FlightShtick
Captain
My cousin came over and asked me what the hell I was doing and explained it to me. I felt like an idiot.
Anyone else sit for 3 hours fighting ships at the end of WC3 for PSX until figuring out they had to cloak?
- Thread starter FlightShtick
- Start date
Rylex
Rear Admiral
Well ... I've seen the last mission at a friend of mine first, who had a much faster computer in 1995 ... he had a 486 DX2-66 while I had only a 386 with 40 MHz, which was way too slow and without a CD-ROM drive. Good old days...
But yeah ... I might have tried to cloak first, before fighting through.
A pity that you could not use the Arrow... but well... the WC3 Arrow is... well... way too slow. Gimme the Armada Arrow with speeeeeeeeeeeed...
But yeah ... I might have tried to cloak first, before fighting through.
A pity that you could not use the Arrow... but well... the WC3 Arrow is... well... way too slow. Gimme the Armada Arrow with speeeeeeeeeeeed...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Many, many people have done this! It's not at all your fault, it's an oversight in the game's design. They SHOULD have cut the cloaking aspect once they realized they didn't have sufficient setup in the videos.
FlightShtick
Captain
At least a message on the screen would have helped. Heh.
Rylex
Rear Admiral
So you mean, the cloaking device was added later even though it wasn't originally planned?
The game would have been much more difficult without it. But then again, why do you have to fly the Excalibur? OK, obviously the Arrow doesn't have enough room for the templor bomb. A light fast fighter isn't a bomber, I know.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
They always intended to have the cloaking device in the last mission but a series of other smaller changes... and one big unforced error!... made it very poorly explained.
As scripted, the game introduced the concept of cloaking slowly but steadily: the cloaked jump point in act one and then the Skipper missile was written to appear in act two... but the mission was moved up to the start of the game (causing a true difficulty spike in addition to breaking the intended narrative!). Another cut that hurt was dropping the final briefing where Blair explains the last mission to wingmen... so the only mention of cloaking your Excalibur is Eisen's reference to it two missions before it's 100% necessary to finish the finale!
But it's a small example of one big problem developers often ran into with FMV games: it was extremely difficult to the point of impossible to solve a problem like this once it was recognized... because by the time the game was going through QA there was no chance to reshoot anything. A FMV shoot 'locked' things in early which meant that the script had to /imagine/ how people would play the game... and that's not as easy as it sounds! (For example, the Eisen speech that DOES mention cloaking the Excalibur is focused entirely on letting the player know the cloak wouldn't work after the bomb was dropped... an imagined gameplay element that seemed very important when the game was being scripted but which had absolutely no relevance to the finished mission).
(The way the process should work is that QA plays the game and realizes hey there's not enough context here... people will be confused by the need to hit 'c' to not fail the mission. And that obviously happened because they ended up dropping in a note on the nav map to help lost players... it's just that no one would ever think to check that. In a non-FMV game the easy thing would be to edit the briefing: have Paladin explain that you should cloak at X point... but on WC3/4/etc. you couldn't do that because your Paladin video was shot six months ago.)
(... now imagine doing all your celebrity capture work and then spending ten or more years making the game they go with... that'd be a real dumb mistake...
)
As scripted, the game introduced the concept of cloaking slowly but steadily: the cloaked jump point in act one and then the Skipper missile was written to appear in act two... but the mission was moved up to the start of the game (causing a true difficulty spike in addition to breaking the intended narrative!). Another cut that hurt was dropping the final briefing where Blair explains the last mission to wingmen... so the only mention of cloaking your Excalibur is Eisen's reference to it two missions before it's 100% necessary to finish the finale!
But it's a small example of one big problem developers often ran into with FMV games: it was extremely difficult to the point of impossible to solve a problem like this once it was recognized... because by the time the game was going through QA there was no chance to reshoot anything. A FMV shoot 'locked' things in early which meant that the script had to /imagine/ how people would play the game... and that's not as easy as it sounds! (For example, the Eisen speech that DOES mention cloaking the Excalibur is focused entirely on letting the player know the cloak wouldn't work after the bomb was dropped... an imagined gameplay element that seemed very important when the game was being scripted but which had absolutely no relevance to the finished mission).
(The way the process should work is that QA plays the game and realizes hey there's not enough context here... people will be confused by the need to hit 'c' to not fail the mission. And that obviously happened because they ended up dropping in a note on the nav map to help lost players... it's just that no one would ever think to check that. In a non-FMV game the easy thing would be to edit the briefing: have Paladin explain that you should cloak at X point... but on WC3/4/etc. you couldn't do that because your Paladin video was shot six months ago.)
(... now imagine doing all your celebrity capture work and then spending ten or more years making the game they go with... that'd be a real dumb mistake...
)
ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
And it's not just the PSX version! Was a very common issue even on PC. There was a tiny cryptic instruction built into the nav map to tell you to do this that was often missed.
FlightShtick
Captain
..the arrow?..oh boy.
I am sorry, but when I stole Excalibur in that one mission, It was great. Then going back to little pea pods.
Rylex
Rear Admiral
Never underestimate a fast and maneuverable ship like the Arrow. And even though not as fast as the Armada Arrow, the WC3 Arrow could kick your ass with its auto sliding function just like the Excalibur (pressing Caps Lock). It's a pity that this function never worked reliable on the German versions with a German keyboard.
Sure the Excalibur is a great ship, lots of guns, lots of power. And she's beautiful, too... although not as sexy as the Arrow.
OK, I admit ... I'm a bit biased here.