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Thread: Proposed Visual update

  1. #41

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Wait till you try the mod! Interested in discussing it further and helping me? PM me and I'll invite you to the discord server.

    This is the current Faction Selection screen, something I'm pretty proud of. Had very little experience with this and it took me over 5 hours to drastically reword 'nearlyded's awesome original design (from a LotR mod). The whole menu (as you can see in the image below) is now based around this map. It's there behind the menu's, in the splash and loading screens and it becomes interactive when choosing your faction in the campaign.

    Faction Selection Screen:


    Main Menu

  2. #42

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Wow...this is epic cant wait to see and try out...UrienRhegeds masterpiece...

  3. #43

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Hahaa, nice to get some encouragement. Only three important elements I want to change before release. Modders with experience in these matters are very welcome to help me out!

    1. Faction accents: It's a huge turnoff when a Rheged nobleman turns around and says something like 'Yes, my Sultan'. That, and every new faction is stuck with the English accent.

    2. Strat Map UI Faction Symbols: This is a very complex operation which I haven't been able to pull off properly. At this point, the new factions' symbols aren't displayed on the strat map, instead you'll see they get the symbol of the faction they were 'cloned' from. So Dyfed will get Gwynedd's symbol, the Danes get the Jutes' symbol, the Visigoths get the Thuringian symbol, etc... Very frustrating! This might be my main gripe. Someone, please help or direct me to a decent how-to guide!

    3. An overhaul of the EDU. I've already tidied up EDB, to make construction a bit more accessible, but now it's the units' turn. Their stats are very, very inflated, making for endless slugging matches with ridiculous amounts of dead. My principles for a Dark Age vibe in battles is this: the pre-melee missile phase is deadly, with archers (especially long distance and mounted ones) being very valuable. The most important (and yet not that lethal) stage of the battle happens when the two infantry lines meet (in a kind of shield-wall battle typical of the European Early Medieval period). Attack stats for most units are going down significantly, except for maybe some very elite units (who will be all the more important). This will make for a drawn-out melee phase in which positioning and cavalry charges will be extremely important. The last phase, the rout, is where most casualties happen. Meaning, if you win, you don't immediately have to replace/retrain your entire army. But if you lose the melee phase, you're basically f§&%$d. This, as I've read, was the way of most Northern-European battles of the period. I will need some weeks to edit the unit stats in a systematic way, then test out the results and tweak further.


    Meanwhile, I've started to flesh out Dyfed ('Demet') as a West-Brittonic, less-romanized faction, with some aristocratic Goidelic elements (the current king of Dyfed in the campaign is Triffyn Farfog, son of a Déisi settler from Munster named Áed Brosc.).
    Here, have a look at a few Demetian units.
    Top to bottom: 1. the Teglach Demet Bodyguard (heavy javelin cavalry with some staying power in melee),
    2.the Marchaucion Guiddelec (Goidelic Noble Horse) who are a weird combo of mounted skirmishers and shock cavalry. Armed with javs and lances.
    3. Môr-Leitraun Guiddelec (Goidelic Pirates): offensive spearmen with warcry ability only recruitable in higher level port buildings.
    4. Uchelwir Demet. Brittonic Noble Spearmen.


    At the same time I've been working on a three-tiered Kingship Traits system which works to move the campaign forward and to give the player something to work towards. For now, the only cultures where this has been implemented are the British, the Goidels and the Franks. Picts, Romans and other Germanic tribes will have to wait awhile. This is a really huge endeavour. Every faction needs its individual traits and triggers.
    I'll explain how it'll work in-game.
    Every faction leader starts as a Petty King (expressed through a trait), which gives you no bonuses or maluses. In the trait description, however, you'll read faction-specific objectives which you'll complete to receive the second tier: Eminent Kingship, Tribal Kingship or the Irish variant: 'High King with Opposition'. This trait gives you some bonuses and a nice cool faction specific epithet, but, importantly, some very pressing maluses: the envy of rival kings leads to lowered public security and hit points in battle. This can only be lifted when your king becomes the undisputed High King of Britain, Ireland or the Franks. By this point, however, the campaign will probably be very far along.
    Check out this screenshot:

  4. #44
    demagogos nicator's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Wow, amazing progress since I last visited this page!

