For my second experiment I chose to attempt an exploration of the games AI, with the aim of playing against it, but with differing goals. While the AI would seek to destroy me, I would seek to cut down every tree in the land. Various results ensued, especially when the AI difficulty was more advanced. I created a few maps for this purpose, as well as a tower defense type map of which the enemy AI had a choke point and I had an increasing number of villagers.
This carried over into another World Editor for Warcraft III, a similar Real Time Strategy game but set in a fantasy world. I instead of pitting villagers against AI, I decided to instead craft a narrative, based on myths about the fir trees and have the audience able to play this narrative. This involved the creation of a map, similar to AoE2, as well as the placement of monsters and obstacles to hinder the players progress. This had mixed results, especially when it came down to the variation of monsters placed and their relative level of difficulty compared to the player characters. Eventually custom abilities were made for the characters in order for them to adequately counter the obstacles faced, while also allowing for a speedy play though as well as the possibility for varied levels of difficulty if the audience member was more competent and familiar with games and could thus manage the spells and abilities in order to keep their heroes alive.
A failed attempt.
Better. But not good enough.
Map editing.
Finally testing the completed map. The map is almost completely filled with monsters for the ‘hero’, you, to kill. At the beginning your character can pick up an arsenal of items which make the game easier, increasing attack and allowing for health regeneration and reincarnation. These allow for differing play styles and generally just make the game faster, something I was aiming to do by, as in my first experiment, simply speeding up the video recording of the game in a media player, now the game experience is actually faster. However this is not always completely foolproof, as can be seen above.
Playing my final experiment two.