DOWW2 - Alpha release

[ace joh]

Well, here it is, and still before christmas (GMT +1)!

In this alpha Version you can battle soviet enemies in a familiar setting

A couple important notes :
1) Some stuff used in the mod is copyrighted material, and should probably be replaced later on (mainly starcraft images)
2) There is no story, no ending. Once you think you cleared the map, exit and report everything you have to say here
3) Due to game limitations you have to overwrite the existing 'spells.bmp' file, if you made your own alterations to that file, be sure to make a backup (note that you can still play normal modules with the altered spells.bmp file)
4) For some reason you sometimes get an error when summoning troops, all you have to do is press enter, and the game should continue as normal
5) This is still a beta, and as such not balanced and buggy, please report anything you find unusual, suggestions, feedback, ... here!

size +/- 6.5 megs, as a solid rar archive (zip was 11 megs), mainly due to new sounds. Don't want to know what the size of the final module will be...

That's about all I can remember, hope it works, and enjoy!

edit : and merry christmas!

[henk brouwer]

Wow And you got us thinking that the release date would be "several years from now"

It sounds really good, it's slightly frustrating that I won't be able to play it until tuesday though
I don't have my copy of Dungeon Odyssey here (visiting family), but at least I have acces to the internet...

I'll let you know more once I'm finally able to play it, until then I'll just be hiding somewhere on the forums .

[ace joh]

Well, a couple of years from now I hope to have a few maps too
Don't worry, beta testing... Alpha testing? can wait a few days, the DO community is used to it by now, I think

[henk brouwer]

Just downloaded the module this post may contain some spoilers for people who haven't played yet...

I chose a light tank for the first game (and average difficulty), It's was certainly a nice experience to be driving a well-armored tank into Nurtred for a change (Let lord Sertis try and steal the crown of the magis this time... )

I quickly found out I wasn't as invincible as I thougt I was, a level 3 SU-152 came around a corner and killed me with two well aimed shots .

So I started my second game a bit more carefully.. (same setup) and I lived a lot longer this time. I slaugthered a huge batallion of BT7 tanks early on, and had an epic fight with a j8-2 with refitted armor. (My bullets seemed almost useless against it's armor)

I finally found a 85 mm gun and ammo just before my own ammo ran out, wow... the 85 mm is definitely a -lot- more effective than the little gun I started out with . The thing was quite heavy for a light tank, so I had to invest quite some points from levelling into strength, but it was worth the investment. I left a trail of carnage and destruction through the town of Nurtred, until finally my 85mm ammo ran out and I had to resort to other means of destruction. But I did manage to clear the level .

Anyhow, an overall first impression:
I like it a lot , It feels a bit odd to be battling tanks in Nurtred, but I can see that the finished game with more suitable maps, and a good soundtrack would be really nice to play.

What I really like about this module is that the gameplay is very different from original DO. I found myself trying to keep distance from targets, carefully aiming my shots, in an effort to waste as little ammo as possible.

I really like the extensive descriptions for all the units, it adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game.

I also liked how there are clearly different units, like the heavily armored j8-2, which doesn't use much firepower, and on the other hand units that fire lots of shots, but have little armor.

It seems that the heavier weapons, and tanks have a huge advantage over the light tanks and weapons in the alpha Version. Maybe it would be nice to give the heavy weapons some disadvantages in a next Version, which would make the lighter weapons more usefull. (like enemy infantry with a very high "lightning" resistance, that are easily harmed by light weapons (low "magic" resistance).

Other than that gameplay balance seems reasonable, I was low on ammo a couple of times though, but I never completely ran out, but I can see how this could become a really big problem.

keep up the good work

[ace joh]

Thanks for the comments!

I'm already working hard (well, quite hard ) on the next Version, with any luck it'll have pretty much every tank&weapon I wanted to be added... In data, not the graphics unfortunately.

light vs heavy tanks : that was the most obvious balance issue, I do have a couple of things in mind :
-First off, infantry has been fixed to resist lightning 100%, and added magic damage to guns, which is alot smaller than a machinegun's magic damage. I first decided against this, as you would have to switch weapons when facing infantry, and DO doesn't really support this (you can't alter equipment when paused, so you'd have to run away)
-experience requirements for heavier tanks will be vastly increased, but currently, as you may have noticed, experience doesn't seem to make much sense anyway (killing a rifle squad gives just as much, or even more (depending on level?) experience as a KV heavy tank, or something like that), so there's not much point in adding this now
-You can't see it, but lighter tanks have much higher attack&defence Ratings than heavier tanks
-unfortunately I can't alter food consumption speed, but the maximum hunger for heavy tanks is intended to be very low, so you'd have to watch it frequently (unlike regular DO games )
-Heavy weapons ammo will be rather rare compared to light guns ammo. Perhaps I'll also increase weight of shells from a big calibre, MG ammo weighs nothing
-obviously, speed of light tanks is better than heavy tanks

