Here is my latests version of Whiff of Sulphur, after a year and a half of tweaking the file for my own use. In this version;
Melee dust changed to look like real dust
Musket fire made to look as realistic as I could
Naval combat with even more smoke, thicker fire smoke and nice steam ship smoke trails
Cannons tweaked to look better
Blood from musket hits
Air explosions tweaked
Musket smoke thick, but lasts for less time
A bit of dust from horses moving and round shot hits
Probably some other things I have forgotten
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Version 3.1 adds in smoking cannons (not howitzers) after they fire.
I redid the entire file to reduce the number of overall effects while trying to maintain at least Vanilla framerates.
In this version;
Extensively improved cannon smoke. I think I almost got them to look real!
Shell hits and air explosions improved (Enhanced version includes trails from the shrapnel)
Carcass and Quicklime effects improved and now show ground hits.
Air rifles have a quick burst of smoke.
Musket smoke lingers around thickly at ground level.
Brown dirt surrounds melee about waist high.
Ship cannons leave smoke for a good length of time and ship explosions look great.
I hope you like this mod! Combined with the incredible sound mods out there for drums, bugles, musket and cannon fire, I don't think I have ever had so much fun playing Total War!
Watch in HD!
Old notes...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
White smoke version notes;
Features;
White smoke from explosions
Spread out and lingering musket smoke, so much you can loose sight of everything!
More and lasting smoke from cannons, including at sea!
Less flashy but grittier explosions and solid shot ground impacts.
Dark brown melee dust around waist level for hazy melee mixups.
Blood from textures already in the game (sorry, cannon hits just don't seem to work)
Elminated tracers
and much, much more! (Well, ok, maybe thats about all, but it feels good to say it)
Penninsula campaign compatible.
Compatible with any mod that doesn't use Landbattles.xml, including NER (most mods)
Note: I have provided NER with a version that enables whispy trails from cannonballs. To enable them in any other mod, you have to edit the 3rd last column in Projectiles...add "cbt" for cannon ball trails and "hst" for howitzer shell trails (No jokes from Canadians about the HST)
Very special thanks to Pdguru for encouragement, enthusiam, advice, testing and creative insight and screenshot submissions that look just great!
Thanks also to The Nanny for his videos that help show the mod in action and everyone else for the good reception of my first mod!
The trumpets have sounded! The troops are assembled! Soon, you will experience a Whiff of Sulphur!
The Nanny has posted another video showcasing this mod. Included in the mod is Josst's grass mod; Sgt Merlin's NTW Sound Mod.
First version notes;
This mod adds a fair bit of smoke to the game for artillery and ships, as well as customizing a number of effects. The files below are in Mod format, the second file including everything but removing the flash and dark smoke from muskets.
Effects changed; (Landbattles.xml) Hazy smoke from all sources (Called uber smoke) hangs lower in the air and doesn't disappear when the camera gets close to it. Cannon smoke: Initial cloud takes several seconds to dissipate. Haze up to 3 minutes with the wind only able to dissipate part of it. Ship cannon smoke: Haze lasts 3 minutes with the wind only able to dissipate part of it. A few puffs here and there will rise in the air. Sustained ship duels will get very smokey. Water splashes from cannon balls: A bit more dramatic. Projectile explosions: No mushroom clouds. Smoke ribbons only on large explosions. A puff of smoke will hand in the air for some time from each airburst. Ship explosions: Effect by effect reworking. Craters: Smoke drifts out of them across the ground.
Problems; Smoking cannon effect looks ok, but I cannot move the effect with the animation as it appears to be tied to the map x, y, z coordinates. Additionally the location of the Howitzer muzzel is off by half a meter so I have removed the effect from howitzers.
Similar to the smoking cannons, I tried to create a smoke effect at the match but haven't made it work yet (even a negative velocity at the muzzel that quickly slows to zero didn't work)
I tried to make dust from walking and running haven't found the right shade or brightness for the effect yet so I reverted to the old appearance.
Credit to Mech_Donald for his blood effects which I have included in this mod and for the inspiration to make a smoke mod.
Notes: 1) All effects were set to zero so I could see how they interact, but it might make slower computers run the game poorly. 2) I removed most distortion effects except heat haze and the ripple from ship explosions because those two I liked. 3) Ambient grass, pollen and leaves were going to be removed, but I saw the effect in real life and thought "huh, it really can look like that" 4) The game seems to have a limited number of effects it can draw at any given time. (To give you an idea, each musket shot uses 19 particles each) In really big battles you might see some effects not animate or be delayed, but I have backed off on some non-crutial particle-heavy effects to help prevent this. In my test with over 8,000 men in full battle I saw no loss after my correction.
...the WHITE version is stand-alone and needs no other files.
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.- Josh Billings The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.- George Orwell
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
How to use it?
I have taken the standart pack file (only the "best" of them) and place in data folder.
In user script I have typed mod "Whiff of sulphur 1_0.pack"; and that did not change anything in game.
Then I tryed mod Whiff of sulphur 1_0.pack; and that made the sound ingame disapere.
Then I just toke the file in data and then didten type anything at all,... no effect.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Higgings and TK3338
It appears that you are doing everything correctly. My mod needs to go in the data folder and user.script needs to be edited as you have described. Like you, I had trouble with mod type pack files not working in the past. I highly recommend LtChamber's mod manager edited for NTW.(http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=344757) Unzip the download and run the .exe and you should see a list of your mods which you can select and prioritize before running the game.
