(WIP) Curse of River's End

[invalidnick]

Hi!
Me and a few friends started working on a Dota2 mod shortly after the new tools were released, this is a thread about its progress.

The Gameplay:

• 1-8 heroes objective deathmatch (FFA)
• Gain gold and experience by killing Radian/Dire/Neutral creeps
• Win condition: Kill Roshan (spawns in the Monastery) and bring back the Aegis to the Shopkeeper (in the town)
• Courier/TP scrolls are disabled
• 3 Runes spawn on the map
• A few (standard) items of various value are placed in hard-to-reach places around the map
• Re-spawn timer currently set to 10 seconds
• Roshan is slightly boosted (more armor and magical resistance)

The Lore:
History of River's End

Even after the fall of the Mad Moon the life at River's End was easy and peaceful, every once in a while merchants brought news of distant battles and uncertain times in the rest of the land (or realm?). Nothing that really affected the town population, here everything circulated around two things; the creation of cheese, and the creation of ale. For generations the secret recipes of Brother Dom's stinky cheese and Brother Tom's potent ale has been nurtured into perfected and enjoyed by travelers and town folks.
The town of River's End slowly grew in size and population as the demand of their popular exports increased in the lands, the rooms at The Freeman's Inn were occupied year around by traveling merchants bidding on upcoming batches of the towns delicacies. Soon The Alliance Guild opened up a guild hall for traveling heroes, a blacksmith set up shop. The town population grew richer for every season.

The curse of River's End:

One season the town of River's End was particular popular; as a result of the visit of the famous Secret Shop, a traveling merchant with delicate items nobody had ever seen before. Heroes came from great distance to see his shop bid on his item.
In a hard to reach mountain pass Roshan came to wake as he could feel the presents of the Aegis.

On this particular night the Aegis was stolen by Roshan, being so close to the Cloister he could feel the delicious smell from the aging stinky cheese curing in the cellar. He could not resist the urge to munch away all night, after all the stinky cheese and potent ale he fell asleep.
When the morning came the Shop keeper saw that his precious Aegis had been stolen; he cursed the town of River's End and pledged to the Gods to strike down whoever took his item without paying for it.
The Gods answer his prayer and conjured a giant sword striking down from the sky, cleaving the Cloister in half. Roshan barley escaped but was forever tied to wait by the blade for his bane.
The curse left no man unharmed, greed turned neighbors into enemies as the looting and pillaging began.

A few weeks later,

Game starts here:
You, as a wandering hero spawn outside River's End...

Shopkeeper:
"Ahhh...a new customer..."
"Welcome to River's End, the journey to your hero starts here..."
"The creature Roshan has stolen something precious..."
"Bring it back to me...and I will see you properly rewared!"
"The Aegis!...back to where it belongs, in my stash!"

Quest Objectives:

1. "Enter River's End and find the Secret Shop"
2. "Search for Roshan in the Monastary beyond the Graveyard"
3. "Kill Roshan"
4. "Bring the Aegis back to the Secret Shop"

This mod takes place in the Dota2 universe:

As a wandering hero you stumble upon a ordinary looking abandoned and raided village...north spawn area

...south spawn area

In the middle of River's End lies the Secret shop, to win the game; kill Roshan and bring the Aegis back to the Shopkeeper

Freeman's Inn, 1 Broadway, River's End, Owner and Founder: M̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶ Gordon Freeman

The south most entrance to the town

The middle entrance, barricades suggests siege

The north most entrance and bottle neck

Road on Dire side leading towards the church, beware of creep spawns

A neutral creep camp just off the road, to the left lies the Graveyard, to the right lies the Dire main camp

Dire side crossing to the middle part of the Graveyard, use tango or axe to escape along the tree line

Radiant side Graveyard,

Radiant side neutral camp, north road leads to the church (Roshans pit), south road leads to the town

The upper courtyard on Dire side, entrance to Roshans area

The main courtyard,

Top rune platform,

Radiant side ramp leading from the main courtyard, to the right Roshans pit, this is a safe spot to see if anyone is attacking the boss

Left to do before first release:
Lighting tweaks
Minor changes to the gameplay scripting
Add game mode: DotA
Fix display quest objective and dialog

Future:
Custom HUD
Update gameplay scripting

GGs

 

[Deathcom3s]

Definitely very interesting!

