Previews?

[swhunter]

The fans are asking no more faction previews, so the game will get done faster. Will it make a difference?
I think we should have the last one for the Romans, and the rest will be a surprise when they get the mod.
Unless it doesn't matter.

[cherryfunk]

Actually, another preview before the Romans is probably a good idea. Previews go a long ways towards keeping potential fans interested and expectant...

In fact I can think of two previews that we should probably start working on:

1. Another Non-Faction unit preview, like we did before with the Bosporans. Which non-faction units have not yet been previewed?

2. The Boii preview. This is the 'secret' faction that we've been careful not to reveal; it's totally unique in the history of RTW mods, and it occupies a new and important strategic location that will change the flow of campaigns. The Boii deserve to be revealed properly, with a full preview.

In fact we could make the Boii preview extra impressive by showing a few other features, like the new interface changes Tzar has done and of course some more hints of the new battle environments. We might have a section of the preview talking about the Boii homeland and regions like Bavaria and Bohemia that still bear their name to this day. Some scenery screenshots taken from within their kingdom on the strat would both bring the faction to life and demonstrate just how far advanced the RS2 battle environments have become...

That might be the ideal place for screenshots that focus on the environment like this one:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[swhunter]

I guess let them see everything?
no surprises?
O..well, what ever everyone wants.

[aja5191]

What factions do we have left to preview?

Boii
Romans

...is that it?

And besides that, there's the environment, starting positions, and all the traits, ancillaries, buildings, and all that.

I understand we want to do the Romans and environment last...so where does that leave us?

[rory o'kane]

we haven't done Carthage.

[cherryfunk]

I guess let them see everything?
no surprises?
O..well, what ever everyone wants.

There's plenty to show without giving everything away...

we haven't done Carthage.

And the Gallaeci...

If we did all four, the order might be:

- Carthage (with associated AOR units)

- Gallaeci

- Boii

- Rome (2 or 3 different previews)

[leif_erikson]

There's plenty to show without giving everything away...

And the Gallaeci...

If we did all four, the order might be:

- Carthage (with associated AOR units)

- Gallaeci

- Boii

- Rome (2 or 3 different previews)

add Pergamon to that list...

[dvk901]

There's plenty to show without giving everything away...

And the Gallaeci...

If we did all four, the order might be:

- Carthage (with associated AOR units)

- Gallaeci

- Boii

- Rome (2 or 3 different previews)

This order is fine with me, and I agree there is plenty to show. The problem is our limitations on who can do this stuff.

As far as showing environmental stuff......geez, the 'old' new environment was far ahead of anything anyone had ever done. The stuff that has been done since is a light year ahead of what anyone would even understand! I think people are just sitting on their hands waiting for this to get released so they can SEE how things were done, rather than trying to figure it out and compete with it. Sure...you can add trees and grass and fiddle around with settings, but we've dealt with and thought about things like how it affects gameplay, the look of the 'whole' of a climate....not just jamming something new into an existing one, moving climates around to make them more useful in portraying the overall picture we want....and that's just a start. I'm convinced that even with an understanding of WHAT we did, it would take people months and months to try and duplicate it.....maybe even a year. Seriously, there are things I learned from Tone working on this that involve the geography database and how it works with the typical RTW map files that...if never spoken of.....might never be figured out. The answers were and have been staring people in the face for a long time.....but it really takes some in depth thought and analysis to put it all together. One thing that still gets me is what Tone did with the grass. I stared at, played with, experimented with those files for a year and never even 'dreamed' that you could do what he did. Even when he showed what he did, I STILL couldn't understand how he did it. That's just how confusing some of these issues are, and how 'hidden' the capabilities of RTW really were. In five years since it's release, NO ONE ever figured that out. It's kind of shocking, really.

So what we show there is up to Tone....but really, I have no fear that anyone is going to look at it and say: "Wow! I think I'll go duplicate that a minute." Good luck with that. LOL

[rory o'kane]

i thought Carthage was going to be last but one, that way we could sneakily give small hints at what the Pre-Marian Romans look like...

[Tzar]

If we don't have more then 2-3 month before release I wouldn't make any more previews. New environment and Romans should be kept as a surprise.
If you do decaide for more previews then we should't have full faction preview but just few units.
This is just my opinion.

[pacco]

I agree with Tzar.

[apple]

I say have rome+carthage+ environment as a large last week preview special and skip the rest.

[tone]

Well, I'll get a couple of screenshots together for this POTW submission then. I agree with what you're saying in many ways. All this new environment stuff has taken us collectively about a year to do so in many ways there's no danger of anyone trying to replicate it. You'd need the descr_geography.db editor, the grasses, the trees, the rivers, the ground texture.....etc...etc. It's taken me nearly 3 months of solid work just to do the stuff I've done, let alone DVK, Gennosuke and Gotthard's work.

Of course there's bound to be some guys like Rise of the Nations who'll make some changes, but it'd take even them another year or so to be able to do the sort of things we've done.

[Arnspac]

Pergamon and the Gallaeci could be done on a smaller scale with no add ons. Just labelled unit shots and some battle scenes.
I would hate to see them passed up. The Boii could be a slimmed down preview similar to Dacia. Carthage and Rome as week long previews, ie one section per day. Environment can take a week on it's own and could be parked in between Rome and Carthage.

Just my two cents.

[Ketchup]

The thing about working on previews, though, is that things are constantly improving (especially Tone's trees and the new grass etc.).

[Brusilov]

The problem with the environment is that it will be very hard to not show it after it's been added to the beta. Unless we only preview units in the desert or the snow? Even that would reveal some of the changes - the palms and winter landscape (unless it was a 'desolate desert' (I presume we could find such a location on the campaign map)). I would hate to not see the new environments in the beta simply because the team doesn't want to preview it (I can understand that they don't want them shown).

I guess if the team wanted to reveal the environment before the other factions it would make the previews easier. However, we could always mess with people's minds by only previewing units in the desert or snow. Would that get them wondering why are the previews only in these environments?

[Argent Usher]

Well we could add some ground fog "per photoshopping" or we make a "fighting on a wall" special preview.

Tone and DVK can surely easy make a small tweak to give the POTW screengrabber an old battleterrain v.1.0 back. Let's decide where it would be a good place but a grassy plain should be our first choice.

[dvk901]

I think a preview done like the Dacian one would be great...simple, and people loved it. A grassy plain would be fine, and close ups of the units.

[Mulattothrasher]

My free time varies a bit, but, I can do the Boii preview in my sleep. All I need is one of you guys to supply the pics from your high end gaming rigs and I can fill in the rest. Theres a wealth of Boii/Boii-Volcae regional Celtic archaeological info and pics that I would love to present, and it can possibly be wrapped into into a pt. I and pt. II.

[cherryfunk]

My free time varies a bit, but, I can do the Boii preview in my sleep. All I need is one of you guys to supply the pics from your high end gaming rigs and I can fill in the rest. Theres a wealth of Boii/Boii-Volcae regional Celtic archaeological info and pics that I would love to present, and it can possibly be wrapped into into a pt. I and pt. II.

I'd love to help Mulatto -- in particular I'd like to address the question of why we picked the Boii, the strategic role they play in the campaign etc...