INTRO
Are you tired of how the vanilla general characters look in Total War: ROME II? Is your immersion broken when you have or see a character who is 80 years of age who still looks like he's 30? Or how about when they're trudging through the snow without any kind of winter clothing (mustn't they be freezing)? Aren't you just generally sick of how campaign characters always look the same throughout all your campaigns and have always wanted to give them some better looking gear to fit their increasing status / rank?
Then look no further! This general mod - like none other before it - will solve all of the above for you.
ABOUT This is the first - in potentially a series - of campaign agent character mods that aims to provide players with characters that dynamically replace their appearances with alternating variants (over 2,500 VariantMeshDefinition files for Rome alone!) based on three attributes for all campaigns, compatible with all overhaul mods (e.g. Divide et Impera). While in a battle, their appearance from the campaign will transfer over as well.
These three attributes are: 1.Age - As a general character's age value increases over the years, their facial appearance will gradually look older. This will provide a visual clue to the player that a character will soon be reaching a natural death. 2. Advancement - As a general ranks up through battles, their gear will become more extravagant as befits their status and accumulated gravitas. 3. Acclimatisation - When a season changes to winter, they will swap their appearance to a version which will wear winter clothing. This will provide a bit more immersion and variation to their appearances.
Rome (Polybian + Marian / Imperial) will be the first playable culture group to have their generals done, since their vanilla general appearances are in such dire need of replacement and most people will encounter them in their campaigns anyway.
The campaigns that will feature them for this mod will be:
• Prologue - Rome (pro_rome) uses the Polybian general art set.
• Hannibal at the Gates - Rome (pun_rome) uses the Polybian general art set.
• Caesar in Gaul - Rome (gaul_rome) uses the Marian / Imperial general art set.
• Imperator Augustus - All four Roman factions (emp_octavian, emp_antony, emp_lepidus, emp_pompey) will use the Marian / Imperial general art set.
• Grand Campaign - Rome (rom_rome) uses a mixture of Polybian (Ranks 1 to 5)+ Marian / Imperial (Ranks 6 to 10) general art sets. Their appearances will now fit with the Marian + Imperial Reforms technologies as they rank up, no longer solely looking mid-Republican.
• Divide et Impera - Macedonian Wars - Rome (?) uses the Polybian general art set.
The mod also makes a few changes to the historical characters in historical battles as well, such as Varus and Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. These new visuals fit well with what CA originally envisioned the characters to look like, while maintaining historical authenticity (e.g. Varus' appearance in the vanilla game looked like he was in Punic Wars, now he looks like he belongs during the reign of Augustus. Arminius' appearance looks more like an Germanic auxiliary cavalry officer, and also more closely resembles the same character in Total War: ARENA, making him more recognisable).
Of course, this won't count the Empire Divided campaign - their general appearances will require a lot more work to be done since each of the three Roman factions have distinct art styles to them qualifying for a future, separate mod.
COMPATIBILITY
This mod was designed for compatibility in mind and is therefore compatible with all overhaul mods (e.g. Divide et Impera) - no need for separate versions. However, there are a lot of overhaul mods out there and I may not have tested them all. If you find anything that's wrong, let me know in the Bug Reports thread and I will try to fix it.
FUTURE The plan for this mod is to provide General appearances for all the Roman factions in the pre-Empire Divided campaigns (Prologue, Hannibal at the Gates, Caesar in Gaul, Imperator Augustus, Grand Campaign, Wrath of Sparta (Divide et Impera - Macedonian Wars).
Quote:
UPDATE #4 - v1.0
Hopefully the final update to this mod, the next update will cover the listed features below. I will finish this update after I've released the Greek Generals and updated the Rise of the Republic Generals.
PLANNED CHANGES
ADDING
Add new 3D hair to the rank 1 + politician variants who are still bald.
Add rank 9-10 White Ceremonial Helmet for Marian / Imperial variants who used a Marian White Helmet from ranks 2 - 8.
FIXING
Fix skin weight issue with the General Sash (coloured waist cloth) asset - right side seems to clip with Ceremonial Muscle Cuirass.
For every future update - if you are subscribed to the Steam Workshop version, the mod will update automatically for you. If you have downloaded directly from Total War Center and placed the pack file manually into your data folder, you will need to manually update the mod yourself by replacing the older version of the mod with the updated version.
[ORIGINAL PREVIEW POST BELOW]
WHEN WILL IT RELEASE? EDIT 02/05/2018: When I first made this post, I had nothing else going on in my life and originally said that this mod would be released "Very soon - a week or two after this post, as I've already got the hard stuff out of the way", since I was going to be dedicating most of my time on it. However, a week and a half after posting this, I managed to get two paid jobs and then had no free time to work on it for my original deadline. As of this edit, the pressure from my two jobs is off a little bit so I can spend time on finishing this mod, hoping for a release (at the latest) around mid-June, for Father's Day. Expected file size will be around 180MB.
ORIGINAL:
For the past month and a half I have been quietly working on all of the hard stuff - that is creating all of the new assets for the new VMDs to make use of. I have not just done a load of retextures; I've made a few entirely new assets as well - one of them mentioned below - and also had to export, edit in 3DS Max and reimport a lot of CA's existing assets into the game to get them to fit with certain things (e.g. the Roman Auxiliary Trousers could not fit properly with greaves, but I have made a new version which now fits with all greaves). Any retextures I've done have been made to improve quality in a few areas which needed that extra quality (e.g. helmets) or provide a few variations to fit existing historical characters, but all adhering to the aim of making them fit with the vanilla game first and foremost - I haven't gone too crazy with them. I will show and list them all in a later post.
