Tragicvision
joined
I have no idea what the average gamer's demographic is, but I'm pretty much that. Gaming for 20 years, modding for 6, I have a bad habit of jumping into bed with a game, modding the hell out of it then moving onto the next game. Hopefully I'll find my perfect partner. Currently playing (and modding) Dawn of War, Skyrim, Portal 2, Oblivion, Company of Heroes, Doom 3, several iOS games and Solitaire.
My Blogs
As previously mentioned, the Special Characters all follow a certain role within the campaign and are very much influenced by both Western and Japanese character classes. All characters can be met and recruited throughout Enter Phoenix but depending on how you play the game, their allegiance to you can be loyal, misplaced or even hostile at first. Farseer Celanae is of course the most powerful but using these characters can save you heartache in several sections and make puzzles much easier.
Here's the rundown of the first you meet:
Here's the rundown of the first you meet:
Pathfinder Kaedras
Race: Eldar
Disposition: Selfish
Type: Ranger/Pathfinder
Class: Sniper/Infiltrator
Abilities: Infiltration, Long Range, Fleet
SpiritSeer Laenehl
Race: Eldar
Disposition: Good
Type: Warlock/Seer
Class: Black Mage
Abilities: Psychic Powers - Destructive and Morale, Close Combat, Ghost Walker buffs
Chud Fatz
Race: Ogryn
Disposition: Neutral
Type: Grenadier
Class: Chemist
Abilities: Grenade Launcher, Custom effect with grenades, Never breaks
Notice that I have included a 'class' description in each profile. Just as every player has a certain race they are more suited to, just so each of these characters would be more suited. As you're basically 'stuck' with Eldar, my aim is to make their style much more adaptable by introducing characters that are very different from each other.
The Ogryn may seem a surprise to some and some might shout 'FLUFF' but trust me, the story fits. Chud is as close to an 'intellectual' subhuman (but still nowhere near human intelligence) as you can get. A former Bullgryn, the poor soul has been pumped with so many chemicals and genetically modified to at least know which direction to aim his grenade launcher at. Although he doesn't understand exactly what his grenades do, he sees Farseer Celanae as his saviour and is willing to blindly follow orders and tactics to help her in her cause.
And it just gives me a huge excuse to give a Horrorfex grenade AND and Biotox bomb effect grenade to his grenade launcher ;).
Well I finally bit the bullet and bought the 6th edition Eldar Codex to help with my fluff building for the Enter Phoenix campaign mod. Not only is it a good read with a huge variety of stories, tales and background histories but it also shows many units and abilities that were either never in the original DOW series or have never been modded to be included.
I've already started to attribute edit a Spiritseer using the Seer Council model as a base but knowing the unit will be much more effective with Wraithguard and Wraithblades, I think the decision to use it means it has to be turned into a special character. The fact that Farseer Celanae is fascinated with death anyway more than makes my mind up for this reasoning. The Wraithblades will be great to model but I fear I may need to call on help there.
The other aspect is units abilities. The measly 4 active abilities for the Farseer were never going to be enough for Celanae and so, mission by mission I have decided to create some of the more obscure Psyker powers for both Farseer and SpiritSeer dependant on what would be more useful in the relevant episode. For example, Celanae gains Executioner later on and i'm currently working on my Seer to instil Horrify (using a few Necron extension tricks :P).
This now makes a total of 7 Special Characters that you can use throughout the campaign and every single one has to be used in different ways which I'm very happy with.
I've already started to attribute edit a Spiritseer using the Seer Council model as a base but knowing the unit will be much more effective with Wraithguard and Wraithblades, I think the decision to use it means it has to be turned into a special character. The fact that Farseer Celanae is fascinated with death anyway more than makes my mind up for this reasoning. The Wraithblades will be great to model but I fear I may need to call on help there.
The other aspect is units abilities. The measly 4 active abilities for the Farseer were never going to be enough for Celanae and so, mission by mission I have decided to create some of the more obscure Psyker powers for both Farseer and SpiritSeer dependant on what would be more useful in the relevant episode. For example, Celanae gains Executioner later on and i'm currently working on my Seer to instil Horrify (using a few Necron extension tricks :P).
This now makes a total of 7 Special Characters that you can use throughout the campaign and every single one has to be used in different ways which I'm very happy with.
It appears this really is going the way of NeverWinter Nights :). Never a bad thing, of course.
I've been a musician, a producer, a mixer and dj for 16 years now and with that experience and qualification you would have thought it would be easy to make characters in the 41st Millenium easy to recreate. Well, unfortunately no.
Five races features in Enter Phoenix and by far the easiest to produce has been the Orks. Paul Wilson has been invaluable to this process, not least to the fact he has a musical and vocal background but also to the fact he can do accents - not least the 'cockney' Ork - very well. His background in death metal also helps.
