1. Hey, haeressiarch, tell us a bit about yourself.
Hi
Xavier! What can I say? I was never good in interviews
. I am joint team leader of the RotN Team and Rise of the Nations mod project along with
magpie and
hamsha. I am responsible for all 3D art and some of 2D stuff and skins. My first visit here was an oportunity to meet people who made all those awesome mods I've played so far. I never had hope to gather my own mod team, but I was invited to participate in AEE project, but I had completely different approach in making models and textures. some time passed and I've learnt that I need a completely different mod to truly be able to do what I do and have what I want, and so after another fight with team leader I was rather happy to leave.
I am always trying to say what I think and do what I feel is right. That's probably my major problem
What else can i say? I've studied in Art School and Academy of Art. that should explain my passion in arts and my activity here. I just can't resist when I have an oportunity to "create" something. It's really great feeling. i was modding Neverwinter Nights CRPG game before i've started to modify Rome Total War.
Oh. and I'm from poland, so forgive me my bad english. It's not my native language, so I use my time here to learn
I've managed along with magpie and hamsha to gather really good time with people we can trust and rely on their abilities. we have all described ourselves in our subforum thread:
RotN Team
2. When did you begin thinking about the idea of Rise of the Nations? Was it 'conjured' in conjuction with any others?
After one long skype chat with magpie we decided to join our forces and so we came up with our RotN idea. We asked ourselves what we really want to achieve and our ideas seemed to be exactly what we always tried to do in other projects. We decided to post some stuff in wips ideas and proposals (we have moved all stuff here:
RotN: Prelude to War - Moved from: Wips, Ideas, and Proposals) and after few posts of disbelief (some people were suspicious about me making models, I was more known as skinner before) we recieved really nice support and here we are now with our own subforum. In the mean time
hamsha - our 3rd team leader (we called ourselves "Triumviri") appeared and she really improved our graphics with marvellous skins and 2D art. her
signatures are as amazing and so are the skins for our units. I love her work.
She is an ethnologist, but she is very talented in paintings and drawings. magpie is our mastermind. His knowledge about the Rome Total War game engine, scripts and all that "inside" stuff is really amazing. He is one of the best modders here, so I can't imagine making this mod without him.
Some time passed and we decided to invite more trusted friends to this project. we have great historian. I am speaking of
pirates_say_arrgg. His voice is decisive when it comes to struggle with artistic license of modellers and skinners.
We always wanted to create something new, but what new can you create when so many other mods came out? Europa Barbarorum, Roma Surrectum, Paeninsula Italica and Fall of the Republic were always mods I liked very much but there were also many others like DarthMod, Rome Total Realism, SPQR, and many others. All of them have some influence on what we do, so there's no way that we could avoid making RotN similar to all of them in what we liked most. But it's going to be more than refreshing ideas. our main ieas are similar (historical legions, regions of recruitment, historical accuracy, announcements, narrative message boards during the gameplay), but we also want to refresh good old idea of Creative Assembly Team. This mod is going to be our tribute and big thanks to all who made us love Total War games
3. What has been the main aim or focus for your mod and your team?
We never created any list of what we want to achieve, but everyone in RotN team has his own ambitions. I want this mod to be the best looking Rome Total War mod on earth
So I will do anthing to make it happen. hamsha wants it to be as good looking and playable as educative for all those who will play it. Antiquity is fascinating era, and we can also gain knowledge while playing. magpie wants to have excellent gameplay I think, and some extra features. He loves to beat game bugs and improve stuff deep in the areas of the game I am afraid to go
. Generally we all want the same - to create something more than another mod people will play and forget about it. And I must say we are very pleased with what we have achieved so far
We want all who will download it in the future to have great time with good old Rome total War again. This game was revolutionary and we want our mod to be the same like
. I know we have some extra ambitions, but that's our fuel along with every good comment about our work.
4. Do you see Rise of the Nations as a mod that emphasises historicity and accuracy, or one that makes the gameplay more exciting?
We are very focused on historical accuracy. We spent hours reading books, surfing through web articles and collecting informations. Not only visuals matters here. Also the gameplay, battle formations, way of taking battles by different factions, architecture, buildings, battlegrounds, specific types of trees and grass, races of war horses and battle beasts. It's all important in RotN. that gives more life to the game and some awe that makes you want to come back and play again.
But gameplay is also very important. We believe that historical accuracy is very helpful in making gameplay exciting here, so we are not troubled in making choices between gameplay and accuracy. We won't use fantasy units 'cause "carthage don't have elite spears or swords". We will simply ask player to recruit more Spanish and Gallic mercenaries
And we will give him opportunity to do so. I think it's simplier than explaining "why sacred band infantry exists in 270 BC".
We are going to make gameplay more exciting with many things. magpie has forced AI to "think" and after few tests Gauls were able to outflank and cut down Roman troops during the battle by simply using the reserves of lightly armoured infantry and cavalry while medium and heavy infantry tied down Roman cohorts in face to face combat. I was totally amazed with that and I think that this feeling of constant and unknown danger on the battlefield will make players very pleased or we will be called cruel sadists
. War is always something dangerous and exciting. we want RotN to be the same no matter which faction you will encounter. I hope we will keep our word untill the final release. So far we can asure you, you won't get bored
5. What are main changes between Rome: Total War and Rise of the Nations?
First of all my favourite - graphics. We are heavily improving every aspect of the game but many of them depends on graphics. We want this mod to have one, unified style of visuals. That makes us work on each tecture and model in 3 phases. The final stage is what we wanted to achieve and we are in the 3rd phase with graphics right now. There are not many screens for now, but the time will come.
