Fall of Rome - Total War

[oldnfaded]

You said
Rumor has it he wrote a letter and promised to save the Romano-Brits during the early barbarian invasions of the island and some historians said he was the basis for the Aurthurian legends. I'm assuming he ruled over a gallo roman aristocracy and used the same troops (foederati, buccelari etc etc) as anyone else in that era.
.

The information I have differs a little to this. In his chronicles, Gildas(contemporary to the period) says that a letter was sent from agitus, who is assumed to be the last effective Roman magister miltitum of gaul that modern history knows as Aegidius the father of Syagrius. You may be interested to know of the existence of a fictional work on Syagrius called "the king of the Romans " by John Gorman which is available from palm digital as an E book

http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/product/detail/184

may be of help but very little real info seems to be available, Aegidius is often connected with the Arthurian legend and is sometimes said to be arthur but who knows.

oldnfaded

[Dux Syagrius]

You're right. Aegidus was the last Magister Militum per Gaullia. I guess I was typing a little too fast......... I am not totally sure where I read that Syagrius was tied to the Arthurian legend. I want to say Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon, but there is a little too much info and a little too much old style english prose is that book to be 100% certain. I just remember the feeling I got when I read that passage: "Boy, those Brits sure are getting ripped off. Syagrius as King Arthur? Fat chance he's coming to help, he's got his hands full as it is!" There is such a relatice scarcity of info during this period and alot of it was biased or very exagerrated. It was kind of like the 70's. People werent sure what decade they were in!

Thanks for the adjustment
Dux

[oldnfaded]

How close are you to releasing the new Late Roman 3D anim bifs? I am about ready to make the next release of "Arthur" but would love to have more accurate battle images?

oldnfaded

[maximus decimus meridius]

Hi

i think that Fall of Rome 3.0 will be released within 15 october.

[Hross af Guttenburg]

Hiya Max, long time no see! :p
Great news about the release date, hopefully something even bigger and better can be done for ROME TW?!
Guess it's a bit late to start monaing about stuff for FOR3? Just gonna say that the Bosporan kingdom fell to the Goths around 300 AD, so it shouldn't really be in the later campaigns...although I reckon the Slavs should be there.
Also, the AngloSaxon and Romano-Britons should have different start pos. The Danes did not leave Sweden until well into the fourth century after the AngloSaxons and Jutes left Jutland-Denmark.... I think that the next version/Rome Total war should have new provinces like Cernow in south west Britain as a Romano-British province.
I've started work on the portraits again (!- don't laugh...) and made the look and feel of the factions a lot better I think, the problems of black portraits and CTDs is still there though...
Anyways, good luck, can't wait till FOR3 is released!

[Belisarivs]

Hi Max. I use Photoshop to make those new graphics, but I don't know how to pack it back to bif. So I won't be able to post any screenshots.
About that new unit, I was buse recently (seasonal work to gather money to finance my studies at the university). Sorry. I'll do my best.
What about loading screen. Do you have any suggestions? Could you mail me names you want to add to it (you mentioned, that you wish to add tem there). Bye.

[Belisarivs]

Sorry, I was busy, not buse.

[maximus decimus meridius]

Hross.

hi! how are you? .... i don't know for ROME TW , .. really.


Belisarivs.

no problem for me, take your time, i think that your studies are more important than MTW mods.

anyway to pack back the new graphics you can use "readbif" (there is an import function under the file menu - "import frame from bmp"), i've tried 2 days ago to pack back some of the frame you sent me, but after the importation in readbif, the background of the horse was black ! maybe there is something wrong in the transparent color of the color palette .
Also the horse colour palette is wrong, infact the horse is very dark and the has other altered colours.
maybe this fact is due to several graphic format changes ?



about the loading screen (great!) i will send you the name list

bye
max

ps.
if you haven't i can send you readbif.exe

[Belisarivs]

Thanks.
I used this procedure:
Extracted frames from light horse (for horse archers etc.) and that with mail armour (for Kataphraktoi etc.).
Then i set one frame of light horse as background and appropriate frame of that mailed horse as Layer 1.
Then moved parts of Layer 1 to correct positions according Background and carefully erased redundant parts of Layer 1.
Merged them together and saved as bmp in 8-bit.
So, you can see, that I didn't darken anything as well as didn't do anything with background.

I thing, that problem is, that while compression to 8-bit colours chooses any 256 colours, just to reduce size at max, readbif has still the same 256 colours and when it doesn't find any exactly correstponding ones, it tries to find closest ones, but it appears, that it doesn't mean, that it will succeed.
I've already tried readbif, but it produced something what cannot be taken seriously. Perhaps I had bad version. If you wish you can send it to me.

BTW, what do you think about that NSIS. It can create nice installer (and uninstaller as well) and still reduce size of finall file. I've managed to pack your mod from 24 - 26 MB to 14,5 MB with it. If you wish, I can send you my addon as example. It needs MedMod 3.14 to be installed first and adds bohemian faction to MTW. Just ot show how it works.

