[MOD] MagisterModmod

[Spodacus]

I've never had the steam version myself. In you steamapps/common folder is there a civ mod complete folder or anything? The file path I think would be something like steam/steamapps/common/civ4 complete/bts/mods/mod name. Something like that. You should be able to extract the mod files into that and then you can make a shortcut to the exe or load the mod under advanced options in beyond the sword. The shortcut to the exe is a lot quicker though.

Realized I forgot the quote. I got it. It was a resource path issue

 

[BossDaddy]

So when I combine the FFH2 folder with the Magister Mod I get an issue with the primary control bug. Isn't this related to the Resources folder being in an "irregular" spot?

It’s been a minute since I installed this, but I think you essentially install Ffh again, but in a folder called magistermodforffh 1020 or something like that. The name of the mod is the same as the folder the download comes in. I think you the extract to that folder you copied ffh in to and overwrite with the magister files.

 

[BossDaddy]

I also noticed a long time ago for vanilla Ffh that the model Hyborem uses is the bloodthirster of Khone from Dawn of War. I dunno about animations, but I was thinking of seeing if I can take some assets from that and port them over to use in Civ 4. They have some cool units there like cultists and the great unclean one that could look good.

 

[BossDaddy]

Here are some of the items. The slow down I'm getting is due to the assets being uncompressed. I've only ever used a bsa before and unpacking those didn't cause a slow down so my guess is it's just due to the age of the game. Fortunately, the game seems to prioritize the path of an asset over the archive. I've got everything compressed again and have left only what I'm working on as a created path in the directory. I'm able to zip in and out now. Let me know what you think of these items. You can ignore Condatis for now. The animations are giving me trouble so it's not ready yet.

 

[BossDaddy]

Here's what I was thinking for Brigit/Condatis/Gyra. It looks ok with quick moves and quick attack turned off. I think I just need to find which bone is governing the movement of the wings and join that to their skeletons. I have one with scaled down wings and another with the wings slightly folded. I thought it might look nice if the wings are shaded to match each one.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What would you think if I changed world spells to be based on religion instead of civ type? It seems to me that March of the Trees fits the Fellowship of the leaves better than the Ljosalfar specifically, and that Sanctuary fits the Brotherhood of Wardens better than the Elohim,and that Arcane Lacuna fits the Laeran Cord better than the Amurites.

Some of the current world spells don't seem like such a great fit for the patron's religion though. Maybe I should have world spells for both civs and religions? That would be more work for me of course, more than doubling the number of world spells.

Note that when the game marks a world spell as being able to be cast only once per game, that does not mean you can cast the spells once each. If multiple world spells are available, choosing to cast one of them would make the others impossible to use (unless you finish the Birthright Regained ritual or cheat in worldbuilder.)

I rarely use world spells anyway, and often play with them disabled. Does anyone have any advise on how they ought to be changed, whether or not I tie them to religions?

(One thought that come to mind is that the Svartalfar world spell making their units hidden nationality is not that useful, as their CoE units can easily become HN anyway and others can become HN with the help of a Shadow Archmage. Usually I'd prefer to save a world spell for when I need help not to loose a war, but this spell is is useless unless you are at peace. What would you think if I made it so that Veil of Night ended your wars as well as giving units an HN status, so you could keep fighting without the enemy fighting back? It seems to fit thematically that the Svartalfar would prefer to trick enemies into peace treaties that they have no intention of honoring, seeing peace as merely an opportunity to wage war by subtler means.)





I spent way too long today playing round with different icons for the new religions, and tweaking some of my previous additions. I found a website with a lot of free png files that I used as a starting point for a lot of them. Several version i made looked great full sized but terrible in the little icons from the GameFont files. A couple looked better in the small gamefont versions. I think I settled on these as a compromise.


For the Sons of Discord I ended up just using the Inanna religious icon from the Gods of Old scenario, two swords crossed over a red background. I originally made my own icon based on changing the colors of the Forify icon, but I think the quality of the professional religious ion from the BtS scenario was better.


The Brotherhood of Wardens icon is now a more stylized gold owl head with glowing light blue eyes, instead of the recolored owl icon from a Greek flag in a BtS scenario. (Technically I'd say it is an Appeleur rather than an owl; the bestiary says "Appeleurs are spirits that appear as owls with luminous eyes. They are often sent to warn mortals of danger.")

