Demon's Souls : Total War

[Killerbee]

1. Introduction

I'm not sure if there are some of you who have played this game, but I think most that did could agree with me when I say 'That game was(/is) awesome !'. Well, I decided to make a mod about it. For those who don't, here's the background story :

King Allant the Twelfth brought unprecedented prosperity to his people by channeling the Soul Arts. However, in his lust for power, he awakened the Deep One, and with it, a horde of Demons. The Demons hunt for the human's souls. Those who lose their souls, lose their minds. Those who lost their minds attack the sane, and chaos reigns. The Demons feed themselves with the power of a human soul. And the power of a mature Demon's Soul, is beyond imagination. Boletaria was shrouded in a deep fog, and those who dared enter, never returned. Until Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs broke free, and told the rest of the world of Boletaria's plight. Many heroes, including Biorr of the Twing Fangs; Sage Freke, the Visionary; Saint Urbain; Yurt, The Silent Chief; Saint Astraea and her loyal knight, Garl Vinland; and many more. But there was one who broke free - a sole knight. Will you be the saviour of the world ? Or will the Demons find a new slave ?

2. About the Mod

The mod is quite revolutionary in the way it works, so I have included a "few" words that would explain the mod This would also be included in the read-me, if the game would be released

1 - The Start of the game

The idea is to create the ultimate RPG-mod. And the RPG-elemnts start immediately from the beginning. I was thinking of letting a script fire which makes the player choose from 3 classes (that were also included in Demon's Souls), and each class has their own good and bad things :

Wanderer
Soldier
Hunter

In the real game, the Wanderer was very lightly equipped but had some deadly weapons - I was thinking of giving the Wanderer class the option to create cavalry units from the beginning. As a bad side, however, they are all badly equipped. The soldier wad the normal class in the game, and it will be here as well : No special good stuff, and no bad stuff. Just somewhere in between. The Hunter would be the only class to be able to make archers from the start - but again, badly equipped.

I was thinking about creating 3 custom generals - 1 with a Soldier's model, 1 with a Hunter's model, and 1 with a Wanderer's model (perhaps riding on horseback ?). The player chooses his class (for instance Soldier), and a script fires and kills off the other 2 choices (=Generals). The player then starts with 1 settlement (The Nexus) and then has to fight his way through the world.

2 - During the Game

During his fight for the main settlements (Boletarian Palace for example - for those who have played the game), the player also gets to stumble across "treasures". The treasures would actually be settlements (in their lowest form, meaning no wall or w/e), and guarded with a small garisson, depending on the size of the treasure. Treasures could include the option to create horses (for those who didn't pick Wanderer in the beginning), or just get extra money. The strat map model would be a stereotypical 'treasure chest'. The treasures would have to be very spread, but the map is large enough for it (map_heights is 701*701), and obviously, the good treasures would have to be far away from the beginning point.

3 - Main settlements and Bosses
In Demon's Souls, there are 5 worlds : 1 normal castle world, 1 world in a tunnel, 1 world partially in a swamp and partially in a tower, 1 world in an open wasteland, and 1 world in a swamp. I'd pick 3 out of them (the Tunnel, the Castle and the Wasteland), and create 1 big setlement for each of them - meaning there are 3 "Big" settlements in the game - later releases could feature more of them. Each settlement is guarded by a boss - and Demon's Souls has it's share of huge and awesome bosses. For the castle, I'd pick the Boss "Tower Knight", for the Tunnel I'd pick "Flamelurker" (I'm thinking a remodelled and textured Balrog), and for the Wasteland I was thinking about either "Adjudicator" or "Old Hero", or "Vanguard". With the recent discovery of single-man units, this should all be possible. I can model them, but I'd need someone to rig and port them in-game.

The goal is obviously to capture all 3 "Big" settlements.

3. Units

The Units system is pretty easy - there are several types of armor :

Leather
Hard Leather (optional)
Chainmail
Plate Mail
Bare-Breasted (male only )
Fluted Armor (either this one or Plate Mail for vs.1)

The units are only available in the settlement in which you found the armor - meaning that if you found the Plate Mail treasure on the map, you can only create units armed with Plate Mail there. If you chose Soldier in the beginning - who are equipped with Plate Mail - , you can create Plate Mail units in the Nexus, BUT ONLY PLATE MAIL UNITS. You'll have to find the Leather armor treasure to create cheaper units ! The Wanderer and Hunter both start with leather, but Wanderer also has stables (which would also be a treasure), and Hunter has archery ranges (again, would also be a treasure).

Each armor has x (needs to be decided for the first release) kinds of units, and could include :

Normal Man-at-Arms (Sword and shield)
2-Handed Swordsman (perhaps also a 2H Axeman)
Spear-and-shield guys (same as Man-at-Arms but armed with a spear)
Halberdiers (which are essentially the Pikemen of Med2)
Archers
Cavalery

Each armour has it's plusses and minusses -

Leather : Cheap but weak
Fluted Armor : Extremely Expensive but extremely strong
Hard Leather : Good balance between cost/durability
etc...

So if I would include all the types of soldiers and armors, that'd make a complete roster of 36 units.

