I also noticed this. The overall quality of scenarios seems to be low compared to the Fall of the Trident campaign and even to the AoK scenarios. Higher standards and a more complicated editor are definitely part of it - in AoM, you are expected to have movie-like cinematics and 3D eyecandy and the little patches of flowers and normal-view movies and bird explosions from AoK are worth almost nothing. Also, using all the editor features takes a lot of time and people are either dropping projects after getting half-way through or working for them on months and not releasing them yet. In AoK and AoE, there were many simple and neat "tricks" such as gaia units, click-chat system and the explosions that could create innovative effects, and players liked them because they were not used to seeing such effects in an AoK/AoE campaign, so they praised scenarios with them. The AoM campaign is very high-quality from the start and the unexpected little tricks in AoK/AoE are commonplace.

Maybe something like The Quest in AoK could serve as a catalyst to the scenario design community and give people enough ideas to get them started. More likely, however, people should try to take things step by step and make small scenarios instead of attempting to make the 6-scenario, 12-hour super-campaigns from Best of AoK. Even 30-minute maps can be enjoyable and creative, and their designers don't feel much pressure to finish them and are able to release them one by one or in batches and have an overall storyline. Multiplayer scenarios and RMS are also an idea that can be done quickly, especially with the new trigger-copying tools, and we've seen some nice ones there. Even in AoK, the great campaigns and scenarios didn't come until several months after the game's release. Eventually standards will start to build up, designers will improve in skill and we might see some better results.

[This message has been edited by Matei (edited 04-15-2003 @ 09:29 PM).]

yes, RMS is building some momentum. They're faster to make than scenarios, which why we've seen more quality RMS scenarios than scenarios. RMS design (as I think we should call it now) has only been done for multiplayer scenarios though...

AOM hasn't ruined scenario design, it's just complexed it. More features mean you need to spend more time making things, making sure that everything works for each thing.

Unlike in AOK with it's Tile-based map system, AOM is much more complex. You're not restriced to tiles, to "stair" elevation, etc. Triggers are more specific, theres cinematics, lighting, hundreds of units and many other things. All of these have to be evaluated for your scenario, and that ofcourse takes more time. There are shortcuts ofcourse, all you need to do is take advantage of the interface, hotkeys, and a certain cinematic bug. You'll be designing much faster. What'll take longer than designing is polishing and fine tuning though...

AOM's editor is a whole new thing now, far better than AOK's editor. An example of that would be comparing AOK's single player campaigns with AOM's.

So it's not so bad Theres just not enough designers, and not enough good designers. AOM split the community. Some people went to EE, some to Warcraft 3, some to AOM and some stuck with AOK... thats the only problem with AOM's scenario design and community.

All said is kinda true.. I have been making a campaign, Thursday will complete a month of working on it, and im still making Scenario 1....

Quote:

Ouch cheezy, very ouch.

Yes, things were better in the AoK days. There's no denying that. If there were some way to get rid of AoM and freeze advancement at AoK, I would be the first person standing in line. With the greater length of time an AoM scenario takes to make, the quality of the average scenario will begin to fall, while the rating system continues to expect more as the game gets older. When AoK first came out, scenarios were amazing with their graphics and triggers. Skip two years later and the graphics seemed downright primitive and everyone had gotten over triggers. It's an endless downward spiral and making better and better editors isn't going to help anything.

But for your other point, I agree that the editor will probably not be used much for Multiplayer. But there's still single player, still RPG's (Well, I'm out of touch with the community, but I'M working on an RPG right now, so there's at least one.)

Scenario Design takes an amazing degree of dicipline. Many aspiring designers simply aren't able to handle that. They can't deal with the fact that designing a quality scenario is a huge commitment, and that if they don't force themselves to design instead of doing more entertaining things, they'll never finish a scenario. Probably only 1 in 20 designers has what it takes to produce great work, and sadly, that limits us to four or five great designers.

All the "oldies" (as I call them) were desperesed. Rasher doesn't do anything, Ingo isn't even in the scene, Ex-T quickly lost interest in AOM and moved on to Dawn of Fantasy, Shadows isn't too interested, I think he's only making his buff campaign because people expect him too. Philip has AOM, but enjoys playing it more than designing for it, and any of the others have settled down in design teams waiting for a renaisance in the community. So that means theres very few people actually designing something.

Theres still some people that're doing things though, Tsunami is looking mighty fine with 5 projects planned, Woad's got some action going on, people are taking advantage of the XML-modability of AOM, The community is alot better than it was when AOM was first released (remember those scenarios that people made where you'd just walk through a large path in a forrest and attack myth units? Those days are now over finally ) The community should be better later on, and even better when the expantion is out. Scenario design isn't dead.

