ANNOUNCEMENT: The Autumn Release (and an appeal)

[QuintusSertorius]

Greetings fans of Europa Barbarorum!

If you've been following the Twitter/Facebook feeds, or indeed have been involved in the pre-release testing of the iterations of version 2.03, you'll know we've been planning a major new release of Europa Barbarorum II for the summer. In the spirit of full disclosure, our target was the 23rd August, marking the first anniversary of the last major release, 2.01. We had an internal change freeze set for the end of this month so that we could focus on final testing and building an installer to ensure a seamless experience.

However, upon review of the progress on unit creation, we don't feel that an August release would reflect well upon the balance of focus between factions. Most of the new units that are ready belong to just one roster, and it would be unfair to the remaining factions not to be updated until the next major release. Furthermore, we are still extremely constrained on modelling resources and there is only so much that our small number of modellers can do.

With that in mind, we are postponing the release to the autumn, most likely the end of September.

I know this will be a disappointment to many people, but we thought it better to make it public sooner, rather than later. We feel openness is better than simply overshooting the deadline and keeping silent. This will give us another four or five weeks to trial some more gameplay features, but more importantly build the new units that everyone is looking forward to. We'd appreciate people's patience in this regard, bear with us and you will see the mod you're hoping for.

Which brings me onto the second part of this announcement. What would be really helpful is if we had more 3D modellers, especially those with experience of M2TW modding, to help with assembly of new units. We have a pretty extensive collection of the parts needed to build many of our planned units, but not enough people who can put them all together in order to make them real. I know this isn't a glamorous task, and many modellers prefer to make their own meshes, textures and so on from scratch, but this isn't necessary to reach our unit goal. We need people willing to do the legwork of stitching together existing parts under direction from our historians as to what is required. Every unit has a concept thread with photos, illustrations, quotations from text and a breakdown of what is needed, and what current units have valid parts. If we got just five people willing to commit to assembling 10 units each, for example, that would make a big dent in the outstanding units. And yes, we have that many units ready to be assembled!

If you are an experienced M2TW modeller, or know someone who is and could lend a hand, please get in touch with us via our recruitment thread, or PM me or anubis88 directly. That doesn’t mean to say we’re not still interested in enthusiastic people without modding experience who want to learn how; just that for the autumn release it will go much smoother with people who already know what they're doing.

As ever, thank you for your support and remember to read more history.

- The Europa Barbarorum II Team