Archer's effects pack WIP

[HorseArcher]

Well, last night in my utter boredom of being locked up for almost a week, due to the flue, I reinstalled M2TW, not to play it, but to find something to fiddle with..to look over what else can be done with it.

While I enabled the dust effect for the running horses and units kick up, (just like I did a few months ago) I wondered if I would try to see if I can mess around with other special effects, including smoke, fire, sound.

The game has good effects without any mods, I'm not trying to say that it was done poorly, but after a while when the novelty wears off, we all want to see something new or unique.

I'm not sure how far I can go with this, we'll see.

The first effect I am working on is the dust kicked up while walking.

These are raw images, testing a particular settings:






colored the dust a little brownish, because the bright dust shows up weird on grassy places or at night:







Now i'm 90% satisfied with the amount of dust and the way its generated, I'm up to change something else, probably something with the guns and the explosions.

[Pope_Fred_I]

This looks awesome!

[Pnutmaster]

Glad to see you're back in business, Horsearcher. I want a dust mod 2.0

[Light]

Impressive!

[HorseArcher]

Wait until you guys get to see what I'm doing to the cannon impacts....wow.. the culverine and the monster bombard impacts......you don't wanna be there.

For the people wondering if things going to be realistic....it's a no. Imagine this as the Hollywood movie effects mod. ...I'll might be also changing sounds too....I don't like the sound of the flying cannonball, I need something scarier..

Ok, I've been messing around with the explosions and I'm getting to the point of being satisfied...seeing the destruction. But only on the ground for now.....later I'll check the explosions on the walls etc...

So anyway, here is fire exchange between 2 opponents... hehe, It is fun now to shoot fire balls and even just regular cannons make a nice big splashhh..

Different cannons and mortars have different way of impacting, some of them make a big smoke, some make a flash...some bounces around...














I was lucky, 3 different non-flaming shots landed right on the trebuchets:
The culverine and the 2 bombards. (see my grouped arties)



This one is a mortar hit. There are more particles flying around, but for some reason the game won't include it in the screenshot:



If there is a lot of black smoke, then it's a trebuchet tarred rock.

[The Walrus]

Very nice Archer

(mind if I merge your double posts, or are they there for some arcane reason?)

[HorseArcher]

I'm working on the sound effects, but I can't find really good ones. I don't like the ones in the game.
I'm talking about the cannonball flight and the impact effects. Anyone know a good places on the web for sound effects?

I want to make it, so you will fear the cannons and hear the cannonball coming at you and about to hit you.

[SonOfCrusader76]

I'm working on the sound effects, but I can't find really good ones. I don't like the ones in the game.
I'm talking about the cannonball flight and the impact effects. Anyone know a good places on the web for sound effects?

I want to make it, so you will fear the cannons and hear the cannonball coming at you and about to hit you.

Good stuff, one of the things that was missing from MTW2 that was in RTW was , if a unit took a direct hit from a flaming onager, it would throw men in all directions (as it should). Now, they just burn and fall over in neat lines....BORING!!!! Can you fix that?

[The Walrus]

I found this

http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/warsounds.shtml

[PurpleScotch]

Nice work Archer!

It would be nice if cannon impacts resembled the movies in a way that it would be visible, and now you make it come true . I love your work, I hate it when you have to switch to flaming cannon-balls just to know where your cannon hit and to get a feel of it.

Amazing, really!

[HorseArcher]

Nice work Archer!

It would be nice if cannon impacts resembled the movies in a way that it would be visible, and now you make it come true . I love your work, I hate it when you have to switch to flaming cannon-balls just to know where your cannon hit and to get a feel of it.

Amazing, really!

Ahhh....You don't know what is waiting for you... now the sounds are getting scary and cool...I was just testing the cannons again...all I can say is Welcome to Dog Green Sector, Omaha Beach!
I'll make a short movie soon!

[Prof]

*drooling* I hearby request the permission to use them in Polemarchia as soon as they are released ^^

[Miraj]

Nice stuff horse archer. Is this open for other mods to incorporate?

[HorseArcher]

Nice stuff horse archer. Is this open for other mods to incorporate?

As usual. I have my fun in the custom battles, tweak it around until I get somewhat satisfied then you can have it.

[The Walrus]

The daily life of Horsearcher

[HorseArcher]

The daily life of Horsearcher

Actually I haven't modded M2TW for a while now. This entire idea came, because I did a custom battle and I went like WTF...

Right now, I'll be working on the wall-effects.

Did anyone notice, that the walls are too easy to breach? (if you got cannons)

The culverine knocks the walll down in like 3-4 shots.
That's not right.

[toopers]

yeah its really unrealistic!! in several sieges the walls didnt breach for days, months, or even years !!

[HorseArcher]

yeah its really unrealistic!! in several sieges the walls didnt breach for days, months, or even years !!

Here is a the wall of the Eger fortress in Hungary. The Ottomans could not breach it with anything and they only took it over by a help of a traitor. Just observe the thickness (he is "standing" on the wall):



Ok, who wants the walls fixed with this mod?

Make it realistic, I won't go as far as you shoot them for 3 weeks, but stuff like, the ballista is only good to break maybe the gate, but useless against the wall, same with the serpentine might damage the towers but ineffective against the wall.

If you wanna go in, you better bring some big guns!

Anyone?

my only concern is, that the AI will bring some puny little crap cannon for the siege and ends up leaving the battlefield, not being able to breach the walls.

[PurpleScotch]

I agree with you, walls are too weak in M2TW.

[HorseArcher]

Alright. I raised the wall strength 5 times of what they were. This isn't the final yet, but you gonna have to concentrate your firepower to one location, if you want to breach it. I'm not sure about how the AI will handle this, but I'm afraid, they won't be able to brake in, so I will test it soon and lower it if necessary.

I tried making a video and I did about the impacts, but it became so large, that I'm gonna have to trim it down today, because it's over 68Mb -compressed to mpeg!

I will upload it to youtube soon.

By the way, yesterday I completely revised the effects, because the vanilla effects weren't satisfactory to expand on, so I introduced new effects but it still might be further editing to be done, to make it cool as possible. I don't have a screen and it is hard to show what it's like , the video would be a much better presentation.

The sound is cool now, you will hear the cannonball whizzing by with a satisfying amount of bass, it's very "hollywod-ish" if you got a good speaker system, you'll love it. Same with the satisfying "boom" when it impacts the ground or the walls.