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Forces Of Nature
Forces of Nature is a Warcraft 3 mod which I helped create while at UAT. I
was primarily the Lead Designer of this mod, but I also designed and built
the triggers for the old-style Turn-based game play. In addition I did a
large portion of the level design itself.
FON is a turn-based RPG in the style of Final Fantasy and is almost
fully-functional. There are 5 playable characters, and 3 of them will be
easy to play by loading up any of the maps. Each map is drastically
different from the last in visual style.
The battle engine is a personal triumph. I created it in a 2 week break
between classes. It features: Items, Weapons, Armor, Basic Attacks, Defense
Stances, Spells, Status Effects and many other standards. While shops were
never added to the game itself, the structure for keeping track of an
inventory is there. Most of the menu system works. However, there are
critical game-ending flaws. Therefore, I would suggest you test the menu out
when you have finished with a level.
Most of this mod was created over the course of a 5 week class. This is
deceptive, as the first week was spent breaking into 2 teams and the last
week was cut short for grading. So we really only had 3 weeks to complete
this mod. This is the primary reason that it isn't finished. If we had
another 2-3 weeks, this would be complete. We came very close.
The over-world had you take control of Ruth, and movement is based entirely
on traditional WC3 movements. This is the only part of the game that is much
like the source game play.
Clicking Ruth's skill will open the menu. The menu and the battles use the
same skill-based control scheme. You can use ASWD to activate the skills, or
click on them with the mouse. They act as arrow and selection keys.
After you move around the map a while, you will encounter battles. These
battles require the player to pick from a selection of options using the
same control scheme as the menu. These next screen shots show Ruth selecting
a spell and attacking the monster and killing him.
You can play these maps individually, and as you do, there are several
things to look out for that I personally did. The areas where the battles
take place are of primary concern. I hand-crafted all of these areas
myself. Additionally, I did the entire opening sequence. The opening movie
is only about 90% complete, as I wanted to give other people a chance to add
to it before I finished it off. No one ever did, which was likely due to the
poor communication system we had to use.
The tools we had to organize these efforts were minimal, essentially a forum
with no editing abilities and very basic threading. Information was
very-much a jumble. However, through a combination of outside-school forums
and AOL Instant Messenger, we were able to produce something I think we are
all very proud of.
This was a class setting, after all. Thus, as the lead designer, I had
limited ability to deal with a couple of people that refused to work. The
secondary reason we did not finish on time, is that we ended up waiting for
some of the aspects of the design that needed to be completed before others
could do their job. If, for example, the level overview designs took longer
than expected, the level designers couldn't begin making their maps.
Still, these problems were minor, and in the end we managed to create a very
unique WC3 mod. One that never could have been done to this point if it were
not for a class of very dedicated people.
(Not bad for 5 weeks of work.)
Forces Of Nature ZIP (about 6 Mb).
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