Also 3D models of units, vegerations, battlefield elements, cities, bulidings are being modified. We want you all feel how ancient people loved colours, how sacred they were for them. I want to include all styles in ancient architecture in building levels.
We are joking sometimes that only thing we leave untouched is the Senate faction
Senate and 3 Roman families will remain in RotN. We loved to have civil war event and senate missions. I think many mod players want to have them back
We are simply changing everything we are able to. Sometimes i think that we will stop when we will reach the naked engine
But we want to release this mod, so we will not force ourselves to do what we can't do 'cause of game engine limitations.
6. What do you think players of your mod will enjoy most about it, and why?
Action. There will be no way to get bored playing RotN. You will go tired but not bored. Visuals are also very important so I think players will enjoy them too. We are giving our best in every aspect of the game. I think that players will enjoy level of details, historical acuracy, "storytelling" (scripted events and anouncements), and tons of informations we are going to put inside this mod. Our ambition is to reconstruct past and we will use all our abilities to do so
I hope they will enjoy minicampaigns also. we are going to make special units packs for them, so you will never get bored. We are also going to include our "diary" along with tutorials for every aspect of the game whe have modified, so if anyone will like to continue when we will go tired with modding, he will be well equipped.
I think that players will also enjoy that we are going to minimize the differences between Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War. We have our secret ways I can't introduce right now, but we will explain everything as we promise
We are very busy with improving every aspect of the game. I hope that we will have really good graphics and people will enjoy them too. We spent hours of research after every single pattern, tree or shrub to give you the feel of ancient times.
Finally I hope that players will enjoy discovering more of the ancient world as much as we are while creating this mod
7. What were the challenges and hardships have you and your crew met along the way?
I've mentioned mistrust to our abilities. I was accused of using models from other mod but it was solved and we showed our meshes in previews. I've also sent my models (phase 1 and 2) to forum moderators, so they have evidence that we had not commited any crime. I hope that no one has any doubts that we are able to make our own stuff now. That was most harmful story I think, but now I see that it was necessary somehow to show that we can be original and we are working really hard with passion and pleasure.
Challenges came always when I was going to do something I never did before. Fortunately there are many good willing people on this forum, so with a little help we have managed to beat all problems. Now we are quite experienced, but we have selected the slow and hard path. We worked on R:TW 1.2, 1.3 and finally 1.5 to know all limitations and some of them we managed to beat with really fresh ideas.
My worst nightmare was the skin modifier. But the problem was solved also. I simply had my cas exporter buggy
English is also challenging
.
8. Are there any new special features in your mod that you would like to advertise?
I can introduce only limited number of them before we will be ready to tell you how it works.
1. Multiunit models is one of those we already did. We wanted to increase units numbers first, so we tried to use the old alpha channel trick to change the appearance of our troops, but M2TW gave me another idea. Now we had increased unit numbers limitations and we gained special unit appearance feature. for example RotN uses 5 types of hastati with different gear elements for each faction and they are all using one DMB slot. That also improves mod visuals. It gives you feeling that every army is using different units.
2. Most of bulidings in cities will be walkable where they should be in reality. Fences and stairs will now became great improvement in city defences. Hiding in long grass is great but how about hiding in the city and ambushing attackers/defenders on the streets or taking higher position on the marble stairs of ancient temple? I am sure this is going to improve the gameplay.
3. RoR of Regions of Recruitment - basically works the same way as the well known AoR, but gives you also limited access to special units and buildings, which are historically accurate for each faction. If you know history well you will be than happy to have unique bulidings on their right places and your troops will be available to recruit only in the place where they live.
Remember that when AI will convert local population of Gauls to Spanish, you will be able to recruit spanish troops when you will conquer the region that wasn't natively Spanish before AI conquered it
4. 42 Roman legions. All historically acurate. Civil war will gain more colours when Caesar's 10th will stand against Pompey's 6th
5. Completely new siege engines with custom animations
6. New animations for selected troops.
That's all I can remember and tell you for now
9. Can we expect any date of release for the mod, or at least some beta of it?
It's really hard to tell but we have planned to release beta at the end of 2009 and after intense betatests we will have our final release along with first minicampaign
10. Do you have any final words to give say to the readers?
Sure i do
. Thanks for your support and visit us more often. This mod would never reach this far without you. Thank you all
and remember:
direct link:
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/4256/joinir0.png
Thanks for this oppotrunity to show what we do, Xavier. Best regards.
RotN Faction Preview - CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=206203
RotN Workshop: Units Previews and discussion:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=202614
RotN Workshop: Environment:
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/258/rotnforumenvironmentheabl7.png
RotN Workshop: Mounts, Chariots and Battle Beasts
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=207481
RotN Workshop: Siege Engines and Special Efects
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=202612
RotN Gameplay Discussion & Battle Screens:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=202844
Eye candy for the readers: