Loladins of Legend - The Making Of Part 4

Have you felt as though you are living a half-life between the barriers of imagination and reality? That although you stride this world you are elsewhere, trapped within an eternity of madness?

The Making of Loladins of Legend - Part 4
Part 1 - http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=130797
Part 2 - http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=133270
Part 3 - http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=133745

I am not afraid. Although I teeter between the edges of destruction and nothingness I feel nothing. It is because I have been here before. I have been here all my life.

A couple days ago I had a meeting with Mister Black Man aka my psychiatrist again. He took me off the one drug that was semi-effective against my anxiety, the one that was absolutely destroying my ability to stay awake. He told me to look up and consider Dexedrine upon my pressing the issue of my inability to focus. Next month, when we meet again, I plan to begin taking this drug.

This new drug will have the potential to completely obliterate the unstable balance of my sanity. My mental disorders have steadily eroded my emotional stability and control for the last ten years, leaving me broken and barren like some random hooker in a ditch. Yet still, for the moment, I stand. I stand alone, but I stand. This drug may be the final straw that breaks the camel's back and finally kills me. Or, it may allow me to write again. That chance, that one chance, is more than reason enough for me to risk it. If I cannot fight for my dreams then there is no reason worth living.

People sometimes say that it's always nice to have family to fall back on when shit hits the fan. What if you have no family? Then what do you do? What if your existence has been one giant non-stop chunky flow of diarrhea into an industrial-grade ventilation unit?

You don't know. You don't know unless you've been there.

You absorb yourself in your work.

That is what I do to pass life by. I keep fighting. Even for something so hopeless as this, I keep fighting. I am a stubborn, arrogant bastard. I just won't let it go.

In the last few days I cracked the secret to yet another Korean MMO - a more well-known one - with even more graphics available than the last. The risk involved with using this MMO's graphics is far greater than any other resource to date, as its ip holder is particularly anal about this kind of thing. However, being a private project and largely under the radar, I don't expect any trouble. You can't kill that which does not breathe, neh?

With this new resource in mind I have begun to rebuild the Human graphics from the ground up.

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Footman, baseline infantry available at Ghetto-level (lowest) town without any structures. Is your alternative to the Disgruntled Pilgrim. Has Block. Very cheap and expendable (like most human units).

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Knight-Archer. Tier 2, basic archer. Cheaper and more mobile than the base archers of other races but more frail and slower to learn.

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Arcanist. Basic tier 2 caster. Has Magic Missiles.

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Knight. Cheap, expendable infantry unit at tier 2. Has Physical Protection but is less mobile than the Footman. Expect to be using them both early on to take advantage of their various strengths.

This is a dragon who lacks a death animation (much like the Proto Drake from my previous blogs, except this guy had no complete anim to begin with). Since I decided to use him for the Corrupt I opted to have him turn into crystal, shatter, then collapse into a black hole. I'm not done with the animation yet, but I also have a demon I need to make some kind of bloody explosion for since he also lacks a death anim, so I'll probably do them both at once in the future.

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HKS completed his graphic for the Loladin's tier 8 archer, the Wind of Rapture.

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HKS suggested that the Loladins could be completely redone with these graphics, not only for consistency but because this game has the best armor/weapons to fit the bill. As such he is going to, very slowly, create Loladin units and heroes. However, he is a slow worker, and these conversions entail re-coloring the textures as they have no color at all. For the moment at least this leaves me to worry about the Humans and Doom Prophets.

I've decided to use Requiem and its delightfully sexist armor sets for the Doom Prophets as that kind of style fits them the best. Meanwhile I'm using my new resource for the Humans and Elves, and some of the Dark Elves will surely be used for either the Doom Prophets or Baelificus heroes or somesuch. In any case I've got a lot to use in terms of characters alone.

Monster-wise, this game has a ton of shit I'm not even aware of. It has a lot of expansions and I've seen at most 25% of the game's content when I played on private servers.

