ACW needs your help!
Coders, programmers, startpos editors, people with TW modding experience wanted!
A lot of progress has been made since last released 3.5beta. Particularly pappagoat has spent way more nights awake than is good for his health fixing units, stats, features, navy, etc. But now with Husserl having moved on to greener pastures (which is a great loss for ACW, though we wish him best of luck) and with GetAssista (recent startpos advisor) and pappagoat (ACW's main workhorse) currently too engaged in r/l stuff to be able to allocate enough time to modding, ACW team's progress unfortunately again seems stalled somewhat.
Where we are now with 3.6?
- The Union roster is pretty much done and the way we wanted it to be with updated models and textures.
- CSA is too, but not quite to the standard we've done Union.
- Artillery is also pretty much finalised.
- The navy is in its current stage pretty much done, which means, no new custom models were or could be imported, but vanilla ships were repainted, re-gunned and renamed to function as Civil War ships did.
- Minors are all custom equipped and ready.
- ...this is the current beta version we're using for testing and unless we get the manpower to finish it up, will be made available as the next release.
What still needs doing for 3.6 before we are able to release it?
- Unexpected crashes have occured with the new CSA roster, so this has to be examined carefully or reworked again, to plug in the new models and textures correctly. No new CS units which we showed on screenies until this is fixed...
- Assigning correct lods2,3,4 to all unit models.
- Generals' recruitment and availability needs some work.
- Startpos stuff, such as units available at start game, enabling towns, diplomatic relations, etc
- Campaign map icons for minors.
- Trade goods finalisation.
- Assembling the auto-installer for the game, to spare people the current headache of installing.
- ...and some other details.
What is planned for 3.7?
- Further optimisation of units (more units to same texture sheets for lesser load, more details put on models themselves, etc)
- More emphasis on fog of war and line of sight. Decreasing view range on campaign map, requiring to scout with cavalry as was the historic case, making units in battle visible only when spotted, etc.
- Implementing period-correct technology (currently all is enabled, but we'd like to make some 19th century technologies or concepts relevant to the civil war researchable).
- More work on the navies.
- More work on campaign map details (towns, fortifications, etc).
- ...and some other stuff.
So there you have it. Modding takes a lot of work, testing, bughunting...every feature you add or change always causes some unexpected problems which need to be found and fixed. With only one or two guys doing this for a few hours each week, months pass whithout any apparent progress, which is just as frustrating for us as it is for you, waiting for a new release. So if you or anyone you know can help speed up this process, it would be most appreciated. If you or someone you know has the will, time and dedication to help bring this mod to a stable and releasable state, contact me or pappagoat.
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Originally Posted by hockeyguy6759
