Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Re: Titans

There was a time when the race of Man was least among those creatures that strode the earth.

In those days, there were a multitude of thinking races, all of different form and aspect. The dwur mastered metals beneath the cold mountains of the Pyrenees, mining ever deeper in their search for superior tools and greater wealth. The serpentkind invoked dark magics in the names of their foul lords, bringing terrible blights down upon them; the warbelfynn struggled against them, using their own innate strength to overcome the arcane power of the serpent-men. The whale-clans roamed the seas, lords of all they surveyed, violently challenging any fool enough to enter into their domains; they had not yet learned the virtues of kindness and mercy. And most terrible of all were the Titans, who reshaped the very earth itself.

At a stroke, any Titan could turn grassland into desert, desert into verdant jungle, jungle into icy wasteland; create vast craters with the blink of any eye, and raise up tall mountains with the slightest gesture of a pinky. They went wherever they wished, did whatever they pleased; none but the most foolish would make any attempt to obstruct their will, and the wise made haste to flee before their coming, knowing the change - and destruction - it brought.

Then they vanished; and nothing more of them is known. With their passing came the diminishing in power of the greater races. The dwur were annihilated by an earthquake unmatched in strength before or since; its thunder was heard the world 'round, and the very mountains collapsed upon the dwur, sealing them into eternal darkness. The war between snake and fynn ended with the destruction of the former and the mortal weakening of the latter, who were overcome by the arrival of men within their demense. The whales, for reasons incomprehensible to those who live on a timescale swifter than their alien, cetacean minds dictate, retreated into the depths. And so only man remained to inherit the earth.

Nothing is known of the titans, though some speculate that they left to the outer spheres: the Moon, or the wandering stars beyond. Certainly, they have left for-ever; nothing has been seen of them for millenia. But rumour holds that they left their tools behind...

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Map editor, for the game mentioned earlier! It's a tremendous amount of fun to fiddle with - for me, anyway. The file is here, and will require Python 2.6 to run. But that's really easy to get, as noted previously, so it's no trouble. Experiment with it! Report bugs! (I don't think there are any bugs.)

Suggestions:
- Fiddle with the views a lot. (With the menu on the top; you can see it in the screenshots.) You can't really do all that much in the default view, terrain view - unit view, and especially altitude view, are needed for the Full Map Editor experience.

- You might want to try making a smaller map - File:New, 800x600 - for a superior experience. Larger maps, such as the default, are significantly slower when it comes to certain operations, most notably anything involving altitude changes.

Note:
- This is a work in progress. The minimap isn't 100% functional yet, and there are a few things that aren't actually there yet. (Victory conditions, mainly.) Oh! Also, the main game won't do a darned tootin' thing with any maps made by it. (Yet.)

But it's still really lovely! I'm very proud of it. Also, going to bed.

EDIT: Included a dependency that I'd forgotten about. Apologies to anyone who downloaded before.

Also, feel free to point me to a better free-hosting site than Rapidshare. Feel free.

1 comment:

Kelsey Higham said...

i cannot understand anything but it looks quite impresive