This sounds great, and the screenies look good as well.

HOLY BATMAN, out of nowhere! Are you making this for HD, Userpatch, or the CD version ?

[This message has been edited by Aristeides (edited 07-01-2015 @ 10:40 AM).]

Nice to see this thread go up! Screenies look great, concept is cool, and from what I've heard/seen over skype this should be quite a good one!

HOLY BATMAN, out of nowhere! Are you making this for HD, Userpatch, or the CD version ?

Should be compatible with all game versions and mods.


Note the cursor in the screenshots. So professional.

I always forget about the cursor too, then I look at the image in paint when I'm cropping it and notice it so I retake the screenshot. It's not very noticeable in your screenshots, though - my eyes were drawn immediately to the design instead

Looks great John!

Unique victory conditions is a good idea, RPs where everyone makes peace and builds a huge army to duke it out two hours in are boring, so that should shake up things.

Also, why does the cursor appear to you? Print Screen + Paste into the image editor, voila, no cursor.

Thanks!

I make screenshots by pressing F14 and taking the PNG from the screenshots folder of AoE II.

Looks sweet

Great work so far mate!

Aaaand my external hard drive just died. Hope I can rescue the files, this project would be my least concern (lots of personal and non-backed-up stuff saved there) but it would be just another thing lost.

Any way of recovering the Drive?

The project looks good, and the unique victory conditions are interesting. It'd be a shame if this is lost.

It seems to work again... don't ask me why (wasn't overheated or anything). But I take it as a sign to get a new one asap.

I blame cables for things like that.

Files (scenario and concept images) are copied to new computer. Work on this will continue shortly.

Good to hear!

Finally made a lot of progress again today. Was designing for about 8 hours, and was streaming it all just for fun, with varying viewer numbers from 1-12. Definitely a nice way to design.

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Next time you're streaming, tell us so we can watch

It's a purely spontaneous thing. However you can drop me a follow to might notice it. (Twitch channel)

Made some more progress this morning. Soon I'll have a finished map without a story.

I'll continue (and also stream again lol) in a few minutes. Maybe I can get it done this week.

Nice screenshots. The combination of the castle and the monastery in particular is one of my favorites - it has a very organic feel to it.

We should put together an AoKH Twitch channel to do design streams on. I'd be game for doing some over the holidays in particular.

Excellent work John. I logged in for 1 minute to see what you were doing but sadly I didn't have time to see more. Looking great though.

I was thinking of making a video or a stream of me figuring out how to 3D model aoe1 buildings. They're on a much smaller scale than aoe2, even though both are made in very similar ways, so it's easier imo. I just have to figure a few more things out but I'm getting close to ES' style.

[This message has been edited by Jan dc (edited 12-15-2015 @ 01:52 PM).]

Thanks for the nice words!

While checking some stuff in TS I noticed I'm at 41188 existing units right now, 23226 of those placed in the last 2 days within a total of 16 hours of work. One could say that I was on a roll. And out of music to use on the stream, haha. Luckily those were only the IDs (which don't go down upon again deleting a unit), the units are only 14k. Means a lot less lag.

[This message has been edited by John the Late (edited 12-19-2015 @ 00:22 AM).]

The stream is a pleasure to watch. Makes me want to follow suit once I'm home

I tend to listen to EDM to get me all energized, but that's just me

Good to know. I'll see if I can use a better resolution next time without my upload collapsing.

And about the music... I've had everything. From EDM to videogame or movie soundtracks to (today) early venetian lute music. I quite like to use fitting music when design certain things, like this track while designing some of the swampy area. The "energising" music, like some good nice hardstyle, I listen to while playing, for the most part.

_____________

Map design is at 97%. All areas are done, I just want to improve a few older ones.

However... I still lack names and a story.

[This message has been edited by John the Late (edited 12-16-2015 @ 01:16 PM).]

However... I still lack names and a story.

Often the most difficult part. I spent hours trying to formulate those for my map

And I thought that a story/names/background are worthless when there's no map but a map without a story is well usable, so I decided to not bother with it until I have a substantial amount of the map completed.

