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Middle-Earth: Lord of the Mods (XIII)
- Thread starter PCHighway
- Start date
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Well guys, this mod is in the phase when one poor guy (PCHighway) has to convert all our high and lofty ideas down to nitty gritty technical stuff. Nearly all units are added, and the tech tree is being mapped out. Just because he doesn't post anything doesn't mean he isn't working his backside off.
This is what he's done while we've discussed curved swords:
This is what he's done while we've discussed curved swords:
I hope nothing I've said implied that he (and you too, mrtn) wasn't working his arse off. I'm busy with my personal mod and I know full well that PCH is doing a hell of a lot more work than me, and I don't envy his job one little bit. But good golly, do things ever look good in that pic! Wow, cudos to the guy. Is there any concrete way in which we can help? For example, would it help if we wrote animname entries so he could simply cut and paste them (I doubt it, but I might as well suggest it anyhow)?
Hope this isn't old news, but for the Numenorean soldier:
the Numenoreans, at least after a little while, and then also for the gondorians, had wings on their helmets, signifying the seabirds, seeing as how they came from the sea. and the model that is there, although beautiful, has no such wings. and the wings on these helmets should, i think, be pretty obvious, seeing as (sorry to refer to movie as a reference for argument) the gondorian soldiers in the prologue of the first movie have somewhat protruding wings on their helmets, and by the third age, these wings are basically just embossed onto the normal conical helmets.
sorry to be a prick, i just thought it should be said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we're all here to learn.
EDIT::
on another topic, I looked at the available resource list, and I saw mithril as a luxury, and I think this shouldn't be so. I guess its a matter of opinion. But, since mithril isnt often seen in jewlery(or at least its not mentioned a lot), and is used for weapons, it should be a strategic resource that allows you to create very high end soldiers, most likely near the end of an age, and maybe its eradicated at the end of the second age, cause you don't hear of it a lot in the third age.
and maybe adamantium should be added as a resource. Dont really know what it would be for, but its cool. I think tolkien says it was used to create the fortress of barad dur, as well as the black gate...maybe also the tower in Isengard (forget the name)
again sorry to be a prick
the Numenoreans, at least after a little while, and then also for the gondorians, had wings on their helmets, signifying the seabirds, seeing as how they came from the sea. and the model that is there, although beautiful, has no such wings. and the wings on these helmets should, i think, be pretty obvious, seeing as (sorry to refer to movie as a reference for argument) the gondorian soldiers in the prologue of the first movie have somewhat protruding wings on their helmets, and by the third age, these wings are basically just embossed onto the normal conical helmets.
sorry to be a prick, i just thought it should be said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we're all here to learn.
EDIT::
on another topic, I looked at the available resource list, and I saw mithril as a luxury, and I think this shouldn't be so. I guess its a matter of opinion. But, since mithril isnt often seen in jewlery(or at least its not mentioned a lot), and is used for weapons, it should be a strategic resource that allows you to create very high end soldiers, most likely near the end of an age, and maybe its eradicated at the end of the second age, cause you don't hear of it a lot in the third age.
and maybe adamantium should be added as a resource. Dont really know what it would be for, but its cool. I think tolkien says it was used to create the fortress of barad dur, as well as the black gate...maybe also the tower in Isengard (forget the name)
again sorry to be a prick
Greenlocke
Northern Hermit
Idit said:
Good points - specifically the Mithril point. Why was it a luxury in the first place? It is a strategic resource for sure...
And I don't think that anybody here thinks you are a prick - the board is for comments just like this.
also:
sorry to semi flame, but seeing as how the main modders are saying they are taking years to do this is because they want top quality mod, and then cutting corners by taking others units (elephant archer=mumakil, ogre=troll) is kind of hypocritical.
at least make a mumakil and not use wyvern rider for the nazgul with fellbeast.
my 2 cents
sorry to semi flame, but seeing as how the main modders are saying they are taking years to do this is because they want top quality mod, and then cutting corners by taking others units (elephant archer=mumakil, ogre=troll) is kind of hypocritical.
at least make a mumakil and not use wyvern rider for the nazgul with fellbeast.
my 2 cents
The "main modders" can't make unit gfx. If you can, I wouldn't say no to a custom made Mumakil, or a Numenorean with a winged helmet.Idit said:
We're only compiling units made by others.
The idea to make Mithril a lux was mine, as you can have a luxury as a prerequisite for units. This actually make Mithril more important, as it's functioning both as a lux and a strat at the same time.
Greenlocke
Northern Hermit
mrtn said:
Good idea. I didn't know that luxury resources could be strategic resources as well. Interesting...
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
The resources basically work like this:
Bonus- in city radius only, not traded
Strategic- traded around empire
Luxury- traded and adds happiness
Anything that requires a resource to be built can require any type of resource. We can use that in the map version of the mod to limit certain improvements, wonders, or even units to be built only in certain places.
Did CamJH release his Domani yet? We could use it instead of the Kandori since it has a straight sword.
@mrtn: Why so many duplicates of king units in the preview?
Bonus- in city radius only, not traded
Strategic- traded around empire
Luxury- traded and adds happiness
Anything that requires a resource to be built can require any type of resource. We can use that in the map version of the mod to limit certain improvements, wonders, or even units to be built only in certain places.
Did CamJH release his Domani yet? We could use it instead of the Kandori since it has a straight sword.
@mrtn: Why so many duplicates of king units in the preview?
Drift
It's a boy!
My guess of why all the kings are there is that PCH placed all the units on one map to test they work for sure.
BTW, I guess you have taken into account that making mithril luxury, makes it appear very differently from strategics?
BTW, I guess you have taken into account that making mithril luxury, makes it appear very differently from strategics?
joeskip
Jimi Hendrix
Ok. I can't model either and I wasn't aware that was unavailable to you all also. So sorry.mrtn said:The "main modders" can't make unit gfx. If you can, I wouldn't say no to a custom made Mumakil, or a Numenorean with a winged helmet.
We're only compiling units made by others.
The idea to make Mithril a lux was mine, as you can have a luxury as a prerequisite for units. This actually make Mithril more important, as it's functioning both as a lux and a strat at the same time.
And the idea for mithril as a luxury, now that you've explained, is good.
Are there any available lists of units that you have, and what models you are using for them? and then units that you need?
Unfortunately most of this post is yelling at naysayers and what not. Which is really pointless as I'd rather be modding.
. There is a vote at the bottom of this post.
Any objections?
I respect people who try to do what they set out, rather than giving up. More to the point, I respect people who offer a helping hand rather than mindlessly posting annoying, counter-productive, unrelated junk in threads. Why don't you go back to trolling other threads about why there were crossbows in the stone age, or whatever it is you devote your recreation time too? That would make us all much happier..
Also, this is the first MOD that I am aware of that ever even tried to use a democratic styled system for its initial creation. Because of this there is a lot of discussion, a lot of talking, and a lot of voting before the real work starts to get done. And I mean a lot of talking
.
There were other MODs that tried to use our same system, but none have finished, and some even bit the dust.. Truth be told the only time I even play civ3 is when I need to test it for this MOD. Your comment about the time it is taking is the only one I paid serious attention to. If there is one thing I want to avoid, it is making people who donated many hours of their free-time contributing to an LotR MOD, wait. I feel the private beta coming soon though. When Mrtn posted the picture of the units, it was a file I sent him after testing the game. I basically weeded out all the faulty .ini files and made sure the 'engine' would run. It was a relief to finally see the civ3 screen load. If you can compare modding to space travel, I sort of felt like sputnik just orbited the earth when that happened .
. People don't understand the system on how LotM went about it. It probably wasn't the smartest system to use, but at that time their was no one who had the background knowledge of the ME, and the skills to modify it solo. If there was, people would be playing a MOD similar to Eclipse's, or Nobby's - one that wasn't updated, and one where the times eventually passed over it. As I stated above, editing the .biq is one thing. Sure, we can talk about how we want Clear Forest to come in the third era of the MOD. But what is the use when the Technologies haven't been thought out yet? Even then, when you can put Clear Forest at a specific time, it doesn't do much good unless the PediIcons and Civpedia texts are ready to be edited. It is sort of like building a (for lack of a better term) building. You may put one pillar up, but that pillar is useless unless there are other pillars to help hold up the structure. Mods have tons of little pillars. Three specific entries need to be added for each unit, building, or technology. If it all doesn't fit together, it won't work. So while editing of the .biq started a year ago, the real stuff, the structure of the MOD has only been started in a wholesale way these past few months. I know you certainly don't need to hear how to make a MOD Drift, I'm just using your post to make a point to some of the others .
