Azeroth Total War

[Mr_Nygren]

Thinking the starting faction list should be:

Kingdom of Stormwind
Kingdom of Khaz Modan
Night Elves

Nation of Durotar
United Tauren Tribes
Forsaken

The Scarlet Crusade
The Undead Scourge
The Dark Iron Empire
The Dark Horde
The Drakkari Empire
Dalaran
Rebels

13 factions is a more achievable target.

mostly balances out with the continents except Kalimdor. Let me know what you think.

I'll suggest replacing one faction with the Blood Elves. Even though they weren't playable in vanilla WoW they still existed in that world - as they are in WC3:FT. Always wanted to play as them and the Scourge. I was so disappointed at the units of WTW.

[Vladyvid]

13 factions is a more achievable target.

[Darrowmere]

Maybe add Theramore as well, so that the orcs and tauren have 1 more challenge in Kalimdor.

Theramore will be a Stormwind settlement to keep the faction count down it may seem like this gives an advantage to the Horde but Kalimdor has less regions than the Eastern Kingdoms.

Does Durotar have warsong and darkspear units in 1.0? And as the faction fragment these troops are moved to the new factions?

Durotar should have three units one of Darkspear, Warsong and Frostwolf troops in their roster to show their presence but not the whole of Dark/War/Frost rosters as thats more work and should be saved till post 1.0. Similarly Stormwind should have three units one of Theramore, Stromguarde and High Elf (or better replacement) troops.

Looks good. It gives the core allied factions of the Horde and Alliance more room to expand without being in to much competition.
Factions like Blood elves and Stromgarde can be represented by troops available in a liberated city.
Silvermoon city could supply Blood knights and mages Horde faction, maybe even Alliance and Dalaran if they purge it of scourge.

Those special units being trainable in certain settlements sounds nice. Quel' Thalas will not be present as a faction in 1.0 and Blood/High Elf troops probably wont be in the game in 1.0 except maybe one unit for rebel purposes. During Vanilla wow Quel' Thalas is still neutral so haaving their Elf units on Durotar's roster wont happen just like Stormwind wont have Draenei units (who haven't even crashed down on Azeroth yet.)

[jim501]

Theramore will be a Stormwind settlement to keep the faction count down it may seem like this gives an advantage to the Horde but Kalimdor has less regions than the Eastern Kingdoms.

Durotar should have three units one of Darkspear, Warsong and Frostwolf troops in their roster to show their presence but not the whole of Dark/War/Frost rosters as thats more work and should be saved till post 1.0. Similarly Stormwind should have three units one of Theramore, Stromguarde and High Elf (or better replacement) troops.

Sounds like a good idea.
I dont know if it is necessary to name units as Frostwolf or Warsong since the Horde was made up of mixed clans, but maybe they can add a little flavor.
I think though that even after 1.0 you dont need to make extra factions for these 2.
The Horde was a united entity and they were big parts of it.

Even if it has assymetrical balance it wont be a bad thing but rather a challenge.

[Darrowmere]

Hey sorry for lack of updates and responses just finished uni so been celebrating pretty hard things are calming down now and plan to start work on the mod again on Sunday. Nice roster there Jim would be nice to work some tribes into the roster in their respective roles so warriors: ragetotem/stonehoof/bloodhoof Druid: skychaser/mistrunner/runetotem hunter: wildmane/eagletalon/cliffwalker etc think a more traditional set of weapons I remember having a Tauren hunter on wow and being surprised that they had guns. I'll look into sunchasers and come to a decision on them.

[jim501]

Hey sorry for lack of updates and responses just finished uni so been celebrating pretty hard things are calming down now and plan to start work on the mod again on Sunday. Nice roster there Jim would be nice to work some tribes into the roster in their respective roles so warriors: ragetotem/stonehoof/bloodhoof Druid: skychaser/mistrunner/runetotem hunter: wildmane/eagletalon/cliffwalker etc think a more traditional set of weapons I remember having a Tauren hunter on wow and being surprised that they had guns. I'll look into sunchasers and come to a decision on them.

Thanks, I tried to incorporate tauren tribes in the warriors and hunters but I didnt actually want to shoehorn every tribe to a specific role, and even if I wanted I dont know what role each one of them should have. So anyone who has a better layout can add.
Tauren had guns indeed, but in my idea I had them with bows since they are described as a more "traditional" race and more nature-oriented. Just my suggestion

By the way, congratulations on your graduation and good luck in the future.

