SP Fantasy Legend - story based fantasy mod - New Update 30.8

[wheene]

Hey everyone. After about a year long break I decided to give modding one more shot, this time with more premeditation and clearer goal.

So lets cut straight to the point. What I want to make is a comlete overhaul of MnB (I know it doesnt sound like a modest goal), but dont shake your head and leave just yet. Complete overhaul here means that everything that one will see in the mod will be content made by me, however the ammount of this content will be nowhere near to that of the original MnB. Only thing Im planning to use from the Native is the engine itself. Now you might ask why I dont start from scratch with some other more modern engine like Unity or UDK. The reason is that I dont want this to take years again, I would like to be done with it and publish it in about six months. MnB has all the features I need already in, Ill just dress those in different clothes.

Now that we have the introduction sorted, lets move on to what Id like the mod to be like:
: player is predefined character (only one choice, no initial customization) in a world where he already has some history and is part of the lore
: the story has start and an end, there are some side quests in between and there is still free roaming map, the main focus is on progression of the story though
: the story is divided into several chapters (divided graphicaly by slideshows with pictures progresing the story), new parts of map get opened as the story progresses
: very small and compact map:
                        good guys: 1 main city, 1 castle, 2 villages
                        bad guys: 1 fortress, several camps and outposts, these change throughout the story
                        1-3 dungeon-esque places  like old ruins or abandoned temple)
: 1 troop tree for the good guys for the player to recruit (about 12 different soldiers) and about 5 general types of baddies + unique badarses
: no fancy stuff that requieres insane amount of coding (crafting, kingdom management...)

The point of the whole mod is to create a short intense experience rather than sandbox that you can play for months. I can already feel the hate raining on me from some who will say that MnB is sandbox game and we have CoD for linear movie-like game. You are right, but I have explained why I decided to use MnB above, so please try to understand that.

Enough words from now, Im sure you want to see if I have already done anything or if Im just tossing ideas around hoping some experience moders will bite and make this for me. So here goes:

These are example of modular architecture Im making for the mod, I already have dozens of game ready modules. The reason Im not showing them ingame but just screengrabs from Blender is that I might decide to make some tweaks later and Im trying to avoid double work.

Please let me know what you think about story based mod, its possible that people arent interested in such thing at all in which case I would abandon this and try something else. Oh and even though I could probably do everything myself, there are two things that Id love to get some help with:

Coding
I know C# and Lua so I could probably learn to code for MnB too, however Id like to get someone with knowledge and experience withMnB script so I  dont have to reinvent the wheel

Storywriting
I have rough outline of what I want the story to be like, however english is not my primary language and Im not a great story teller either, so since the mod is supposed to be story based itd be good if some scribbler could work just on that and polish it to perfection.



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[OLT_Grandmaster_farferon]

Good luck!
I love the houses, for some reason they seem farmilliar and give me a nostalgic feeling haha. Can't remember from where though!
Good luck with the project!
- John

 

[Cherek Lycanus]

I like what i see Here. Wanna try the story line using the MB like world.

Good luck bro!

Mis saludos

 

[Tcherski]

It's YOUR mod, you'd like to do a story, do it. BTW lucks good, good look !

 

[Rowaan]

It will be interesting to have an other linear story mod into the mix (there aren't all that many, if any). So I wish you the best of luck! 


And I really like those buildings, they have a slightly 'tudor' feel about them.

 

[John Xenir]

Please use spoilers for large images, it ruins the layout.

Light and Darkness it's a story mod and it's probably the best one, since it gives you a goal which makes you keep playing unlike most mods with which you stop playing after you test all new features.

My opinions and ideas: I think there should be still some customization of characterat at least appearance and gender. If there will be less towns and other locations, those locations must be more detailed as more places to visit (not just the yard, tavern and shop).

I have an idea if the mod is heavily story driven. Make some areas of the map inaccessible at the beginning and after progressing the story, more areas become avalaible to visit.

And what is the story roughly about. I mean, the world and such, if there is magic, non human creatures or realistic medieval world?

 

[wheene]

Well the story aint completely sorted yet, Ill let you all know when it starts taking some shape.

Im indeed planning to make the map open more areas as player progresses. As for the setting, no magic, no guns, creatures yes but not too crazy.

The locations will be very detailed, you see Im making a whole bunch of custom architecture so I want the player to see as much of it as possible. And to force him to not just skip it and navigate through menu, there will be no menu shortcuts for scenes 

 

[Hypno Toad]

Liking the stylized aesthetic of those buildings

 

[Barry_bon_Loyale]

It's ambitious but hopefully doable.  Best of luck with the mod, I definitely look forward to playing it when it comes out.

