MY MOD HISTORY – PART 1

DEADLOCK, mod for Making History Gold

With all these “Never Finished Projects”, you may think I can’t accomplish anything. I will dedicate the next post to my game modifications (mods).

Deadlock is my current project. It's a mod for the game Making History Gold. Let me tell you a little about MH.

At the first look, MH is not exactly attractive. The presentation is simple, the graphics are outdated, but if you like war games, there is a great possibility you will be hooked by this one. I use to test every single game I have opportunity to get my hands on, from the blockbusters to the indie stuff and no video game made me stand in front of the computer more time than Making History.

For short, the game is based on WW2, and you command one country through the history events. Any country. Depending on your influence, the history can be change (Germany can win the war, USA can be obliterated or even Haiti can become a world power).

A cool feature of the game is the support for “scenarios”. Players can actually make their own version of the war and upload it in the game’s site.
I downloaded, played and enjoyed the custom scenarios but… why keeping the game in WW2? Why not changing the game deeper? So I decided to make not a scenario, but a mod, Deadlock: a WW1 conversion for Making History.

Main Features:

- All countries of the WW1 era, including their flags, art set, politic map, armies and foreign relations.
- New units, including Assault Infantry, Lancers, WW1 tanks, WW1 planes, Airships, Seaplane Tenders and Torpedo Boats. New 3d models.
- Units’ stats, economy and provinces adapted for WW1. More than 30 new cities.
- New technology tree.
- Important events of the WW1, like Russian Revolution, Arab Revolt, Irish Easter Rising and Finnish Civil War.

Some images comparing the original game (WW2) and the mod (WW1):

Game lobby for France

Map of Europe

Fighter researches

Tank researches

You can follow the mod progress in these links:
Making History HQ - More than 5,000 downloads!
Mod DB

NEVER FINISHED PROJECTS: TF2 CBG

TEAM FORTRESS 2 CARD/BOARD GAME


I was keeping this project quiet until it’s done to show to the Valve guys. Unfortunately, I had some disappointments in sending suggestions to game developers. It looks like creative geniuses are not very willing to receive outside ideas. Anyway, in my days of addiction for Team Fortress 2, I conceived a card game. 

“TF2 CBG” is the 3rd card game I designed. The first one was “Mana”, back in the middle nineties, based on AD&D (something like “Spellfire meets Magic”). The second was “Warcraft III Card Game” (see Never Finished Projects – Part 3, posted September 21, 2008). And, believe it or not, there are 2 other card games I’m planning right now.

Basically, this game is to be played one-o-one. One player is the RED team and the other is the BLU team.

Each player has two decks, being one the “Loadout deck” (thanks, PaperStab!) and the other the “Teammate deck”. The loadout deck is made by up to 40 Weapon and Maneuver cards choosen by the player. The teammate deck is composed by 9 fixed cards, the Teammates, one for each type (Demoman, Engineer, Heavy, Medic, Pyro, Scout, Sniper, Soldier and Spy).

There is a possibility to use miniatures instead of the teammates cards in the board, which make it much smaller.

Weapons are attached to a Teammate and Maneuvers are spent to make an instant effect.

There is a board (“map”) with the dimensions of at least 6x9 squares, and its configuration depends on the game mode (Intelligence, Control Point, Payload and Arena). There can be different map configurations for each game mode (like Badlands, Well, Granary, etc., all for Control Point mode). Intelligence maps are won capturing the enemy’s Intel 3 times. In Control Point maps, win the player who hold all CPs. In Payload maps there is an attacking player that needs to push a card to the enemy base. And in Arena maps, starting rules are a bit different, the teammates can’t respawn and the bases don’t offer protection, so the player with surviving teammates wins.

At the start of a round (Setup Phase), each player draws one card from each deck. He can spawn the teammate in his base and attach a weapon card in any of his teammates that accept that weapon.
In the Mission Phase the player can move his teammates, attack, and use Maneuver cards.

Each killed teammate goes to the bottom of the teammate deck. Each weapon or maneuver card lost is remove from the game. If the custom deck of both players ends, the game is over in Stalement (except in attack/defend maps, like Payload, when the defender wins).

Teammate card have the following stats: Speed, Health and Melee Damage.
Weapon cards have: Damage per range and may have special features.

