Crusader: No Remorse in Ancient Warfare 3

Desert-Mammoth

Desert-Mammoth

New member
Hi, I'd already emailed Keenan about this before realising y'all have a forum... a little on the dead side I suppose but there's nothing like injecting a bit of necromantic energy into things.

I play a game called Ancient Warfare 3 on Steam, its basically a sandbox that lets you build anything you want within the constraints of the game. Ancient Warfare 3 is a bit of a silly name because it is essentially its own self-contained game maker, complete with custom models and scripting. It started life as a blue vs red block battle game, and has kept that aesthetic.

In any event, I have a fond memory of CNR, and randomly started creating props and weapons from it for Ancient Warfare 3. Before long I released a map for others to play, which was recieved with decent fanfare - considering the playerbase is rather small, anyway. I then went on to make more props and weapons, releasing a second map which has recieved equal praise. This has started a trend amongst the other players, most of them youngsters, into making their own CNR stuff. Three of the top trending nine workshop items, for example, are CNR related stuff.

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So I thought you skeles would like to know that CNR isn't dead, it continues to grow into new forms and new audiences after all these years. Here are some pictures from the maps I have released for others to play:

CNR1.jpg
CNR2.jpg
CNR3.jpgCNR4.jpgCNR5.jpgCNR6.jpgCNR7.jpgCNR8.jpg
 
My latest map, showcasing all of the guns and props I have made so far, as well as some gimmicks unique to CNR such as controlling a droid and of course the teleporters.


For those of you who are wondering what Ancient Warfare 3 is, here's the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/758990/Ancient_Warfare_3/

For those of you who decide to take a gander at Ancient Warfare 3, the map link is here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3058387551

Annnd for those of you who take a gander at Ancient Warfare 3 and want to start making CNR related stuff because YOLO, here's the collection with all the items, units, props etc: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3046715668

Cheers!
 
Do you have those resources in a format usable for playing around somewhere? I found them in Steam's workshop folders but they're in a non-standard JSON dump inside a file called "SerializedContent.xml".
 
I have the object files, but a lot of the visual tinkering/colouring/sizing happens in Ancient Warfare 3. They're also scattered across my computer because I am sort of new to Blender and didn't have a great deal of forward thinking when it came to archiving everything I was making. I will see if I can round them up.
 
Okay here it is. I should point out that not everything seen in the video is made by me, I used assets from other creators, for example the brick walls are not mine. However, this is everything I have made for my CNR project so far - I think. It includes a few walls, grated floors, guns, the Silencer's torso armour and helm, complete with a totally incorrect WEC symbol because I am a moron and used what I think was a fanmade reference image, and props like crates, barrels, medical station etc.

I'm sort of in the mindset of adding more assets as quickly as possible, with the view to go back and fix/update them once my collection is sizable.

Go nuts.
 

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Case and point, working on the surveillance camera. I am hoping that in-game I can animate it.
 

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I've started working on the 1:1 of CNR's first mission. AW3 works in different proportions, and CNR's isometric perspective kind of screws with me visually, but if I can get it to around 75% of the real thing then I'm happy.

CNR Mission 1 So Farj.jpg
 
Nice, looks great! I've been going back into hacking the level data and have started to understand how the usecode hooks into it. Trying to solve the last few level secrets this way. I have some code that dumps the whole level data that way which you could use as input... but it's probably as much work to use as it is to recreate.
 
Thanks! It is certainly a labour of love.

Honestly, the biggest problem I have right now is extracting the game's sound files. I've used audacity so far to extract the files as raw data, but because they're an archaic format I then have to do a bunch of post processing to make them sound right. I've got the death sounds, and some of the guards/technician verbal challenges, but that's about it. The other issue is that those brainiacs didn't name their files, so its just 01,02,03,04,05 so on and so forth, so I have to literally listen to one, process it to understand what it is, then move onto the next one if it's not useful.
 
That reminds me so much of my first attempt to recreate CNR 12 years ago in a custom engine -

I don't think I still have any of those resources. And the engine was buggy. Shortly after that I tried to rewrite part of it and failed miserably, then to give up on it for a while.
 
Candy said:
That reminds me so much of my first attempt to recreate CNR 12 years ago in a custom engine -

I don't think I still have any of those resources. And the engine was buggy. Shortly after that I tried to rewrite part of it and failed miserably, then to give up on it for a while.
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Hah that's really cool! I never got into proper game development myself, although in hindsight considering how complex AW3 can get I think I could've figured it out if I went with Unity. Regardless, AW3 is all I know and so this project will be grounded in that game.

If you have a flare for creating things, I can't recommend AW3 enough. It's one of those "easy to use, hard to master" type deals, where the complexity of what you make is mostly limited by the amount of effort you want to put in.
 
I was mostly amused by you remaking the exact same part, deciding "this is enough" at the same point of that level.
 
Candy said:
I was mostly amused by you remaking the exact same part, deciding "this is enough" at the same point of that level.
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Yeah lol, I noticed that too, except that I've already moved beyond that now. I'll post another video tonight, and hopefully daily, showing my progress. With how AW3 works, I might end up splitting the level in several mini levels, so that it forms a type of campaign in its own right. I guess we'll see how we go. Biggest problem I'm going to have is controlling the droids, because I haven't got a way to save the player's equipment or ammo, so swapping between controlling the player and the droid will create a memory break. I'll speak to the dev and see if he can add the nodes for it.
 
Desert-Mammoth said:
Yeah lol, I noticed that too, except that I've already moved beyond that now. I'll post another video tonight, and hopefully daily, showing my progress. With how AW3 works, I might end up splitting the level in several mini levels, so that it forms a type of campaign in its own right. I guess we'll see how we go. Biggest problem I'm going to have is controlling the droids, because I haven't got a way to save the player's equipment or ammo, so swapping between controlling the player and the droid will create a memory break. I'll speak to the dev and see if he can add the nodes for it.
Click to expand...
I can send you full resolution images of the levels (with some render bugs) if that helps. They're fairly big (1GB total in PNGs, 16kx8k pixels) so let me know if I should.
 
That would actually be kind of handy. If you can send me the one of the first mission, I'd greatly appreciate it. What would be the best way of delivery?
 
No update to the map tonight, as I spent my time scripting a custom hud. We now have an active energy shield, a weapon read out. I wanted to follow the actual CNR hud layout, but I can't get around the vanilla ammo system as it doesn't keep track of the player's total ammo, so I've sort of built the vanilla ammo into the hud and arranged it accordingly. In any case, it means I can now create a shield recharge station and power packs.

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Little update: So it looks like I'm going to have to cut the level into smaller missions and stitch them together into a campaign. Not a problem I guess, but the amount of light sources I'm having to use along with amount of fairly high-fidelity (for AW3 anyway) objects is going to cause an FPS issue.

With that in mind, I'm going to end the "first mission" when the player encounters the teleporter that takes them to the shotgun, so that the level continues at that juncture on the "second mission". Bar a loading screen menu, the experience should be seamless.

Before moving forwards, I'm going to refine what I've made so far. Add the missing objects (as I will need them later), as well as some speaking lines from the WEC guards/technicians (HEY! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!").
 
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