This is a project I’ve started half year ago , but it was on my mind/ in planning phase probably since the start of vcmi project or even earlier. I wanted to stay in the shadows untill I have most of the work done, but recent events here in the forums encouraged me to post about my project and show what I have done so far.
**Story\World\Background: **
-Legends will take part in fantasy world where there is a conflict between magic and technology. Fe. Dwarves are Tech Faction while Elves use Magic.
There will be Technology heroes and Magic heroes that will have unique skill tree and abilities. Playing a technology hero/faction will be completely different then playing a magic hero/faction.
Game design:
Legends will be a heroes like game in terms of gameplay but will have it’s differences.
There are 3 points I want to focus on in the gameplay:
-Balance - game will be balanced as much as possible. Random elements will only give a slight advantage to the player.
-Diverstiy - This game will have 4-5 faction, but the goal is to make them different thrugh split magic/tech racial skills, so that every faction will have it’s different playstyle and feel like in no other TBS.
-Simplicity - no needless micromanagment.
**Tech stuff **
Most of already existing skills in h3\vcmi will be used be it for heroes or creatures or special builidings in Towns (named differently, used in different towns , changed % of skills etc.), Required things to code is maybe 1-3 extra things. I don’t want to put stress on vcmi team so this was the course of action here in the design stage, and h3 is so flexible with wog that I could do this new game just with that. However support for high color graphics and modern widescreen interface in high res is something that I would really want to see. Any other project that wants to use vcmi will also benefit from it and generally I think VCMI should have those anyway as any modern 2d engine.
** Stuff already done:**
I’ve searched the net for already made graphics/projects that I could use/base my work upon. Some initially planned factions were removed / some were changed but I was very lucky to find almost all the 3d models I will need (units bulidings etc.). First thing done by me and presented in the preview are the Towns (only interiors). Nothing is in game yet as there is no point for it at this stage of the project.
License
In terms of license all the stuff I’m basing or will be basing my work on is confirmed to be either public domain or cc-by-sa. Licensing is a big headache (contacting people , confirming licenses etc.) but it needs to be done.
Heya, thanks for posting about my project.
Wanted to make a few corrections: It’s AGPL 3.0
and repository is over at github.com/FreezingMoon/AncientBeast
It just had it’s first 0.1 release today, quite crazy. Hopefully more coders will get involved with patches.
I’ll check out this Project Legends, so far it looks cool. Keep up the good work!
Are the graphics for these 5 towns available somewhere?
I want to use it for VCMI. What should I do?
Or these towns are already made for VCMI mod format?
Those pics are only ready as graphics. For support in vcmi it will need 32 bit support and AFAIK today it is still not there .
Furthermore those towns will not be part of any mod for vcmi / homm3. Art style is very different then the one in HOMM , balance and game mechanic will also be different then in normal heroes. The goal is to create WHOLE GAME not another mod. The goal is big so it will take years to finish.
BTW sorry for long absence I was taking care of some real life problems for a while . I did some work on the project though in the meantime and so :
Style is no question, HMM3 can be filled with graphics of any style:-)
Maybe you can share only graphics for town screens at least (if you have it in 2D - I don’t go easy with 3D graphics)?
Or if you don’t want to distribute them, maybe you share them only to me?
I promise not to share or distribute them on Internet.
By the way, I played with replacing DEF frames of town screen buildings by PNG files, and I must say that 32-bit PNGs with transparency, half-transparency etc are shown cool.
So there is already 32-bit support in VCMI.
Just it isn’t direct - you must write in structures.json path to DEFs, in folder with DEF place .json, and then write what frames must be replaced by what files.
Well it doesn’t mean though such mix would look good though …
my work is mostly in 2d xcf files. It is based on 3d models though.
For now I rather not share them. There are two reasons :
to share them would mean I have to make a proper licensing file attached to them instead of rough sketch I have now… Well this task is not fun at all (licensing is generally boring) so for now I postpone it . This is important because I want (and must according to license terms of stuff I use) to give credits to all the fantastic people that made models I’m using.
For now this is early stage so I would rather keep it as private as I can, because I would hate to see some of this stuff used in any h3 mods before there is a playable alpha or beta of legends.
That’s nice to know… but it sounds very complex. I hope it will get easier in the future
OK.
But if you change mind I swear that this graphics will not be in any of H3 mods. I already have many mods with graphics I sweared to not share, and I didn’t cheat it’s authors.
Nice idea about totally new game with heroes 3 style. I was thinking to make 3d creatures and towns models from Heroes 3 and replace Heroes 5 ones with this ones.
However for legends it will not be of an importance. I don’t plan of enabling DD and Fly in my game.
-Firstly there will be two hero classes Mages and Technicians. Technicians will use potions (aiding their units with mass haste bless etc.) and will be able to fix(resurrect) mechanical units. Mages on the other hand will have access to diversity of spells (destruction, summoning, etc. ) DD and Fly would brake the balance giving too much power to mage classes.
-Secondly I think DD and Fly brakes the game and most maps as it allows player to cross zone guards he shouldn’t have. So my personal preference is also to not have those spells in game.
Town portal however will be enabled . Technicians will be able to counter it as their towns will have an Airport building (Infernos castle gate.)
I thought you posted an open source game … but it seems to be comercial… Would be really nice if it was an open source game… I could use some of their work if it was cc-by-sa or GPLed …
… but here is some update on the work in progress :
