Eagle Standard Presents latest Shogun II mods and modding news, including modding summit coverage!

**The Dutch Devil** · November 05, 2012, 10:21 AM

Shogun II

Release: Historical Shinsengumi Recolor

Historical Shinsengumi Recolor

Release: FotS Canister and Grape shot

FotS Canister and Grape shot

Release: Snuffbox Breechloader Rifles for FoTS Sailors

Snuffbox Breechloader Rifles for FoTS Sailors

Release: The Tenka Fubu Campaign

Tenka Fubu Campaign

Beta: Shogun 2 Overhaul Retexture & Huge Performance Project

Shogun 2 Overhaul Retexture & Huge Performance Project

Release: Shogun 2: Total Clans - Multiplayer Edition

Shogun 2: Total Clans - Multiplayer Edition

Release: Better maps V 0.20

Better maps V 0.20

Release: Campaign Balance V0.75

Campaign Balance mod

The Wizard's Workshop

Preview: Steam Workshop Exclusive Mods

Steam Workshop Exclusive Mods

Well well well, who'd of thought it eh? A modding workshop, mod tools, and a modding summit? CA Have really outdone themselves this time! This then has brought me onto providing a small coverage of some of the mods that are up and running on the workshop, the list has kindly been provided by Glorious Gandalf so thank him and of course a thanks need to go to all these wonderful modders that have certainly made my TW:S2 experience great.

First up we have the Half Price Ashigaru, which funnily enough halves the recruitment and upkeep costs of the following units: all varieties of Bow and Yari Ashigaru; Bow and Naginata Levy; Spear Levy and Levy Infantry.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Secondly we have the Unit Pack Compatibility mod, are very useful feature for the non-English amongst you. There are several version of this mod ranging from a German to Czech one and they translate and support most custom unit packs and work on latest version of the game, fully supports Shogun 2 and all its DLCs and Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai campaigns. What this means is no more having no texts (names, descriptions) on custom units etc. But be warned only the respective pack will work on the respective game language, I think an example is need to explain my self. Basically if you have the German version of the game, only the German version of this mod will work.

Next onto the stage we have Blackthorne's mod only for Fall of the Samurai, and in the authors own words:

New units
Bayonets
Epic uniforms
it's all there

It changes some of the units and their weapons, as well as add some new abilities. And lets be honest everyone loves fancy new abilities to play about with!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Following on we have the Combined Difficulty Effects mod. This combines two of the authors previous mods into one - the "Add Occupation Resistance to AI Factions" and "No Handicap on Normal", which means you'll have double the trouble from the AI who ill stop cowering down to your demands!

The features are as followed:

- Easy and Normal: Resistance as high as player's
- Hard: Effect reduced -10
- VH: Effect reduced -50
- Legendary: Effect reduced -100 (as in vanilla)
- Removes all campaign balancing effects (income bonuses, changed recruit costs) for both player and AI when playing Normal difficulty

So yeah, you'll have plenty of fun...

Speaking of fun, the final mod we have for you to get your teeth into is the Extended Camera Minimod. I have to admit that this mod is a person favourite of mine and it extends the amount the camera can zoom out in battle. A feature surely useful for all you AARtists! below are some examples of the kind of shots you can take.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

There you have it folks, it was all done for us so go out and enjoy it! Above is just a snippet of the stuff the wonderful TW:S2 modders have done, and I'm sure we'll be enjoying their stuff for ages to come, maybe even longer than that...

Written by: Shankbot de Bodemloze.

Modding summit coverage

Interview

Interview with taw

1) Firstly before we move on to talking about the modding summit, would you be able to tell us a little bit more about yourself and about how you became involved in the modding scene?

I was mostly a mod player, and before I started making all the tools I only did a bit of modding for Medieval 2 (Concentrated Vanilla).

