Chapter 104: Chapter 103: Arthas’s Sketch
The planning of units and buildings only took two days with the help of the Memory Playback Potion. But of course, Chen Mo had just the numbers, with no images for reference at all.
Chen Mo had previously posted a few concept arts of the World of Azeroth, including gryphons and hippogryphs, but most of the units still lacked artwork.
As Chen Mo had so many other things on his hands, he decided to hand over the buildings and units to Qian Kun.
Qian Kun built a system according to the attack/defence types of the different units and buildings to achieve a sort of balance between different races and units.
Su Jinyu on the other hand was creating artwork for a portion of the units based on her concept art, and the rest of it were outsourced to an art company.
As for the story, Chen Mo only left the story for The Frozen Throne to Zheng Hongxi, asking to make a draft for the story (including the plot and campaign), before revising it in the future.
After assigning the jobs, Chen Mo started to work on the most important part, the foundations of the specifications for maps.
The Warcraft world editor (aka WE) was very powerful, leading to the development of many minigames.
Moreover this game birthed classic minigames such Chenghai 3C, Dynasty Warriors[1], and DotA. DotA was especially important as it started the long MOBA saga.
Blizzard didn’t know how powerful the world editor was, but Chen Mo did. Because of how useful it was, Chen Mo wanted to make sure he did it right, and even make it better than the one in his previous life.
Not only did the mainframe of the world editor needed to be good, other hero mechanisms(respawning, reviving, invulnerability, etc.) also had to be added, becoming part of the editor.
Moreover, the resources for the map were also very expansive.
The map settings included map size, terrain, texture, as well as water and land.
There were also settings such as time(night and day) which would affect the vision range as well as if they were sleeping. It could even influence the strategy for different races.
Night Elves for example, where a few of the heroes and units would get invisibility upon standing still during the night, as well as increased health regeneration and improved vision range.
Because of the limitations of the game engine, controls for Warcraft weren’t as crisp as Starcraft 2 or other MOBA games, and Chen Mo felt that it was a point he could improve on.
—
The development of the game continued steadily.
Chen Mo would spend most of his time making the engine for the world, and would spend the remaining time making sketches of different units, buildings or areas for Su Jinyu to finish and colour.
These sketches didn’t need to be as detailed as the cards as the players would mostly focus on the character models as opposed to the artwork.
As when the artworks were finished, there were still character models to work on, and after that were animations, collision boxes and many more items. This was why Chen Mo decided to focus on finishing the concept document, as it was a bottleneck for everything else.
First floor of the experience store.
“Goldfish, can you tell me what genre the game will be? Is it an RPG?” asked Wen Lingwei.
Su Jinyu replied, “Geez, relax, you’ll know when it comes out.”
“But the concept art is pretty good, the urge for me to help you colour them in are so strong I could barely contain myself,” replied Wen Lingwei.
Jia Peng also added, “It seems related to Azeroth, but it’s not a cute version this time. Perhaps it’s a more realistic I Am MT?”
Su Jinyu was speechless, “You guys are underestimating the manager, is he that type of guy? The type of guy to scam players for money on the basis of a reskin?”
Wen Lingwei facepalmed, “What do you think?”
“You don’t have to worry about that. This game is completely unrelated to I Am MT. It completely rests on the story from the World of Azeroth,” said Zheng Hongxi.
“Isn’t the World of Azeroth and I Am MT the same thing?” asked Jia Peng.
Zheng Hongxi shook his head, “Of course it isn’t the same. Haven’t you noticed that the story the manager posts of the World Of Azeroth is the world behind I Am MT, but the characters in I Am MT never appeared in World of Azeroth?”
Jia Peng gave it some thought, “Uhh, that’s… true.”
Wen Lingwei was also confused, “Why is that?”
“You guys still don’t know? Names like Rogue and Priest clearly aren’t normal names of Western Fantasy characters, it’s just the bastardisation of their english pronunciation. I’m guessing that the manager is afraid that the people aren’t ready to accept Western Fantasy, which was why he decided to make the game and animated series more cute and suited to local tastes as promotion.
“That means that I Am MT is basically a parody and has nothing to do with the actual story in Azeroth.”
Everyone finally understood, “So that’s why! The manager sure thinks far into the future.”
Wen Lingwei scowled, “Therefore, now that the manager thinks its the right time, he decided to tell the story of the actual World of Azeroth?”
Zheng Hongxi nodded, “Exactly. I can’t tell you too much, but I can tell you that the story is insane. That’s right, insane.”
…Is it as good as you make it out to be?
—
As they were talking Chen Mo came down stairs.
“I’ve sent a new batch of sketches to you, Goldfish,” said Chen Mo.
Everyone gathered around Su Jinyu as she opened the sketches.
It was a young man wearing dark green armor with ashen hair, with eyes filled with evil intent.
There was another sketch on the same image, a flaming skeleton horse running, as well as a two-sword with magic inscriptions on it.
The sketch also had the name of the character: Arthas Menethil, his mount Invincible, and his weapon Frostmourne.
“Is this the new Undead hero? He’s so handsome!” exclaimed Su Jinyu.
Wen Lingwei also joined in, “He’s so good looking! Is this the main character?”
Jia Peng said, “Umm… looks like the antagonist. That smile sends shivers through my spine.”
“The sketch for Arthas is finally done? Let me see! Crazy! This is amazing!” exclaimed Zheng Hongxi.
Everyone had nothing but praises for the sketch.
Chen Mo’s sketch of Arthas fully conveyed his possible good or bad nature, especially with his mount Invincible and Fortmourne, everyone were able to imagine the heroic figure of Arthas leading the Scourge to take over Azeroth.
This picture was enough to make their blood boil!
After giving the sketch another look, they had more to say about it.
Although the sketch was far from complete, it was more than enough to convey the idea and characteristics of the character. From a design point of view, it was basically perfect and could even stand toe to toe with Heavenly Ring!
Wen Lingwei said, “Alright, I’ve decided that I’ll colour this sketch, free of charge!”
TL note [1]: Names of WOW minigames, and Dynasty Warriors here doesn’t refer to the actual Dynasty Warrior series