D&D 4e Time

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950716 steps to go...

Saw this when doing some maintenance. The blue really draws the eye!

Blogger is being difficult....click on the image to bask in the glory of MS.

!(a blog)

All 12 heroes are now in the game, and artifact implementation has begun. Some of the powers have been altered and made more interesting. I'll post a change list soon.

It's Been Such a Long Time

...but don't worry I'm not going anywhere. Lots of real life happening, but now that is safely taken care of for a while, it's back to mapping!

The AI is in a better state now, with only three outstanding behaviors left to add: melee hero temperence, gate defense, and gate upgrading. Even without those it is quite fun (for me) to start up a 4v4 game played with AIs and see who comes out on top.

I've fixed many small issues and have now completed 8/12 heroes and started on #9: the Broodmother. After her I'll tackle to Duchess of Drake, and finally crown it all with the General and the Black King. Once those are in I'll turn my attention to the artifact creation and work on adding a few final layers of strategery before final AI work, tuning, balance, and map beautification.

It's been almost exactly a month since I've started this project, and when it moves, wow does it move fast. What a testament to Blizzard's incredible tool and asset work that such a major departure from W3 can be created, with no prior knowledge of the toolset, in such a short period of time. Also it is worth noting that I decided a few weeks ago to expand the scope of the project rather than diminish the quality and vision of the final product. It wouldn't do to show that I had picked up bad habits and felt the need to rush this to release!

It's Alive, Aliiiiiiive!

I stared into the Abyss of AI and found it staring back! Once they released me from the asylum, I discovered that the AI editor isn't used for custom maps at all. An AI system for this map would need to be totally trigger driven (!!!) which means lots of work.

During my research I also came to realize how important it would be to have some "automated testers" and also how important AI is for a finished product. I decided that it would expand the scope of the map significantly but it would be worth it. I was really happy to learn that heroes will use custom skills fairly well on their own, which removed a big chunk of control logic from the scope.

The AI has a sort of hierarchy of needs that goes like this:

1. Stay Alive
2. Defend Gates
3. Navigate
4. Spend money
5. Level-up

I'd estimate the progress in each of those areas to be:

1. Stay Alive - 80% - needs melee hero adjustment
2. Defend Gates - 0%
3. Navigate - 80% - 1 bug where heroes lose move orders
4. Spend money - 60% - works for the black kingdom, only a little for free peoples
5. Level-up -100%

Melee heroes (1) have a hard time staying alive since they are so aggressive. I'll put in some logic to have them stand back and soak free XP at lower levels. Defending gates (2) should be straight forward. There is one navigation bug (3) left where custom trigger skills are overriding move orders. Spending money (4) works for the demon gate upgrade system and potions. The Free People money system is next on my list to put in. I had to think long and hard about the leveling system (5), but it is now working for each hero. Both spending and leveling will require updates as new items and heroes are implemented, but it doesn't take much and the rest of the AI should stay autonomous (ha).