Warcraft: A New Dawn

[The World Is Flat]

Ok. I think we should keep the heroes. this is right after wc3. arhats shouldent be playable.

Real. when i was the sig, it was perfectly fine. no cutoff.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

I'd be willing to make the music for you

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Ok think subfactions...

As flat? Suggested we could break up the races, as most have been split or fractured.

So a fairly unique system could be 'evolving' melee races.

Simply put: Certain parts of the racial techtree will lock or unlock depending in heroes built or technologies researched during the game.

So humans might research (very expensive) 'Elven Heritage':

Peasents would become elven workers
New elf heroes would become available as would rare blood elf units e.g. Liutenants/Dragon Hawk Riders and buildings (healing wells?) like Arcane Towers.

Just an idea and could do with more thought, but what do you think in general?

 

[The World Is Flat]

Good idea, does anyone else agree?

Wherewolf. Accepted. Do some orc music first plox.

 

[real138]

Hey i figured out the minimap but i cannot make it circular if thats a big deal... also what kind of minimap controls would you want?

 

[The World Is Flat]

Well i suppose the basic ones that are already there. thats GREAT that you got it set up.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Does this look accurate (not including wow): http://wikibin.org/articles/timeline-and-alternate-timelines-for-the-warcraft-lore.html

I'm sure it does, but as I mentioned I don't know the finer details.
, better safe than sorry

 

[thisruoy]

Concept artist please

 

[The World Is Flat]

You want to be part of the team? As a concept artist? ok!

 

[thisruoy]

Just tell me what to draw. Bu. In the meantime, I'll work on the banner and sigs.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok. i don't know abut sigs, but if yours are good...

but yeah, we will need a banner.

 

[thisruoy]

What do you think?

 

[Reaper51]

Ok think subfactions...

As flat? Suggested we could break up the races, as most have been split or fractured.

So a fairly unique system could be 'evolving' melee races.

Simply put: Certain parts of the racial techtree will lock or unlock depending in heroes built or technologies researched during the game.

So humans might research (very expensive) 'Elven Heritage':

Peasents would become elven workers
New elf heroes would become available as would rare blood elf units e.g. Liutenants/Dragon Hawk Riders and buildings (healing wells?) like Arcane Towers.

Just an idea and could do with more thought, but what do you think in general?

I agree with Grey a lot on his point. Each race should have the ability to ally themselves to another for more units, techs, etc

For example if you are playing as the alliance, you can alliy yourself with humans, dwarfs, bandits, high elves, or blood elves.

If you are playing as the horde you can ally yourself with the orcs, trolls, ogres, tauren, or goblins.

If you are playing as the scourge, you can ally with the undead, nerubian, and demon.

If you are playing as the sentinels, you can ally yourself with the night elves, naga, or draenei.

SC2 also allow one additional resource. That can be oil like in WC2. We can bring ships back and have more gunpowder units. Face it, on wc2 it felt like the 1700's in wc3 it felt like the 1200's. We should not go back in time technologically.

BTW i almost forgot to tell you about a game which rips wc3 with better graphics. It's Armies of Exigo. I played it a few times. Its quite fun and has many new features. PM me if you want it.

 

[mrzwach]

they had helicopters in the 1200s?

Also, you can actually have up to 4 resources in SC2.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Wow, yeah you put into a much better context ^.^

Though I didn't really mean the races in general: naga and night elves? :S

No bandits either.

I was thinking more along this line:

Undead: The Scourge (Arthas/Lich King)
The Forsaken (Sylvanas Windrunner)
One more?

Night Elves:

Maiev - Watchers, limited units, very elite.
Malfurion/Tyrande - Typical
One More

Humans:

Jaina - Good Navy
Kael - Blood Elves
Garithos/Human Remnants - Diverse Race/Unit Choice

Horde:

Thrall - Typical
Fel Orcs - Demonic (Red Skinned) no trolls, tauren etc... But slightly tougher and access to demonic units.
One More

I'll work on it some more after school.

EDIT: As well as plot outlining, funnily enough I think we need to know how it ends, before it begins.

Just seems... Right.