The attacks are made by rolling a 6-side dice. The damage is dealt comparing the result of the dice with the maximum damage of the weapon for that range. For instance, if you roll a “5” and the maximum damage of that weapon for that range is “3”, you will do 3 of damage. Rolling a “6” means “critical”, and always delivers 6 of damage.

Well, this is the basics. I managed to cover everything of the video game in the card game. In the list of the maneuvers, you can find cards like: Rocket Jump; Double Jump; Ubercharge; Cloak; Teleport: Entry; Teleport: Exit; Sentry Gun; Compression Blast; Rocket on the Feet; etc.

Example of a maneuver card:
Stick Grenade Jump
- Duration: instant
- Replaces: attack
- Requires: Demoman with Stick Grenade Launcher
- Roll a [4] die. The Demoman can move that distance and receives 2 of damage. This movement passes though any obstacle.


Here is a preview of how should be the teammate cards:




And the basic weapons:

REVIEW: DAWN OF WAR II

I was looking forward since 2008 for the Dawn of War II. I can’t say I’m disappointed, but Relic will have lot of work to make this DoW2 as remarkable as where the previous ones.


- GRAPHICS: 9.0
(The graphics are top, but like the other DoW, the effects cause my – and probably more people’s - eyes to get red after some time playing. Relic should be aware of that when making its next release)

- SOUND: 9.0
(very adequate for the game)

- GAMEPLAY: 9.0
(the unit’s upgrades are good, but we, DoW fans, wanted more squads to control. Playing with an army of only 4 squads is frustrating)

- MULTIPLAYER: 8.0
(the cooperative campaign is great, but the regular skirmish multiplayer is too much simplified. We all miss the DoW gameplay in skirmish. And why Windows Live + Steam?)

- INNOVATION: 8.0
(DoW + Company of Heroes resulted in a downgrade DoW)

- EXTENSIBILITY: ?
(will Relic release decent mod tools? Community content support? We don’t know yet. If not, DoW2 will dye pretty soon)

- REPLAY FACTOR: 7.0
(as the campaign is much more linear than in Dark Crusade or Soulstorm, this game is unlikely to be played much after completed)

- OVERALL: 8.5

Duel of titans

Pimp your squad!

Fast action in a destructible environment

Scary cut scenes

- CONCLUSION:
DoW2 it’s a good but yet limited game, which carries the burden of other great titles. Being very different from the previous DoW series, it’s better to don’t uninstall your Dark Crusade. Let’s just hope the expansions will not only add the awaited new factions, but also new game features and deepness.

COMICS IN FILMS

Speaking about comics’ super heroes adaptations, I made a list of the movies from 2000 until now, classified in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good

1- Watchmen
2- The Dark Night
3- Iron Man
4- Batman Begins
5- X-Men 3
6- X-Men 2
7- X-Men
8- Hellboy 2
9- Spiderman 2
10- Spiderman 3
11- Spiderman

The Bad

1- Constantine
2- Hulk
3- The Incredible Hulk
4- Hellboy
5- V for Vendetta
6- Ultraviolet
7- The Punisher
8- Superman – Returns
9- The League of Extraordinary Gentleman
12- Fantastic Four
13- Fantastic Four 2
14- Wanted

The Ugly

1- Cat Woman
2- Electra
3- Daredevil
4- Ghost Rider

“The Good” movies are faithful or improved versions of the comics that really work as a film.
Most in “The Bad” list are not always that awful as movies, but they use to be so different in concept from the comics that I couldn´t like them.
And “The Ugly”… well, they just suck hard in all ways.

Funny as hell

I’m a jerk, but I’m the Iron Man

REVIEW: WATCHMEN – THE MOVIE

This one will be fast: I loved the movie and I endorse every change made by the film’s authors.




Best scenes:

» The amazing opening, with an amazing song, telling the (alternative) story of the US from the thirties to the eighties.
» Most of the Rorschach citations, like:
“- Is this BEAN juice?
- HUMAN bean juice...”
» Prison scene. “I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!”
» The ending – greatest director “liberty” and works even better than the gigantic psyche octopus from the comics.

Conclusion:

» Sure it was hard to adapt these comics to the silver screen, but the director chooses the only acceptable way: to be as faithful as possible. This is not a movie for everyone, though. As the graphic novel wasn´t.

Minutemen flashbacks

Only in real world the villains are more human than the heroes

Flawless locations

A darker America