 

[FinnishKnight]

Might be too, ambitious, bah if we would not have ambitious people we would not have as many stuff, cool mod

 

[wheene]

Thanks for all the kind words. Its true that the goal might be too high, but Ill do my best to fulfill it, so lets hope for the best.

Id like to make friday known as the eye-candy day. Every friday Ill try to post an update here so you know whats happening with the mod and I have some incentive and short term goal towards which Ill work every week. Starting today:

隐藏

This is example of Ancient modular architecture set. There will be three tilesets in total. The buildings in the first post are for town of the good guys. This is for non-aligned places where side quests can take place, where you can get some cool loot and also in one case place made of these will be very important for the story, but lets keep that a secret for now. The last, third tileset will be for the baddies, although that will work a bit different than these two as the baddies live mostly in tents/caves/holes...

 

[wheene]

Im now trying to add some moss and foliage to give the ruins the ancient and abandoned look.

 

[momcilo94]

Man I've waited for so long for someone to make a linear campaign mod with a good story, and on top of all that it's fantasy! This is great and I wish you luck! My suggestions:

1. For the love of everything, don't make this mod easy or a cookie cutter. Make it full of challenges.

2. Please, don't increase difficulty by adding more opponents, it's more fun to fight a single opponent who can fight well, and you get a sense of satisfaction after beating him, then fighting a zerg of enemies.

3. Don't use teal or blue color for menu artwork! It's OK for buildings (As long as the surrounding isn't themed that way) but MENU and UI play big part in player immersion. Take for an example the WoWs UI, its great looking and immersive (Although I dislike the game itself). Now, take a look at AIONs teal UI, it breaks immersion, it doesn't feel like you are reading something off your journal, or a parchment. It feels like you are reading it of a diamond or some sort of stone.

4. Don't bind a player to a weapon, let him choose, add a lot variety of weapons of the same level. At least one for each type. And don't forget the longswords

5. Don't add models or weapons that don't fit in the whole artwork, and don't add them if they aren't modeled or textured well. Another example is environment, the trees in native look horrible. But spruce trees with polished landscape textures look great!

6. All in all, when making a story mod, the most important thing is immersion, so don't allow yourself to make a cheesy story line, or undeveloped characters, or bad artwork, textures, models and sound.

I'll add more suggestions if i remember, but this is it for now.

This looks great and original so far and I wish you luck in the future! If you need objective critics contact me (lol). Gl.

 

[doctorwarband]

Good luck indeed, looks awesome, and a suggestion for the story:
Try the story to be with ups and downs, like with less action and more action, that way it will be interesting all the time.
Good luck once more!

 

[wheene]

Its Friday which means its time for an update. So lets get to it.

This past week Ive spent most of my time learning stuff around normal maps (sculpting, baking, actually getting the thing ingame...) in which I eventually succeeded, however Ive not yet made anything in that department I would feel is worthy showing. As for things that I want you to see, here goes:

The capital of the good guys will be built on a steep hillside, which means there are many terraces on which the buildings stand, here is what some of those will look like

This city will be pretty huge, and the architecture is rather detailed and high-poly, which means it will be split into separate quarters each of which are one scene. One of transitions between these scenes will be passage similar to this

Here are some of the new modules I made for the city

I have also started working on folliage, so far I have modular set of ivys (seen used in other pics here), tree stump that can be in a village or around a camp, and a dead tree for the Wasteland

The ivys also go nicely with the Ancient modules set

That it for now, stay tuned for next weeks update. As for the story itself, development of it has already started. Im not working on it myself much, my mate robbyg is the writer.

Also I will of course be gratefull for any comments and crits

 

[bpopa27]

O_O' Waw!

 

[Michadr]

i like the building/ houses. as mentioned earlier they look pretty sweet. also i find it interesting that you are going to make it using a very small map. hope it has a lot of replay value

- michadr

 

[wheene]

Thanks for the praise.

Well the story will be strictly linear. You see there is no huge team working on this so we cant afford huge quest line with multiple endings and stuff. You could however play as different class and choose different companions the next time through.

 

[Tcherski]

This city will be pretty huge, and the architecture is rather detailed and high-poly, which means it will be split into separate quarters each of which are one scene. One of transitions between these scenes will be passage similar to this

Awesome. I alwaays thought to something like that into M§B, I mean removing quick travel, making some separate but close scenes from which you can see
each other. You got me really interested.

 

[Mad Vader]

1. You need a good story first. If you can't write one, find one or you are flying half-blind with making "good guy building" etc. Good stories can also attract people who can help.
2. "Complete rehaul" and "done six months" don't quite fit in the same sentence, especially if you don't know how much coding is needed.
3. Cutscenes are much easier to do and better than slideshows.
4. How about finishing Daydream instead?