First of all, sorry I haven't posted much this week. I've been involved in a team at my school and I haven't been getting home until after 1 AM this whole week. I'm also running on about 4 hours of sleep right now, and I'm going to attempt to respond to the week's postings, so this post might be a little discursive.
Well, getting night-time screenshots was problematic: these two eggheads implemented some kind of trolling day/night system where day lasts for 3 hours game-time and night lasts about a minute, meaning that even with a speed up function it was tricky.
Right, so basically, we HAD a day/night system that was working, but then we realized it didn't work with player-specific lighting. So I took out the dynamic lighting and replaced it with static lighting for either day or night. But then blizzard said they'd be fixing the issue, so we putthe dynamic 24-hour lighting back in and left it non-functional, waiting for the fix. And then blizzard said that they changed their minds and it would be coming in a future patch who-knows-when. So the lighting is currently messed up, but it's an easy thing to fix, we just need to remove the time-of-day lighting and replace it with the static day/night lighting.
Nooo! I actually prefer the night, and those screenies look nicer than day IMO. Day looks ok, but I like night better. Though, IDK why the footpaths are light up by street lamps, it gives a nice park effect.
The intended time duration is the same between day and night. 6 AM to 6 PM is daylight, and 6 PM to 6 AM is night. The cycle will be shorter (I don't remember the time specifically, but it's 5-10 minutes for each phase).
All of this is Route 1; some at day-time, some at night-time. The lighting is still WIP, but it'll give you an estimate. The zone is now about 99% done, with me only wanting to make some smaller adjustments that'll pop up later.
Moz's terrain is awesome :P With any luck, we should have at least a few mostly terrained zones to explore. Now that the terrain is done, we'll go ahead and start adding stuff to do (mostly quests, item boxes, trainers, and random events). This first zone is sort of our "tutorial zone". It's the only zone, other than the city, which you are able to enter until you complete the introduction quest (it's basically requires you to pick your starting starmon, then catch a wild starmon during a tutorial-battle). So it's not too big and will likely have no trainers to fight, making it an easy and safe place to get started.
@TheAlmaity: Go A teleporter huh? I'll think of something. Made me remember of Chrono Trigger... I wonder if your teleporter had a chance to malfunction and send the player to a new secret zone, with some never-before-seen starmon... that would be an awesome secret in this map ;-)
Yes, a teleporter model would be fantastic. We're using a sensor tower as the temporary model, and even thought I put a lot of work into making teleporting super cool, the sensor tower just doesn't sell it as well as I'd like. I literally spent like 20 minutes just teleporting around because I loved the way it felt. If you're able to animate the model at all, a "charging up" animation would be pretty cool. If not, don't worry about it at all, we can add some kind of sparks via other actors.
@JacktheArcher: Go
Just took a look at the triggers that handle our quest system, and I must say Zelda did a really neat job ^.^ 90% of the actions necessary for quests seem to be the conversation box related ones :) He even made the phasing system really easy to use!
Yup, I just overhauled the sidequest system, so it's going to be (hopefully) very easy to add quests. It's not totally "redone" yet, but it's already way easier to add stuff. We just enter the info in the user type (requirements, some info, xp rewards, etc....), copy the "template" quest trigger that I haven't actually made yet, set up the dialog, and then create any quest-specific units or events we might need.
I was thinking the mentor could be more accessible if broken up and might save players from teleporting/flying back to the same town all the time. I like the NPC gathering idea and will there be a random amount and types at each place (just to make it more realistic and interesting)? Yay for a quest log like thing.
I'll reiterate what TheAlmaity said- we're going to have ONE city, the big "arena city" at the center of the map. There just isn't enough room to put in loads of towns, and we'd rather have more fun content rather than an extra city to talk to people in. We're definitely going to have some "outpost" types of places where you can find trainers to talk to, pick up quests, heal starmon, teleport, and buy items. You'll find places like a small farm, an outpost in the desert, a campsite in the forest....stuff like that.
