View Single Post
  #2  
Old 04-04-2009, 09:10 PM
coreyh2 coreyh2 is offline
Approved Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: WA
Posts: 40
Default

I can talk about the Fantasy Wars editor. Its very easy to use.

Terrain editing is very easy. A map is made of 2d hex tiles. A compiler is run to generate the 3d terrain. All the connections between normal terrain is done automatically. Its easy to create a beautiful land in no time at all. The only hard part of terrain editing is manually connecting the larger city fortress tiles. I had to look up how they were they were put together in the existing game maps. All of the maps from the campaign can be opened and you can see how they put things together.

Putting down units is also very easy. Its takes a little while to learn how to set their AI however. There isn't really any documentation and terms they use are hard to interpret. I figured it out pretty easily after looking at the campaign maps. Setting up the AI consists of setting up groups of units and how they behave. Mostly its just the choice between them defending a area or attacking any seen units.

Elven Legacy is supposed to have a branching dialog. I don't know how that is set up yet. Fantasy Wars just had linear dialog. The only hard part was figuring out what name to use for the regular units icons. I had to look up the names in a folder.

All the coding/setting up AI is done in triggers. Its not actual code just logical statements where you fill in blanks. A map with triggers similar to a campaign map is very easy to do. Some of the terms were a little hard to understand but after I looked at the game maps it wasn't that hard. Its possible to make errors so you still have to test things. Its programming although a very simple kind.

At least in Fantasy Wars there wasn't any support for cutscenes. There are actual cutscenes in the game. There just isn't any way to make them in the editor. I just told the story through dialog.

Overall its very easy. While the strategy to beat a map can be hard to figure out the actual game is simple. Its very easy to use the editor create a land and tell a story.

On the negative side the community is small. If you want a lot of people to play your maps it isn't the best choice. There aren't many english player made maps for fantasy wars. The community seemed larger in Russia.
Reply With Quote