I'll have a deep look into races, factions and characters and try to work something out.



+rep reaper

 

[karland90]

i love the idea. but from the headline of the thread i hoped something more like i had had in mind.
(sorry if this is slightly offtopic :s):
a mod to sc2. without real content or story. it would just be the game engine of sc2, but with all replaced content. ui, textures, sounds, models - all replaced to those of warcraft made in a similar fashion to sc2. this would allow players to dl the install package and then run any custom maps. this would drastically reduce the filesize of all wc themed custom maps.
(btw: this wouldnt be legal, would it?)

anyways good luck with your project and i might even help you by making a few warcraft/sc2 models ;D

 

[real138]

you can have as many resources as you want... just not "their" resources.
I'm gonna be making a custom bar with the UI that contains all the resources and i can put as much as we want into it.
gold, wood, food, anything else.
just make an image for it, update the text every .5 seconds or so.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Well, acually, we are going to port the vanilla races directly to some melee maps, so you will be seeing that. but we also want to do a continueabtion of the campaign, and we will be sticking heavily to story.

Thisruoy:

Its good, but i dont know about the dark crystal font, its a bit hard on the eyes.

Grey:

Reaper:

Ok, well it seems like a good idea, and i personally prefer reapers version, but, well see. I'm hesitant to implement it at all. and guys, lets take WiPs for a basic human techtree, with this feature of yours implemented.

Reaper, do you plan on joining?

 

[Reaper51]

yes of course, when i get sc2
i am in a contest to win a sc2 beta key so i can try out galaxy editor

BTW do you want me to create an demo alliance system for wc3?

 

[real138]

also about the minimap... i think i can make it round figured out how i think just an idea though. and is the minimap gonna be like WOW? were its local and moves with the hero? because i am able to do that.

for the circular map: i think i would do this by importing a custom frame for the map. make the part thats seethrough circular. And make a 1024 x 1024 image but the actual opening is only like 100 x 100 zoomed in. and just move the map around as the hero moves...

 

[The World Is Flat]

No.. no... because this is a n rts. it moves wit hthe camera.

 

[real138]

ok makes my life easier haha.
making the UI isn't hard but its time consuming due to the amount of times you have to test... ive tested about 100 times so far? and im not even half done.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Wow. tht is a pain. what do you have? screenies?

 

[real138]

lol i restarted today since i didn't like what i had. right now i have health and mana bars fully working. Screenies will come tonight. or tomorrow morning.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Well, acually, we are going to port the vanilla races directly to some melee maps, so you will be seeing that. but we also want to do a continueabtion of the campaign, and we will be sticking heavily to story.

Thisruoy:

Its good, but i dont know about the dark crystal font, its a bit hard on the eyes.

Grey:

Reaper:

Ok, well it seems like a good idea, and i personally prefer reapers version, but, well see. I'm hesitant to implement it at all. and guys, lets take WiPs for a basic human techtree, with this feature of yours implemented.

Reaper, do you plan on joining?

I'm not sure what reaper meant entirely;

At first I thought he meant that as you progress with the base race you could ally with one of sub ones.

On a second look, you mean, you select which part of the 'alliance' you want to play?

If it's the latter, I'm with you.

Although a lot of things will need to be checked up with the lore and balance issues will be horrendous -.-'

Certain races will need to consist of almost primarily unique units, e.g. naga would not fight with night elves, not imo.

Draeni and Maiev (watchers) is just about passable.

Normal night elves, are fine.

Splitting the horde up is also tricky... It might be better to have it separated into clans/groups/leaders rather than the races, as there is:

a. Too many compared to other racial sub factions

b. Each race is 'too' distinguished, you may as well just classify them as their own team.

Undead:

-> The Nerubians (under Anub'arak) are essentially allied to Arthas and the Lich King, so one team.

-> The Forsaken (aka sylvanas) HATE the enthralled undead and dreadlords/demons (who could be the third undead race)



Effectively, our ideas are identical, except mine was in-game, yours is before (assuming I'm reading you right).


EDIT: I'll see about a very simple example techtree... probably be an hour or so, very, very simple.

