Introducing the New "OSCAR" Sub-mod Compilation Project

[Mank]

Great ideas all around Taro! I'll definitely come back to them when I cycle around to tweaking Gondor's roster content (and will provide updated previews once they are applied).

UI Update:

Below I've added some previews of the new Gondor UI I've been working on. It is still being tweaked and will undergo some changes, but this should give you the sense of what I'm shooting for in terms of "mood" for the interface.

1) Opening screen:

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2) A couple of the new event icons on the left:

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3) The 'available' recruitment buttons:

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As I said this is still a WIP, so if there are any ideas/ suggestions/ or critiques for the new AI feel free to share!

[Taro_M]

While looking at the screenshots: please rename the Osgiliath parts to Western and Eastern respectively, It will look more elegant.

Also, what do you think about 12 turns per year? This way generals will live longer and distances will be more believable. After all Rohhirims went from Dunharrow to Minas Tirith in a day or two (cant remember).

[Withwnar]

Also, what do you think about 12 turns per year? This way generals will live longer and distances will be more believable. After all Rohhirims went from Dunharrow to Minas Tirith in a day or two (cant remember).

It also means that it takes ages for children to come of age. And it breaks a scripting function.

[Mank]

Withwnar will definitely have the final say on the 12 turns per year aspect, and from the looks of it we may leave it out of the first release of OSCAR for scripting reasons.

I'll be sure to add the 'eastern' and 'western' names to Osgiliath, I too like their full names much more than the E. and W. Great suggestion!

EDIT:

UI Update: I've incorperated the "Eastern" and "Western" Osgiliath suggestion from Taro_M, as well as addressed a concern of Withwnar's that the scroll text was rather hard to read against the grey background. I've added a new background texture to the scrolls and hope this is a bit of an improvement in terms of read-ability:

New:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Old:

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[Taro_M]

Hmm... that end turn button in shape of Horn looks odd. Do you think you could add something under the horn? Like some kind of ornamental, uh I dont know how its called, you use it when you hag stuff like swords and weapons on the wall, like here:

http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/im...uril-sword.jpg

That stuff under the Anduril. Ornamental frame or something...

[Mank]

Hrm, I'll give it a try just to see. Might make that area a bit too cramped so I'll just have to play with it. I was hoping it looked like the horn was hanging down from the string at the top.

[orclover5]

Hrm, I'll give it a try just to see. Might make that area a bit too cramped so I'll just have to play with it. I was hoping it looked like the horn was hanging down from the string at the top.

Mank, have you seen the realism mod(TATW Realism+ /Final/ [TATW 3.2] made by Davinci

that was put out a year ago or so. I think you should check out the recruitment dynamics as they are awesome and lore friendly. Basically the main units of any faction cannot be recruited outside of the home region but you can recruit regional mercenaries from nearly every faction...and the evil factions recruit their own evil mercenaries as well so armies are very well mixed. I absolutely hate how Arnor can conquer Rohan or even mordor and build Arnor troops in a couple of months... etc. Is this something you plan to do? Or are you going to keep the same recruiting format as TATW where Harad can recruit haradrim from Edoras... Argh Also Eriador/ Arnor is nearly perfect in that mod as they have tons of regional mercenaries including Elves, Men of Rohan, Cardolan Crossbowman... I actually added some Repentent Rhudarian soldiers as well because I figure men would never be ruled well by orcs and some would always want to be free of that yoke and would flock to the free armies once they conquered those regions. Just some ideas.

[Mank]

Hi orclover,

I checked out Davinci's Realism mod a few months ago, but it certainly has been awhile now. Bascially the short answer for whether or not this type of recruitment will be added to OSCAR's initial relase is no. It would be a HUGE amount of work to rebuild (not to mention balance) each faction's recruitment, and if we undertook something like this there would be a good chance OSCAR wouldn't be released this year.

That said, I personally really like the sound of this and might very well come out with a "Realism" inspired sub-mod for OSCAR later on which incorperates these types of changes. It won't be included in OSCAR's initial release, but very well might find its way into the mix sometime later down the line.

[orclover5]

Hi orclover,

I checked out Davinci's Realism mod a few months ago, but it certainly has been awhile now. Bascially the short answer for whether or not this type of recruitment will be added to OSCAR's initial relase is no. It would be a HUGE amount of work to rebuild (not to mention balance) each faction's recruitment, and if we undertook something like this there would be a good chance OSCAR wouldn't be released this year.

That said, I personally really like the sound of this and might very well come out with a "Realism" inspired sub-mod for OSCAR later on which incorperates these types of changes. It won't be included in OSCAR's initial release, but very well might find its way into the mix sometime later down the line.

Thanks for the response. Could you limit the recruitment of home troops though to regions where the troops historically would be drawn from by the use of hidden resources and culture requirements. You could then use the MERC pool to create the good and evil faction mercs for when the armies conquer a new region. For example you would make the haradrim only recruitable in the harad hidden resource areas, arnor troops only recruitable in arnor areas, Orcs only recruitable in mordor and mountains, etc. but if they made their way into rohan you could make Dunlending and Isengard mercs available. I don't think you need to do the entire EDB overhaul to fix the arcade recruitment. I loved realism because I had to take into account what areas were WORTH conquering... the misty mountains and mordor and the deserts added nothing to recruitment as is logical so could be bypassed or just destroyed. I suppose when you release I could make these changes as well. I may also add the new armor upgrades and make them only possible in regions that have iron and gold as a hidden resource. Thanks for spicing up an already great game.

