Fanstratics月报#14#2021-10

来源：https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter14，以下由HeavenK翻译。

• Fanstratics Troop: Gawker.
• 兵种介绍：邪眼
• Where the Chimerans are believed to be the unfortunate remnants of archaic arcane experiments, the Zubhewens are a sub-human faction born from intentional evolutionary corruption. While there are clear evolutionary connections between Elves and Goblins, when it comes to the Gawker, there is one obvious question, “From what did the Gawker evolve, and what is its mysterious relationship to the other Zubhewen folk?”
  In 1997, when I began building HoMM3’s various rosters, TSR’s original hard cover Monster Manual was a primary resource. To this day, it is still valuable. It is quite literally, a ‘manual of monsters’ gleaned from mythology, folklore, and fantasy fiction. To avoid extended creative research, any author can jumpstart their work by thumbing through TSR’s Monster Manual. Most of the depicted creatures couldn’t be copyrighted by TSR, but the Beholder was different, and I wanted something like a Beholder in HoMM3. While the idea of a ‘floating eye’ is not necessarily original, TSR’s stylistic conception could be copyrighted. In fact, to avoid any potential copyright issues, Ultima’s version of the Beholder was initially called Wandering Eyes, before it eventually became the Gazer. I had no idea Beholders were specifically copyrighted by TSR, and I should have avoided naming HoMM3’s Beholders/Evil Eyes as such. Perhaps TSR didn’t know, didn’t care, or didn’t think a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter was worth the turmoil. Perhaps we were on safe ground. I simply don’t know. Regardless, I am happy a Beholder-inspired Troop remained in the game. As for Fanstratics... we have a Gawker. For those of you who want to see Justin actually render the drawing, you can watch a VOD of his Twitch stream.
• Chimerans据信是远古神秘实验的不幸受害者，而Zubhewens则是蓄意进化污染所诞生的亚人种族。对于精灵与地精等等种族，它们都有着明确的演化关系，但是对于Gawker，问题就来了，这玩意到底是由什么进化出来的，又和其他Zubhewens之间有哪些神秘的联系？
  剧情外的部分：1997年我们还在制作英雄无敌3时，我们的一个主要参考来源就是TSR的怪物手册。但是当时也存在一个问题，尽管其他怪物TSR是没有版权的，但是眼魔不一样。所以当初英雄无敌3没有直接照搬名字，而是像创世纪把眼魔改名为徘徊之眼一样，用了邪眼这个名称。最终不知道TSR是不知道，不想管，还是懒得管。反正最后没被寄律师函。现在到了FST，我们就有了Gawker这玩意。

• Fanstratics Feature: Artifact Upgrade System.
• FST特性：宝物升级系统
• When I was designing HoMM3, my primary guideline was, “If it is not in the spirit of HoMM... remove it.” When designing Fanstratics, I have a couple different primary guidelines. One is, “When possible, create competition for resources.” Anyone who has built a HoMM3 map, should know there is repetition in the various Artifact groups. For instance...
  • Centaur’s Axe: Attack 2
  • Greater Gnoll’s Flail: Attack 4
  • Sword of Hellfire: Attack 6
  At the time, this approach was derived from TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons, and was quite common. I couldn’t say when, but at some point, the concept of upgradable Artifacts (in one form or another), took root, began to spread, and eventually overtook unique Artifacts. With Fanstratics, I am modifying the Artifact system. As an example, consider the aforementioned ‘Attack’ Artifacts. While there will still be 3 individual Attack Artifacts, a player will have the option to spend resources (Common, Rare, and Gold), to upgrade an Artifact. For example...
  Centaur’s Axe > Greater Gnoll’s Flail >> Sword of Hellfire.
  Hopefully, with each turn, a player will be faced with the following budgetary decisions...
  • Should I buy Troops?
  • Should I buy a Town Structure?
  • Should I upgrade an equipped Hero Artifact?
  Hopefully, this ‘system adjustment’ will create some additional strategic avenues, which should create additional competition for a player’s resources.
• 简单说，在英雄无敌3里面有大量同类型宝物，比如攻击 2的人马战斧，攻击 4的狼人连枷，攻击 6的火神剑。当初这一设定也是学的龙与地下城。但是当前游戏设定中更偏向可升级的神器宝物。所以在FST里也会有类似设定，比如可以花费一定资源把低等级宝物升级成高等级的。