[Vladyvid]

Looking forward to new developments.

[MacCarthy]

Would be neat if druids had the ability to shift into feral. Not sure that's something modifiable with the engine.
Perhaps instead of setting stakes it's a wall of thorns.

[Vladyvid]

Would be neat if druids had the ability to shift into feral. Not sure that's something modifiable with the engine.

Pretty sure its not possible.

Perhaps instead of setting stakes it's a wall of thorns.

It might be possible to replace the stakes model with something else, but I reckon that would affect all the factions in the game.

[Darrowmere]

Was thinking of giving Night Elves, Tauren and maybe unlockable for Gilneas in-form druids. Bear with more health and cat with more attack. Have a ranged humanoid druid too.

[jim501]

Was thinking of giving Night Elves, Tauren and maybe unlockable for Gilneas in-form druids. Bear with more health and cat with more attack. Have a ranged humanoid druid too.

Animal forms have 2 issues I think:
1) they might be redundant given the other nelf units and they could overblow the roster
2) their skeletons and animations will be hard like Vladyyvid said

Why dont you make it this way at least for the night elves :

Druids of the Claw : melee units, with more health and a bulkier physique, wearing bear skins and having claw fist weapons.
Druids of the Talon : ranged units, less health but have magic attacks,wearing black feather-like tunics.

That distinction is pretty accurate lorewise for night elves, and I think the others could just have ranged druids alone.

Yeah that would be cool, but you would need new animations and skeletons for those animal form units.

For any humanoids you can still use vanilla animations and skeletons, but for different forms of creatures you need to have new ones. If you can get them from some kind of a free source then that would be perfect, but if you would have to make them from scratch, well that could be quite difficult.

Is there any guide to creating and importing models ?
I would like to try my luck.

[Vladyvid]

Yeah that would be cool, but you would need new animations and skeletons for those animal form units.

For any humanoids you can still use vanilla animations and skeletons, but for different forms of creatures you need to have new ones. If you can get them from some kind of a free source then that would be perfect, but if you would have to make them from scratch, well that could be quite difficult.

I think you should first focus on making the humanoid units because its easier and less time consuming. Any modellers on the team btw? Who would be in charge of the units models/skins?

Also, any chances we are going to see some preview of whats being developed? Some pictures would be cool.

[Vladyvid]

Is there any guide to creating and importing models ?
I would like to try my luck.

Yes jim501, there are tutorials that could help you to learn to do that.

I dont know what skills you already have, but I assume you must have some experience with textures at least? There are different graphics softwares which you could use to work on the textures, one of the most popular being GIMP 2. It allows you not only to rework or create new "diff" textures but also (with an addon) to work on the "normal" textures - the ones used for shading/glints/reflections. Many people also use Photo Shop, and I personally use Paint Shop Pro and Gimp 2 (this one only for 'normal' textures and converting .tga files to .dds files).

Here you can find many useful tutorials, but I woudnt say all of them are very easy to follow and sometimes easy things are overly complicated in some of them, at least that was my impression, probably depends on what you already know etc.

This tutorial by Ishan I found very useful to learn how to import models into the game. It tells you how to change weapons from one vanilla unit to another, and although it doesnt say everything about what you should do if you want to add a new model to the game, still the basic steps are the same and I could probably explain it to you when you get the general grasp of how to do stuff like that.

For 3d modelling people often use Milkshape or Blender or 3dsmax, or a combination of them. I use Milkshape for now and plan to learn Blender but not yet there so cant really tell you much. You should really browse that section of the workshop I showed you in the first link and you will most likely find a tutorial for both Milkshape and Blender.

Also, its probably best idea to first learn how to make weapons models because they are quite simple. Having learned that, you could make more complicated models like eventually complete units models. Making the models is one thing, however, and making them playable is yet another thing to learn, but I could help you with that because I actually just recently learned how to do this myself.
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I know that all this probably looks confusing and maybe overwhelming at first, but you just have to take one thing at a time. For both texturing and modelling the thing that will simplify and speed up your work over time is that you build up your own library of templates and patterns. For example making one simple helmet model that is lets say 'generic' is a good starting point for making more elaborate helmets later on without having to start from scratch each time. Similarly with the textures.

