Is this mod still being developed?

[jabbothehut]

As title suggests. Is this still being actively worked on and if so is there a late campaign planned?

[Jurand of Cracow]

As title suggests. Is this still being actively worked on and if so is there a late campaign planned?

The title asks, not suggests.
The first answer is: yes.
The second answer: no, we don't plan late campaign unless somebody shows up willing to make this campaing. I have some plans as far as the factions are concerned, suggested starting date would be 1390.
JoC

[Sin_]

I've started getting back into Medieval 2 and recently downloaded your mod after getting fed up with the abundance of money, endless spam of stacks and historical inaccuracies in SS. Given CA won't be working on Medieval 3 anytime soon, I'm happy to help out with this mod as it's a really good project - I like how your code is optimized as well (over double the code and better performance than SS)

I've noticed that some of the faction descriptions at the start are from SS, which aren't particularly great, or some are just downright inaccurate i.e. with Lithuania, the Grand Duchy only formed in the 13th century, Mindaugas only became grand duke in 1253, and was born in 1203... 71 years after start date. We have Imperium Romanum for the Holy Roman Empire, whereas if you want to have the faction as the Holy Roman Empire it should be Sacrum Romanorum Imperium, Holy Empire of the Romans. At that time period they only had a single headed eagle as well.

There's also references in the pop-ups to different factions, like the Byzantine Empire, when it was either the Roman Empire or the Empire of the Romans. Granted this stuff isn't high priority but them getting fixed will add to the overall polish of the mod.

I'm also able to create textures, code and can 3D model (was going to look into creating a unique settlement map for Constantinople but will see). If you'd like my help I'd probably just start with the text and textures first. I wouldn't mind doing the late campaign after those parts are polished either. Let me know.

[jabbothehut]

Thanks for the answer and really wish I knew how to mod this game well in order to help you develop a late campaign as I love what you guys have done so far. It has really breathed some life into Total War for me again

Much love.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Thanks for the answer and really wish I knew how to mod this game well in order to help you develop a late campaign as I love what you guys have done so far. It has really breathed some life into Total War for me again

Start small. The best way into modding is, imo, to make an ancillary. You may see the basic logic of coding, some constraints imposed by the engine, opportunities for effects etc. For instance, I want to add great person of Paolo Venetiano for Venice, or a relic of Arm of St. Adalbertus for Poland. One need to create an icon, then code the benefits and descriptions, and code how to get it.
Or if you like graphical fun - take on some elements of the UI. Eg. I've replaced icons of trade goods in the city panel. Or - what may be useful for us - learn how to change the graphical representation of the resources on map - I've changed a few for the SSHIP, but it's not the end of work there. There're tutorials how to do it.

I've started getting back into Medieval 2 and recently downloaded your mod after getting fed up with the abundance of money, endless spam of stacks and historical inaccuracies in SS. Given CA won't be working on Medieval 3 anytime soon, I'm happy to help out with this mod as it's a really good project - I like how your code is optimized as well (over double the code and better performance than SS)

I've noticed that some of the faction descriptions at the start are from SS, which aren't particularly great, or some are just downright inaccurate i.e. with Lithuania, the Grand Duchy only formed in the 13th century, Mindaugas only became grand duke in 1253, and was born in 1203... 71 years after start date. We have Imperium Romanum for the Holy Roman Empire, whereas if you want to have the faction as the Holy Roman Empire it should be Sacrum Romanorum Imperium, Holy Empire of the Romans. At that time period they only had a single headed eagle as well.

There's also references in the pop-ups to different factions, like the Byzantine Empire, when it was either the Roman Empire or the Empire of the Romans. Granted this stuff isn't high priority but them getting fixed will add to the overall polish of the mod.

I'm also able to create textures, code and can 3D model (was going to look into creating a unique settlement map for Constantinople but will see). If you'd like my help I'd probably just start with the text and textures first. I wouldn't mind doing the late campaign after those parts are polished either. Let me know.