I often find that it gives me a bit of inspiration when it comes to the characteristics of the players whose lands I am designing when you've fleshed out each faction a bit story-wise.

Looking great!
Cant wait to play, You gotta let me be yellow tho!

^ Explanation: Knaber helped me a lot with the wall layout of the yellow town, greatly improving its looks.

Looks like we'll have a test game on Steam (despite utter lack of story ) in about 30-40 minutes. Anyone's welcome to join, right now we are on 4 or 5 of 7 players.

Triple post but:

Short overview of the factions:

IMPORTANT: All victory conditions require a standing army of at least 80. What good is a wonder when there are no people left?

Player 1 - Teutons
One of the two main military players. Starts in west with an economic base and in northwest with a military base. Requires 4 castles in special locations to win.

Player 2 - Celts
The other of the two main military players. Starts in east with an economic base and in the center with a military base. Requires 4 castles in special locations to win.

Player 3 - Japanese
Starts in northern mountains, has the smallest starting town and no army, but 3 relics. Needs to secure all 10 relics to win (no countdown required).

Player 4 - Britons
Starts with a fortified town in the center. Needs to build a wonder to win (no countdown required).

Player 5 - Aztecs
Starts on an island in the south, needs to ensure that no other player has any monasteries left standing, while having 10 of their own.

Player 6 - Goths
Have a weak start in the southwest, but more food. Need to expel all other players from the western land by destroying their military buildings on it.

Player 7 - Spanish
Start in the northest and the southwest, have a good economy. Need to achieve 100.000 gold to win.

AI
Neutral trade town village that everyone can trade with. Its existence is especially important to player 7.

Techs: No gunpowder for anyone, no Paladins for anyone but the Celts, no siege onager for anyone but the aztecs. No perfusion for goths, no free +1 foot archer range in imperial for britons.

[This message has been edited by John the Late (edited 12-30-2015 @ 04:26 PM).]

Ah, it's nice to see the individual victory conditions and which players have to achieve them. From what you've shown me of the map, it seems that you have a very different take on the unique victory conditions and power structure in this map than what I've created in Galderton, so I'm quite intrigued. I'm unavailable today and tomorrow for testing, but I look forward to some games afterwards!

played before 2 rounds of it, was a very close match. had a lot of fun. map detail is also pretty nice.

I just noticed that I still haven't published this...

Everything is complete, except for the fact that I lack names and a background story, and I don't want to upload a 99% finished map, not this close to 100%.

If anyone has some ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.

My last concept was:

Blue and red are both invading nations from the west and east respectively.

Green is a monastic order from the north that only recently took arms to recover all the relics.

Cyan was the former ruling folk of the lands but got displaced by the blue, would have to either bury their rivalry or rekindle it.

Yellow is the longest standing (and somewhat arrogant?) town in the area, but facing a continuous threat from red. Are in some sort of friendship with cyan (they also start as allied to each other as opposed to neutral like everyone else to everyone).

Orange is some trader nation, company, whatever - they come from the northeast (dryer area), hold the best trade route with an army and an economical camp along the route.

Purple are island dwellers that for some reason leave it and expand.

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The AoKH Continuous Screenshot Competition X | The CSC Archives VI | Unnamed RP Map project - 99% finished

[This message has been edited by John the Late (edited 06-07-2016 @ 03:14 PM).]

Nice to have you back, and it's great to see this getting close to completion.

From what you've posted, it seems that you already have the premise of the scenario largely set, so it should be reasonably straightforward to derive a brief background plot for it. As for the actual names, the key thing is keeping them within a more-or-less consistent style - if the differences within a single map are too jarring and numerous across the board then it would seem unrealistic. When designing my Galderton map I derived most names from the Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, and early Germanic linguistic groups. While all of those have a degree of difference, there is also some commonality, and it's far more reasonable than having, say, Chinese, Turkic, Norse, Indian, Spanish, and Mayan names all on the same map.

There was actually a recent discussion in another thread on this subject, so check that out if you like (see posts 252-266).

Apologies for the relative lack of specificity, but I'm giving fairly general advice because it's your project and I don't want to inject my personal preferences into it to the point of hijacking it.