Project: Arda Mod (LOTR)

[frenchman]

That's what I wanted to mean by create: they corrupted another beings, "creating" the orcs.

I should re-read the book because in the film Saruman creates the URUKS and I stayed on this idea...
For the Hobbits, you could give them a special resistance against magic ( I mean if we take them like an human unit...)

 

[Elda King]

In the book it was said about "dark Uruks of Mordor" in the Moria's chapter. For those who don't know (I took some months to realize), Uruk and Uruk-hai are the same, -hai mean "people", like in Olog-hai.
I was thinking about making them invisible (except for some units), but this is also a good idea.
Any ideas for the traits? I sugest changing Imperialistic, Spiritual and Charismatic for Seafaring, Prudent (or Wise?) and Destructive.
NamesAreUseless, could you pass me some of your art files for the mod, please?

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

I may be able to help a little bit with this mod.

How are you going to handle religon? Middle-Earth is a pretty religon free zone.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

slightly off-topic, but in terms of the Judeo-Christian mythos, it could be argued that if the Wizards are Angels and Balrogs are fallen angels (i.e. demons), then Sauron is probably Lucifer himself-chief of the fallen angels. Morgoth doesn't count because he is an order of magnitude GREATER than the angels-formerly the Vala Melkor. Also, Morgoth lost the power to create anything of his own after he rebelled against the other Valar. The orcs are in fact twisted and tortured versions of the elves-which is why they hate the elves so passionately. The Uruks merely represent an advanced breeding program by Sauron, combined with the strength they gain merely by being in his service, and the Uruk-Hai are the result of Saruman magically combining Orcs and Men-making them taller, stronger and able to resist sunlight (normal orcs can't stand sunlight because they came into existence during the time of the Great Darkness-before the days of the Sun and the Moon. Trolls fall into the same category).

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

slightly off-topic, but in terms of the Judeo-Christian mythos, it could be argued that if the Wizards are Angels and Balrogs are fallen angels (i.e. demons), then Sauron is probably Lucifer himself-chief of the fallen angels. Morgoth doesn't count because he is an order of magnitude GREATER than the angels-formerly the Vala Melkor. Also, Morgoth lost the power to create anything of his own after he rebelled against the other Valar. The orcs are in fact twisted and tortured versions of the elves-which is why they hate the elves so passionately. The Uruks merely represent an advanced breeding program by Sauron, combined with the strength they gain merely by being in his service, and the Uruk-Hai are the result of Saruman magically combining Orcs and Men-making them taller, stronger and able to resist sunlight (normal orcs can't stand sunlight because they came into existence during the time of the Great Darkness-before the days of the Sun and the Moon. Trolls fall into the same category).

Aussie_Lurker.

yes.

anyawys:
there are alot of religions that you could force into the game: Reverance to the one ring, something dwarfish (worship gold/jewls/Aule)

 

[Elda King]

I may be able to help a little bit with this mod.

How are you going to handle religon? Middle-Earth is a pretty religon free zone.

Thank you for the help. About religion, my only idea is that we should have "morgoth's corruption" as one of the options. Perhaps we should also have "Reverence for Eru". About valar cult (including dwarvish Aulë's cult) I believe it would be, in Arda, completely wrong, because Eru was God, and the Valar (except from Melkor and his servants) were completely submited to him and would not want, not even allow, being saw as gods.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Okay, I have been exploring the XMLs and I have added a new resource: Mearas. It is the same as the horse except it gives plus 1 hammer, I think I also made it 50% rarer than horses...I will test it a bit later to see if I have done it right. If it works it could also be a prequisite resource for a kind of upgraded cavalry or something.

On religons...I think reverence for eru and morgoths corruption (or perhaps 'cult of morgoth') are okay...it would be possible to cut out the other religons and just use those 2 (we could keep paganism as the default startig religon)

I have also had afew ideas for civics:

governments:
-Despotism
-Hereditary Rule
-Supreme Rule
-Wise Council
-Stewardship

I dunno about the other civics

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Ah well much head-scratching later I have admitted defeat on the Mearas. They kind-of-sort-of work but:

-They are maquerading under the name 'text_key_bonus_mearas' or somthing like that
-Civ4 gives some error messages when loading the mod...they are apparently inconsequential but then I only used the world builder to check out the mearas, so over the length of a full game there might be errors

I'm sure someone who knew more about this kind of thing could work it out (HINT! but for now there you go...the idea is there if you want to use it.