[maximus decimus meridius]

Oh. i see i use same technique to make my unitgraphics. for example i create a new shield on the first frame with readbif, extract all the 12 frames in .bmp format and open them with Microsoft Office Photoeditor (very easy to use, it maintains the colour palette and also makes the resizing from 512 to 256 px), then i copy and paste the shield on the remnants 11 frames, save all the files, and reimport them in readbif.

no problems with color palette...

so if i have understand well you are using the light horse frames as background to paste part of the armored horse .... probably you are right the problem is the 8 bit conversion so i think that you should maintain the original output compress ratio of readbif.
i'll send you the readbif i'm using.

about the self installer for me it's ok but i have only to speak with Duke John to resolve the limit 2 Mb of uploading on the download section ..

oh yes please send me your mod ...

[Empedocles]

Maximus, can you give us any idea for a release date!! I'm eager to play your new mod.

Diego, from Argentina

PS: Now a Senior Patron....soon an Emperor

[Consul Flaminius]

Maximus, can you give us any idea for a release date!! I'm eager to play your new mod.

Diego, from Argentina

PS: Now a Senior Patron....soon an Emperor

15th October.............................

[maximus decimus meridius]

The release date is 15 th october, the mod is finished and i'm making some tests, but.. i've a problem. every time i try to go to the battle screen, the pc screen freezes after few minutes!

...... !!

so i can't test the mod in the right way!!

please if anyone have a solution tell me the answer !!

[Empedocles]

Can't wait to kill barbarians!!!
Thanks Maximus

PS: Can't help cause don't know a thing about programming

[maximus decimus meridius]

Hi all!

The mod release will be delayed to next week cause i've had problems with my graphic cards drivers.

i'm sorry....

max

[Empedocles]

no problem, we will wait you.

Diego, from Argentina

PS: In the meantime I have a wonderful family in Sims 2 and I'm happy with it.

[metatron]

You could just release a "beta" and we can test it for you... :D

[dimitrios the samian]

Hello Maximus ..... So is it your faulty graphics card that made your screen freeze ? or something the programming ?

[maximus decimus meridius]

dimitrios the samian.

i had a radeon 9000 and i havent had any problem, some weeks ago i upgraded my pc witha radeon 9600 with new drivers.....

it always freezed my pc ...

so i put my old radeon 9000 in the pc with new drivers downloaded from ati site.... it freezed the pc..

i have uninstalled the new driver and installed the old ones (old catalyst 3.2 or 3.3 i don't remember well) and now IT WORKS VERY WELL !!!

SO THE NEW CATALYST DRIVERS DON'T WORK AND THE OLD ONES WORK WELL !!

i don't understand ! really !

[dimitrios the samian]

Hhhmmm.... Frustrating for sure Maximus .. Anyway Im glad you got it all working again , so your testing can proceed .
One question ,, I haven't played any of your earlier versions .
So will your Mod have different music ?
cheers

[maximus decimus meridius]

No sorry , it will not have new music...



max

[dimitrios the samian]

Thats Ok Max ,, Reason I asked is I recently downloaded and installed the HTW music pack for that Mod , It makes a big difference .
Ive gotten a bit of an idea how it all works and if I had suitable Roman music Im confident of being able to do something for your mod .
Any tips on sources for music anyone ?

[Belisarivs]

Thats Ok Max ,, Reason I asked is I recently downloaded and installed the HTW music pack for that Mod , It makes a big difference .
Ive gotten a bit of an idea how it all works and if I had suitable Roman music Im confident of being able to do something for your mod .
Any tips on sources for music anyone ?

How do you do this? I've found pretty simple technique. Convert sound to ogg (as it offers better compression with the same quality in comparison with mp3) with http://winvorbis.stationplaylist.com/WinVorbisSetup.exe or http://www.vorbis.com/files/1.0/windows/oggdropXPd.zip , download oggdec at http://www.rarewares.org/files/ogg/oggdec1.0.1.zip make batch file and anyone can decompress all files by simple doubleclick.

[dimitrios the samian]

Hello Belisarivs ,,
The HTW music pack came with tools to convert the files to wav and all i had to do was remove viking files and replace .
I will get the one's you suggest as it looks like you have used them succesfully .
Do you have any music that would suit the Mod ?
I was thinking music from some of the late 50's 60's Hollywood Movie's , like QuoVadis , Spartacus , Cleopatra etc etc .

[Belisarivs]

Sorry Dimitrios. I have none of them.

[dimitrios the samian]

Thats ok Belisarivs , i have none either , I just want opinions on what music would be suitable .. I will find out if those hollywood movies had soundtracks , talk to you later ...

[Hross af Guttenburg]

I think something really 'folky' and ancient sounding would suit the game more than classical music that we're so used to.
I think the Medieval Baebes do some really good rousing stuff that can be atmospheric too. Some songs are actually in LATIN and date from Roman times. Others are in Old Englsih and would suit the Germanic factions, I have a lot of Scandinavian folk music that would suit those factions. Mongolian throat-chanting would suit the nomadic factions. All of this real original authentic music is what influenced Activision's Total War music anyway....
Of course I have a lot of these in my PC if you wanna download 'em and try 'em out....

[dimitrios the samian]

Hross , I haven't any of this type of music at all , So your files are a starting point .
I have plenty of time and a Music pak for Max's Mod would be excellent .
Lets get the project on the road .

[Hross af Guttenburg]

Great! Let's get to work.
I sent you a PM with some details.

[maximus decimus meridius]

All.

Excellent !!
A music pack for Fall of Rome would be excellent !

Thanks mate !