I understand I might be asking a little too much and have been in that same position. When people really like your project they suggest lots of wild and interesting ideas. From the dev's point of view it's a little overwhelming since we have alot of work to do and our own ideas to manage. Just give the word and I'll cool my jets :P
I understand that from both sides. Obviously we're not able to take every suggestion and implement it, but we really do look at them all, and we really do appreciate it. A lot of times as a developer, you see your project as "your baby", and it takes an outside pair of eyes to point out obvious flaws. I know for runecraft we had this super weird alternate currency and had this placement system that was annoying and confusing, and Eivyn came along and pointed out how stupid those systems were.
The Starcenter is looking really incredible now, I love the couches added I agree that Pain Table seems kinda out of place though need like a modern Wood table there by the two couches I think.
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My Projects:
Sorted Multiplayer Leader Board
Card Shuffle Dialog Demo
Air Wars Mass
Blizzard Fan since Starcraft. The Single Player story is AMAZING IMO, I can't wait for the Expansions. In Warcraft 3 I only enjoy the Custom Maps scene (& Blizzards...
Just to elaborate on something Zelda missed since he didn't check the map before posting:
Night lighting is implemented already.
SoulFilcher already made an amazing model for the teleporter =D (Top left corner) He is working on some modifications to it though, so that it's not completely gray
Also, what Zelda did for the teleporter is flippin' amazing. It's so much fun using it =D Just simply a good sound and visual effect.
To be absolutely honest, I feel as if an alpha/beta test is incoming. We've got a LOT of stuff implemented, we just need to add more zones and quests, and I need to do some more data work for a couple of the quests which will hopefully be a pleasant surprise for you guys ;) I'd give us another month though - Can't really estimate well how quickly this phase of development will go, as we heavily rely on each other (We need Moz's terrain to make quests, and we need me to... Well, I kinda do whatever the fuck I want and no one really relies on me too much. We need Moz to make the terrain, then Zelda and I start adding quests, and I set up anything special necessary for the quests)
Oh oh oh, SoulFilcher, how hard is it to change the way textures are applied to an existing model? To be more specific, are you able to make the Human male/female model from WoW use multiple textures? One for legs, one for upper body + arms + hands and another for the head? The few human WoW models I have on this laptop all use all textures in one, but these don't seem to be the models player characters in WoW use so the textures on those might be split up. But in the case they are not split, are you capable of splitting?
EDIT: Yea, we're gonna remove the weird table, don't worry.
EDIT 2: Zelda, you did not only miss your 4000th post, but also the 500th post in this thread :) Dammit we've been doing this for a while, we should hurry up!
Nooo! I actually prefer the night, and those screenies look nicer than day IMO. Day looks ok, but I like night better. Though, IDK why the footpaths are light up by street lamps, it gives a nice park effect.
I agree, I like night better too. This is mostly because Route 1 ended up being a relatively 'plain' zone, with it being the first accessible and all. Some of the light tricks I've got in there will show better when I do the forest, which is gonna light up with all sorts of creepy insects and glowbugs when night falls.
You really kind of need to scroll over the area to get a better idea of how it feels, though. The problem is that there are very few points to focus on because the whole area is one streamlined thing. This works for the gameplay but makes single screenshots rather uninteresting. Plus, you really miss out on the 'alive' feeling where the lights flicker a little bit and the birds come over every now and then. I'm probably going to try and add some light wind or such to that too.
@TheAlmaity: Go I'm not sure I can do it. You know, I had no modelling experience before the first model I uploaded to mapster. I'm still learning the tricks here. That being said I know models can use multiple textures (many SC2 models do), but my ability to make it depends on the original model, so you should PM these files. I never touched WoW and I'd like to keep my hands clean ;-)
Alright, no problem. I'll ask Zolden or xCorbo instead once I get my hands on the model. Thanks a lot for the help you already gave to the map :) Some more furniture could be cool, and Mozared should probably post a wishlist if he has one. Once we start filling out the arena trainers, I'll make sure to add you as one of the milestone trainers ;) If you have any preferences, post em!
