Enarwaen
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Posts posted by Enarwaen
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I presume that at some point TLA will begin migrating around Men, Dwarves, Orcs, and similar creatures, even though the development team may be working on the Noldor for the moment.
that is correct - we are currently working on the needed units for our Story Campaigns that one day will be our 'Nern Ennorath'.
in NE there won't be any kind of resource gathering or base-building (such as in today's common RTS titles) - instead it will focus only in portraying Tolkien's tales on screen. as an example you will not have to chop down x amount of lumber before the Noldor can strike up their camp at Lake Mithrim. 'events' such as this will be either portrayed via scripted events or will be presented to the player at the beginning of a mission.
what you are aiming at (to what i've understood from your post) will definitely be part of another game mode that will be worked on after Nern Ennorath is well under way - something where we will look upon Arda from a more 'globalized' view. but that doesn't really mean we will portray this like all the 'shuttling economies' found in other current RTS titles but in more abstract way.
and yes - the website does (sadly) contain much outdated info (esp. in the civ showcases) since the old concepts don't comply with the NE design as well as our 'global mode'.
hope this answers your question!
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thanks for the comments
if you really feel the urge to have a 'somewhat' Middle-earthish Diablo 2 experience - i'd recommend you check out this: V&K ME-Mod
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Mae govannen!
As we are gearing up for production we have the following positions to offer:
- Essayist / Ardaquenta Editor
- Game Designer / Design Consultant
- 3D Modeler
- 3D Animator
- Texture Artist
- Musician
- Sound Designer
If you are interested please read the according job descriptions carefully. If you feel confident enough, please fill out our application form.
Good luck!
- Essayist / Ardaquenta Editor
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Mae govannen, worthy readers! Welcome to our showcase of the 'Lay of Leithian' Story Campaign!
In this special story campaign we will depict the events of the Tale of Beren and Lúthien. This very showcase deals with the a perilous mission the player has to complete - Lúthien's and Beren's descent into Angband on their quest to recover a Silmaril from Morgoth's Iron Crown.
The mission will start off just outside the outer fortifications of Angband. Our heroes must overcome a large score of Morgoth's orcs, trolls and wolves.
Lúthien's special powers (including Water Magic - a skill which she shares with her Third Age descendant Arwen) and Beren's protective auras (which improve both of their combat abilities) will aid them on their epic quest.
After having successfully gained entrance into the dreaded halls of Angband they must find their way through various obstacles like glowing rivers of lava and get past an army of Balrogs guarding the way towards Morgoth's throne room deep down below.
Just before entering Morgoth's throne room they will have to fight several dangerous werewolves, including the dreaded werewolf Carcharoth who is also a dangerous spell-caster - and Sauron's favorite pupil.
Finally inside the throne room Lúthien needs to cast a 'Stunning Spell' on Morgoth so that he drops his Iron Crown which will yield a shining Silmaril to Beren's excellent crafting skills.
When we were creating the design for this story campaign we've been heavily influenced by Tolkien's descriptions - especially to his repeated use of magic in his works. This was really helpful in the design stage when we assigned all the needed magic skills to both Lúthien and Beren as well as their adversaries.
We really want to push the envelope on the game engine here and provide our audience with a memorable gameplay experience. This includes a whole tree of possible spells which will become unlocked as the character accumaltes more experience points by vanquishing enemies.
This has even prompted a response from our former project leader Adam 'av_nefardec' Vana who congratulated us on our bold decision:
"This is exactly the type of game i always dreamed of!".With that we are coming to an end of this showcase. Hope you enjoyed this as much as we designing this specific mission!
edit: i hope this does not come as a shock to some - but this was indeed our April 1st prank
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Anyway, I'm sure we will find a way to have players identify their units no problem
indeed - there's always the heraldry that the professor left us with to fall back upon
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nope - it will stay blue
every civ and their sub-factions will have unique colors of their own. just as the professer described them in his texts.
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Mae govannen, nobles all!
