Getting the most out of your assets in a world of limited time and resources - which is the world we will always live in, no matter how good tech gets - is essential to good game design. But hey, it had all unique monster assets. This decision, cautioned against by his former friends and colleagues, caused the project go through a 3 year long cycle in development Hell, eating nearly 30 million dollars USD (in the year 2000) only to be released as an incredibly mediocre game. That's not 'lazy', that's enabling bonus content and creativity from hobby users that can't 3D model.ĮDIT: If anyone is ever tempted to think of getting the most bang for your buck out of a given asset as 'laziness' or a 'shortcut', go read up on the development of Daikatana - John Romero's pet project hot off of the heels of Doom, where one of the primary design conceits was that he was going to have every enemy asset in the game be completely unique. It's usually pretty easy to go in, use the base model for a given unit and just swap equipment / effect / palettes / whatever and be off to the races. Honestly I'm impressed with how detailed it all is considering how rarely you're ever zoomed-in on these models the artists were clearly just having some fun.Īnd as a nice side benefit, when assets are made like this it makes it accessible for modders. Even on a massive budget you'd still want to be smart about re-using assets, and this is all done tastefully without anything looking lazy or distractingly similar. There are certainly re-used assets, but that's a smart use of resources rather than a 'shortcut'. Plenty of units have significant character and details you wouldn't expect, like the big rock spirit having a bunch of weapons lodged in him. There is literally no unit in the game that is just 'clouds of particles'. I've went through the encyclopedia to see all of these 'obvious shortcuts' and honestly it all looks great. Blizzard got bashed for having all art for the WC3 remake done by a Malaysian third party so that it ended up clashing somewhat with the company's usual style, but here this kind of treatment would be an improvement. Maybe this is one area in which they should consider outsourcing. The systems in Triumph's games are meticulously designed, strategic and tactical maps alike are pleasant to the eye but actual units to fill up the roster occasionally look and feel like an afterthought. This is sad, because grand strategy in a fantasy setting hinges on visual variety (HoMM got that right nearly every time) and rather baffling because the situation hasn't changed much since AoW 3. Units that are basically clouds of particles, all standard civilization soldiers using the hero model with preset equipment (of which there are maybe 5 per civ), limited animation on many attacks and abilities. The usual procedure to get them is to subscribe to Steam Workshop and the map should be downloaded automaticaly. Unfortunately, there are some very obvious shortcuts taken to make the most of limited graphics development man-hours and budget. Posted NovemHi, in short, most maps made by the community are stored in Steam Workshop.
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