To be absolutely honest, I feel as if an alpha/beta test is incoming. We've got a LOT of stuff implemented, we just need to add more zones and quests, and I need to do some more data work for a couple of the quests which will hopefully be a pleasant surprise for you guys ;) I'd give us another month though - Can't really estimate well how quickly this phase of development will go, as we heavily rely on each other (We need Moz's terrain to make quests, and we need me to... Well, I kinda do whatever the fuck I want and no one really relies on me too much. We need Moz to make the terrain, then Zelda and I start adding quests, and I set up anything special necessary for the quests)
^ I'm emphasizing this. We really are making progress. Moz needs to create a few more of our starting zones, I need to then populate those zones with quests, and maity needs to....well, like he said, he'll do whatever he wants :P We definitely do rely on each other, and real life stuff can get in the way, but things are looking good....We'll just say that our guess for Alpha is now just a regular old "soon" instead of Blizzard's "soonTM".
And like Maity said, soulfilcher, we really do appreciate what you've already provided. It might not seem like much, but just a few custom assets go a very long way.
Ok here is the buildings map. It's not exactly beautiful but it works great. Plus you could always make the walls doodads or tint them or retexture them. All models are made by xxxdisturbedxxx. I copied these over from my survival map so sorry for any weird values. Sorry I didn't have time to add an ability to open the door and close it. I originally had a behavior that had a search effect that issued an order. But yea this is it.
Zelda was writing a post but had to go, so I'll take over :)
First of all, sorry if I didn't comment directly on your ideas >.> It either slipped my mind or there were just too many posts to reply to (There's been quite a lot more posts here lately :p ) I'll try and comment on everything from now on though.
For the mentor again: There'll definitely be people all over the place giving helpful hints or directing you to quests, and if we have time we might make some more elaborate ones like the main mentor. But putting very important NPCs into the zones kind of puts them out of the way (We're not saving your position in banks atm, so you always start in the main city. That's one of the reasons why we have the teleporter system), we'd like to keep all the important NPCs you want to repeatedly visit inside the main city (Doesn't mean we won't put any interesting NPCs you want to visit multiple times outside the city - If you have some cool ideas for some dude we can stuff in a hut somewhere, feel free to say so :p )
Quote from Zeldarules28:
We're not going to be giving too many details to spoil pieces of the plot here, but I will say that one of our goals when designing the "bad guys" was to make them feel threatening. In starmon, the criminal gang goes by the name "Cipher" (we felt that team xyz felt inherently childish). We found it silly that a criminal organization was taken down by a 10-year old brand-new trainer. So we're taking steps early within the game to make Cipher to feel scary, like you would feel with a real criminal gang. They use guns, they shoot and kill people, the police are constantly on lookout, etc.... We want them to feel scary, and we want them to feel like a real threat.
Zelda explained that pretty well before he had to leave.
There might still be idiots with the bad guys like in the real pokemon games, but the organisation itself won't be composed entirely of morons :p
Another thing is that guns are used in this universe. Guards will have guns, bad guys will have guns. But guns aren't very effective against starmon - They are naturally extremely resilient, which is why they are able to fight as much as they do, survive lightning strike, etc. You can shoot an entire clip into a Larvy, and yea it'll bleed like hell, but there's a good chance it'll survive and possibly even jump on you and chew your face off. And that's one of the weakest starmon in existence. Good look taking down a Venostalk, Blasturtle or Skarr, let alone ghosts like Mortessus.
Yes, everything is WoL doodads: tops of space platform towers for tables, scaled new folsom misc for glasses and plates and city props for the chairs.
What about a Radagast-esque character? Living in solitude and doesn't use much technology, instead excelling at herbalism for treating his starmon and he could be a starmon pacifist communicating well with starmon. The trainer could be given a quest to fetch herbs or plants for instance, you meet a plant-starmon and fight it but before you beat it the hermit will arrive and get it to calm down. Reward would be herbs that buff or heal your starmon.