If you wouldn't mind, some insight into how you used the tools and the work that went into it would be very much appreciated. I feel that DotA 2 may be the next stop after Warcraft 3 modding, and there is a noticeable lack of decent tutorials or information regarding the mod tools (yes, they're in Alpha, but some resources is better than no resources, ya know?). I know I would be interested in learning more.

 

[invalidnick]

Definitely very interesting!

If you wouldn't mind, some insight into how you used the tools and the work that went into it would be very much appreciated. I feel that DotA 2 may be the next stop after Warcraft 3 modding, and there is a noticeable lack of decent tutorials or information regarding the mod tools (yes, they're in Alpha, but some resources is better than no resources, ya know?). I know I would be interested in learning more.

Thanks,

Do date I've been recording approximately 40-60 hours of mapping, from gray boxing (dev textures) to what you see in the screens,

Which included:
creating layouts
setting up instances (which is very useful)
creating mockup placeholders for various models
making displace and painting textures
adding details, bushes etc.
adding various map logic

Currently got 13 parts posted on my patreon site along with some more screens: http://www.patreon.com/invalidnick?ty=a
got a good ~30 more episodes to post when I have time,

PS. some recordings don't have sound, was thinking of doing a time lapse of 100 hours of mapping in 10 minutes

 

[Deathcom3s]

Thanks for the link! I've been looking at some DotA 2 modding, and have messed around with the tools, but haven't had much time to dedicate to actually getting anything rolling on it. It will be nice to see the typical workflow involved in making a mod that is more than a simple DotA style map (3 lanes, creeps, etc.)

The asset and design seem to point to some more experience, do you do this as a hobby/side thing and have an actual dev job on the side?

 

[invalidnick]

Thanks for the link! I've been looking at some DotA 2 modding, and have messed around with the tools, but haven't had much time to dedicate to actually getting anything rolling on it. It will be nice to see the typical workflow involved in making a mod that is more than a simple DotA style map (3 lanes, creeps, etc.)

The asset and design seem to point to some more experience, do you do this as a hobby/side thing and have an actual dev job on the side?

Good!
Overall I'd say the tools are fairly amazing, especially if you are used to "old" source-hammer (and bsp) then the cross over should be easy, and even if you are not the workflow is very streamlined and easy to learn, https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dota_2_Workshop_Tools
Some of the major updates that makes it interesting is:
The new approach to mesh editing, a light version of any 3D program, i.e. easy vertex, face and edge editing, you are not longer tied to the limitations of bsp.
It supports deferred shading, which is cool, and material editing is straight forward
They have a cool tileset tool that allows you to make initial layouts in minutes rather than hours, and you can make your own tilesets, this is the first step towards having a system that allows you to generate large amounts of playable area on the fly, i.e. DiabloII (but its not yet implemented)

Even if it has a few minor bugs and lacking some useful features the tools are in very good shape

This is 100% hobby (for about 15 years), but I do have a dev job and been working in the industry for the past 10 years

Here is the current layout of the map:

 

[Jicyphex]

this is the first step towards having a system that allows you to generate large amounts of playable area on the fly, i.e. DiabloII (but its not yet implemented)

You can generate a random area already. The problem about it is that Bitmap Data in scaleform is dysfunctional at this point so you'd have to play without it for now. There is a possible workaround for it but I don't see efficiency in making a temporary and broken workaround for something that gets support in the future anyway.

 

[Ricochet]

Looks amazing, can't wait to see it in action.

 

[invalidnick]

You can generate a random area already. The problem about it is that Bitmap Data in scaleform is dysfunctional at this point so you'd have to play without it for now. There is a possible workaround for it but I don't see efficiency in making a temporary and broken workaround for something that gets support in the future anyway.

Ah nice, good to hear that other people are exploring it!

Ricochet: Thanks! Will probably have some more updates coming this week!

 

[_lycan]

Wow, looks really good

 

[invalidnick]

Wow, looks really good

Thanks! Means a lot to us!