Well, if you would be willing to work on the text files, you're welcome. Tell me beforehand though to provide you with fresh versions, as I'm updating these files continously. (or one can use WinMerge afterwards).
Creating unique settlement - this would be really great. We've got a mutual agreement with Tsardoms to use our assets so you may start with experimenting of inclusion their strat mamp city models into our mods - actually, they've started to use icons and pictures of the buildings created by me, so it'd be a fair play.
you may also warm yourself up with coding fires - I've done it for a few wonders, but most are not
On coding, I have a following problem:
- currently, the pop-out window of Baqt (and many other events) is coded like this:

log -------------------- Script start : Baqt (1) EVENT AND MONEY --------------------

add_events
event historic EGYPT_MAKURIAN_BAQT factions { egypt, jerusalem, zengid, abbasid, }
date 0
position 304, 2 ; Faras
end_add_events
console_command add_money egypt, 3000
set_event_counter egypt_baqt_payed 21

- I wanted to create windows popping out that would make the camera swinging to the place where this event occured. However, I've done it wrongly, as the events happen during the AI turns, and now they are visible for all factions, not those listed in the code. One need to do it differently - through Yes/No event mechanism. I am not familiar with it, and I don't have time to do it. So if you'd be able to help - great.

Tutorial for yes/no is here, and more advanced is here.
I gathered a code from the RotK mod with an example how to do it - this may be a good starting point:

'regular' yes\no event where yes then moved the camera and if you want to be fancy you could highlight the object as well.

if I_EventCounter little_conqueror_accepted > 0
disable_cursor
disable_shortcuts true
ui_indicator_remove 0
ui_indicator_remove 1
snap_strat_camera 176, 74
zoom_strat_camera 1.0
reveal_tile 155, 56 ; Jianan
ui_indicator 0 arrow_up_right track_ground_3d 156 57 10 colour 255 0 0 period 3
campaign_wait 4
ui_indicator_remove 1
campaign_wait 2
ui_indicator_remove 0
enable_cursor
disable_shortcuts false
terminate_monitor
end_if

[jabbothehut]

Thank you very much for the pointer. I've been playing around with the unit stats files and the music files. Can I just say that the change you guys made to missiles (making them non AP and Area damage instead) is so bloody good. AP missiles are so stupidly strong in this game and what you guys have done really makes missile units more strategic to use rather than just "haha longbow go brrr".

[Jurand of Cracow]

Thank you very much for the pointer. I've been playing around with the unit stats files and the music files. Can I just say that the change you guys made to missiles (making them non AP and Area damage instead) is so bloody good. AP missiles are so stupidly strong in this game and what you guys have done really makes missile units more strategic to use rather than just "haha longbow go brrr".

This was actually the feat of the previous SSHIP team, perhaps of MWY or Fair Prince. All accolades for them.
From my side, what I've done recently was to lower the availability of archers by showing the ranges one level up. This is somehow counterweigh by more ubiquotus availability of the AoR archers, like Hunters, but in general the archers (and crossbowmen) should be rarer.

[Sin_]

Have had a look into the Tsardoms mod - looks quite nice although has a different feel to it. Biggest hurdle for using some of the models is I'm unable to get IWTE to load - once I can get the meshes into Blender and be able to export them back to cas. format will be golden (I'll ask on that forum).

On the easier stuff, I've redone the HRE, Byz, Seljuqs of Rum and Lithuania - general approach is giving a handful of paragraphs of critical history in the build up to 1132 AD, then something on the current ruler and state of the faction. Used multiple sources so doesn't feel like a copy and paste job from wiki. Also fixed the HRE icons.

What's the best way to exchange files - is there a Discord for the project?

[Jurand of Cracow]

We've got Discrod, but we communicate so little, that it makes any sense to make it public. Let's stick to TWC.

[Sin_]

Sounds good, np. I'll add a sub-mod thread to store the changes I make, rather than keep it on this one, if that's alright?

I've played around with the models but unfortunately the not able to get IWTE working on the comp yet - still I'm able to change file names, edit textures etc. and get the unique settlements into the game:

[IMG][/IMG]


Once I can get the IWTE working, I'll edit the size so it isn't as long and re-position it so when in a siege the enemy won't be camped inside the walls! For Constantinople you can edit the map so that they can only ever attack from the west, so will look better.

Only problem I can see looking at the tutorials is that unique settlements require a faction e.g. in this I have used the greeks huge city to replace it with Constantinople, but that will mean every huge greek city will become Constantinople. The mod is already at max faction limit, so appears that unique settlements might be off the cards unless there is some other way ... might not be a huge problem if for some of the factions their only huge city will ever be their capital.

