Should we rely on submods for updates or should another team take over TATW?

[Andytheplatypus]

Hey guys, just curious what your thoughts were about this.

Should we rely on submods for new features for TATW or would you prefer if a new team took over officially from KK? Pretty obvious he isnt coming back at this point.

Please vote on the poll and explain your thoughts.

[leo.civil.uefs]

From my humble point of view, the possibilities for TATW updates are extinguished, except for new units from the new movies, what more could be done?

[Nastrael]

From my humble point of view, the possibilities for TATW updates are extinguished, except for new units from the new movies, what more could be done?

More custom settlements!!! I want mah dwarves to have their own thing too. :p

[Andytheplatypus]

From my humble point of view, the possibilities for TATW updates are extinguished, except for new units from the new movies, what more could be done?

That is actually why KK stopped modding TATW, he felt there was nothing more to be done. Yet look how much has been done since then (your work included) that has vastly improved on the core game. Now with even more modding discoveries being made there will always be something to improve upon.

[leo.civil.uefs]

That is actually why KK stopped modding TATW

That does not match with his last statements and I belive he is smart enough to know that at the point he left there was still LOT OF THINGS TO DO. He is just one man and he got his real life business so he left, and I also belive he got exhausted of all this, as I am.

Now with all we have done I belive the end is near, I mean in therms of vanilla stuff. With the possibility of the .exe editing we could have more factions but that would be for alternatives like DAC, wich does not follow lore rules but its a demand because a lot of players want to play something like it, huge, variated and fun, even if it brings non existant factions/sub-factions and units. I have no interest in DAC because Im a pro-lore/serious stuff, yes Im boring. But sometimes I open some small little exceptions, like boar mounts for Dain's bodyguard like in the third Hobbit movie, its anti lore but it is cool and it will be in the movie at all so I think it is ok.

The .exe could also bring things like expanded culture limit but this is for point changes like specific campaign map faction music and UI. Those small things could easly be made by the community, TATW is in a good moment as there is a lot of guys modding with quality.

As for custom settlements, as I announced I have no more intention of making them, the missing ones are in places where battles never happen and they cannot be added to custom battles with the actual culture limit we have, and I dont think there is more necessary settlements to be included as I already did them all and more than this would start to get too anti-lore. Anyway there is some other guys who already know how to make them, not something for me anymore.

Everything has a end, TATW is ethernal, there is no game like such in the market, its a dream, we did something that no game company with all their professionals, money and resources did, but we did. But modding itself has extinguised its limits, I belive that for now it will be only about small improvements and fixes.

For me, personally, TATW is just beggining as I never played it much so I have now all the possibilities at hand, there is so much custom settlements that the amount of gameplay variations is pratically infinite.

[VektorT]

I dont think that rely on submods is a bad thing.

The TATW creator already created something freaking awesome that works exactly like a new game to another modders (submodders?). Together with submods, it's the best total overhaul mod I ever seen to ANY game! Nothing is that deep and stretchs the engine limitations so far in my opinion! It totally look like a professional work from a commercial studio right now. But with submods done by so skilled persons, we can have different play styles for different players, like MOS for lore purists and DaC for extended possibilities. The best of both worlds, to me, would be DaC with unit hoster and scripts from MOS. Both of those mods are strong on exactly different things and would be awesome to have them merged together. To me, it would be the ultimate TATW experience and something like that will be done eventually!

I'm not a lore purist (except if you rape it) and I like tons of content and tons of gameplay diversity. If you keep doing plausible stuff that fits the theme, I will enjoy. To me, DaC is the way to go now!

(funny part: despite all the talk about MOS and DaC, I play FRoGS! It just feel so right to me. If it adds Orcs of Mirkwood and split High Elves in two factions like it did to the dwarves, it would be perfect to me!)

[Flinn]

I second leo in almost everything he said

as for the poll, there are rules to follow and I don't think it is up to us to decide to break them; as long as we remain within such rules, the only way to keep working on this is to make submods; I think KK post is pretty clear in this sense.

the future of this mod lies on the hands of people like leo who willingly emproved the vanilla version of it to keep it up with the times, on groups of modders working on big overhaul submods and on other groups working on submods that are set in different periods of Arda; there is still much to do with submods as you can see, but TATW as it is is a well balanced and really enjoyable mod.

