Sorry for butchering your mod, but...

[Finrod Felagund]

Hey Aradan/guys,

I've been lurking a while since modrealms went down - there I was logged on as Finarfin - and have been working on a little mini-mod of my own...

First up I want to apologise for taking something beautiful that the FATW team have created & then butchering it. FATW is a great piece of work & the more I've looked into it, the more I see how talented you guys truly are.

Having never programmed, modded or otherwise got technical with anything computery in my life, I started playing around with FATW by following a few of the mod guides up in twcenter. No problems! I got playing with elves, dwarves, dale fella's, all good. I then managed to change it up so I could shortcut a lot of the early conquests & take me straight to the hardline battles fought after the usual 40-60 turns. I was pretty pleased with myself - I'm an engineer, a musician, a craftsman, a blacksmith, but not a programmer.

Being a fan of The Silmarillion more so than LOTR, I decided to take on my biggest challenge yet - to recreate the Wars of the Jewels. The aim is to have a simple Free Peoples vs. Morgoth campaign starting just at the cusp of the Battle of Sudden Flame. Eventually I'm going to give a little idea I had about having my characters as ancilleries & my bodyguard units named purely as 'Bodyguard of Nargothrond/Menegroth/Hithlum,etc' rather than 'Feanor/Finarfin/Fingolfin/Beren' to avoid the whole elves dying thing. Also going to introduce aor scheme so the 'correct' units are only recruitable in the right areas, at the moment they will all be recruitable from all settlements. Anyway, I'm digressing really..

I copied the CI folder, changed the name of the original to CI2 (that way, when I want to play my 'normal' FATW game, I just have to change the CI folder names around). Next up I went into CI...\world\etc, copied the new shadow folder and renamed it war_of_the_jewels. I stole some maps that some other more talented people had done (there is silmarillion:total war & first age:total war, either defunct or not for rtw) and resized/tidied them up in GIMP (nice programme, first time I'd used it) to the same as TNS ones, and replaced ALL the map files in the w_o_t_j folder with my newer ones. I did a bit more butchering with names, campaign descriptions, etc. Couldn't get it to work despite following tutorials to the word so went back to basics.

I recopied my tns folder, called it war_of_the__family_jewels and gave it a shot. Came up as a normal tns campaign. Cool. Went in, swapped all the map files for my w_o_t_j ones and fired rome up again. Started a new campaign (with w_o_t_f_j) and low and behold, up comes tns campaign, but with a slightly confused looking radar.

So my question, after this long and arduous post, is, how is it that after completely replacing the map_fog.tga, map_heights.tga, map_regions.tga, etc, in my mod folder, I've managed to come up with TNS campaign map?

Cheers for reading through & if this post needs to be moved to the modding forum, be my guest!

[StealthEvo]

I have to admit. That sounds pretty badass. Good job! As for the mapping files. Ask Azza (Aradan)

[Aradan]

Have you deleted map.rwm in the the_new_shadow folder?

[Finrod Felagund]

Have you deleted map.rwm in the the_new_shadow folder?

Turns out I was modifying the wrong folder - what I've done now is screwup my duplicated TNS installation. Stupid, school boy error. No problem though, I've got backups. Cheers for the reply anyway, Aradan.

If/when this ever happens - and it is likely it will crash & burn before I go travelling in 3 weeks time - I'll be sure to forward the files on to you, if you're interested. I'm not making this for public release as such but it'd only polite to share my work with the people who made the original product.

[Aradan]

Sure thing, a Beleriand map would be very nice. Good luck with that.

[CountMRVHS]

Sorry for an OT-question, but does GIMP allow you to do the map modding that I usually hear people using Photoshop and PaintShopPro for? I'm a little suspicious of "free" programs, but also too cheap to buy the expensive ones (can't win).

Good luck with your modding!

[Finrod Felagund]

Sorry for an OT-question, but does GIMP allow you to do the map modding that I usually hear people using Photoshop and PaintShopPro for? I'm a little suspicious of "free" programs, but also too cheap to buy the expensive ones (can't win).

Yeah mate, GIMP seems to be pretty good for it I think (not that I've tried anything else, but I'm pretty backward with computers & I'm managing to get results). Biggest hassle is the y-axis being reversed when compared to the Rome system.

Good luck with your modding!

I need it! We'll see over the weekend if I can get my strat map working in a basic form...

[Finrod Felagund]

Had no luck getting my strat map working Friday & as I was packing the laptop away, disaster struck - dropped my trackerball mouse & the centre & left clicks are now defunct. Great. Down to touchpad, which is no good for GIMP or Rome.

I'm heading off to asia for 12-18 months travelling in about 3 weeks, so chances are I won't be doing any more work to this. Ah well, was a good idea. I'll upload the files I managed to mess around with anyway, perhaps someone out there wants to take the project on.

