[Download] Authentic Ancient World 0.05

[Hetairos]

I did a quick signature until we get better ones, respectively more variety:

Attachment 308616

Now to the real work, the music project and than finally to our first Roman buildings and roster concept.

[Hetairos]

We have a first signature: Feel free to use our new signature or create your own according to your preferences.

I will now sit down and push that music project for release. My apologies for being occupied with other projects than the Roman buildings and roster. I have a little bottleneck just right now. I will be with you soon working on the concept, roster and getting together the models and textures pack.

So for now, enjoy the sunshine (or if its raining sit down and do some work on that buildings and rosters just as ABH2 and Hloeric did already ).

Cheers
Alec

[Barune]

That Edict mod sounds very very promising. Seems like it adds quite a few layers of depth! Great work!

[Hetairos]

Yes, if the UI really handles 8 edicts (please verify) than I will more than welcome use 4 of them for ABH2/RSII's taxes buildings, respectively now we can convert it into edicts which is a much better way of doing it than integrating this in buildings.

Also we will do something similar like DeI with the agents, but much more extended.

[ABH2]

Pictures:

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Any more and they get thrown off to the sides where you can only see a sliver of them. Same issue as the buildings. The UI is sort of maxed out.

A small update on what I'm working on:
1. Working adding buildings/testing to answer Alec's question no models and which to assign. Doesn't seem like it will be difficult or create much new work. I figure the main issue is going to be UI (more on this in a second).
2. I'm currently testing which minor settlements get paired with which battle maps with walls added. This is going to take a while as its a pretty big task to test 179 regions. I'll then have a list of minor settlements that can be upgraded with walls.

Another note-I started this process looking to make minor settlements less 'minor.' I would hope that any building plans we do incorporate one concept where all buildings can be built in any settlement. It makes little sense, for instance, that Syracuse can't build an agora or other building chains. This is a pretty easy thing to implement and I've already done it.

Also, back to the UI icons for buildings - I'm not sure what style or what the plan is with regards to that. Like I said, I could probably redo Rome's buildings in a few days if I had the right icons to set up and a set building roster.

I'm in the minority, but I actually like the neatness of the building icons (one of the aspects of vanilla I appreciate) and I haven't seen many better solutions on this front. If the plan is to keep that style, I really liked what this modder did:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-v-1-0-release

I'm inept with graphical work. I contacted him a while back before I even joined this mod about using them (he seems done with the mod, at least for now), but I don't think he's been online since. But, again, I'm not sure what the plan is on this front.

[ABH2]

I really like the sound of the music add-on and the look of that UI. Little things like that can add an underrated element of depth to a game.

[Hetairos]

Poll added.

[Legatus21]

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Your project seems very promising . I was a big fan of RS2 and RTR and I think those pics will prove quite useful to your team ! Best wishes to your project !!!
(All rights go to the marvellous artists of these pics)

[Legatus21]

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Your project seems very promising . I was a big fan of RS2 and RTR and I think those pics will prove quite useful to your team ! Best wishes to your project !!!
(All rights go to the marvellous artists of these pics)

[Hetairos]

Legatus21 thanks mate! Those awesome and legendary shields from RSII, it is definitely a big support for us. I will copy this thread into our creative thread (sticky) where we gather such things like that. We would love to have you on board of our forum and get your feedback and assistance about our upcoming work. In distant future we will also look for beta testers. We are getting started now and have a little team that starts to do some magic stuff in here it's all WIP, but once released we are going for full RSII immersion and in-depth style with awesome graphics!

So thank you again and hopefully see you more often in this forum in future!

Cheers
Alec

[Hetairos]

Nice verify! So, this is fixed. We will use 4 of those for tax levels just in RSII and 4 of those will be faction specific (e.g. Roman Bread & Games).

We might want to see in future what we can do with the global tax modifier. We can most certainly edit its name, text, description, but if we could edit the global tax multipliers effects haha we could make some other magic with it. Like make it a global trade multiplier with certain drawbacks. e.g. protective economy or aggressive trading, or global slave policy like actively encouraging house slavery or using them as serve in mines) whatever... basically just some quick ideas. Since now that multiplier does exchange money for happiness. Why should it not be possible to try and edit some other effects to it?

Second one on the buildings. Nice initiative. I will be very happy about that list with the graphic buildings and such (the compilation of what we have: e.g. agora, harbor, barracks, odeon... and if they look different once you build a better version of it or if some versions like 1 level sanitation are not displayed on the battle map but than lvl 4 sanitation buildings give a aqueduct.

Also your personal project on the settlements (minor and walls) will be something unique to us.

To your questions now:

1.) Yes, minor settlements will not be minor in our concept. Everything can be build everywhere (just a pity we could now give all settlements to be major, hence all having 6 building slots). Well you said one can make each region to be its own province, but certainly this has to be evaluated first).

2.) Building icons... in contrast to the Unit icons, which will be in-game pics converted to nice artwork (simple automatic conversion of in-game shots) I am not sure with the buildings yet. We could do them exactly like units... or remain with the old style. I like the Rome II icons, but I also like the in-game artworks from RSII which make units and buildings very easy to distinguish. I guess this could be a matter of sub-mods or optionals.