[Koko_Fr]

In my opinion, the mods are largely fines with Background and graphic improvement.

The most important by far is to increase challenge (for exemple with script choice at the beginning of the game) and increase the true tactical choices, by creating new units, new formations, new special powers (for exemple with true phallanx formation, taunting power for gathering the ennemy to this formation).

The pleasure in replayability cannot come from more lore or more graphic but come from tactic and challenge.


Now, the best mods in my opinion are Realism + (because it is very challenging) and P&C (because challenging if you play against Mordor). D&C is very good but is not enough challenging from now in my opinion. And MOS can be challenging if you turtle, but I don't play it because the playability is weak due to too much long turn timer (for my old computer).

[ElvenKind]

This poll is not needed( neither is the thread needed).

If someone wants to improve/add stuff, it can be done by submods.

King Kong wishes it and gave permissions to edit/use HIS stuff only for making TATW submods/ or modifications for vanilla TATW.

[Andytheplatypus]

That does not match with his last statements and I belive he is smart enough to know that at the point he left there was still LOT OF THINGS TO DO. He is just one man and he got his real life business so he left, and I also belive he got exhausted of all this, as I am.

I was only commenting on what he and I discussed through email years ago. if he came back later and gave a different reason then no harm done.

This poll is not needed( neither is the thread needed).

If someone wants to improve/add stuff, it can be done by submods.

King Kong wishes it and gave permissions to edit/use HIS stuff only for making TATW submods/ or modifications for vanilla TATW.

Excuse me but I only made this because I said I was curious. If you feel its not needed then dont vote on the poll. The whole point of this was to get peoples opinions.

[Ngugi]

People are free to vote all they want, no one can take the rights from King Kong for Third Age: Total War, the very notion is interestingly disrespectful; whatever is developed from now without the sanction to be official from King Kong, or developed by King Kong himself as an official version, is and will reamain a submod.
No more than someone can write fan fiction about the fellowship and call it official.

If what is wanted is an ongoing official M2 Middle-earth mod then that person can start develop a new mod without the TATW content; and that's not a grumpy opposition but a frank conclusion.
King Kong and his fellows put their heart into creating TATW and they share their toil with us as a free gift, it is something that we love, not something that we can put claim on, and if we demand more of them than they offer, then we can just grab our sleeves and do what they did, ourselves.
Until then KK has been magnificent enough to give us free range to create submods.

[Andytheplatypus]

People are free to vote all they want, no one can take the rights from King Kong for Third Age: Total War, the very notion is interestingly disrespectful; whatever is developed from now without the sanction to be official from King Kong, or developed by King Kong himself as an official version, is and will reamain a submod.
No more than someone can write fan fiction about the fellowship and call it official.

If what is wanted is an ongoing official M2 Middle-earth mod then that person can start develop a new mod without the TATW content; and that's not a grumpy opposition but a frank conclusion.
King Kong and his fellows put their heart into creating TATW and they share their toil with us as a free gift, it is something that we love, not something that we can put claim on, and if we demand more of them than they offer, then we can just grab our sleeves and do what they did, ourselves.
Until then KK has been magnificent enough to give us free range to create submods.

I am a little confused where all of this hostility is coming from... I am not implying that someone should steal the rights to TA and claim them as their own. I honestly think that it should be the submods that continue to change and update. I for one dont even have a single TA mod downloaded on my computer. I just want the people that frequent Third Age Total War to give an honest opinion about which they would prefer. I am not asking about your personal feelings about King Kong or am I in any way trying to disrespect anyone or anything affiliated with Third Age. At all. Just a hypothetical question.

[ElvenKind]

I was only commenting on what he and I discussed through email years ago. if he came back later and gave a different reason then no harm done.



Excuse me but I only made this because I said I was curious. If you feel its not needed then dont vote on the poll. The whole point of this was to get peoples opinions.

As Ngugi said, people can vote even 100 vs 1 vote in favour of another team taking over, it won't matter. King Kong said that 3.2 version is not the last from him, and besides that, rules of this site are clear regarding other people's work.

This is not some hostility towards you or anything, only way that some team can take over TATW is by getting an official approval from King Kong. Til then, submods are the way to go.