Hiker trainers. They'll point you to side quests at places like mountains or wherever there's less people likely to be travelling through (or maybe some remote location).
Ruins maniacs. They give you puzzle minigames that when completed they'll share hidden locations like caves or an island.
A certain awesome terrainer may or may not be placed into the game and have this role exactly. But don't tell him I said that, he doesn't know yet.
Law enforcer. Help officer Jenny defeat specific trainers like biker gangs or team rocket trainers and you can return to her office in the city for money. Kinda like being an assassin for hire but starmon are your weapons and the target doesn't end up killed :P.
Organised rebels. Defeat specific trainers (just like the law enforcer) except you kind of run as a small gang. Based on the difficulty you return to the black market to gain an item.
No specifics for now, but there might be some stuff like this. We'll let you know.
Charismtic protagonist. Defeating certain trainers makes them want to join your party. Kinda like Ash, Misty, and Brock. You also get to choose who to bring along (when you want) for 2v2 battles or other team activities. This extends to milestone trainers or someone related to them. The benched party members hang out in the city or their usual locations. They also train their own starmon their own ways so you can't control that.
As neat as that is, it probably won't happen. 2v2's are definitely not coming during the alpha or beta.... There's a small chance they COULD be added in a post-release patch, but if they were added at all, it would likely be in a major game-changing patch or expansion. It's just that the current way the system is set up would make it very difficult to add 2v2 support. If I tried, it would certainly take at least several months with the amount of time I have available.
That's some interesting info about Cipher. How about in battles with them they occasionally pull out their gun to do reasonable damage to your starmon on top of their starmon's attacks. Maybe even have a yugioh thing where Cipher will occasionally attack the trainer during battles. Honestly, why has no one directed their starmon's attacks at the trainers? Without them, their starmon will roll over and die :P.
I'm going to just reiterate the following quote instead of responding in full. We hope you'll like "it" when we reveal "it"- you might even be able to guess what "it" is ^.^ But that's for later.
Maybe something along the lines of this for the counters in the star centers?
I definitely like some of your kitbashes there. Obviously the Star center will be a Star center and not a stripclub, but I can use some ideas. Nice thinking, I generally dislike doing man-made stuff.
So do these discounts or deals work for just that merchant or every shop? How about we can get coupons that give us free items of our choosing? I don't want to grind at the battle tower to get enough points to buy earthquake for everyone :P.
For now, the plan is to have a few random events spawn each game. So if you find a particular shopkeeper, his prices might be 75% cheaper than the "standard" price for whatever he's selling, but he doesn't always spawn, and even when he does, it's in a difference place. Or perhaps it's a black market that is only open at night. Something like that. Some random events would be more like mini-quests or battles, but the discount shopkeeper would be one of them.
Haha :) . Now I'm wondering, is the awesome trigger guy, data guy, and models ppl going to be in the game and what are their roles? Does anyone mind being professor Oak or the mentor? :P
The world is fairly empty now, but when we're closer to release, if you explore the world closely enough you'd be surprised what (and who) you'll be able to find :P
Ah, fair enuf. In that case how about something lighter? I do like the idea of making buddies in the game so maybe we can borrow their starmon at certain times. They'll train their starmon to keep up with your party or the zones you've been travelling in but I was thinking maybe a side quest could be helping these helpers out. For example if you train Brock's geodude, for every 5 levels and you return to him, you'll get like a TM, money, or party exp reward.
Training/borrowing other people's starmon is a neat idea. I'll put in in the idea box :P
I went ahead and put in the quest log today, that was a great idea. It was getting a little tricky to tell what you had to do at times, so this should help alot. It's nothing fancy, just a list of your active quests that tell you what to do next, but it really helps. Maity also made awesome artwork for some more UI elements, which we'll show off once they're properly in-game.
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Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
So, focusing on story and props atm? cool. I think a lot of ideas will flow in after you let us all play with the map for an hour or two. Btw, how's that alpha going to work, you just private-upload it and invite 3-4 of us into the game?