4. Progress and Team Members needed

So far, I have created :

A few textures/models that we can work with.
A map (heights map finished, just working on the regions and ground types)
UI is redone (I even made a new cursor from scratch)
Campaign description

What do I need ?

Mostly Scripters and Modellers (who are willing to rig a model)

5. Final Words

I know this is an ambitious project, but man, wouldn't it be awesome if it were to be created ?

[Tsarsies]

I very much like this idea as it goes against the grain of created mods or mod proposals in general.

I would however suggest a smaller map, as small as it can be that still allows quite a few settlements and represents the world as best possible. The reason is because your mod idea will obviously be heavily scripted. Any mod that plans to be heavily scripted should reduce the map and factions.

I like that your idea is outside the box, so to speak.

I can not help with scripting as i have my own project i am working on but i will keep an eye on this

[Vaz]

Looks interesting. I'm not sure I'd like to commit to much more atm, but an idea for your general is to use traits, similar to how crusades faction leaders worked. I.e, generic general model, +1 = wander, +2 = hunter, +3 = warrior or whatever?

[Nesimî]

The Units system is pretty easy - there are several types of armor :

Leather
Hard Leather (optional)
Chainmail
Plate Mail
Bare-Breasted (male only )
Fluted Armor (either this one or Plate Mail for vs.1)

Damn

Mostly Scripters and Modellers (who are willing to rig a model)

You lazy jerk

[Nesimî]

How would this work, like god of war? In battles would you have to kill hundreds of enemies as one person?

[Killerbee]

You lazy jerk

I can model everything, but I can't rig it since I have Blender, and I need someone with either Milkshape or 3dsMax to rig it

How would this work, like god of war? In battles would you have to kill hundreds of enemies as one person?

Nope. While your general won't be weak in any way, you'll have to create units along the way in the treasure-settlements that you find - you could also create all your soldiers in your starting settlement (The Nexus), but this would be a bad idea if you've progressed far in the game

Looks interesting. I'm not sure I'd like to commit to much more atm, but an idea for your general is to use traits, similar to how crusades faction leaders worked. I.e, generic general model, +1 = wander, +2 = hunter, +3 = warrior or whatever?

I also thought about something like that, but I'm gonna keep it the way it is : 3 custom generals (perhaps also with custom models ?), and each has a few traits/ancillaries that are exclusive to that class

I very much like this idea as it goes against the grain of created mods or mod proposals in general.

I would however suggest a smaller map, as small as it can be that still allows quite a few settlements and represents the world as best possible. The reason is because your mod idea will obviously be heavily scripted. Any mod that plans to be heavily scripted should reduce the map and factions.

I like that your idea is outside the box, so to speak.

I can not help with scripting as i have my own project i am working on but i will keep an eye on this

Thanks for the feedback I also noticed (when testing the map in-game), that the map was quite large, so perhaps I'd better scale it down to vanilla size

[Nesimî]

Well, Theoden King, I might be able to do some skinning. But I wont rig, god I hate rigging...
How will you export them from Blender? I used Blender for a while and the only python script I could find for ms3d exports had a broken link. I found a part of its script on blenderartists.com but I dont know any python.

[Killerbee]

I was thinking about exporting to a .obj file, and then anyone could import it

Btw, I completed (or almost) the Adjudicator's model

Front View :



Side View :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

First I sculpted it in Sculptris :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Then i greatly recuded the amount of faces

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And then I just unwrapped and finished up in Blender

[Nesimî]

That looks.... unorthodox...

[Killerbee]

That looks.... unorthodox...

Ofcourse, he's naught but a large blob of fat and meant

[Hrobatos]

like...catholic?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Killerbee]

Oh and btw, he's not definitve yet or so, I might still take Old Hero or something

He was practise so I could try workflow

[Killerbee]

Vanguard model :



And the axe he'll carry :

[Nesimî]

Whats with all the triangles? I though you were using Blender

[Killerbee]

Don't worry, it gives a bit of a biased view on the model

I sculpted the model in Sculptris, which uses triangles, then reduced the amount of traingles drastically, and then imported and UV mapped in Blender

Here's a textured view :



Yes I know he looks like a stuffed animal

[The Holy Pilgrim]

Don't worry, it gives a bit of a biased view on the model

I sculpted the model in Sculptris, which uses triangles, then reduced the amount of traingles drastically, and then imported and UV mapped in Blender

Here's a textured view :



Yes I know he looks like a stuffed animal

Aww, he looks so cute!

[Killerbee]

Hey guys, just wanted to say(/bump) that the progress is going really good and that it's time to move on to the units now

After that, I'll finish the map (meaning creating a bunch of treasures and -hidden- paths), and then there's just a small piece of scripting and coding left

If anyone is interested to join, please contact me

[Killerbee]

Tower Knight :



(It's because of the render and angle that he looks so robot-ish, he'll look different in-game )

And his shield :

[Nesimî]

I think you're going to have to make an animation for the tongue-thingy.

[Killerbee]

I think you're going to have to make an animation for the tongue-thingy.

I'm not gonna include him

And I'll try to get permission to use the troll animation from TATW