Hello. I am Phantom Designer. A long time ago I started a topic called "Some Design Tricks" that was featured in The Scenario Design Resource Library, for which I was deeply honored. I say deeply honored but really I was flattered beyond belief.
That was five years ago. I had to remember where I was five years ago. It's insane to me how my life has changed since then.
At the time I was very big into designing scenario and campaigns for RTS games. I started with Age of Empires II, the Conquerors, when I first discovered triggers. After toying with them for a long time I began to really understand them.
After that I moved on to other games, such as Age of Mythology and eventually Empire Earth, which was a lot of fun.
The problem was that, by the time I really got the hang of designing for that particular game, the scenario design community would be in its decline. I couldn't catch up and by the time I was ready to make something worthwhile people had moved on.
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World was different for me. I bought the game when it first came out and immediately looked into design. I discovered that I was very familiar with the editor because it had the same framework as Empire Earth.
I cannot tell you how many countless hours, days, weeks of my life I spent designing scenarios. I was sure this time I could create something and had enough experience to make a great scenario/campaign.
I worked on a few, such as one about Sekigahara, two battles from Napoleon's Egypt campaign, and a few others, but never finished them.
My pride and joy was going to be an RPG called "Heretic". In it, a crusader, condemned for being a heretic, escapes his confinement and returns to his homeland of Flanders. Finding that the kingdom is perfectly happy, in fact utopian, he decides to ignite a coup, simply for the hell of it. I created a very large map, and wrote pages of dialogue. It was going to have everything, side-quests, battles, equipment, music, and it was going to be fully voiced.
I was very proud of the story and took pride in the map design work. There were going to be countless locations, a lot of tricks from my design tricks were going to be employed, and I spend a good deal of time on the writing.
It was never finished. In fact, it was never close to being finished. But I still love it and am proud of it. I even considered converting it to other venues, such as the games I do work for now.
I kept a close eye on the community until I heard the news that the site was being archived. It's always a very sad thing when a community you felt a part of drifts into obscurity. It's just a game, it's just scenario designing, but both of those things were very much so a part of my life.
The game had a lot of great designers, Gordon Farrell, _o0XxX0o_, and Talon Karrde to name a few. There were some great scenarios released and ones I simply couldn't wait to play. I think unfortunately this community was not around long enough to work up a magnum opus - a scenario or campaign that raised the standards as other design communities had eventually achieved.
I watched quietly as the site became archived and felt sad, and eventually moved on. The real shame of it was that the game had so much potential to be great, but for any number of reasons remained a small community, though dedicated.
Every so often I would "dust off" my Empires game and look at my old scenarios.
I was very encouraged to see another small website pop up dedicated to this game and hoped eventually this site would come back.
Just today, I randomly looked at an article about this game and clicked a link and saw Empires Heaven was back up. I was amazed and quite amused. I used to check the website every day, stopping when it was not updated as often, and didn't visit for years eventually. Finding it today was like running into an old friend.
I had to look through computer backup disks that were years old to find my password and log into the forums to write this.
I guess really I just wanted to say how much fun I really had designing for this game and being a member of this community, though a typically quiet one.
I don't know how active the site is. I don't know who is still designing, if any of the great designers are still around, or any of that. But, whoever is still designing, whoever is still out there, I really want to say best of luck to you.
Good luck to all of you and cheers,
Phantom Designer
That was five years ago. I had to remember where I was five years ago. It's insane to me how my life has changed since then.
At the time I was very big into designing scenario and campaigns for RTS games. I started with Age of Empires II, the Conquerors, when I first discovered triggers. After toying with them for a long time I began to really understand them.
After that I moved on to other games, such as Age of Mythology and eventually Empire Earth, which was a lot of fun.
The problem was that, by the time I really got the hang of designing for that particular game, the scenario design community would be in its decline. I couldn't catch up and by the time I was ready to make something worthwhile people had moved on.
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World was different for me. I bought the game when it first came out and immediately looked into design. I discovered that I was very familiar with the editor because it had the same framework as Empire Earth.
I cannot tell you how many countless hours, days, weeks of my life I spent designing scenarios. I was sure this time I could create something and had enough experience to make a great scenario/campaign.
I worked on a few, such as one about Sekigahara, two battles from Napoleon's Egypt campaign, and a few others, but never finished them.
My pride and joy was going to be an RPG called "Heretic". In it, a crusader, condemned for being a heretic, escapes his confinement and returns to his homeland of Flanders. Finding that the kingdom is perfectly happy, in fact utopian, he decides to ignite a coup, simply for the hell of it. I created a very large map, and wrote pages of dialogue. It was going to have everything, side-quests, battles, equipment, music, and it was going to be fully voiced.
I was very proud of the story and took pride in the map design work. There were going to be countless locations, a lot of tricks from my design tricks were going to be employed, and I spend a good deal of time on the writing.
It was never finished. In fact, it was never close to being finished. But I still love it and am proud of it. I even considered converting it to other venues, such as the games I do work for now.
I kept a close eye on the community until I heard the news that the site was being archived. It's always a very sad thing when a community you felt a part of drifts into obscurity. It's just a game, it's just scenario designing, but both of those things were very much so a part of my life.
The game had a lot of great designers, Gordon Farrell, _o0XxX0o_, and Talon Karrde to name a few. There were some great scenarios released and ones I simply couldn't wait to play. I think unfortunately this community was not around long enough to work up a magnum opus - a scenario or campaign that raised the standards as other design communities had eventually achieved.
I watched quietly as the site became archived and felt sad, and eventually moved on. The real shame of it was that the game had so much potential to be great, but for any number of reasons remained a small community, though dedicated.
Every so often I would "dust off" my Empires game and look at my old scenarios.
I was very encouraged to see another small website pop up dedicated to this game and hoped eventually this site would come back.
Just today, I randomly looked at an article about this game and clicked a link and saw Empires Heaven was back up. I was amazed and quite amused. I used to check the website every day, stopping when it was not updated as often, and didn't visit for years eventually. Finding it today was like running into an old friend.
I had to look through computer backup disks that were years old to find my password and log into the forums to write this.
I guess really I just wanted to say how much fun I really had designing for this game and being a member of this community, though a typically quiet one.
I don't know how active the site is. I don't know who is still designing, if any of the great designers are still around, or any of that. But, whoever is still designing, whoever is still out there, I really want to say best of luck to you.
Good luck to all of you and cheers,
Phantom Designer