Until release, I will be aiming to make a new post each day showing off the progress in making the new VMDs for each general character's art set. As said before - the Roman culture group will require thousands of new VariantMeshDefinitions as they will not just one art set, but two (Polybian and Marian / Imperial). They also have access to a few historical characters as well which increases that number.
# of VMDs Required For Just One Roman General Character Set:
Default General VMD: 1
x2 new VMDs for at least one age variation: 2
x2 new VMDs for at least one seasonal variation: 4
x10 new VMDs for all rank variations: 40
x2 new VMDs for extra art set (Marian / Imperial - historical characters will only have one art set fitting their time period, so will stay at 40): 80
# of VMDs Required For All Roman Generals:
x32 new VMDs for each character (one extra since I'm adding an entirely new one to spawn with two new heads for young / old): 2,560
+240 new VMDs for remaining 6 major historical characters (Scipio Africanus, Caesar, Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, Pompey): 2,800
EDIT 04/04/2018:
To respect James Payne's (Willow Foundation patient - lost his life to liver cancer and honoured ingame as Roman General #31) depiction, I won't be making any older variations of him. He will still have Polybian and Marian / Imperial uniform sets with winter clothing though, so rather than the default 80 required VMDs his will instead need 40. Plus another 20 VMDs - from Caesar's new younger variants - and the new total is 2,780.
Roman General #32 - Polybian Art Set
The first general art set I will be showing off will be Polybian. It will be based on the new general #32's appearance VMDs - who has an entirely new custom head for his older variant, made by myself (model, texture and skin weights). I will show off his younger variation later (also requiring a new head model which I am working on at the moment), probably on the day of the mod's release.
The Polybian general art set is used for Roman factions in the Prologue + Hannibal at the Gates + Grand Campaign (ranks 1 - 5).
@Tenerife_Boy Hellenic generals will definitely come after this one. Which Hellenic faction do you think I should start after Rome's? I would preferably do a faction which is in need of unique variations the most, such as Egypt.
Also, if any one has any ideas for custom assets (i.e. new models, textures etc) that future generals could use (for Roman, Hellenic, Eastern, whatever) - post them up here / private message me the idea / research.
Roman General #32 - Marian / Imperial
Here is the second Roman general art set, based on the same character as last time (Roman General #32), but for use in Caesar in Gaul + Imperator Augustus + Grand Campaign (ranks 6 - 10).
That's it for today. Sometime in the next few days I'll post up the first character which has both of their young + old variants completed, along with an ingame demonstration of that character's appearance changing (a young general ranking up a few times, changing type of clothes in winter and finally growing old).
This is the first character I'm showing who has all of their variants completely finished and working ingame (I'll show a video demonstrating it later today or tomorrow) - it clearly shows off how these characters will age. This historical character is the man himself - Julius Caesar.
Unlike most other characters, Julius Caesar is special in this mod - he won't just have "Young" and "Old" aged variant sets; he also has a "Middle" aged variant set as well. I thought that this would be suitable for him since, in the Caesar in Gaul campaign, he already begins at the age of 42 and visually looks kind of old right at the start, which fits. However, I didn't want that appearance to be of his old-old self - I also wanted him to progressively get a little bit older in the Caesar in Gaul campaign as a way to provide a visual signal to the player that they're taking too long, since it takes almost two hundred turns for Caesar's age to turn 50 ("Daaaaaamn! You've been playing this campaign so long, Caesar was actually meant to be crossing the Rubicon at this time!"). So, that would mean the original appearance at the start of Caesar in Gaul would have to be the "Young" aged variant set, but I realised that wouldn't make sense in the Grand Campaign - for when he spawns as a historical character in his teens - to look that old. So, I decided to give him a third aged variant set, since the 3D art for it already existed (albeit needed some additional editing to get working properly). I took Julius Caesar's body model from Total War: ARENA, chopped off his head, rigged it again (so that he can move his mouth + eyes properly) and re-imported it into the game for the new younger aged set which shows off his youth, before the Gallic Wars (like I said, you'd only see this variant in the Grand Campaign when he spawns - not in Caesar in Gaul or any of his historical battles, so it's kind of an easter egg for those who manage to spot him in their Grand Campaign playthroughs).
Following in line with CA's vision for the character (in Total War: ROME II's concept art and his appearance in Total War: ARENA), he also replaces his helmet with a loral wreath on ranks 9 and 10; a regular green (looks dark brown in the renders below, sorry about that - but it is definitely meant to be dark green) one on rank 9, and finally a golden one on rank 10. At rank 5, he starts wearing his leather + gold cuirass (and later replaces it with the ceremonial one from the intro / trailer at rank 8) - a retexture using the vanilla brass "hellenic_cuirass_03" model (I originally made that texture of the cuirass specifically for Lepidus' mid-ranked variants, but it fit nicely with Caesar so I gave it to him for his mid-ranked variants as well). As I previously said on the first post - historical characters only get one uniform ranked set. The time that they're set to spawn is the kind of clothing / gear they're going to wear. There's no point making a Polybian uniform set for Julius Caesar since he won't ever be living before Marius' reforms to have a chance at wearing them.
Next Update (ETA: Tomorrow - EDIT: When I have time - currently busy)
Okay, those renders are going to be the last for a while - they take me a bit of time to do (an individual one is easy and takes a few minutes, but since they're in bulk it takes longer)... time better spent on solely making VMDs + implementing for release, otherwise it'll take a month to create the mod at this rate. Besides, I think you all get the idea by now.
Tomorrow I'll be implementing a few more generals (e.g. Marcus Antonius), but will show them off in a quick ingame demonstration video of the mod in action rather than lots of individual renders.
Three weeks ago I got a job and am doing some other paid work for someone else in my free time - I've just been very busy lately and don't have time for games / modding / hobbies at the moment. Don't worry, I will continue once the pressure is off (maybe in a week or two).