  5. #45

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Thanks!
    In the mean time Athanarih's mod 'Wind of Scandia' has some great strat models, which I've been given access to. The results are nice, with, obviously, a lot of adjustments from me as I am physically incapable of copying something and not changing anything =)! Germanic castle type settlements, for example are now much more Burg-like!
    See the continental Saxon stronghold of the Eresburg.

    As you can see I've also redone the flags and sails on which faction icons are displayed. They give off much more of a dark age gritty feel!

    The new Sutton Hoo helmet-wearing king of the South Angles and his heir with a Spangenhelm, one of his nobles and a lowly soldier. When he turns fifty, the king stops wearing a helmet and reveals his grey locks. This brings the amount of 'named character' levels to 4! It's like this for almost all factions.
    Note ship with the Dark Age sail and the smaller Burg-model in the background! The large stronghold of Branceaster is a just a reoccupied Roman fort, so I obviously kept the Roman castrum-model there!

  6. #46

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Any news on this UrienRheged masterpiece...I hope mod gonna see daylight soon...good luck..
    Mod of the 2022...

  7. #47

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Hey everyone,
    I haven't posted many updates even though I've been working on this mod like crazy. Basically, I think within a month or two this submod will be ready for a first release.
    A summary of what I've done since december...

    - rebalanced the unit stats and added tons of unique units

    - imported a bunch of nice looking units from other early medieval mods

    - redid the entire menu to add texture and a rich aesthetic

    - redone almost ALL building cards according to culture

    - changed the font of the entire game, which REALLY took it to another level. Very happy with that. Thanks to the SSHIP team whose font I took and did something crazy with which actually worked, thank god =)

    - redone the UI almost completely now, including event images, buttons, the radar map, eeeeeverything. This was a great deal of fun and I think this will make the mod stand out. Very little UI elements from vanilla now remain, yet I've tried to keep it readable and aesthetically homogenous.

    - reworked the map to be more historical and dynamic

    - added TheEliteDwarf's amazing (but unused) hillfort models from a superseded version of Divide&Conquer, which now adorn the campaign map for Pictish and Brittonic factions. I'm still in doubt whether I should give them to the Goidelic factions as well.

    - made a complex system for a sort of ethnicity based AOR recruitment based on trade resources (so the player can literally see which ethnicities are present in the region by looking at the map and seeing minor villages)

    - added several options for holy men for every faction. Christians (Catholic, Pelagian, Arian) can recruit Missionaries, Heathens and Druidists can recruit Scops/Bards and Roman Pagans can recruit Augurs.
    This, coupled with the ability for everyone to change religion via script, means that every faction has about two or three available priest figures. When you change religion you lose your previously recruited priests, sadly. Wouldn't do to see monks preaching the gospel of Woden, would it?

    - added scripted mysterious Seers, male (Celtic) and female (Germanic). These characters (just three, at the moment, will add more later when I feel divine inspiration =P) appear for certain factions, give their prophecies and then disappear after 1 turn. Their prophecies are vague and slightly poetic, and warn the player about imminent danger or opportunity. Sometimes their prophecies are just hogwash =)

    - made the construction of very lucrative catholic monasteries on the strat map possible (this replaces mines as no nation in this time would've been able to fund mine construction)

    - finished my Kingship trait systems: all faction leaders now have traits based on how powerful they are. Being more powerful & famous comes with some disadvantages as well as advantages. The option of becoming a variation of High-King (of Britain, Ireland, Scotland, the Franks, Teutons or the Anglo-Saxons) is now available to all factions except for the Romans. After 476 their faction leader can become the Augustus of the Gallic Empire, though, so that's some consolation at least =).
    All these higher titles come with nice sounding epithets in Old Welsh, Old Irish, Proto-Norse and their Germanic variations. Things like 'Bryten-wealda', 'Sæ-Konungr', 'Rex Francorum', 'Guletic', 'Penn Dreic', etc... Lots of yummy historical goodness!

