New Clan colours, Banners and textures!

[Jace11]

7th Sept 2011: New version

New version is complete. I have been using it for some time and am happy with the colours now so it’s time to upload it. I have also started some work on some banners.

In this version:

The basic clan colour balance mod (which has been updated again) plus some bonus modifications:-

All factions uniforms and some banners have been recoloured to remove over-saturated colours. As in previous versions, faction colour schemes have been generally preserved except for several of the "white" minor factions which were very similar to each other, so some variation has been added to these. These have been tweaked and reworked again.

Also, unique unit colours are similar to faction colours again - so no pink Date No-Dachi, no red Chosokabe Bow Samurai etc as in previous version. Differences are very minor now for unique units (eg. some Hojo siege units have a black jingasa colour but retain the same blue colour as other Hojo units).

Jingasa mod - a plain jingasa texture for all ashigaru units (includes variant files, textures and atlas files) has been added while maintaining the old "spot" version so both versions appear in units. Only the Ikko Ikki ashigaru units do not have the new plain jingasa (their ashigaru have other headwear).

No-Dachi Samurai - have shoulder armour, I added this to cover their bad texture / mesh problem where their arms join the torso.

Very large white robes removed from Ikko Ikki units, due to mesh clipping problems.

General’s horo texture has been changed to fix the blending problem between two similarly saturated colours. Looks nice now even if the colours are nearly the same (see pics lower down this page).

This is all contained in the modified_colours.pack

Unzip and copy this pack to your data folder – remove the old version – named: colour_balance.pack or colour_balance_only.pack from your data folder etc.









Please try it, and give feedback. New big patch from CA is due within weeks coming, so this will need a big update later this month.

If you need a version requiring something removing for compatibility or just personal preference, let me know and i'll see to it... probably.

Note on banners: removed because I made a mistake with them. They do, in fact, appear on the campaign map. Not just the battlefield as I thought. Some of the new banners have colour schemes that conflict with the colour of the army strength bars and others have their mon obscured when an army is at full strength. I can alter the banners, remove strength bars from the campaign, or potentially do a workaround with the bars somehow - as I think they are quite important. Thoughts on this?

[Little Legionaire]

Godspeed Jace!

Wondering the colors and results.

[McCarronXLD]

Looking forward to it

[Jace11]

Here is the first version.

Consider this a minor colour rebalance, please. Don't expect massive differences in colour schemes. Some clans still need a bit of a tweak.

Edit: Download link removed, new version uploaded at top of page.

[Whiskeyjack]

Hey mate been trying this out for the last few days, I like it a lot. I am not sure if its possible, but is it possible to increase the contrast between clothes and armour/sanshimo so that when zoomed out the soldiers don't all look one colour. I hope you understand what i mean, Tokugawa for example looks good close up with white (ish) clothes and brown armour but when you zoom out they look more or less pure white. Its one of the things that bugs me the most with shogun 2. In any case your mod is a big improvement over vanilla.

[Jace11]

Hey mate been trying this out for the last few days, I like it a lot. I am not sure if its possible, but is it possible to increase the contrast between clothes and armour/sanshimo so that when zoomed out the soldiers don't all look one colour. I hope you understand what i mean, Tokugawa for example looks good close up with white (ish) clothes and brown armour but when you zoom out they look more or less pure white. Its one of the things that bugs me the most with shogun 2. In any case your mod is a big improvement over vanilla.

Not sure I've tried a few things but nothing really solves it and I hate this too. The white is caused by the second RGB in the sashimon (in Tokugawa case the sashimon's white background). This more or less determines the colour of the army when zoomed out. Notice that when zoomed right out you can look at a tokugawa army from different corners of the map and the colour has changed. The lighting effect changes are easily noticed if you strafe the camera left and right at the start of a battle against them.

I also noticed that with some clans, as the camera closes in on them, the colour changes twice. Something happens as LODs come in and the models appear pure white (in Tokugawa's case) then it goes darker again as the uniform colours are represented. I don't think I can do anything about it.. Maybe someone else can, but I think I mentioned how much I hate this effect on tokugawa clan in another thread months ago.