 

[Modhell]

Fair enough starcraft 2 melee is more or less the same as starcraft, to tie in what the hardcore fanbase wants...

...but the transition from war 2 to war 3 was a big leap and what made customizing it so much fun. The introduction of heroes greatly changed the over-all game and what made it fun and exciting.

I think if you are going to make 'Warcraft 4' you need to get out of warcraft 3's shadow and make some decisive gameplay changes. For example you could add General bonuses, like if there was a skirmish somewhere on the map and one side obliterated the opposing units it could temporarily buff morale for that team depending on the success (and scale) of the battle and outcome, or if they defended an important location (like a main base or a resource-heavy sector) sucessfully it could do the same... or you could figure out something much wilder.

Also, keeping the same races and same heroes (the same) from warcraft 3 is no good... with the little story on you first post it sounds like the humans should be built up predominately of weak and worthless (yet cunning) survivors giving it all in their last stand, and extremely tough heroes proving point on why they have survived to lead on in battle.... they can't remain as regimented footmen and gallant knights if you want them to tie in with your story, they need to be more underdog in design.

If its just a copy of all war3's primary elements it'll be more like Warcraft 3: A Fan Conversion + Enhanced Graphics then an actual warcraft 4 game...

...it's not that I think this is a bad idea, I just reckon if you are going to go to all this effort (and this will be alot of effort) you might as well go all out and create something creative, not stay safe with a replication... that's the problem with commercial games, theres so much 'well that worked so lets do it again' on the market, so when you have full control of a product you should go insane with it

 

[real138]

the progress bar. Not gonna reveal anything else till its perfected... small things bother me its gonna take some time

 

[Fulla]

Some very good points Modhell. Would be nice to take every possible game element up a notch.

Yea there could be control points around the map that do different things. Currently in SC2 they have Xel'Naga watch towers, that only grant vision.

This is possible but could also have all sorts of varied point like ancient relics, tomes, towers and enchanted areas that if you control add arcane spells/buffs on your armies, give access to 'shop' abilities, allow new units to be trained, grants extra income/resources etc. etc.

===

As for the races, I think war3 did a very good job of grouping together a main race with a few 'sub' ones to give a nice varied feel to each one.

This is probably the best method, but could instead of having say 'Orc' and 'Human' they can be more generalized as the 'The Horde' and 'the Alliance', this allows them to be much broader.

Could have a nice Demonic type of race, with blood elves, naga, outlanders, demons etc.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Yes if you look, were currently discussing the issues behind races/subfactions, to allow for a more unique feel, though being careful to keep to the lore (bar WoW).

As for the bonuses, this is NOT a good idea, giving the winning team an advantage is never a good idea, it means the underdog has to work ever harder to swing the game back in their favour, which is no fun for the losing side and will cause an agonizing amount of 'rage quits'.

The heroes are currently under brainstorming by other members of the team.

Being able to capture points for bonuses is a great idea also, seeing as warcraft 3 had a variety of neutral buildings from which you could do various things, I have no doubt we will implement something, fresh or otherwise.

Simply put we understand your concerns and are with you all the way, we would like this to be an extremely unique and hopefully enjoyable experience with both the new and old, building on the classic, if you will.
The problem is balancing this, if a game stays to similar people get bored, if it changes too much it's a poor sequel - as it may fail to appeal to hardcore fans, COD4/COD5 for e.g.
We hope to bridge the gap between the two and deliver a mod worthy of it's name, thanks ever so much for the feedback, it's fantastic to know that people are interested, it makes it all worth while and you can be assured your comments will be considered very carefully.


EDIT: Looking good real!

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

Some people like torturing themselves - in war3, complete futuristic interface, the opposite here. Well, their prob, but for sure it will become better than war3, so it will be interesting to see.

 

[Modhell]

Bonus idea was just an example idea that popped into my head as I was writing, not a solid idea but just one to supplement my 'think outside of war 3's box' train of thought...

