Lordaeron Past Day 3: New Areas, New Names

The Valley of Colors, one of the routes to the Elder Forest.

Welcome to Lordaeron Past (Soon Mythrin) map development: Day 3.

I haven't updated for a while due to their being no major additions. Lately I've been working hard on balancing encounters and drop rates. I think I've reached a good point, so I can continue with new stuff.

I'm still undecided on whether or not to change make the map take place in an entirely different universe lore wise, but it might as well be. There's probably 5% map accuracy when you compare what I'm doing here to actual Lordaeron in Warcraft 3.

I've been working on finishing up the River Forest and Southern Plains recently! Many new encounters were added as endgame for the area. I also added more hidden crates that could be destroyed for bonus gold, wood, or items. Some of the new areas exist for pure challenge and loot, without opening new routes, like the area below:

This is Tahnos Rise, a tree-covered hill in the middle of the Southern Plains. Filled with medium-level and high health rogues and bandits ready to deal some damage to your team.

The 'final' encounter in the area is Hidden Ridge, the center for Troll movement in the area by Capital City. It's also your first chance at an Artifact Item. Artifacts in Warcraft 3 are the highest quality gear in the game, they're permanent and have powerful passives or actives.

I want to remind everyone real quick: You can go about this map in any order you want. You don't need to 'finish' an area to move on to the next, you can move freely between any part of the map and it's encounters at any time!

Lordaeron Past: Day 2 - Mechanics, new name

This is Day 2 of the development of Lordaeron Past, my Warcraft 3 map.

Before I start, I want to say I'm thinking up some new names for the map. I'll also be developing some lore and background, as well as real location names. Expect something official tomorrow! Current name: Mythrin. Something with Myth in the name.

First thing I did today was expand the map. First, I extended the city and added a Park area, that happens to be filled with bandits and rogues. 

Next I built up on some land south of the River Forest. This is the Southern Fields, home of 3 key areas: The first village you should encounter, Stone Springs, and the nearby Quarry. When you arrive, this quarry will be taken over by Kobolds, and the lake west of town is occupied by Murlocs.

In the town of Stone Springs, you'll find two things that matter to you: A barracks to train more soldiers without heading back to the city, and a Healing Fountain in a grove north of town.

Alright, now that new area discussion is over with. Mechanics!

• I modified many 'creeps' attack speeds and damage to make them more of a challenge.
• A whole lot of loot table balancing has been done today, but this is something I doubt will ever by solid. It'll likely change in every patch.
• I added a Night Elf and Orc hero spawn, so you can choose between Human, Night Elf, or Orc. There are some major issues, though. One Night Elf hero has the ability to turn Trees into Treants, in this map Trees themselves act as natural boundaries rather than normal Warcraft 3 black boundaries. This hero can be used to cut through a forest and get around the map. Peons can't cut down trees, heroes shouldn't either.
• Hero move speeds have been balanced out. No more extremely slow Mountain King.

My Warcraft 3 Map: Lordaeron Past

About two years ago I had this big project in the Warcraft 3 map editor. It wasn't a plain RTS map, it was a "RPRTS",  a roleplaying real time strategy game. Anyways, I lost it when my computer was sent in for repairs. Today, I'm starting it back up and I'll be writing about it on my blog here.

Let me explain it a bit more.

• The main character is a Hero, like a normal Warcraft 3 game. These heroes level up, can carry items and equipment, and have stats and spells.
• The map is single player. You command your hero around the map, killing monsters and looting their stuff in typical RPG format. You'll collect sums of the Gold resource during your travels.
• You use this gold to purchase units such as; footmen, riflemen, healers, spell casters, mortar teams and more. You can also purchase upgrades for your troops, or some items for your inventory.
• Your goal is to create an army. Units travel with you to various Raids a-la World of Warcraft.
• These raids provide challenge and more loot, you have to strategically prepare your units, attack priority targets, and use your items and spells to their maximum potential to survive.
• The main focus of the game is raids, and the map is huge. There'll be plenty of them, in my first revision there was over 4, not counting smaller enemy hideouts of course.
• It uses pretty much every enemy 'creep' available, dragons, demons, trolls, murlocs, they're all in the map, it doesn't use many custom models or entities, though

So I'll be keeping you guys up to date with progress throughout the following week or so. Here are some screenshots.

Your first challenge will be to push back a band of trolls right outside Capital City, where you start.
It's designed to ramp up rater quickly, so you must head back to town to order more troops to defeat the tribe.

This is City Center, where you first choose your hero, order troops and upgrades, or heal at the Mana and Health fountains. There might be additional barracks/fountains in other villages in the future.

The trolls are situated across the river in the nearby forest. There is also a hidden area, and a few hidden destructible objects you can scour for additional loot.

Next up: The big Square Trail update!

So summer has pretty much started and the Lone and Prologue mini-updates have hit, here are some of my goals for this summer.

1. Get the next Square Trail update, version 2, pushed out in the coming weeks.
2. Get some levels done for Prologue, revise gifting system.
3. I doubt I'll be able to get Outskirts part 2 for Lone this summer, SO I'M MAKING IT A 4 PART UPDATE WOOO. parts 2 and 3 will probably come out next month. Finishing the forest area and adding more to the Pier. Actual ferry would be in part 4.

Pretty much: Big updates for all 3 games. But Square Trail will be my main focus. I had to revise my goals for it a bit, but here's what I want as of now:

• Complete UI overhaul, big enough to fit...
• New customization tools!
• Credit system, points are aggregated with bonuses to create Coins each round.
• Coins are spent on items and skins for your Square.
• Items give small "mini-abilities" such as a bomb. They are not limited to your ability choice. You can use Ghost as your ability and carry a few Bomb items. Items are ALWAYS weaker than Abilities.
• Abilities will most likely not be locked out. You won't have to buy them with Coins.
• Skins are different, completely cosmetic designs for your Square. They always have the same size and speed.

A while back I talked about a Ranking system, where you can level up and such. While this seems like a good idea and all, I fear it's a bit overused. Leveling puts interesting RPG aspects into non-RPG games nowadays. Look at Call of Duty (4 and up) and Battlefield 3. Square Trail is not supposed to be an RPG, and I will leave this out until I can come up with an idea better than simple Levels. For now, it'll play similar to Prologue's "MyPro". Collect credits -> buy items for new gameplay -> earn more credits.

Minor lone update!

Here's the update!
Now, the changelog.

• Sound-related bug fixes.
• Sound files compressed to take up less space.
• A few changes to the interface, specifically startup.

Back to development! Prologue prerelease2.1! (ToT 6/6/12)

I finally got the new computer I needed, so I can safely resume development projects without worrying about losing everything again. Anyways, here's the latest revision of Prologue, to prove I do want to get back to work on it! Download from my Dropbox here.

The changes are mostly to ProPoint rates, you'll earn a bit less now. This might get nerfed even more in upcoming versions, too.

1.4 is a pain. (ToT 2/29/12)

Well, Square Trail 1.4 is huge if I want to fulfill as many of my expectations as possible. So I plan on breaking it up into two updates, 1.4 and 1.5 so I can divide the work up a bit. There's a lot of new graphics and programming work going into this, but it'll be worth it!

Today I put in a death screen, Coin collection system... 

score+(kills*2)

And a frame of the new main menu. A lot has to be done, ohhhh boy. In the coming days I'll be working on UI stuff. A lot of UI stuff.