Just published a few more videos of the development of this mod, unless you are interested in mapping/level design or the Dota 2 tools these videos will probably be very boring, there is no fancy commentary, no effects, just plain simple straight forward mapping, the earlier videos are a few months old and the map has come quite far since then, it's nice to see progress even if its coming somewhat slow!

hi, a few more hours of hand placing trees and adding details, in the background some youtube ambient music...

in general; placing trees with paint-tool is way faster, however I like doing it by hand, it goes rather fast and I think the result is better,
additionally; since this level mod only has ~500-800 trees in the player area I think its rather nice to have them placed by had to emphasize impact on gameplay

Hi!
This is a short episode with some ambient music (provided by youtube), in this part I'll start making changes to the top area of the map where one of the runes will spawn

Part two of the layout updates to the top area of River's End, a dota 2 map mod,
Working with custom shaped (displacement) meshes helps creating unique looking areas, going back to level design basics powerful pickups should be placed in areas where the player need to trade off their own safety trying to collect the item, the top rune area in River's End is placed on a lower-level platform that accessed from two ramps,
Heroes with movement skills/items (such as blink) can reach/escape this are without using any of the ramps,
Trees and stone pillars has been placed to obscure vision for players on the rune platform,

Hi!
~70 more minutes building the top area of River's End, mostly object placement and navmesh tweaks, still working a lot with mockups, this is the third or fourth iteration of the top area in this map.
If you want to check out how it looked from the start watch earlier parts...

Anyways, nothing fancy, just clicks
Music brought to you by youtube!

Curse of River's End!
Continuing working on the top area, the player area is somewhat complete; in this short part I'll start working on the backdrop, its going to be cliff dropping down onto a beach.
The new mesh tools makes it very easy to swiftly create faces which later will be subdivided for 4-blend materials

Starting to add textures to the backdrop near the top part...

Music from youtube

Another soothing hour of plain simple mapping, mostly prop placing, wrapping up some small stuff at the backdrop near the top part, also building/propping a few neutral camps in the town, also working a little bit on the Graveyard....

If you have recently seen any screen grabs from my developer blog (which are more recent than this movie you will see how much everything has changed! you can find the link somewhere in my profile description if you are interested)

Anyways, the music is from youtube! GGS!

Another all-around-episode, doing a bunch of random stuff; working on the player backdrop (the area you can see but not go to), checking the navmesh, adding a bunch of triggers,

Music from youtube, one of Mat Zo's sets (can't remember if its Mix mag or BBC)

Sorry for the map loading in the editor in the beginning, started to record a little early, anyways, Thievery Corporation, mapping...can't be any better,

Still a bunch of grayboxes in this level, and sometimes it seems like you are not getting anywhere!

Replacing the big sword with our custom mockup, also starting to make room for the big upcoming update to Roshans pit

Music from youtube,
GGs

Building a broken church, part one (of many) I've already started some of the easy stuff, at first I was fairly happy with the result, now a few weeks later when all the mockups has been replaced I realized that the quality was not up to par with the rest, so most of this has been deleted and replaced with something even better looking! Check my patreon blog for more up to date screen grabs!

Like always, music is from youtube!

Building some more broken stuff...it's pretty fun

Music from youtube,

Hello! this is a fairly long episode, in general: first I'm having a look at the town, planning out the upcoming work, then; continuing working on the broken church (roshans pit), then heading down town starting to work on the roofs,
Overall a few fairly productive hours,

 

[Noya]

Damn that video documentation is great!
Thank you for sharing it, perhaps someone could even make a summary or take notes, I already bookmarked it for later

Looking forward to a release in Jan/Feb?

 

[Deathcom3s]

I'll definitely be sure to take a look at all of the videos that you've posted. I'm sure they'll come in handy to budding/aspiring Dota 2 modders.

The map is coming along great, can't wait to see it when it's ready!

 

[swovo]

I am so hyped for this, especially because when Dota 1 was happening I was like ten and one of the things I regret the most is I wasn't around by this time
I'm going to watch those films and learn more about mods and I can't wait to see it when map's ready
I'm so hyped

 

[bhusta]

What a beauty.
Subscribing!

 

[invalidnick]

Thanks for the good response!

Damn that video documentation is great!
Thank you for sharing it, perhaps someone could even make a summary or take notes, I already bookmarked it for later

Looking forward to a release in Jan/Feb?

Updated my previous post with some notes regarding the video-clips, pretty much just copy paste from the youtube description, hopefully it will give a rough idea of what is going on...

We are aiming at a first (friends only) release early Jan (like the 6-10th) then a public release by mid-end of January

Also posted a few more videos:

Another long looong....looong part of Curse of River's End mapping, nothing special and nothing fancy, mostly working on the town houses, --

Music from youtube

[There is a part #27 of the video-dev blog, but it has some private Steam chat, need to edit that out]

Building some addon structures for the broken church, by now I feel fairly familiar with the new mesh tool...my lord its amazing!

