Team Announcement
Dear friends and supporters of Tsardoms, in the past year our mod has changed quite a lot from what it was originally both in terms of concept but also in terms of work progress and team members. We thought it is time to present a little update on our trials and tribulations to the public to show that we are more alive then ever and getting close to the goal that we are all looking forward to: a first release of the mod
First and foremost we would like to thank our founding member and team leader for many years phoenix[illusion]. Phoenix was part of the originally started Tsardoms all those years ago with people such as il_duce, matthaeus, sarmatian, tzar etc. Some of them have left us but some are still contributing to our mod. Recently phoenix has decided to step down as leader of our mod due personal life which is taking much of his time. He will still be helping our mod and continue contributing with his talent and advice and we hope that we will still see some great units to come from him
Our new team leader is now Hrobatos. He has been the driving force of our mod for some time now and was elected as team leader by an unanimous vote. The latest preview that Hrobatos has published of the Knights St John was fantastic and expect to see more from him in the future.
All hail the new King
Mod Future and Plans
Due to the large scope of our mod we have decided to split the release of the mod into several phases. The first phase will be the release a Battle Beta. This beta will have only the battle map and will feature all the factions already previewed (Ottomans, Bulgaria, Serbia, Wallachia, Moldova, Ragusa, Bosnia, Hospitallers and perhaps another one or two factions depending on modding progress). The purpose of this beta is to first let the fans enjoy the units that we currently have but to also serve as beta testing of sorts. Bugs, issues, imbalances in stats can be highlighted by the fans and help the team. In terms of timeframe we don't really have one but we hope it will happen in the new year.
The second phase will be the release of a Reduced Map Beta. This first beta release with the reduced map will feature a brand new map created by our new mapper (more on that below). Having a reduced map will allow us to reduce the scope of our work and reduce the number of initial factions. Basically, a part of the Italian Peninsula and the Northern Alps will not be in the first version. Work will continue on the full mod in parallel to work on the reduced map. Pretty much everything that we will use for the reduced map version will be applied to the full mod. Also, rest assured Italian factions will still exist in the Reduced Map Beta. Factions such as Venice, Genoa or Naples will still be there but the focus will be more on their colonial or overseas possessions.
This is the approximation of the map for the first beta release
Finally, if all goes well we will release the Full Mod with all the planned factions and the full map stretching from Switzerland all the way to Anatolia and Cyprus which will include the whole of the Italian peninsula.
Team Membership Changes
Besides leadership change our mod has also welcomed a host of new, talented and sorely needed members. I will list them below in the order in alphabetical order:
danny X
Danny has joined Tsardoms as mapper. His previous work includes mods such DragonDawn and War of the West. Danny has agreed to create a brand new map which will be the reduced map for the first beta version of the game. He has been doing some great progress and hopefully we can show a little preview of all his work.
k/t
One of the areas where our mod has been severely lacking has been coding and unit stats. Enter k/t of Real Combat/Real Recruitment fame. k/t has been working on several RC/RR submods for mods such as Stainless Steel and Broken Crescent. He is now helping to implement the RC/RR system in Tsardoms Total War to ensure realistic battles. His work will be essential for our planned first beta release: the battle only beta. k/t has already prepared the RC/RR stats for factions such Ragusa, Bosnia, Moldova and more to come soon.
King of the Ring
King of the Ring has joined our mod to help with the creation of unit cards and has completed several factions already such as the Knights St John and the Moldavians. Even though he is working full time for the great Stainless Steel submod Titanium he has found time to lend his support to our mod and we hope to see more of his great unit card work in the future.
Miszel
Just like a storm Miszel appeared out of nowhere on TWC and turned our mod upside down (in a good way). We had been lacking manpower to increase our unit making for years only managing to finish 1-2 factions in a year. Since Miszel has joined our mod we have managed to finish one full faction which has allowed our existing modders to work on another 2-3 factions. You will soon see the fruits of Miszel's work.
Neadal
One of our latest additions to the team is Neadal. Although he is hosting his own great mod Die Italienische Krieg (The Italian Wars) he has agreed to collaborate with our mod and help us with coding, an area which we have been severely lacking in recent times. Our two mods will collaborate and share resources in the future so keep an eye on both.
Vipman
Together with Neadal, Vipman has also been our latest addition to the coding team. He is helping our team with coding the character names for all the factions and also creating the unfinished family trees. This is Vipman's first mod however he has already proven his worth to our team in areas which may be more boring but are just as important.
We also need to mention the involvement of modding great Uanime5 He will be sharing with our mod resources from his mods such as the Italian banking system and also assist us with building tree development. We are still in the process of actually agreeing on a set building tree and setting down in stone all our ideas (which can prove painful as we would love to have very detailed and historical building trees).
As for the rest of the team, we are all here pushing ahead! We hope to show some great work from some of our team members soon so stay tuned!
Work in Progress
Below we have some sneak peaks of various work that we have done throughout this year. All of the pictures are work in progress and may change.
Here is a sneak peak of danny's work in progress mapping work (keep in mind he only started this a few weeks ago and he started from scratch!!). All provinces have already been done. All the material that we already had from our map preview is here including the jewel Constantinopole!
Here is a sneak peak of the faction icons made by DobroVece. Notice something different? Each faction will have two faction symbols
Now here is a brand new unit made by Hrobatos (who could they be?)
Here you can see lovely work created by three of our members: unit info cards made by HolyCrusader, unit cards made by King of the Ring and battle interface by DobroVece
Tsardoms Needs You!
If you are interested in modding and would like to join an ever-growing team of talented modders we will welcome you with open arms!
If you are into high medieval and renaissance history, if you have skinning, modelling, coding or scripting skills or even if you have just 2D skils and are interested in joining contact any of our members or post on our forum.
In terms of skinning and modelling we would welcome modders interested in working on Italian and Swiss factions, Landsknechts aswell as Turkish beylik factions. We already have plenty of materials that can be used from already finished factions (some revealed and some not), however the more modders we have the quicker the factions will get made.
The more of us there are in our team the greater the progress will be!