3 Kingdoms: Total War -- Recruiting

[antirelic]

Hello Everyone,

I am jumping off of the the below thread:



I will be working to help put together a Mod based off of the popular Chinese "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". The Three Kingdoms period in China is similar to the Medieval period in Europe, where rival warlords via for power to conquer all of China. While this will only be a "mod" we will be forced to keep to the hard coded aspects of the game, and not try too hard to go around anything that will keep us from achieving a "final product". Our goals will ultimately change as time goes on, and as our team grows/shrinks, so keeping a general time line will help us change focus as need be.

Since we cannot change hard code, we can always try and make appropriate changes. For example, since its hard to remove the Pope, we can always make him into the "Han Emperor" and have call the warlords to do missions. Also, by default, the map will show "Turns" instead of "years" because we will be focused on 250CE to 450CE. This will cause the "year" to be out of sync with in game messages.


Phase 1 (3-6 months -- All Vanilla Code):

- Map of China with 60 provinces
- Core Faction names changed to faction names of China during that period
- Names of Generals Changed
- Historical Events Changed to China based (culture, tech, religion based)
- Flags Changed appropriately
- Change "Han" missions as appropriate

When 1.0 is released, we will focus on bug crushing and simple balance issues. This should take 2-4 weeks. 1.0 Will most likely look alot like Europe has been displaced to China, but given different names. This will, of course, depend

Phase 2 (7-12)

- Map of China with 80 provinces
- Implement Map AI
- Implement Battle AI
- Implement BBB (with appropriate changes)
- Continue to implement missions
- Change (if possible) religions to Eastern.

When 2.0 is released, we will focus on further bug crushing and balance issues. This should take a substantial amount of time, and may require incremental releases in between feature implementation, thus utilizing the entire time frame.

- Skinning/Re-Texturing will be conducted throughout the entirety of the campaign, and will also cause incremental releases between during phase 1 and 2 to make people "excited" visually.


Members/Team Mates

Mapping: Anti-Relic
Texturing/Skinning:
Unit Design:
Modeling:
Historical Events:
Scripting:
Mission Development:
Art (portraits,etc):

Please feel free to pitch in ideas, join the team, or just lend some advice. If your new or old, ambitious, want to help, and have time, please feel free to pitch in.

For new people to modding, I recommend reading the following links:

TW Wiki Modding Tutorial

http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Categor...ding_Tutorials

[antirelic]

Hello, I'm Anti-Relic. I've got some real world scripting/programming experience, but I am pretty new to modding Total War. I'm paging through the tutorials and getting my hands dirty using some of the excellent guides I have read so far. I am currently working on the map of China. I will release some shots of what I am working with, once I have a working map up and running (crawling first).

I look forward to working with all of you on creating this lovely little mod, and please feel free to put forward any recommendations/suggestions/criticisms.

[LuBu]

Hello, after coming onto the forumns I was surpirised to see another part to to my original thread. I take it you've decided to continue my idea further, if so I would like to be included in the team as a researcher. To be honest, at first, I could've come in here and began shouting purely because it at first, seemed you had stolen my idea! It would've been nice to tell me you planned to do this over a PM instead of announcing it here

Anywho, I am more than willing to help out as i've currently alot of free time on my hands. It is also good to see that you are taking this mod forward as I take a while to get things up and running. On the whole I feel this is a good thing and hope we can work on it as a team, like you yourself mentioned.

One thing I would like to know, Is your planned time span. I, personally, consider the 3 kingdoms period from 184 AD with the rise of the Yellow Scarves/Turbans until the destruction of the Wu kingdom by Jin in 280 AD.
I have a deep interest in this period myself and would love to see this mod develop as time passes into something great.

For now, I will wait for your reply before I post down some questions i'd like to put forward.

LuBu

[antirelic]

Definantly not taking over, just helping to put in some direction. I'm trying to put some money where my mouth is per say by doing the map, which is definantly not an easy thing to do. I look forward to working with you, and your opinion counts as much as mine. Anything you dont like that I posted, just say so and its open for debate.

