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 Ver. 1.0, March 2000
Q: How many different objects are there that you can place in the game? A: Currently there are 773 scenery objects that you can place in the game. Scenery objects are like trees and flowers and chairs and chests. There are also 310 items you can have or place in the game. Items are like swords, grenades, iron ore and such. Both of these lists are growing as well. I am projecting about 1000 scenery objects and 500 items will be available when the game ships. Q: Describe the different categories of objects. For example, are there different characters/monsters/building types/chests that you can choose from? A: Everything in our game is broken up into categories that are easy to grasp. Laying down objects is as simple as grabbing from pre-designed categories called prototypes. Ex: If you are looking for a bucket or a lantern, you would find those in the "small metal objects" category. If you want a chair or a table, you would find them in "medium wooden objects." Full-grown oak and pine trees are found in the "large tree" category. As far as monsters and people, there is a large bank of them to choose from. Each comes with built in abilities. Ex: If you lay down a shopkeeper, he will automatically talk and act like a shopkeeper. If I were to lay down an elven noble and talk to him with an orc, he would say something like: "Disgusting creature, stay away from me or I'll call animal control." So behaviors and such are built in to the characters. Monsters have a predetermined demeanor and already have their powers built in. Ex: A fire rat will automatically burn you when he attacks and it will play the small fire damage when he strikes you. We have lots of buildings and chests and such that you can choose from as well. Everything is drag and drop and point and click. So if I put a sword on the ground and I want it to be in the chest, I click and drag it over the chest and let go. It's now in there. The same is true for equipping characters. Q: What kinds of properties can you specify for an object? For example, how can you specify that a door is locked but the windows are open? A: Every object in our game can be modified and edited. All of them are done the same way. If I want a door locked, I just right click on the door, hit edit, and check the box marked "locked." If I want a window unlocked I right click on it and uncheck the box marked "locked." I can even check boxes like "locked at night". That way if you want to make a store keeper that shuts down at night, his doors and windows can automatically lock when the sun sets. Q: Can you assign behaviors to characters and monsters? What kinds? A: Assigning behaviors to monsters is also very easy. You have lots of options as to how you want your character to interact with the world around it. The three main ways to affect character behavior are: Waypoints, AI, and Factions. Waypoints are where a character walks and in what order. You just right click on a character and select "waypoints." Everywhere you left-click will now become a point where this character will walk to. Once you are done clicking down the waypoints, right-click to go back into normal editing mode. AI is the default combat behavior of a creature. We will provide the gamer with a number different behaviors that he can assign to his character. What you do is right click on a character and select edit. You will see a box in the lower left hand corner that lets you enter a number. The numbers coincide with different behaviors. The numbers will be listed in the manual. Ex: I have a huge ogre that I want to attack and never let up. Regardless of the odds or how mismatched the fight, he will keep on swinging. I would give him an AI number of two. Two happens to be our extremely aggressive monster AI. I would give an AI number of one to a wimpy little creature such as a rat. He will attack you but run away if you start doing any real damage. The last way is by Faction. Faction is way of assigning a sense of family to your creatures or townspeople. If I right click on a creature and click edit, I can see in the lower right hand corner the pull down menu called "Faction." Let's say I lay down 10 townspeople. I would edit them all and select the faction of "Edmond Villagers." Now they are all part of the same gang. If I attack one of them, they all will jump me instantly. So in a dungeon you could set all your monsters to "dungeon monsters 1." They will kill everything but each other now. Q: How can you affect the environment when creating maps? A: You can affect the environment in all sorts of ways when creating a map. One of the most important and visually impacting way to affect an environment is lighting. Lighting is done in two parts, ambient lighting and placed lights. Ambient lighting controls the lighting of the entire scene. Ambient lighting is the "sunlight" you see in our game. You can control the ambient light levels for interior and exterior separately. So if you want it to be bright and sunny outside and slightly darker inside buildings you can do that. Ambient lighting cycles with time of day. I have set the colors to what I think looks good for morning, noon, and night colors, but you can change them to anything you want. If you want the world to turn a bright red at midnight because a meteor flies by or something you can do that. The other types of lights are placed lights. Placed lights are like lamp or torch lights or any other light you want to affect a specific area. The game ships with many different shapes and sizes of lights to choose from. As far as colors are concerned, you can choose any color you want. We have also included prototypes of glows that have lights built in to them. So what you can do is drop down a streetlight and then drop on top of it one of our glow prototypes on top of it. You now have a really cool looking street lamp. The cool thing is when you place one of our glow prototypes down it has some knowledge already built in to it. So the lights will turn off or on depending on the time of day. Basically it allows street lights to come on as the sun is setting and to turn off as the sun rises. Also, if you destroy a light in a town, it will respawn over the course of a 24-48 period, because the assumption is that someone would have come by and replaced the light within that timeframe. Q: What kinds of environments are there to create maps with? A: We have included large pieces of terrain that are already generated for you. If you wish to make a desert island with a swamp in the middle you can use our terrain editor. This will allow you to paint down massive areas of land like swamps and mountain ranges. Also we have pieces of scenery calls Facades. These Facades are large pieces of pre-rendered art you can lay down like a huge castle or expansive bridge. Q: Are these the same tools you are using to create the game? A: The tools we are providing the player are the exact same tools we are using to create the game. Q: Did you design the editor with consumers in mind? For example, have you built documentation into the scripts, help buttons, etc? A: The editor is created to be as simple as possible. We have developed these tools so that anyone who purchases our game can create a game themselves. As far as help with creating maps and such, we will have several tutorials available to the users. Q: How long will it take a typical level designer to create a relatively simple hack-n-slash dungeon? A: I would say to create a dungeon with monsters and chests and gold and weapons, it would take about half-hour to make. Q: What about a more complex module with a few side quests? A: The amount of time to make maps can vary greatly. Maps can be any size and contain as many buildings and scenery and people that you want. So I would say for a really small RPG with side quests and such, it might take a full day. Now if the quests are complex then it could take much longer. Ex: A simple quest to do would be a "FedEx" quest, like: "I'll give 100 gold if you bring me the golden ring." So you go in a dungeon and kill stuff and find the ring and return it. A difficult quest would be like: "You must convince the guards at the dungeon to give you the key to the inner chamber. Once there you must talk with the oracle and he will give the gold ring if you are deemed worthy. You must return the ring to me by this evening or I will start lowering your prize money 10 gold for every hour you are late." Q: Can users design their own graphics? A: We are considering shipping our art implementation tools as well, but we're not sure. Implementing your own art would be very difficult and time consuming. If we do ship these tools we probably won't be able to offer much help. They will mostly be for people with good digital art experience and a technical mind. Q: What portion of the Arcanum fan base do you expect to use the editor? A: I would guess 50% might make general dungeon-like maps. I would also guess that about 5% will really get into creating maps and be cranking out cool in depth small RPGs for everyone to enjoy. Q: Can you edit the maps that ship with the game? A: You will not be able to edit the maps that we ship with the game. Q: How will Troika and Sierra support module designers? Will there be an outreach to foster the community? A: We are always very present on our message boards. If anyone has any questions they can post and we will promptly get back to them with an answer. Q: How big are completed maps, in bytes? A: Very small. If I were to upload all the Arcanum maps start to finish, it would be about 20 megs. A typical map you download from someone will probably be about 300k. Q: Can users edit other things, like sounds, texts, quests, etc.? A: Everything is editable in our game. If you wish to attach an electric sound to a leather boot, you could do it. If you want to create a book that tells about a strange wizard that lives in a nearby tower, you can do that as well. |