Deadfall released!

Deadfall Released! (10/19/2009)

After months of development by Jon God, with help from Zeph, Deadfall, an extensive modification to Quarantine, is finally finished. Deadfall is a Zombie based cooperative survival plugin for Myth II. Playable with up to 15 players, Deadfall pits you against nearly 400 AI controlled zombies.

Without variety, is plugin a nothing? Deadfall is playable across 15 maps, with 6 unique gametypes and team/ffa variants.

To add another layer to the gameplay, Deadfall is class based, and every round you can choose a class to suit your playing style, be it Rockets, or Medic, there are 8 classes to choose from, each unique with their own pros and cons.

If a player dies when fighting against zombies, he returns from the grave to kill his former team mates to score extra points, and keep them from getting any more points.

Levels range from urban sprawls to snowbound bases, and everything in between, get ready to fight on some of the most varied maps in on plugin. You'll find yourself fighting in quarries, deserts, small cities, harbors, and more on a host of Strangelet maps!

Gametype wise, expect some interesting twists, with the normal zombie slaying infection, along with other gametypes including a FPS style deathmatch gametype, with multiple spawn points, and FPS style capture the flag.

Touching on classes, there are some of the more obligatory classes, such as the Medic, and Flamethrower classes, but along with them are more original classes, such as the Seeker, with his plasma launcher, and missiles. There is enough variety to make for some very interesting combinations of classes for co-op.

The cherry on top of the features is the high standard of graphical quality in this plugin, with nearly all sprites much higher resolution then normal Myth II sprites, and all 15 levels completely detail textured. Deadfall will be the prettiest Myth II 1.7 plugin released to date!

After reading all this, what are you waiting for? Go download it now:

Download Deadfall from the Tain

Also, be sure to keep an eye on the Official Site for news an updates!

Official site link: LINK

Myth III: The Wolf Age review.

Name: Myth III: The Wolf Age

System/s: Mac/PC

Developers: MumboJumbo

Release Date: 10/30/01

It's no secret that I love the Myth series of games, as I own every game in the series, including the Worlds edition of Myth 2, and the offshoot, Green Berets. Myth III is kind of an odd duck here as I've owned it for a while, but never played through it all the way, that is until now.

Myth III is generally regarded as 'pretty bad' be most of the myth community, and most constantly talk about how it sucks. (One sad thing to note, is that most of these people haven't played the game/given it a chance. Not all though) That was my impression upon playing the demo for the first time when it was released, and not touching it again until a few years ago, when I got back into Myth and snatched it up off ebay. I started to play it, and really liked it a lot, but technical difficulties prevented me from finishing it on that playthrough leaving me maybe a third through the game.

The back-story behind Myth III's development is what happens when you take a copy not caring about the source material and mix it with some of the most hardcore modders in the community, then chop the end off the development time.

Myth III takes place 1000 years before Myth: The Fallen Lords, and focuses around explaining some of the unexplained history behind Myth and Myth II. The main character is a barbarian named Connacht who is the first man to lead a successful defense against the monsters known as Myrkridia.

The story really shines in some parts, and falls flat on it's face in others, with plot elements being ludicrous, and very much reeking of plot devices. The whole story feels a bit like a high budget tribute to the older Myth games than a whole new game itself. A lot of lines and narration in the game is quite cheesy, especially compared to the previous games.

While the plot has it's ups and downs it manages to be worth while to finnish at least once, though the ending is perhaps the lowest point of the story. The rest of the story, depending on your point of view, can close some gaps and fill in the holes remaining from the other games.

Along with the story is the voice acting which ranges from above average to quite bad. Some of the voice actors are quite competent, but none of them really give off the unique sound that the voice actors from the previous games did, and come off as, at best, pretty generic. The voice acting isn't helped by bad writing for the in game dialog and lousy voice direction.

The music for Myth III is interesting, it's a very different style then Myth or Myth II feeling more cinematic. While the music does feel atmospheric, it is in a different way then the previous games. The music itself is pretty good, though suffers from not enough creativity, and the songs are repeated a lot with little variation. While the music isn't live-recorded music, it's pretty high quality and could pass for movie music.

The graphics of Myth III are perhaps one of the most updated parts of the game, with fully 3D units, projectiles and more, with dynamic lighting detailed textures for the ground, trees swaying in the wind and reacting to explosions, grass not just being a blanket, and water with waves being much more complex.

The units are a hit and miss, some look great, others look downright bad, with square heads, and ugly faces. In general, most of the units are great, though a bit low polygon for today's RTSes. I think the main problem is the art direction which feels a lot more bland compared to the earlier games in the series. The animations for the units are also hit and miss with some being great and others feeling like filler animations, such as the trow kick.