Kudos iNt.

Scenario design for 3d games is awfully bad compared to 2d. Look at W3 and SC as a comparison...I doubt anything in W3 nearly 1 year after its release(give or take a few months) is half as good as the Starcraft stuff(although I hate the game, I gotta admit the SD community owned).

I'm not sure what the problem is...I'm guessing it's the increased work needed. Same thing happened with EE. We are given tons of options, gazillions of them, but it gets overwhelming. Scenario editing has become hard, tedious and overly long as you said and as such I don't even feel like starting anything big(same thing that scared me with W3) because I don't know where to start really.

And I tend to agree with hmmm...some unknown red guy() about this...there is no real community here. SD never lifted and never even began.

In the AoK community by now, Ingo had released the quest, Rasher his Map Tricks, David his taunt AI, Magnus the click-talk scenario RPG, Ex-t had released ROTDM, there was a huge newbie wave(that basically brought me to AoKH a bit before the release), teams were starting(well tons of teams were created after the success of Punk), ambitious projects that would see completion were started, etc. So, stop saying it's like the AoK community, it isn't.

There is a nice modding, RMS community(kinda although both are rather small too, but they produce something), but the game is lacking any great designer or any good scenarios released(yeah I'm offending tons of people) or anything special, great that would make it a real design community.

My 2 cents.

I guess people will be wanting Ease of Use more than Power/features in an editor now

Yeah, thats the way it is Cheezy...

The only thing(s) we need to make good scens is the Kill condition and a editing stats effect.

EVERYTHING else about the editor is absolutely AWESOME!

I think one of the main reasons is because no one wants to make B&D or FF scenarios. With RPGs, you simply don't have enough control over things to make a decent one. At least not better than what you could do in AoK:TC/SWGB gameplay wise. Lack of Toybox units is also a problem for AOM. There's only so many heroes in this game and they're all pretty much ones used in the official campaign and all but a few are Greek. Despite how much more advance this editor is, its still lacking tons of stuff that AoK:TC and SWGB had and I'd rather not have to resort to making scenarios in an editor without those things.

Sooner or later we’re going to see decent work coming out for AOM, and if it’s all from teams instead of individuals then so be it. The Half-Life scene is very similar, with the only good mods being made by experienced teams with time on their hands and only a handful of lone designers doing anything other than multiplayer maps. The same thing may well happen to AOM. Let’s face it, there’s going to be infinitely more bulk than there ever was in AOK because as well as the people who can’t be bothered to put any effort in, the moderate designers like me can only do as well as the poorer designers in AOK, due to the massive increase in skill and time needed for a decent project. The future may well be that studios like TS or Punk all work on just one project each with everyone doing a bit, giving quality over quantity in the few campaigns worth downloading.

Wouldn’t it have been so much easier if we had AOK3D?

In terms of scenario design, AoM is AoK3D, with a lot of toybox units in the form of MU's. That's the problem with it, you can't make SP scenarios that make people go "wow" anymore without putting in a lot of effort. Although in the eyecandy thread we have seen some very nice designs.

I was thinking more in terms of AOK3 as compatible with AOK scns, so that you could make your map in AOK, export it to the 3D engine, touch it up and release it. Nonsense of course, but it would be pretty damn amazing.

AOM requires more effort, because you can have more details in it in terms of map designing.

Triggers are fairly similar to AoK:TC IMO, but with AoM scendrio design, there is one problem.

The problem is the standard set by the ES campaign. The story might not be liked by all, but the designing was fabolous, and although many will argue, that they used dev-tools, still I havent seen one creation anything near it.

But now, if we notice, the major influx of n00b scenarios is over (as can be seen by hardly any new scns in Downloads section) and in some time many people are coming out with what I think are good scenarios, so its gonna get better

Also, for RM scripters, AoM is the perfect game I think

Naw..it isn't perfect for rmscripting, just very nice - better than all its predecessors....

we can do some really cool things...watch for my newest one coming out very soon..

thx
svede

IMO maybe it's not the editor itself, I think it's the lack of plots and stories. And maybe, the lack of editability of some elements (for instance, the units) that discourages the real scen makers from doing them.
It's an art

[This message has been edited by Scavenger (edited 04-16-2003 @ 05:07 PM).]

Scavenger, the greatest maps I've seen in the Age series were made in Aoe/AoK and both of those lacked any unit editing features. The Quest is a fine example of what a great map is and it didn't need fluffy fluffy beautify feature, name change, HP change and all...

