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Is anyone around here familiar with Warcraft III modding/mapmaking?


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I'm little by little making an ancient themed RTS on the Warcraft 3 world editor. While I like strategy game design and how it turns out, WC3 is fantasy themed and lacking modeling/skinning skills reduces my enthousiasm (and I turn out to focus mostly on my other hobbies, like writting punk rock music). The gameplay and faction design is mostly done, it was actually playable with 4 factions and AI until I broke many things to alter the core gameplay.

Is anyone here familiar with WC3 modding and willing to help or make it as a team? I'd mostly need minor model/skin edits, but anything from triggering/terraining better than mine to just advice or playtesting is welcome. I'm also using 0 A.D. icons on it (I hope it's ok since it's freeware) to give more of an ancient era feel and plan to advertise 0 A.D. within the map and on the hosting forums.

If someone is interested I'll post more details.

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I feel like you would need to catch us in a lull. Artists around here are pretty busy at the moment, I know I only have limited amounts spare time in which to get anything around here done.

It does sound interesting though, care to post some more details?

Yeah when I saw your reply I was ready to say something like "I don't want to distract one of the major contributors from 0 AD to my project, I prefer to see 0 AD finished anyway, even if I see it selfishly it will allow for better ancient era mapmaking:)". So this mostly goes to people here familiar with Warcraft III but not contributing to 0AD, unless someone becomes totally interested in my project which I doubt.

The map has 8 planed Civs, some of which might change (each of them has several unique mechanics and bonuses, which I'm not describing now to avoid length).

Mostly done:

-Romans

-Celts

-Scythians

-Macedonians (which can become Antigonids, Seleucids or Ptolemaics with a city phase choice)

To be done:

-Carthaginians

-Spartans

-Athenians (might merge with the previous in Greeks or something)

-Persians (might become Pathians if I deside to settle for only hellenistic age)

-Other civs are considered as well

The core gameplay is mostly influenced by Age of Empires (and 0AD with paired techs and other details).

Some differences include:

-Soldiers rank up to rank 5 (each rank increases their evasion and critical strike chance)

-Towns are built on fixed settlements, somewhat Age of Mythology like

-There are 2 gatherable resources, Gold and Lumber (an annoying WCIII limmit)

-Most factions require to capture elephants or horses in the wild, or import them at the market in order to build stables.

-Similarly, herdables can be captured or trained at the farm. These increase the pop cap and are slightly cheaper than farms in doing so, but they will require some extra micro and protection.

-WCIII naval system is limmited, but I've come up with a working solution. You can capture "Greek Colonies" along the shore, train ships there and use them to capture fishing regions (which increase your pop cap) and sea trade routes, which grant gold income.

-At fixed locations across the map, randomized mercenary camps appear, changing the options available for each game. I'm also thinking to add structure "resources" as well at those slots, which will be required to be held in order to research top tier upgrades (like iron for top tier weaponforging).

There's much more, that's just some things on top of my head. I've posted many of the techs and other ideas I use in the technologies part of the forum as suggestions for 0AD.

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Thanks for the interest:) The map being playable again is just a matter of a few hours work. It only comes down to when I'll have the will. Screenshots won't be really impressive since most unit models are like "closest possible" rather than historically accurate, but I can post some I guess. That reason is why I look for a WC3 skinner and/or modeler. A few small changes will improve the game visuals a lot.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've composed two soundtrack songs for it, and while it's my first effort outside of punk and rock music they didn't turn out that bad. If anyone is interested or willing to give feedback they are attached to the post. Once authorized by Moddb moderators, a little blog post with some extra info on them will appear here.

Music.zip

Edited by Prodigal Son
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  • 7 months later...

Is Warcraft open source? Doesn't it go to a lawyer if you post content you created for Warcraft III (and hence agreeing to their license) here?

Once we have multiplayer campaigns couldn't 0AD be turned into a Warcraft of its own?

Other than that cool you tackle such a great project with all elements involved (e.g. music, ..)

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Warcraft 3 has a powerful map editor, and while it's not open source, mods and custom maps (which work as stand-alone mods) are very common and certainly not banned and posted on forums all around the net. 0 AD will eventually get better than wc3, at least for my taste, but since my time and experience aren't endless, I prefer working with something more stable for now.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

What is the problem with the gold mine ?

What's so right about the gold mine? It's so darn boring, and nobody ever makes models or skins to replace the darn thing.

If you give me a reference or something I could maybe work something out for you.

Auron summed up my feelings about it quite well... However, it's not a top priority, since it works and i don't want to distract valuable modelers from 0 AD, have them learn WC3 specifics etc.

Prodigal Son:

If you want players to test it might be a good idea to give a download link.

(You don't seam to want that at the current stage but that would be the simplest way to make PPL test it and get feedback)

I have a link at the last(?) page of the thread I linked above for people wanting to check, since I was mostly away recently, but it has expired by now. I just don't want to spread it everywhere for now. If anyone wants the map I can send it though and feedback is very welcome.

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  • 2 months later...

Ancient Empires for WC3 released (first beta)

The map is at a playable state with a working AI on all difficulties, including 5 Civs: Athenians, Carthaginians, Macedonians (with 3 successor sub-factions), Romans and Spartans.

I've decided to push a beta release to be able to focus my modding time on 0 A.D. Made the map a bit smaller and player count got reduced to 4 to prevent some lag/crash issues that no one could solve (delaying the release for months now) and since then it works great so far.

Link (awaiting authorization - should work soon)

To install simply un-zip and put the map file in your WC3 maps folder or any sub-folder of your choice.

If someone wants to play (I'm on EU battlenet) pm and I will If I'm around.

Known issues:
Starting Phase - Post Imperial doesn't work for AI players
Some tooltips need improvement
A few hotkeys might not be working
Some Icons need changes or passive versions

Edited by Prodigal Son
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