The gameplay of this will look quite like Myth II at first glance, but when you actually get down to playing it, it feels quite different. In some levels it feels better, with more of an adventure feel to it, but being an RTS, most of the combat parts feel far too simple and bland. The enemies move too fast most of the time to use your long range units, so it often boils down to just charging in with your melee units. In general, the gameplay feels just a bit "Off" to those who have played the other games in the series.

Another strange thing about Myth III is the difficulty being extremely difficult due to aforementioned lack of being able to easily use all your units, leaving you dead in most conflicts unless you are lucky on even the normal difficulty. The game only has three difficulties, Timid, Normal and Legendary. Normal is hard enough to be labeled hard to most casual players, making it feel pointless to be called "Normal"

Since the game is so hard, you will be saving all the time, which is very annoying for anyone playing coop, (online coop doesn't have any saving system). There were a few points in the game which had insta-death parts that I couldn't have known about until I died from it once, which isn't a very nice move, especially when in coop, where you would need to start the level from scratch.

The level design is quite different from the earlier games in the series, often feeling like they lack the charm of Bungie's levels, being simpler and not as memorable. However, Myth III's indoor environments trump anything possible in Myth or Myth II, with high detail and polygon environmental models and brilliantly done levels with great ground textures.

All in all there are some great levels in Myth III, taking cue from the more popular plugins for Myth and Myth II. As well as units to go along with them.

In the end as a Myth player, I believe Myth III is worth you time for a playthrough and maybe even two, depending on how much you like it. I stand by what I said before. Myth III feels like a book to move adaption of a game, some things were done right, some things were done horribly wrong, but it's great to see everything come alive.

What I liked:

Story: While it was not all good, I certainly was interested on seeing where they went with it, and I had fun while it lasted.

Music: I did like the music, and it grew on me more playing through the game, thumbs up here.

Graphics: Say what you will, I liked the graphics, even if the models were a bit low poly, the whole thing brings the Myth engine into new realms of possibility in terms of what you could make, but the atmosphere you could create.

Art Style: Not everywhere, as I stated before, I didn't like all of it, but the world map and some of the drawings are quite pretty in this.

New ideas/gameplay mechanics: While most of the time, Myth III stays being just like Myth and Myth II in gameplay mechanics, it does mix it up on a few levels, breathing some new life into the campaign, I liked this a lot.

Some nice small things: There were some great small interface or gameplay tweaks that I really liked. Having a formation bar was one of them.

What I didn't like:

Story: While a lot of it was good, some of it sounded like fanfic by a young kid, not fully caring about, or understanding the story. I almost face-palmed a few times.

Difficulty: I am not sure the intent, but this game has a far too hard normal difficulty, I assume Legendary is just ridiculous, and probably isn't much fun.

Voice Acting: Man, some of the voice acting in this was cringe worthy, Archers and dwarfs especially.

Glitches: While the updates fixed a lot of glitches, this game still has quite a few left over... One can only more more updates are somewhere in the future.

Rock Paper... what?: Myth was based on the concept of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Archers kill Dwarves, Dwarves kill Melee, Melee kills archers. Myth III seems to have forgotten this.

Not enough looked into: I feel a lot of things they could have gone into about the past of this world were not explored, instead focusing on lesser known of things a lot of the time.

Not enough of a reunion tour: While some would consider this a plus, Myth III doesn't revisit just about any locations from Myth or Myth II, making it almost feel like a different world all together.

I wasn't done yet?: Often times levels will end with you still fighting giving you a sense of unaccomplishment.

Ending: Bleah. Most of the ending felt thrown together at the last moment, with a badly done final level, with scripting glitches.

Plugins?: For some reason Myth III automatically enables all plugins that are in, and lists them in the map list, making it too easy to accidentally kick people for not having the same plugin, when you don't even realize you are using one. This also makes it have a loading time at start up.

Art Style: While some of it is good, in general, the game feels a lot more 'generic western fantasy' then the original games.

Gameplay?: Somehow Mumbo Jumbo ported the gameplay, but made it feel 'off'. There's just something about it that doesn't sit right.

Overall Scores:

Presentation - 8.5/10: This feels like a whole new game, which it should, and pushes the Myth engine in good ways, along with some good music, and average narration.

Graphics - 9/10: While the artstyle is a bit bland, and the units are low polygon, the overall graphics look great, big thumbs up.

Sound - 7/10: Good music, but coupled with average to horrid voice acting.

Gameplay - 6/10: While it's partially the same myth gameplay, the balance between units and pacing all suffer making this feel a lot more generic.

Lasting appeal - 6/10: While it's good for a playthrough or two, and contains the same 2-16 player LAN of Myth and Myth II, the multiplayer isn't as well done as Myth II.

Overall Fun - 7.5: I definitely had fun with this and can see myself going back to play it later down the line. Sure there are problems with this game, but it's also worth the time to play through and a good game it it's own ways.