Learn how to work with textures if you dont know that yet. Afterwards learn to do some 3d work. Id say many things are quite easy but the tutorials sometimes make them appear more complicated than they really are.

For what it's worth I can offer you some tips or advice if you would be needing any, so you can ask me here or via PM if you like. Ofcourse it often might be a much better idea to ask the experts in the workshop who know pretty much everything there is to know about these things.

[jim501]

snip

I dont have any experience or knowledge with modding, thats why I am asking so I can learn.
It was only a few months ago that I had the idea of making a warcraft mod that I got interested in it.
Then I found this one so I thought it was the perfet opportunity to learn so I can help.
It is nice to hear weapon models are easy. These are what I would mostly like to create, since I have a fascination with medieval and fantasy weaponry.

Of course at the moment I am occupied with other work so it will have to wait.
Thanks for your willingness to help me though.

[jim501]

snip

As a complete newbie to modding (nothing at all), a guide that would explain even the most basic stuff would be useful honestly if you know something like that.
I found that one for now but dunno how accurate it is. https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/co...ding_for_m2tw/

[Darrowmere]

In-form druids should be left to later releases and may not even be needed saving the trouble of skeletons. The original Rome total war had war dogs but i'm unsure if you can bring the skeleton across. If not and they're needed can see if any mods have dogs/wolves/bears and ask permission to use their skeletons.

[Darrowmere]

Hey everyone so i've been tidying the regions on the map arranging everything and the one thing that's been bugging me for ages was Blackrock Mountain. With the Spire connected to Searing Gorge and the depths connected to the Burning Steppes this gives the illusion of bottom and top of the mountain. The downside of this is that each sides (Dark Horde and Dark Iron) capital is cut off from the rest of their settlements. I'm hoping it provides a intresting game experience for playing as either faction and if not playing as either then one computer faction needs to take the whole mountain before they can truly expand. This fits in with the lore of the mountain being constantly fought over. Anyway let me know what you think and yes i will work/learn about ground types and reterrain the land as burning/ashy.

Blackrock Mountain

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Also for models i'm thinking the gates into Blackrock Mountain for Shadowforge and a mountain model for Hordemar (Very much like the moria one from TATW)

[Vladyvid]

I wouldnt really worry about regions on this stage of map development. What I believe you should first do is all of the heights, climates, rivers and terrains types. I would only play around with regions when all the geography is ready, or mostly ready. Dont know what to tell your about this mountain idea you have here. I would be interested to see how would a siege work, if it would work at all. It doesnt look too impressive but most likely because that there is nothing in there only one "mountain" and flat lands all around, so there is no point of reference with other mountains or anything really.

Heights, terrain types, climates, I would suggest to focus on them first to flesh out the topography. I could probably even help with that, cause I've been doing that before and developed ways to get some things done quicker, but then how could I really try to take something as cool as map making from you - this mod's creator, woudnt be fair at all.

Still, I could give some advice how to make the heights quicker or something like that. To be honest Im actually surprised you dont have even some basic version of heights ready yet. Its been a few months that this mod is in development and getting a basic heights map doesnt take more than, dunno a couple of hours...

[Molochwalker]

What faction placeholders are you using for the 13 factions? I am currently experimenting with sounds and music, as I'm on call with work and nobody's calling, so I might aswell do something worthwhile.

[Molochwalker]

Okay, I have some music ready over here.

If you want to listen to it:
1. got to [...]/Medieval 2 Total War/data/sounds
2. Backup music.idx, music.dat, event.idx, events.dat in a seperate folder
3. Extract the zip to [...]/Medieval 2 Total War/data/sounds and overwrite
4. Run the game and listen

It works perfectly for me, but I haven't tested it on another computer, so I can't promise anything.

Northern European factions = Alliance music
Mediterranean factions = Nelf music
Eastern European factions = Undead music
Arabic factions = Horde music
Mesoamerican factions = Troll (uncomplete and unplayable)

All cultures have 20+ minutes of unique strat map music, and unique tunes for battle mobility, battle win and battle loss. Battle tension and battle engagement remains the same for all factions at this moment. Furthermore, some tunes are a bit too loud (especially the WC3 files) and I probably have to adjust them a little bit, but for now I want to see if anyone else can use these files.

Download here and let me know what you think:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8stbi8uh5r...music.zip?dl=0