Quote:

This is true, however, the reason RMS is so quick and easy is easily because of the fact that good terrain mixing and eye candy placement is not able to be put online, for the reason of 56Kers. Personally, I say let the RMS's take ESO. But, it will be long time before they begin to dominate SP, if they ever do. It is much easier, even if more tedious, to place rocks, grass, and mix terrain via the scenario editor. The reason RMS is dominating multiplayer is simply because the standards of multiplayer maps aren't as high. Making an RPG... a good one with RMS would take just as long, maybe a little less, than with the editor.

Quote:

I don't know if you are or not CheeZy, but, if you are, you cannot compare this community (I.E. designer skill) with that of AoKH. Why? Simply because the community of AoKH has existed much longer than this one. If you compare the two, AoM is still fairly young, therefore designers are still developing. And, even though I find the editor decent, it is still lacking the "User-friendly" aspect to go along with how "AoM has complexed scenario designing." I hope the X-pack will add more features to help designers make things easier.

My thoughts.

Yes, true. The majority of the AOK scn design community didn't move to AOM, and if they did they went back. Compared to how AOK was durring this time of it's release as compared to AOM, AOM is doing alot better. But AOM now compared to how AOK is now isn't looking too good.

It's still a young community I suppose

I'm new to this AOM forum (and others!) or nOOb as we're called. So, 'ello, to everyone here.
Lets get this out of the way: I enjoy AOM editor. Ok, it has its faults, like a zillian triggers for a small reward. No killed unit count without a miriad of overlapping triggers (no i can't do it. So don't flood this thread asking. But I'm sure experts on here have) But the graphics are cool. Some of the sfx are kind of neat! I'm sure when the x-pack comes out it will have that one effect or character that will set the idea's rolling again; same goes for the modding comminities efforts in character design.
I've not used any of the game editors mentioned before, so i cannot compare, sorry. My limits stretch to cossacks. I say this because that had a few handy trigger conditions such as killed unit counts (anyone made one). The layout of triggers was ok, but far easier to read and organise. I've use AOK a tiny bit, but I'm afraid I'm a 3d'ish guy.
I've also noticed several threads concerning a problem with changing stats in the game. Now I know this is not possible in the editor, but people keep asking how to make so and so's hp higher and getting a flood of nasty trigger combos as a reply (enough to puzzle some). But isn't that what the V- editors for? Yes I hear you cry! But, it seems so simple to use. As you say the RMS thingy is mainly concern with MP, until its fully sorted, i'm presuming. So, generally, they're going to be SP. So there is no reason to be scared in unbalancing the games stats, because we don't need every unit available, just the ones that fit the story, which inturn means we don't have to spend time changing every stat.Want your hero with a million hp then do it. In my scenario, amongst others changes, i have a regeneration on most of the units (not on all the enemies, hehe i like hords!), as a natural healing, all changed according to size of and so on, mixed with a bit of common sense. Now this is a small change,( added two things to each character used in 5 mins) however, simple change like this would stop people having to be put off by spend huge amounts of time trying this and that trigger to increase hp etc.; something the triggers were not design to do in a single equation. Worried about certain characters getting killed if needed alive? add a restore hp through the v-editor (and no I'm not a friend of the programmer, its just a god send). Give fire giant 10000hp 20000, why, well he would be a lot bigger in *real life* but thats not represented because of graphic limits, but you can make it FEEL that way, also. Get a minion, change its stats to garbage and you can smack tons down for a big raid and make your slightly changed character look like a bloody hero as he slashes the hords!!! Would it stop designers getting bogged down and exhausted with the implimentation of the scenario rather than the design? would stories not come about from your changes to the V editor, too? What I'm trying to say is: use V-editor. It's a spring board!!
Anyways, here's another slant on your discussion: One problem I've found on several sites is the ratio of reply posts to downloads for most scenarios. Now ,if someone is going to learn whats bad about their scenario designs,(and encourage them to continue -so important!), do they not need to know? So a scenario gets 5/10...Mmm. One persons score of five is going to be different from anothers, regardless of the rules of the forum, if any; unless several aspects of the game are to be rated seperately then possibly an overall score(this may cause even more problems! so i'm not going to open that can of vipers). So, it may of achieved that score because of a fantastic story but a diabolical map. or visa versa. Now, this is a highly simplified example. However, downloading this scenario may give someone a chance to learn the right and wrong way in its map or story design and offer advice or more importantly get advice by replying. How many people download a 5/10 scenario!!! Without any reply, a five is just a five. Maybe its not about bad scenarios, per sa, but taking the time to play the ones out there and replying!.(if you do, then ok! I'm not a mind reader.)
We have the audio lists, trigger lists, cinimatics faq's etc, which is great, and frankly without them, I would be several paces back in my AOM design, so thanks!!! But get ten people to do a cinimatic scene, and you'll get ten differing results ranging from poor to cool! Because, people may know HOW to make the cinimatics, but its the little things however small, in the design and such, which seperate the men from the boys. If knowone replies to peoples ideas, maybe, we will not achieve a better natural progression in the peoples design communities.

