Medieval: Total Realism

[Samurai Waki]

I certainly think you could make a more accurate realism mod for Medieval Era than Rome Era, just because you're dealing with languages that are more easily interpreted, probably more detailed accounts, better archeological evidence, etc. etc. I'm just hoping CA gives you modders a lot of breathing space, and an AI thats easier to work with than RTW.

[Shahed]

Thank you & Good luck in advance.

[Lochar]

I enjoyed both TW and TR games altho the only mod I tried was RTR, I really never messed with MTW or STW mods.

IMO I am pretty sure CA will take the middle ground and make the game more fun vs realistic, as the hardcore isnt the major market, you can see this more and more everyday with RTS games nothing more than who clicks the fastest.

I am surprised tho your starting so early without getting an idea of what their skins will have for all factions, but if this is a passion I guess you cant say its work either.

I dont know if Modders can be treated like press but I wonder if you guys cant get an early build of the game just like alot of press sites/mags to give you at least something you know would need changing, afterall you guys dont hurt business, since they need to buy the game to get the mod anyways. Just my 2 cents..:)

[Antiochius]

good luck. but it is a little bit curious that you announce this shortly after the Announcement of M2TR. if i had been you, i would have searched at first some information for yourselves, and after the Release of the game, than i would have announced the Mod

[Mithrandir]

A little on the heavy handed side Mithrandir? I see no evidence of serious game or mod bashing. A few light hearted comments containing minor critical opinions can hardly be called bashing

......Orda

2 highly offensive posts were deleted.

If you have an issue with how I moderate, please use PM to inform me.
Not because I can't take critisism, but because threads have a nasty tendency to focus on the style of moderating instead of the original topic.

Thanks,

-Mithrandir.

[Trajanus]

Well to continue ontopic.

Its always nice to have variation in the games we play even if it is only different variations of the same game. Plus if in the MTR teams eyes they create something they prefer to play than to vanilla M2TW good for them. At the end of the day they don't have to mod the game and put in all those extra hours to let other people play a different version of the game but they do.

Good luck with the project and enjoy making it more to the point!

[hoom]

Looking forward to it :)
Hopefully there will be only the one big Medieval conversion though, I think two has caused too much duplication in the RTW mods.

Really hoping someone will put out a high class Rome period mod for M2TW too. Probably actually more so than the Medieval period since there really were huge empires then & a bunch of the new features should really improve the depiction of the period.

[3.14]

Mark my words, I'm pretty sure there will be a mod team to work on it. ;)

[Sir Robin]

Thank you thank you thank you

RTR and EB have both vastly improved RTW imho.

I know there will be a variety of issues the more history-loving crowd, like me, will have with MTW2. MTR will give us a reason to keep playing MTW2 after the initial has worn off. Can't wait to face the crusades as the Byzantines in tweaked RTW engined glory.

[3.14]

Hehe thanks for the good words. It's our main goal, to give you guys a game that's as historically accurate as possible. Luckily, we'll have a great game, M2TW to work with so I'm pretty sure that everything will be as nice as you and we could hope for.

Cheers!

Ach!

[Anti-hero]

How can I join the team? I can help with any info on the Balkan region. Any type of information, from Names of leaders to provinces to units outlook.

[3.14]

Interesting. You should just PM me with some informations about yourself, your background, do you study history for example, stuff like that.

Ach!

[3.14]

Ok here's a little preview for this week. Research is still in progress (and will be for some time hehe) but here's a concept drawing produced by wraithdt. It features a unit of saracen infantry, inspired by MTW1.

Enjoy.

[ivoignob]

Yep, that unit looks cool! By the way, where do you guys get your visual reference for medieval middle-east armour/wargear from. That really interests me...

[econ21]

It features a unit of saracen infantry, inspired by MTW1.

It looks very good, but I'd be interested in what your subsequent research finds out. The Saracen infantry was one MTW unit I thought rather suspect from a realism point of view. Saracens were not noted for their heavy infantry and it was particularly odd that their spears were more armoured than the early Catholics. I suspect that such a unit is more likely a dismounted Saracen cavalryman - necessary for sieges etc. I don't believe they fielded ranks of mail armoured spear infantry. The best I could come up with for such infantry for the Saracens were unarmoured and low quality Syrian spearmen. Such troops don't seem to have been much used in battles against the Crusaders.