    - finished my system of cultural social strata traits. So new generals or adopted or in-law characters no come from a variety of social backgrounds and have traits dependent on that. Romans have about 6 ancestral ethnicities (Goth, Alan, Briton, Gallic Aristocrat, Italian, Frank), and the rest of the factions have 3 unique social backgrounds: serf, freeman and nobleman.

    - added the quotes from Arthurian Total War, which I absolutely adore and which I will be editing with some extra quotes from ancient sources. There's some dodgy made up ones in there, too =)

    A couple of things I'm still struggling with and would really appreciate help/suggestions on:
    - Faction Selection screen CTD when selecting many factions (a very stupid side effect of having 31 factions)
    - Faction Accents and sounds in general. Can't seem to find the right files
    - the smaller faction symbols on the campaign map UI still don't work yet
    - an annoying random CTD, probably caused by traits, which plagues the campaign. This I will need some serious help with from an experienced modder.

    So...
    I'm finishing up the Brittonic building cards at the moment and then I think I'll be releasing a test version for people to try out. In the mean time, everyone is welcome to join me on Discord to give suggestions and play through the current version. Contact me for the invite link!

  8. #48

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Man, this is looking great. I hope some experienced modder show up to help you.

  9. #49

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    P R E - R E L E A S E !

    There is now a pre-release version for people to try. I'm not putting this on moddb for now, because it has yet to be tested by experienced players.
    This is the download link!

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...gQ?usp=sharing

    Unpack the file, move it to your 'mods' folder and then go to your preferences and change this:

    no_background_fmv = 1
    unit_detail = highest
    movies = false



    I'm especially interested in finding out what you guys think of the whole visual overhaul (I've quite drastically redone pretty much every UI aspect and added a huge amount of detail on the strat map) and of the unit roster rebalancing. I've tried to make the mod more visually consistent and appealing, and also more legible and understandable. I've also added a ton of historical detail and fun stuff so I'm dying to know what you think of it. Let me know here, in my inbox or on the discord (an invite link is provided above).


  10. #50

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Dreams come true...Iam downloading now...1000 thanks to UrienRheged...I hope some one from big name modders gone try your excellen submod and give some advice...

  11. #51

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Did you manage to get it working already?
    Don't forget to switch off background movies and sprites!

  12. #52

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    I am playing as goths and so far so good...excellent..WOW..

  13. #53

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Keep getting a CTD with almost every battle. Is this normal at this stage of development?

  14. #54

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Me too.

  15. #55

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Oh, no, that's not supposed to happen.

    Have you disabled sprites? In your cfg preferences file, got to unit_detail and edit this to 'highest'. This can't be done in-game.

    Does this work?
    If not, I'd advise you to come to the Discord server. We've got a pretty good track record of helping people set it up right.
    As I'm a mac-owner, I can't really help you with Windows-specific concerns, annoyingly.

  16. #56

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Found it, but it's already at "highest."

  17. #57

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    I've got dozens of people testing it, and ctds on most battles is not something that's in any way common. Perhaps some setting is different on your end. Wanna join the discord? More experienced Windows users could probably help you.

    https://discord.gg/RK28uGNdkR
    Last edited by UrienRheged; March 21, 2022 at 03:37 AM. Reason: invite link

  18. #58

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Hey everyone,
    the mod is available on moddb (just search of 'Insularis Draco') and you'll see it is quite polished as is, even though I've obviously still got a ways to go to make it more streamlined and stable. I'd love for you guys to try it.
    If you run into any trouble, swing by our discord server to find troubleshooters

  19. #59

    Default Re: Proposed Visual update

    Quote Originally Posted by gepeac View Post
    Hi.
    I think I may have fallen in love with you.
    Hi Urien. I just want to inform you that I still remember your work and today I saw the mod in moddb by luck. I wanted to congratulate you. I don't think I'm the only one who wrote this but rest assured that hundreds of people out there are aware of the magic you create. Know your worth even in the darkest times, my friend. At a time when everyone can easily change their efforts and desires, sticking to the same plan throughout the years gives hope to all of us. Have a great day.

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