Feedback wanted!

[Ticu]

Alright, I've been a bit busy for a while, but I'll try and tackle the buildings for now. :D

And Kitagata, you're awesome. Blue Lotus desparately needed new sounds, and you seem to be filling in the gap quite well.

[Ticu]

Well, I finally updated BL all the way, and when I played it, I found a very changed game - for the better. I though't I'd address a few issues and concerns before working on the buildings, if that's alright. I know my ranting is probably growing tiresome, but I'm a neat freak, so I can't help it sometimes. Please note that what I am posting is only a suggestion. I'm not going to beg or anything. =P

However, I'll give one last attempt at stating my case about the hero units. I know they are "really special", but take one final look at this and tell me what you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSxqr1sggbY
(The only difference is the launching ability.)

That's basically all I can say about that, though it would also be good to note that I was able to kill half of an entire army using only one hero unit. I doubt that any of the stats will be changed, but it would be nice if we could make it so that the heroes do well in combat, but not to the point where they sort of throw away the necessity to use tactics to win (just a thought).

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Perhaps they weren't implemented yet, but when trying out the Japanese, none of the katana wielding units seemed to have the katana animations (I didn't try *all* the units out, but enough so that it was noticeable). I thought it was an issue with the way I installed the patches, but I later noticed that the Green leaves had the two-handed sword animation. I'm sure you meant to add the new animations in, but I thought I'd point it out just in case. If that is how you meant to have them, then ignore this. :P

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While I'm on the topic of the Japanese, I might as well mention that some of the Zensen units seemed to be the same color as the akagi units. I don't know if this was done on purpose, but I find the blue armor slightly more fitting. It might also be better if they had a different symbol on the flag attached to their back.

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I noticed you changed the music around some more, which is awesome. However, I noticed that some of the songs didn't seem to fit the situation they played in. I noticed some peaceful flute music, as well as intense combat music during the the marches. Having a different mood often works well, as in the case of having that bell like music during the combat scenes, but the previously mentioned situations should be tweaked a bit in my opinion.

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Lastly, the units seem to have an extremely large amount of defense compared to attack. It's great that the battles now last longer, but the truth is, they last a bit too long. I pitted some Akagi duelists against another similar unit, and the fight lasted *really long* - a bit too long in my opinion. If tuning it down slightly isn't an option, I had the idea of lowering the wait time between attacks for every unit. That way the defense is kept, and fights between two soldiers don't take 2 minutes. ;)
Having the soldiers perform rapid attacks would also further help maintain the illusion of an intense battle.

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That's all I have to say for now.

[Rinsui]

Ok, here we go. Second round ;)
You won, the launching attribute will be cancelled in the next official patch (this sunday). Stop begging already, haha! The stats of the hero units are far from being final anyway - I just gave them the high numbers to make them last long enough to check for modeling and skinning errors and the like. Btw, this goes for ALL units up to now. None of the stats are final; the high defense ratings the stats are based on were introduced as a try-out by Moros, originally.
The problem with the Katana and two-handed spear animations is unit movement speed. As the animations are directly tied to movement speed, I could well give the Yari Ashigaru the two handed animation alright - by making them move just as slow as a heavy unit clad in full body plate armour. I decided to go with the a little less beautiful, but technically a little better option. The Katana animation may work with the No-Dachi, the normal Samurai and some other units though. I'll look into this.
The Akagi/Zensens colours were mentioned by Kitagata already. It is just a matter of the little time I have to do things. I guess I'll have to re-introduce different colours for both factions, then. It's just a matter of working time.
The music... I am not sure about which pieces don't fit, but I will try to keep my ears open for inconsistencies.

@Kitagata
You'll get the Handlers next. Anything else that needs new sounds?

[kitagata]

Hmm, beast riders, and yomi general's unit maybe; they could use the shishi sounds.
I'd like to give the Wang Liang and Hanya a few new growls and howls and add new Asiatic chants to any chanting monk units.

These are all low priorities though, and can be done at whatever your pace work is. So I guess for the time being, the leopards are the last in dire need of sounds.

Beyond that I probably can't help too much else unless there are sound issues or needs.

Do you want a new background song for the credits instead of the one from M2TW? I have a raw sound file that could easily be turned into a fitting dark and Asian down-tempo piece for the credits.
Also if you want to put new sounds in to replace the 'clicks' and 'button pushing' I have a bunch of mastered Asian instrument wav sounds lying around.

On the subject of animations, I know people make slow, semi-fast, fast versions of skeletions. Maybe that could be looked into.