[Mike13531]

i can also do research, first i would like to point out, historically, chinese armies are huge, 10-20 times bigger than european armies, literally. They are consisted mainly of Spear, curved sword, and large sword. They wear those padded chain mails, you can use the mongol texture as base, just recoloring them will do the trick, altho the face will need somebody to texture. In EDU, the spearmen stats should also be changed, spear will be the equivilent of swords in vanilla MTWII, as in just as powerful, instead of all spearmen get owned by swords(which is completely ridiculous, no idea where CA came up with this.. this "idea"). Halberds will be best against cavalry as they are historically suppose to cut horses foot .
As for generals, Zhu Ge Liang which is the best strategist in the history, he should have all strategic skill, tactical skill, mathematical skill, logistical skill and more. People like Zhao Yun, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei , i have no idea what to do with them, they are more of fighters than generals . Anyways, you can create units saying they are trained by these guys, which should be more or less historical accurate since they should have trained certain amount of units.

as for unit ideas, i found these pictures
here is the most common weapon you will see in Chinese medieval battle field.. the unit textures in this pic is also real

an example of swords that they use in China

here is some basic armors in chinese medieval times

horses textures can be made like this, sort of like the byzantium texture on armored horses

this pic here proves my point on , how chinese army is consisted of spearmen, and large numbers in army

there is a general

an example of the armors

maces which can be used

idea of spears and swords

[Orko]

Do you need a researcher? because I can be one

[LuBu]

Definantly not taking over, just helping to put in some direction. I'm trying to put some money where my mouth is per say by doing the map, which is definantly not an easy thing to do. I look forward to working with you, and your opinion counts as much as mine. Anything you dont like that I posted, just say so and its open for debate.

Ok, it is good to finally get the mod going and i'm glad to be working with whoever joins the team. Right now I guess we could use researchers like Orko and Mike, who seems to know his stuff

I would also like to point out that the crossbow was used far more frequently in China, or so I have been told as bows were more of a western style. Mike, also a very good idea about reskinning some of the Mongol units as they would be quite similar. Regarding generals, I would like to propose they are done as one man units so they can each be given individual traits and the like. People such as Zhuge Liang or Sima Yi would be excellent stratgeists giving them very high stars, they would suffer from less hitpoints to make up for the fact they were not brilliant warriors. However people such as Guan Yu, who was supposedly the 'God of War' will have quite high stars and traits that give bonus to his prowess in combat aswell.

Anywho, if Orko Mike and myslef would like to gather research while antirelic creates our map it would be great. One last thing is I feel we should decide the start date and end dates so we may, if needed start to gather information on possible factions and so on.

LuBu

[Mike13531]

i can also balance the EDU if someone was to create units.. also character traits if you like, descr_building might get complicated since i don't know much about it , but i guess i can learn if i wanted to. ok, forget that, i'll just put down a list i can do:
EDU
character_traits
projectile
maybe descr_building
descr_events(if someone give me ideas)

[LuBu]

Hmm ideas for events. If we are to keep it historical, we could include famous deaths such as Sun Jian or maybe famous battles. They may be hard to do as the mod probably wouldn't follow the course of history. However, it may be possible to do coalition battles such as the ones against Dong Zhuo.

About the start date, I personally would like it to be 184 AD with the Yellow Scarve uprising.

[antirelic]

Orko and Mike, welcome aboard.

Mike: Those images will be a great help for whomever comes aboard as a model maker / skinner. Once we get moving, we can get a forum and have a place to post images. We will also need banners/flags.

Researchers: If you would like to help with research, it would be best if we divide up some of the data/text files. We should try and not over lap one another, so I will put up the list, and anyone who wants to do research should volunteer to take a particular text file and work with it. Here is the list:

data/text/names.txt
data/descr_names_lookup.txt
data/descr_names.txt (this and the two above should go together, so these three should be for one, dedicated person)

data/text/historic_events.txt (more files will need to be modified with this, but its a good start, and should serve as a good example)

data/text/campaign_descriptions.txt (the opening text underneath the banners, tells a little about the faction and its objectives, use this as an example)

If you do not have these files available, you need to follow the advice in the below link:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76289

Follow the advice CAREFULLY!!! I recommend using the tool provided in step 3.