I've spent a total of 3 hours just compiling and typing this post up. If you added all the time I spent posting; modding word documents, excel files, and creating pcx for this MOD it would total an insane number of hours. If those hours were converted into waking hours of a day, I've no doubt myself and other posters in this thread have contributed months of their free-time for this to work.. There is absolutely no possible way these threads have hurt the ME modding community, simply lobbying for art and units has helped a civ3 mod based on ME. We've carried our own weight when it comes to LotR being recreated in Civ3.
In short, while your attempt to explain these "hurry up posts" is noble, it ultimately made me more sure of what I already knew. People come in here after skimming the latest thread and feel like they can comprehend everything in the past 12 threads. As AlcTrv put it, we put more time into this than any of said hurry-up posters have. We want to get this done more than they do. We won't do it for them. We'll do it for the people who have donated their hard-earned free-time to the MOD, not _just_ for people who have done nilch and still feel the need to have others do their work.
I wouldn't mind if you stuck around zxe, just try and keep on subject. Posting about this subject any further than the replies you will have to my post is counter-productive for the goal of the MOD.
And of course you haven't sounded ungrateful or anything. You've contributed time to this MOD as well. The only problem I have is people who don't/didn't do anything and come into complain about how we are ruining their PC time somehow.
Idit, sorry to answer your PM here, but simply help how you can. Everything is mostly done, unless you can create graphics.
If you can't, I'll re-post some civilopedia entries. In these entries you need to post _only_ about historical information.
Then upload the text file and I'll copy and paste the historical entry into the actual file. All that could be done during the private beta, however.
You are welcome to post questions about things you don't understand from previous threads. But remember, we've had a lot of time to think about this. We usually do things (like Mithril as a lux) intentionally.
LH Vote Results:
LH Final Vote:
Who wants Inegrid as Galadriel for the Moriquendi LH graphic?
Who wants Drift's edited wood elf (Celeborn) for the Moriquendi LH graphic?
(Seeing as how Drift just edited and proposed a new graphic, we'll do a revote on the Moriquendi LH.)
And, finally, here is a screenshot of the First Era's tech tree.
Follow this link: First Era beta
And here is my post about what history pedia entries are needed for units: Click Here
Thanks Drift, like TLC, I think we will use it as CelebornDrift said:
. There is a vote at the bottom of this post.Any objections?
Big words from someone who left before any modification of a .biq had begun.SoCalian said:
I respect people who try to do what they set out, rather than giving up. More to the point, I respect people who offer a helping hand rather than mindlessly posting annoying, counter-productive, unrelated junk in threads. Why don't you go back to trolling other threads about why there were crossbows in the stone age, or whatever it is you devote your recreation time too? That would make us all much happier.
There is joeskip. The units are finished statistically and in some regard graphically. There are roughly 100-115 core units in the MOD. These are the units that will impact the game's playability. Once these are firmly balanced in the private beta, I'll begin to add flavor graphics. There are a lot of units out there that would fit a "Edain" type of line (like the one you posted), but just as many that would fit a Northman-type of line, or an Easterling line. So although it doesn't look like we are using Utah's Huscarl, or say, Kinboat's Mongolian horse archers, we will undoubtedly use them in the future. The unit you just linked too will definitely be on our radar when we decide what to put in the Edain linejoeskip said:
.
I took over the project from Celeborn shortly after the release of the C3C, one year ago. Before that time this MOD wasn't even close to possible, the ambitions we had for it wouldn't have manifested. We knew we had to wait until conquests even to be able to start, and that is exactly what happened. Second; there are no guys at this stage. Just me. We finally finished discussing the last tab in the MOD a month or two ago, and from that point on the real modding has begun.lotrKruzr said:
I saw you post in the unit thread that it wasn't in actuality taller, but wider? Do you still think anything needs to be done with it? When shrinking a unit horizontally, there may be more compression, causing the unit to look skewed.Drift said:
Thanks tjedge. I am not the quickest modder in the world, but I don't feel like I am going slower than I should be. It takes roughly four to five hours just to plot and put the X-Y co-ordinates and arrows together for a single era in the tech tree. I get annoyed by people who want it done faster, as they usually have no clue what they are talking about.tjedge1 said:
Also, this is the first MOD that I am aware of that ever even tried to use a democratic styled system for its initial creation. Because of this there is a lot of discussion, a lot of talking, and a lot of voting before the real work starts to get done. And I mean a lot of talking
. There were other MODs that tried to use our same system, but none have finished, and some even bit the dust.
