Roma Surrectum III preview: The new battle map enviroment

[ur-Lord Tedric]

I will like to suggest a special focus on stats of archers( both mounted and dismounted). When playing as parthia, use of archers doesn't seem much effective against armoured seleucid units specially phalanx even if they are being shot from behind. i think they should be some much more prone to archers.

In general, archers are oddly ineffective, for sure.

Please read Xenophon's 'March to the Sea' and, by all means, analyse the Battle(S) of Carrhae and explain why?

[gaunty14]

Drooool..those skies look wonderful, the RS teams work is yet again spectacular. I sometimes forget I'm playing on the RTW engine.

[Sint]

Please read Xenophon's 'March to the Sea' and, by all means, analyse the Battle(S) of Carrhae and explain why?

I guess the popular modern idea that armor and shieds were useless against bows.

[HG_SCIPCION]

wow, The flora now is perfect... n.n
great work!!!!

ROME SURRECTUM THE BEST!!!!!!

[TallestDavid]

looks great. but i so wish you guys made a unit pack with your units from roma surrectum 2 to rome II. i love those units!

[Grimbold]

I think it was in this thread that the hoplite forming fix was mentioned.

So let me ask another thing: if you are able to fix that, do you think you're able to look into some units that don't switch to their secondary weapons when commanded to? Im mainly thinking of the Thorakitai units that don't use their swords, despite having one.

[Rezorekt]

OMG! RS III is comming! I'm going to scream!

[proyecto117]

I can't believe this is actually happening! You guys are AWESOME! Keep the great job! Looking forward to this!

[J0shua]

I know that you guys are already working on a solution to the CTD when running the game on Steam, so I just want to ask if you expect to solve it before the release of this version?

My new PC dosen't even have a CD-drive anymore so I'm really hoping for this. Especially because you guys have basically raised the bar so high that I can't find any satisfaction in other RTW or RTW 2 mods :/

[LavaCreeper]

This is awesome... RSII is one of the greatest mods of all time in my opinion, and certainly the best for RTW, it is amazing to see it being updated once more ! I look forward to see the complete list of bugfixes and new features !
I have only one question about the improvements you make on the graphics. As the engine of RTW is old, even modern configs can't run the game at max settings in big battles, have you found a workaround for that problem ? It would be sad not to be able to use those graphics because of engine limitations =/.

[Paulcook002]

Maybe you haven't focussed on this part yet...

I would say the environments are lovely, but they are still way too dark in terms of the figure renders and perhaps slightly too bright for the sunlit areas - more subtlety required (i do kind of like the desert bleached effect and I understand the feel of intensity this is supposed to portray - that one works, as does the golden arid feel of the mediterranean). I do feel you need a better birghtness balance. Men standing in bright sunlight will not appear shadowed, they are not in a coal cellar; not even in normal daylight would they look this dark, but if you are putting the sun up there, you need to work on this. This is the depressing look of the RTW2 genre that makes you want to go throw yourself under a chariot. Enjoy the bright colours of the ancient world. It's all a bit different in a cityscape under a pall of smoke but rarely would ancient battles be dark depressing places, they are more likely to crimson charnel houses. In the north, you might find everything is more subdued, more sombre, especially in bad weather, then it can get depressing but not in the examples you've given here.

I hope this is constructive feedback on what is an excellent job otherwise.



If dark shadows are your thing, better to design for Gothic Horror games.


The sun is wrong too, it looks like a lunar orb. A better study of light and shadow is required. It's one of the things M2TW does really well and I love the 'dapple' effect of units passing through sunlight under shaded trees.

[dvk901]

Maybe you haven't focussed on this part yet...

I would say the environments are lovely, but they are still way too dark in terms of the figure renders and perhaps slightly too bright for the sunlit areas - more subtlety required (i do kind of like the desert bleached effect and I understand the feel of intensity this is supposed to portray - that one works, as does the golden arid feel of the mediterranean). I do feel you need a better birghtness balance. Men standing in bright sunlight will not appear shadowed, they are not in a coal cellar; not even in normal daylight would they look this dark, but if you are putting the sun up there, you need to work on this. This is the depressing look of the RTW2 genre that makes you want to go throw yourself under a chariot. Enjoy the bright colours of the ancient world. It's all a bit different in a cityscape under a pall of smoke but rarely would ancient battles be dark depressing places, they are more likely to crimson charnel houses. In the north, you might find everything is more subdued, more sombre, especially in bad weather, then it can get depressing but not in the examples you've given here.

I hope this is constructive feedback on what is an excellent job otherwise.



If dark shadows are your thing, better to design for Gothic Horror games.


The sun is wrong too, it looks like a lunar orb. A better study of light and shadow is required. It's one of the things M2TW does really well and I love the 'dapple' effect of units passing through sunlight under shaded trees.

You have to take into account that this game is 10 years old, and although we adapted as many features in MTW2 to RTW as we could...still, old RTW is not MTW2, so it is limited in what it can do. Also, I believe the shots taken here were using 'Bloom'...which tends to enhance dark and light features, sorta like adding a lot of contrast. I'm not particularly a fan of that, as getting it to work is rather clunky anyway, and it makes certain UI elements look too bright. In short, it was not intended for RTW, but works in a fashion.

Certainly, newer more modern games have abilities to render things that are amazing in their realism....some look like you're watching a movie. But you can't fault RTW for not looking like that, because it didn't exist then. Lighting, shadows, sunlight....all those things are pretty rudimentary in RTW, although at the time this game came out, they were pretty state of the art.

A good example of what MTW2 can do that RTW can't regards the water. As hard as I've tried, I cannot replicate MTW2 water in RTW....the underlying mechanism just isn't there to make it work.

[HG_SCIPCION]

for new skies...

http://www.cgskies.com/browse.php?type=altostratus

[Micon]

Most units will be the same, although some units will be improved: towered bush elephants will be resized and indian armoured elephants will get a new model. Ranges of missile weapons will be made more realistic and there will be alternate stats with lower morale, high lethality, 2 hitpoints and much more. Also a a lot of bugs will be fixed, for example: Indian war elephants will not throw normal javelins while they are holding bamboo javelins (they will throw bamboo javelins instead) and hoplites will line up properly.

Finnaly! have looked forward to this in a long time! Was it the skeleton that was the issue? Will the phalangites with the same issue get fixed aswell?

[dvk901]

Finnaly! have looked forward to this in a long time! Was it the skeleton that was the issue? Will the phalangites with the same issue get fixed aswell?

The problem was a specific 'animation' that wasn't working right....or at all, I guess. So all units that had that animation have had it changed to different one.

[Philadelphos]

Just overhauled the semi arid climate, here are some screenies:

The improved sky textures and lighting are hugely improved:


The battlemap lighting, textures and grass are also completely overhauled:





The improved tree textures are very visible on this particular screenshot:

Great environments. I love what you did on this already in RS II.

But I have one request: Will you fix the vanilla bug that has the sun always rise in the west and set in the east?
I know that very few people have noticed at all, but I am disturbed by it and I would be immensely grateful to anybody able to fix it.

[dvk901]

Heh. Never noticed that.

[Kranos]

Do you also plan to add/reskin some units?

[dvk901]

Do you also plan to add/reskin some units?

It is possible that the towered elephants will be reskinned, but there is no reason to do any others.

[clone]

shame to the roma surrect team.
who do you thing you will fool by posing rome 2 enviroment as rome 1 . shame