This week we are proud to present you another excellent concept art piece by Naurwen - a Noldorin Captain of the House of Fingolfin!
First of the series of conceptual designs for the Noldor. In this case, a lord/captain of the House of Fingolfin. The arrival of the host of Fingolfin to Beleriand has always been one of my favourite parts of the Silmarillion,But as the host of Fingolfin marched into Mithrim the Sun rose flaming in the West; and Fingolfin unfurled his blue and silver banners, and blew his horns, and flowers sprang beneath his marching feet, and the ages of the stars were ended (...)
This type of unit will of course be featured in our Nern Ennorath.
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concerning 0 A.D. - there's always Part II to consider - which will not only include many improved gameplay aspects (which are deliberately left out currently and put on the backburner) but also all the additional civs that appear in the timespan from 1 A.D. to 500 A.D.
so i guess most of the current 0 A.D. team will stick around for that.
TLA will over time accumulate it's own workforce that creates all the assets needed specifically for our project. but frankly it's too early to tell right now who is going to switch to and from
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@rinion
i can only speak for TLA - as i see it, work on TLA will probably not stop for a long time - since there's so much material we can cover.
we are currently concentrating our efforts solely on the First Age of the Sun - and that alone is an enourmous amount of work.
our first release will be 'Nern Ennorath' - depending on the general state of the game we will publish it in chunks and so the users can download the individual Story Campaigns as they are released by the team.
at that point the community will not only be able to create their own scenarios and campaigns but also to create their own modifications. the game itself will be 'very' mod-friendly.
further down the road we are toying with the concept to create a game mode that takes a look at a more global perspective. but this is still some ways off.
hope this helps!
-bernd
p.s. the topic title is kind of morbid
- i'll adjust this ... -
both games (0 A.D. and TLA) developed by WFG are still in production and there is no date yet for the release of a demo, a public beta or the whole game itself.
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True, but am I incorrect in assuming that TLA will eventually have an economic system with resource gathering and settlement-building?
as for Nern Ennorath - there will be no resource gathering or settlement building.
this might be altogether different for later development stages - but it's too early to tell ...
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0 A. D. is deviating very strongly from this rule, having male citizen-soldiers that can hunt, fight, etc. and female units that can farm, gather, etc. All of the units are combat-capable, although some of them are better than others (and female citizens depend very widely on the culture; Roman women are not even useful for fodder, while Celtic women are actually pretty tough). This still isn't a super-believable population model as it still has buildings, which are of course genderless, producing most of the units, and the male and female units don't really matter but for their roles. Certainly you don't automatically lose the game if all your men die, and you certainly don't if all of your women die.
keep in mind that the layout of 'Nern Ennorath' is quite different than that of typical RTS games - that means we will not feature the economic side (-> no resource gathering) and the base building doctrine (-> pre deployed units) that many current RTS games use.
as for the inclusion of civilian units - yes of course - the Noldor will have civilian units that need to be protected and we'll feature assorted victory conditions that concern those (e.g. x% of your civilian units must survive).
regarding 'children units' - no decision has been made yet. the problem as i see it is, that Tolkien mostly concentrates on the heroic deeds of his characters, whereas he sort of neglects most of the aspects of the more 'mundane' population.
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What is it, an rpg?
it's an MMORPG (think Everquest/Dark Age of Camelot/Worlds of Warcraft ...) and this is basically the 'leftovers' of the old MMORPG concept that once was Middle-earth Online (short MEO) that began it's existance under Sierra's development wings many years back and then was cancelled. after the movies hit the license was carried over to Vivendi/Turbine Games who wanted to recreate all of Middle-earth in the late Third Age - but this has also been scrapped and now 'Shadows of Angmar' is the next (downsized) installment.
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When is the release date?
you know ... i guess ... umm ... when it's done.