A few quick notes when splitting faces and using the vertex tool, depending on what texture you use and the result you want; make sure that you have texture lock on, delete all faces not seen in game to opt your performance...should go without saying, but aha well,
ggs

Continuing working on the broken church, opting out some dead time by copy pasting some mesh work already done, adding details to the remaining church addon structures, cant remember if the windows are done in maya or hammer, since this move was recorded the broken parts of the church has been redone, it now looks way better and has better performance! think I got it recorded and will post it....erm at some point,

Hi!
Some more random youtube music and some more broken church mapping, at this point I've spend around 10 hours making this church,
In this ~1h part I'll be working on some of the smaller details like trims,

Greetings, some BBC Essential Mix music and mapping, making some details for the Church and updating the windows,
Working with instances is super efficient and useful, and its never been easier in Source history, a few quick notes;
Make sure that mockuped object is as close to the final size and shape as possible,
As you are developing your map and updating your meshes, remember to update the instances with some more details so there is a somewhat cohesive amount of details in you map
Save/hide mockup meshes when replacing them with final art, make sure to compare them to they are as close to each other as possible,
Don't be shy to collapse and make new instances of the same object if you are making different versions of the same object, I do it all the time, you can do it too!


Got ~4-8 more hours or recordings coming, will see if I get some time the upcoming days to upload it!

 

[Arhowk]

That... is... alot... of... youtube... hours... O.O

It's a shame that you're only using the default dota 2 game mode but the map itself looks incredible! Honestly, I wouldn't even be surprised if it gets thrown in as an official dota 2 map. Beautiful introduction to what the Source 2 engine can do.

Best of luck! +rep

 

[Noya]

It's a shame that you're only using the default dota 2 game mode

It is not strictly a dota game mode to be fair, it's a custom deathmatch with dota heroes

 

[Arhowk]

It is not strictly a dota game mode to be fair, it's a custom deathmatch with dota heroes

Even so, its still deadly similar to the normal dota game type.

 

[bhusta]

Your last videos are locked for me due to copyright infringements :/

 

[invalidnick]

That... is... alot... of... youtube... hours... O.O

It's a shame that you're only using the default dota 2 game mode but the map itself looks incredible! Honestly, I wouldn't even be surprised if it gets thrown in as an official dota 2 map. Beautiful introduction to what the Source 2 engine can do.

Best of luck! +rep

Yeah, I know...I'm starting to feel a little like one of those people that floods the internet with useless stuff, heh
The plan is to make a dev-time-lapse video once I got 100 hours or the map is complete, saw a time lapse video of some artist making a painting a few months back and it looked really cool...if this turns out anywhere near as cool as that one I will be very happy

In its current state its fairly similar to dota2 (we haven't decided if we should make a pure dota2 version of this map; i.e. 5v5 Radiant vs. Dire, kill the other teams ancient to win). Right now it plays more like a FFA Deathmatch (where neither player is on Radiant/Dire team)

One of the major reasons we want to keep it as close to dota2 as possible is the amount of time that has gone into gameplay tweaks on heroes and items (since the time of WC3), to me this is a modders dream, to be able to play around with well balanced gameplay.
How challenging and interesting it seem to create new heroes and items none of us simply have time for that commitment (even if we have talked about it).
So we decided to place it in the regular "dota2"-world due to the fact that we are still using the dota2 trees, bushes, flowers, announcers, creeps, netural creeps, heroes and items.

Keeping the heroes/items/gameplay close to dota2 will save us a lot of time in terms of designing/making new heroes and items and balancing gameplay etc. It will also (hopefully) help new players to recognize what is going on in the level as they are playing - since it's fairly familiar to dota2.
And me personally like the idea of expanding the dota2 universe similar to any other rpg game out there, I would best describe this map mod as the starting area in DiabloII, and the quest to kill Roshan and bringing back the Aegis is very similar to clearing out The Den.

We have plans to add some new items and a new sound track, and if we ever get the time we will probably make a few new netural creeps, custom lane creeps to better fit the lore and the theme of the map (i.e. town folks and farmers).
We have also talked about making a new boss, but that will have to wait until the next project since the lore/theme/layout in this project very much circles around Roshan.