The Children of the One now uses a color wheel, indicating how all the gods and humans are split from The One like all he colors are split from pure white light. It is my least favorite of these, but after making most of the others I came to be very disappointed with using the Evangelist promotion icon.

The Ember Legion uses a burning ember or ball of fire I found online.

The Eternal Cabal uses a Skull and Crossbones (the Delete Unit icon) placed on the background of the waning moon. (I found a moon image I liked and them flipped it horizontally after looking up which side should be illuminated in a waning moon.) The Moon motif was based on a Reddit discussion with Kael about what the Moon of Erebus is. He put forth a few possibilities but had never settled on a canon explanation. He knew only that Erebus has a moon which had phases even before the Compact established a regular cycle of days, seasons, etc., and that it was not a creation of Esus in mockery of Lugus's Sun. One of the options I suggested if that the Moon could be the Otherworld, the Vault Arawn ruled when he was God of Both Life and Death, with the Dark Side of the Moon being the Netherworld of Death and the bright side being the Infinite Garden now ruled by Sucellus. It is practically canon now, as Kael really liked that idea and decided that he wants to tie the strength of life and death magic to the lunar cycle in his campaigns. Death would be at its strongest at the New Moon, but you can't really see that, so a waning crescent is the next best thing.

I made a very subtle improvement to the The Unblemished icon I'd used in previous MagisterModmod releases. The pure white circle background has been changed to an image of a bright full moon (for the Infinite Garden). Having the background be a light grey instead of pure white makes the pure white of the butterfly wings stand out better.

I changed the White Hand icon to get rid of the white background and the border, making it match its gamefont icon better.

I had a hard time finding anything I liked for the Grey Council. For a while I was using a new image of scales, similar but not the same as the Force Mana icon, which looked good full size but was hard to see in the smaller icons. I ended up making something based on the goddess Ki icon from the Gods of Old scenario, but de-saturated and with each quarter of he circle changed to be filled with a different shade of grey.

The House of Plenty uses a Cornucopia. This is the best of several cornucopia icons I tried to adapt, but I'm still not in love with it. I think the black lines are much too bold. The original had colors that were too dull. I probably have brightened it too much, but Amathaon's heaven The Painted Lands is noted for being extremely colorful.

I made more versions of the Matronae icon than anything. I tried a lot of complictaed Celtic Knots, triquetras, etc., but such narrow lines don't work well in tiny icons. I ended up using a simple gold triquetra and filling each section with a different image. The top uses the Ember Legion icon, representing Brigit/Sarabride's link to Bhall. The bottom left uses the Skull and Crossbones of Arawn, for Gyra/Morrigan. The lower right uses a combination of the Enki waves and the vanilla civ ocean texture. The center is a lightened desaturated version of Birthright regained, representing the life sphere and Basium, whom the Matronae rescued from hell and who stayed with Morrigan for the rest of the Age of Invention, although he only acquires the Font of Life briefly, after the Matronae fall, to help restore the world after the Age of Ruin.


For the Ring Givers I ended up using the Ingenuity icon from the Master of Mana, which I believe was the Guild of Hammers icon from when that was a corporation, although I got rid of the border and made the background transparent. Originally I used a picture of two interlinked wedding bands, which I liked, but decided that showing a craftsman's tools within a ring was more appropriate.



I considered adding even more religions, but found that the game does not understand how to read the gamefont files if I add more than 24 religious icons (48 including the holy city icons). I can add an unlimited number of religions and have them appear on the religion screen, but unless we want to mess up all of the icons for resources, diplomacy, etc, then we would have to settle for the 25th religion having no little gamefont icons and the 26th religion using the Aluminum icon for the religion and coal for its holy city.

24 is not a bad number of religions though. It allows for one religion per god, plus the Cult of the Dragon, Matronae, and Children of the One. We don't really know enough to implement the Children of Condatis, the Witches of the Horn, or the Haunted, and all of the other cults/organizations in Kael's document are not really separate religions anyway.