I had auditions for vocals and still seeing a few but the main character, Celanae is now settled upon with actress, Sarah Brown taking the helm. As talented as she is, the Eldar voice was always going to be difficult to get the effect right. Think a mixture of Transformers and music interacting on a constant basis. The original voices for DOW and DOW2 were the basis but the method of creating the effect appear to be a closely guarded secret and you can forget about any tutorials on Youtube.
So, of course I had to recreate that as best as I could. It took a month. Yes, a month. Quite long in musical terms, but I finally cracked it. Hopefully it will sound amazing when mixed properly. But please have a listen on my mod page. She's a fantastic voice actress and has really got into the spirit of the grim darkness of 40K.
Five races features in Enter Phoenix and by far the easiest to produce has been the Orks. Paul Wilson has been invaluable to this process, not least to the fact he has a musical and vocal background but also to the fact he can do accents - not least the 'cockney' Ork - very well. His background in death metal also helps.
I had auditions for vocals and still seeing a few but the main character, Celanae is now settled upon with actress, Sarah Brown taking the helm. As talented as she is, the Eldar voice was always going to be difficult to get the effect right. Think a mixture of Transformers and music interacting on a constant basis. The original voices for DOW and DOW2 were the basis but the method of creating the effect appear to be a closely guarded secret and you can forget about any tutorials on Youtube.
So, of course I had to recreate that as best as I could. It took a month. Yes, a month. Quite long in musical terms, but I finally cracked it. Hopefully it will sound amazing when mixed properly. But please have a listen on my mod page. She's a fantastic voice actress and has really got into the spirit of the grim darkness of 40K.
I also would like to make a shout out for any vocal artists for other characters as some have now let me down. I am looking for Tau in particular but also Imperial Guard and Dark Eldar
Happy Valentines Day
After going back and reworking some parts of Episode 2-4, I've now got a proper branching campaign going in that even up to Episode 5 can actually be done in several different ways -
I've marked them down as Good, Bad and Selfish paths and Celanae gradually changes her FX aura (similar to Star Wars: KOTOR) according to what direction she takes. Or what the player takes. I'm trying to make it so that if she takes a completely good path by Episode 5, she can't become completely bad by the end and vice versa for fluff's sake.
This also has the unintentional (but surprisingly pleasing) effect of having different allies as the story progresses.
The first special character you meet is of course the arrogant (even for an Eldar) Pathfinder Kaedras who appears when impressed with your skills and helps you with puzzles.
The second is a (soon to be revealed race) captain who is lost and forever inebriated but can open certain paths due to his phasing skill.
As you can see this is starting to resemble more of a Baldur's Gate RPG but have no fear - HUGE battles WILL start appearing as well as additional Wargear that at the moment is borrowed from the original Soulstorm campaign but will eventually have more customised gear.
And for all you puzzle fans out there, a few puzzles have been worked into each mission to test the player to give more variety.
The fun part is letting people decide on if the protagonist is actually worth it or not and introducing PUZZLES...... hehe
After a hard day's work scripting 1992 lines for mission 6 of the Enter Phoenix campaign, I thought I'd share a little progress on how the mod is coming along.
Every single subsequent episode of the campaign has resulted in longer and more complex scripts, which I envisaged but hopefully this will challenge and immerse the player more as the campaign continues. For example, the original Single Player demo has a measly 280 odd lines of code (the updated campaign version has just over 1000!) right up to Episode 5 which has just over 2500 lines.
One thing I have noticed is that I go back onto missions and replay them to check that they have replay value. Thankfully, each mission has several ways to play them and to complete ALL objectives in one Episode can take up to an hour for the earlier ones.
A new method I'm using is the branching narratives in that the player can decide what course to take, ignore certain objectives or even miss them completely by not following instructions. This changes the later missions into a a sort of tree and instead of having a 10 mission campaign, it's actually more of a 25 mission campaign (but not all playable in one sitting) as some are duplicate files but with some additions (or subtractions). Totaling up, this actually gives NINE different endings, instead of the original THREE.
The other thing I've learned to do is CONTROL the enemy. Anything that happens that isn't intended is immediately ironed out, right down to giving direct commands to enemy units whilst disabling the ai.
All in all, this is coming along nicely and each mission is getting completed every 3-4 weeks or so now.
Fluff is needed on this as the Eldar army lists 6th ed aren't all that great for including these wonderful warriors.Any modellers or fluff experts needed. I have have a nice Worldsinger modelled but the main focus is completely new - dinosaurs. Eldar Exodites as you know use dinosaurs as mounts. Even just an idea would be good.