That's good to hearKindred72 said:
. Truth be told the only time I even play civ3 is when I need to test it for this MOD. Your comment about the time it is taking is the only one I paid serious attention to. If there is one thing I want to avoid, it is making people who donated many hours of their free-time contributing to an LotR MOD, wait. I feel the private beta coming soon though. When Mrtn posted the picture of the units, it was a file I sent him after testing the game. I basically weeded out all the faulty .ini files and made sure the 'engine' would run. It was a relief to finally see the civ3 screen load. If you can compare modding to space travel, I sort of felt like sputnik just orbited the earth when that happened .
You couldn't know the amount of time it takes to MOD something unless you do it yourself. Picking up the pace is the equivalent to saying "instead of spending 3-5 hours a day, spend 7-9 hours." Relax, as I stated the actual modding has only been going on for a month or two. The discussion, preliminary modding if you will, is what took two years.lotrKruzr said:
Thanks again, DriftDrift said:
. People don't understand the system on how LotM went about it. It probably wasn't the smartest system to use, but at that time their was no one who had the background knowledge of the ME, and the skills to modify it solo. If there was, people would be playing a MOD similar to Eclipse's, or Nobby's - one that wasn't updated, and one where the times eventually passed over it. As I stated above, editing the .biq is one thing. Sure, we can talk about how we want Clear Forest to come in the third era of the MOD. But what is the use when the Technologies haven't been thought out yet? Even then, when you can put Clear Forest at a specific time, it doesn't do much good unless the PediIcons and Civpedia texts are ready to be edited. It is sort of like building a (for lack of a better term) building. You may put one pillar up, but that pillar is useless unless there are other pillars to help hold up the structure. Mods have tons of little pillars. Three specific entries need to be added for each unit, building, or technology. If it all doesn't fit together, it won't work. So while editing of the .biq started a year ago, the real stuff, the structure of the MOD has only been started in a wholesale way these past few months. I know you certainly don't need to hear how to make a MOD Drift, I'm just using your post to make a point to some of the others .
Amen. It takes a lot of time to make a MOD. Modders need to give up a lot of time I'm sure they would rather spend doing something else. Would I rather go see a movie in the time it takes to enter the Mannish unit line's pediaicons? Of course. But would I rather see 100 movies instead of seeing a modern LotR MOD be completed for the civilization series? Hell no. The problem is it just takes a lot of time and tedious, redundant work to get to the good stuff.tjedge1 said:
I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I don't care if you are 'certainly not happy seeing buggeroff posts.'zxe said:
I've spent a total of 3 hours just compiling and typing this post up. If you added all the time I spent posting; modding word documents, excel files, and creating pcx for this MOD it would total an insane number of hours. If those hours were converted into waking hours of a day, I've no doubt myself and other posters in this thread have contributed months of their free-time for this to work.
Again, I don't mean to answer an intelligent post with another lame comment, but the Civ3 community is much better off that LotM exists. If you ever read the previous threads to this one, you would realize that this was a collection of mostly LotR fanatics adding input to a common goal. LotM has been the first place for many novel ideas that were later taken up my other MODs. We think liberally (in MOD terms) and because of that we stay fresh. The whole point of posting a thread, or threads, before the MOD was even possible, was to create a collection of LotR related work. So some work could be completed and would always be there for people to look at. If you were to read the millions of words people put into this MOD, you would come out infinitely more wiser about LotR/ME and modding in general. If someone really had the guts, and the hundreds of hours of spare time, they could make the MOD too, knock their-selves out. I'll be beta testing in the meantimezxe said:
. There is absolutely no possible way these threads have hurt the ME modding community, simply lobbying for art and units has helped a civ3 mod based on ME. We've carried our own weight when it comes to LotR being recreated in Civ3.
