Conquer Club

Very nice start!

gimil wrote:Working on it. Finding it difficult to put together a full landscape. I want to move away from just a green play area like the other two maps

that's easy. all you need is:

1. a mountain (grey-white)
2. forests (dark green-orange)
3. barren lands (earth tones)

and this way you'll easily get more colours.

DiM wrote:

gimil wrote:Working on it. Finding it difficult to put together a full landscape. I want to move away from just a green play area like the other two maps

that's easy. all you need is:

1. a mountain (grey-white)
2. forests (dark green-orange)
3. barren lands (earth tones)

and this way you'll easily get more colours.

That is what I plan, I have just become needlessly fussy at the moment and feel unsatisfied with everything I do.

Is Feudal Throne a working title? Or is it related to some new gameplay aspect of the map?

OliverFA wrote:Is Feudal Throne a working title? Or is it related to some new gameplay aspect of the map?

No, I did have a concept similar to on of our ideas which I was going to implement but have since changed my mind. If anyone has a better name for the title let me know!

Here is some test terrain that I did today. What do you all think of it?

[bigimg]http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c64/Gimil_01/FeudalThrone-1.png[/bigimg]

Looks nice... the mountains are a bit dark though.

To me, the mountains kind of look like grey goo

-Sully

natty_dread wrote:Looks nice... the mountains are a bit dark though.

They look good on my monitor. Perhaps a poll with a few choices for mountain graphics could be useful once the map is more complete.

id like to see the castle postitions before mountains,river etc colours are decided.

maybe throw a desert type area in one part of the map to give some contrast from other feudal maps?

gimil wrote:

OliverFA wrote:Is Feudal Throne a working title? Or is it related to some new gameplay aspect of the map?

No, I did have a concept similar to on of our ideas which I was going to implement but have since changed my mind. If anyone has a better name for the title let me know!

Here is some test terrain that I did today. What do you all think of it?

[bigimg]http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c64/Gimil_01/FeudalThrone-1.png[/bigimg]

did your cat sneeze on the map?

the mountains shape look cool but the color is not yet quite right i think

It is far too green

Seriously though, the forests might look a bit better if you throw in a couple of other colour trees, maybe a couple of orange and red ones, also it kind of looks like the river is above the forest maybe make a few trees looks like it over hangs the river slightly might make this look better. Lastly on the forest maybe adding a slight shadow from them might make them see more real.

On the to the mountains, I think the problem you have here is mainly that there seems to be no consistency with the scale, the width of the river compared to the size of the mountain seems wrong. Also they seem very 'shiny', although im not quite sure how to improve that... But the shape seems good.

Either way i think the maps looks nice, possibly a bit of variation to the colour of the ground, mudflats around the river, maybe a desert, shingle beaches instead of all this idealised sand

But anyway

How about instead of the previous green background color you go with the "dust bowl" background color and make it a middle east castle fight? There are plenty of castles in that area and a sand Feudal war would really be intriguing!

I've seen enough dirt brown castle environments in first person shooters, please, no.

I'd not get too gimicky with the environments in this actually. Age of Realms 3 sees a lot less play than the other two for some reason and the extreme contrasts between the kingdoms might be as good a reason as any. If you pick an environment I'd say make sure it all flows together or changes from one theme to another naturally and is not brown.

Coleman wrote:I've seen enough dirt brown castle environments in first person shooters, please, no.

I'd not get too gimicky with the environments in this actually. Age of Realms 3 sees a lot less play than the other two for some reason and the extreme contrasts between the kingdoms might be as good a reason as any. If you pick an environment I'd say make sure it all flows together or changes from one theme to another naturally and is not brown.

I didn't suggest a brown or dirt dirt colored map but a sand colored map ! It's much more bright and inviting and honestly without a environment change I don't see a reason to make another Feudal map! There are already 2 green maps with similar game play. How many more of those do we need??

Gillipig wrote:

Coleman wrote:I've seen enough dirt brown castle environments in first person shooters, please, no.

I'd not get too gimicky with the environments in this actually. Age of Realms 3 sees a lot less play than the other two for some reason and the extreme contrasts between the kingdoms might be as good a reason as any. If you pick an environment I'd say make sure it all flows together or changes from one theme to another naturally and is not brown.