[Jace11]

New version upload and some screens to explain. Please refer to version 1 info for the background info on this mod (in the first post).

[M2TWRocks]

This mod hasn't got a lot of attention. You should try posting some screens. It's actually a really good graphic mod. Some of the clan colors are rich and downright beautiful. Nice work!

[Demokritos]

Welcome to the time-consuming but gratifying world of TWS2 uniforms and banners modifications, Jace!

You should definitely follow M2TWRocks' advice and put up some screenies of your work.

[Jace11]

Glad you like it. I haven't updated anything for a week (moved house) and I was kind of happy with it. Any further changes will be to add more unique colour units. Screenies are kinda pointless for this, the differences are slight for many clans and lighting conditions vary from battle to battle so...

I've had a bit of trouble logging in too... damn hackers.. but my PC is up and running again now. Trying to survive my Ikko Ikki legendary campaign. May return to this mod soon for a few tweaks.

[M2TWRocks]

Nice job man.

[M2TWRocks]

Jace11, thanks again for this mod. After setting up a bunch of custom battles with your mod, I think I actually like your original better. I'm not a fan of having different colors within the same faction. I'm using the original now and I simply can't tell you enough how much I enjoy it. In conjunction with the no gloss mod, it looks the way vanilla should have looked to begin with.

[Jace11]

Ok, well if you want I can upload the latest version without the unique units stuff, as that is in a separate table. Or, if you know PFM, then just delete the units to faction colurs table. I'm also unsure whether I like it 100%, I think for special units only maybe, like DLC? My new Fire cav look great so I'm keeping them I think. Plus Ronin colours are a bit nicer. I've redone chosokabe archers again but maybe you're right. Zoomed out, the clan colours dominate anyway because of the banners.

[Little Legionaire]

Screens are great and i'll try that mod ASAP Thanks for the initiative and hardwork Jace.

[Jace11]

Cool, I was going to leave it at version 3, but I decided to try a jingasa variant mod and hopefully that will appear in version 4. The idea is to add a few different patterns on jingasa to add variation to ashigaru (probably the most used unit in game!). They have to use a colour mask etc so they change colour with each clan. I had a real nice picture I'd saved of various jingasa designs that were not clan affiliated patterns, i.e neutral, but guess what. Lost it...

Anyway, editing atlas files, textures and unit_variant files is pretty complicated if you haven't done it before but found some good tools and tutorials in the forums here. I did a trial one to start with, it took about an hour, but now I know how to do it, I should be able to add more quicker, here it is: just 6 points on the helmet. Kept old spot variant obviously..



There is space in the ashigaru atlas textures for maybe 4 or 5 more, any suggestions?

[pisoiasul]

Very nice job , but please keep the future jingasa variant mod separated from the main color balance mod.
+ Rep

[Demokritos]

Nice idea with the jingasas, Jace. I think the new jingasas would look cool in some cases if they're coloured wholly in that contrasting tone. But it wouldn't work for all contrasting colours.

[Jace11]

I tried a few patterns, the rim around the bottom, a plain and a plain contrasted version as you mentioned. Also some pointed patterns a bit like the one above. Some looked strange. Plain (no spot) was fine obviously, but the plain in the contrasting colour could look odd depending on each clans 3rd faction rRGB value. I may leave this for now, I am using a version with original spot and a plain jingasa, adds a bit of variety I suppose.

Problem is finding historical patterns or pictures etc.

[Jace11]

I have abandoned the jingasa mod, purely because they look overdone with too complicated designs. The next version may include just the plain version as an added variant:



As for other things, re-worked a few more clan colours including Yamanouchi and Ogigayatsu (which I realise I didn't like while playing a Hojo campaign).

[Jace11]

I noticed that horos have two colours and if the 2nd and 3rd RGB colours for a faction are similar, the colour mask messes up the border between the two causing some strange dots / and overlaps that look bad. If the colours are contrasting eg bright v dark, it doesn't happen.

But during recolouring, I've struggled to make some factions look acceptable without triggering this effect a few times, so I redid the colour mask for the horo. Now it has a nice boundry between the two colours.