[Moros]

the length of the battles is mostly due to a low lethality used bu most units. Try doubling or trippling them.
So don't lower attack speed, and defense yet.

[Rinsui]

Hm. Changing the colours for Akagi and Zensen will be more time-consuming than I originally thought, as the original BLTW does not provide INFO pics in different colours. I'll do it right away, though.

[Ticu]

The movement speeds of the animations could always be changed, of course. If you want I can try modifying them.

Edit: Also, another minor issue I thought I'd point out is that the veil of the Tomoe Gozen isn't semitransparent as it was in the previous version.

[Moros]

Note that a lot of animation packs who have the basic animations also have different speed anim's. Alin's one for example might have usefull ones.

[Rinsui]

@Ticu
Definitely yes. Finalization of unit movement speed is of much higher priority than the building roster for now. As Kita knows how to integrate new animations, please talk to him directly - I guess he can help on that matter. As far as I can tell, we still can use, ordered according to priority high->low:
1.) An additional slow-firing crossbow-type animation. Movement speed is ok as it is, but the reload times are too fast (for the Singijeon). Perhaps you can simply double the animation cycles for the reload animation? (making them reload twice before firing)
2.) An additional "semi-fast movement speed" 2-handed spear animation for the Ashigaru - otherwise the 1-handed one will have to do.
3.) thats all for now. Give it a shot, and if it takes too much effort, tell me. It is not a "must have", just a "would be good to have".



The veil of Miss Gozen is directly linked to the indian officer's beards (haha). You will know what I mean if you read Kita's post a few posts up. This will be corrected in the next release (Sunday). Strangely the GIMP seems to sometimes lose transparency information - just sometimes I say, because it did a great job for the Kamikaze (their flag has holes).

[Ticu]

I've worked with animations before and know how to implement new ones, so I will do that now.

Also, I have photoshop, and am pretty proficient with it. So if you need help with something that can't be doen in GIMP, I could work with it. I will fix the veil of "Miss Gozen" for now. :P

[kitagata]

I noticed that the Yomi banners that surround the town center in their settlements have some skinning problems. The bottom of the banners contains other imagery. Also, is it intentional that stonewall sieges no longer allow ladders?

[Rinsui]

Both are errors I guess. I'll look into it right away. The new patch I just uploaded also contains the new colours vor Akagi and Zensen, and the new sounds you provided for all units except the Snow Monkeys. Since I didn't fully understand what you did for them, I was weary to integrate the changes to the export_descr_unit.txt and the export_descr_sounds_soldier_voice as yet \ savety first, you know... As you hijacked the romal Light_1 set for the Monkeys, what will happen if another faction (e.g. the Egyptians/Yomi) recruit Snowmonkey Infantry? Will those use the monkey sounds or the normal egyptian Light_1 set then?
Another thing is the Leopard Handlers. As you noticed, I did not implement the changes to their voices as yet, as some of them seem to cause CTDs (according to your tests). However, those kitties are in dire need of new growls, I think. could you look into that, perhaps? I'll do them right now, but just in case you want to continue immediately, they will be named "BLTW_leopard_handlers" internally.
Thanks again,
continuing work after a long weekend,

[kitagata]

The Snow Monkeys should only use the Roman light_1. Units don't change their voice category if you make them recruitable for other factions, and mercenaries in vanilla RTW didn't either, so I think the monkeys are fine. It seems units have a primary "affiliation" to one culture, but I don't know where that's determined in the _.txts.

I'll try them with different factions to see what happens when I get a chance.

In fact, if you can switch the Son Goku from a Barbarian unit to a Roman unit (but only recruitable to the Chinese through export_descr_buildings) then he could just borrow the Snow Monkeys' voice set from Roman light_1.　
Then I wouldn't have to take the Barbarian light_1 voice just for Son Goku.

The leopard sounds have been fixed so they are all the right format. I don't get CTDs anymore with them. When I get a chance I'll put them on filefront.

Lastly, I've never liked the overly-stereotyped eyes of the Mongol units. The eyes of other Asian units are fine, but the Mongols are all sleeping/blind/or squinting!
So I've tried GIMPing in some eyes on the old BL Kharazai units. If you wouldn't mind looking, maybe if you like them you could cut and paste the faces to the new Kharazai units.

I'll include them with the leopard sounds in a while.

EDIT:
Here's the fixed Leopard sounds and the sample Mongol textures:

http://files.filefront.com/LeopardAn.../fileinfo.html

Keep up the good work.

