Ars Gratia Artis - Complete Battle Overhaul, v2.7.2 - Patch 7 ready (updated 15/11/13)

[jamiedp88]

"Again, putting a bunch of variant meshes together..."

Ok sure, those shield patterns, metal textures etc. I made just got to your game with a simple snap
of my fingers. Absolutely no work was done to test, and re-test and re-texture, and test again.
Nothing like that. I don't think so.

You're right about this bickering, it is childish.

Texturing is different to putting a Variant Mesh Together. Texturing is more work yes and is an artistic expression.

I'm just saying, if people make it so I can download and play with their mod, that means I can edit it as I wish IMO. If someone gave me a motorbike, I can tinker with it, paint it etc (metaphor). I think it is harsh attacking people who actually spread the popularity of other's mods, it's free publicity.

Your sarcasm is noted obviously. But believe me it's not that hard, I did a whole army in one or 2 days, textures and variant meshes. The game is made to mod easily. I come from modding in Arma 2 and 3, it's a lot harder but I have never got angry when I release a mod and someone else uses it. 99% of People still credit the work. There's no need to refuse people the use/permission to edit the mod if the mod has been freely given/released to the public it still gets credited.

[Selea]

Ok sure, those shield patterns, metal textures etc. I made just got to your game with a simple snap
of my fingers. Absolutely no work was done to test, and re-test and re-texture, and test again.
Nothing like that. I don't think so.

You're right about this bickering, it is childish.

As I said I absolutely respect your work and the one of other reskin modders. If I gave you the impression of hostility this was not what I meant at all, and I apologize if you felt this was the case.

I tried to explain to you the motivations behind the fact that I don't ask for permissions anymore. I don't do it for laziness or out of respect for other modders, all the contrary. I always respected to the most other's people work and I always worked for the community myself. I always asked for permissions before because it is polite and respectful to do so. I did at beginning also in this community. Only that differently from before this time I found a variable in the process I never encountered before: people not wanting to share their work.

I'm sorry but this I cannot accept nor respect. Since I've seen that anyway the vast majority of cases reskinners simply deny permission I just said "to hell with it and I will include the mods anyway and what it happens happens", because for me it doesn't make any sense to not give permission to use your work in an unrelated content; if I had to abide and "respect" something I cannot respect users could not have the texture addon. Seriously, what harm can some modder procure if I put their work (with links and credits) in a compilation for users so they don't have to search around? I don't steal the work of anybody, I don't cause harm to the product (on the contrary I provide publicity to it) and I don't use it for money or something similar.

I cannot respect the decision of a bunch of people that don't want to share their work with other modders for no reason whatsoever.

[Selea]

Again, putting a bunch of variant meshes together isn't hard especially with the right tools.

On the contrary the work of many reskinners is very hard. It's true that changing the variantmeshdefinitions may not seem a so huge work but in reality it is because you must search the best correlation and it is a time consuming work.

Moreover many reskin mods don't just change the definitions, they alter the textures in the game and that's very time consuming and a long process.

I didn't say what I say to not respect the work of reskinners, all the contrary in fact. I did say what I did to explain Kaziel why I don't ask permission anymore, elsewhere it may seem I do it out of laziness or for a sense of superiority or whatever other imbecility. I always asked for other work's permission in every other game I worked. I started in this way too at beginning while working on modding Rome II. I started asking for inclusion of other work (having nothing to do with mine) expecting no problems as it did always happen. This time around, however, 95% of the people I asked denied permission and this for me didn't make any sense.

So I decided to not "respect" the decision of those modders because I cannot respect something which is completely opposite to my ideals.

[Kymmuriel]

Ok so is normal that no one knows whats behind ill just clear the miserstanding, as Selea said when he 1st did his texture addon , most of all the skinners said they wouldnt share their works, so he actualy did it becuse as he said this was nonsense if he was crediting + link to thread.
So that happened with octave, permission werent asked from Octave on the 1st texture addon, and when octave saw that, his saw that he was full credited, he didnt mind and gave his blessing allright? because doing skins without a good bai is pointless right? As we r all going to the same direction of enjoying the game with the community.

The only problem was that as Selea said before, its nonsense doing a mod and not share your work with ppls, so as octave is on the same like as us, he asked for his mod that if he could use ancient colours he got denied permission from epaminidas who wasnt yet in the AGA team and who too saw that his work was being used without his permissions but full credited, he (epam) understood that our works are onlly forthe community and that its nonsense to do not share it, especialy the factions colours or skins right? So he changed his behaviour and actually shared with hellas resurgent, and as he in the meantime joined the AGA texture team we were so hyped about things to do that we had forgotten to give permissions to Octave to use Ancient colours into his mod.