[3.14]

Wraithdt is only warming up. This was a display of what he's able to do. This unit may or may not be in the final unit list (which is far from finished of course). It's just a sight no matter what.

Ach!

[Mount Suribachi]

as the hardcore isnt the major market,

See, this is a misconception that really annoys me. There is a hard-core games market. Its not as big as the mainstream market, but neither is it as competative. "Hardcore" games have been and continue to be big sellers for those developers and publishers who have the guts and the talent to do them. EU2 springs to mind, as does the much maligned Microsoft Train Simulator. Hell, I remember when BG came out, the RPG genre was meant to be dead, especially stat-heavy DnD ones. One high quality "hardcore" RPG single-handedly revived the whole genre.

If historically accurate games are such a small, niche market, how come there are about 15 documentary channels on Sky TV? How come my local bookshop has huge amounts of shelf-space devoted to history books?

[NagatsukaShumi]

Looking very good guys, like the style of concept art

[wraithdt]

Hey people,

Just wanted to clarify that any conceptual sketches we're doing at this stage are just preliminary and not final. We are doing this based on our own knowledge and references at the moment. So once the research team gets going you'll be seeing changes on the unit designs. For the time being I'll try my best to conform closely to whatever historical references I can find. Cheers!

[spanakoryzo]

I for one have greatly enjoyed the RTR mod (it improved the gameplay value of the original RTW 10x) and I think it's great that we are going to enjoy the same quality product for MTW2. Thanks for all the hard work and great fun you've provided so far and I wish you luck on your new modding endeavour!

[3.14]

Since we have a couple concept drawings in reserve, I'll post another one right now. Once again, Wraithdt did the drawing. It represents a Templar Knight. Remember that this is only a concept (hey just as in concept art ;) ) and that it might or might not be in the final units list.

Enjoy!

https://img214.imageshack.us/my.php?...rknight0px.jpg

[Duke John]

Wraithdt is very talented! Are you gonna feed us just one at a time to keep this thread going?

[3.14]

And would that be a problem ? Because for now, yes it's the plan. Since the game isn't out yet, we can't really post previews of models and skins right ? So we show concept arts.

Ach!

[Duke John]

Personally I find this concept art as interesting to see as a screenshot, perhaps even more. But I meant that I find it a bit of a pity that you do not show all those wonderfull concept art all at once and instead drip feeding it to us like a large games developer.

[PROMETHEUS]

Actually those concepts look like redraws of the actual units we can see in the CA screenshots , is quite early to shoot at CA sayng they didn't do a good job and say it is unhistorical ...

[wraithdt]

Thanks for your compliments guys.

Prometheus: If you're implying that my sketches are copies of M2TW screen shots, you're sadly mistaken. I use my own historical references or whatever the team provides. Although these concepts are heavily referenced, they're never copied nor traced; I'm a professional artist just so you know.
Also, I somewhat agree with you that it might seem a little early to be starting on the mod, but very few of us are actually working on it at this moment. I'm only doing these concepts to warm myslef up untill we begin actual development and to provide you guys with some little teasers. Needless to say there are alot of ppl out there who'd love to play the realism mod and we all know that Vanilla M2TW will not be 100% historically accurate (although deep down I hope I'm wrong....). Thats why we're starting early.

[3.14]

Yes Prom it might be a bit early but I wonder if you read about the cannons mounted on elephants ? I do not doubt that the game will be awesome in terms of possibilities etc, I just think that CA has to make choices between a historically accurate game and a flashy-exentrique game. That's their choice to make but I think that most of us around here can already guess. ;)

Ach!

[PROMETHEUS]

Whel may seem strange , but as I remember those Cannons on Elephants where used by Moghul Indian troops .....more than a Cannon was a Colubrine tough....

[Butcher]

Yes Prom it might be a bit early but I wonder if you read about the cannons mounted on elephants ?

I missed that one!

[3.14]

Oh yes I also heard references of cannons mounted on elephants but I doubt that this technique was used so regularly. Just like flaming pigs. Having been used once or twice doesn't really justify a unit ? I don't think so.