[Mank]

Ok we do have some news on the new additional units that will influence the subject of recruitment:

-Instead of using almost all the remaining unit slots to expand the Lorien, Silvan, Gundabad, Mordor, Dunland, and OotMM rosters we're planning on leaving the rest of the rosters as-is for OSCAR's initial release. Very soon after, I will be releasing a special "OSCAR Auxillary Unit Pack" that will be full of additional units (including the unused Gondor ones). We decided on this because one of our goals for OSCAR is to keep the main release very moddable to allow for more improvements later! Hopefully this will be the best of both worlds, as those who want the freedom to add their own new units will be able to, while those who want additional units immediatley will have them soon as well.

@orclover: So with this announement in mind, I probably won't be doing any more work on the recruit pools until after the "OSCAR Auxillary Unit Pack" is released. Once I begin work on the new rosters I'll be sure to PM you and we can talk about some of these new dynamics you would like to see as I work on the expanded recrult pools, that way a "OSCAR Realism" recruitment option can be released alongside the Unit Pack.

[tree1212001]

As always great job on everything as its all very much appreciated. Now i love the idea of making this as modifiable as possible and with that in mind how many of mos' mods as there many interesting submods there and with the future i dream of will be oscar and mos join forces to blow respective minds. Ps was the secret forest trails submod going to be present in oscar ?

[Tankbustaz]

I am wondering, in the future would it be better to have "homeland" structures for different factions like EB1, it might make the player make a more diverse army, as elite units would be available in the homeland without upgrading many buildings, but unavailable in non homeland regions, so the player would have to rely more on auxiliary forces. Just an idea.


I already have 3 copies of TATW in my hard drive, waiting for this mod and DAC to be released.

[Mank]

@ Tree1212001: Ah yes, I was wondering when this question would appear. Truth be told OSCAR will have many similarities to MOS, though some of the scripts selections will be different as more of Withwnar's sub-mods will be added as well as some upgraded features like my optional supply lines and Gondor's Former Glory. Lots of the units that you are used to seeing in MOS will be added in OSCAR's Auxiliary Unit Pack (including many new ones on top of that!), and we're shooting for a highly customizable gamestart just like MOS provides. We're still in the process of getting permissions for some content so I can't show an exact list of mods included in both MOS and OSCAR, but if you like MOS I reckon you'll enjoy the OSCAR expansion as well!

Edit: As to the secret forest trails, we are still discussing how we might incorporate this into the new DaC map. Unless we modify the map there would need to be a bit of a different dynamic as FireFreak has totally re-designed Mirkwood. It is a much asked for feature however, so we're still ironing out how it might be elegantly added to the DaC map. This would definitely be something we would preview if it is added, so check back here every once and awhile and you might be pleasantly surprised! Short answer: We're still deciding, but hope to include it.

@Tankbustaz: I am personally very keen on adding a sub-mod to OSCAR that includes this dynamic. Look up the thread just a bit and you can see that orclover5 also raised a similar idea, and I'll keep it very much in mind when I begin work on the expanded rosters pack. This type of recruitment won't be featured in the main OSCAR release, but hopefully we'll be able to release a sub-mod for OSCAR soon after that providing this type of recruitment!

[Tankbustaz]

You could call it Middle Earth Barborum.

[Aper]

I think Lorien is way too much open to enemy armies lore-wise, you could close it up a bit and add the secret forest trails to permit the movements of
elvish stacks.

[Mank]

@ Aper: Hrm, interesting idea. The only problem I could forsee with that is that the AI would have NO way of actually getting to Lorien, as they cannot move past the "forest path" nodes. I'll certainly bounce this off the other mod members to get their opinion on it though!

Update - 2d Progress

We've been working hard on making new 2d content for OSCAR as well as including some excellent work from other modders in the community. In this preview we'll be showing some of what has already been incorporated into OSCAR. As you will see, this preview features content shared by Araval, Hereje, and Fozzie, so be sure to let them know if you like their work!

Menus and Loading Screens

New Splash Screen:

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New Loading Screens and Borders:

-In-game Border:

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- One example from Araval's new Loading Screens:

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New Menu with Moving Fog!: (Based on Hereje's fantastic Silver Menu Design)

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Additional 2d Content:

- Fozzie's Improved Settlement Upgrade Building Cards (no more pale squares around the core buildings).

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- Araval's "Improved Banners" for OotMM and Isengard:

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Signature for OSCAR!!

I've also made the first (of possibly many) signatures for the OSCAR sub-mod collection. I hope you like it, and if so I'll be sure to keep rolling new ones out occasionally!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Flinn]

good good, really looking forward for it

[lukaszcbc]

good work

[Legio]

Very good, MANK...

[tree1212001]

I hope in the future we could see an oscar's mos mod. We can dream