Review by Jon God, Saturday September 19th, 2009, 3:49AM.

P.S. Keep your eye out for DarthRevan555's Myth III -> Myth II port, coming sometime in the future.

Heros of Haxor 3 released!

The previously mentioned Heros of Haxor 3 is now availible on the Tain, go snatch it up!

LINK

Heros Of Haxor 3 preview

I played Myth for many years before becoming a real fan of it, and I missed out on many popular plugins, which I am slowly catching up on. One of the plugins I missed was Zeph's popular "Heros of Haxor" series of plugins, in which 2 teams made up of a small number of 'hero' units with crazy-powerful powers duke it out in an arena.

Heros of Haxor 3 is the newest installment of the Heros of Haxor series, and looks to not only do the originals justice, but push this series of plugins even farther with new it's new co-op mode.

The co-op mode places a team of randomly assigned Hero units against groups of enemies, which start out small, but over time, the groups get larger and large, so after a time, you will really be pushed to the edge of your seat. It's never hopeless however, as the group of Heros are all well made, with incredible special effects and satisfying attacks. While lot of plugins with new units and attacks take a while to ease in, making them have harsh learning curves, this plugin does a good job of side stepping it, making a lot of the attacks new enough to not feel "been there done that", yet close enough to other attacks to feel at home, and not lost on your first try.

Another thing that makes the co-op stan out, is the fact that unlike a lot of coop survival plugins, in this, your units are not incredibly tough, being only a bit tougher then the original units they are based on, which makes this feel a lot more tense, but in a good way, and not tedious.

The increasing difficulty is really well done, and was something that stood out to me as a very great addition to the coop, giving you time to dish out units, and get used to what you have before the big waves come in. Even so, it doesn't start boring either, as you still have to watch yourself, even at the start.

The versus of this is what the fans of the other plugins have come to expect, but updated for a new plugin, it will still contain some of, if not the best special effects for attacks, as well as some of the most interesting and unique attacks to grace Myth.

For either mode of play you are looking forward to, you have a treat in store, hopefully Zeph will fix some minor balance issues, because that seemed to be all that was left to fix before it was ready to go into the public's hands.

Keep your eyes open for it!

Myth III personal observation

I realized what Myth III feels like to me.

Almost everyone has seen a book to movie adaptation, where the story is changed, the way people look is changed, things are done differently, and it feels like at the most, it's a tribute, rather then a rendition.

However, in spite of all that, it's nice to see things come alive, and be able to see what thins looked like, and such. Even if things don't look how you expect, it can be interesting to see everything come to life.

Myth III is like that for the Myth series for me, the story feels like it was done by some people that cared about the universe, but did not full know the source material, and a lot of events and happenings in the game feel like they are pushing the suspension of disbelief.

However again, it feels nice to see the things come alive, or in this case be 3D. Making it possible to zoom in and watch the combat. While some things look 'wrong' in my opinion, in general it's nice to see 3D units.

This is not a review, but one will be coming as soon as I finish this game.

Interview with The Wind Age team

Renwood and OogaBooga were kind enough to lend me some time for an interview on their ambiguous project, The Wind Age.

Jon God: Hiya, thanks for taking the time to talk to me, now, if you would, tell everyone about your project.

OogaBooga: Alright, currently we're developing new maps, units, and special effects for our project, The Wind Age.

Renwood: All new high res effects.

OogaBooga: It takes place during, of course, the wind age.

Renwood: Err, High-Def really.

Renwood: Since you can see in fine detail.

Renwood: What exactly it is your looking at.

Jon God: The wind age is around the same time as Myth III, if I am correct?

Renwood: Nope.

Renwood: Well.

OogaBooga: It's adjacent.

Renwood: Myth 3 takes place during the ass end of the wind age.

Renwood: As in Moagim reborn/Connacht timelines.

Jon God: So are we going to see any references between The Wind and the The Wolf age games?

Renwood: Ours is the beginning of the wind age.

Renwood: Well or its allready in a few hundred into it.

Renwood: It seems to be around the time mazz was alive.

Jon God: Since this is prequel are we going to have reasons that new units wouldn't exist in later times (Myth TFL, Myth II), or is it going to be the same as Myth 3 which will give you more breathing room?

OogaBooga: One of the themes of the cycle is the destruction of humanity, and its eventual rebuilding.

OogaBooga: So lost technology plays a large factor in the unit set.

OogaBooga: If you recall, the end of the wind age did not end with the light being victorious - but rather, being scattered and huddled together in misery while the myrkridian hordes roamed the land, despite the death of moagim.

Renwood: Yes entire citys towns or kingdoms that were wiped out long ago.

OogaBooga: So much of the old technology was lost.

Renwood: Just like in our timeline.