[Rinsui]

Ok. The Stonewalls no more allowing ladders is "intentional by accident", I think. The problem is that the outline of those walls is slightly slanted for the Chinese and Japanese Factions, and thus the ladders and Men would disapper inside while climbing them (as the original obstacle data was not changed - it is a different file from the visible .ITEM file you see in battle). The removal of the ladders altogether seems to have been the best solution the original BLTW developers could come up with - I guess they realized the problems the new models would cause after they were finished, and were too lazy to redo the complete wall sets afterwards. In theory I think I could correct this; no, actually I am quite sure I could. But alas, i also think this is a rather low priority problem. It would take me several hours to do, after all. Remind me once I am finished with everything else.
The wrong skinning of the Yomi banners is not due to a wrong skinning, but due to the Yomi using a slightly differently composed texture for all their banners. No problem to correct this, but I am not sure what side-effects this may have. I'll give it a shot.
Edit: Ok. The side-effects are controllable. This will be corrected in the next patch.

[kitagata]

Tested the newer sounds for the Leopards, and they definitely don't cause problems anymore.
If you haven't gotten them, they are linked in my last post.
Messed around with Son Goku, and he can't borrow the snow monkeys' sounds. You're right, by making him recruitable for the Chinese, he takes their voice. I can give him sounds, but I'll have to take one of the Eastern/Parthian voice classes. Same for the Incarnation of Kali.

I'm going to test the snow monkeys to make sure that when they are mercenaries, they keep their monkey voice in any army. Again I think I remember that it is true in normal Rome Total War, so it should be fine.

Also, what are the sounds that the beast riders use? Did you make them camels? They don't use horse sounds.

Lastly, While the model is pretty cool, do the demons need the headless horse cavalry? It seemed like their strength was infantry, with just a few cavalry and archery units. Also, it doesn't seem quite as 'Asian mythology' as the other demons.
I can get used to the unit, though, but maybe you could at least limit it to the custom battle or something. No offense, the unit looks good, but I dunno...

What's coming up in the next release???

[Rinsui]

@Kitagata
The next release will be on July 1st. This will be a new "base" version (~1.3GB), that will supersede the current base version+patches.
It looks like we can't have distinctive sounds for all those special units we are about to field, then. Well, please do not hack more of the original unit sounds; for Kali, Dragons and some of the more stupid-looking Yomi Units etc. it would suffice to have an "undistinguishable grunt" of some sort - one for all of them. So you are free to "conquer" one of the voice types - Light_1, Medium_1, Heavy_1, General_1, Female_1 - for each of the cultures; and I guess you will have to do that for mercenary units anyway. Unlike yourself, I am not sure the snow monkeys will keep their voices in an "egyptian" army. Rather I am convinced they will not, just like Son Goku doesn't. Hmm. This is a problem we didn't think of...
Yep, I fear I was right. I just tried the snow monkeys within a Yomi (egyptian) and Rebel (roman) army. The roman ones had your beautiful screechings, but the Yomi ones were just plain soldiers. Damn. I really liked those monkey sounds. But I guess you understand we cannot afford to sacrifice one whole voice cathegory for every faction just for a single unit. My test was with custom battles, so I am not 120% sure this will affect stratmap mercenaries as well. But then again, do all mercenaries really use roman voices? Until this problem is sorted out, the monkey sounds are on hold and will not be included in the next release.
Beast riders are "camels" too, yes. Horse sounds would be a little strange for them, eh?
The headless horses mainly fill a gap in the Yomi roster. The problem is: there are generally four levels of cavalry: 1 is light, 2 is medium, 3 is heavy. The Yomi had medium (beast riders) and heavy (shishi). Undoubtable, Shishi "look" pretty heavy, and not just "medium". They have a certain weakness to ensure a Yomi player doesn't get overly cavalry-enthusiastic (they may run amok), but a giant lion just isn't "medium". The next decision was to make the beast riders either medium or heavy, and to fill the third slot with something appropriate. I first thought about using the Tengu Camel Archers for this, but I need them to have at least a second missile unit for the Yomi.. If you take the time to read through the unit descriptions, you will note the Yomi have serious problems with live horses.. Now ok, it is possible to... grr. Yes, I could make up a new Yomi archery unit, alright - to fill the ensuing gap in the missile department. But I don't want it to be "better" than the Kappa archers, just different. Hmmhmm. Let me think about this. Hmm.
Btw, I agree the Yomi cavalry, and especially their archery shouldn't - relative to the other units they field - be the best. On a sidenote, however: in MP battles with unlimited amounts of money, the Yomi will be nearly unbeatable. The BLTW campaign game should give even the most experienced players a real challenge when facing a Yomi army - and I think just giving them a money boost (which is very easy to implement), I want them to be really stronger than the other factions. But... now I have to go back to unit-implementing. Tedious bug-slaying has slowed me down a lot during the last days. It's time to move on.