Infantry is still not much of a threat, they can't really come near your tank (that's when they become dangerous), but it gives the command car a chance ti kill something himself )

Just noticed I forgot to tell, range of weapons is a stat DO fails to mention, if for some reason you can't seem to shoot, there's 3 possibilities :
1. You're out of ammo
2. You're trying to shoot beyond weapon range, aim closer to your tank (note that bullets will still travel unlimited distance, or so it seems? Range only affects how far away from your tank you'll be able to start clicking, making targetting a bit harder)
3. You found a bug, congrats, don't forget to report it

edit : also, a walther P38 has a range of 1, this means you'll have to stand right next to an enemy, else it won't do anything at all.

[DarkStar]

I had some time so I tried out this module. I didn't get to play it much but so far it's very cool.

I really felt like was I driving a tank around. I choose the light tank and enjoyed moving it around and blowing up the other tanks.

The tank graphics look very cool and I really like how each tank is not the same. Very awesome stuff.

I didn't know much about tanks in general and it was fun for me to read your descriptions of each. It really add to the module in my opinion.

As it was said before with the right type of map this game could play really well. It's also nice that it's not all magic and fantasy.

Is there a way to change the 'paper doll' background image to a tank instead? (I'm guessing not because I'm sure you would have).

A minor suggestion is that maybe you could change the graphic for the fuel to be an oil barrel or a gas can. It's not that big of a deal since you can hover over the item but I think it might be more fitting.

I really have enjoyed it so far - keep up the great work!

[ace joh]

Good to see you like it!

Can't take credit for the tank graphics, they're from civilization 2 (and civilization test of time, you might have noticed the difference in detail between some tanks (light tanks for example)), as stated in the readme

Yeah I should go and create some maps, but currently I'm still 'designing' tanks&weapons... Perhaps I could use Henk's wilderness map from xerathul's revenge, without the town? and chests

yes the inventory and UI in general doesn't really fit, unfortunately, this is one of the things currently not working in DO, only way to do that would be to replace the existing images, but, unlike the spells.bmp file which is already altered, this would be noticeable in all modules

Currently the graphic is a 'drop' of oil, from Hearts of Iron (I've really been scraping images from here and there ), though it shouldn't be hard to replace, I'll look into it!

edit : can't really tell when the next update will be released, item and tank data comes from "steel panther world at war" OOB files, I used to manually 'copy' each weapon/unit to DO, but after my 26th full review of the (rather few) things I already have, I figured this was too impractical, and I'm now writing a program to do everything for me... This brings a lot of problems though.

[henk brouwer]

The wilderness map from Xerathul's Revenge ? You're free to take it, but are you sure you want it?

That map was the first map I ever created, and as such it has turned into a really awkward mess... It uses four different connection types, 0 for forests, 1 for grassland, 2 for roads and 3 for buildings that are on the northern or southern edge of the tile. You can probably see that that creates a quite large number of different combinations.

DO is quite clever in puzzling together maps when it doesn't have all the pieces, but the town map still quite often creates inaccessible areas, bad connections, and other errors, on top of that, the textfile that describes it is a horrible, horrible mess .

I guess I vented enough personal frustration about the xerathul's revenge module now . Anyhow, you can use the map, but taking the wilderness map from the christmas module might be a better idea, I could also create a new map that uses simmilar terrain as the xerathul's revenge map, but without the complexity in connection types and errors, since I understand mapmaking a bit better now, that shouldn't be too hard to do.

[ace joh]

Hmm, I see, haven't tried mapmaking yet, I expect my maps won't be better

Christmas module would be possible, but currently all monsters have summer camo, instead of winter. If you'd want to create the map, that'd be really nice, but I wouldn't want to delay your current projects...

[henk brouwer]

ace joh said:
Hmm, I see, haven't tried mapmaking yet, I expect my maps won't be better

Christmas module would be possible, but currently all monsters have summer camo, instead of winter. If you'd want to create the map, that'd be really nice, but I wouldn't want to delay your current projects...

Good point about the Camo
I'll try and make a map, don't worry about it delaying my current projects, I'll be able to use it for my own module as well, with some small changes. About the map: any special wishes? Should tanks be able to fire through trees, or should they block fire? should they block vision?