TopCat
No problem using my mod, I am glad you like it! Let me know and I might even be able to help you tweak some of the effects to your liking The file has its oddities and I am by no means an expert, but I have found out alot about this particular file.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
All set then! Thanks for the prompt fix, I didn't even know there was a MM for NTW...never had to use it yet, thank you. For others thinking on trying it...DO IT. Being a reenactor, this reflects what it means to have thousands of troops pounding the heck outta each other. Plenty of smoke and the cool thing is the lingering. About a few minutes into the battle, it becomes hard to see the main lines, which is fantastic.
Couple this with Toons battle pack, and georiders units its one helluva great combo. Rep the good man +++
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Thanks Nanny! I especially love the opening sequence with the cannons There are some explosions going off in the background of the footage of the line infantry that I am particularly proud of too as well as the ships circling through packets of smoke at the end.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
no problem mate...I was testing your mod, and testing vid recording settings, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone! hehe If you want, grab that vid and stick it into your original post...around here, particularly with visual mods, people like to see vid samples to decide if they want to install.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Originally Posted by ♔The Nanny♔
no problem mate...I was testing your mod, and testing vid recording settings, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone! hehe If you want, grab that vid and stick it into your original post...around here, particularly with visual mods, people like to see vid samples to decide if they want to install.
cheers!
Hey Nanny,
I love your work. Which sound mod are you using for the muskets, cannons, etcetera?
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
I really like in this mod how the smoke lingers a bit longer. Also, the cannon balls splashes in the water are pretty cool. Oddly, I found that using this mod didn't really give me much of a FPS hit...barely noticeable...and a really nice surprise.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Great mod love the smoke in naval battles now. Also love the water splashes and smoking craters on landbattles.
Unfortunatley I have large unit sizes in my own custom mod. Nothing too massive just an extra 100 men per unit and a cannon extra per arty unit. This obviously creates more smoke and smoke pops up and disappears alot in large battles, probably due to the engine limitation, which is silly cause I think it could handle more.
I have no experiance modding the landbattle file, would it be possible to make a version that keeps all the goodies you put in for naval battles smoke included but keep the smoke effects to vanilla in land battles and keep your nice explosion effects when cannon fire hits the ground?
Unless you can offer some pointers how to edit the smoke effects back to vanilla for landbattles if its simple to do?
Last edited by El-Vi-Riachi; June 03, 2010 at 03:59 AM.
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Originally Posted by El-Vi-Riachi
Great mod love the smoke in naval battles now. Also love the water splashes and smoking craters on landbattles.
Unfortunatley I have large unit sizes in my own custom mod. Nothing too massive just an extra 100 men per unit and a cannon extra per arty unit. This obviously creates more smoke and smoke pops up and disappears alot in large battles, probably due to the engine limitation, which is silly cause I think it could handle more.
I have no experiance modding the landbattle file, would it be possible to make a version that keeps all the goodies you put in for naval battles smoke included but keep the smoke effects to vanilla in land battles and keep your nice explosion effects when cannon fire hits the ground?
Unless you can offer some pointers how to edit the smoke effects back to vanilla for landbattles if its simple to do?
I have similar unit sizes and see no reduction in effects. Most effects were reduced in particle count, with the following exceptions: uber smoke, airburst, rocket trail and crater smoke lasts longer and cannons add 2-3 musket shots worth of particles.
I did also set every effect to the minimum quality requirement, so if you have a lower quality setting it could have introduced some particles that weren't previously displaying. Effects quality setting might also dictate the number of particles that can be drawn in total, so if yours is not at max you might want to try to dial that up and see what happens.
If that doesn't help, let me know and I will assist in reducing the life of the lasting smoke. (Hint: change the life_range (a,b) where a = base length and b = plus or minus range. For example, the scripted effect 'uber_smoke_white' which governs the lasting musket smoke, is set to 90 sec +/- 60, where it was 60 +/- 5 in vanilla)
Re: Whiff of Sulphur - a ship and cannon smoke mod for NTW
Originally Posted by rikktherek
I have similar unit sizes and see no reduction in effects. Most effects were reduced in particle count, with the following exceptions: uber smoke, airburst, rocket trail and crater smoke lasts longer and cannons add 2-3 musket shots worth of particles.
I did also set every effect to the minimum quality requirement, so if you have a lower quality setting it could have introduced some particles that weren't previously displaying. Effects quality setting might also dictate the number of particles that can be drawn in total, so if yours is not at max you might want to try to dial that up and see what happens.
If that doesn't help, let me know and I will assist in reducing the life of the lasting smoke. (Hint: change the life_range (a,b) where a = base length and b = plus or minus range. For example, the scripted effect 'uber_smoke_white' which governs the lasting musket smoke, is set to 90 sec +/- 60, where it was 60 +/- 5 in vanilla)
Thanks for your response. it was raining in the battle that I tried I wonder if that would have an effect?
I run everything in max with AA at x8 and atro at x16. I will give it another go and see how it fairs in a custom battle. Might be the rain.
**edit**
Been playing around trying to teach myself and do some testing. Seems to work quite well a times but what I saw was the smoke appearing when muskets fire and then when the smoke life ended just vanished rather than fade away.
I think that might be the problem as musket smoke rather than fade in, just pops up and when the timer for smoke life runs out it just vanishes rather than fade away.
Is there something that could make it fade in and out do you think?
Last edited by El-Vi-Riachi; June 03, 2010 at 06:04 PM.
Whiff of Sulphur - WHITE
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Any way to fix it?
The file has its oddities and I am by no means an expert, but I have found out alot about this particular file.
Originally Posted by ♔The Nanny♔
