What is the future?

[Alexology]

Ladies and Gents this mod is outstanding. It is without a doubt one of the greatest pieces of essentially fan fiction that I have ever seen. So let me tell you a little story:

I just got through with a full play through of Warhammer Total War as the Dwarves. However as things went on in the campaign it kept reminding me of TTA and things that were done even better here and didn't cost an arm and a leg to buy. The new game is quite good and with the Radious mod it is quite enjoyable but it is still early days for WHTW. I am sure it will improve and the mods will continue to improve to help us enjoy it all the more.

So after finishing my game I decided to come back to TTA. I had played it years ago as the Wood elves and mown down endless waves of goblins with my archers way back in the day. So I was really looking forward to coming back and trying it out as Rohan. After the slightly tricky install (some of the pictures on various threads are not working) I managed to get the game running. But that's when it all went wrong.

I have been spoiled with the new 'features' of the newer games. It was a shock going back to the heady days of MW2. My units no longer inform me of which units are dangerous for them, my archers arc is not entirely clear on a snow map, my units don't display their kill count or their attributes etc, etc.

So that got me thinking, while this mod is a work of genius, what's the future for the mod? Obviously the TW2 game engine is seriously out of date and while there will be many that continue to love and enjoy the game the newer players will find it hard to go back to these earlier engines without the features they now take for granted.

I am absolutely not complaining about the mod but just pondering what will the future be? It is hard to go back to MTW2, but this mod is so astounding I will more than happily do it and get used to it.

[Dutch-Balrog]

The future of development for Third Age Total War is pretty much in it's submods right now.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...?1154-Sub-Mods

[Vifarc]

Obviously the TW2 game engine is seriously out of date

Obviously the post-TW2 game engines (the Steam exclusive) are seriously out of modding.
The future is yours to chose: Buy badly modable games or buy elsewhere than Steam.

[alreadyded]

... Also the "newer" engines are just limited period, modding aside. Tiny battlemaps, clone battlemaps, etc... that alone is enough for me to not even want to play them. That crap was outdated when M2TW came out so what is it doing in newer games?

"I have been spoiled with the new 'features' of the newer games. It was a shock going back to the heady days of MW2. My units no longer inform me of which units are dangerous for them, my archers arc is not entirely clear on a snow map, my units don't display their kill count or their attributes etc, etc. "

Why would you want your units to tell you how to use them? Figuring it out yourself is half the damn battle. Even so such things as well as unit attributes can be put on the unit info cards which can be seen in battle at any time. Also, they have their own sounds that can be made to say such things if anyone wanted them to. I am not saying these newer engines don't have desirable features that m2tw doesn't, but these don't seem like good examples to me. I actually did enjoy ETW for the most part but after that the games were designed for 12 year olds (that apparently need units to tell them how to use them).

As for the future of TATW, no one is working on any official release, just various submods. Even if KK did return the next release would probably be submod content for the most part. Even before he left there was a great deal he planned to add from submods at the time. Much and more has happened since then.

[Ngugi]

The future of mods for W:TA is in the hands of the W:TA-modders; to put it bluntly, this question is posted in the the wrong place. It has no actual relationship to TATW, since if someone hope for mods in newer games he/she has to turn to the modders of those games.

TATW's dev's declared they never intended to bring the mod over to to any later game, because they were not interested in re-learn how to mod in Warscape, partly as the engine at the time had, and still 7 years later have unresolved, limitations that prevent creating full conversion mods, such as TATW. And at any rate - today there are no active TATW dev's.
The submodders in turn either continue as we are, or they quit modding TATW to join/start projects for the new games, that are at most inspired by this game, but after 7 years the result been no better than that all so far have died before they released anything.
The exception shall hopefully become the very latest project Rise of Mordor, led by a former TATW submodder known as Mr.Jox. The first version(s) are planned to be battles only, and the expectations are to have to put the campaign on a Europe map (due to some of the limitations) mind you, but it should be the go-to place for you concerning this.

[Alexology]

Good points all round, it's just such a terrible shame that the later games are so limited in potential. I mean clearly the modders are well within their rights to decide to limit themselves to MTW but it is so tempting to think what could have been achieved with the later engines. Especially as other modders got involved who started with the later games.

Either way, in the mean time I got back into TTA to some extent and it started to flood back the memories of MT2 and TTA. Warm, fuzzy memories

I'm happy to get back into the game again, but like I say the new features which may or may not be an improvement are greatly missed when going back to the MW2 engine straight from Warhammer. Honestly I really don't want to seem ungrateful for what TTA is, I just wondered if it could ever be updated to the newer models. Which I see, it cannot.

I was literally agog last night when I examined forest warden models in battle, they are simply stunning. It just instantly made me fall in love with the mod again.