MTW2 weapon & armour levels (IMAGE HEAVY!)

[=Omni=]

First of all I want to say Hi!

I'm new to TW modding community and I want to say that I'm really impressed by what I've seen so far - the custom mods for RTW are outstanding (I've tried NTW2, Chivalry and SPQR so far, but they are purely awesome:2thumbsup: )

I can't wait for MTW2 to come out, and as modder myself (I'm modeller for Forgotten Hope mod (http://www.fhmod.org) for Battlefield 2) the first thing I'll do will mod something for it or at least seek for realism mods :p

Anyway, I wanted to contribute a bit for the TW community, so I've done a little test on MTW2 demo to check how different weapon and armour leves influence the apperance of models :) (kudos for Sinhuet for showing us how to mod custom demo battles:2thumbsup: ) I've ran the test on Saxons/Hre and Normans.

And here's what I got:

1) the first unit I've decided to check were peasants from HRE

With 0 armour level they look like that:
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/peasants0armour.jpg

Peasants with armour level 1:
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/peasants1armor.jpg


I've tried giving them other armour levels but it seems they can have only 0 and 1 levels. Adding more doesn't change the game, but also doesn't change their stats - and they alwayx have the orange 'armour level' shield (for 1st armour level and upwards)

Also, on the 1st screenshot they have weapon level 1 and on 2nd - level 0 - they look almost the same, except that some weapons (like the small pitchfork) seem to be used more often.

2) the next unit were sergeant spearmen

armour 0:

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/sergspear0armour.jpg

armour 1
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/sergspear1armour.jpg


Giving more armour caused a crash, so maybe they can have more armour levels, but the proper models/skins are not in demo.

Note: I gave both units weapon level 1, so they have spears with different blade. For level 0 they look a bit different - you can see it on next screenshots. Also, it applies to all spear units - like thiegns and armored spearmen. Giving them weapon level 2 crashes the demo :(

3) armored spearmen

armour level 0:

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/armserg0armour.jpg

(notice that they have different spears - they're at weapon level 0)

armour level 1 - added helmets and some of them wear more chainmail:

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/armserg1armour.jpg

(Again I gave them weapon level 0, but like sergeant spearmen they can have other levels - with level 1 they have spears like in example above)

Notice:

The level 0 armored sergeants look just like theigns, they only have a little different skins (for example shields - probably because theigns are used by saxons - but they also work for HRE). also theigns cannot have any armour bonuses - we can only change weapon levels. Changing armour does nothing

theigns

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/theig.jpg

4) mailed knights

Apparently mailed knights use the armored sergeants' model, just put on the horses. However, it seem that HRE horses are not in demo, thus we get floating knights :p

armour 0, weapon 1 (different pikes)

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/mialiedkn0a0qhre.jpg

amrour 1, weapon 0

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/mailedkn1a1whre.jpg

And that's how the mailed knights should look like (they work properly for Normans)

armor1, weapon 1

https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/mailedknnorm.jpg

Also, there are mounted sergeants ingame (there's the icon, but the game crashes when loading), so I assume that they're just sergeant spearmen riding horses.

5) huscarls

All I could change was weapon level - changing armour did nothing (although it didn't crash the game)

weapon 0
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/husc0weap.jpg

weapon 1 (different axes)
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/husc1weap.jpg

6) archer militia

I've tried giving HRE archer militia, but it seems that there are no models for it in demo - so what we get is the army of ghosts :D

The norman archer militia

armour 0, weapon 1
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/militiaarch0arm1weap.jpg

armour 1, weapon 0 (different looking bows)
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m65/omniFH/militiaarch1arm0weap.jpg

---------

Also, the sergeant spearmen and armored sergeants can be added to France, Hre and Normans (I haven't tried England and Spain yet, for Saxons we get ghost army) - they all use the same model, but with different skins :)


I hope that was some useful info:book:

cheers

Omni

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Great first post mate, I haven't seen some of those before.

The multiple armour and weapon level thing is certainly going to make it tougher for modders - not sure how I'm going to go about implementing this into AoW II yet I must say, it could take a hell of lot of work.

[shifty157]

Interesting stuff. Its a nice feature.

[Herkus]

nice stuff.
There are different tools for peasant weapons. So I assume that there will be possibility to make for example different sword version within unit.
Maybe one unit could have different weapons (though these weapons should be used in the same way for the animations) like swords, maces, axes.

[Myrddraal]

I agree with BKB, great first post!

Welcome to the .org :bow:, and thanks for the info.

[impar]

Greetings!
I hope that was some useful info:book: Quite interesting, Omni! :yes:
Thanks! ~:cheers:

[PorT_Lobo]

Great Post, thanks!!

[alpaca]

CA definitely spends too much money on graphics in my opinion...
I mean they could do with half the number of modellers and skinners and still deliver a very well-looking game. Such detail is just plain ridiculous in my opinion. Well, I hope they spent enough time on the actual game instead of just making eye-candy stuff.

[PROMETHEUS]

I wonder how the aztec units upgrades do look ....

[Orb]

on the plus side, we might be able to mix and match enough heads and other things to cut down on custom models, which would help get releases out much faster, I think.