The Eagle Standard Interviews Troy: Total War!
The Eagle Standard Interviews Troy: Total War.
Lucius Vorenus interviews Zhuge_Liang
A year ago the Eagle standard team interviewed the Troy Total War team and the community was first introduced the idea of going back to the time of the Iliad and fighting the Trojan War. How many of us watched the movie thinking that they could have defended the great city? You could say that Rome Total War has been begging for a Trojan mod for a long time, and here it is! So, before we get down to the actual interview updating us with exclusive info on the status of this exiting mod, some of you might want to go back in time to the first interview found here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26162
You’re probably wondering how things have progressed, well, the Eagle Standard took the time to interview the team and before some more teasers here is the interview!
1) So, it’s been a long time since the TWC news team has interviewed the Troy: Tw team, at one point many people thought the mod was dead! For those with short memories, what are the aims and inspiration of this Mod?
The mod was quite dead at one stage! Things are thankfully back on track now.
The aim of the mod is and has always been to create a product covering the Trojan era of history in a way that combines historical accuracy with a degree mythology. We hope to change the emphasis of battles to heroes and the use of the most advanced weapons of the day (chariots and iron) along with elite troops. The campaign game will be driven as much by the family members and their abilities (consider meeting Achilles in battle) as the cost of troops and strength of factions. The gameplay should present more action and more pitched battles in the field as sieges were long and costly due to primitive siege weapons.
As the movie troy was a huge success we have also included a number of units artistically inspired by it. So far the 'movie units' have generated some of the best feedback from the fans. Having been the head of art for over a year I have battled to try to satisfy the greatest number of people while trying to overcome limitations presented from the history of this era. There are very few accurate sources regarding armour and weapons from the time and many modern preconceptions about hoplite style soldiers are simply wrong. Thankfully we have had the fantastic Zenith Darksea as our historian who has provided a great deal of reliable information. Even with his experience however there was still a lack of variety and not enough information to transfer to 19 factions worth of units. The result is a mixture of somewhat fantasy/artistic interpretations from the depths of my turbulent mind based on historically accurate foundations. In any case I am personally pleased with the results, especially the variety between factions (murder on the model limits).
2) Many of the older members remember the departure of your old coder, almost killing the mod, now he has apparently returned. Would you like to update us on that story? Also how would you say Troy: Tw has progressed within the last few months, any interesting updates on the status of the mod?
Indeed our main coder honorius left last year due to disagreements with the then leadership and having to redo code several times when he had better things to do. After his departure progress slowed and then stopped. The team fragmented, i became leader as the old leader (Dark_Shadow) left along with most of the team. For a long time i was the only active member before declaring the mod dead for a short time. Over the last five months we made almost no progress with new coders coming and going very quickly as they lost interest upon seeing the scale of the task at hand. Even i lost interest.
Then out of the blue about two or three weeks ago i decided to create a program to help with unit code as part of my studies in real life. The program was very successful and i was single handed able to complete all of the unit code at a relaxed rate in under three days. Not bad after virtually no progress in five months. Just days after this announcement was made at the forums we got word back from our old coder who returned to help finish the job. Honorius has been working hard since and last week we finished the alpha.
3) How has the rest of the team changed within the last year? Are there any new members?
The team has changed considerably over the last year with more short term members than I can remember and a steady decrease in the regulars. From the original team for a long while we were reduced to just myself, Zenith, and Marcvs (who works on the websites). Now together with Honorius we form the core of the team. We have had other members who have helped in the past and they will not be forgotten in the credits.
4) Is it easy to coordinate and keep such a team motivated and working together? What advice would you give other members interested into putting together a team?
I’m sure any mod leader will agree that it is incredibly difficult to organise a team that doesn't get paid. You have to rely on people's good natures and personal drive and hope they aren't too busy with real life . Still somehow work gets done. I would advise people trying to start up their own teams to be ready to lead by example and be prepared to do as much of the work themselves as possible in order to help out others and maintain progress. The best team members to have would be the most able fanatics you can find, that way they would never loose interest.
5) Do you have any upcoming releases and/or an official release date for the mod?
We just released our new website last month and just released our new forums last night. As we are progressing very quickly now we may release some small amounts of media such as gifs or screenshots but our main focus is getting the public beta finished. Everybody will know when we release as the day or two before we will publically release our high quality intro movie and after that I hope to have announcements everywhere for our frustrated fans that have waited too long already.
6) What makes your mod project stand out with all the other competing mods out there, why should they download your mod?
Our mod is different in several ways. For a start it is a completely different era from Rome or medieval Europe which we have all seen a lot of. It is an era which is incredibly interesting and character driven and also very popular. We are the only major mod covering the era.
The gameplay of the mod will also be unique, with the emphasis being placed on the greatest heroes of the day and battles being decided by their actions. I have been balancing the units myself, and as it is my first time there are still problems to iron out but it is currently very similar to MTW gameplay with long hard fought battles (unlike the 5 min battles from BI) which give you enough time to attempt to save a bad situation or seal an enemies fate.
7) Ok, here is an ES Classic - If you could make a slogan or catchphrase to go with the mod, what would it be?
Our slogan hasn't changed over the past year lol.
"The most poetic war in history"
8) Cool, any new screenshots or eye candy?
Like I said there will be little new screens as our concentration is on the beta, however a few new screens might pop up over the next two weeks until we release. Just a few days ago I released some new screens of our campaign map complete with the strat models.
Well that’s the interview, there might be some follow up questions. I thought I’d add some content and older eye candy for those new to this mod, and you might like to check out their TWC subforum - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51
Here is their Map thread with some nice eye candy -
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=44338
Also, lets not forget their Heroes shown in this thread - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...5&page=2&pp=20
The Renders thread - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=41282&page=1
Also. check out their Q&A thread here - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=53428
I would like to thank the Troy TW team for their time.
Lucius Vorenus
+rep for j00
Sig by Manji