24 is also neatly divisible by either 2 or 3, so I could display the religions in the city screen as 2 rows of 12 or 3 rows of 8. Right now it is 2 rows of 12, but the gold boxes around them seem off. I may see how it would work in 3 rows tomorrow.


(When I was thinking of adding the Witches of the Horn, I made a green version of the Hyborem icon to represent Cernunnos, whom they worshiped as their god even before Sucellus was slain and he was a mere archangel. After seeing that I decided to make a reskin of the Hyborem unit that could represent the god of nature. I have not added him as a unit yet and don't really plan to, but I temprary changes Yvain's art so I could thought I'd go ahead and show you how it looks. I also included an image of the Ifrit next to the new Demonic Beastmaster I made so as not to let the two units be confused for one another. )


I should probably go to bed now, as I need to take my parents to doctors appointments in the morning. Tomorrow afternoon I plan to update religious units' icons to incorporate the proper icons, unless someone suggests changes I should make to these icons first.

Edit: I just saw BadDaddy's uploads. I'm liking the look of the folded wings Brigit in Nifscope, but I have not put any of the files in the mod yet to see how they will look with he Civ4 game engine.

 

[Nothrazim]

I think the World Spells are fine; while March of the Trees for example are more of a Fellowship thing than Ljosalfar, it's still a very appropriate spell for them due to their ability to build in forests. The Svartalfar change however is extremely interesting; it did lose a lot of value thanks to CoE & archmages.
That said, i frequently play with World Spells off, especially since i had a repeatable crash related to them a few patches ago.

The final image makes it a bit hard to see the Beastmaster, but it looks somewhat similar to an Eater of Dreams? (Which, if i recall right, the Svartalfar indeed use parts of for their beastmaster) I suppose it'll be easier to see in-game once the mod is updated, but at any rate it is always great to see units receive updated models.

 

[BossDaddy]

Are there any other assets I should look at? It's much easier for me to work on static meshes like, items, buildings, improvements, etc. I'm going to poke around through the files, but I'd like to look over something that you or others might have in mind. Making changes to a single unit is simple enough. The issue I have is when combining two or more unit assets together as the animations mess with each other. I had messed with the eater of dreams a little about a week ago. I scaled the legs growing out of the back some and had them more enclosed over the body. I thought it looked a little better and could post that if ya'll would like to see it.

 

[Scypio]

The upcoming program looks very promising. Thanks a lot.

 

[BossDaddy]

These are attached to her skeleton now so they move with her animations. Even zoomed in super close they seemed fine for me in game. I included both folded and unfolded. I prefer the folded ones myself. I'll fiddle around with this more and some other assets too unless there is something you or anyone would like me to work on. I'm not very good with this stuff, but will help if I can.

I've been meaning to ask about tile improvements and resources on peaks in your mod. All I've managed to figure out was to have improvements allowed on them via Arete. I gave the Arete improvement ability to every labor civic and this allowed the AI to go nuts and build roads and quarries (I prefer quarries to differentiate them from neighboring mines and give quarries a production bonus). Mountaineering is still needed to use the roads on peaks and I just gave all workers mountaineering. It's a pretty dumb solution, but since I use the Erebus map script, a lot more of the map is opened up for me and for the AI. Is there someplace where I could simply allow peaks to be workable without using the Arete gimmick?

 

[BossDaddy]

I want to talk meta-game for a minute. I love magistermodmod and its emergent storytelling as a game unfolds. However, due to game mechanics and balance, settings, and variables, i can't quite get it to tell the right story. For example, I want to see a game where I start out as a good faction, living in the world as great evil emerges, the Armageddon counter rises, hell sweeps across the land and a small coalition of good pushes back and eventually liberates the world from tyranny. I want different factions from fantasy represented, dwarves, humans, elves and the undead. However, I can't seem to produce this outcome. The evil empires generally are too weak when run by AI and I end up fighting the Khazad or Hippus, who tend to take over any game they are in. Certain good nations are almost always powerful, like the Ljosalfar, Bannor, and Malakim, but their natural enemies are generally too weak to ever beat them. Even with twice the number. My last game I tried to give evil a huge advantage. it was Sabathiel and Arendal Phaedra vs two shiem, two calabim, doviello, clan, illians and svartalfar. By midgame, the illians had 2 cities still, the elves had a huge empire, and none of the evil nations were strong enough to counter the elves all together except the doviello, and of course both Sheim died by turn 50 as usual. and the AC was still 0. The svarts were never a threat due to constant infighting and rebellions. All good really has to do to defeat evil is wait, as evil is incompetent. What settings do people recommend to get an epic tale of good vs evil in high fantasy vs the AI?

