34 replies to this topic

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

When working on Lone Wolf I do a lot of little things and lot of things I don't often mention.
I almost never show renders of units I'm working on as of late and I can't always reveal what I'm working on.
But whether seen or not I do a lot of work on Lone Wolf.
I'm going to use this topic to keep people updated on things when I don't do updates.
Hopefully this will show that though things are quiet on the forums here they aren't quite on my end ( ).
This will be part progress report part development diary.

So time to kick it -

23-2-10

Tonight I've been back at work on LW after some downtime due to computer problems.
Unfortunately I still can't run BFME/LW because my DVD drive doesn't want to read CDs lately.
Nevertheless I've been hard at work today.
I started off in Worldbuilder putting some touches on some maps.
(Sea of Rhun,Steppes of Rhun,Weather Hills and My Map)
Next I started coding in some stuff,this stuff is sort of Gondor related.
Then I fired up the pencils and drew some concepts.
I drew 2 new building concepts for Mirkwood (Mirkwood Hall and Mirkwood Lodge)
which hopefully DIGI will be modelling soon.
I drew some concepts of Goblin buildings 4 in total all very cool.
Just now I finished some Dale concepts.
These concepts are of a possible Grimbeorn design,Beorning Druid concept and a pretty cool drawing of a rabid bear which I may use in the button art.

Some of the work done today is kind of secretive and some is experimental stuff.

[Florisz]

Interesting.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

27-2-10

Back at work yesterday and a pretty productive day.
First off I drew a new concept of the Lossarnach Axemen which I'll be renaming Arnach Axemen.
Including a new shield and symbol design.
I of course made the new Gondor Citadel Guard and Gimli skins.
I also touched up the Gondor Soldier skin.
I did some further research into Lossarnach and the other fiefdoms.
Currently I'm looking into a way to incorporate them into the mod in some way.
Maybe an upgrade or spell.

I have come up with colour themes for Lebennin,Anfalas,Lossarnach,Lamedom and for the Golasgil household.

Edited by Radspakr, 02 March 2010 - 01:40 AM.

[Fishbone]

About the houses, are you going after the color that was in the peter jackson/gamesworkshop style or new?

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

I'm coming up with the colour themes from research.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

5-3-10

After lunch I put some more thought into modding

So I decided to have a look at Morgul.
I made a list of things to fix which will give me some stuff to do for a couple hours.

I'm going to fix a lot of the Castle issues -
The Gate area needs models,making the models for the Wall upgrades,change the foundation model for the Wall upgrades.
Fix the issue with not being able to walk on certain walls.
I'm creating a new ability for Lagduf as well possibly touching up his skin.
I'm going to remove Sneak from Shagrat at least until I can get it working how I want.
I'm going to shorten the wander distance for the Orc Leader (Skully) and slow his run speed a little.
Raise Gothmog's cost and fix a couple issues with him.
Fix some things with the Witch King and a few other things.

I'll be starting all this now so wish me luck

[man_of_gondor]

Luck!

[Bashkuga]

gooooooooooooodd luckkk

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

6-3-10 - 7-3-10

Still working through the Morgul list got some done other stuff still to do.
I decided that soon I'll release a new beta complete with installer.
linkness

I added 248 new terrain textures.
31 new beach textures
11 new farmland textures
19 new flowerbed textures
42 new foliage textures
25 new grass textures (takes it to 103 new LW grass textures)
4 new hedge textures
13 new ivy textures
24 new moss textures
51 new pavement textures
1 new rock floor texture
27 new grass textures

more will be added later.

I'm currently making a list of things to fix for Mordor.

In coding I coded in some stuff for the Dark Warden (one of the nine)
The Morgul Blade has been changed it now does a strong attack followed by a DOT.

Mapping - Fixed an issue with the river flooding the bridge on the Sea of Rhun map and added some of the new textures to the map.

There were some other things but I forgot

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

13-3-10

This morning I woke thinking it was the 5th of March
Stupid computer clock went funny after a black out.
So after I had recovered from Groundhog Day I got to work on some modding.


To start with I did some work on Trials adding in quests,touching up the terrain and finally fixing the boar quest issue.
Word of Advice if you want a unit to be countable in map scripting it needs to have the SCORE Kindof

Before dinner I wrote a tutorial on adding Radiance (Damage dealing aura) to heroes.
http://www.the3rdage.net/item-501

After dinner I got stuck into to some texture work creating 7 new textures for the Dale/Bree Houses.
These houses are used as props for Trials.

