Silver Shield Special Edition

**Bolkonsky** · August 24, 2011, 02:30 PM

Hello Total War Center! The Silver Shield has returned (again) and has a fair bit going on! To keep you all in the loop on the current happenings, I decided to release this small edition. First of all, let me introduce myself!

I am Bolkonsky! I registered on the site a couple of years ago after Armatus wanted to use the social group features for a M&B mod's development. Eventually we got our own sub-forum and I became a local moderator. I joined the Silver Auxilia and went on to join Content Staff as a Silver Shield writer. Then life happened and Armatus was left stranded with no computer, and most of the Silver Shield fell apart. After some time, when he made a glorious return riding on the back of a netbook, Armatus decided that he would leave the future of the Shield in my hands. So here I am, doing my best to re-organize and reinvent ourselves from just any old publication to something truly unique about an already unique site.

However, before I delve too deeply into what the Shield has planned, I'd like to say a thank you to Armatus and all the old staff for all their hard work. The Shield is a fantastic publication, and a large amount of time and effort went into creating and maintaining it, and it's most certainly something not to be taken lightly. So thank you all for the great work, and I hope that you'll see the current staff as a suitable successor!

Now let's get into what the Shield is going to be about in the future. One of the great things about the Shield is that it keeps you covered on current TWCenter happenings. It's a large site, with millions of posts, and it can be quite difficult to keep track of the whole thing. The Silver Shield aims to keep you informed and up to date on all the local communities and events, and we're hoping that it will become a great source of news and information.

One of the issues that we faced is the time in-between releases. Unfortunately, especially as of late, the Shield hasn't been getting it's releases out in a timely manner at all. So to resolve this, we'll be playing around with a number of methods, so all I can say is check back here once in a while to see what's up.

The Shield is also looking for good reporters. If you are a local moderator, speak decent English, frequent one of the below areas, and would like to contribute as a reporter, drop me a PM! The areas that we're looking for reporters in are:

Shogun 2 Total War
Empire Total War
Medieval II Total War
Total War Eras (Shogun, Medieval I, and Rome)
Other Games (Minecraft, ArmA II, Mount&Blade, etc)
Forum RPGs
Any Local Community

As a reporter for the Shield, you will be covering the communities that revolve around these topics, such as mods, clans, and any other conglomerations of people and projects. If you have any questions or suggestions on anything related to the Shield, I'd be more than happy to address them in our forum.

Anyways, I won't leave you guys hanging, and hence I have included a couple of articles we had hanging around ready for publishing.

New Mount&Blade Hosted Mods Section (by Bolkonsky)

TWCenter Now Has a Mount&Blade Hosted Mod Section!

Mount&Blade is back to TWCenter with a vengeance!

A big thank you to the Total War Center staff for making this happen, and also a round of applause to Prophesy of Pendor for being the catalyst with this new foray into hosting mods for non-Total War games! That’s right, when you want to take a break from being on top of the battle, and you want to jump right in to the swordfight, it’s time to boot up Mount&Blade! That’s right, Mount&Blade puts you right in the battle, with an immersive 1st/3rd person feel camera capable of making you feel as though every stroke and parry is the real thing! Create your character, go on a journey, be an adventurer, conquer Calradia, and – well, then what?

Mods.

That’s right my friend, mods it is. And Total War Center just got their own Mount&Blade Hosted Mods section. How do you get there? Go to the main page, scroll down a bit. Nope, a bit further, I don’t care if your scroll wheel is sticky, it’s worth it.

See right there? Non-Total War Games? Look harder! Under that is Mount&Blade. Click. Faster. Go, go! Yeah! Now up at the top, head to hosted mods! You did it! It’s rather barren at the moment, but it’s not looking all too bad. Be sure to check out Prophesy of Pendor, one of the largest mods to date! Perhaps stop by 1257 AD, a full conversion into 13th century Europe! Be sure to try Finland at WWII, and check out one of the best modern Mount&Blade Mods to date! There’s also Imperium Graecorum, which is just in the beta stages, but if you’re into the era, give it a quick look as well.

New to the Mount&Blade series? Want to know which one to get? Here we go!

Mount&Blade was an indie game developed since around 2004 by a man and his wife. As they grew larger, they started a small company and threw together a small team using funding they received by selling an early beta a discount price. It wasn’t too long after that when they caught the eye of Paradox Interactive, and in 2008 they published Mount&Blade for $30. Mount&Blade however, was single player only. That needed to be rectified.