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A large Gargoyle for the Baelificus to use as a mid-level air unit. Like the smaller variant he will have Resurgence (now known as Jesus Powers) and be relatively slow.

Honor Amongst Modders

A little while ago I had hunted down one of the artists responsible for many of the Civ3 graphics I was now slowly converting to AoW2-compliant naming schemes. I hunted him down simply to thank him for his work. Recently he came back to me with a curious request - he wanted me to smooth out one of his models for him. After a bit of difficulty with cross-converting I had a peculiar smooth, curved ship in 3ds max. I later discovered this was a remake of a wotw Manta ship. Anyways, I couldn't repair his model; it got re-triangulated by the conversion and turned into a disaster. So, I challenged myself to rebuild it from scratch, and within a few hours I did just that.

I don't take requests from people. Not unless they've done something for me. And this guy had done something for me most valuable indirectly - he made a ton of civ3 graphics. Grateful for the model, he offered booty from his collection of models.

The one major thing I can't convert from Civilization 3 is Helicopter graphics. This is because individuals have a habit of using darker pinks to take advantage of the engine's transparency capabilities. Something I can't use in AoW2. In fact I have to use a PSP script to get rid of all the extra pink indexes (unfortunately it doesn't get rid of one present on many of the graphics, I need HKS to fix it but he's LAZY and I don't know how to fix it AAAAAAAAAARGH THE TRAIN CRASHES TO A HALT), and ultimately the choppers lose their rotors.

But this gentlemen filled my request of three particular Helicopter models; the Comanche, Hind, and KA-66. Through these I can make a variety of hilarious Confederate units, including flame thrower choppers. These models are all high detail and also have skins I can work off of!

This is a classic example of honor amongst modders that I feel has for the most part been lost amongst developers.

Something even bigger came out of this, though.

There is a plugin for 3ds max called Afterburn. Consider for a moment Avatar and BSG. The explosion effects. The fire and smoke. Afterburn is what makes those. I think both productions also used FumeFX, a liquid physics simulator, as well. For the most part I am focused on Afterburn because that's what I used to make the awesome explosions for The Great Destroyer in AO.

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I also created a test battlecruiser explosion scene and heavily experimented with Afterburn. Unfortunately I only have a few renders uploaded.

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Afterburn is certainly one of the most heavily used Max plugins in the industry. BSG owes most of its explosions and smoke/fire effects to this plugin. The rest are either pre-cendered CGI or liquid physics simulations like FumeFX, which I also have experience with but is far harder to use than Afterburn.

Incidentally, it doesn't work on windows 7. At least this version doesn't. Rather, it doesn't like Window 7's internet explorer for some reason. I could not even get to the registration section at all. I'd get "Navigation Canceled." But now I was looking three very pretty Helicopter models and the lust to make clouds of burning, freezy, and aids for their various weapons and effects. I could do this through traditional particles but it'd look like shit. Granted, I still can't use any kind of blending in AoW2, but Afterburn would beat basic particles anyways. Plus, one day I could try to make a fleet battle CGI had I this plugin working again.

So, empowered by my new resources (and hardware, I rendered those BC explosions, in particular a very big one, on my old XP computer. It took 10 minutes a frame. On Windows 7 beta, on my i7, it took a minute tops. Yes, this i7 is literally 10x as fast as my X2 6000 3.ghz because max actually uses all 8 cores unlike games), I hunted down an answer on google.

Given time I found a dll file and some other random bobble. Just like that, Afterburn was working.

God damn I was pleased for a moment there. Then I realized I still don't know how to animate. But now I have the single most important plugin for a future attempt at animation now functional again at long last. I still have The Great Destroyer's explosion scenes as well. I'm a pack rat, you know.

So the last week has seen some crazy shit happening. That's like, the most activity and excitement that ever happens in my life. A whole ton of crazy shit, and mostly positive for once! I feel content for the moment. But the ~110 degree temperatures still sicken me.