Yea, most likely that way. Currently we're thinking of late April, but it might be later if we don't get much time to work, or earlier if get a lot of time.
Let's see what we have for now...
Ground Fire (Evolves from Ground Bug)
Fire Fly why did it have to end D: .
Poison Grass
Water Rock
Electric Flying
Electric Steel
Ghost Ice
Rock Ice
Fly Poison
Bug Fly
Bug Dark
Grass Water
Grass Fight
Fire Rock
Fire Dark
we'll likely have a dark/ghost or dark/psychic combo.
The biggest issue is models - I can't just slap random types on random models. Most of the types atm were picked to match the model. Skarr is a big light brown scorpion with glowing orange pincers that look almost fiery, so he's ground fire. If you know any WoW models that would fit any of the type combos you like, post a screenshot and their names so that I can find em.
Also, definitely planning on a dark+electric (Starmon's version of Eevee is dark, we've got Ice, Fire and base already, just missing the electric one. Worst case scenario I'll retexture the Predator to be yellow+black.)
EDIT: I seem to have run into quite a big issue... WoW Model Viewer hasn't been updated since September and can't load the version of Mists of Pandaria that I have >.>
Ooh, I like fire fly. Too bad pokemon stopped using them if that's what you meant by that tiny text XD.
No, that was a shout out to the journey of Mal, his ship the Serenity, and it's crew. It's a Space-Western TV series that died short for no real reason (dedicated fan base, fairly good reviews) most of the way through season 1. Mal was a soldier that fought against the power that now is, so he works as a Ranyor-esque pirate/rebel/hired hand using his Firefly class transport ship. (this class was infamously used by smugglers, and is unarmed)
Almaity, I'm almost surprised at how awesome you are. Not only are you "mr.Who" but you are designing a map/mod/gameinagame for Sc2 about pokemon, and make firefly references. Hrm. that needs to be implemented into the mod/map. We need more Firefly in our Pokemon in our Sc2.
I say we find an abandoned Medivac, fix it up, and use it to rob an outpost (or the central) Starcenter of it's expensive medical products. We then sell those to the black market and receive a large bounty n our heads from "team rocket" or whatever organization was dubiously providing that med center with meds (and mind control substances to lace it with??)
First of all, sorry I haven't posted much this week. I've been involved in a team at my school and I haven't been getting home until after 1 AM this whole week. I'm also running on about 4 hours of sleep right now, and I'm going to attempt to respond to the week's postings, so this post might be a little discursive.
Right, so basically, we HAD a day/night system that was working, but then we realized it didn't work with player-specific lighting. So I took out the dynamic lighting and replaced it with static lighting for either day or night. But then blizzard said they'd be fixing the issue, so we putthe dynamic 24-hour lighting back in and left it non-functional, waiting for the fix. And then blizzard said that they changed their minds and it would be coming in a future patch who-knows-when. So the lighting is currently messed up, but it's an easy thing to fix, we just need to remove the time-of-day lighting and replace it with the static day/night lighting.
The intended time duration is the same between day and night. 6 AM to 6 PM is daylight, and 6 PM to 6 AM is night. The cycle will be shorter (I don't remember the time specifically, but it's 5-10 minutes for each phase).
Moz's terrain is awesome :P With any luck, we should have at least a few mostly terrained zones to explore. Now that the terrain is done, we'll go ahead and start adding stuff to do (mostly quests, item boxes, trainers, and random events). This first zone is sort of our "tutorial zone". It's the only zone, other than the city, which you are able to enter until you complete the introduction quest (it's basically requires you to pick your starting starmon, then catch a wild starmon during a tutorial-battle). So it's not too big and will likely have no trainers to fight, making it an easy and safe place to get started.
Yes, a teleporter model would be fantastic. We're using a sensor tower as the temporary model, and even thought I put a lot of work into making teleporting super cool, the sensor tower just doesn't sell it as well as I'd like. I literally spent like 20 minutes just teleporting around because I loved the way it felt. If you're able to animate the model at all, a "charging up" animation would be pretty cool. If not, don't worry about it at all, we can add some kind of sparks via other actors.