For Empire vanilla game frustrated me far too much, and I really missed ability to do small tweaks which were so easy for Rome and Medieval 2, even things which were possible like removing forts were far too slow, tedious, and error-prone. There weren't really many mods back then I could play instead, and the few existing mods were often really buggy because they didn't understand file formats correctly. For example forts were often removed the wrong way which led to AI bugs and very miserable overall experience.

So I did the only natural thing and started making tools and opening file formats, so I could do tweaks I wanted and modders could make mods. I haven't been able to open everything I wanted (like campaign map), but this still led to some revival of interest in modding Empire/Napoleon/later Shogun 2.

2) Now let’s move onto the modding summit. You were one of only a handful of modders to receive an invite to this event hosted by the Creative Assembly, so how did you feel when you found out that they wanted you to attend?

If they wanted people who actually made mods, I would probably be the wrong person to invite, but as tool makers go, there aren't really that many of us, and I live less than 2 hours away from CA headquarters, so it made sense.

3) Alot of new information was revealed at the summit and many announcement were made. The first thing that the ES and I’m sure many others would also like to know is whether or not anything announced by CA at the mod summit will allow the creation of new campaign maps for Shogun 2?

That's the idea. New campaign maps, new campaign setup (something that was partially possible before with esfxml), much more access to creation of new models. These are the main points.

There's also battle map editor TEd released some time ago, I've seen people making good use of it already.

4) The Creative Assembly has also announced new tools are on the way for Shogun 2 and that Rome 2 Total War will be integrated with the Steam workshop. How do you feel about these developments and do you believe that CA will be able to maintain these commitments in the future? Do you think tools will still be developed for future games despite the time and money they must cost CA to develop?

CA guys were quite open that they made no "commitment in the future" for modding support in Rome 2 and later games, since they overpromised and underdelivered a lot in the past. We don't know what will be supported for Rome 2. What was released was for Shogun 2 only, and we might get similar tools for Rome 2, but that's just speculative at this point.

Many games follow strict separation of game engine vs game content, and for them it's really easy to support modding, since even vanilla game is essentially one big mod. Total War briefly approached this model with Kingdoms (4 campaign on 1 engine, very little hardcoded), and that was the golden age of modding as well, but since then CA moved away from this model and they don't have any plans to go there again.

Even without strict separation these tools are used internally, and have not been developed specifically for modding - they've been cleaned up and packaged and documented for modders, but their primary users are internal.

So the hope is mostly that they'll make such tools anyway for internal use, and then release them to modders, not that they'll put large effort into making these tools for modders only.

5) The tools are unfortunately only being released for Shogun 2 at the moment though. Do you believe it will be possible to port any of them over to other Warscape games in the series?

As a first approximation - tools for models will probably be portable, tools for battle maps probably less so, tools for campaign map probably very little. People are still researching Empire's campaign map, so eventually the map might be cracked, but that will be a slow and tedious process even if it succeeds.

6) Out of everything you heard whilst you were there – what do you think will be the most important new development in regards to modding current and future Total War games?

There's hope for much better relations between CA and modding community.

There's also a chance that the new wiki will be a central coordination point for modders and tool makers, right now we don't really have such place - or we have too many such places, and in ends up with modders being spread all over the Internet, and knowledge often being lost.

I tried very hard to make sure things I find out don't get lost by documenting as much as I can, putting all the code on github and trying to answer all questions I get by any means, but discoveries of many older modders were never documented, and were lost when they left the community.

7) We have also heard that you were lucky enough to see a short video of gameplay from Rome2 whilst you were at the summit. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about that? Was there anything in particular that you thought looked very interesting?

Battle map was really massive and complex (siege features on both sides, naval assault going on during siege, multiple capture points, huge city with many layers and many capture points) and number of soldiers on the battlefield was very high, and yet flow of units in complex street pattern was very dynamic. In all existing Total War games pathfinding on the battlefield, especially in sieges, often fails miserably and all soldiers mix into one big unorganized blob over which there's no way to have any meaningful control - it didn't look like it at all in the video. Of course with vidoes one only sees the game from the best side, but it impressed me.

