Preparing Alpha BETA news - WarCraft III: World of WarCraft Mod for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne

Hello everybody and thank you for your input on podcasts.  Though not as many as I had hoped wanted the podcasts, only one or two people said they didn't want me to do podcasts.  I know I've been slow with presenting the first Wc3:WoW podcast to you guys but I intend to have something to show off and comment on when I do create the podcast.  You'll see what I mean when I upload it and it will likely make everyone a bit happier or at least more satisfied.

Very early in the morning I contacted PurgeandFire111 who is my other RPG's (Ardent Heroes ORPG) lead coder and asked him for a favor: to help get Wc3:WoW back on its feet by implementing a few basic systems to make it testable.  Not necessarily 'playable' since there's not much playing involved in these early alpha beta tests but there will be a few key things to test such as how the camera works in-game, memory leaks, terrain pathing, and so on.  I probably won't be able to get him to do more than a few basic things since it is summer and I am sure he'd rather spend more time enjoying his rather than working on tedious systems. :P
But who knows!

Right now I've setup only a select few systems as emergency priority systems.  Just a small handful of things that are required in order to test the mod.

• Third Person Camera system - A camera that follows your character and allows you to toggle what the arrow keys do; rotate the camera left, right, up, and down, or use them for moving your character around.  The mouse-scroll is used to zoom the camera in and out.  When the arrow keys are used for character movement, the camera will auto-rotate and adjust accordingly to where you are and where you're facing. (The camera also knows to avoid terrain) This system is being based off of Opossum's 'OppiCam' system found at Wc3C.net.
• Arrow Key Movement system - The player can toggle what functionality the arrow keys have.  I know this is a bit inconvenient for fast-paced action but for the time being this is the best solution we've got.  When arrow keys are in movement mode, the Up Arrow Key is for moving your character Forward, the Down Arrow Key is for moving your character Backwards, and the Left and Right Arrow Keys are for turning your character left and right.  No strafing just yet since it's still a bit unknown how we're even going to add that smoothly into the mod.  As for turning speeds, there will likely be 1 through 5 speeds from slowest to fastest.  Players will have to type -1, -2, -3, -4, or -5 to quickly set the speed to what they want.  Whether there will be a quick and easy interface button to click instead will possibly be added later on, but I'm still unsure about it.
• Bags Inventory system - Although this isn't an emergency to have, I'd like to have something like this setup very soon in the development of this mod since picking up items and using them is pretty important in any RPG, MMO or not.  I'm not sure if we'll also include a character info sheet system as well any time soon but it is on my mind to have done...
  This system is being based off of ashujon's 'Bags System' from Wc3C.net but we plan to modify it a lot to be more like World of Warcraft and may also use it for loot windows.

Sorry to those of you who hate to just hear things are progressing and not see it.  As soon as things are working, I plan on showing it off a bit.  So stay tuned while we fill up the goodies basket and thanks for the feedback!