This will require ALOT of work, so if you are truly on board, this should be fun. If not, then comments are always welcome, but you'll have to have a side seat as far as development goes. Perhaps those who do not have the time/ability to modify text files can participate as "play testers".

Map: I have a working map! I used actual satellite imagery to build the map. It will encompass all of China and some regions surrounding it (including the Islands of Tiawan and Hong-Kong). This wont matter too much, but will give us the ability to put in neighboring factions.

I will post the map once I get the heights worked out a little better. The imagery makes for a very ROUGH map by default, so I am going to have to manually level out the terrain and place cities/rivers/etc..

My plan of action is:

1. Level the map
2. Place cities
3. Modify the terrain types
4. Place rivers, etc.

The nice part is, I have working map of the actual region.

[LuBu]

Very nice work antirelic One thing to quickly point out is that China was a much smaller country than it is now. I will find some maps very quickly right now to post here.





Now i'm going to find a more detailed map to show you loactions of more major cities f the period. Firstly go to www.kongming.net. At the right hand list under navigation, click history. This should then bring up a list, slightly further down should be a China Map by William under officers and kingdoms.

Hope this helps!

LuBu

[Orko]

Orko and Mike, welcome aboard.

Mike: Those images will be a great help for whomever comes aboard as a model maker / skinner. Once we get moving, we can get a forum and have a place to post images. We will also need banners/flags.

Researchers: If you would like to help with research, it would be best if we divide up some of the data/text files. We should try and not over lap one another, so I will put up the list, and anyone who wants to do research should volunteer to take a particular text file and work with it. Here is the list:

data/text/names.txt
data/descr_names_lookup.txt
data/descr_names.txt (this and the two above should go together, so these three should be for one, dedicated person)

data/text/historic_events.txt (more files will need to be modified with this, but its a good start, and should serve as a good example)

data/text/campaign_descriptions.txt (the opening text underneath the banners, tells a little about the faction and its objectives, use this as an example)

If you do not have these files available, you need to follow the advice in the below link:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76289

Follow the advice CAREFULLY!!! I recommend using the tool provided in step 3.


This will require ALOT of work, so if you are truly on board, this should be fun. If not, then comments are always welcome, but you'll have to have a side seat as far as development goes. Perhaps those who do not have the time/ability to modify text files can participate as "play testers".

Map: I have a working map! I used actual satellite imagery to build the map. It will encompass all of China and some regions surrounding it (including the Islands of Tiawan and Hong-Kong). This wont matter too much, but will give us the ability to put in neighboring factions.

I will post the map once I get the heights worked out a little better. The imagery makes for a very ROUGH map by default, so I am going to have to manually level out the terrain and place cities/rivers/etc..

My plan of action is:

1. Level the map
2. Place cities
3. Modify the terrain types
4. Place rivers, etc.

The nice part is, I have working map of the actual region.

I actully meant by reaserching to find unit types and cities, maybe maps for the mod, and I don't know how to mod.

[antirelic]

Mike: I know the thing about Chinese armies being HUGE! Perhaps we can account for this by making "auxillary" armies CHEAP, and quick to replenish, while more "elite" units are relatively expensive and slow to replenish (as far as recruiting goes). This would make having multiple full stacks of cheap auxillary troops common, making the battlefields feel like real battles of that time frame.

LuBu: The time frame I believe is hard coded, so we are stuck with the dates saying "1078-1490" or something like that. But, we could, just make the game show turns instead.

We will also need to decide on a list of factions and where they start. I say we initially limit this to 8 factions, so I dont have to kill myself too hard trying to place them on the initial map (its easy placing "rebel" units). We can add more later of course. We will also need to discuss the starting cities (how much resources they have, etc) and pay particular attention to "balance". While we would all love to see Lui Bei have an unstoppable army of Chinese warriors, it wouldnt be much fun (or make LuBu unit that cant be killed).

There is alot of work to do, in other words.

[LuBu]

Anti : Bummer about the time being hard coded, at least we can show turns instead however As for the list of factions, if we started in 184 AD then I can for sure help with starting factions. I can't remember the exact names so I will note the forces ruler and there general locations on the map, it is by no means final however.