Zooming out to see fullscreen bird's eye view was another feature that's currently badly missing, and it was shows on the video.

8) Do you believe that the Modding Summit could soon lead to a new golden age of Total War modding on the newer games? Do you believe we will ever see total conversion mods such the Third Age mod again for any of the Warscape games?

I think many people have overly high expectations here.

Even with best of tools the games are currently much more complicated than they were in Rome/Medieval 2 era, especially if you plan to match level of detail with what's in vanilla, so even things that are possible will take a lot more effort.

Another issue is that we still don't have a lot of things we'd need for a total conversion mods like control over UI layout and lua UI logic. This might change in the future, and modders often show amazing creativity even within very narrow technical restrictions, but right now I'd expect total conversion to be more like American Civil War than War of the Ring.

And even if we had access to things like UI layout there's still a lot of hardcoded logic in all games, often small surprising things (for example in Empire resistance to foreign occupation, war weariness, and crackdown happiness bonuses are all totally hardcoded, while every single other thing about happiness is really easy to mod - such moddable-except-this situations are fairly common), and that will make total conversions more difficult.

I hope people will still try, and the future definitely looks brighter than at any time since Empire was first released.

9) What is next for you in the world of Total War modding? Will you wait for the tools and see where things go from there?

I expect a lot of people will now begin to play with the new tools, and we'll learn how much can be done with them. The big event everybody is waiting for is a campaign map mod.

10) Is there anything else you would like to mention or any closing remarks you would like to make?

Good modding!

Interview taken by: General Brittanicus.

Interview

Interview with Akaie

Greetings Ladies and Gents, please join me in thanking Akaie for agreeing to do this interview. For those of you who don't know Akaie is a great TW:S2 modder, and the man behind the great Sekigahara Campaign! He has answered my questions in regards to his modding, and CA's release of these new tools, also managing to slip in a bit about himself as well...*

1) So Akaie, first off thank-you for doing this interview, the man behind The Sekigahara Campaign must be busy indeed, could you tell us mere mortals a bit about yourself?

Flattering! Well, I am a nineteen year old from Australia. I am a full-time carer for my grandma, which, as unfortunate as that is, gives me a bit of flexibity with time to study and engage in hobbies, such as The Sekigahara Campaign!

2) Well we all know where flattery gets us.... but being a Aussie I'm thinking of taking it back! I'll start off with what seems to be standard for these sorts of things, what brought you to TWC?

Shogun 2. I can't really remember the specifics of how I got here, but it was definitely just after the release of Shogun 2!

3) We should thank CA then. What was it that got you involved with the modding scene?

I'd say Radious has some credit here, as I enjoyed a few campaigns with his mods installed and was definitely inspired by him to get into modding myself. My first modding creation was a simple scaled recruitment cost mod to make each unit cheaper.

4) And it went on from there, how did you first find modding, was the process difficult at first, or did you just catch on?

I can't quite remember, though I don't think it was too much of a hassle.

5) Anything you particularly struggled with?

I believe I had some annoyances with the startpos.esf file, though those days are certainly gone.

6) Glad to hear it. Could you list us a few general mods you've made for Shogun and it's follow-ups, and explain what a few of them do and how you found making it etc.?

One mod I made was a visual overhaul with new banners, traditional artworks, and even a few extra changes to add new clans. Another manipulated the startpos.esf file - at this point I had overcome the annoying damn thing - to allow access to multiple minor clans in a multiplayer-friendly way. There is also a bunch of other mods pertaining to units, visuals, and other smaller things that build up to a hefty array of changes.

7) Well you certainly how been busy! So now onto the topic that everyone has been waiting for... The Sekigahara Campaign - what can you tell us?

The Sekigahara Campaign was the very first of its kind for Shogun 2, that being a total conversion covering a distinct time period than in the original game. The premise is semi-fictitious; we take heavy inspiration from the historical campaign and climactic battle of sekigahara, albeit evening out the conflict to work in a more practical however ahistorical way.

