Too Late Development

Now here is a game that you probably weren't expecting, Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate 2.  It was something I randomly picked off the shelf while browsing a game store, so very long ago.  This game single handedly changed the way I would play video games forever.  Offering an immense world to explore with an unbelievably deep story and unforgettable characters.  It gripped me by the hand and stole away those long months of summer vacation.  It became my all time favorite strategy and tactics game.

Baldur's Gate hit a gaming chords that I didn't even know existed.  I'll hit on the major points that are now shaping some of the mechanics of Warlord, but know that there are plenty other reasons to play this game.

The ability to customize your character into something to call your own and the ability to add and remove members of your party, creating a unique group everytime you played, was all new to me.  I would weigh the pros and cons of each character's class and personality, building out the perfect party to tackle the game.  Reading through the dozens of spells, picking the the right party member to fill out the role that I'm missing.  The numbers game is something D&D does well, and the game taught me what a min maxing bastard I could become.

The depth of combat was nothing like I've ever seen.  The strategies a player used were completely based on how you wanted to form your party and what you enjoyed doing.  I could gear up some warriors with a druid, a priest, and mage to boost their offensive and defensive powers then crush every kobold I find.  Or I could use the same warriors as a wall to protect my squishy mages and slow down the enemies with web and grease, then blast them into ash with explosive death.  I enjoyed a lot of explosive death, and it's something that Warlord will feature plenty of.

A group of characters could be choosen that fit your personality.  If you're a nice person and you wanted to do the right thing, there was a group of digital friends you could adventure along with.  If you wanted to murder the innocent peasents, there were some crazed bastards that would love you for it.  Many actions had consequences, and the encouragement or dissaproval of party members made me think differently than usual.

The last thing I want to cover are the astounding locations.  Every single new icon on the games global map was full of amazing and new locations.  I want to end this post with some of these locations, and I want everyone to think about what it's going to be like to wage all out war on such a map, because that's our goal.

Gnoll Strong Hold:

Baldur's Gate:

Windspear Hills:

Ust'Natha

Brynnlaw

Umar Hills

So I'm sure you have read our quick blurb about what we intend the game to be, but I'm sure that everyone wants to know more about how we intend the game to be played.  To do that we have to first take a look back at some of the influentual games of our time and decide what features we loved, what features we hated, and how it's going to influence Warlord: Tears of Taltos as we move forward.  Each week I'm going to continue this article until it results in some of our first gameplay footage.

The first Real Time Strategy game I ever played, and probably my first encounter with creatures known as Elves, Orcs, and Fantasy as a whole.  Warcraft 2.

I imagine this game was many gamers introduction to RTS.  The screams of my blazing 56k modem would let me connect to a friends computer and test my newly discovered Orc Grunt rush attack against his Alliance Keeps.  We loved every moment of the game, it was new, it let us think and strategies evolved from lunch room discussions.  The sweet sound of death and decay eating away an enemies farms as your Bloodlusted Ogres bashed his Knights into a bloody pulp.  It was beautiful.

There was a lot to love here, but there are some serious stand out traits that I love to see in video games to this very day.

1. A game that isn't too serious.  I love finding that hidden nook in the corner of the map where some funny encounter plays out.  It lets you know that you're in on the joke.  Too many clicks on an Orc when you're bored and the dialog stops getting serious and it starts getting silly.  The perfect mix between serious when axes are hitting faces, and silly when you are bored with finding that enemies last peon.

2.The diversity in units and colors were amazing.  An array of goblins strapped with explosives, trolls with blue mohawks, fat fleshy orgres, and dark mysterious death knights all made the Orcs stand out from one another.  The alliance was much of the same with feathery griffons, armor clad knights, blonde haired elves,  and those damn mages.

3. The UI was incredibly easy to use.  It's archiac by today's standards, but there is something just beautiful about how simple it was.  There were only a few things to choose from for each unit, and that was all you needed.  Move, Patrol, Attack, Guard.  Then you had your special commands for your wizards.  Sheep, Blizzard, Fireball.  So simple, but the depth at which you could use them was damn near limitless.

Despite all of the love I have for the game, there were some serious flaws.  I'm sure you're saying of course there are the game is 15 years old, but there are flaws that are being repeated even in recent games.

1. The long wait before action.  Watching that little peon hammer away at a strong hold, waiting for the next peon to be created, building a barracks, ugh.  So boring.

