Athalwulf's Natural Dyes - Version 3.0 (ALL African Factions Added)

[GenghisB]

I can't actually use Kaziel's Romans mod if I want to use Natural Dyes because it seems he has a faction uniform color table that overwrites the table from Natural Dyes. Ordinarily this wouldn't of been a problem in the past, but since CA is mentally inept and decided to force their terrible Mod Manager on us, we now have no means that I can see to set load orders. This had me stumped all day yesterday too. I even opened up two PFMs and transferred all of Natural Dye's color entries into my data_rome2.pack one by one and then went in game to still see my Suebi marching for the gay parade. Just now I downloaded the one you linked two-three posts up and got the same outcome. Tried disabling Kaziel's mod cause I remembered him saying he changed the Roman colors, and like magic, Natural Dyes is working again. The Suebi shall march in the parade NO LONGER. Thanks for helping me come to this realization.

Did you try playing around with alphabetical order in the data folder.. Z's loaded first A's loaded last.. so I guess the early alphabet takes precedent. I'm still having problems figuring out how to get Kaziels Romans, Legionnaire's armies, Natural Dyes, and Radious (not uncluding unit packs) working fluently. Is that asking too much!?! lol

[Vinushka]

Did you try playing around with alphabetical order in the data folder.. Z's loaded first A's loaded last.. so I guess the early alphabet takes precedent. I'm still having problems figuring out how to get Kaziels Romans, Legionnaire's armies, Natural Dyes, and Radious (not uncluding unit packs) working fluently. Is that asking too much!?! lol

I got it working a awhile back in a later post with both. The alphabetical thing only applies when the mods are all in movie format. Pretty much all of mine are mod packs now. I had to give up Kaziel's though. I don't like the noisy texture he used for the chainmail nor the fact it seems to lack specular compared to the default. I started to notice that same quality loss on other armors and tried to ignore it cause I loved the praetorian cloak color changes so much, but a friend of mine pointed it out when I was showing him screens and I went all OCD over it. Lol. So now I'm using Artstudio's RM texture mod again and I'm gonna' have to butcher it to get all the conflicts and terrible unit count increase out of there. I really hope Mitch's mod manager gets updated soon. I never intended to learn this much about the inner workings of this terrible engine.

[Kaziel]

I got it working a awhile back in a later post with both. The alphabetical thing only applies when the mods are all in movie format. Pretty much all of mine are mod packs now. I had to give up Kaziel's though. I don't like the noisy texture he used for the chainmail nor the fact it seems to lack specular compared to the default. I started to notice that same quality loss on other armors and tried to ignore it cause I loved the praetorian cloak color changes so much, but a friend of mine pointed it out when I was showing him screens and I went all OCD over it. Lol. So now I'm using Artstudio's RM texture mod again and I'm gonna' have to butcher it to get all the conflicts and terrible unit count increase out of there. I really hope Mitch's mod manager gets updated soon. I never intended to learn this much about the inner workings of this terrible engine.

The chainmail is noisier as it contains sharper textures. I toned down the shine as all the chainmail I've seen during my research shows me exactly that. Note that there are 3 Hamatas, 2 have the newish look, 1 with the double crossbelts have rustier mail. In my opinion the newer looking ones sparkle just enough under the right conditions (full sunlight). Quality loss you speak of I really don't understand, everything I've re-textured, I believe, has added more quality (i.e, sharper textures, better specular etc.). I'm not being defensive nor am I attacking your opinion, I appreciate the feedback, but just wanted to explain my design choices

Now back on topic, I guess Athalwulf has abandoned this mod. I won't be able to add it in my next update

[Falco]

Seconded, thirded whatever

Yes a Radious compatible version would be great, I'm back to the yellow shields ((((((((((

[GenghisB]

I actually did this yesterday after it dawned on me that I could just remove the table for the uniform faction colors and keep the updated version Selea linked. It worked like a charm. I didn't bother adding your color values though. Just deleted the entry on your mod along with the land and main unit tables to avoid conflicts with other mods. Works perfectly this way. This way I get Natural Dye colors and I still get to keep your changes to things like the Praetorian cloaks being red instead of that nasty default violet color.

Ah I see you figured it out. I just don't know how to do the editing of mods part. It sounds simple, but I just don't know what I'm looking at with this PFM thing. I also have a handful of mods that start with A, AA,AB ABB and I'm lost as to what is actually prioritizing over what now. I thought I had it figured out, but I've officially ran myself in circles.

It would be a huge help if someone could give a quick guide to editing this mod to work with Octavian's. I never intended to learn about it either, but I figure it might be good to learn a thing or two. Better to teach a man to fish... Also I can't stand the yellow shields god help me.

I would follow suit with you using Artsudio's, but you said it needs even more editing, so thats a no. Just wondering what mods are you using together at the moment?

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

Just did some tweak based on the last version of the mod. My main goal was to get rid of the hugly Seleucid.

This is my version :

http://imageshack.us/a/img543/6880/aoct.png

I also change the "blue Ptolemaic" to a more historical red/white/sand theme:


Some Macedonian :


Enjoy !

[Frei]

are you going to upload it, or do you just mean enjoy the pictures?