... and I didn't give a bonus to the winning team over-all, I meant from the skirmish point of view... like say in a film a side is losing yet due to unforeseen circumstance they win a small battle which provides them with hope to move on, ultimately meaning just because a side is down it is not out.... so basically a bonus that either provided a player with a reward for a good tactic, or a second chance card to pull out from being completely crushed.... something like if a team sucessfully held onto a mine during and after an attack, the remaining workers would get say 30 seconds of speed bonus.

I'm in no means concerned or bitching about the direction of this project... even if It just ended up being a complete port of war 3 I wouldn't complain, I'd be giddy with joy.... I'm just throwing my 2 cents in hoping it could spark a bunch of fresh ideas like Fulla pumped out.

Oh and what I was saying about races... I didn't mean change the races, what I meant was alter them to suit where they sit in the story... as for another example to coincide with the short piece in the first post, if the humans are all band together and have limited supplies perhaps their required resources would be less gold heavy, as that wouldn't hold much weight in a society on it's last leg, and more lumber and other resource heavy. Also they could be a weak starting race yet very customisable throught upgrades as the resources start collecting and allow them to form a much more formidable force.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok. Thanks guys.

I've been thinking alot about where this project is headed, and you guys are right. Idon't want this to be war3 with new units and storyline. this has to be a NEW GAME entirely. new interface, new mechanics, new storyline. I'm thinknig in don't want to copy wc3's races. we should think abotu what has happened in the story, and we should ajust accordingly. I think the naga should be a full fleged race. i think that the playable undead should be the forsaken, i think that arthas' scourge should be against EVERYONE and not be playable, and that the demons should be a race. along with the human surviors, the orcish tribes and the night elves klinging on...

Really, this has to be a NEW game. or else its jsut gonig to be a phail. it not only has to extend wc3, but it has to do it in a new way. I personally think that this storlying should happen very soon after the evnts of frozen throne, under a year... and it should be about the rise of the Demons, The Forsaken, and the naga, and about the orcs and humans clinging on... ect.

We need to think about the story before we make some decisons however.


Real: excellent work. so we need somone to make the UI

 

[Grey Nightmare]

You mean like morale? I personally think that should stay in games like MTW, but that's just my opinion. I see, well I won't say any more on the 'bonus' subject, you know where I stand and it won't change.

Glad to hear you'll like it either way and very good call on the races, this is what I referred to by 'fitting' with the lore, more on that soon I hope!

The humans, gold not meaning much? Could work... guess it depends on how we group the races.


EDIT: Nice speech flat I'm with you all way.

EDIT2 : I presume the 'sub' idea shall be ditched for now? Should I start working on some plot elements?

i.e. Brainstorming possible events, factions and characters?

 

[Modhell]

Cool, that's the spirit lol...

...oh and demons as a race... If I was to have one more rant today it would be that DEMONS HAVE TO BE A RACE! That's a good call, I swear reading during the development of warcraft 3 that demons were supposed to be a playable race, and it only makes sense (especially campaign-wise) to live their side of the story.

One other idea that just popped into my head.... with heroes, like you could keep similar hero classes yet instead of using the warcraft characters (like jaina, the warden, etc) you could create a whole heap of new ones to fit in with your story, and then throughout the campaign side of things you can incorporate the original characters in various ways... whether you assist them in a battle, need to find if they are still alive or even end up being a boss to a chapter. They can be more powerful versions of your melee version of the hero, and this way you can tell a completely new story while tying it all in with true-to-warcraft lore

 

[The World Is Flat]

Thanks Grey:

Races:

The Naga
The Demons
Forsaken
Horde
Alliance
Sentine


Cool idea, want to join the team?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

No problem, got three positions to live up to, need to start somewhere hehe ^.^

What format should I post any brainstorming in?

In the thread? Or via software/files and if so which ones?

 

[Fussiler1]

Thanks Grey:

Races:

The Naga
The Demons
Forsaken
Horde
Alliance
Sentine


Cool idea, want to join the team?

Sentinels are in the Alliance?
Or you should make up some lore that they broke away.

Same with Forsaken and the Horde.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Well keep it neat and orderly.

make it so i can C&P post it to the main thread.

make it sound liek it is a feature of the map, not a suggestion.

