Crusader: No Remorse in Ancient Warfare 3

Still working on the map. Made some shield batteries, and some other custom objects.

Going to see if i can script an inventory that works in tandem with the vanilla game's, and will allow me to explore the use of items such as spider bombs and medikits that can be called upon later on. AW3's base inventory only lets you carry a single item, such as a grenade, so I sort of want to merge CNR with AW3 to have both be active at the same time. Grenades will replace things such as mines and the detonation packs, but the CNR inventory will allow for spider bombs, shield batteries and medical kits.


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Hi guys, just a little update.

Unfortunately I ended up abandoning the 1:1 recreation, purely because IRL stuff stripped me of most of my free time and in the intervening development lull I sort of lost all motivation to get back into it.

That was until an Ancient Warfare 3 map competition was announced. Originally I wasn't going to join, but then decided to have a crack at it. As I am currently playing through CNR on my Steam Deck (mapping the controls to a controller make the game so much better!!!!), I was naturally inspired to use Crusader as my map's theme.

As you have seen, AW3 is primarily a first person experience, however I have crunched away in the scripting mines and developed a faux-isometric camera angle, and reworked the game's native control scheme to something more in-line with CNR.

The theme of the competition is exploration, titled "Beyond the Horizon", so I am making lavish use of CNR's teleporter gimmick to have the Silencer teleport from Earth to Martian Mines, to a space stations in Saturun's Rings, to an alternate alien dimension etc etc.

I'll put up some pictures when I get a moment.
 
So I've just finished making the map and have submitted it to the competition. Its already had very positive feedback, which is nice. Without going into too much personal detail I'm the father of two disabled children and because of that I generally have very, very little time to do anything, so I've literally been ploughing in the hours from 12am to 3am every day and operating on next to nothing sleep lol. Safe to say I couldn't keep it up forever and whilst I enjoyed making it I am kind of glad that its done.

Obviously this is not a 1:1 of CNR, and Ancient Warfare 3 is primarily an FPS sandbox. The fact I have made the game behave like an isometric shooter is in itself a feat of engineering, but other things like using Echo Sector as the map's central hub, and creating several "mini levels" that the player then teleports into and out of in one map space is also something rarely explored. I had to create a custom made dialogue/computer hacking/interaction system, which though looking basic, is again another engineering feat. I'm explaining this because I want to provide context to what I have made and with what kind of restrictions I am having to bypass.

For example, I wanted to script the ability to have the Silencer roll left and right as in the original game. However to do so would mean I would have to fully animate the unit with custom animations, and given I have 5 weapons in play, that's a set of animations for each weapon including walking, standing, aiming, rolling, etc etc, and then there's the scripting work required to make those animations behave like a coherent unit. I just haven't got the time.

In short, I am basically emulating CNR with a typewriter.

Competition ends in 8 days, I'll let you know how I get on.

Instead of pictures, I thought I'd just record a playthrough and shove it on Youtube. Its a little skittery because I had to dull the video quality to keep the file size within sane limits, I do not have a great deal of disk space. Still processing HD at time of posting so you might wanna leave it 30 minutes. Link below:


And the link to the map itself if any of you all have had your interests in AW3 piqued by the video and bought it (good choice):


Isn't it odd? I bought that game 29 years ago when I was 6 years old at a Toys R Us, and though I struggled to grasp its control scheme and complete it even on the easiest difficulty, here it is, all these years later. The mark it left on my subconscious is beyond my comprehension.
 
My mouth's agape at your work, speechless. It's truly outstanding. Congratulations on the amazing work and I hope you win the competition!
 
My mouth's agape at your work, speechless. It's truly outstanding. Congratulations on the amazing work and I hope you win the competition!
Thanks Keenan, means a lot. Since my last update I've been busy. Deadline was yesterday, the judging takes place tomorrow (3:00pm EST). If anyone finds themselves bored, the competition is being judged by one of the dev's Discord mods TomeBinder, a heavyweight of the AW3 community. He'll be streaming the judging live over at his YT channel linked below. There are 84 entries, so its expected to be a long stream.

https://www.youtube.com/@tomebinder4369/featured

At the moment I am continuing to add to my CNR model library. I've got quite the collection now, and as I go forwards I am relying less and less on AW3's vanilla content. Here's a picture of what I have so far, barring a few omissions and colour variants:

AW3 Collection.jpg

Aside from building my model library, I am currently in the process of constructing a template CRUSADER map, which is gutted and stripped back to just the Echo Sector section, leaving the rest of the map blank for mission areas. The scripting in this template is also going to be very streamlined and modular: my hope being that aside from making it easy for me to generate content at full speed, that it will allow other players to easily grasp and use the set up too.
 
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First place! Crusader reigns supreme!

 
Thanks guys! It's gotten a bunch of people interested in Crusader, with some copycat works popping up. Time to grow my cult! Haha
 
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