Jon God: Makes sense to me, what kind of technology should we expect to see?

OogaBooga: The dwarves will have explosive shrapnel devices, some of them even using shape-charges, to blast a cone pattern of the evil debris at enemies.

OogaBooga: There are even talks of crude firearms..

Renwood: The plan is to start with a TFL-ish kind of level of weapons tech and then as the war lasts years upon years, the diffrent races and faction start developing more and terrible weapons to use against each other.

OogaBooga: But of course, you'll be able to see the lovely (and lost to the ages) dwarven cannons that made the defense of Stoneheim and Myrgard such a difficult opposition for the ghols.

Jon God: Have the dwarves being the age old enemies of the Ghol, made any sort of melee weapons?

OogaBooga: The dwarves have always had a penchant for explosives, but we may be seeing some other, more traditional style melee warriors for the dwarves.

Renwood: there are dorfs that like to hack thing up nice and close.

Jon God: I look forward to finding out. :)

OogaBooga: The great forges of the dwarves siezed up and became monuments of a bygone era when the ghols finally overthrew their cities, and were too ignorant and tribal to adopt metalworking.

Renwood: But they would be maybe more like the jock version of dorfs.

OogaBooga - M: Only during myth 2's timeline do they finally start making crude metal armor (as seen in the mortar dwarf's hat and chestplate).

Jon God: I am curious what the game plan for the game play is. (Bungie's philosophy was Rock Paper Scissors)

Renwood: It's going to have evreything that bungie myth has..

Renwood: Plus a buncha extra things and features.

OogaBooga: The idea is to adhere to the bungie philosophy in that regard - making every unit fit into the niche it did before, but introduce new unit types.

OogaBooga: We plan to include every vanilla bungie unit, as it appears, in addition to the new content.

Renwood: It will add replay value to the myth units that wasnt really there in the bungie games.

OogaBooga: You'll still have your warriors, your dwarves, and your thrall, and all the units inbetween. The new units are there to spice up the already solid Myth gameplay dynamics.

Renwood: Like the dorfs have a little knife on thier belt in myth 2 you can see it.

Renwood: But they never use it.

Renwood: So I used to wonder "do myth dorfs really have daggers?"

Renwood: And YES they do! the animations are in there and were unused.

Renwood: they have short stubby arms and a short weapon (dagger) so they have to get in closer then other melee units like warriors or thrall. and the dorfs miss a LOT with melee.

Jon God: Changing pace a little, what made you chose the Wind Age, rather then doing a sequel?

OogaBooga: The wind age is far enough into the past that it shouldnt step on any of the toes of the Myth 3 story (although we aren't necessarily going to try and tie everything from the wind age into myth 3's era, we do believe it should at least be congruent).

Renwood: There is so much talked about or hinted at in Myth's history. and some of the stories from long ago were more the type of thing ooga and I were intesrested in depicting.

OogaBooga: And also, being over two thousand years before the events of TFL, its separated enough that we can use our artistic freedom to not just fill in gaps (which is what myth 3 tried to do), but to also instead create a new set of mythology (if youll pardon the pun) within that era.

Jon God: Was there something in particular that inspired The Wind Age project?

OogaBooga: Sometimes sequels answer too many questions, and dont raise any of their own.

Renwood: We and many others that work with us are working twards updating evrything within myth.

Renwood: To make it look like a modern RTS game.

Renwood: Even better then most ive seen like the total war games.

Renwood: Where its just thousands of carbon copies of the guys all over.

Renwood: No variation in texture or sizes. they even are all RIGHT handed in most RTS games.

Renwood: Nobody ever finds that odd.

OogaBooga: The inspiration from the Wind Age comes a lot from the fact that we need to return to the gloomy, brooding atmosphere of TFL, but since the timeline TFL is in was a light-successful run of the Cycle, our story will be much, much darker.

Renwood: Yes in the wind age Moagim is the leveler.

OogaBooga: The sense of desperation and gloom will pervade it, and you'll be getting to see a lot of the destruction and wholesale slaughter the light must endure during it's "losing" era in the Cycle.

OogaBooga: Which is very fun to make cutscenes for :)

Renwood: the time of the wind age to anybody who knows a lot of the myth storys is a sad time for humanity.

Jon God: If the original creators of Myth were to see your project, what do you think they would say, and do you think they would approve of the work you have done?

OogaBooga: If I could talk to Jason Jones, Tuncer Deniz, and a few other select individuals, and REALLY have a sit-down with them, and demo our stuff, I know they'd be excited as hell.

Jon God: Then I would extend that excitement to anyone reading this.

OogaBooga: An adjective we love to use is "mythy".

OogaBooga: If something isnt "mythy" enough, its got to be tweaked or its got to go.