• Will it be possible to add custom hero portraits in the Fanstratics map editor, or will it be possible to use only portraits of existing heroes, as in HoMM3?
• 地图编辑器会开放自定义头像么？
• Hero Portraits will be limited, and the reasoning for this is simple. If we give the community the ability to import any picture they want... well... I think you can imagine someone will eventually import adult material. From a developer perspective, it’s best to keep this feature un-customizable.
• 不会，原因你懂的，一旦开放就会有大量R18要素出现。

• Will Fanstratics have a campaign editor? Will Fanstratics use a campaign map where territories are highlighted where the scenario takes place, just like HoMM3? If so, will it be possible to load a custom campaign map and highlight territories on it?
• FST会有战役编辑器么？
• As to a Campaign Editor, I’m leaning against it, but it’s presently undecided. Why? Community Campaign tools simply aren’t used very much. If you look at Map4Heroes.com, there are over 2000 HoMM3 maps. Of these maps, ~30 entries are multi-map campaigns. This translates into ~1.5%. We’ll see what happens.
• 个人倾向不会，但目前未定。因为根据过去经验，做战役的玩家很少，比如在Map4Heroes.com上，地图有2000 ，但战役只有30左右，比例很低。所以后续再决定。

• HoMM3 Recollection: Nick Ferrari.
• H3拾遗: Nick Ferrari
• 点击展开长文
• 

• As you said in the earlier interviews, Angels are highly advanced technological (biotechnological?) constructs. What about Monks and Zealots? Are they human or maybe something else? One of the tavern rumor states: “Have you heard? Zealots are beings of pure energy.”
• 之前的采访中你提到，天使是高科技构造体。那么僧侣和祭司呢？它们是人类么。有一个酒馆传言说祭司是纯粹的能量体。
• Monks are human, and Zealots are ‘ascended’ Monks; essentially higher-level Monks able to control and project energy. I wouldn’t say they are beings of pure energy, but they are luminous.
• 僧侣是人类，祭司是升华的僧侣。这些高级僧侣能控制并投射能量，但并不是纯能量生物，只是会发光而已。