I think I will stick to shouting ideas from the sidelines.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Darth, your first problem is easily solvable. Copy and paste the Civ4GameText_Civilopedia_Bonuses.xml file (found in the Text Folder of \\...Assets\XML) into your mod folder. Then simply add a civilopedia entry for Mearas into this file. Make sure it is well formed and 'Bob's your Uncle', you should find that it no longer comes up as text_key_bonus etc etc. Your other problem, however, I cannot solve without first knowing what the error message is. However, I suspect it might be a parsing error caused by a poorly formed tag. Do you use XMLSpy by Altova? If not, I can highly recommend it, as it pretty much forms the tags as you go.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

soory, i realized this post was stupid, so i got rid of it

 

[Elda King]

I don't believe Mearas are a good resource, they were so uncommon that it would be weird to have more than one horse at a time.
I have finished the ideas for the civs (except for the UUs), and this weekend I must put them in. I already have some leaderheads, but no flags (I use the Gimp, and don't know how to set the Alpha channel black and all the flags I try to do appear white in the game, can someone help me or do some flags?).

 

[thomas.berubeg]

i'll upload the dwarves civ here when i get it to work
(leader Durin)

 

[Dúnadan]

Best of luck, guys!

 

[frenchman]

I don't believe Mearas are a good resource, they were so uncommon that it would be weird to have more than one horse at a time.
I have finished the ideas for the civs (except for the UUs), and this weekend I must put them in. I already have some leaderheads, but no flags (I use the Gimp, and don't know how to set the Alpha channel black and all the flags I try to do appear white in the game, can someone help me or do some flags?).

You could use Bad Ronald flag principle ( without alpha channel...)... have a look in my signature in my library I have created 2 flags for France (with his method) and there is a link to Bad Ronald thread...
Perhaps it will be good to use this thread to build the mod and show the civs, techs...etc..

 

[Wyz_sub10]

I don't believe Mearas are a good resource, they were so uncommon that it would be weird to have more than one horse at a time.
I have finished the ideas for the civs (except for the UUs), and this weekend I must put them in. I already have some leaderheads, but no flags (I use the Gimp, and don't know how to set the Alpha channel black and all the flags I try to do appear white in the game, can someone help me or do some flags?).

I've already offered to do flags. Let me know what races you're wanting and I'll get some graphics and do the flags properly.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

@Aussie - I fixed the second problem but the first is still persisting...thanks for the help anyways. I was using wordpad to edit the files.

@Elda King: No worries if you don't want to use the mearas, it was mainly a way of me practicsing fiddling with civ4 a bit anyway.

 

[Elda King]

I've already offered to do flags. Let me know what races you're wanting and I'll get some graphics and do the flags properly.

Well, thank you. All the civs listed in this thread need flags, so feel free to chose wich you want to do. . I'll try to do some, also, but first I need some practice.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

i'm having some XML isseus with the dwarves(durin) it shouldn't be to long before i post them.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Hey Darth, your first problem is easily solvable. Copy and paste the Civ4GameText_Civilopedia_Bonuses.xml file (found in the Text Folder of \\...Assets\XML) into your mod folder. Then simply add a civilopedia entry for Mearas into this file. Make sure it is well formed and 'Bob's your Uncle', you should find that it no longer comes up as text_key_bonus etc etc. Your other problem, however, I cannot solve without first knowing what the error message is. However, I suspect it might be a parsing error caused by a poorly formed tag. Do you use XMLSpy by Altova? If not, I can highly recommend it, as it pretty much forms the tags as you go.

Aussie_Lurker.

Both probs fixed now

I think you meant 'Civ4GameTextInfos_Objects'? That is the file for sorting out name weirdness, the one you mentioned is just for pedia entries.

Not quite sure what a tag is but yes the second prob was caused by a missing line in the xml file (I think this is what you meant?)

Okay, enough about the mearas now...Sorry to flog a dead horse so to speak.

Can I suggest Mithril as a resource though? It would add some flavour to the resources

 

[Wyz_sub10]

I'll post the Team Color and CIv Pedia flags sometime today (maybe late today, though - i.e. 2:00 am ).