Jon God: You mentioned Cutscenes, what is the plan as far as music, art and cutscenes? Are you reusing old Myth artwork, or going make new ones, same for music and cutscenes.

OogaBooga: We've got a few talented musicians, currently working with us on themes for levels. Just a few days ago our guy BruteSquad sent us three new tracks.

Renwood: Yeah, have all new musical score.

Renwood: And we have some pretty good artwork, allthough its mostly character concept art.

OogaBooga: We have 100% original, made-to-order concept art by our late friend Matthew Kammert, and we are always on the lookout for concept artists who know how to take direction.

Jon God: Any comment on cutscenes?

Renwood: In what sense ?

OogaBooga: In-game or animated??

Jon God: Animated or 3D, outside of gameplay cutscenes, to be less vague.

Renwood: No cartoon cutscenes.

Jon God: Is that a "no comment" on possible 3D cutscenes?

Renwood: We might do 3d ones.

Renwood: Using the all new models we make.

OogaBooga: Pre-rendered flybys of maps, with action, story or objective focus, most likely.

Renwood: So they will look the exact same as the quality of the units you will play with in the game.

Jon God: Sounds good to me.

OogaBooga: Not sold on the idea yet, still in an amorphous state.

Renwood: Stuff like flyiing over myth units about to have a huge battle and filmed on a port of a myth map within Bryce.

Renwood: Or Maya.

Renwood: Cutscenes in myth allways seems to be mostly dissconnected from what you saw on the level after they were done playing the cartoon animations.

Jon God: How many people have contributed to the project, approximately?

Renwood: Most of the higher visiblity myth devs have helped at one point or continue to help.

Jon God: Got a number, or range?

Renwood: I try to get the highest skilled people in the mtyh community in each persons respective niche to work with us.

OogaBooga : Two musicians, coding help from Myrd and Melekor, three or four colormappers, three scripters, myself as fear/loathing/collection editor, ren as producer/story, two concept artists, and a handful of testers and others who have contributed in one way or another.

Renwood: That way we get a good cross section of skillsets with a LOT of EXP to back it up.

OogaBooga: The main issue are scripters - if we didnt have a load on our plate already (myself and ren) we'd have learned scripting by now, but as it stands we've got a lot to do.

Renwood: We also invited anybody reading us to help with the project.

Renwood: It's allways been an open development house we try to run.

OogaBooga: Colormaps are slowly but surely being plugged away at, but we could always use another photoshop guy. :)

Jon God: Do you have any open positions you'd like to shout out for?

OogaBooga: Colormaps and scripting. With an emphasis on scripters.

OogaBooga: Over everything else.

Renwood: Scripting.

Renwood: It seems scripters have the least amount of focus from what I've seen.

Renwood: Working with tons of people over the years I always noticed that.

Renwood: Like we get lots of engine enhancements and bug fixes in the myth to engine complete.

Renwood: Things that without our team working twards our goal wouldnt have been added for all mythers to enjoy.

Renwood: We found an engine crashing bug that only our latest plugin version at the time triggered.

Renwood: It crashed myth to desktop.

Renwood: And we told myrd about and now thats been fixed in the Myth 2 engine.

Jon God: Okay, if you don't mind, I would like to touch on some negative events regarding TWA if you don't mind.

OogaBooga: Shoot, I'd like to squash some rumors or misconceptions.

Jon God: it's no secret that The Wind Age wasn't announced to the highest fanfare, what do you think caused this, and if you could have it happen over again, do you think you could have shown things in a more positive light?

Renwood: Well ill put it like this.

OogaBooga: The reaction it got was, predictably, tied to the name. Since nobody really had anything to go on at that time.

Renwood: Long ago people said "Ren, Myth can never look modern enough"

OogaBooga: Nobody liked that we had the audacity to call it Myth 4: The Wind Age.

Renwood: Well current events of the last year or so prove otherwise.

Renwood: The name of the project was to set the bar high.

Renwood: If I heard somebody is looking for help on "Myth 4" I would be interested

OogaBooga: We're calling it such because eventually, we'd like to be working on a funded Myth game.

Renwood: If I hear so and so is working on "blank_plugin title" I don't care.

OogaBooga: Its less about bravado and more about optimism and ambition.

Renwood: It's a very good title because it lets people know from the get go what is expected out of them.

Renwood: We have 4 versions of some of our songs for heavens sake.

Jon God: Do you think that it is living up to the bar you originally set?

OogaBooga: What we're currently working on is more of a pitch - obviously with the amount of modders in the community dwindling, we wont be able to fabricate 25-30 all-new levels that we've already got planned.

Renwood: You should see how long it takes for us to get new units to look JUST right.

Renwood: We strive for high quality, that even bungie wasnt able to come close to.

OogaBooga: Case-in-point - put a Myth 1 Thrall and Myth 2 Thrall next to each other.