8) How many people do you have working on it? And can we have a cheeky progress report?

Innitially, it was just three people: Erwin Rommel, robinzx, and, of course, me. Apart from the dozen or so that contributed pieces of their own work, such as Kungfuserge's and BullGod's texture work and Mech_Donalds battlefield smoke mod, the team itself has recently been expanded to six people; on top of the original three, wealthmonger, who documents aspects of the mod and does testing, Maverick Houston, who creates amazing videos, and Lokgar, who has created several submods and is now a database editor. As for progress, we've finished much of what we planned to do, as well as a hell of a lot more. There is still one big aspect of the mod that has not yet come to pass, so we hope to have that out in due time.

9) Well it is great to see you expanding. Have new tools such as TEd and the recently release bundle helped you at all, or made life easier?

TEd, and what could come from it, has been recently been brought up within the team, though we haven't felt the need to make much use of it. Due to the new tools being a very new thing, I haven't committed the time to thoroughly explore it. One thing that will seamlessly help is the thorough documentation of the database and startpos; I've already learnt a few things just by looking at the description of certain columns.

10) So we can expect and even awesome-er mod?

I'm sure we will!

11) Glad to hear it! What are you personal views on CA releasing these tools, and of course of the modding summit?

The modding summit was a great initiative to give a hand to their modding community. The kit has some great features, like the aforementioned thorough column descriptions of the database and startpos, as well as a nice way to edit the groupformations.bin file via xml and a technically easier platform to manipulate and even create a campaign map. So, the kit is certainly a success in my book. It's now largely up to the community to take up arms and get stuck into testing and developing!

12) Indeed it is, and we certainly hope they'll make good use of it. Now, Rome II - your hopes and fears?

I don't think I have any huge hopes or fears for the project. My Rome fanboy days are long gone, and I've forgotten a lot about that general time period, I'm afraid. That being said, as long as CA adds a cut-scene where, if your general dies after attacking the Parthians, they pour molten gold down his throat, I'll be pretty happy!

13) Hahaha, so can we expect any Rome II mods by you, or will we have to satisfy ourselves with Seki?

I hope to keep building on Seki for a long, long time, hopefully well beyond the release of Rome II. I'll more than likely look at modding Rome II; I'd probably take a step back and get someone to order me around for the purposes of creating a big and ambitious overhaul. Anything pertaining to the Roman kingdom, republic, or Gaul is fine with me!

14) Well I wish you the best of luck, and I'll look forward to it all. Once again, thank-you for agreeing to do this interview, and before we go do you have any final words?

Thank you for choosing me to be interviewed, and I hope this interview was a good read

.

I'm sure it will be. If you guys wanted to check out more of Akaie's work then why not check out his profile, or head over to the Sekigahara Campaign forum to see it all as it happens. That's all from me, and enjoy the rest of the issue!

Interview taken by: Shankbot de Bodemloze.

Interview

Interview with Radious

1) Hello Radious, and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed! Tell us something about yourself: who is the man behind the avatar? What made you join TWC?

Hello Everyone,

well something about me, i am an usual guy, who works every day to late hours. I work in Czech Social Security Administration, from sports i like to play tenis and watch icehockey. I live in a house, have very nice and lazy english bulldog. Also i like to read mostly scifi and fantasy books and watch movies, ofcourse i must not forget on gamming and modding. So as i said nothing special, just the free time is hard to find for all this :-) Most people know me here already, i am not a newcomer. I joined TWC many years ago and registered i think around ETW release, but i was around some time before already. I joined because of TW games ofcourse, this place has very nice community and i think its best place for TW mods and TW fans.

2) What was your first released mod? Why did you make it?