Mount&Blade is all about one thing – a medieval RPG. It is not fantasy, aside from the map and factions, and the all the weapons are found throughout history, as well as architecture and COMBAT. Yes, the combat is not hack and slash – it’s carefully computer and slowly perfected and amazingly diverse with manual attack and parry directions, timings, and knockdowns as well as shield and armor penetration. What better than to play that with multiplayer? Enter ~~Sandman~~ Warband. Mount&Blade Warband is the standalone expansion to Mount&Blade that features a more polished single player experience, with a new map and faction, as well as 64 player multiplayer! (Though it’s been hacked up to over 200 players!) The game was released in March of 2010 and retailed for $30. Back before Warband was released however, I said that I wanted to see TaleWorlds create a Pike and Shot era game. I got my wish. Well, sort of.

This year, (March, yet again) TaleWorlds in collaboration with Sich Studios released Mount&Blade: With Fire and Sword, based on Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel, Ogniem I Mieczem. It was somewhat buggy and not quite received as well as Mount&Blade Warband, but is featured in a unique historical era, and the developers have promised that several patches are on the way to bring the singleplay and multiplayer up to speed. Now which one should you get?

The answer to that is quite simply (assuming you can’t get all three) Mount&Blade Warband. It’s the most polished and well received of the three, and has the largest playerbase, as well as a good variety of mods. However, it’s still worth noting that the others are fun and the original has some absolutely breathtaking mods, some of which are still in production. (Star Wars Conquest, and The Last Days of the Third Age.)
You’ll find that a good number of Total War players and TWCenter members already play Mount&Blade, and if you’re looking for some multiplayer companions, you can find quite the comprehensive list of TWC Mount&Blade players and their in-game names here. Don’t see your favorite mod in the Hosted Mod section? (Which is likely since it’s just in an infantile state.

) Feel free to start a topic here, or post in a preexisting one! Want to enter in the Mount&Blade Picture of the Month Competition, graciously run by Adorno1? Check it out here! Finally, if you have an questions, feel free to ask any of the Local Moderators, who are Armatus, Adorno1, Turkeys!, and Kamos. I hope you enjoy this masterpiece, and check out some of it's fantastic mods!

In the meantime, let’s celebrate TWCenter and it’s new section by cutting some people up! Praised be for video games!

Interview with modding prodigy shokh! (by Okmin)

Introduction This time I managed to dragged the other 2010 ETW Rising Star into answering some questions. That both of my interview-ees happened to have the same award is just a coincidence. At the time of this interview, shokh was one of the team leaders of the American Civil War: The Blue and the Grey (ACW) mod and had just released the first version of his British East India Company - The Indian Mutiny (BEIC) mod. Both are hosted modifications for Empire: Total War, which I believe makes shokh the first modder to have been a team lead for more than one ETW hosted mod.

If you didn't feel like reading the above paragraph, I'll summarize -- shokh's a really good ETW modder, and here he's giving some hints about what's next for BEIC.

Enjoy the interview.

Q&A About your name?
Well, here in the forums i have chosen the nickname shokh.
It have to do with a great time in my past as i worked as event manager for electronic music events and my passion to produce music by my own. One of my contacts there used this name as artist name and i liked it, so i had used this name many years for male characters in different games online and offline, mostly rpg`s.
Anyway my real name is Michael, but most of all my friends call me simple Mitch.

How did you find TWC?
That´s long ago. I loved the total war series from the time i´ve seen the first preview of shogun 1. For a game like this i was looking since my childhood.
Collection informations about the games of this series was important to me and the first address for this is for sure TWC. To be honestly it took a very long time till i created an account here. Let´s say i was a long time silent observer.

What Total War games do you own?
Oh, all. And from most of them i have two cd`s. Sounds crazy but i purchased the anthology package with Empire Total War and all previous games. I needed Empire and the package prize was quite good, a side effect was to have an additional cd if one of them get damaged.

Subforums Managed
Well at the moment i have to manage the two hosted ETW mods "American Civil War - The Blue and The Gray" and "British East India Company - The Indian Mutiny (BEIC)".

Other Duties
I´m afraid that i had to retreat from some sectors of TWC trough my tasks in the two big mod projects and my reallife.
One of my second homes in TWC where the Artist Studio section where you can find excellent work of the TWC users. Professional looking screens, pictures and videos of all total war games.
Beside that i try to answer questions in the mod workshop for ETW and additional to do some little modding for users who want small changes to their game.
At least i offer to other modders my service by creating Launcher, Installer and a modfoldered setup for their mod.

What do you like about Total War?
It was the first game where i had the feeling to really take part as whole faction. The combination of campaign map strategy and battle map tactic is exact what i wanted and in my point of view there is no game which give me both in a better way then Total War.
I prefer to play with factions who have small starting territories and build up step by step my empire - or lose. And most of my game time i spend by simple watching the brave soldiers fighting for the interests of me ..ehm our faction.