Good luck with FATW3! I'll be missing it

[Aradan]

Yes, Gimp can be used for mapping.

[Aradan]

Too bad about your project.


Enjoy travelling around, Dominion of Men will be waiting when you return.

[StealthEvo]

Azza. It's Return of the Elves; The Reslaughtering. Stop giving people mixed messages. Geez...

[Finrod Felagund]

I've attached the files I've been messing around with.

War of the Jewels.rar contains my original (and most comprehensive) campaign attempt, plus my final maps (in map files 3) & files I needed to change from the /data folder.

War of the Jewels2.rar contains my second attempt after the first didn't work. It's a lot less messed around with but does include the original maps I'd stolen from the MTWII-mod, First Age: Total War (is it stealing if you give the original modders credit?).

As a disclaimer, I am in no way a programmer, scripter, graphic artist or modder, so this represents an attempt by someone with very little computer knowledge to create a representation of the period following the Battle of Sudden Flame in Beleriand. I'd encourage anyone else who is unsure of modding but interested in Tolkien to download GIMP, read a few tutorials & have a try. What I've made is a start for everyone else to fix & improve. It'd be nice to think that in a year or two, when I get back from wandering around the globe, a small team of amatuers have popped up and put something together...

As outlined above, the intent was to have each of the major characters of the First Age who are alive at the time of the Battle of SF represented as an ancillery, with named characters with a very limited option of 'names', so the game would say something like "Bodyguards of Nargothrond have been born!", replacing the word 'born' with 'began training(?)'. Then all the characters attached to that bodyguard could be transfered across before the bodyguard 'dies' (would change the text to say, like, 'retired'). Would mean that if the bodyguard was wiped out in a battle, the characters would be dead & there's no coming back(I was going to have it so that none of the ancilleries would regenerate or whatever the term is), but also means that they can be sustained across several bodyguards without worrying about elves 'dying' aged 65. This would also work to a degree with Dwarven & Edain characters, but they would be immortal too. Hmmmm. Eventually things like the Silmarils could also be represented, but that is a way down the line yet. Anyway, what I've implemented in War of the Jewels.rar is actually just the Houses of the Noldor as named characters - far less exciting, but easier to implement to get the strat map working (which it still doesn't).

I've also made it so that all Free Peoples units are available to be recruited at all of their settlements. Once the map was functioning I would've needed to implement hidden resources & toggle the building requirements so that dwarves are only recruitable in Nogrod & Belegost, Noldor in specific areas, Sindar in others, Edain types in others. The idea is that the Edain are supplicant to the Noldor, with who they took service, therefore the elves have control over their units. Dwarves we just have to bend lore a little & say that Maedhros had them nominally under his command at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, so we'll have them under Noldor commanders here too.

One last thing, I had been using the Sarmatians as the Free Peoples & Celts as Morgoth. Might be easier to use empire_east as Free Peoples and/or lombardii as Morgoth, but it's the call of whoever takes it on as to whether that remains. In my head I've been thinking of most of the Dale/Goth units as Edain, Dwarves/Saxons as Dwarves (obv) & Elves/Sarmatians as Elves (obv). In Doriath only Sindar would be recruitable, inc. the Galadhrim units (would need unit_descr change) who would not be recruitable elsewhere. In Ossiriand you could get the Nandor units (again, descr_change) but nothing else, Dor Lomin Edain units, Hithlum Noldor only, etc. The idea being that it's a short campaign where the loss of one region actually has a big impact on the units you can field in battle. Morgoth would start with only 2 regions, but massive stacks of orc units to come through Beleriand. The Free Peoples would have limited numbers, but effective units. I'm sure you get the idea. I probably won't be posting much anymore but don't fully disappear for a couple of weeks yet, so will keep an eye out if anyone is interested.

As this will probably be my final post before I disappear I just want to say a big thankyou to Aradan & the team. I've already thanked you heaps & you all know how great you are so I won't repeat myself, but I have had many, many enjoyable hours with FATW and for that I am grateful. I look forward to one day getting into DoM/Return of the Noldor/Revenge of Durin!

[Aradan]

I'm intrigued now, have to take a peek at the files!



Enjoy travelling, thx for the kind words!


EDIT: No wonder the game CTDd, thee are a number of errors, at least in the map_heights file. By the by, do the First Age mod people know of your uploading of their files here?

[Finrod Felagund]

No wonder the game CTDd, thee are a number of errors, at least in the map_heights file.

Yeah, I'd picked up on that when I'd read a different how-to. I made a lot of errors in resizing tga's, didn't have GIMP set up properly. I made a bit of an attempt to fix the coastline in map files 3, but nothing concrete. Like I said, I'm no expert & once I was using the touchpad it was game over really.

By the by, do the First Age mod people know of your uploading of their files here?

Errrr.... They will in about 5 minutes

EDIT: PM'ed Gigantus....