Now to the point of the discord, what happened is that me and epam, we were looking to recolour the polybian units of octave, and this was done in the hype of everythings news everthings beautifull so we forgot again to ask to octave if we could change some colours paterns on his units, but as no one is the same in the world even if they share the same visions, he wont give permissions to alter any of his texture ( that is i think normal) but in exchange, he even proposed to me that he would do our custom units no problems, the bad timing was there, i had not yet the time to speak to Selea about this, and when he woke up and came in , he saw red and thats what happened.

So as for now everythings is cool with octave, he understand that it is a miserstanding , and hes even still ok to do custom units with us, so please guyz do not take it personally , we r all sharing the same thing making advance things to get the game better for the community, but we r not alone in this world and we have to be aware of the guy next to us.

Thats it, i hope everything is clarified, and as for a matter of facts, everyone had his own reason so just not let begins with im right and ure wrong, everythings grey even if we really bad timed this

[Kymmuriel]

The only problem was that as Selea said before, its nonsense doing a mod and not share your work with ppls, so as octave is on the same like as us, he asked for his mod that if he could use ancient colours he got denied permission from epaminidas who wasnt yet in the AGA team and who too saw that his work was being used without his permissions but full credited, he (epam) understood that our works are onlly forthe community and that its nonsense to do not share it, especialy the factions colours or skins right? So he changed his behaviour and actually shared with hellas resurgent, and as he in the meantime joined the AGA texture team we were so hyped about things to do that we had forgotten to give permissions to Octave to use Ancient colours into his mod.

Now to the point of the discord, what happened is that me and epam, we were looking to recolour the polybian units of octave, and this was done in the hype of everythings news everthings beautifull so we forgot again to ask to octave if we could change some colours paterns on his units, but as no one is the same in the world even if they share the same visions, he wont give permissions to alter any of his texture ( that is i think normal) but in exchange, he even proposed to me that he would do our custom units no problems, the bad timing was there, i had not yet the time to speak to Selea about this, and when he woke up and came in , he saw red and thats what happened.

So as for now everythings is cool with octave, he understand that it is a miserstanding , and hes even still ok to do custom units with us, so please guyz do not take it personally , we r all sharing the same thing making advance things to get the game better for the community, but we r not alone in this world and we have to be aware of the guy next to us.

Thats it, i hope everything is clarified, and as for a matter of facts, everyone had his own reason so just not let begins with im right and ure wrong, everythings grey even if we really bad timed this

Now that you said your sorry can we stop with that now? i wanted to make a constructive post on the CA forum a drop a *bomb* about the BAI in the only way you Selea can describe it, if we jsut put our arses on the soil nothing will change with CA so lets makea ruckus under their houses so they notice us

[Durador]

I see that the texture addon have been updated but is this also happend if you use AGA from the workshop?

[Kymmuriel]

No the update on workshop will take place every monday

[Durador]

No the update on workshop will take place every monday

oke thanks for the info

[alexois]

Guys, how can I check that the mod is indeed considered when playing the game? I was clinging on this line "Increased cavalry sizes to 100." but starting as Egypt, size of light cavalry is still 75. I am using the built-in mod manager and not using the workshop mod. Thanks.

[Kymmuriel]

Guys, how can I check that the mod is indeed considered when playing the game? I was clinging on this line "Increased cavalry sizes to 100." but starting as Egypt, size of light cavalry is still 75. I am using the built-in mod manager and not using the workshop mod. Thanks.

A good thing is to check how much the hoplites has in weapon dmg or dmg in melee i dont rmeember but its the 1st line, if you see them having 24 then the mod is activated.
If as Egypt u got 75 nit cav, its jsut that you have an another mod on that changes the starpos esf, be it all playable faction or quar hadast or anything like that

[Selea]

Guys, how can I check that the mod is indeed considered when playing the game? I was clinging on this line "Increased cavalry sizes to 100." but starting as Egypt, size of light cavalry is still 75. I am using the built-in mod manager and not using the workshop mod. Thanks.

Are you sure you don't have another mod that changes the startpos file? (examples are mods that change turns per year or that adds more playable factions etc.)

If you have a conflict in this sense you have to decide if you prefer the right starting rosters or the changes in that other mod. If you prefer the starting rosters simply be sure that this mod is loaded before the other one, elsewhere the contrary.

Anyway also if you don't have the correct starting rosters the mod will play fine and you just need to create other troops to have the correct sizes. It is just a matter of the starting troops.

The only very important mod that change the startpos in a way that you possibly don't want to lose is the "all factions playable mod". In that case if you want to play a campaign with a non-playable faction you have to lose the possibility to have correct starting rosters size, there's no alternative. However if you use that mod with a normal playable faction you don't need the changes in the startpos of the mod (that serves only to unlock not-playable factions in a campaign, in a custom battle the startpos file serves nothing) and so you can use the ones of AGA instead.