 

[invalidnick]

Your last videos are locked for me due to copyright infringements :/

Arrgh...Might only work in the US, just saw a little flag about this in the video-playlist, odd all the music comes from youtube, I'm not very good at youtube D:

 

[invalidnick]

Here are some more pictures from the town area, have been working on minor things like decals etc,

A somewhat old picture of Broadway in the town of River's End:

This is a new(er) picture from the same are, as you can see some things are still missing, but it's slowing getting there:

The southern entrance to the town, this area has spawnpoint: 1, 3, 5 and 7, on the right you can see the Secret Shop, in the left most corner there is a easy neutral camp (just outside the town)

The northen entrance to the town, spawnpoint 2, 4, 6 and 8, the Secret Shop bottom left, and a easy neutral camp top middle right (while respawning players are invulnerable), both of these spawn closets felt a little too tight for more than one player, so I will probably increase the area

The middle area of River's End, Secret Shop in the middle, there are multiple routs in and out of this town, some that are a little bit more sneaky,

 

[Deathcom3s]

So, pardon my ignorance on this subject, but were those houses comletely mocked up/modeled inside of the editor itself? In a brief look at your videos, I noticed you were editing them a bit. Does it just use standard BSP, or is it something else entirely? Or something in-between?

It's looking great, either way!

Edit: Just thought I would point out that I linked to this thread in another thread here: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/site-discussion-97/about-thw-2-a-259972/index3.html#post2631781

That thread has been discussing the future direction of THW, and I personally feel that DotA 2 holds the most potential as far as a modding platform goes.

 

[Heinvers]

It looks great

 

[sonofjay]

Heh, if I show this to my friend who wants to mod on Dota2 he'll probably gonna shit bricks. Keep it up!

 

[invalidnick]

So, pardon my ignorance on this subject, but were those houses comletely mocked up/modeled inside of the editor itself? In a brief look at your videos, I noticed you were editing them a bit. Does it just use standard BSP, or is it something else entirely? Or something in-between?

It's looking great, either way!

Edit: Just thought I would point out that I linked to this thread in another thread here: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/site-discussion-97/about-thw-2-a-259972/index3.html#post2631781

That thread has been discussing the future direction of THW, and I personally feel that DotA 2 holds the most potential as far as a modding platform goes.

Ah cool! I think that the Dota 2 modding scene will start taking off sometime next year when Valve decides to release their next "big" Source 2 update, I think that the amount of content creators will increase slowly in comparison to players playing custom games (that will increase more rapidly) -since you no longer will need to have the ~3gb tools installed to play custom games.
Hopefully all this will also be good for WC3/SC2 modding community that wants to try out something new, the Steam Workshop is awesome! The current state of the tools are great, and soon it will be even better!
There are already a few custom game modes for Dota2 worth mentioning, Warchasers (posted here on THW) and FoF (also posted here on THW)
I think we will start seeing the full potential of the Dota2 tools around this time next year

Anyways, regarding the houses...
They are build in Hammer, and are modular constructed, here is a picture showing the current setup:

All objects connected to each house is its own instance (1 house=1 instance); in addition windows, doors roof addons and all other sharable parts are also instanced (inside the "house" instance), it's all build with the mesh tools (what has replaced BSP).
Compared to BSP you can make high detailed objects, edit edges, faces, vertices, bevel etc...without the limitations of BSP (however the "mindset" of building things with BSP still remains) This is a super important part of the workflow since its allows (you) to start of easy and simple, then later choose your level of detail until you are satisfied, you also have the choice to leave it as "mesh" (editable in hammer), convert it to vmdl (static prop or similar, allows custom properties, also saves a few drawcalls) or export it as obj/dmx/fbx (fix it up in maya, and re-import it as static prop or similar)

At any time you can select a model and convert it to editable mesh (sometimes the UV screws up, but it usually works pretty good)

The Instance information is saved in the map file, if you want to "share it" in the asset browser you can apply the same theory but make it a "prefab", copy pasting instances between projects also works!