It's not just Megadons or Carnosaurs I'm wanting but just think of a backwater world that uses (and not relies) dinosaurs for battle.
As some of you will know I've been ill over Christmas and not feeling great to code or even game. But I'm now back in focus. Because animating and building models has always been the missing link to things I want to do, I've now decided to try my hand at it. 2015 is a new year after all.
I've finished on Oblivion now and 100% on Dawn of War.
I've now got a working code sorted for my good friend ZmajOgnjeniVuk for an amazing map he's created. Check his page for examples of how complex and friggin' lore friendly his maps are. The idea is radiation and utilising several different variations of existing code and some of which I've written to change (seriously a headache) culminates into something Dawn of War never originally planned to execute on any campaign maps. If you like SCAR maps (which are sorely lacking to be brutally honest) then you'll like this. Think units slowly dying in a radiation filled wasteland once out of their bases but then fine once they get back.
Also check out War Eternal. Upcoming mod utilising a more strategic based combat than you may be used to.
I also have my first episode of Enter Phoenix up which is uploaded in the form of a skirmish but hopefully will followed by more episodes and built into a linear campaign. Check my addons and take a look.
If anyone would like to contribute with story ideas PM me. You kind of get the gist with the description but there's more to it if you want to know more. I also would like any suggestions for map making. Trying to use default decals/objects for ease of use but as this will eventually turn into a mod I can add.
2015 looks good :)
I've finished on Oblivion now and 100% on Dawn of War.
I've now got a working code sorted for my good friend ZmajOgnjeniVuk for an amazing map he's created. Check his page for examples of how complex and friggin' lore friendly his maps are. The idea is radiation and utilising several different variations of existing code and some of which I've written to change (seriously a headache) culminates into something Dawn of War never originally planned to execute on any campaign maps. If you like SCAR maps (which are sorely lacking to be brutally honest) then you'll like this. Think units slowly dying in a radiation filled wasteland once out of their bases but then fine once they get back.
Also check out War Eternal. Upcoming mod utilising a more strategic based combat than you may be used to.
I also have my first episode of Enter Phoenix up which is uploaded in the form of a skirmish but hopefully will followed by more episodes and built into a linear campaign. Check my addons and take a look.
If anyone would like to contribute with story ideas PM me. You kind of get the gist with the description but there's more to it if you want to know more. I also would like any suggestions for map making. Trying to use default decals/objects for ease of use but as this will eventually turn into a mod I can add.
2015 looks good :)
I've always been a huge fan of single player games. Whether it be Half Life, Oblivion or banging away at the Dawn of War Campaign on the highest difficulty, I've always had a fascination with challenging yourself against what is essentially a machine rather than human players. I'm all for co-operative games as the essence of that genre is still go to mano y mano against the sometimes sluggish and generally predictable cpu ai. Maybe I just like the fact that single player games follow a set of predetermined rules; absence of chaos, if you like. Or maybe it is an embittered twist of fate stemming from not being wanted to join certain guilds in World of Warcraft.
I have a better theory.
I like to de-construct games to their bare bones. I like to analyse WHY the ai is doing that, WHY am I being shot at when all I did was eat an apple? What was the point of me traversing the entire lab on the second floor when my objective was on the first? Humans in this sense are actually more predictable. Their aims are the same even if their objectives are different. With the computer as your enemy, it maybe more clear cut but there is no reason to WHY it does it; only that it DOES.
Don't get me wrong. I love playing against other people but the sense of satisfaction beating a peer in Dawn of War is nowhere near the same satisfaction you get when solving a puzzle in Portal 2. My experiences against human players have always been sporadic because of lag issues, connection issues, the opposing player deciding to dip out at the crucial moment. Worst of the worst being they just happen to be playing their first ever game. Ever. Or they having tournament trophies of the game gathering dust on their custom-made games-shelf.
The computer just doesn't do that. It just doesn't.
I have a better theory.
I like to de-construct games to their bare bones. I like to analyse WHY the ai is doing that, WHY am I being shot at when all I did was eat an apple? What was the point of me traversing the entire lab on the second floor when my objective was on the first? Humans in this sense are actually more predictable. Their aims are the same even if their objectives are different. With the computer as your enemy, it maybe more clear cut but there is no reason to WHY it does it; only that it DOES.
Don't get me wrong. I love playing against other people but the sense of satisfaction beating a peer in Dawn of War is nowhere near the same satisfaction you get when solving a puzzle in Portal 2. My experiences against human players have always been sporadic because of lag issues, connection issues, the opposing player deciding to dip out at the crucial moment. Worst of the worst being they just happen to be playing their first ever game. Ever. Or they having tournament trophies of the game gathering dust on their custom-made games-shelf.
The computer just doesn't do that. It just doesn't.
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