2. Ships.  Not every level had a place for them, and when they were useful they were annoying.  Looking back I kind of hate that they wasted resources on something that wasn't fully utilized.  More flying units or spend some time balancing the other units and making them different would have been prefered.  I guess there is a reason we haven't seen a return to sea warfare by Blizzard.

3. Sameness.  Both factions were mirrors of each other.  No true differences except for the spells, and Orc spells kicked way more ass.  To make the game dynamic it has to have variety.

Next up, is a game that many of you probably aren't thinking of as an RTS....

Hey, hi all!

My name is Carl Dubreuil and I do some animation for the Warlod game.In the next few week I will try to show you the animation I'm working on for this game.

For this blog I will show you two small animation of the Reptus KhongTo. A walkcycle and the preemptive attack.

Thanx and see you later :D!

WIP of the hound of judgement model. Maya averaged the normals on the legs a little weirdly.

Our Kickstarter fund-raising program is slowly raising money.  Hopefully we have a big surge as we lead into the last month.  Tell your friends and family to pre-order the game so that they get all the kick ass bonuses like our sound track, beta access and more.

We also added a reward that allows the supporter to voice one of the characters in our game.  So if you want if you want the once in a lifetime chance to voice a templar hero or blood thirsty vampire this is it!

Ok guys, I'm not dead, here's the refined linework of the reptus mage. I'll go over it and add scales to him later and maybe clean some lines up and add some shadows.

Hey ho,

My Name's Jenna and I'm doing some concept art for a couple of miniatures that hopefully will be released along with the Warlord game. I'll put up a bit of my process here to give you an idea of what goes into a concept. I usually draw game concept art, but the principles are the same.

First up I gather reference for the drawing, because this is based on a pre-existing set of characters, I am looking at the miniatures that have aleady been done, as well as some previous concept art. Here's a page of reference to give you an idea.

Okay, once I have some reference and have got a bit of a feel for the character, I'll go ahead and do some thumbnail sketches, to find a good pose for the character.

I scanned these drawing, then picked on of the poses that I liked, and cut that one out, increased the size, then drew over the top of it to get a base drawing to go on with.

This guy is pretty rough, but I can clean him up later. The important thing is to have a body to draw armour etc over the top of.You can see I drew a profile of his head, as it isn't easy to see in the original drawing, and a sculptor might get angry at me :B

I duplicate this guy several times, then on a new layer in photoshop I draw costume on top.

You can see I've done a few variations, again so there is an option of which one to go on with. I'll post some more later on, it's not over yet!

After a night of headaches we finally have our project under source control, backed up, and protected.  Moving everything manually was becoming a pain fast. 

I'll try to show off a few of our maps as I complete them.  I'm also thinking about holding a contest where a fan gets to help us design a map that will be used in game.

We have several new team members that have pledged to sweat and bleed until Warlord is complete.  I plan on updating our Team page with information on everyone soon.  That way you can get to know us a little better.

Our new volunteer artist has reinvisioned our Reptus models, and I love what I see.  As soon as we get the model properly rigged in the game, I'll show it off for everyone here.

One very important aspect of a RTS game is that you need to be able to see your units, which means there needs to be a camera.  Preferably one that the player can move around and look at the map and generally see what's going on where. I started working on camera controls to allow the user to see things.

The game that inspired me the most for camera controls has been Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II.  This game allows for full 360 degree rotation on the vertical axis, zooming in and out, and cardinal direction movement.  Since we are also making a similar type of game (except with giant reptiles and Moorish castles), I thought this would be a good starting point for ideas.

I started modifying a camera in a Unity demo project and researching on how to detect input methods.  Turns out, detecting input was my greatest hurdle for the project due to lack of documentation, but it's way easy.  It wasn't very long before I had a camera moving around with the arrow keys and zooming in and out with a scroll wheel.  Next step was getting the camera to move by moving the cursor next to an edge of a screen, which didn't take long either.  

I thought about some more features that would be neat for the camera, such as accelerating the movement speed of the camera either by holding down an arrow key for an extended period of time or moving the cursor closer to the edge of the screen.  Those would allow for finer control of the camera and faster movement across the map.  I managed to get the camera to move faster or slower based on how close the cursor is to the edge of the screen but I do not have acceleration working for arrow keys.

I also got camera rotation "working".  By "working" I mean I can rotate the camera by holding down an "Alt" key and moving the mouse left or right.  But then when you try to move forward with the camera it moves the direction of the original "North".  Not good so I'm currently working on that.  I have a few ideas on how to solve the problem but I'm hoping I get to trigonometry.  Everywhere.  Probably not though since Unity makes everything so easy :-/.