[Vinushka]

The chainmail is noisier as it contains sharper textures. I toned down the shine as all the chainmail I've seen during my research shows me exactly that. Note that there are 3 Hamatas, 2 have the newish look, 1 with the double crossbelts have rustier mail. In my opinion the newer looking ones sparkle just enough under the right conditions (full sunlight). Quality loss you speak of I really don't understand, everything I've re-textured, I believe, has added more quality (i.e, sharper textures, better specular etc.). I'm not being defensive nor am I attacking your opinion, I appreciate the feedback, but just wanted to explain my design choices

Now back on topic, I guess Athalwulf has abandoned this mod. I won't be able to add it in my next update

I could tell you sharpened the .dds images just from looking at them. The problem was happening on my end because I need to sharpen the overall image with Lumasharpening to get the look I want. When you stack sharpen filters like that, usually the outcome is too much noise or distortion on textures. I started downsampling my game again because the AA stacking + Gaussian Blur was driving me crazy due to the loss of texture quality, so I'm gonna try your textures again and see how they look with just 2560x1440 and FXAA.

@GenghisB, I'll get back to you on what I'm using, and some tips. I'm still testing the best possible setup for my first full playthrough. I can't even decide on which battle mod to settle on. All of them end up feeling like something's off or missing after awhile. And yeah, RM Textures doesn't play nice with pretty much any other texture mod. He's using variantmeshes from pretty much everywhere. The best you can do is remove the faction uniform color table and the AM land units and AM main unit tables in the DB category via PFM.

[GenghisB]

I could tell you sharpened the .dds images just from looking at them. The problem was happening on my end because I need to sharpen the overall image with Lumasharpening to get the look I want. When you stack sharpen filters like that, usually the outcome is too much noise or distortion on textures. I started downsampling my game again because the AA stacking + Gaussian Blur was driving me crazy due to the loss of texture quality, so I'm gonna try your textures again and see how they look with just 2560x1440 and FXAA.

@GenghisB, I'll get back to you on what I'm using, and some tips. I'm still testing the best possible setup for my first full playthrough. I can't even decide on which battle mod to settle on. All of them end up feeling like something's off or missing after awhile. And yeah, RM Textures doesn't play nice with pretty much any other texture mod. He's using variantmeshes from pretty much everywhere. The best you can do is remove the faction uniform color table and the AM land units and AM main unit tables in the DB category via PFM.

Yeah I would really appreciate it if I could get some help. I think I figured out how to remove them.. I right clicked on the table on the left, then "Add ->" "From Pack " selected Kaziels mod from my data folder and this pack browser Dialog box came up through which I navigated and double clicked on the land unit and main unit lines. It toggles between "removed" and "added" at the bottom of that window.

If I try to open it through the file tab on the top I get an error message though that says "Unhandled exception has occurred in your application.."

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

Frei ==> i'm now on holiday so i will put more time in changing other faction colour, if you want to try my ongoing rework and give some feedback please send me a pm.

Roman:


Triarii:


Epirus:


Pontus:

[Dago Red]

I believe he was asking where you uploaded this to? Do you have a mod on steam workshop? A thread hosted here? A link!?

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

As you can see this is just my own personnal setting for the moment. 80% of it is still the work of Athalwulf... but i'm working on it.

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

I just asked permission to the OP in order to share my version of his mod.

Syracuse Hoplite:


Etruscan Spear:

I will keep you all informed about it. Don't hesitate to share your thought about those early examples. This could help me for the next steps.

Thanks !

[Kaziel]

Guys, can we please remember that these soldiers are not Royalty or Senators and pick the colours accordingly. If you're going for a white, go dirtier (off-white),
if you're going for a blue (be it navy, royal, turquoise), go dirtier. Remember that years of use in battle, sweat and dirt will make the colours go a little bland.
Some of these colours I'm seeing are still very close to the standard CA default neon colours.

Here's an example of what I remember doing for the Brutii Faction back in Rome I. Back then we had to do it "by hand" and re-texture the clothing parts of the models
individually. Remember the Brutti green at that time? Awful (IMO too clean, too sharp and too bright). I simply re-coloured it to a more olive green.

Just some friendly suggestions for those of you taking up this project

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

I got your point Octavian, thanks for the feedback. I will go "dirtier" for the next wave !
If i don't have any answer from the OP i might also consider extending the project to do my own mod.

[dom385]

Could we have some black back for macedon? Maybe in stead of the white? Maybe a pale brown or something for the etrsucans instead of the orange too. But in general I would agree with octavian that some of the colours need "dirtying" a bit. Apart from that it's looking good, Epirus in particular!

Hopefully it you make a decent start on it then Toon could use it in his compilation, since it doesn't look like Athwulf is coming back any time soon.

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

Update, the dirty version is on the way ! As you said "it doesn't look like Athwulf is coming back any time soon" so im moving toward my own mod and i already changed more than 50% of the faction in the process.

New Ptolemaic:


New Pontus:


New Seleucid:


Hope you will like this new direction. By the way, any feedback will help me !

[Dago Red]

The new direction just got my undivided attention.

You will definitely please many more people going more toward a gritty realism. Afterall, everyone has the vanilla colors for the bright and garish if they want!

[VonSchlepp]

Going in the right direction? You keep going in the direction your going, your going to have a lot of followers. Those colors are the best yet I have seen. Maybe start your own thread.

[Épaminondas The "Oblique"]

Thanks for the encouragements,i will go on on this path !