{EDIT}
fuss this ignore wow, none of thes are conneced. they are all seperate.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

The Forsaken "ally" with horde, for personal reasons, aka necessity during WoW (the lore of which we are disregarding).

Sentinels = Night Elves, they are not effectively part of the 'Human Alliance' in wc3, only WoW's "Alliance".



I did my homework, flat

 

[Fussiler1]

You can't deny WoW lore as lore, but meh. Good luck.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Were not denying it just ignoring it, for several reasons.

The most obvious being that many wc3 players (RTS fans) did not/do not play WoW, therefore since we are catering for people who played the original RTS games, it would be unfair to presume they have played WoW.

Correct me if I'm wrong there, Flat.

 

[The World Is Flat]

That is one reason. another is that i hate WoW. and blizzard said they would ignore wow if they made wc4. and it would be too hard to clean up the mess that is wow and make a fun game out of it. so thats that. you can deny or ignore wow lore if you want. i for one, consider it non canonical.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

blizzard said they would ignore wow if they made wc4

What more is there to be said?

EDIT: On that topic, what are we doing about the alliance? As after warcraft 3 there isn't one, the 'New Alliance' led by Garithos is as good as gone, only Jaina remains as far as I can tell, upon Theramore an Isle off the east coast of Kalimdor.

Obviously we could construct one through various rag tag humans and self-expanded lore, if that is what you desire?

 

[Modhell]

What more is there to be said?

EDIT: On that topic, what are we doing about the alliance? As after warcraft 3 there isn't one, the 'New Alliance' led by Garithos is as good as gone, only Jaina remains as far as I can tell, upon Theramore an Isle off the east coast of Kalimdor.

Obviously we could construct one through various rag tag humans and self-expanded lore, if that is what you desire?

Yeah you could have the bulk of the race being the rag-tag remnants of the empire, who perhaps during the campaign have to travel to Jaina for reinforcements or even just to survive, and introduce a new prophesier faction (perhaps to do with medivh?) that somehow predicted the events leading up to the end of war 3 and have prepared forces to combat the enemy outside of the original alliance, that are well prepared but small in number, and this could introduce more powerful units like knights and fire mage and paladin-like heroes into the game

 

[The World Is Flat]

Yeah, like bandits and guys with patchy armor ect.

I thought about it, and i think that jaina is now the only seat of power for the humans, so i thought we could have the human campaign bouce between darius (journals) who lives where loaderon was. and jaina worknig to fortify thereamore.

the humans in mele shoud be split into the Theramoreian Emipire. and the rag tag guys n loaeron.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Great stuff, will add it. Send you a short WIP soon, really nothing special just the basic info.

 

[mouseman89]

uhh isnt Stormwind still alive ?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

I think so, it's not mentioned in warcraft 3 much, to my knowledge.

I will look into it though, thanks for the memo!

 

[Reaper51]

Flat is right, we can't just C&P wc3 with better graphics. Mostly everything has to be new, like units, heroes, game-play mechanics, and lore. We have to make this a quality mod to give wc3 fans what they really want.

On Topic: Having alliances will cause many game-play balance issues. It's better to have a worker build a merc camp to hire mercs. wc3 tft did it with items, we should have an item shop, and a merc shop for each race. After all, in sc2 you can have up to 14 buildings instead of 11 on a build menu.

But first of all, we need the lore to drive this project to completion. It has to include a good storyline and memorable characters.

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Simply put we understand your concerns and are with you all the way, we would like this to be an extremely unique and hopefully enjoyable experience with both the new and old, building on the classic, if you will.
The problem is balancing this, if a game stays to similar people get bored, if it changes too much it's a poor sequel - as it may fail to appeal to hardcore fans, COD4/COD5 for e.g.
We hope to bridge the gap between the two and deliver a mod worthy of it's name, thanks ever so much for the feedback, it's fantastic to know that people are interested, it makes it all worth while and you can be assured your comments will be considered very carefully.

Agreed. I believe the plan is to start with the lore/UI/design, while we wait for the retail bug/free galaxy editor and more team members

New engine, new game, complete overhaul, near enough.

EDIT: Interesting, see what Flat says about that and yeah, the alliance idea is pretty much striked through already.