In 4 days I'll be 23. Most kids would spend such a day drinking themselves to death, sleeping with cheap blondes, and generally mundane shit like that. Me? Nah. Maybe I'll eat something. Maybe not. Birthdays are not a day to be happy for me. They're a day to reminisce and remind myself how much time has been wasted.

I in particular look back a year, since I was 22 in this case, and ask myself about all the major events that happened.

- I began taking drugs and now seriously regret it.
- I almost got back on track on writing TOA. In total I wrote and edited around 500-600 pages between December and mid January. Not much, but it's something.
- Suffered many breakdowns, attempted suicide once (overdose) and was on the verge a second time. Mental stability is better than my predictions but I'm still losing the fight.
- Starcraft 2 was released and subsequently disappointed me in virtually every way possible. In particular, Blizzard's decision to totally fuck over custom content and release a horribly designed layout with their editor. I have no doubt I will sometime along the time attempt a project for sc2 but chances are it will be after both expansions are out and the editor/battle.net have been patched to the point of being usable.

In particular I am concerned about running multiplayer mods. Since you can't have any more than 10 megs of space in any individual object and 20mb globally on battle.net (and I do expect these to rise, but not nearly enough, conversion mods for this game will easily exceed 400-500mb, on top of their systems requiring maps to be modified to accept custom data in the first place aka not a mod at all), you'll be running an Mpqdraft or equivalent to play mods with your friends. There is no LAN, either - you'll be doing this through battle.net. If Blizzard took LAN out of Diablo 2, for example, the hundreds of modders working on the game right this minute would probably quit or at the very least reconsider since their projects would now be SP-only.

However, you can get achievements through custom games - the same system you'd be playing mods on. I have no doubt in my mind that Blizzard would see these global modifications as hacks or means to circumvent achievements and thus deem them a bannable offense.

Unless through private servers or a Blizzard-made option to play global modifications that are unbound by their arbitrary size limits, modding will never live in Starcraft 2.

Warcraft 3's modding is already dead and has been for a very long time. Warcraft 3 is totally mapping dominated with the odd campaign, and because of the mindset of LOL MAPS ARE MODS, Blizzard has totally ignored all of our efforts to present the contrary. I have heard rumors of a "mod loader" but I suspect this is people like Karune still being ignorant to what a mod really is.

Ultimately what all this means is that I would be making a campaign in Starcraft 2, not a mod. However, given the choice, I think I'd make a campaign anyway. It seems more rewarding to me to tell my story then make a huge gameplay shift no one's ever going to play besides me and a few other blokes.

The question of graphics in SC2 is a little more blurred now. I can import graphics from the new game with all of their animations at once. They are virtually sc2-ready. In fact, I plan to try to put that dragon into sc2 in the near-ish future. I also have a minimum of two very experienced trigger/data editor users to call upon.

In particular, after discovering how dreadfully terrible sc2's "insane" AI still is, I started looking at the galaxy files. I feel more confident about one day taking these apart and trying to, at the very least, write build orders in them. I know Zalamander, one of the programmers of AMAI for wc3 who has been working on a sc2 AI in the beta, and I'd be able to talk to him about the AI should I decide to try to screw with it in the future.

Come full circle, Starcraft 2 is not something I'd be focusing on anytime soon. I plan to commentate post-release, but chances are I won't even be touching the editor outside of minor experiments for a very long time.

At least I want to get 2042 finished first.

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Okay bro, this one's done. What next?

What it means to mod for me

I am past the point of no return. There is no turning back, only moving forward. Where ever this path leads I am destined to follow. Through pain, through fear, and through despair, I have faltered but never fallen too far. I cannot deny that I, as a dreamer, am bound to the will to create. Even if I cannot stomach the prospect of making a large-scale project in Starcraft 2's terrible editor ui there is no doubt one day I will attempt just that. It will either fail or it will succeed. But I will attempt it.

There is a billion and one things I should be doing right now. I should be writing. I should be rendering graphics. I should be voice acting my new units. I should be working on my documentary video. But I can do none of those, because I cannot focus. I cannot concentrate. Too difficult is it for me to enter the mindset of productivity. Impossible is it for me to learn new and advanced subjects.