*breath

Sorry I waffled, but there's my two cents. Ay...I gave you a nickle, wheres my change?!..

Bye!

I know I've been out of touch (I let new forums six months to get rid of the worst n00bs), so it might sound a little strange but...

What's V Editor, how does it work, and where do I get it?

Hi spitfire.
-Nicholas "Vachu" Pollender for the program
-AoMC for hosting the file. ( http://aom.rtsgamer.com/Just search for V-editor hear. Its dead easy to get to grips with. Install it, load it up. It takes the .ofd file from your AOM, so you can put the stats of each character back to the way it was if need be, because if you play a sp scenario with your reworked file the states from that will be played in the sp missions, but its simple to change back.
create a new one and then you can give possible any character in the game an ability which another character has got. Wnat to walk under the bridges in the object section, change the obstruction radius for x and y to 0.0 and you can walk straight under it. TRue 3d! Give a restore hp and its rate like Arcantos to a spearman! and so on. Change the foot prints of a fire giants to a frosts footprints!?!?!?!? To a deers!!!!!!!!!!!!CHange the armour stats for crushing etc, set initial hp to what ever., all that and more The list is endless. Get it. TRy it. Then don't look back.

Chow!

P.s. when i say nOOb, I mean to the forum. I've never played AOM, I've just designed. yehar!!

[This message has been edited by mitch1971 (edited 04-17-2003 @ 00:52 AM).]

Age of Mythology didn't destroy scenario designing, that enough is easily said. What did, in my opinion, was the simple release of numerous high-quality games.

During the late time in AoK other great games were planned for release. Such as EE, Wc3 and even AoM in the distant future. Each game was being released in close distant to the other.

I remember talking to people about where they planned to "move". War Craft apparently was already well known for it design, especially in StarCraft. So I knew some of the best designers had plans of departing AoK and moving to Wc3. Such as TDS and Nazgul.

EE did the same, dividing a community into small pieces. The spread left a thin layer of good designers to each respectable game. Intrepid left for EE ( and in my opinion, did a great job) most of the Punk staff went as well. Ex-t even released a fairly decent campaign for EE.

And now AoM arrived, and those communities were divided even more. Except many considered the AoM editor to be flawed and inferior. I still hear people compare WC3 to AoM all the time.

AoM never got off the ground. The optimism thus far is miss placed, as any comparison to where AoK was right now is bewildering. AoK launched rather quickly, and fantastic scenarios came in such quick succession it blustered the community. And of course, the newbie flooding which only further increased an expanding community. In my opinion, AoK was a utopia of a scenario designing community, much like Star Craft. They were strong, had a huge backing by a good community, numerous skilled designers and storytellers and ext.

Nothing at all like that has occurred for AoM. There has not been a mass release of quality scenarios, or even high quality well thought out scenarios. We had a small newbie rush, but instead of blustering the community it simply seemed to only lower the percentile of quality to good scenarios. In this case, quality loses to quantity again.

AoM is a good editor save a few flaws which should have never existed. The only problem right now is the community. Too slow, too little.

It makes me jealous actually to look at how well the RMS community is doing. But at the same time, happy to know that at least one community is flourishing.

My own campaign has been on a standstill for such a long time. I have a good 4 playable scenarios completed, along with 4 other cinematic scenarios. But I fear the point of finishing them is minute. Considering the time and effort one must put into such an effort, for so little people who will most likely glide right by your hard work. As your work slowly falls into the bottom of the download list never to be seen again...

(and I'm sure purchasing Final Fantasy Orgins is not exactly helping my production levels either...)

(sigh)

[This message has been edited by Shadows (edited 04-17-2003 @ 01:13 PM).]

Quoted from Shadows:

From my observations, I believe there are two main ingredients for a successful design community:

1) A good editor
2) A highly effective scenario-publishing center (e.g. AoKHeaven's Blacksmith)

AoK had both , and most importantly, it had what many other designing communities do not: The Blacksmith -- which served effectively as a scenario publishing center, as well as a place that marked the achievements of the designers listed in its Hall of Fame that is known to its visitors as the Best of AoKHeaven section.

I just don't get the same feeling when I visit AoMHeaven's Download Central...

PS: if anyone is curious, visit the Blacksmith (if you haven't been there lately)
... and then visit AoM Download Central. You will see the reason for the difference in the success of the two Scenario communities.

I dare say that if The Blacksmith is taken away from AoKHeaven, its design community would not be any better than AoMHeaven's .

[This message has been edited by Alexandergreat3 (edited 04-17-2003 @ 03:35 PM).]