What Total War theme would you like CA to release in the future?
Rome 2, thats clear for me. I can for sure say i spent more time in Rome as in all other games of the Total War series together.
My favorite timeframe is exact this, my second chose would be the dark early medieval.

Ever been into the debate forums?
Well to be honest mostly as observer, but limited also their.

Political Leaning
Good point. I don´t joined any party. They change their disposition like a flag in the wind. It´s sad to say this but the political system all over the world falling deeper and deeper into self-righteousness. Everyone is looking at first at his own, the oppositions don´t come with suggestions and prefer only to say what is good to discredit the others and the same in reverse.
To bring it to a point the political leaders seems to drift far away from the mass of their citizen, and with it the trust in them drift away also.

Is there a God?
No one can answer this for sure. But for those who think yes and their faith give them power to solve difficult situations in their life it is good.
But i guess that religious brought more troubles then benefits in the life of humans till now. Too many died for it and too many will do in the future.
Religiosity is good but fanaticism is bad as in every form of fanaticism for any reason.

What are your future plans? (TWC, Life, Work)
The next goal in TWC is the third master release of ACW. I like to say this will be the first complete ACW we released. It will be a big difference to what we have seen till now. From the time you start the game till you finish the campaign you should think this is not Empire Total War anymore. This begins in the menu and ends in the battles. As i take part in every section beside unit models i have the big advantage to can better organise the progress of this version.
Planned for sure is for me for in the future a mod project for Rome 2 if it will be released. But till that i will have enough work with my Empire Projects.

In my real life i try to keep on moving as now and before. Straight and without taking care about pointless problems. If you fall, chill out a while and stand up again.
Maybe i have to change my domicile from Austria to Germany, because my girlfriend is from there (Saxony) and we have to weight the odds carefully.
But at least: Don´t take life too serious.

What got you to start modding?
Well, i´m modding now the Total War Games and also a bit Bethesda games (oblivion, fallout) and paradox`s Hearts of iron.I think the starting point of every modder is the wish to change something, a small detail for the own usage. And after that first attempt some simply can´t stop finding things what they want to improve.
As i said before i created my account here very late, about autumn 2010.
I found ACW very late, have overseen this project for along time. But when i noticed it, my first idea was to make one or two submods. Shortly after that i received a personal message of Hinkel who asked me to join the team. I was very glad to this offer and since that i tried to find out what can be done with this engine.

You released v1.0 of the British East India Company mod in May, what was your inspiration to make that mod?
That is very simple, it was an idea i had and have spoken with primergy. It was something we wanted to play by our own. We tried to create a mod inspired of books and movies we have seen as childs and did it.
The base idea was to bring out a mod not too big but with a stable base and a challenging gameplay.

There's probably a bunch of modders out there (myself included) trying to figure out how you got working camels and trains on the roads. How'd you do it?
This parts where a fantastic work of primergy. He have done many good models, not only units. You have to be a bit tricky to integrate this models in a way that they are working but it is possible.
The railways himself where simple new textures for the streets. The models replaced the existing model of the trading cart. The trading cart have two parts, the front model and the rear model.
As we worked for BEIC i asked him if we want to bring in camels for immersion issues and then we simple taken the model from NTW.
When you build it into your files you have to get sure to do both parts, if you do anything wrong you will get a black horse instead of what you wanted to bring in.
Interested modders can search contact to use for some help if needed.

How's v2.0 coming? Anything secret in the works you want to let the fans know?
The second version of BEIC will be not only BEIC anymore. We thought about where to go with the mod. The first version covers the Indian Mutiny well we think. So for the next version we have to expand.
It will have included an improved BEIC and also one or better two other conflicts. The two candidates would be for now the Crimean Wars and the Anglo Persian Wars.
For those parts we take a bit artistic freedom to bring a bit more content to our users. We take the situation as starting position but the campaign is not limited to them. You can stretch the conflict over the base area.

Anything else you want to share?
With the next releases i plan to bring in into account a something to think about.
The team and i received several offers of users who would pay us for the mods. I thought about and came to the point that i will try to use this willingness for a charity project i want start.
Satisfied users can (not must) give a donation what will be collected and given away to an institution which is helping war-damaged children.

For informations about this anyone will be welcome to send me a personal message.

At least i wanna say thank you to you for the interest, TWC for all what the do for us modders, and specially to all users and members of this site.
Your help and compliments are our motivation.

With kind regards, Shokh