For all other mods (as TTT) that also change the startpos the change has only to do with more turns per years, usually, so you can just override those changes with the ones of AGA and if you want to play with more turns per year simply download from here the correct version (the steam workshop version is for now at default 1tpy but from here you can download a pack that contains more choices).

[alexois]

Are you sure you don't have another mod that changes the startpos file? (examples are mods that change turns per year or that adds more playable factions etc.)

I am sure. I only ticked AGA and AGA texture packs in the built-in mod manager.
I do not use any startpos.esf other than the default.
Also, it is not about existing cav units, but creating new ones - they are created with 75 size.
Restarted steam with no avail.

[Kymmuriel]

I am sure. I only ticked AGA and AGA texture packs in the built-in mod manager.
I do not use any startpos.esf other than the default.
Also, it is not about existing cav units, but creating new ones - they are created with 75 size.
Restarted steam with no avail.

I strongly recommend you to use mitch mod manager, theres way more visibility on what your doing with your mod, here is the link to his thread for dl http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...h-CA-Launcher) HF

[alexois]

I strongly recommend you to use mitch mod manager, theres way more visibility on what your doing with your mod, here is the link to his thread for dl http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...h-CA-Launcher) HF

Downloaded, used, same issue.
Only selected AGA pack, nothing else.
Still 75 cav size upon recruitment in Alexandria. Any other way I can verify that the mod is loaded?

[Selea]

Also, it is not about existing cav units, but creating new ones - they are created with 75 size.
Restarted steam with no avail.

You have 75 because you have set the unit size at less than ultra in the graphic settings.

Naturally 100 is the maximum size if you have the graphic options set to maximum, elsewhere the unit size gets scaled back.

You will also have "normal" infantry at 120 probably, yet the maximum size is 160.

When I talk of 100 I mean the maximum size of the unit, not its effective size depending on the size you have set in the options; that is scaled back for all units proportionately. For example, for infantry: ultra is 160, large is 120, medium is 80 and low is 40.

If the mod didn't work you would have 60 men in cavalry (the large unit size of the maximum 80).

[Selea]

Btw I'm making good progress for the next version.

I've finally found a good compromise to work with and I'm sure all will be happy in the end.

I removed the fire-at-will because it causes too many bugs in behavior of the BAI that doesn't know how to cope with it. However I increased the range from which Javelins get thrown in a charge so you have all the time to switch to a formation or similar after a javelin is thrown. Playing I assure you there's no difference and it actually works almost better than before.

I also changed the behavior on Shield Wall/Shield Screen (this last btw has become an unique formation of Romans) so that it doesn't make no more those bad to see animation bugs where lines of not colliding troops do nothing. I had to remove the Pike Phalanx behavior to do this and this means that the BAI will use the formation much less, but I've seen that in some circumstances the formation is still used so all in all it's fine.

I then removed the annoying "green arrow" from some abilities as Gallop so that when the BAI uses them you don't see glowing troops everywhere.

And lastly I implemented a sort of "way to use the abilities" in the tooltips to help newcomers. In the description of the abilities I inserted a line where I explain in short how to use the ability to the best so that if you never used it before you know how to use it properly.

[Cochus1]

Does the mod only support one unit scale?? I loke the ideas of the mod but i dont think my computer can run that big sizes (i use normal scale in vanilla)

[Selea]

Does the mod only support one unit scale?? I loke the ideas of the mod but i dont think my computer can run that big sizes (i use normal scale in vanilla)

No, naturally, hence why the poster above thinks he has a problem.

It's neither possible to have a singular scale.

[vinakro]

Are archers meant to do very little damage? I just did a custom battle test with 4 maxed out Cretan archers firing against a single unit of Shield Nobles. By the time the nobles reached the archers (they got 4ish volleys off), four units of archers only took down 6 of the nobles. Was this intentional? I feel it to be very weak in comparison to what javelin units can do.

[Selea]

Are archers meant to do very little damage? I just did a custom battle test with 4 maxed out Cretan archers firing against a single unit of Shield Nobles. By the time the nobles reached the archers (they got 4ish volleys off), four units of archers only took down 6 of the nobles. Was this intentional? I feel it to be very weak in comparison to what javelin units can do.

Archers are surely stronger than in vanilla (they are more and have more damage) but if you look at deaths you are missing the point of archery in this game. Rome II is different than the precedent TW games in the fact that units have hit points. The point of arrows is that they deplete those hit points; deaths will not be substantial (as it happens with javelins) but when your melee units will then go to fight against the units you had under arrows volleys they will be much weaker than without, hence much easier to put down.

Arrows are better than javelins for this, actually.

Then it also depends: there's a tactic on using arrows correctly. If you fire from the front on units using shields arrows will do much less damage because the shield will cover the arrow impact (CA also added a special variable just for this). The point is on using the archers units in a way that you can attack the units so that they cannot cover with their shields.