I changed the amount of Eidolons that can be built to unlimited. My late game was really hell on earth and the clan of embers started to steamroll with spammed Eidolons via warrens.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

These are attached to her skeleton now so they move with her animations. Even zoomed in super close they seemed fine for me in game. I included both folded and unfolded. I prefer the folded ones myself. I'll fiddle around with this more and some other assets too unless there is something you or anyone would like me to work on. I'm not very good with this stuff, but will help if I can.

I've been meaning to ask about tile improvements and resources on peaks in your mod. All I've managed to figure out was to have improvements allowed on them via Arete. I gave the Arete improvement ability to every labor civic and this allowed the AI to go nuts and build roads and quarries (I prefer quarries to differentiate them from neighboring mines and give quarries a production bonus). Mountaineering is still needed to use the roads on peaks and I just gave all workers mountaineering. It's a pretty dumb solution, but since I use the Erebus map script, a lot more of the map is opened up for me and for the AI. Is there someplace where I could simply allow peaks to be workable without using the Arete gimmick?

We're on the right track, but could you do something about the gaps between the sections of the wings? There is more of a gap than I'd like in the normal Angel of Death, but it is not nearly as noticeable as this. There is less of a gap in the 6 winged seraph model if that helps.


Attached is an image where you can see how the units look with recolored wings. For the Brigit/Sarabride wings I just took the original Angel of Death wings and used GIMP to triple their saturation, turning them from off-white to a brilliant gold. For Gyra/Morrigan I used the darker wings I've been using for the Angels of Death in my modmod. For Condatis/Cliodna I took those darker wings and applied the Colorize command.



I'm thinking I'd like to use folded wings for Brigit, Condatis, and Gyra, but the unfolded wings for Sarabride, Cliodna, and Morrigan. That may be a better way of distinguishing between the archangels and their upgrades than just making the Matronae versions so much larger. The outspread wings seem more imposing, more fitting for units that can draw on infinite energy supplies from their gems of creation and thus never need to relax.

I'd still add the magical auras to the Matronae to distinguish them further, but I'd rather wait and see if you can get rid of those gaps first. Now that I think of it, I'd also like to change the shields of the Matronae to show their new religious icon. That can wait for tomorrow afternoon though. I should try to get to sleep soon as I need to take my parents to doctors appointments first thing in the morning.




When you say "workable," are you talking about city population being able to work the tiles of peaks within their city radius? Or are you talking about workers being able to built improvements there?

Peaks are workable so long as they have some yield, but CivIV sets the yield of all Peak tiles to 0 unless it is modified by the presence of improvements or by python. You can give peaks extra yields using the call gc.getGame().setPlotExtraYield(pPlot.getX(), pPlot.getY(), YieldTypes.YIELD_PRODUCTION, 1) like I use in the Motherlode world spell.

I bet you could modify a mapscript to change the yields of peaks as soon as they are generated.

The game does not normally allow improvements to be built in peaks, but you can override that in CvGameUtils.py under def canBuild(self,argsList), where declaring "return 1" means that the game allows things to be built there regardless of any of the requirements usually handled in the DLL.

You don't need to check for any civic type or improvement types. You could just put "return 1" in the line directly below "if pPlot.isPeak():"



You could give he workers the <bCanMoveImpassable>1 tag in their xml defines instead of giving them all an extra promotion. Mud golems already have that tag.

Speaking of workers, I just spent longer than I care to admit trying to figure out why the same was giving everyone Tinkers instead of workers in Classical Age starts. The first clue that led anywhere was that the Luchuirp still got Mud Golems instead of workers or Tinkers. I'd given Tinkers he abilities of workers and double the normal work rate, but Mud Golems had triple the normal work rate. When I changed Tinkers to only work at 99% the speed of normal workers then the game stopped giving everyone the Ringgiver clerics at the start of the game.