Yup, I just overhauled the sidequest system, so it's going to be (hopefully) very easy to add quests. It's not totally "redone" yet, but it's already way easier to add stuff. We just enter the info in the user type (requirements, some info, xp rewards, etc....), copy the "template" quest trigger that I haven't actually made yet, set up the dialog, and then create any quest-specific units or events we might need.
I'll reiterate what TheAlmaity said- we're going to have ONE city, the big "arena city" at the center of the map. There just isn't enough room to put in loads of towns, and we'd rather have more fun content rather than an extra city to talk to people in. We're definitely going to have some "outpost" types of places where you can find trainers to talk to, pick up quests, heal starmon, teleport, and buy items. You'll find places like a small farm, an outpost in the desert, a campsite in the forest....stuff like that.
I understand that from both sides. Obviously we're not able to take every suggestion and implement it, but we really do look at them all, and we really do appreciate it. A lot of times as a developer, you see your project as "your baby", and it takes an outside pair of eyes to point out obvious flaws. I know for runecraft we had this super weird alternate currency and had this placement system that was annoying and confusing, and Eivyn came along and pointed out how stupid those systems were.
Oh no! I wanted to make a special post for number 4000 but I posted that at like 1 AM when I wasn't paying attention :O
The Starcenter is looking really incredible now, I love the couches added I agree that Pain Table seems kinda out of place though need like a modern Wood table there by the two couches I think.
Just to elaborate on something Zelda missed since he didn't check the map before posting:
Also, what Zelda did for the teleporter is flippin' amazing. It's so much fun using it =D Just simply a good sound and visual effect.
To be absolutely honest, I feel as if an alpha/beta test is incoming. We've got a LOT of stuff implemented, we just need to add more zones and quests, and I need to do some more data work for a couple of the quests which will hopefully be a pleasant surprise for you guys ;) I'd give us another month though - Can't really estimate well how quickly this phase of development will go, as we heavily rely on each other (We need Moz's terrain to make quests, and we need me to... Well, I kinda do whatever the fuck I want and no one really relies on me too much. We need Moz to make the terrain, then Zelda and I start adding quests, and I set up anything special necessary for the quests)
Oh oh oh, SoulFilcher, how hard is it to change the way textures are applied to an existing model? To be more specific, are you able to make the Human male/female model from WoW use multiple textures? One for legs, one for upper body + arms + hands and another for the head? The few human WoW models I have on this laptop all use all textures in one, but these don't seem to be the models player characters in WoW use so the textures on those might be split up. But in the case they are not split, are you capable of splitting?
EDIT: Yea, we're gonna remove the weird table, don't worry.
EDIT 2: Zelda, you did not only miss your 4000th post, but also the 500th post in this thread :) Dammit we've been doing this for a while, we should hurry up!
I agree, I like night better too. This is mostly because Route 1 ended up being a relatively 'plain' zone, with it being the first accessible and all. Some of the light tricks I've got in there will show better when I do the forest, which is gonna light up with all sorts of creepy insects and glowbugs when night falls.
You really kind of need to scroll over the area to get a better idea of how it feels, though. The problem is that there are very few points to focus on because the whole area is one streamlined thing. This works for the gameplay but makes single screenshots rather uninteresting. Plus, you really miss out on the 'alive' feeling where the lights flicker a little bit and the birds come over every now and then. I'm probably going to try and add some light wind or such to that too.
@TheAlmaity: Go I'm not sure I can do it. You know, I had no modelling experience before the first model I uploaded to mapster. I'm still learning the tricks here. That being said I know models can use multiple textures (many SC2 models do), but my ability to make it depends on the original model, so you should PM these files. I never touched WoW and I'd like to keep my hands clean ;-)
@SoulFilcher: Go
Alright, no problem. I'll ask Zolden or xCorbo instead once I get my hands on the model. Thanks a lot for the help you already gave to the map :) Some more furniture could be cool, and Mozared should probably post a wishlist if he has one. Once we start filling out the arena trainers, I'll make sure to add you as one of the milestone trainers ;) If you have any preferences, post em!
