Goofy's Eye Candy Pack

[Goofy]

GOOFY'S EYE CANDY PACK

Mod released!

Goofy's Improved Faction Shields for Broken Crescent - OUT NOW!

Download here What is it? This shield pack is the first installment in Goofy's Eye Candy Pack. I have always loved Broken Crescent, and I have always liked the faction shields. However, the quality of those is, frankly, rather poor. That is what this fancy shield pack thing is attempting to fix by providing you with 18 high-quality shields, improving your Broken Crescent experience along with all the other eye candy provided in this thread. My ultimate goal is to provide you the authentic Broken Crescent experience but with top-notch quality this time around. This mod is the result of more than 100 hours of hard work, so please let me know if you are enjoying the new look of your game! The new faction shields Screenshots Installation Copy and paste the contents of the "data" folder included in the download into your BC main data folder. By default this is ...\...\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Broken_Crescent_Kingdoms\data. It is recommended to create backups of the "menu" and "ui" folders prior to installing this mod. Compatibility This mod is fully save game compatible, and compatible with most Broken Crescent submods - more specifically those that do not alter any files in the following folders: data\ui\african\interface data\ui\eastern_european\interface data\ui\faction_symbols data\ui\greek\interface data\ui\mesoamerican\interface data\ui\middle_eastern\interface data\ui\northern_european\interface data\ui\southern_european\interface Permissions You can include this mod in yours as long as my work is credited. It is also to be taken note of that all the contents of this mod have been meant for use in Broken Crescent only. Credits All faction shields and additional graphics in this mod have been made by Goofy. Special thanks to Maximinus Thrax for inspiration and constructive feedback. Download Download here

If you notice any bugs or other issues, please let me know so they can be addressed accordingly.

COMPATIBLE MUST-HAVE EYE CANDY MODS

Here's a selection (well, there might be in the future) of absolutely fantastic eye candy mods that are fully compatible with mine.

Please note that I haven't contributed to these mods in any way - give full credit to the authors.

New Cities Strat Models for BC

Download here Original thread Kudos to MIKE GOLF for making Agart's strat map cities and castles compatible with BC.

[Goofy]

Here's the first preview for you fellows. Bear in mind everything is still work-in-progress so some changes (colours, brightness, middle part layout and so forth) will certainly be made before the mod is released. Unfortunately the original Rajput symbol was impossible to find so I was forced to create a new one. I hope you still like it:

First Preview

From left to right: Solanki Rajputs, Ghorid Sultanate, Great Seljuks, Ayyubid Sultanate.

I'm working on the shields in much higher resolution, just resized them so you can compare them to the original BC shields. This is what they actually look like in development, in case someone is interested:

Higher Resolution

As you can see, a lot of effort has been put into these. The black swords on the Ghorid Sultanate's shield look bad because the original image was very low-res, but don't worry, it's going to look perfectly fine in-game.

I have actually made a new shield for every faction except the Chauhan Rajputs - you'll see more soon. All feedback is appreciated and suggestions will be taken into consideration before the mod is released. Thanks for your attention.

[Kameraden]

Gooby pls, looking good. maybe I'll install BC after all..

[Goofy]

Gooby pls, looking good. maybe I'll install BC after all..

You better do that old man. Seriously though, BC is a lot of fun to play.

[Maximinus Thrax]

Good, good...

I like what I see here. Great to find out that you haven't lost the touch, o' Goofy One.

[Goofy]

Good, good...

I like what I see here. Great to find out that you haven't lost the touch, o' Goofy One.

Thank you Maximinus, it is appreciated.

Now, having watched my work in the smaller size I've come to the conclusion that the rim and the shadows still need quite some adjusting. I think my shields are a bit too dark and the ornament on the rim is slightly too dominant right now, so I'll need to figure that out before actually importing these in the game - high quality and clarity is what I'm aiming for. Anyways, I'll make sure to make an update on this soon.

[MIKE GOLF]

These look very nice so far. Will these be included in BC 2.4?

[Goofy]

These look very nice so far.

Thanks a lot!

Will these be included in BC 2.4?

Nope, unless the BC team wants to. I think 2.4 will include new official faction shields anyways. However, I'm currently planning on updating this for all the new factions for 2.4 once it's out so people will get to use these if they choose to (by what I've seen so far the official shields are probably going to look very good so not a lot probably will...). I did offer these to the BC team back in 2013 and they were interested but I don't think they had proper faction shields at all by then. Now that they do, they are probably going to stick with them.

Anyhow, regarding the mod, I have great news: yesterday I decided to try if I could replicate the original Solanki Rajput flower emblem, and I was pleased to see that what I made actually looked very good. So, no new faction emblem for Solanki Rajputs! Here's the (greatly) improved version in high resolution:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think it looks pretty good considering I made it based on the original 60 x 60 or so emblem.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

That one does look awesome. Nice to see you arting again... I would rep you but...

I hope you are using GIMP?

[Goofy]

That one does look awesome. Nice to see you arting again... I would rep you but...

Thanks, Shanky, and it's okay. And believe me I feel awesome while making these.

I hope you are using GIMP?

Of course I am, it's the only thing that I'm good at using. It would definitely be easier to redesign (if it is needed, that is) some of these in vector graphics software but alas I'm terrible with those.