[Flinn]

I am a little confused where all of this hostility is coming from... I am not implying that someone should steal the rights to TA and claim them as their own. I honestly think that it should be the submods that continue to change and update. I for one dont even have a single TA mod downloaded on my computer. I just want the people that frequent Third Age Total War to give an honest opinion about which they would prefer. I am not asking about your personal feelings about King Kong or am I in any way trying to disrespect anyone or anything affiliated with Third Age. At all. Just a hypothetical question.

Don't worry mate, I don't think anything bad happened, but as an old member of TWC and a mod leader you surely know how strict are the rules about using other people's work with modding. Though it was a hypothetical question, the sentence itself (There should be an official team to take over TATW!) it's too straight and actually it is not permitted to do this, simply.

We have had tons of threads of people asking for the next release of TATW, so the matter has been discussed largely; furthermore, KK's post from end of 2013 is pretty clear about what he allowes to do with his works, so that's why insisting in this poll is worthless, not to say that probaly it is also not allowed by TOS (or not very polite anyway, considering that that direct sentece is asking people if they want to go against the rules).

I'm sure that this was not your intention, none the less that's how the thing is seen here

[Greymane]

This is not some hostility towards you or anything, only way that some team can take over TATW is by getting an official approval from King Kong. Til then, submods are the way to go.

Don't worry mate, I don't think anything bad happened, but as an old member of TWC and a mod leader you surely know how strict are the rules about using other people's work with modding. Though it was a hypothetical question, the sentence itself (There should be an official team to take over TATW!) it's too straight and actually it is not permitted to do this, simply.

I think the hypothetical implied permission from King Kong to carry on with TATW vanilla, otherwise you would indeed just be making a submod while pissing off KK by making it look like an official new version without asking him first. Bad idea

So, if someone would get permission from KK to develop TATW from 3.2. onwards, would it matter?
I don't think so. Several submods (DAC, MOS) now use a different map from the 3.2 vanilla one and have all kinds of stuff implemented that is not in 3.2 and is not compatible with 3.2.
Upgrading TATW from 3.2 to 4.0 (or something) would either force MOS and DAC to adapt to 4.0 (something they are not going to do, because it would be a huge amount of work), or would result in 4.0 just being another submod, which would be called an official TATW version.
Right now, extra content is being developed for MOS, where MOS functions as the base, like TATW 3.2 functioned as the base for MOS.
This might be true for other submods as well.
There is so much content being developed for TATW as we speak, that in my view a new 'official' version would be redundant.

Leo has also got a point, that there is not a whole lot to be done anymore. From now on, it's mostly gameplay choices and maybe a few interesting scripts and that can indeed be done in the form of submods, as everyone's tastes are different.
And Leo's unofficial patch is as good as any official TATW version is likely ever going to be

[Flinn]

I concur with you Greymane, but if one says "official", it means something different.

One can say that this is just a matter of words, but anyway there are rules to respect, so in order to avoid confusion and problems, I think it is better to be always clear on what can be done or not.

I'm not well into modding, but I'm sure experienced modders can see the difference between making a submod and officially taking the reins of a mod; even if it is actually just a matter of keeping KK's name on the top of it, it's in his rights to do so, because it's his mod

Until then KK has been magnificent enough to give us free range to create submods.

I think this is sufficient to explain and sum up the whole situation

enough words spent for me

[Greymane]

I concur with you Greymane, but if one says "official", it means something different.

One can say that this is just a matter of words, but anyway there are rules to respect, so in order to avoid confusion and problems, I think it is better to be always clear on what can be done or not.

Yes, but since that had already been established, I started reasoning from the hypothetical that TATW would get an official new version, leaving the possibility part behind (which is what Andy likely intended with this thread in the first place).
My argument was that a new official version would be redundant because it would effectively be another submod, not that a new official version would not be official. Or something like that

Anyways, I think we are pretty much on the same page here

[probmfixn]

i dont really like new factions being added in but there are some concepts and locations id like to see. so i hope some one makes an officail next version some day...

[Lord Dakier]

Until progress is made in memory editing I can't see much to be done. If a submod really pushes the majority of the community then maybe it would be best if the team did look to step aside but currently the submods and vanilla seem pretty even in terms of community.