Here are the first 13 part in my little video-dev-blog, showing how the houses are being build:

-Movement, placement and mesh editing basics
-Creating instances
-Replacing mesh groups with instances
-Placing instances
-Building house mockups

-Basic movement and mesh creation
-Updating house-instances
-Grouping objects and working in instances
-Creating basic mockup meshes for railings and pillars
-Preparing/placing trims and borders mockups

-Placing instances, basics
-Replacing grouped objects with instances
-Modifying instances

-Part 2 of Layout and trims
-Placing instances, basics
-Replacing grouped objects with instances
-Modifying instances

-Movement, placement and mesh editing basics
-Creating instances
-Building mockups for the graveyard fence
-Placing instances
-Building house mockups

- Using the new (awesome) mirroring tool to easy and fast match dire and radiant sides (very good if you want to create a symmetrical level)

~1h of placing game objects, this is a fairly boring recording...fyi
In future episodes I'll start recording my background music, all brought to you by youtube!

The Dota 2 modding continues! In this video we're placing some props, adding lights, and improving the layout!

All music is from youtube!
First track is from Tricking IT 2, the best q3 trick movies of all time! it also have killer music, youtube: tricking it 2 if you want to see it
Second track is BBC Essential Mix with Mat Zo

yoy, the mapping continues...for the upcoming ~3 hours I'll be replacing mockups with detailed assets, placing/tweaking models, and painting ground materials

Music:
BBC Essential Mix with Above and Beyond
Jerome Isma-ae guest mix at Above and Beyond (can't remember which podcast)
Mat Zo - The Sky
Mat Zo and Above and Beyond at MixMag (sick set)

yoyoy, 3 hours of mapping...uuugh
Painting materials, updating layout, adding details...

Music: Pendulum, Mix Mag, BBC Essential

yoyoy, 3 hours of mapping...uuugh
Painting materials, updating layout, adding details...

Music: Pendulum, Mix Mag, BBC Essential

ESL ONE IN MY CITY!
Hi, welcome to...River's End! - a Dota 2 level mod!
In this part: various ground mesh modification, layout updates, and some ESL One New York games (mostly in the background)

Music: Random Ambient Space mix + ESL One New York broadcast

~20 minutes of speed mapping! Adding some decals and ground clip

Music from youtube: Tricking IT 2 (quake 3)

 

[Deathcom3s]

Thanks for the additonal info! That's great to see that Valve implemented a mesh to like that. I have experience with UE4 and Unity, so the concept of instances and prefabs aren't new concepts. It's great that valve is adding things like that, which will help people create more custom content.

Edit: Congrats on getting your thread stickied!

 

[invalidnick]

Heh, if I show this to my friend who wants to mod on Dota2 he'll probably gonna shit bricks. Keep it up!

Will do!
I read elsewhere that your friend is a 3d artist (?), if he is interested in level art and has the tools installed he can download the vmap-file my friend and I used when creating the props for CORE (Curse of River's End), might be easier with a little flying start if he wants to get into the tools.

Vmap includes:

- Houses
- Lights
- Wall trims
- Pillars
- Graveyard and town fences
- Bridge
- Fountain
- Rune plateau

These are not complete/finished assets, just simple mockups to demonstrate shape and size, it's all made with dev textures (included in the tools),
We've been talking about releasing the assets for CORE once the project is completed, in the meantime feel free to play around with these items to see how they are built etc.
You find the vmap file here: http://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=1140657

The easiest way to export single instances to maya/max/etc is to:
1. Collapse the instance you want to export (select the instance, then ctrl+shift+u)
2. While all meshes are selected; hit "m" (to merge meshes)
3. Go to File>Export Selected...select export properties
4. Open in 3d editor

Thanks for the additonal info! That's great to see that Valve implemented a mesh to like that. I have experience with UE4 and Unity, so the concept of instances and prefabs aren't new concepts. It's great that valve is adding things like that, which will help people create more custom content.

Edit: Congrats on getting your thread stickied!

Ah thanks!

Yeah, the concept of instancing is starting to become common language in most editors which is super good, since it greatly improves the workflow,
Haven't really used Unreal engine since UT (long time ago) but read some of the documentation about UE4, seems like a interesting way to develop a engine - much crowd sourcing etc.,
I'm fairly familiar to Unity, been using it for a few years now, I like it, fast and easy to test your stuff etc., just wish it had some UI modules out of the box, to avoid have to script it all.

