[Discussion] My Life AAR - Questions and Answers in here!

[molls]

Allright while I am preparing a new update () you guys can bash me with your precise!! questions about methods, tricks and editing I used in my AAR.
If it turns out that there are no questions anymore and no interest in this thread the moderators may delete this thread, I just didn't want to spam the AAR thread with this.

Yes please?

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

I may have asked this before, but I'm willing to know about how did you capture those screenies, and which editor did you use and how, to polish them.

[molls]

I may have asked this before, but I'm willing to know about how did you capture those screenies, and which editor did you use and how, to polish them.

---how did you capture those screenies

- I'm using FRAPS, (illegal legalized) to cap screenies.
All of the pics with close up /or very weird angles or lonely peoples are made with CUSTOM BATTLES and the -movie_cam.
The chapter where Verzo is training our hero for the first time shows some tricks:

This pic:


I recall people asking about this one.
Ok 1. obvious = -movie_cam.
Thus 2. = custom battle

Now the thing is: An Illyrian Slinger stabs an Illyrian Elite Soldier. But they're the same faction?
Trick: I'm using 2 models for our hero atm: First, the Illyrian slinger (who has a buckler!!) and second the Thracian Slinger who is without shield and shown here.

So I set up a Battle with me=Thrace and AI=Illyria, and forced my slingers into meelee with the Illyrian Black Feathers!

Any more questions to certain pics? Just ask!

The only pics I shot in the campaign are the City Pics and the Battle Pics and of course (which I'm very proud of) the pics for Chapter 5.


----which editor did you use

For the first two chapters I used PS 2, then switched over to GIMP 2, which suits me fine as I'm not the pro Editor (yet )

----how to polish them

To polish, not much but allways the same:

Enlightening some bright parts (as on a Helmet, Swords, or Shields) with the dodge tool (I've the German GIMP so dunno about the words in english)
Sharpen them a bit sometimes.
And most important put a higher Light/Shadow Colour Contrast and a bit more Brightness.

[Jingles]

I had to do something weird like this for my AAR. I wanted to do Normans versus Saxons in that custom battle to simulate hastings....except there are no Norman and Saxon factions. There's just England, who recruit Norman AND saxon units. So I had to muck around for a bit and I gave France saxon units for custom battles, thus I could finally re enact Hastings.

Took a while though...

My Question is, how did you get those screens of the landscape when our slinger friend is travelling?

[molls]

I had to do something weird like this for my AAR. I wanted to do Normans versus Saxons in that custom battle to simulate hastings....except there are no Norman and Saxon factions. There's just England, who recruit Norman AND saxon units. So I had to muck around for a bit and I gave France saxon units for custom battles, thus I could finally re enact Hastings.

Took a while though...

These efforts are what makes one AAR special

My Question is, how did you get those screens of the landscape when our slinger friend is travelling?

The answer will make you slap your forehead

See these 3 positions where I took the pics from.
I left my mousecursor on each of them, opened the console and typed show_cursorstat(s)? [dont remember correctly]
So I was given the coordinates of the different spots. (form e.g. 147,23)
Now I grabbed myself some foreign army somewhere led by a family member and remembered his name. ( XYZ)
Then I opened console again, typed move_character XYZ 147,23 and BAM, the foreign army was standing on the said spot!

And now, you guess it, I moved a unit of mine to attack it.
So I entered a battle and could screenshot the whole area

I came up with this idea after making my mind about how I could make the character travel.
And this method is great! It lets you travel through the ingame world of Rome Total War and as you could see the landscape actually SHOWS what the campaign map shows!

That's why I chose to make chapter 5 so "boring". I was surprised how well you could travel and see each region, each field of the whole campaign map connected with eachother with great detail and graphics and wanted to show this to the TWC Members.

[Jingles]

Huh, that's pretty cool. I always liked the way the map connected together on the battlemap. I loved that feature ever since I played Vanilla. It's one of the reasons I don't prefer mods with scaled up campaign maps, because you lose some of that. Especially if you get a battle at the boot of Italy, and can see Sicily on the battlemap in the distance, I think that's real attention to detail. After all, CA could just have given you a random battlefield each time, but they didn't.

[molls]

I get the feeling that the new chapter 6 sucks somehow upon recognizing the (missing/) reactions.
Please tell me the things you did not like about it!

[Jingles]

Actually I thought chapter 6 was pretty darn good... Decidedly unique to just about any other AAR in every way.

Keep up the good work is all I can say, really