Ave! I'm a new member to TWC, however i'm certainly not new to the Total War series. I've mainly focused on RTW:1 and the expansions, and played some Rome II but I found it wasn't anywhere near as good as the first. I was playing RTW:1 from the age of 11, maybe younger than that, and I consider it to be one of my favourite games of all time with a few thousand hours clocked up (only 500+ on steam though, yes I had no life when I was young lol).
In the past I tried to mod RTW:1 but I could only really mess around with the coding like export_descr_unit and the basic notepad files, the rest I didn't have the patience for and tried numerous times to re-texture units but failed every time and was almost impossible to find out why (google is useless). Then one day within the last few months I gave it another crack, and stumbled upon a thread i've since lost so I cannot thank the person who posted a reply to the thread who gave me exactly what I needed to get the skins working. Since then i've been modding like crazy.
So far in the last few months I have completely re-textured all 4 roman factions, the Seleucid Empire, the Greek Cities, the Armenians, the Gauls and mercenaries as well as their respective mounts, horses and elephants. I have been using various bits from different unit skins from existing textures from RTW:1 and the expansions BI and Alexander as I want to keep the skins looking as vanilla as possible with my own twist to make them look interesting and fresh. I've also extensively edited unit statistics in export_descr_unit, fiddled around with export_descr_buildings and descr_model_battle files, and also various aspects of the imperial campaign files.
The reason why i've only just joined TWC today is that i've reached a point where I would like to further my modding skills for the Total War series and I want to gather as much knowledge from the community to help me along with my project.
In the long run I aim to completely re-texture all factions, yes that's right, all of them. Re-balance the game to become challenging but enjoyable (I find the difficulty settings to be completely broken when set above moderate as I hate seeing highly trained urban cohorts being butchered by peasants), and give players who still play RTW:1 to this day, a fresh new experience while staying as true to the original games gameplay and aesthetics as possible. I also aim to fix some issues players have when playing as the Roman factions to give them exactly what they want, well near enough anyway ahaha. Personally one aspect I HATE about the Roman factions is the fact you end up playing a campaign and 50 turns in you're still unable to start a civil war and try to seize Rome, and when you get the option to do so you find you have 30/40/50 death stacks of Roman legions across the whole of Europe which end up becoming one very long, tiring and frankly, boring end game which quickly goes stale just to say you've finished the game.
I hope to address these issues within my mod while also maintaining 100%!!! stability with ZERO errors. And in the meantime I also aim to help kill some common misconceptions about the roman factions when starting the civil war and help provide a clear and comprehensive tutorial to all aspects of my modding project.
One thing I would like to mention, bringing us back to the issue I briefly mentioned earlier in this post, is the issue I had when I first tried to mod the unit textures. For a long time I scoured skinning tutorials for help when I first attempted to re-texture units, as detailed as they are I felt that many were lacking key parts to the modding process that are crucial to getting your skins to show up in-game. I do not fault the effort and time put into making such detailed and well thought out tutorials for the public to use however I was sorely disappointed to see how they were lacking in giving more detailed instructions within the modding process. Some modders may not speak English as their first language and while i'm impressed by their grammar and vocabulary I felt that some parts of the tutorials were either not made clear enough in the instructions or were over complicated in their explanations, which made their tutorials difficult to follow. I am not saying these tutorials are bad as i'm sure many members of TWC and guests alike found them very useful. I just feel that it can never hurt to add to the already extensive level of support provided, so i'll provide my own take on the modding process to help any aspiring modders out there begin their journey in the world of modding.
Anyway, I hope to learn a lot from you guys, and I hope that my own work and input will be of valuable use to the community. Also I would like to hear what you guys think about my project and look forward to any help I can get as I myself am still learning, and any advice, tips and ideas will be appreciated. I will be posting my progress for the community to follow and showcase my work for those who are interested, and uploading individual mod packs as I go so the community can enjoy using my mods separately, as well as uploading the final product as a complete package for those who want the full experience. So keep your eyes open for further posts from myself and the work I upload.
Quia gloria Romae!