[PItalica] About this mod & progress

[SigniferOne]

~DESCRIPTION:~

In this mod we aim to portray Italy as it existed in the late fourth century BC, right up to the breakout of the Punic Wars. Those Punic wars may engage a lot of places, but make it impossible to get down and dirty with the cultures and factions they involve; a great number of things are simply forced be covered in only a very cursory and surface fashion. Can we acquire a real sense of the Roman republic with its civic virtue and devotion to citizen-soldiery, in action? Can we get a sense for who the Gauls really were, how they lived and what they cared about? Is there a sense of the Greeks and their achievements? I won't even touch the Etruscans, whose irreplaceable masterwork paintings are completely forgotten; indeed the entire faction is usually forgotten! Though their artistry would come to teach Raphael about how to paint, during the Renaissance.

Here in the 4th century BC all these nations all came to a collision. You can take up the Etrurian cause, discover who they were, their history, observe their paintings announcing events on your computer screen, and live in that mysterious culture as it existed over 2,000 years ago. Or, you can take up the cause of Gauls: we have so many of their factions, and our size of Gaul is so large, that you may spend much of your game never even having left Gallic territory! When you do come down south into Italy, you'll come in massive waves, and all of Italy will tremble at your hoary presence. Samnites, whose 2,400-year old painting you see below, are a mysterious and extremely tough highlanders from the Appenines, itching to teach the sophisticated lowlanders about the meaning of violence. Nothing less interesting could be said about the urbane Greek cities to the south, with a tough hoplite ethic of civic virtue, and philosopher Archytas who only recently has published books on Nature, and entertained Plato in his very own house. Then there's Rome, a relatively small Italic town on the western coast, possessing pretensions, a sense of citizenship, and a political structure, that are far out of proportion to its size and current lack of importance.

In any case, these petty squabbles must soon be put to the side -- the uncle of Alexander the Great, called Alexander of Epirus, is scheduled to soon invade Italy with a great host of armies from mainland Greece and Macedonia, and all nations will have to scramble in order to deal with this immense new enemy.

The board is set!

~PROGRESS:~

General:
Vanilla coded out: 100%
Factions coded in: 100%
Cultures coded in: 100%
Religions coded in: 100%
Map completed: 100%

Graphics:
Strat map models: 100%
Menu and interfaces: 100%
Faction icons: 100%
Campaign models: 100%
Battle models: 100%
Event icons: 100%
Building icons: 100%
Voicemods: 100%
Animations: 70%

Text:
Factional coding: 100%
Recruitment system: 100%
Unit stats system: 100%
Buildings system: 97%
Gallic invasions system: 100%
Building descriptions: 100%
Unit descriptions: 70%

Progress to v1.0: 99%


June 29th update:
o Buildings system: went from 94% to 97%

o Unit descriptions: went from 40% to 70%

Big development:
o Voicemods: went from 0% to 100%

New category added:
o Animations: went from 0% to 70%

[Father Jack]

Progress looks like its progressing well. Well done SigniferOne and anyone else who maybe in your team

[Little Legionaire]

Progress percentage is just fantastic. Couple crucial part of the project such unit balancing and building tree remain but by the time and some support it can be handle.

[irwinesca]

AmazinG! definitely something to look forward to!

[irwinesca]

Yes yes!! can hardly wait for this mod! question though, is this compatible with the other mods? Separate folder?

[SigniferOne]

Separate mod folder of course; been this way since first version.

[SonOfCrusader76]

That's good, means we won't need two separate installations of MTW2, one for Medieval and one for Roman!

[Leviathan DarklyCute]

How the hell have you progressed so mach???
Hoe long have you been working on this mod?

[Hister]

How the hell have you progressed so mach???
Hoe long have you been working on this mod?

Well the mod itself has been in progress long before M2TW came out. It was first meant for RTW engine but the progress halted. SigniferOne took the initiative and started transferring old PI mod into new engine
We can say we've been around for quite some time...

[tfarr007]

Excellent, finally an ancient mod with noticable progress. Very interesting setting by the way, ill be following this one closely. Btw, do you think there will be a beta?

[SigniferOne]

How the hell have you progressed so mach???