By the way, what do you think about these new graphics for the Brotherhood of Wardens summoned hero Tristan the Ring? It is based on Sphener instead of the Ljosalfar Paladin. The wispy wings on his back were make invisible (since I don't have the modelling skills to remove them from the model) and the decorative wings on the helmet were borrowed from another unit. (It seemed an appropriate motif for a hero whose true form resides in the Isle of Birds, he heaven of Sirona.) I changed the red and brown parts of the clothing to blue, changed he Order icon to the Brotherhood of Wardens Icon with an image of his Dahlia Band below it, and made the armor brighter "living ivory" with rose-gold colored Gemellus accents. I made the gorget a darker grey to prepresent the force-aligned Palladium torc.

 

[BossDaddy]

I noticed that gap as well and was not satisfied with how it came out. I'll go back and spend some time on the six wing model. It's easy enough to rescale, but will take a bit more time catching all the vertices on the additional two. It should look much, much better though so I'll work on it. Those colors look amazing. The shading on those look even better than what I had thought. I was also thinking about what could be done with the swords and shields so I can putter around with that too. I always made going after Brigit one of my main goals in FFH and Orbis. Getting your mod and reading about Condatis and Gyra and the Matronae has been fantastic. That was the main reason I doodled with Condatis. I found the civilopedia entry on Brigit to be compelling and I love seeing more info in your mod and how it adds to the story of Erebus. Maybe I could do something with the vanilla sword and shield on Brigit/Condatis/Gyra and then a more intricate sword and shield with the religious icon for the Matronae versions? I also immediately noticed the masks that the Matronae wear. It's a very nice touch to read the civilopedia on them and then seeing them wearing a mask after 21 turns have elapsed.

For peaks, I was referring to both yields and improvements. GameUtils.py was were I had found some ways to get these to work. I'll look at this again with what you've pointed out.

That model for Tristan is fantastic. I really like the colors and the shield looks great. What do you think of maybe a crown with those wings and a visible face for him? Just something that could differentiate from Sphener a little bit more. Kind of like how Chalid is a variation of Empyrean soldiers. I could try something like that if you like and I'll go ahead and remove the wings from the Sphener model and send that. I almost always play the Bannor in my games and try for a permanent alliance with the Malakim. I really love the lore behind those two civs and I have very much liked the Brotherhood of Wardens. I make it a point now to spread the Wardens and the Unblemished to as many of my cities and ally cities as I can. Again, I think the colors you have on that model look amazing. I'm looking forward to getting that new Tristan in a game.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Giving him a visible face would be nice. I was originally thinking on basing him on Donal Lugh, so to that may be the place to start. It might be nice to use Donal's crown of leaves (perhaps recolored to rose gold match the the Dahlia Band) and maybe attach decorative wings to his shoulder armour instead. I was also thinking it might be better for him to use a spear (the one from the Warden if the Weak unit would be good) instead if a sword.

I'd also like a version of Sphener with the same wings you made for the Matronae.

 

[BossDaddy]

Perfect. I'll work on adding back the two other wing sets first and then look at something for a sword and shield later. I'll see what we can do with some variations of Donal's head and crown with what you're thinking. What are you thinking about as a decorative set of wings for the shoulder armour? I'll look through some of the unit assets for what kind of spear could be used or what would be nice as a foundation that could be modified. I'll incorporate the wings onto a model of Sphener and attach that as well. Those wings are an amazing resource I think. I was just thinking that it could look nice to have the wings modeled onto the Pegasus mesh. Especially if I could get the animation for them to carry over.

 

[BossDaddy]

The angel wings are an issue with the texture and not the mesh from what I can tell. I don't really know anything about textures, but I'm trying to figure this out.

I believe it's the alpha channel / transparency on the texture that's causing this. I can see it on the image editor so I'll see what I can figure out. I switched to Sphener and I'm attempting to get the wings to parent to the armature in the right way. It looks like the origin is at his feet so, no matter where I try to attach them, the wings get pulled down to that. I'll attach once I have something working.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The angel wings are an issue with the texture and not the mesh from what I can tell. I don't really know anything about textures, but I'm trying to figure this out.