Han Empire : This allows us to include the Han Emporer as the Pope, who i believe you said is hard coded or a complete pain to remove. I know Little of the Han dynasty myself, so more research is needed here, which im more than willing to do. I thought they could act as the papal states in vannila M2TW however they if possible, could be a playable faction. They should control the capital, which was I think Chang An or Luo Yang, curse my memory

Yellow Scarves/Turbans : They can act as either rebels or a playable faction. Lead by Zhang Jiao and aided by his two brothers Zhang Liang and Zhang Bao. As for starting provinces, they were mainly a very large rebelious force throughout china at this period so it would be hard to give starting regions to.

As for the rest, I know of there rough starting positions but not of the cities or provinces they should occupy. A brief list to follow;

Forces of Gongsun Zan
Forces of Yuan Shao
Forces of Cao Cao
Forces of Sun Jian
Forces of Liu Bei
Forces of Liu Biao
Forces Of Liu Zhang
Forces of Nanman, I think there leader was Sha Moke or that could be a little later on.
Forces of Ma Teng
Forces of Dong Zhuo

If i remember anymore i will post them here ASAP. I can also note down some starting officers for each faction aswell if need be!

LuBu

[Mike13531]

x_X, we really need skiners and modelers now, someone should post it somewhere, recruiting modelers/skiners?.. this is gonna be a lot, we can start with a simple custom campaign, sort of like the Kingdom expansion? we can stick like that for now, and move bigger and bigger with updates.

Those 3 factions will do, because that's the only power so far.. about starting army, Shu will start with lowest army amount and smallest land, but better general, more elite units and better position. Wei of course wil be biggest, with most army and highest influence . Wu is uh.. let's just say, in between (they were never good, pack of retards) , they have socond biggest land and army count, however, they will have the weakest units in the game, as they are never powerful..

i will do campaign discriptions.. when do you like me to start?

oh ya, one more thing , as for banners? that might be a little tricky, since they do not have flags, they only have general flags, as in,

General's last name on a colored flag, i do not have my chinese writing program on this computer so i guess i can't type it. So ya, for Wei's banners, use Guan as main infantry, Zhao as cavalry, Liu as general, and Zhang as light and of course Shu as normal flags
as for the rest, just use chinese last names for the flags, it should be simple enough, just draw them or type them into a colored flag.
As for faction colors
Shu: yellow(historically accurate)
Wei: either red or black(saw this in the movies, not quite sure)
Wu: uh.. no clue, just pick one, lol, maybe green?

also antire, , that'll be good, cheaper recruitment and upkeep will allow all factions to have bigger size of armies which will make it a different feeling than BC(middle east) , MTWII(europe)

antire, this is important, go edit your first post, go advanced, and then rename this thread, to Three Kingdoms Modification - Recruiting, that way, we will have more chance of getting more teammates

[Mike13531]

lol, that's ok, i guess, you can always just post info here. Such as, unit description? building description? and such..

[Orko]

I want to suggest a faction list, but I need a starting date. is there is any date, or undecided date?

[LuBu]

Undecided date as of yet i think. I personally would rather start in 184 AD to increase the eventual number of factions. Unless as Mike said we release it like kingdoms and have the option of having the actual 3 kingdoms period rather than the extended version. Mike, I woud like some feeback on my proposed faction list if thats ok

Mike : I think you should be in charge of banners, as you clearly understand it better than me. Are you from China or something as you do know alot about your history

As a colour for Wu, I'd go for a blue/green colour unless we can find some images to show us otherwise.

Anywho, does anyone else wish to propose a suitable starting date. I think it's best to choose the best of out the suggestions. Personally, anywhere between 184-190 is fine with me. The reason I would choose 184 AD is the coalition battle against the Yellow Scarves and i feel it would be a good start point because any earlier and alot oft the warlords had little land.

[Mike13531]

lol, Lubu, ya man, my home country. what about you? anyways, i would do the banner if i knew how.. ...

umm.. about the faction list, i'd say, it's too much work for the first release. We don't want to be like anno avenum(or whatever that name is), or BC. i mean, we can make it small, and bigger gradually with more and more releases. So the mod will less likely to end up dead. What do you guys think?

[LuBu]

lol, nah im English Mike Have had an interest in this period for along time. We could do with some skinners/modellers .