Heh, oops. I left you guys alone for just one week and you had to go ahead and make the map amazing without me. :P
^ I'm emphasizing this. We really are making progress. Moz needs to create a few more of our starting zones, I need to then populate those zones with quests, and maity needs to....well, like he said, he'll do whatever he wants :P We definitely do rely on each other, and real life stuff can get in the way, but things are looking good....We'll just say that our guess for Alpha is now just a regular old "soon" instead of Blizzard's "soonTM".
And like Maity said, soulfilcher, we really do appreciate what you've already provided. It might not seem like much, but just a few custom assets go a very long way.
Ok here is the buildings map. It's not exactly beautiful but it works great. Plus you could always make the walls doodads or tint them or retexture them. All models are made by xxxdisturbedxxx. I copied these over from my survival map so sorry for any weird values. Sorry I didn't have time to add an ability to open the door and close it. I originally had a behavior that had a search effect that issued an order. But yea this is it.
@Mozared: Go
Maybe something along the lines of this for the counters in the star centers?
@Trieva: Go
Zelda was writing a post but had to go, so I'll take over :)
First of all, sorry if I didn't comment directly on your ideas >.> It either slipped my mind or there were just too many posts to reply to (There's been quite a lot more posts here lately :p ) I'll try and comment on everything from now on though.
For the mentor again: There'll definitely be people all over the place giving helpful hints or directing you to quests, and if we have time we might make some more elaborate ones like the main mentor. But putting very important NPCs into the zones kind of puts them out of the way (We're not saving your position in banks atm, so you always start in the main city. That's one of the reasons why we have the teleporter system), we'd like to keep all the important NPCs you want to repeatedly visit inside the main city (Doesn't mean we won't put any interesting NPCs you want to visit multiple times outside the city - If you have some cool ideas for some dude we can stuff in a hut somewhere, feel free to say so :p )
Zelda explained that pretty well before he had to leave.
There might still be idiots with the bad guys like in the real pokemon games, but the organisation itself won't be composed entirely of morons :p
Another thing is that guns are used in this universe. Guards will have guns, bad guys will have guns. But guns aren't very effective against starmon - They are naturally extremely resilient, which is why they are able to fight as much as they do, survive lightning strike, etc. You can shoot an entire clip into a Larvy, and yea it'll bleed like hell, but there's a good chance it'll survive and possibly even jump on you and chew your face off. And that's one of the weakest starmon in existence. Good look taking down a Venostalk, Blasturtle or Skarr, let alone ghosts like Mortessus.
And...
It is related to the bad guys ;)
@SheogorathSC: Go
That looks pretty cool, might use something like that if we have the space.
Also, are those chairs/tables/everything on them WoL doodads, cause I don't know those O.o
@TheAlmaity: Go
Yes, everything is WoL doodads: tops of space platform towers for tables, scaled new folsom misc for glasses and plates and city props for the chairs.
What about a Radagast-esque character? Living in solitude and doesn't use much technology, instead excelling at herbalism for treating his starmon and he could be a starmon pacifist communicating well with starmon. The trainer could be given a quest to fetch herbs or plants for instance, you meet a plant-starmon and fight it but before you beat it the hermit will arrive and get it to calm down. Reward would be herbs that buff or heal your starmon.
We're definitely putting those in. Some of the "traveling merchants" will have discount deals and are rare, so stock up if you find them :P
A certain awesome terrainer may or may not be placed into the game and have this role exactly. But don't tell him I said that, he doesn't know yet.
No specifics for now, but there might be some stuff like this. We'll let you know.
As neat as that is, it probably won't happen. 2v2's are definitely not coming during the alpha or beta.... There's a small chance they COULD be added in a post-release patch, but if they were added at all, it would likely be in a major game-changing patch or expansion. It's just that the current way the system is set up would make it very difficult to add 2v2 support. If I tried, it would certainly take at least several months with the amount of time I have available.