[Jurand of Cracow]

@Sin_, you're ofc welcome to add a thread in the mini mod subforum. You may even add it our main forum, as this may be more visible.
On IWTE - I have no idea if it works also in our mod. Never used / learnt it.
In the SSHIP files modified by myself, at the beginnig there're sections explaining what has been modded / what can be in the future / what are the pitfals. Most comments as such are in the script and EDB.
Huge cities - the SSHIP starts historical but allows creation of the unhistorically large factions. So each faction should be able to accomodate more than one huge city.

[Sin_]

No problem. Got it working in the end. Redesigned the whole city as the ones available were over twice the size of a huge city, and it can't fit on the map well. Redone the textures for most of it too, as the original ones weren't the best quality. Looking good so far I think:

[j.a.luna]

No problem. Got it working in the end. Redesigned the whole city as the ones available were over twice the size of a huge city, and it can't fit on the map well. Redone the textures for most of it too, as the original ones weren't the best quality. Looking good so far I think:

Woow looks great! This would give a unique touch to the most important cities in the game! can you do it for other sship mod cities? Can they be added to the next version?
On the other hand, in this case, would it be possible only for the city of Constantinople or every time we reach a "Byzantine huge city" we will have the Constantinople model? any way to fix that? +Rep for you!

[Sin_]

Thanks - planning to do one for Rome, Jerusalem and Egypt. Beyond that in terms of 3d modelling, I'd like to start looking into creating custom battle maps for settlements - genuine siege at Constantinople would be pretty sweet (probably use the assets from Attila).

Yeah found a workaround - you can add a unique strat map city through faction_variants, and provided there is another faction that uses the same culture as that one, you can use theirs for your regular cities. For example, for Constantinople I used the byzantium faction under faction_variants, and set all of the starter settlements to Georgia (as they use the greek culture which gives you the regular greek cities.

In the screen below, you can see Constantinople is unique and Nicea (upgraded to a huge city to prove it works) is the standard huge city the Byzantines would get in this mod:



Done some minor tweaks to Constantinople - Haghia Sophia was a little too red, added marble and some gold in some places in the city.

[Sin_]

planning to do one for Rome, Jerusalem and Egypt.

Actually, make that Rome, Jerusalem, Egypt (Pyramids and Sphinx), and Venice.

[Macaras]

How does it look zoomed out ?

[j.a.luna]

Actually, make that Rome, Jerusalem, Egypt (Pyramids and Sphinx), and Venice.

Great!! @Sin Do you think that in the Constantinople model you could add the famous iron chains on the Bosporus and the Galata tower in sship? I think the Tsardom mod included it in its map model...

[Sin_]

I can add it - the only issue is the SSHIP peninsula isn't big enough for it but I'll have a look and possibly move the regions port there as well to act as Galata.

I have hit a snag though with the Medieval engine itself - once you go past a certain number of vertices in all the settlement models loaded in the game (regardless of whether they are even used or not), the shadows stop displaying for the settlements the further you go over this limit and makes them look terrible. SSHIP is right at the edge of hitting this ceiling and with Constantinople added is over it - the middle east factions were impacted by this limitation.

I've reduced the battlements on Constantinople (the city is a whopping 13,000 vertices - usual ones are around 3k - and without the battlements its about 7,000). That reduction still doesn't fix it, hence SSHIP must be right near the ceiling. There are some (from what I can gather), not needed faction variants in SSHIP for HRE and Jerusalem. Just letting those use the settlements for their culture will save about 26,000 vertices, which will give SSHIP a good deal of unique settlements without breaking the engine.

[Sin_]

Cities + Resources stop having shadows even

[Jurand of Cracow]

I can add it - the only issue is the SSHIP peninsula isn't big enough for it but I'll have a look and possibly move the regions port there as well to act as Galata.

I have hit a snag though with the Medieval engine itself - once you go past a certain number of vertices in all the settlement models loaded in the game (regardless of whether they are even used or not), the shadows stop displaying for the settlements the further you go over this limit and makes them look terrible. SSHIP is right at the edge of hitting this ceiling and with Constantinople added is over it - the middle east factions were impacted by this limitation.

I've reduced the battlements on Constantinople (the city is a whopping 13,000 vertices - usual ones are around 3k - and without the battlements its about 7,000). That reduction still doesn't fix it, hence SSHIP must be right near the ceiling. There are some (from what I can gather), not needed faction variants in SSHIP for HRE and Jerusalem. Just letting those use the settlements for their culture will save about 26,000 vertices, which will give SSHIP a good deal of unique settlements without breaking the engine.

It looks like you're knowing this stuff. Great! Carry on!