So I've just finished making the map and have submitted it to the competition. Its already had very positive feedback, which is nice. Without going into too much personal detail I'm the father of two disabled children and because of that I generally have very, very little time to do anything, so I've literally been ploughing in the hours from 12am to 3am every day and operating on next to nothing sleep lol. Safe to say I couldn't keep it up forever and whilst I enjoyed making it I am kind of glad that its done.
Obviously this is not a 1:1 of CNR, and Ancient Warfare 3 is primarily an FPS sandbox. The fact I have made the game behave like an isometric shooter is in itself a feat of engineering, but other things like using Echo Sector as the map's central hub, and creating several "mini levels" that the player then teleports into and out of in one map space is also something rarely explored. I had to create a custom made dialogue/computer hacking/interaction system, which though looking basic, is again another engineering feat. I'm explaining this because I want to provide context to what I have made and with what kind of restrictions I am having to bypass.
For example, I wanted to script the ability to have the Silencer roll left and right as in the original game. However to do so would mean I would have to fully animate the unit with custom animations, and given I have 5 weapons in play, that's a set of animations for each weapon including walking, standing, aiming, rolling, etc etc, and then there's the scripting work required to make those animations behave like a coherent unit. I just haven't got the time.
In short, I am basically emulating CNR with a typewriter.
Competition ends in 8 days, I'll let you know how I get on.
Instead of pictures, I thought I'd just record a playthrough and shove it on Youtube. Its a little skittery because I had to dull the video quality to keep the file size within sane limits, I do not have a great deal of disk space. Still processing HD at time of posting so you might wanna leave it 30 minutes. Link below:
And the link to the map itself if any of you all have had your interests in AW3 piqued by the video and bought it (good choice):
steamcommunity.com
Isn't it odd? I bought that game 29 years ago when I was 6 years old at a Toys R Us, and though I struggled to grasp its control scheme and complete it even on the easiest difficulty, here it is, all these years later. The mark it left on my subconscious is beyond my comprehension.