I just edited the textures, to paste copies of portions of the wings into the transparent portions of angelwings.dds

I started with the Brigit/Sarabride version, and then colorized, darkened, and desaurated them to make the Condatis/Cliodna and Gyra/Morrigan versions.

They are not perfect. I could not figure out how to get rid of the gaps where the portion closest to the torso overlaps the middle section of the wings, but it is a definite improvement. They look better from the back than from the front.


These are probably good enough for me to begin putting the auras back and playing around with different shields and weapons.

The round shield the unit uses now is laterally symmetrical (the texture shows one half of the front of the shield and half the back of the shield, and then takes the mirror image of each), so I cannot use it to display an asymmetrical religious icon. I could still use a Triquetra design (and may decide that is good enough), but could not include the images inside to represent each of the Matronae spheres.


I'm thinking I'd like to distinguish each archangel/Matrona from the others a bit more rather than just using reskins. My first thought was to simply change the weapons. I'm thinking Brigit/Sarabride would keep her sword, Condatis/Clioda would get a spear (or possibly trident like I used for Trenton Majosi), and Gyra/Morrigan could use a staff with a skull on it like the one used by the Sheaim mage (which I reskinned as Daneg the Faithful and and Asmoday).

I believe I can handle swapping out Condatis/Clioda's sword for a spear in Nifscope on my own without too much trouble, but I would need some help getting the Sheaim mage's staff separated from the unit model.


There are a lot of units that have staffs of other weapons I really wish were easily separable from the body of the unit. Another one that comes to mind is the owl staff of the Elohim mage. That would be a perfect fit for the Brotherhood of Warden's clerics, both the Warden of the Weak and the Blinded Brother UU.

The Elohim mage unit model is one of my favorites and would be nice to use without that staff too.


I might decide to go in a different direction and change Gyra and Condatis even more. Canonically Gyra is described as "A woman with a cloth over her eyes much as mine, and ragged bands woven around her arms and into a tattered dress. She had dark wings and pale ivory skin. She was like moonlight filtered through a canopy of branches."

Condatis is described as "A woman, but as inhuman as she was beautiful. She was the tide, powerful but yielding, fleeting but eternal... floating billowy maiden.."

Neither was as warlike as Brigit, so they might be better wearing dresses rather than armor.

I just made a couple of quick candidates for Gyra and Condatis, based on the Ljosalfar Archmage and the Elohim Mage (unfortunately still carrying an inappropriate Owl staff instead of a trident) respectively. What do you think of these?

 

[BossDaddy]

I just edited the textures, to paste copies of portions of the wings into the transparent portions of angelwings.dds

I started with the Brigit/Sarabride version, and then colorized, darkened, and desaurated them to make the Condatis/Cliodna and Gyra/Morrigan versions.

They are not perfect. I could not figure out how to get rid of the gaps where the portion closest to the torso overlaps the middle section of the wings, but it is a definite improvement. They look better from the back than from the front.


These are probably good enough for me to begin putting the auras back and playing around with different shields and weapons.

The round shield the unit uses now is laterally symmetrical (the texture shows one half of the front of the shield and half the back of the shield, and then takes the mirror image of each), so I cannot use it to display an asymmetrical religious icon. I could still use a Triquetra design (and may decide that is good enough), but could not include the images inside to represent each of the Matronae spheres.


I'm thinking I'd like to distinguish each archangel/Matrona from the others a bit more rather than just using reskins. My first thought was to simply change the weapons. I'm thinking Brigit/Sarabride would keep her sword, Condatis/Clioda would get a spear (or possibly trident like I used for Trenton Majosi), and Gyra/Morrigan could use a staff with a skull on it like the one used by the Sheaim mage (which I reskinned as Daneg the Faithful and and Asmoday).

I believe I can handle swapping out Condatis/Clioda's sword for a spear in Nifscope on my own without too much trouble, but I would need some help getting the Sheaim mage's staff separated from the unit model.


There are a lot of units that have staffs of other weapons I really wish were easily separable from the body of the unit. Another one that comes to mind is the owl staff of the Elohim mage. That would be a perfect fit for the Brotherhood of Warden's clerics, both the Warden of the Weak and the Blinded Brother UU.