...

Here are the Chauhan Rajput and Sultanate of Ghazni faction emblems I remade by hand. And again, it's still all work-in-progress.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Original:

As you can see, I decided I could just as well replace the peacock in the original emblem with something that can actually be recognized as a peacock, so the Ghazni faction emblem is going to see a slight chance. Nothing too major there. I'm not sure if I like the renewed Ghazni symbol better though. Well, at least it's way more symmetric and therefore pleases the eye of us obsessive perfectionists better.

I also remade the swords in the Ghorid emblem (just because I'm so obsessed):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Those are rather beautiful if I say so myself. Again I used the original emblem as a template.

[MIKE GOLF]

I never knew that the emblem was supposed to be a peacock, now I do!

[Goofy]

I never knew that the emblem was supposed to be a peacock, now I do!

I know right, I never had an idea as to what it was supposed to be either. I was wondering about it all the time while drawing the original emblem in higher quality, and when I was finished I realized it looked absolutely terrible. So while trying to figure out what it was, I stumbled upon this site and made the conclusion that this

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Gazneli (Gazneliler)


Alleged flag of the Ghazneli - Image by Ivan Sache, 4 July 2004
Official description: Founded by Alptekin, covering the area from the Trans-Oxus to the Ganges River, from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the steppes of the Pamir (total area 4,700,000 sq. km).
Additional information: The Empire of the Ghaznavids, founded by Mahmud of Ghazni (ruled 998-1030), had its center in Ghazni, Afghanistan.
Flag: The flag attributed to the Gazneli is green with a grey crescent in canton and a peacock.
Ivan Sache & Jarig Bakker, 4 July 2004

is essentially referencing the Sultanate of Ghazni, even though the flag above looks completely different from the emblem we're used to seeing in BC. Either way, I'm convinced the thing in the middle of the Ghaznavid emblem is a peacock.

By the way, after speaking with Maximinus Thrax yesterday I was inspired to try and create a new (golden, though that might change) rim for the shields (I'm sure everyone agrees with me on that the rim is the weakest part in the first version of my shield design), and I think this new one is looking quite fantastic so far. Here's a WIP version I'm working on:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can tell I also changed the middle texture from wood to... something else, I don't know what that would be but it looks damn good anyways. It's the same texture that I've applied to the rim. The previous rim was essentially created from scratch, while for this one I used a stock photo of a golden plate I found. You can see the difference in quality. The new design is still very much a WIP, I have only worked on it for an hour or so, so I'm certainly going to make some improvements soon enough.

I love the gritty look though.

[MIKE GOLF]

I am odds over which which rim I prefer. Either one will work for me.

[Goofy]

I am odds over which which rim I prefer. Either one will work for me.

I think I'm going to use the new one - I think it's going to look great after some more editing - or make two emblem sets.

[Cyrene]

Those are really nice , cool stuff, the new rim is much better.

i am certainly gonna try them out. + rep

[Goofy]

Those are really nice , cool stuff, the new rim is much better.

i am certainly gonna try them out. + rep

Great to hear you like them!

Again an update on the mod - I've been working on these rather lazily in the last few days, I kind of lost the enthusiasm (that always happens to me with my projects) I had when I started to work on this again so I'm not making progress as fast but we're getting there. I need to figure out some changes to make the shield look perfect in the small size it's seen in-game. The good news is I've been able to replicate every single one of the original faction emblems and I now have them saved on my PC (in shields I made using the first rim, to be precise) so once I'm done with adjusting the rim it should be rather easy to craft the faction shields again. On a related note, one adjustment I'm probably going to make is to lower the saturation on the rim so the golden colour looks slightly more brown/bronze and therefore most likely fits the BC interface better. One earlier version I tested in-game popped out too much to my eye.

Anyways, it's looking good so far and I don't think it's going to take more than a week or two until I'm ready with these.

[Goofy]

For those that are interested, here's a screenshot of in-game testing. I'm currently trying to figure out the optimal brightness and hue settings.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

On a side note the UI in the picture above is one made by cedric37 (originally for Stainless Steel) which I'm trying to make compatible with BC (if I succeed in doing that I'm going to share the files with others). Anyhow, more about that later.

As always any feedback will be appreciated. Personally I think it's looking rather solid now but some further touches will be needed at least when using cedric's UI - it's extremely sharp while my shield design is rather smooth at the moment.

[karaislam]

İ ve been waiting for ur release my friend.

[Goofy]

Thanks for letting me know - may it inspire me to finish this soon. I've been busy thinking of other stuff (planning on getting a new PC and all that) so this mod has been on hold a bit. However, I have now reached a point from where on it's quite easy to finally finish the mod and release it so everyone can enjoy it.

On a side note, I'm not getting the roll/select (faction shield selection animations) effect working properly so I need to come up with something. That's actually the only major thing left to do before I can replace the original shields in the game files.

Sorry for my laziness, I really need to focus on this now (I'm the kind that gets easily bored). Thanks for the patience, everyone.

[karaislam]

if i could install my medieval 2 disc(disc is too old and wounded)i plan to make a new submod compilation.i ll ve 10 days holidays.i would like to add ur work into mine as well.