Next it was time to open up Renx again but this time to write another new tutorial this time it's for creating a new
model effect.
http://www.the3rdage.net/item-502

So after typing up this I'll grab a cup of Tea then get these new textures and models in game.
A productive day to be sure

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

14-3-10

Tonight was all about Trials.
A fair bit of work has been done on Trials tonight.
-Scripting in music for the different regions
-retouching some terrain
-reworking Baladin and Elbalad to be more visually interesting
-more work on Thominas
-some more optimisation and a fair deal more.

Baladin is now a sort of open cave with a new look to go with it.
Elbalad has been made slightly bigger and more Elven looking.
Thominas has the new houses added in and some more buildings added and some trees.

The major issue with Trials concerns pathing limitations.
In BFME there are limitations to the amount of mountains and valleys etc you can have on a map.
For mappers these are the red passability squares.
If there is too much the game won't load the map.
I don't know of anyone who has hit this limit except me and only with this map (I tend to hit all the limits with my mod ).
So to have the map play I have to remove all unneeded impassability.
Another issue concerns possible lag on slower computers because of the sheer size of the map and the amount of objects.
At the moment the map hovers around the 6000 objects mark.
It may well go up by another 1000 or so by the time I'm done.
At the moment I have experienced no lag but i'm not sure if others will be so lucky.
But the excess in objects will pay off with a very beautiful map very detailed.
Even at the halfway point in the non script/code parts of the map the map is already very detailed with all kinds of vegetation and ambience sounds.
I have begun adding some critters to the map and some emitters.
There is also a skybox for the map and hopefully I will have a special one just for this map.

Trials will be epic.

In non Trials news I have been working out possible changes to the early Orc heroes.
The heroes are
Grishnakh
Gorbag
Lagduf
Shanka
Snaga
Lugdush
Muzgash
and Radbug

I'm hoping to have them all somewhat different and individual.
I have some pretty cool ideas for powers and I'm currently working out how to code them.

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought into abilities and ways to make them exciting and different.
Some of the abilities I have planned are unlike anything done in BFME it's going to be fun coding them.

I will say this about one of the abilities Shanka will have a new ability called Fury Blades.
When this ability is used Shanka will be feared.

[Fishbone]

This might be a stupid question but will there be co-op in trials?

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Nope it's a single player adventure.
It may though be a precursor to other projects.
I am considering a co-op map possibly using Pantheon.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

18-3-10

Another day at work on Lone Wolf.
This will be a halfway report.

At the moment I'm about 80% through implementing a new feature that involves leadership which I'll probably showcase tonight.
I am also just starting a big overhaul under the bonnet of Lone Wolf.
This overhaul basically consists of redoing the upgrades replacing the Upgrade_AragornLeadership kind of upgrades with the Upgrade_LWLevel1 type upgrades.
This basically streamlines things for me allowing me to have all heroes with an upgrade set for each level meaning that I won't have to add new abilities into experiencelevels.ini instead just changing the level in the object code it's self.
This also reduces the amount of upgrades used freeing up some for the more important stuff and for things like Pantheon,Trials and WAR.
The downside is that in order to do this will require an immense amount of work.
Going through all of the heroes and some units and recording what ability gets triggered at what level and changing it.
A monumental task considering the amount of heroes in in Lone Wolf and the amount of abilities so this will take a while.
I'll be unable to do all this in 1 big go as I do with other large scale changes like the new level up FX or the blood.
So over the next week or so I'll be writing down every hero ability and the corresponding level.

If you guys were really nice you would help me out
If anyone wants to help they can pick a faction to go through and write down what abilities go where.
Which will save me some time,time I can spend preparing for the next beta.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

23-3-10

The notorious triple poster strikes again
The unmistakable sign of a forum asleep.

But I haven't been sleeping (not literally I need sleep more now that i'm getting older).
Tonight has been pretty productive with a whole bunch of work on the look of Lone Wolf.
I have re-implemented the Lone Wolf GUI with some updates.
I have also changed the unit decals so they don't like quite as ugly.
I've also been drawing some random concepts.