I started my modding in Rome Total War, Rome was my first TW game and i love that era so you can imagine how happy i am that Rome 2 is comming. It was also for the first time that i find out that games like this can be easily edited, modded, changed. So i started to dig in gamming files and created something what i used next few years. At that time i had no clue something like TWC exists so i never published any of my work and as said those mods were just minor ones compare to my current work today. Those mods were simply just for my personal use and begginings of my modding.

3) Which mod are you most proud of making?

I am most proud on my Shogun 2 work. I cant say exactly which one i like most, there are so many, i could name 3 largest unit packs for Shogun 2 or great Ai mod or much much more, but as i said i like all of them, because they create unique gamming experience if used together but i keep the decision on others so everyone can choose to use my complete overhauls or build their own from smaller overhaul parts. Sometimes its pain in the ass to update all of them if new patch/dlc is released and mods require updates but all those downloads they have got i think its not waste of time and people like it this way.

4) You've released several mods in the new Steam Workshop. Is it easier to publish mods there? Would you recommend its use to other modders?

Workshop is in beggings but it already got some update, i provided CA some decent feedback about it and they fixed most of the current issues with it. Workshop is mainly extremely helpfull for mod users since they dont have to do anything, just subscribe mod they want to play, thats with one mouse click on big green subscribe button and all is done, once they start the game, mod will be auto-downloaded, auto-installed and auto-patched if i release update. So this is very helpfull for those who may have troubles installing it manually. For modders its also good place, but here i suggest to use it together with sites like TWC, simply because on workshop modder doenst have so much space to write about his work, cant upload larger stuff then 100mb (steam limitations) and also can provide there only work made in mod format, which not all mods are in. So combination of TWC and Workshop is definitely great decision for all modders.

5) On to the modding kit! Have you played around with it yet? If so, what did you think?

Yes i spend some time with it already, its definitely step in right direction from CA, modding is, always been and hopefully always will be big part of any TW game. Tools are great, but same as workshop they are fresh and need some changes and updates, here i have to say big thanks to Daniu for his excelent PFM which allowed us modders to create evertyhing we did till today. New tools will allow us to do more then before, but not everything is simple table editing. For someone untouched by any modding it can be very difficult and i suggest to carefully follow all tutorials provided with it. What all can be done with these tools we will see in the future.

6) Was anything you could not do before made possible by the Assembly Kit?

We still do not know what all we can do with Asembly Kit so its hard to say, but definitely it was changing campaign map, this we are suppose to be able to change now, but it wont be easy task i can asure that :-) We already have a great tools which are contantly updated and improved and i think PFM + Asembly Kit can be very powerfull combination.

7) What, in your opinion, is the biggest breakthrough that can be achieved with this kit?

Simple answer - more great mods, more talented modders, better conection between community and developers :-) How big and what all will be possible to mod with it....for that people must just wait some time. Also i hope more modders will approach to Shogun now, its a great game with many possibilites, 3 different era campaigns so everyone should find its own place here.

8) Are you going to add new features to your Shogun II mods using the assembly kit. If so, what features are you adding?

My Shogun 2 work is very complex, i basicaly changed everything i could and wanted ofcourse. Same as many others i need to learn more about all options Asembly kit can provide and get familiar with all its features, there are some things i would like to change, but i will keep it for myself for the time being :-)

9) Do you think that the release of the Assembly Kit means that there will be support for Rome II modding?

Thats an interesting question, i guess everyone wants that but i hope we will get some tools for Rome 2, if not offical then hopefully another excelent PFM :-) We must realise that CA needs to profit on the game and gamming these days is infested by DLCs, which i may not like since most of them can be done by mods for free, but on other hand i undertsand its a cash and easy money which Sega and CA wants and they work for. So thats why i dont expect any official tools first year after Rome 2 release. But we will see, on other hand i am not afraid that Rome 2 wont be moddable, it will be and hopefully very much so i can again dig in gamming files as i started with Rome 1.

Interview taken by The Dutch Devil.

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Eagle Standard Presents latest Shogun II mods and modding news, including modding summit coverage!

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