 

[invalidnick]

Small update incoming, after a few days in the beautiful Sperryville mountains the development is coming slow,

The Dire area in CORE has long been left untouched, now when the rest of the map is starting to come together this was the last area to get a face lift.
Similar to the Radiant side this areas has no particular purpose in the gameplay in CORE, serving merely as another "grind" area - this can of course change in the future.
I've been trying to get it to look good with our own textures, after failing a few times I decided to use the vanilla textures,

The south/bottom entrance to the Dire area, this is the closes entrance to the town (where players spawn)

The middle entrance to the Dire area, this is the closes entrance when the player comes from the graveyard

The northen/top entrance, this is the closes entrance when the player comes from the Monastery, there is also a shop close by...I see that I've forgotten to add a few flags here, expect flags when its done

The main Dire area, compared to regular Dota(2) there are only two towers per "lane" on each side, in addition two towers protecting the Dire ancient, total 8 Dire towers

I've also been working on the Radiant side, will update the thread when I have time (probably the day after tomorrow)

 

[invalidnick]

Happy New Years!!!

I was not completely happy how the Dire area turned out, felt like it was missing something, I've added some torches and some ground decals, I think it looks better..

I've also updated the Town area a little bit, decided to add a little bit of forest area behind the Freeman's Inn and the other big house, players can still navigate here,
Overall I felt like something had to be done about the big road leading between the Town and the Graveyard, by adding the forest area the "main" road now goes through the town rather than behind it, splitting it up also help make the town feel larger by emphasizing the town core area,

One of the Radiant entrances, in-game this is my favorite area...not sure why, just feels well balanced in terms of composition etc...

The Radiant base seem from above, both the Radiant and the Dire side is...

 

[invalidnick]

Minor update, some new assets and layout updates,

Freeman's Inn in River's End is finally close to complete, as well as the rest of the houses,
New textures for windows and doors have been added, tweaks on the roof texture and some more polys, whats left is to convert all the meshes to a single mesh and turn it into a prop_static - that will reduce the drawcalls,
Additional props has been placed around in the town to help guide the player,

This light only picture shows how much the SSAO helps bringing depth to the scene, its also good to check your normals, for example you can very clearly see that the house walls are missing a normal map (we will probably add it later)

The most up-to-date layout, increased the size of the starting area, updated some dynamic light around the map, color and material painting, some of the church set-pieces are still not complete

If nothing unexpected happens this will be the last update before we release the first playable version later this week, at first it will be for friends only, if you are interested to help out testing it I would be very grateful!

 

[Noya]

Awesome, I'm willing to playtest and review your code whenever you're ready

 

[invalidnick]

Thanks! I will upload a rough version tomorrow night, we will probably playtest it a lot this weekend, so there should be some games running,

Added some details to the houses, updated the Freeman's Inn sign (it now has glasses, easier viewed ingame). Additional bug fixing and polishing around the map,

 

[invalidnick]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are (privately) live, http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=372518307

It's currently set to "friends-only", which means you need to have me on your friends list in order to see it,
Also, you need to have the Dota 2 Workshop Tools installed in order to host/join a custom game,

If you are still interested feel free to add me on Steam "Invalidnick",

Looking forward to hear your feedback!

 

[invalidnick]

Some notes from todays playtest,

- Player should have (fountain) HP regen at spawn, decrease downtime between farm runs
- Fix so win message display Hero name correctly
- One camp auto-stacked, bad for performance
- Needs ambient sounds
- Pickup items didn't spawn, delaying player progression
- Particles from lanes were projected through the ground
- Mailbox is missing textures
- Giant sword is still a placeholder
- Runes did not spawn as expected

Some pictures:

As a wandering hero you stumble upon a ordinary looking abandoned and raided village...north spawn area

...south spawn area

In the middle of River's End lies the Secret shop, to win the game; kill Roshan and bring the Aegis back to the Shopkeeper

Freeman's Inn, 1 Broadway, River's End, Owner and Founder: M̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶ Gordon Freeman

The south most entrance to the town

The middle entrance, barricades suggests siege

The north most entrance and bottle neck

Road on Dire side leading towards the church, beware of creep spawns

A neutral creep camp just off the road, to the left lies the Graveyard, to the right lies the Dire main camp

Dire side crossing to the middle part of the Graveyard, use tango or axe to escape along the tree line

Radiant side Graveyard,

Radiant side neutral camp, north road leads to the church (Roshans pit), south road leads to the town

The upper courtyard on Dire side, entrance to Roshans area

The main courtyard,

Top rune platform,

Radiant side ramp leading from the main courtyard, to the right Roshans pit, this is a safe spot to see if anyone is attacking the boss

 

[invalidnick]

A not-so-super-flattering gameplay video from CORE, just shows the general layout and feeling of the starting area, take notice of the minimap in the bottom left corner for exploration,

The video is a little laggy, and doesn't have any ambient sounds. Music provided by our Mongolian throat singing brothers on youtube. Drawcalls and polycount is in par with the dota2 map, but running source2 and bandicam at the same i3 undercutter...