I'm going to just reiterate the following quote instead of responding in full. We hope you'll like "it" when we reveal "it"- you might even be able to guess what "it" is ^.^ But that's for later.
I definitely like some of your kitbashes there. Obviously the Star center will be a Star center and not a stripclub, but I can use some ideas. Nice thinking, I generally dislike doing man-made stuff.
I knew you were cheating on me! What's her name Zelda?! You at least owe me that, you pig ='(
For now, the plan is to have a few random events spawn each game. So if you find a particular shopkeeper, his prices might be 75% cheaper than the "standard" price for whatever he's selling, but he doesn't always spawn, and even when he does, it's in a difference place. Or perhaps it's a black market that is only open at night. Something like that. Some random events would be more like mini-quests or battles, but the discount shopkeeper would be one of them.
The world is fairly empty now, but when we're closer to release, if you explore the world closely enough you'd be surprised what (and who) you'll be able to find :P
It's definitely going in the game. You'll like what we're doing here a lot, trust me :P But until Alpha that's all I'll say ^.^
Training/borrowing other people's starmon is a neat idea. I'll put in in the idea box :P
I went ahead and put in the quest log today, that was a great idea. It was getting a little tricky to tell what you had to do at times, so this should help alot. It's nothing fancy, just a list of your active quests that tell you what to do next, but it really helps. Maity also made awesome artwork for some more UI elements, which we'll show off once they're properly in-game.
So, focusing on story and props atm? cool. I think a lot of ideas will flow in after you let us all play with the map for an hour or two. Btw, how's that alpha going to work, you just private-upload it and invite 3-4 of us into the game?
@OceanFlex: Go
Yea, most likely that way. Currently we're thinking of late April, but it might be later if we don't get much time to work, or earlier if get a lot of time.
@Trieva: Go
Let's see what we have for now...
Ground Fire (Evolves from Ground Bug)
Fire Fly why did it have to end D: .
Poison Grass
Water Rock
Electric Flying
Electric Steel
Ghost Ice
Rock Ice
Fly Poison
Bug Fly
Bug Dark
Grass Water
Grass Fight
Fire Rock
Fire Dark
we'll likely have a dark/ghost or dark/psychic combo.
The biggest issue is models - I can't just slap random types on random models. Most of the types atm were picked to match the model. Skarr is a big light brown scorpion with glowing orange pincers that look almost fiery, so he's ground fire. If you know any WoW models that would fit any of the type combos you like, post a screenshot and their names so that I can find em.
Also, definitely planning on a dark+electric (Starmon's version of Eevee is dark, we've got Ice, Fire and base already, just missing the electric one. Worst case scenario I'll retexture the Predator to be yellow+black.)
EDIT: I seem to have run into quite a big issue... WoW Model Viewer hasn't been updated since September and can't load the version of Mists of Pandaria that I have >.>
No, that was a shout out to the journey of Mal, his ship the Serenity, and it's crew. It's a Space-Western TV series that died short for no real reason (dedicated fan base, fairly good reviews) most of the way through season 1. Mal was a soldier that fought against the power that now is, so he works as a Ranyor-esque pirate/rebel/hired hand using his Firefly class transport ship. (this class was infamously used by smugglers, and is unarmed)
Almaity, I'm almost surprised at how awesome you are. Not only are you "mr.Who" but you are designing a map/mod/gameinagame for Sc2 about pokemon, and make firefly references. Hrm. that needs to be implemented into the mod/map. We need more Firefly in our Pokemon in our Sc2.
I say we find an abandoned Medivac, fix it up, and use it to rob an outpost (or the central) Starcenter of it's expensive medical products. We then sell those to the black market and receive a large bounty n our heads from "team rocket" or whatever organization was dubiously providing that med center with meds (and mind control substances to lace it with??)
I had some ideas for a rock+psychic model. Ahhh and I'm going to release a critter pack that may be useful to you guys.
Forest zone is done! Expect some screenies tomorrow.