OogaBooga: Originally TFL's units were going to have twice the angles, and twice the frames.

Renwood: The bar that we set....yes it certainly is living up to our expectations.

OogaBooga: Myth 2 settled for smaller resolution, same number of angles, but increased frames.

Renwood: For years Oak and Detail textures were a rumor.

Renwood: NOW hot damn we all use em!

Renwood: There are very few things that we still wanted that we didnt get to add to myth yet.

Renwood: Those would be:

Renwood: #1. More units on the screen at one time.

Renwood: #2 More projectiles in the air at one time.

Renwood: Other then that its allmost like we have evreything we wanted at this point AND MUCH MUCH MORE!

Jon God: On that topic, the original announcement confused a lot of people, as some thought it was a new engine, some thought it was a Myth II plugin, would you mind clearing this up once and for all?

OogaBooga: Okay, to clear things up:

OogaBooga: Myth 4 is the name for the project we're working on as a starting point, or pitch, to a company that would be interested in publishing and funding a new myth game.

OogaBooga: Actual "Myth 4" would have engine enhancements, and other things that only funding would provide.

OogaBooga: Funding or the ability to use the engine in whatever way necessary - currently Magma does not want to up the Monster (units onscreen at once) or projectile (attack/spell/debris) limits.

OogaBooga: And those would be things necessary for the Myth 4 engine.

OogaBooga: Although, we'd like to start with the myth 2 engine as a base, and work from there.

OogaBooga: Some people have asked "Why not the Myth 3 engine?".

OogaBooga: And to use our favorite adjective - it doesnt feel "Mythy" enough.

Renwood: The point is we think the next myth game needs to be built MOSTLY on the lastest version of Myth 2 from Project Magma.

Renwood: We work with them to help test it and get some features added here or there.

Renwood: We are including ALL (timeline kept in mind) myth 2 style units in our wind age stuff.

Renwood: AND we intend to include Myth 2 and TFL WITH Myth 4.

Renwood: So people wont be forced to play nything new they dont like.

Renwood: If your obbsessed with Myth 2 fine. play that, and with higher res evreything!

Renwood: If you want something that isnt 12 years old that youve seen 10000 times before then try out the new campaign.

Renwood: We allways want to make it up to personal choice of what myth players will see.

Renwood: (Sorry no myth 3 will be included.)

Jon God: Another thing I hear is the "The Wind Age feels too much like Mazzarin's Demise" Have any comment to the people that say that?

OogaBooga: People who say it's anything like Mazz either (a) havent played it at all, or (b) dont know what theyre talking about.

OogaBooga: Mazzarins demise is a map that takes about an hour and a half to beat. EVery unit starts off very slow to attack, and you can vet up to about 250 kills.

OogaBooga: For starters,

OogaBooga: Mazz units have INCREDIBLY high hitpoint or resistances.

OogaBooga: An archer can withstand a few fireballs before succumbing.

OogaBooga: The pace, and gameplay, is completely different. They may be referring to the fact that we use inventory on a few of our "hero" units.

OogaBooga: Inventory is a new Myth feature (thanks to magma) that allows units to switch between different artifacts and abilities. So far thats the only similarity i've seen between our project and Mazzarins demise.

OogaBooga: But then again, your Deadfall project makes use of inventory - but that doesnt make it anything like mazzarins demise, does it?

OogaBooga: I'd like to know more indepth reasons why people compare TWA and Mazz, I'd be interested to hear it.

OogaBooga: Because I personally dont see much similarities.

Jon God: One problem I had personally was the very large learning curve, with a whole lot of options, and quick gameplay compared to Myth II, Any comment on that?

Renwood: We are going to have ALL bungie style gameplay units.

Renwood: The EXTRA more complicated units seen in our plugin are HERO or leveled up versions.

Renwood: Of normal units.

Renwood: So a normal Warrior is a Myth 2 style war.

Renwood: And level 2 Warrior is a Warrior Captain.

Renwood: A level 3 warrior is a Colorguard who can block arrows with his shield.

Renwood: And other projectiles.

Renwood: Not evreybody will level up.

Renwood: It's just you can if you want to with some units.

Renwood: Our magician dorfs DONT replace normal dorfs.

Renwood: They are in addtion to them.

OogaBooga: Right. These new and complicated units will be few and far between.

OogaBooga: One quick thing: a new 1.7 feature will allow QUICK scrolling through inventory (much like Battlefield's weapon switching) using the mouse scroll wheel.

Jon God: Alright, I think a few more questions will good enough, you alright will that?

OogaBooga: Sure, shoot.

Jon God: First, when can the public be looking forward to some sort of demo, with story and gameplay that is reflective of what to expect?

OogaBooga: Soon™

OogaBooga: No, seriously, we're working on a few levels right now, and we hope to have probably a four-solo two-netlevel demo out.