This video was recorded in a 1 person game, which makes it play very much like any other RPG game, you should buy PVE friendly items and choose a PVE friendly hero, your quest is to kill Roshan and bring back the Aegis to the Shopkeeper. Heroes that can't kill Roshan 1v1 before lvl 15-25 can train mobs down into his pit. In PVP you can use blink etc to jump into the pit and steal the Aegis before your enemy (even if you are not the person killing Roshan)
Letting creeps fight each other until low health before killing them is a good way to get money and exp faster, this is not as easy when more than 2 players

We are slowly and steady progressing...

 

[invalidnick]

A early look at one of the map mood/concept pictures a friend of mine made, still need a little touch up here and there,

After a few playtests we decided to sit down and discuss the gameplay, mixed with feedback and some of our own concerns here are a few of our ideas to make it even more fun:

-Everyone starts at level 6, many heroes are depended on their ultimate ability and are very weak in the beginning, hopefully this will help avoid and balance early ganking
-Adjust prices to tangos, clarity, flask (just like in d2 players can stack up on flasks before going) - implemented
-Adjust placement of item spawning, players can now explore and find items up to a net worth of ~2000g, by knowing where the items are and map awareness players can collect them all without fighting any mobs - implemented
-Add a few places where the player needs a tango or similar to cut down trees -implemented

A few of the "wouldn't it be cool..."-ideas:
-To team up with other players in the game
-To have more quests and rewards that includes non-violence activities, like picking mushrooms etc
-To be able to trade with other players
-To go inside the houses
-To have destruction on houses
-To have a few custom items

In the meantime, in a alternative universe...the events has occurred slightly different and a DotA scenario takes place in River's End, left to do on dota-version of the map:

-Add correct game logic
-Increase Radiant and Dire spawn areas
-Change layout of neutral camps
-Swap Roshan
-Change position of Runes

Hopefully we have a version up for testing this weekend (download size around 110-120mb)

 

[invalidnick]

Small update,
The DotA version is up and running, needs a minor cleanup of annoying trees etc, but should be releasable in a few days,
Also updated the PvP version, players now starts at level 6 which feels good!

New Mailbox model, placed outside the post office in River's End, somebody got mad and knocked one of them over, in the PvP version these are your Home shops and are placed by each spawn hub,

Some houses got interiors, here it can be seen through the broken roof,

 

[Heinvers]

You know you make it all seem easy and very fluent.

Cheers

 

[invalidnick]

You know you make it all seem easy and very fluent.

Cheers

heheh trying my best


Anyways here is a overview picture showcasing lanes, camps etc...

 

[Deathcom3s]

Wow, you've made some great progress, and it is definitely looking great.

Looking forward to more news from you!

 

[invalidnick]

So my friends, the time has come: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=381995351

The DotA version of CORE is out, thanks to everyone that helped playtest it!
We will continue to work on the PvP version (and I will keep on updating this thread as we make progress)

I just started on a interior props set, which will feature beds, shelfs, ovens, tables, chairs, lamps, desks, stairs, lights, books,...etc,

This is the updated paintover, the sword now also has correct textures in game!

 

[invalidnick]

One more concept, the Graveyard in CORE

 

[Noya]

Stats when?

I really want to see how many people are playing it ^^

 

[Fang]

Ďang is this wc3

 

[Arhowk]

Ďang is this wc3

What subforum are you in...

 

[Heinvers]

One more concept, the Graveyard in CORE

Lovely concept, waiting for more

 

[invalidnick]

All the major cover art for core is unofficially over
We got some more map updates coming in a few weeks, I'd say around end of April when I'm back home in NYC, will also try to wrap up the PvP version (that we've been working on soooo long...errrk)

In the meantime I've started to work on something else,
It's really to early to give it a description unless you can tap into my brain, but will hopefully be pretty cool once it's done...

 

[Arhowk]

Interesting, my votes on the first DotA 2 map with a dynamic field.

 

[invalidnick]

Interesting, my votes on the first DotA 2 map with a dynamic field.

Something like that, hopefully it will be a fresh new palette