As I stated before, modding isn't really fun. It is tedious. The only fun part of modding is seeing the excellent artwork people have created when adding a unit or building. Unfortunately, that is just a fraction of what making a MOD is. The fun part is when it is completed. On your earlier remark of deadlines, sorry, but no. I deal with deadlines when I have to type a college essay in a night, or when I have to do inventory at work. I don't need a deadline for something I'm doing as 'recreation.' That said, I expect the beta to be out soon. That is if you people stop making me type these posts, which eats hours of my time.zxe said:
In short, while your attempt to explain these "hurry up posts" is noble, it ultimately made me more sure of what I already knew. People come in here after skimming the latest thread and feel like they can comprehend everything in the past 12 threads. As AlcTrv put it, we put more time into this than any of said hurry-up posters have. We want to get this done more than they do. We won't do it for them. We'll do it for the people who have donated their hard-earned free-time to the MOD, not _just_ for people who have done nilch and still feel the need to have others do their work.
I wouldn't mind if you stuck around zxe, just try and keep on subject. Posting about this subject any further than the replies you will have to my post is counter-productive for the goal of the MOD.
Excellent. I've missed reading your spam j/k. Hurry back.The Last Conformist said:
Animnames are already done for everything, wouldn't have been a big help though anyway. ;-)Mithadan said:
And of course you haven't sounded ungrateful or anything. You've contributed time to this MOD as well. The only problem I have is people who don't/didn't do anything and come into complain about how we are ruining their PC time somehow.
Yeah. Let's get the building/structure up, then put in the furniture.mrtn said:
Idit, sorry to answer your PM here, but simply help how you can. Everything is mostly done, unless you can create graphics.
If you can't, I'll re-post some civilopedia entries. In these entries you need to post _only_ about historical information.
Then upload the text file and I'll copy and paste the historical entry into the actual file. All that could be done during the private beta, however.
You are welcome to post questions about things you don't understand from previous threads. But remember, we've had a lot of time to think about this
. We usually do things (like Mithril as a lux) intentionally. No members of the team that post regularly can make units. And as I've said before, the private and public beta is where the action will be. Unit creators are much, much, much, more willing to create units, when there is a working MOD to put them in.Idit said:
Well, I can explain that. They are placeholders until I post a vote on taking regicide out. You probably remember that from a while back, about nazgul and such:Weasel Op said:
They are also placeholders until the LH choosing was finished. Which just happened. I can't make an Elven King unit that looks like a male when a female is the LH. So the King units seen there are all separate units, but they use the same graphics until I choose the gfx for them, which I will do after this final vote.mrtn said:
LH Vote Results:
Code:
Sindar [b][color=red]A. High Elf(Emb) [9][/b][/color] OR B. Placeholder and request
Númenor [b][color=red]C. Hannibal(Anc)[9][/b][/color] OR D. Placeholder and request[1]
Noldor [b][color=red]E. William-Medieval[6][/b][/color] OR F. Comanthir(CivArmy)[3]
Moriquendi G. Theodora(Anc)[5] OR [b][color=red]H. Inegrid(R8)[6][/b][/color]
Moriquendi2 J. Comanthir (CivArmy)[1] OR K. High Elf(Emb)
Easterlings L. Dolgan(emb)[1] OR [b][color=red]M. Temujin[6][/b][/color]
Easterlings N. Xiong-Nu(CivArmy)[1] OR O. Attila(R8)[2]LH Final Vote:
Who wants Inegrid as Galadriel for the Moriquendi LH graphic?
Who wants Drift's edited wood elf (Celeborn) for the Moriquendi LH graphic?
(Seeing as how Drift just edited and proposed a new graphic, we'll do a revote on the Moriquendi LH.)
And, finally, here is a screenshot of the First Era's tech tree.
Follow this link: First Era beta
And here is my post about what history pedia entries are needed for units: Click Here
tjedge1
Writer of writerly things
I have to think about this vote. Can't make up mymind.
I wanted to say you did a great job on the arrows in your tech tree. I haven't even done that in my mod.
I wanted to say you did a great job on the arrows in your tech tree. I haven't even done that in my mod.
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