• What are your favorite computer games? Of course, excluding the games that you developed yourself :P
• 你最喜欢的电脑游戏是什么？
• When people make lists like these, in my mind, there are three types: Best, Influential, and Favorite.
  • Best: Best games are quite literally, the best games currently available to play. These lists are heavily weighted toward recent games... because recent games incorporate lessons learned from their predecessors. This is why it is difficult to compare one generation of games to the next. While Space Invaders is a favorite, and arguably the most influential video game ever made... does it belong on a ‘best of’ list? No. I love Space Invaders, but I can’t play it for more than five to ten minutes before I get bored. It’s antiquated.
  • Influential: Influential games may not be the best games, or my favorite games, but they are ‘pioneering’ games. They lay the path on which subsequent games tread. In my opinion, Ultima is not the best RPG ever made, but it laid the groundwork for all of my favorite RPG’s. It’s difficult to underestimate its influence
  • Favorites: Now to answer your question, “What are my favorite computer games?” Favorite games are not necessarily the best... or the most influential. These games hold a special place in my heart, because they affected me on a level, other games did not.
  These games tend to be older, because when you are younger and inexperienced, it takes far less to ignite your imagination. For example, most people, when they see Fall Guys, they a Twitch driven success story. Me? I see a modern incarnation of Mario Party, which was released in 1998. Now... onto my list of favorites.
  • Space Invaders: I heard the sounds of Space Invaders before I saw it. After I saw it... and played it... my life was different.
  • Robotron 2084: In my mind, the legends of coin-operated arcade gaming were Space Invaders, Pac Man, Robotron, Dragon’s Lair, and Street Fighter 2. Robotron was true sensory overload, the birth of bullet hell, and the best implementation of the two-stick control scheme.
  • Dragon’s Lair: Dragon’s Lair appeared in 1983, the same year the as the start of the Video Game Crash in the USA. I’d felt the crash coming, as arcades were diminishing, and the Atari 2600 was everywhere... to an almost sickening degree. Dragon’s Lair was a primitive, ‘learn by death’ collection of what we now call ‘quick time events’, but it was funny... dramatic... artistic. It showed what games could become, and the sound... wow... the sound was exhilarating.
  • Legend of Zelda: Like many of my generation, with the video game crash of the early 1980’s, I began to think video games would end up little more than a wonderous fad. Then Nintendo produced the Nintendo Entertainment System... and Shigeru Miyamoto’s Legend of Zelda. I played Legend of Zelda, in 12-to-16-hour marathon sessions, until I finished the game. I would forget to eat, and because I would forget to eat, my mother would make sandwiches and lay the plates next to me.
  • Might and Magic 3: Colorful. Complex. Vast. Deep. Open world. Surprise twist ending. I was hooked from beginning-to-end. Might and Magic 3 was the first non-arcade, non-console game, I ever played. It was overwhelming.
  • Wolfenstein 3D: For most people, Doom was a revelation. For me, it was Doom’s predecessor... Wolfenstein 3D. I still remember starting the game, moving the joystick, and witnessing the smooth 3D rendering of a virtual world. I audibly uttered ‘Woah’.
  • X-Com: I first played X-Com, as a game demo, taken from a 3.5 floppy disc, packaged with a copy of PC Gamer magazine. It, more than any other game, solidified my desire to become a video game developer. Creative. Mysterious. Creepy. Violent. It took disparate game mechanics, and blended them into a truly unique game for its time. X-Com is the perfect example of a game, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
  • Quake: While I enjoyed the Quake campaign, it was Quake multiplayer where the game became mythical: Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Team Fortress, etc. I went into work on the weekends to play some form of Quake multiplayer via LAN. With my coworkers, we played, ordered in pizza, and played more. Suddenly, it was Sunday night, and we had to go back to work in the morning.
  • Fallout: I bought Fallout as a ‘research project’ (because of my familiarity with the GURPS role-playing game system), and did not have the faintest clue as to the adventure I was about to undertake. I’ll never forget, the moment my character decided it was more beneficial to be evil instead of good. I’ll never forget, being denied re-entry into the vault. In my mind, it was the first truly ‘consequential’ RPG.
  • Diablo: Dustin Browder and I played marathon sessions of co-op Diablo, with the shared goal to defeat the devil, on the hardest level of difficulty. We did it. Lots of randomly generated memories.
  • Half-Life: While I played and finished the final release of Half-life, I re-played the demo numerous times. I even gave the demo to my friends, just so I could watch them play and react to it. Half-life was the birth of the cinematic, action-adventure shooter. It was the first game to begin delivering on the promises made by Dragon’s Lair.
  I’m going to stop here. There are others, but these are the highlights.
• 太空入侵者，机器人2084，龙穴，塞尔达传说，魔法门3，德军总部3d，X-com，雷神之锤，辐射，暗黑破坏神，半条命。

• How did you came up with names for Heroes towns and characters? Conflux names bear resemblance to Old French, Old German, Latin, Greek etc. words connected with the elements (Wazzar, Igne, Magmetin, Brissa, Lacus).
• 你是怎么给英雄无敌的城镇和角色起名字的？
• With the emergence of the internet, crafting an original name is more difficult now than ever before. To arrive at something... somewhat original... I typically start with a basic word description, then work backward, digging into the etymological origins. For instance, the Conflux is an Elemental faction; air, earth, fire, and water. Water descends from the Old High German word of... wazzar. Sometimes I will push or pull a word’s spelling to arrive at something unique, or in the case of Fanstratics, amalgamate different syllables to arrive at a new word. Perhaps the best example of this approach is Darth Vader from Star Wars. ‘Darth’ is a spelling variation of ‘dark’, and ‘Vader’ is Dutch for ‘father’. Hence, Darth Vader means... Dark Father.
• 简单说就是把一些常见事物用其他语言或是近似发音代替。

• The last but not least: David Mullich said that his favorite cheese is cheddar. Do you agree with him or do you prefer a different one?
• David Mullich最喜欢的奶酪是切达干酪（一种英国干酪，产自英格兰西南部的切达村），你呢？
• My grandfather was a dairy farmer, and when I was very young, he introduced me to ‘fresh cheese curd’. There’s nothing quite like it. ‘Fresh’ being the key.
• 略...