). Will present the results as soon as the remap of the body texture is done.

 

[Shamu]

So how far are you with the next update as a whole? I'm kind of confused concerning what you already did and what you still have planned.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

There will be an update in the next few weeks to test the new character models and armor skins, along with bugfixes for all issues that have been found since the last released version, like hunter's net and healing salve bug.

After that, I will continue working on the next big content update.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Finished the Ranger model. However, I'm not satisfied with the basic body texture yet. The shaded areas are still way too bright (compared to the head). Looking for a way to fix that, but GIMP feels a lot less comfortable to me compared to photoshop. :/

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Improved and completed.

Only thief model left until I can start to create the body textures.

 

[S0ulseeker]

oh hello there elf

 

[Zwiebelchen]

oh hello there elf

Gotta say I'm not perfectly satisfied with the texture yet. It still lacks some shading on the sides of the body and legs. It's not on par with the quality of the male body texture imho.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Much better!

 

[Hawajska]

Armor is not needed

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Armor is not needed

It's just the basic skin I use to paint the armor on.

I figured it might be easier to just paint and create all armors from the ground up than having to modify an already fully fledged out armor texture.



It's a shame that WC3 only allows for one single texture to be swapped per model (replacable ID 32). It would be cool if I could "layer" the armor designs ingame by just stacking textures with transparency. This kind of limits possible combinations like having seperate leg and torso textures.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Thief model completed. Next on the list: updating the portraits with the new textures. This actually shouldn't take that long. I hope I can finish this tomorrow so that I can finally start texturing the armors. I've been so looking forward to this for a long time now.

 

[Hawajska]

I see You dont forget about details.. the bush!


but where is brunette?

p.s. legs are too fat I know its just for painting boots, but these boots must be rly big.. too big for assasin I gues.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I see You dont forget about details.. the bush!

That's pretty much just a default texture I found at the interwebs.

I think about adding some more details in the upper chest area though, the texture is missing the collarbones.

but where is brunette?

These are just samples. All 16 teamcolors will be available for the hair, including orange and brown.

p.s. legs are too fat I know its just for painting boots, but these boots must be rly big.. too big for assasin I gues.

I actually made them slimmer compared to the WC3 original model. The original has them far bigger than that.

 

[Hawajska]

(like)

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Portrait files almost done. Just the Squire left. I hope my Photoshop skills will be sufficient to design all those armor textures ...

Can't wait to show some ingame previews.