I didn't suggest a brown or dirt dirt colored map but a sand colored map ! It's much more bright and inviting and honestly without a environment change I don't see a reason to make another Feudal map! There are already 2 green maps with similar game play. How many more of those do we need??

Well, thanks to Coleman, we know that these other 2 get lots of games made every day so another one might be warranted. Straying to far from the formula might cause disaster and never get played.
Feudal War 178.29
Feudal Epic 53.29
But staying with the same might also cause that problem. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. By keeping with the same sort of colours brings the maps together.

koontz1973 wrote:Well, thanks to Coleman, we know that these other 2 get lots of games made every day so another one might be warranted. Straying to far from the formula might cause disaster and never get played.
Feudal War 178.29
Feudal Epic 53.29
But staying with the same might also cause that problem. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. By keeping with the same sort of colours brings the maps together.

I think having "Feudal" in the title will do that ! Those numbers are totally wrong btw! I just searched with game finder and the real stats are:
Feudal War 349.365
Feudal Epic 31.321
I just don't see a reason to make another one if it's going to look the same anyway! I actually prefer the newest of the Feudal maps so I won't say that it wasn't a good map but the number of games played on it isn't very impressive when compared to it's predecessor! Even when you take into consideration that it hasn't been playable for as long. If a third map is made I'll play it once to see if it's better than the previous maps! Don't expect a lot of games being played on it though if the map doesn't bring something radically new! Only Pirates of the Caribbean can do the same thing over and over again and be equally successful every time !

Gillipig wrote:

koontz1973 wrote:Well, thanks to Coleman, we know that these other 2 get lots of games made every day so another one might be warranted. Straying to far from the formula might cause disaster and never get played.
Feudal War 178.29
Feudal Epic 53.29
But staying with the same might also cause that problem. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. By keeping with the same sort of colours brings the maps together.

I think having "Feudal" in the title will do that ! Those numbers are totally wrong btw! I just searched with game finder and the real stats are:
Feudal War 349.365
Feudal Epic 31.321
I just don't see a reason to make another one if it's going to look the same anyway! I actually prefer the newest of the Feudal maps so I won't say that it wasn't a good map but the number of games played on it isn't very impressive when compared to it's predecessor! Even when you take into consideration that it hasn't been playable for as long. If a third map is made I'll play it once to see if it's better than the previous maps! Don't expect a lot of games being played on it though if the map doesn't bring something radically new! Only Pirates of the Caribbean can do the same thing over and over again and be equally successful every time !

But success does not mean good or even quality.
Blame Coleman for the stats, they are not mine.
I think this one is going to be different. With the new types of GP that have been introduced since the last map then it should be different enough.

koontz1973 wrote:

Gillipig wrote:

koontz1973 wrote:Well, thanks to Coleman, we know that these other 2 get lots of games made every day so another one might be warranted. Straying to far from the formula might cause disaster and never get played.
Feudal War 178.29
Feudal Epic 53.29
But staying with the same might also cause that problem. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. By keeping with the same sort of colours brings the maps together.

I think having "Feudal" in the title will do that ! Those numbers are totally wrong btw! I just searched with game finder and the real stats are:
Feudal War 349.365
Feudal Epic 31.321
I just don't see a reason to make another one if it's going to look the same anyway! I actually prefer the newest of the Feudal maps so I won't say that it wasn't a good map but the number of games played on it isn't very impressive when compared to it's predecessor! Even when you take into consideration that it hasn't been playable for as long. If a third map is made I'll play it once to see if it's better than the previous maps! Don't expect a lot of games being played on it though if the map doesn't bring something radically new! Only Pirates of the Caribbean can do the same thing over and over again and be equally successful every time !

But success does not mean good or even quality.
Blame Coleman for the stats, they are not mine.
I think this one is going to be different. With the new types of GP that have been introduced since the last map then it should be different enough.

If better graphics is the only upside then he might just as well just edit the current ones just like classic was edited! let's compare Feudal and AOR! A big difference between the Feudal maps and the AOR maps is that Feudal epic was not nearly as successful as AOR 2. Feudal Epic looks too alike Feudal War while AOR 2 does not look like AOR 1. AOR 3 didn't get up to par to the previous ones but has still had a lot more games played on it than Feudal Epic. What makes anyone think Feudal 3 would do better than Feudal Epic if it doesn't change a lot of things?
AOR 1 142.000
AOR 2 126.000
AOR 3 47.000
Feudal War 349.000
Feudal Epic 31.000
Feudal 3 ????