The Elohim mage unit model is one of my favorites and would be nice to use without that staff too.


I might decide to go in a different direction and change Gyra and Condatis even more. Canonically Gyra is described as "A woman with a cloth over her eyes much as mine, and ragged bands woven around her arms and into a tattered dress. She had dark wings and pale ivory skin. She was like moonlight filtered through a canopy of branches."

Condatis is described as "A woman, but as inhuman as she was beautiful. She was the tide, powerful but yielding, fleeting but eternal... floating billowy maiden.."

Neither was as warlike as Brigit, so they might be better wearing dresses rather than armor.

I just made a couple of quick candidates for Gyra and Condatis, based on the Ljosalfar Archmage and the Elohim Mage (unfortunately still carrying an inappropriate Owl staff instead of a trident) respectively. What do you think of these?

Wow, those look great. I was wondering how they could be differentiated as well. I really like those models for Condatis and Gyra. It absolutely gives them more of a unique feel and identity. The shields that are used has been something I wanted to work on as well. I was looking at Svartalfar models recently and had also though that some of their equipment would like nice. There was a crown/face piece that I thought looked nice and wanted to see about reusing. You mentioning Donal's crown yesterday had me wondering if I could separate that from the head completely so that it was a standalone mesh that could be used on other assets. I can split these items easily. It's getting them rigged onto a skeleton that is taking me some time. After they're separated, I need to make sure that I have them moving correctly and tethered to the new asset. I took about a two year break from this so I'm having to relearn a good bit. Maybe it will be helpful if I go ahead and separate these things into individual assets. It might be more efficient to at least provide some of these so that their will be more for you to brainstorm with.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I just tweaked the Matronae a bit more.

What do you think of these graphic candidates?

I took this screenshot an an angle so you could see Sarabride's shield emblem has changed to a Triquetra, the basic outline of the Matronae symbol but without any details inside to indicate the spheres of fire, water, death, and life. I increased the saturation, increased the balance of yellow compared to other colors, and added the flame aura I'd used for Sarabride before.

Morrigan's arms are withered and blacked due to the strain of wielding the Opalus Mortis, Canonically, by the time Laroht finds her "her porcelain skin [is] marred by deep fissures of dark energy reaching out from the Ending Stone in her right palm. Her right arm withered and cracked and the fissures reaching across her chest."

Gyra and Morrigan are based on the Ljosalfar Archmage, with portions of the gown and cape made transparent to give them the look of tattered rags. The staff has a skull on top, but it is the skull of a deer with antlers rather than a human. None of the models with a human skull staff would be appropriate for a female archangel at all, and the staffs with skulls were not easily interchangeable. I changed the archmage's glowing effect to a smoky effect, but cannot actually see it in the game. I added the purple aura from Barbatos, as I believe I had done for Morrigan before. I copied the black shape I used for a mask from the Brigit based Morrigan, as the faces for the two models were in the same place and almost identical anyway.

This version of Condatis/Cliodna is based on the art I made for Leucetios based on the Mary Morbus model. I figured it was the closest thing we have to a gown for a "billowy maiden." After linear inverting, inverting, darkening, colorizing with about 50% opacity, and increasing the contrast, I found the gown had taken on a texture between that of waves and of iridescent fish scales. I changed out Leucetius's spell staff (which is the Order high priest staff) with Trenton's Trident, and removed the magical effects on the trident for Condatis while dialing them up for Cliodna. The Mary face is very different and in a different place, so I could not copy and paste the old Cliodna jeweled mask but I could copy and paste from the original mask photograph I used when I first made the Brigit based Cliodna model.

 

[BossDaddy]

I just tweaked the Matronae a bit more.

What do you think of these graphic candidates?

(I took this screenshot an an angle so you could see Sarabride's shield emblem has changed to a Triquetra, the basic outline of the Matronae symbol but without any details inside to indicate the spheres of fire, water, death, and life..)

That texture looks really good. I would like to see that on something that seems more fitting for her ascension though. I'll get some candidate put together and uploaded so you can have a better template. I always loved the story of Brigit and it's nice to see this be something that can play out in game.