That is why I will be trying this new drug. That's why I will risk everything to save everything.

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I have no choice. My path was decided for me many years ago.

Somewhere along the line you have to suck it up and keep stepping forward. Somewhere along the line you have to bear steel to the hordes of madness. For, in the end, you have no choice. When all is said and done, when the world falls to ruin and all things beneath your feet fade to flame and ash, know this;

The only true strength in the world is the strength of the mind. The will to fight, the will to survive. Even if you spite life and despise all creatures therein, you still breathe, and thus you still fight. I have been there. I have been in the darkest, foulest reaches of every emotion imaginable. I have seen everything I once held close burn to nothing in my hands. Yet, for some reason, I still stand.

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Not everything is glorious. Not everything reaches that point where you can say, "Hey, I accomplished something here."

Maybe you don't like who you are, who you are becoming. Maybe you can't change. But you still have to live with yourself. You have to accept your weaknesses, and take advantage of your strengths to bend the rules. You have to come full circle, do things your way, take your time. Then, when you're ready, challenge fate once again.

Loladins of Legend: 2042 is my challenge to fate.

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Don't be afraid to step back and say, "I fucked up". Just don't let your mistakes destroy your dreams.

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Let's do this.

A future bound by flame

These are the default races in the games and those I am converting them to.

I cannot change racial alignments unfortunately. So, most races that are Neutral should be Evil. Some races should fucking hate everyone but alliances are so random in this game this cannot be controlled at all.
Default Races - New Races In Mod

Good
Archons - Loladins
Righteous defenders of the light, Loladins are lead by Sir Lol and represent a beacon of all that is good and happy in the world.
Elves - Elves
Elves in LoL are tree-hugging faggots with a hardon for sharp things. They kind of hate everyone.
Dwarves - Beastmasters
They wear sofas on their backs and batman masks, Beastmasters are lead by Re[XXX]aR and exist to hear the call of the wild. This is rumored to sound like a flock of goats mid orgasm and can potentially be fatal.
Halflings - Humans
Dem pink-skimmed 'umies and their goddamn tower spam. Humans infest Modern Earth like cheap blondes in a high school. You can keep killing them but there'll always be more.
Syrons - Loladin Ascendants
Sir Lol's secret weapon, created and trained on the delicious chunk of glowing cheese that is the moon.

Neutral
Tigrans - Corrupt

In the dawn of time, two powers were created - Good, and Evil. Both were represented in whole by an aspect - Sir Lol, and the Doom God. However, there were still neutral energies that bounced around the barriers between imagination and reality.

During the initial wars, dreams and nightmares were made manifest by the Doom God's efforts to subdue humanity. Human dreams were attacked by his powers, and turned into nightmares. There were also dreams forged by other races, such as the Elves, and the Devilwing. Every dream possesses energy, and that energy reaches across the universe.

One of the neutral energies laid dormant between the barriers, asleep and without sentience. As time passed, these dreams and nightmares reached it, and began to influence it. Within time, the energy began to mutate, and it grew sentience forged by the fears, hatreds, and solice of the many worlds of Creation. It soon grew a personality, a personality addicted to these foreign feelings. It fed upon the dreams and nightmares, growing stronger, larger.

Thus was born Amon, the Corrupter.

Amon emerged from the time-barriers when he became strong enough to think for himself. He roamed the universe, searching for the sources of these things he felt. He yearned to immerse himself in their power, to become intoxicated in their strength. Soon, he found Earth, and a mighty war waging across its surface. So many individual souls, each with their own fears and hatreds. It was a field of ambrosia, ripe for the picking.

Amon's own dreams are so powerful that they can create things from nothing. The Corruption are shards of his thought processes, a race of nightmarish origins, forged into figures of absolute fear and terror - often Dragons. Amon's powers also reach across much of reality, and his ability to understand magic is almost unrivaled. He yearns for little else other than to swallow the world in his mind, and encompass all things in a single never-ending nightmare, so that he may feed upon their anguish and revel in their torment, to become infinite and undivided.