Perseverance, my friend; perseverance. We've seen so many mods come and go, great mods with lots of people, small ones of single people by the dozens. Everyone's come and gone except for a few teams, because people don't stick through with it with dedication until completion. Some of the guys on our team have been around for the last three years, through thick and thin. Remember that when you spend a minute here a minute there checking these mods out.

Excellent, finally an ancient mod with noticable progress. Very interesting setting by the way, ill be following this one closely. Btw, do you think there will be a beta?

You bet there'll be a beta, most definitely.

[Pelican Man]

Could we get a progress update?

Thank you,

THE P-MAN

[Hister]

Please wait few more days, SigniferOne has the overall view of the progress and will update it as soon as he returns from his real life obligations!

He will implement all the additional stuff that has been made in our new to be made internal version.

I can throw you a bone though:

Our music composer Garve has yesterday finished his 41th song so that our Music Table for PI is around 80 % complete - he is continuing his composing with full steam as we speak! I'm a total fan of this guy, great music he's creating, great music indeed!
I've coded in all the pieces he made together with suitable vanilla songs from M2TW and RTW.

Faction icons are 100% done.

Faction names are 95 % done (researched and coded in the game). A detailed historical research has been made by Luciano B regarding names and "surnames" that were in use during our time period. He provided a list of all names he could find in the relevant sources of the time. We are now missing only names for Poeni faction and Greek "Surnames". Due to lack of historical data for our Rhaeti faction we decided to use Gallic names for them - it's not historically accurate but sometimes compromises have to be made in order to finish things.
I would be very glad if YOU, yes you who read this thread, provide me a list of Poeni names with their "surnames" (don't forget women names) or atleast give me a hint of where to look for them! You will be fully credited and will receive + rep!

Luciano B has converted the majority of missing (regional) units from RTW PI to M2TW PI and has started working on units for Aepirus faction. By regional I mean units of Aequi, Volsci, Latini, Hernici, Dauni, Peucetii, and such that are part of our factions but don't have their own faction slot.

Descriptions for Samnites, Lucani, and Brettii are finished. So are Apuli, Umbri and Ligures Ingauni though SigniferOne wants to polish them a bit more - he is a perfectionist in this regard. Descriptions for majority of other factions are actually done to but need to undergo SigniferOne's pencile torture

SigniferOne made a very nicely looking GUI for our Etrusco-Italic culture group but it' not fully finished yet. This means 5 more GUI's are still to be made.

So you see that although we are progressing nicely we still have a lot in front of us - the biggest challenge for now is implementing our buildings system. We don't wanna go/can't go with standard vanilla castle/town system but want to create a total overhaul. This is in itself very challenging since we have a very demanding goals. It might happen that for our first release you won't see anything spectacular on that field but nobody wants that!
Because of that I urge YOU to help us in modding buildings system (tree) if you have (good) knowledge on that field! Tell us if you are interested to help us/become our team member.

That's pretty much it for now. I'm sure I missed some new things that have been recently crafted for PI. As I said, only Sig1 is the men with the whole overview upon our mod.

Don't forget - if you believe you can help us regarding Poeni names or buildings system please let us know!

[Ahiga]

41st! And it's not even done! Sooner and sooner to release! Can't wait!

[Solaris]

I would be very glad if YOU, yes you who read this thread, provide me a list of Poeni names with their "surnames" (don't forget women names) or atleast give me a hint of where to look for them! You will be fully credited and will receive + rep!

I had a good look on JSTOR, alas, couldn't find anything of note. Sorry pal - I truly want to help this mod be as good as it can.

I trust you've got the Italian and Latin naming conventions down.

The Roman one's easy: Praenomen, nomen (gens), cognomen

I hate it when I see names like Claudius Titus Africanus or something!

[Hister]

Our mapper Smug updated us on the status of PI map finessing:

He polished majority of the map, only Alps, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily remain untouched for now. He will try to release a beta version of the map for us when he finishes the Alps for testing and hunting down the bugs.

Alps is really the area which will take him the most time, after that all 3 islands won't be much of a problem for him to do.

[SonOfCrusader76]

Will there be elephants in the mod?

[Hister]

Yes, we would like to have them but not have them just now - Aepirotes faction is still being made.

[seleukosART]

good to hear that youre working so hard!
keep it up. Im looking forward to this great mod

[SigniferOne]

Yeah almost all names are done; a few are left to do such as the Poenic and the Gallic names, which we're actually looking for from outside the mod team.