3.) If you can catch him (i tried as well, but no response) invite him to the project. He might be interested to work on icons only.

4.) About buildings, not that I don't trust you, but before we implement the building chains, I would like to go over a complete draw. because there are a few future concepts I need to test on that draw and if they would work with it. I hope you are fine with it.

Overall good post, thanks for the great surprise this evening! +motivational content+

PS: that signature and mod link looks good on you. I think in future we could release a few more different sigs, like faction wise and some with some battle scenes in it etc.

[ABH2]

I'll look into the global tax modifier, but I've never actually spotted anything in the DB related to it. At least nothing I can remember.. I'll look around unless someone knows where it's at.

Well you said one can make each region to be its own province, but certainly this has to be evaluated first).

I believe this is possible (creating more provinces, but even if I did it, it would only show the UI for 6 building slots. It would suffer from the same issue of just adding buildings. As in, the grand campaign map physically has slots on it that are tied to the startpos.esf slots. So, nothing would be buildable in them. They'd be blocked. You could put a building in there through the method I've already discussed with all its drawbacks. I think that removes a lot from the player where as making those unique buildings here and there or 1 per non-port settlement makes them a little special.

We could do them exactly like units... or remain with the old style. I like the Rome II icons, but I also like the in-game artworks from RSII which make units and buildings very easy to distinguish. I guess this could be a matter of sub-mods or optionals.

This is my number one issue with most of the icons I've seen done for Rome 2 through mods. If they change the style, they tend to be hard to distinguish from one another or they are just sort of ugly. I actually think that, at a minimum, the current style CA gave us is clean and chains are easily distinguishable.

One thing I think MAY unlock those slots (it's a longshot, I think) would be constructing a startpos.esf from scratch. If I could figure out how to convert it to XML, I could edit more things than through ESF/PMF. I have one thing I want to try - deleting some of the references to the slots on the campaign map for the extra slots (or maybe all - may stop the expansion of cities, but mainly this is for extras). But, that's above my paygrade at the moment. If there was nothing in the startpos.esf for the slot referring to the campaign map, I want to see how the game responds.

I think currently CA builds the map through whatever tools they use, and the startpos.esf regions are constructed from that. I think the game is hardcoded to go do those animations and only getting a map editor that would allow the physical insertion of construction slots on the map will make fully functional extra buildings possible. Even then, we'd have to find a way to get around the UI issue because minor and major still only show a max of 4 and 6 buildings.

4.) About buildings, not that I don't trust you, but before we implement the building chains, I would like to go over a complete draw. because there are a few future concepts I need to test on that draw and if they would work with it. I hope you are fine with it.

That's fine with me. It's why I threw in that comment on once there is a complete list. My own list above wasn't even 100% complete. I figure that's part of the collaborative process. If there's a way I could speed the process along from a research standpoint, let me know. I could add to some of the incomplete chains above when I get a chance.

[Hetairos]

Global Tax Modifier: I haven't seen the global tax modifier in the db as well, but honestly, I haven't ever searched for it I believe it might be in one of those global variables tables. In future we can find that out.

1-City-Provinces: Ok, scratch that, my mistake, haven't thought of the drawbacks from the UI... classic mistake!

Buildings: After the music mod, I'll be there with the buildings as well. I'll expect a list of graphics buildings for the campaign (and another list for the battle visuals) from you until than, if possible of course. maybe you can even speed this up by looking at the db and what entries we have there.

Small, respectively non-expansion cities: You may have seen the mod of small cities. So I know a guy who could tell us how to remove the expansion graphics for the campaign map. Than only the battle map visuals would remain.

PS: I plan (with a few others, also modders from the modding summit) to some kind of create a petition for CA to free at least the buildings and traits UI limitations! Chances are low, but at least we try...

PSS: BTW, feel free to give some feedback about the new UI. I as well appreciate your ideas and feedbacks, so we can improve things in future.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

I absolutely love the way those silver shields look, so awesome! I need them...

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Hey guys, just browsing through some stuff...


The other thing is, I'd like phalanxes to look more like this( note the different shield patterns/colour of helmets)





Here is some pics:

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Here is my rome 2 playlist

Tell me what you think and see where it can work for the music for this mod, contains Hellenic, Barbarian, Roman, Eastern soundtracks.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...eature=mh_lolz

[Hetairos]

why did i not hear from that haegemonia mod before? where are the other 2 pics from?

[The Wandering Storyteller]

why did i not hear from that haegemonia mod before? where are the other 2 pics from?

The Haegemonia mod was created in 2013, but its user was not active, he's only recently returned and is now updating from what I hear. The other two I found on google, thinking it could serve inspiration for your texturerers.

[Hetairos]

Thanks mate, but we already have like 3 hours material (!)

It's awesome and don't worry our music team will create something gorgeous. I am sure you will like it a lot.

[Hetairos]

Ok, nice, we must certainly keep an eye on his modding progress.