AOR has changed it's outlook and stayed interesting
Feudal War was more of a one hit wonder and I don't think Feudal 3 is going to have many games played on it unless it gets rid of the Green!!! There are two green maps already no need of a third pretty much identical installation! Make it a sand theme and it can stay fresh!

You cannot compare the 2 sets of maps that way. Where as AOR 1 and 2 are different, they have the same layout to an extent with the same gameplay in mind. The 2 Feudals are very different maps.

Epic has
126 territs
8 castles

War has
66 territs
6 castles

Epic is double the size of war.

Which ever stats we produce, we can both argue over them to no end and as this is a map thread, more than happy to carry on elsewhere.

Feudal War is more successful because i also contributed to it's making

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... just kidding.

Gillipig's numbers are correct:
AOR 1 142.000
AOR 2 126.000

but this is not the whole truth. AoR2 was released later and it's logical to have fewer games. of the whole series AoR2 is in fact the most successful and it's only a matter of time before it will also become the leader of this trilogy when it comes to total number of games.

now, i attribute this success not only to the total change in graphics but mostly to the different gameplay. it kept a few of the old aspects but brought to the table a whole new array of gameplay changes that simply fit very well together.
AoR3 followed the same recipe. a complete change of graphics plus adding a lot of gameplay changes. unfortunatelly it didn't go just as well as AoR2 but it's still doing fine.
the current trend is AoR2>AoR3>AoR1
so at this very moment more people are playing parts 2 and 3 than those that are playing part 1.
given enough time and if the trend continues both AoR 2 and 3 will amass more total games than AoR1 proving that they are both better. however AoR3 despite being better than 1 is still not better than 2. i suspect it's probably because i went overboard with the gameplay changes trying to make each and every kingdom different. it meant people had to develop different strategies for different games and not many like that.

now back to feudal.
aside from the fact that it's too green and looks like a golf course
feudal epic didn't bring a graphical change. heck, it even features the same castle images i gave gimil for the first feudal. it simply took the original graphics and made them better. which is not a bad thing at all. it keeps things familiar and nice. but in my opinion it didn't change the gameplay enough. it's almost the same gameplay, upped for 8 players and with a different territory arrangement. the already established fans of feudal war probably tried feudal epic and decided it's the same deal but they abandoned it because they were already familiar with the layout from feudal war and didn't want to be bothered with learning a new layout only to experience roughly the same gameplay.

so in my opinion feudal needs to bring a new gameplay to attract people. simply making the same map with better graphics will not help. however it must not go overboard and include every single xml feature. a nice fresh gameplay and the map will be perfect even if it also looks too green ( )

I agree with dim. All Epic did was update War to 8 players, with no gameplay changes whatsoever. To make a succesful new Feudal map, it should have new gameplay.

But, also something to tie it back to the old - it shouldn't be too different either. Otherwise, there's no point calling it Feudal...

So take the core elements of feudal - the castles, IMO - and build a new gameplay around them.

natty_dread wrote:I agree with dim. All Epic did was update War to 8 players, with no gameplay changes whatsoever. To make a succesful new Feudal map, it should have new gameplay.

But, also something to tie it back to the old - it shouldn't be too different either. Otherwise, there's no point calling it Feudal...

So take the core elements of feudal - the castles, IMO - and build a new gameplay around them.

I assume you want the new map to be green like the previous ones!? Sure a new gameplay is a must but I don't think it's possible to make a new fresh interesting Feudal map without a change of colors! The green has got to go because from a far you won't be able to tell the difference between the new one and the previous ones if it too has Feudal in the title and is bloody green allover !

natty_dread wrote:So take the core elements of feudal - the castles, IMO - and build a new gameplay around them.

Feudal castle assault

Just checking, any updates?
Appreciate what you have done, are doing and will do.

how about starting in villages, and then taking over castles and cities and working up to the capital, which is the several-territory wide victory condition... or something like that