Jon God: Any time-frame, or just "When it's done" ?

OogaBooga: I'd like to say with certainty "a few months", but the more correct answer is "when it's done".

Renwood: We have spent years working on this game, and so far its better then we had hoped.

Jon God: On that subject, how long has this been under development?

Renwood: Many things we though we would have to hire professional programmers for to get added or changed to the engine is done already.

Renwood: I would say the team and the development of it really got going in 2004.

Renwood: It was pretty much Road, Ooga and I playing plugins.

OogaBooga: For a while it was just me and Ren.

Renwood: And testing things.

OogaBooga: And road, of course!

Renwood: Then ooga and I working together to make all kinds of new stuff, all lot of the stuff I got him to make for our plugins I didnt tell him was really ment for the myth The wind age storyline.

Renwood: So its been a while.

Renwood: The rest of the team PROPPER join in the start of 2007.

Renwood: Well we just wish they would keep it more mythy.

Renwood: Tons of warhammer guys running around in myth seems....

Renwood: Not so mythy.

Jon God: A lot of people compare The Wind Age to The Fallen's Vengeance, what does TWA team think of it? Are you friendly rivals, or do you work together? Or maybe is it a race?

OogaBooga: We wish the TFV team all the success they can earn, and its looking to be a very promising solo romp!

Renwood: I like A-Red.

OogaBooga: Although, we cant deny a bit of rivalry. But we all know each other, and talk to each other on an application called Hotline (hl.udogs.net is the address to those intersted).

OogaBooga: Come watch us argue with each other sometime:)

Renwood: The way we see it TFV seems to want to continue where bungie left off.

Renwood: Our goal is to do what even Bungie couldn't.

Renwood: Makes the best "Giant bloody war game" that we can.

Jon God: Alright, 2 more questions.

Jon God: First, is there anything you'd like to announce now to everyone, that hasn't been talked about before?

Renwood: Well, look forward to the sweetest animations for myth units youve ever seen.

Renwood: We spend TONS of time doing and REdoing renderings to get the propper smooth look and feel to animations.

OogaBooga: There are a few things we are under orders from Magma not to talk about.

Renwood: I am a black belt in tae kwon do so i am very picky about the human form in movement.

Renwood: And road loves animation and is good at it.

OogaBooga: But, rest assured, when the silence is lifted, the myth community may be in for quite a pleasant surprise.

Renwood: and ooga has the pefect EYE for seeing what works and what wont.

Renwood: When making the images into COLLECTION for Myth.

Renwood: It's a great combo.

Renwood: That yeilds high quality results.

Renwood: It happens to the best of us.

Renwood: One thing I would like to mention as a example is this,

Renwood: Bungie planned on having AI scripting tags for units.

Renwood: As in you can have certain AI behaviors.

Renwood: That are inbedded in the units themselves.

Renwood: BUT Bungie didnt get to finsish them.

Renwood: We have emulated this AI scripting tags for units feature.

Jon God: Very nice.

Renwood: And with OURS you can CHANGE the behaviour of the unit ON THE FLY in game.

Renwood: something even bungie's wouldnt have done had they finished it.

OogaBooga: By the end of this project, we'd like to see something usable by even novice fear and loathing users, basically.

Renwood: You want to put a warrior to a rout to the flag and when he gets there not just attack 5 warrs that walk up by himself.

Renwood: Tell him to "Not fight outnumbered"

Renwood: Ghols that will dissengage in melee battle if they get to low near red health.

Renwood: They just pick things up to throw at your red units and harrasses you.

Renwood: We have AI fatties that you can set to auto heal freindly units that have less then 75% health and tuant near the.

Renwood: J man IF hes idle.

Renwood: And he has more then 1 root left.

Renwood: He wont auto heal and use his last root.

Renwood: These are the types of things other projects arent trying.

Renwood: And its the kinda thing we think sets us apart a little.

Jon God: Is there anything you want to say to the fans before this interview is over?

OogaBooga: Yes: Come explode with us. We would love some more testers, and a scripter or two couldn't hurt either!

OogaBooga: Everybody explodes.

Jon God: Well, I would like to thank you both for taking the time to have this interview.

OogaBooga : My pleasure, Jon God.

Renwood: Ok well seeya Jon.

Renwood: Peach out!

So I know I am excited to see some more of this project, and you may be too, so head over to their site, or make and account and start posting on their forums, or go download the latest beta of their tagset.

The Seventh God Review

First Myth-Blog review!