(standard dev answer) 
Say you're at the final mission, but cannot complete it because you don't have enough units. It would be very frustrating to have to play the whole campaign again, just because of some failure you made, lets say, in the first missionrest assured that there will be definitive mission goals that you need to fulfill before advancing to the next mission - e.g. in Mission #3 you'll need to accomplish something like 'Celegorm must survive' before being able to advance to Mission #4.
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(thought it was going to be more like you can control one unit, rpg kinda thing)
well sometimes it can even boil down to this - just think of Tuor's quest down from Hithlum to Nevrast. but the framework is still a RTS - just sometimes with a much closer scope on the characters.
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I assume the RPG part will be using the same engine as the RTS part, so how might this effect the RTS part of the game? Like will you be able to play Nern Ennorath part with only the strategy part downloaded, or will any of the RPG features be mixed in with the stratgey portion of the game?
i wouldn't necessarily call it a RPG-part. TLA is and will be a RTS. The scope of Nern Ennorath is just a tad different than e.g. the random map features of games like AoE.
we are presenting the tales of Tolkien as a mixture of engine-driven cutscenes and several missions where the player must fulfill several objectives. you will learn more of this pretty soon so stay tuned ...
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great work Jason
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Our very own Naurwen has given us another great piece of Conceptual Artwork - this time it seems she has been visiting the shores of Lake Mithrim shortly after the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth.
Click here for a larger version
This specific location will be featured in a prominent role in one of the first campaigns of Nern Ennorath.
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and a nice shiny blue dress as well
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Mae govannen, Telchar Master-smith!
glad you've stumbled upon our Dwarven Artwork - as Anushka (Naurwen) already said - feel free to mail some samples of your drawings our way.
cheers
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How do we deal with this sort of incongruence here at TLA?
hmm - why *should* we even deal with that? we are not simulating the afterlife of the Eldar or of any other species in Middle-earth. If an Elf gets killed (or it's hroar is destroyed) we will still see the body on the ground. We will not follow the fëa - or even display it on screen. If one of your units gets killed - it will stay dead - we call that a 'persistant game state'. If you manage to get one of your heroes or leaders killed - it stays dead - no resurrection like in Warcraft III - same goes for the (latter) Strategy Mode.
And yes - the Dead Marshes are contradicting some fragments of MR - but it is not our 'place' to go out and try to interpret some meaning into it or come up with the *one true theory* - we are using it as it is described in the books - we encourage the player to come up with his own ideas and solutions to it.
if you want to know - my *personal* take on this would be that - with Sauron at the height of his power in the Second Age and the Dead Marshes being so close to the battle site at Dagorlad (and to Mordor itself) that some sort of power (or Sauron's influence) somehow denied the fallen (be it Elf, Orc or Man) to release the fëa (or parts thereof) from the body.
we can see a similiar motif in the 'cursed' inhabitants of Dwimorberg.
LotR > The Hobbit > HoME12 > HoME11 > HoME10 > ... HoME1 > Sil > The Adventures of Tom Bombadil > Smith of Wotton Major?well it's not that easy
personally i'd move some 'parts' of the HoME volumes above LotR/Hobbit/Sil ... same with goes with UT. again my *personal* way of tackling these is - keep the 'story' as the core and try to 'enrich' the fabric with facts found in the surrounding works (e.g. HoME, UT). as said previously - this is very much a case by case basis - which forces you to remember to know where to find certain fragments that apply to the current situation/problem/question. hope this helps -
hmmmm......when will that be
pretty soon - our web guys are working on it
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our web guys fixed the news feed ... thanks for bearing with us
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dont suppose you need any help
(y)currently no - but we'll start a recruitment haul shortly after the new forum-driven webpage is up ...
btw, release just this part after 0 AD or the whole thing?well our focus is on this 'game mode' currently - but this doesn't mean that this is gonna be the only one
More migration questions
in General TLA Discussion
Posted
we'll start a redesign of the website around may - coinciding with a switch to a full forum driven website (similiar to 0 A.D. )
until then you'll have to rely on the forums when it comes to game specifics