Humans - Doom Prophets
Lead by Kraden and his demon sidekicks, the Doom Prophets are humans who have either willingly turned to the will of Evil or been brainwashed by American idol/Doom's other nefarious and fiendish and twisted, depraved acts. As time progresses these humans eventually incubate demons, and late-tier Doom Prophet units are mostly true demons of considerable power.
Frostlings - Dread Legion
Hailing from the freezing wasteland that is the sun, the Dread Legion, commanded by Lord Dread, is an armada of demonic forces hellbent on freezing everything. They are generally regarded as dicks.
Draconians - Bloodstone Guard
Hailing from the Mars Battlefortress, Lord Isador's demonic orcs and reptilians, the Bloodstone and Isadorians respectively, have come to set everything on fire. They command advanced technology, including space ships and pew pew lazor gunz. They are also, incidentally, regarded as dicks.
Nomads - Orcs
An ingenius weapon set loose on Modern Earth by Mal`Gammagan, the dragon of the underworld. Orcs constantly fight amongst both themselves and humans, progressively becoming stronger and more industrial. They are especially bothersome in the highlands and the southern forests. Elves especially regard Orcs as huge dicks.

Evil

Dark Elves - Devilwing
The Devilwing are immortal dragons who wander the stars searching for life force to devour to fuel their immortality. Yeah, also dicks.
Undead - Baelificus
Baelificus, the Underworld Legion, is the largest of Doom's evil armies of evilness. They also command the Minotaurs which in the mod are regarded as an entirely different race.
Orcs - Minotaurs
Colossal dicks, the whole lot of them.
Goblins - Confederates
Another space-farring race. This particular race comes from my MFTG universe. The Confederates are guaranteed to offend pretty much anyone of any social, religious, or racial standing. They are also immensely ranged-heavy and possess mostly mechanized units like gundams and battlecruisers.
Shadow Demons - Deep Hive
Deep Hive come from another dimension through portals of evilness and then eat everyone because they can. They would be dicks, but are usually more thought of as assholes than dicks. Dicks you can deal with. Assholes just shit all over everyone.

Afterburn

This plugin is kind of a big deal. It's going to enormously help me in my efforts to make custom death animations for the many demons and beasties lacking proper death anims.

Fire in particular is a bitch to create without something like this. Fire, without blending, is even harder. That's why games who typically use fire employ either what Sc did (special palettes for blending) or what AoW2 did (particle engine). However, when you can't access these (AoW2's particles can only be edited through hex editing), shit gets dangerous and complicated when you need your demons to burn to death.

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Initial animation
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Modified animation
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Current animation

There are still issues even when I'm satisfied, though. For some reason the model has an outline through the particles. I encountered this problem with my XB-42 engines back in AO and a guy showed me how to fix it but now I forget. EXCELLENT! I also still need a stain on the ground for his corpse so you remember where he is should you wish to use ressurect or animate corpse on him. Which you will, because he'll be a Legendary hero. They get abused like that quite a lot.

I am churning through monster graphics in particular as fast as I can right now. I have no time to waste! Every day that passes is another day that something horrible might happen. Have to work as fast and hard as my tattered remains will carry me.

Opened up submission for hero concepts from our community. I only expect a handful, though; hardly anyone goes to the site much less is a part of my SECRETIVE pact. With that in light I've been picking out hero graphics from the monsters in this MMO for some of the neutral and evil races.

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guna byt yew

Okay, let's finish this guy.

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When batch rendering it seems to have to prepare Afterburn data for each frame and this makes each frame take about 2-3 seconds longer than usual. This allows me to find a new model in the meantime to do after this guy. If I wasn't on an i7 this process could potentially take a lot longer.

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Hmm, this guy could be useful...

Much remains to be done. Battles shall be won and lost. But at the end of the day what matters is that we moved forward.

/edit Fixed image.

Loladins of Legend - The Making Of Part 4

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming