Myth III: The Wolf Age

MythDevelopers initially formed with the purpose of fixing the bug-ridden Windows version of The Wolf Age when it became apparent there would be no official support for the game.

[18] The player can also select preferences to allow them to control rotation and orbiting via the mouse, by moving the cursor to the top and bottom corners of the screen, respectively.

The battles are more complex than simply commanding units to attack the enemy, with strategy and awareness of the conditions of the battlefield, and even the weather, also playing important roles.

For example, a dwarf could throw a molotov cocktail at an enemy on a hillside and miss, with the projectile rolling back down the hill towards the player's own units.

[31] The town is successfully defended by a group under the command of Connacht, a man raised in the wild after the Myrkrida destroyed his village and killed his family, and who has spent his life studying them and learning their weaknesses.

[33] Word of Connacht's deeds reach Llancarfan, and he is summoned to meet Emperor Leitrim, who wishes him to join the fight against Moagim Reborn.

[38] The army is decimated, leaving a demoralized Connacht planning to return to Gower, but is prevented by Damas and Myrdred, who suggests they find Mazzarin.

[43] In Llancarfan, the Smiths build Connacht a Tain; a small magical device containing a pocket universe of limitless capacity, capable of sweeping an infinite number of enemies inside it.

Finding the Cult has stolen the Tain and the SunHammer, Connacht readies his forces to attack, but before he can do so, the Smiths infiltrate the cultists' temple.

[61] Years later, Connacht tells Damas to destroy what artifacts of power he can and hide the indestructible ones, explaining that from his knowledge of the Total Codex, he knows he will become the next Leveler, and does not want to have access to any of these items.

[62] Connacht presides over a prosperous era known as the Wolf Age, before disappearing into the east, not to be seen again for a thousand years when he would return as Balor, with Damas and Ravanna again by his side as Soulblighter and Shiver.

However, although Take-Two were impressed with Campbell's pitch, which had beat out four other proposals,[68] they were worried about turning the game over to a team who had yet to develop a major in-house title.

[70] Also addressing the issue of remaining faithful to the two previous games whilst still introducing new elements to the franchise, MumboJumbo president Mark Dochtermann explained the idea with The Wolf Age was not to reinvent the series' basic gameplay, which the developers felt was still capable of supporting a unique title.

Although, we are taking a [new] route in terms of adding 3D acceleration, 3D models, and doing stuff with the terrain engine and physics that are still way beyond what the other RTS games are doing right now".

We plan to completely overhaul the graphics engine to incorporate fully 3D units, 16-bit terrain maps with high-resolution detail textures, true 3D flora that deforms with wind and Wight blasts and more!

[69][71] Although initially hired to work on the technical aspects of the game, such as level design, the members of the community soon became invaluable to MumboJumbo in terms of writing the storyline.

[72] Although The Wolf Age was built using Soulblighter's source code, the developers made significant changes to improve the game's visual aesthetics.

[69]The new game engine also supported real-time shadows and dynamic lighting, as well as being capable of blending six to seven different texture layers, depending on how close the camera is to the action.

We're actually making tools right now that we will be using for Myth III that are not only cross-platform compatible, but will also allow you to do all the neat new things, use all the new scripting commands and the new models and 3D units and stuff that we're using in this game.

[21] Composer Zak Bellica originally wanted to hire an entire Eastern European orchestra with whom to record the score for the game.

Ultimately, Bellica hired only one musician, cellist Lori Goldston; the rest of the score was created using instruments from sample libraries, which were then played back on a digital sampler.

[2] On November 16, lead programmer Andrew Meggs posted on Mythvillage.org that the entire Myth III PC team had been laid off by MumboJumbo the same day the game had been released.

In a post titled "Some ugly, but honest truths", Meggs wrote: The basic reason was that there was no next project lined up and funded, nor was there expected to be in the near future, it's expensive to keep a team of salaried people around doing nothing, and MumboJumbo was not a huge business with infinitely deep pockets.

There's a tangled web between the MumboJumbo Irvine project team, its parent company United Developers and the game's publisher Take-Two.

[77]The same day Meggs made his post, November 16, MumboJumbo closed their offices in Irvine, with a view to consolidate their resources in their Dallas headquarters.

[83] Although MythDevelopers worked to update The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter to newer operating systems on both Mac and PC, fix bugs, and create unofficial patches to enhance both the games themselves and the mapmaking tools, their initial focus was on the bug-ridden release versions of The Wolf Age, which had problems running on both Windows XP and OS X.

[82] MythDevelopers disbanded in December 2003, with Project Magma becoming the main development group for The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter,[84] and FlyingFlip Studios for The Wolf Age.

[85] The final patch for The Wolf Age was v1.3, released in 2004, which introduced multiple gameplay and stability improvements, as well as bug fixes, and performance enhancements.

[91] GateofStorms, which was created by Project Magma,[89] and only supports Soulblighter v1.8, remains active, and continues to host individual games and tournaments.

He praised the gameplay, the importance of tactics during combat and the graphics, but criticized the repetitiveness of the single-player campaign, concluding: "While this third instalment of the series boasts some commendable touches, it rarely manages to fully explode into rip-roaring RTS action.

Screenshot of Myth III showing the 3D character models in a 3D terrain. The previous games in the series utilized a 3D terrain, but had used 2D sprites rather than fully 3D units.