Myth has had a long history of modding filled with amazing plugins, both solo and multiplayer. However in terms of Solo campaigns, three stood out among the rest, which were came to be known by some mythers as "The big three"

These plugins were "Chimera", "JINN" and "The Seventh God"

The Seventh God seems to take place in the same universe, or very similar universe as The Fallen Lords, Soulblighter and The Wolf Age, but somewhere very different from the locations seen in these stories. The map is quite well done, and gives you a feeling of "there's more to this world then I will get to see" which is nice, because it doesn't feel like the world is there only to tell you this one story.

The story is something along the lines of Lord of the Rings, with a lot of parallels in storytelling and ideas, though it quite departs it at times. It's nice as there are no real Lord of the Rings plugins for Myth... (Why aren't there, anyways?). The story is told from the prospective of a mage, who is having visions of another time, which could be the future, his future, in which he slowly finds out the fate of the world, as told through visions. In general the story is quite good, though it starts off extremely hard to follow, giving you names of places and people with no explanation of who they are. It becomes easier later on, as you start to pick up on who's being talked about. It feels like, while the story is great, it doesn't push the barrier of being anything other then decent, everything works, but there aren't any surprises, and it's not incredibly original.

The levels are very beautiful with most, if not almost all of the scenery, units and environment models are completely new and well done. The units are much higher resolution then the normal Myth 2 units, so it's fun to zoom in on the action. In addition to the scenery and units, the color maps are very good, with natural looking landscapes and detailed rocks, grass and paths. While the levels look great, it's often sad that they are not used to their full potential, while a lot of them amount to nothing more then walk, fight, walk fight, walk, level end, with not much strategy on the gameplay compared to the normal myth gameplay. The problem being there isn't the balance of Rock Paper Scissors that Myth 2 had, where a lot of the time you don't have artillery units, and your melee units are much tougher then the enemies, making you not have to rely on much more then clicking and hoping. Also, most of the fight locations take place on level terrain, with no rivers in the ways usually, making the fights feel very similar through out the entire campaign. However, with all of this, the fighting is still fun and "feels right", even if a bit too simple.

While most of the time, there is a sadding lack of objectives beyond kill everyone/get here, there are levels that are very different from almost anything you see in Myth. These RPG levels have you walk around and talk to people to solve puzzles and collect stuff to move on. These levels are usually a beauty to behold with great landscapes and wonderful set-ups of scenery, environmental models and units. The levels often aren't very complex, but the hints they give you can be pretty vague, which makes them take a lot longer to find out. While this can be a good thing, the last RPG level in the game had me scratching my head for quite some time, trying to figure out what to do, after having said everything I could to everyone. The idea is great, but I feel the levels could be better if they had spent a bit more time on planning them.

The music and voice acting were amazing, bordering on something you'd find in a retail game, which was surprising considering "Chimera" had more famous actors, yet wasn't as good. Not all the voice acting is good, there is quite a bit that is passible, yet with the amount voice acting that is good, it doesn't matter.

I haven't gotten a chance to try it multiplayer, but obviously that's not the focus, as I have never seen a game of it played multiplayer online. The levels however look very pretty, though a bit generic, with not much new to bring to the table. I would think, with the simplistic gameplay of the Seventh God, it wouldn't be interesting enough to hold most Myth players. When flipping through the maps in an empty game, the only map that stood out to me was "An Axe to Grind" and it's variant, as they seemed to offer and interesting castle siege element into the netgames which I would imagine to be quite fun.

Overall, my overly critical review might sound negative, but I don't want you to think that the case, I am very critical, and I pointed out everything that stood out to me, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing at all, in fact I think The Seventh God is one of the best plugins for Myth to date, and easily deserves to it's place among the "Big Three". Not only is probably the longest original story plugin for Myth 2, but it also is well done, and is great fun to play coop.

Scores:

New Graphics (9/10): While all the new graphics looked quite amazing, it was strange that they chose to use some Myth 2 units, as they look out of place and blurry compared to those around them.

Story (8/10): While the story is simplistic and hard to follow at first, it's well written overall, and definitely worth exploring.

Gameplay (8/10): I ragged on it a lot, but I still had a lot of fun playing through it, and I know you probably will too.

Level Design (8/10): A mixed bag, the levels looked great, but were often not used to their full potential.

Music/Voice acting (9/10): While some of the voice acting isn't great, the good stuff makes up for it, I have heard worse voice acting in a retail game before.

Replay value (8/10): While the multiplayer might not grab you, the solo levels are great for cooping, and you will probably replay it solo from time to time too.

Verdict: Download/Keep or not?

Answer: Keep

Written by Jon God, August 29th, 2009

Welcome to Jon God's Myth blog!

I am starting this, we will see if it goes anywhere.

This aims to be a blog that covers the workings of the Myth community and development, while providing reviews of plugins, and interviews with plugins makers about their plugins.

If this blog ends up being any good, then maybe even more, for now let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As of now, the Blog's staff is Me, Jon God, and I will have to do all the articles, so if things are slow, poke me. :)