The biggest news on the LW front is the dev version has now exceeded the 1gb mark weighing at a hefty 1.04gb.
The public beta will be less but i'm not sure by how much.
It is my hope that I'll be able to have a patching system in place instead of you guys downloading a new beta.
If I can get a patching system up I'll be able to release smaller updates and fix bugs a lot quicker.
I'm looking into something similar to that used by TDH (if they got it working that is).
So fingers crossed.

[man_of_gondor]

Very Good! (wake up post )

[Fishbone]

nice

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

31-3-10

Today I set myself a goal.
That goal was to finally solve the Campaign bug issue.
I had no success.
If anything I'm probably worse off than I was.
I have ruled out any campaign code I have done as well as the slightly modified version of the Moria map.
Which pretty much means that the issue is going to be around for a while.
But I'll keep trying.

Other news I've been working on tech trees lately for certain factions and sometime soon I'll likely reveal them but at the moment I have to go over them to make sure that they are good enough and to get some discussion over them in the Wolf Den.

Some of the new stuff on these tech trees is pretty cool and very different from what you traditionally see in BFME mods in terms of coding.

Over the last few weeks I have improved and evolved as a coder I am coming up with more varied and interesting special powers both from a gameplay standpoint and a coding one.
Because of these new ideas and my improvements to coding I've had to give tech trees a going over to add in more variety and coolness to the heroes.

As it's shaping up heroes will be a fair deal more powerful than they are in Vanilla BFME especially when it comes to battling other heroes.
Their is an even greater emphasis on micromanagement with heroes now so I expect to see some epic hero clashes in the future.

Yesterday and today I have also given some thought to the Coliseum map in WAR and what I can do to make it more exciting and strategic.
So I've been toying with the idea of base defence upgrades.
These would likely function like a small camp from the vanilla game but may be more than simply purchasing these defensive upgrades.
Some of the better ones will probably require prereqs to be met like killing a certain amount of heroes or other things.
This is just an idea at the moment.

I've even given some thought to Pantheon and it's gameplay.
I decided the other day to move Pantheon over to BFME2 to take advantage of the wider coding/scripting options.
I may have also devised an item system.
The Pantheon flagship map is an AOS map based loosely on Dota.
A big part of Dota's gameplay is items and recipes so I had to come up with a way to implement a similar system.
If this works out and my idea is sound I will use the same system in Trials.

Finally after all this thought and scheming I wrote a tutorial on Ping Powers.
Which you can check out below.
http://www.the3rdage.net/item-505

So now it's time to grab a cup of tea and curl up in front of the computer to watch some anime before bed.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

9-4-10

I've been a bit quieter on the Lone Wolf forums this week (at least compared to the last couple weeks).
This was due to injury and sickness.
After suffering a 1st degree burn (or maybe 2nd) to my hand I was unable to do much on the computer and after that coming down with a nasty cold.
I am currently recovering from both of these.
In the last couple days I've been tinkering with some things I made some new sound FX,drew a couple new concepts,did some work on the website and started work on the new Rohirrim model.
The Rohirrim model will have a whole bunch of random equipment and textures so it will take a while to finish it off.
At the moment I work on it a little everyday so when everything is ready I think the results should be great.

The new sound FX are for spells so now the Dwarf Heal and the Evil Heal (Rhun and Harad's) have new sound FX and both of these have new updated FX as well.

I spoke to DIGI on MSN today and unfortunately he's been too busy with College to do any work on Lone Wolf so it may take some more time.

Finally work towards the next beta continues and I think I have a good release date for it so I'm going to try my hardest to get all the things I want done for the beta ready in time.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

18-4-10
With my recovery well under way I set myself to modding.
The last couple days have been spent on bug fixing and implementing some new stuff.

Yesterday I addressed a whole bunch of Mordor issues and added 2 new spells.
Today I mostly worked on Morgul fixing some issues and reworking the tech tree.
3 new spells and a reworking of Morgul Flare kept me busy for a while.
I even touched on King Brand's Wall of Hope ability creating the last piece in the FX the actual Wall of Hope.

The beta will not be long now so I'm working hard to get it ready in time.
After the beta chances are I'll be moving house so I'll be pretty quiet and will likely be without net for a couple weeks at least till I get everything sorted once I move.

So over the next week or so I'll keep working on the fix list and hopefully will finish everything on the list in time.