Edit: Upon several trials, the new leopard sounds worked like a charm. I also included the new mongolian eyes into the new textures that are currently used for all units but generals and officers - this gives a bit of variation to the faces. Very good idea indeed.

[Moros]

Does the run amok work on normal cavalry though?

Also I just donwloaded the new base build and the updates. I'll start looking for a fix for the white banner.

[Ticu]

Well, another option would be to simply make the screeching sounds play when you select the units. You can customize that for any individual unit without replacing anything.

By the way, I've been out of the house for around a week, so I wasn't able to work very much on the animations. I have created a new, faster, 2 handed animation set, as well as included one I found that has the units holding their spears with 2 hands even when standing idly or marching (the old set didn't do this). I will finish up and try to upload the file soon. ;)

EDIT: Here it is

I didn't include a slower crossbow animation because I think it's possible to simply edit one of the stats in the EDU file in order to modify the rate of attacks. I know this works with melee units, and I'm pretty sure it would do the same with the Singijeon.

[Rinsui]

Ha, yes. I would be glad if it did work. But I upped the attack delay for the Singijeon to 200 (20 secs), and they still attack as fast as before; so if you can make a crossbow animation that has about a 10 sec delay, I would be very grateful. And provided it is easy to do, another 20 sec delay one would be good, too... for now, I'll try out your 2h animations. Thank you!

@Moros
Yes, even normal cavalry runs amok pretty well ^^/. Those white banners are a mystery to me. Try playing at the Rebels in custom battles, and you will notice they use the default RTW roman interface, too. I guess if you can find out where they get that default interface from, the banners problem could be solved too... Strangely, the slaves in custom battles do not seem to use the banners specified in descr_banners.txt!

@Kitagata
Ticu's suggestion concerning the Monkey sounds sounds reasonable to me, as it is better than nothing...?

[Ticu]

I'll see what I can do. It may be that the animations may only be tweaked using a script if it affects movement speed. I may need to edit the animation and tween it a bit in max.

[Ticu]

Alright, I guess a decision's going to have to be made about the crossbow animation. For some strange reason, all crossbow animations appear to be non-editable in the sense that if they are reexported, the bones start to behave erratically in game. The only one I was able to re-edit was the hold animation, but that presented some problems. It seems as if the hold animations of missile units have their length multiplied by a changing value for each indiviual soldier in a unit, causing each of them to fire at slightly different times. Due to the fact that I greatly increased the count of the hold animation frames, the firing variation times became much longer as a result. This caused the soldiers to shoot and reload out of unison (by 5-10 seconds approximately). Also, because the firing wasn't grouped in the same time interval, several soldiers would shoot long after the group firing sound effect had played. It seems like I won't be able to change the speed between firing volleys... unless I can figure something out.

One possibility is to take the bow stringing animation and modify taht instead. Although it would most likely affect the smothness of the transitioning between the ready and holding animations, it would also allow me to get the desired transition time between volleys. I suppose the good news is that I've found out how to make soldiers fire at closer times.

Tell me what you think.

[Rinsui]

The general approach I take with this game is functionality > cosmetics. So if you can give me longer reload times by including animation cycles that don't look as 100% good as the original ones, their "functional superiority" will be given preference. Sometimes the .CAS exporter is (randomly) erratic btw, so it might help to simply try lengthening the old crossbob animations again. I had a similar problem with the Singijeon, which suddenly mixed up their bones upon export (there is a picture on page 2 of this thread).
I guess you are experienced enough with the animations already, so allow me to compile a comrehensive (complete) list of what I think we will still need. Unless I forget something again, that is. ^^/
After this, we should be able to close the animations chapter:

1. A semi_fast 2-handed spearman (Yari Ashigaru, "old style", that is, just 1-handed while idle and moving)
2. A normal speed crossbow animation with about 25 seconds inter-volley time (Singijeon)
3. A normal speed crossbow animation with about 15 seconds inter-volley time (Dragonfire Troopers)
4. A slow-moving crossbow animation with the minimum possible inter-volley time (is 3 seconds possible? - for the Chu-ko-nu)
BTW, it would be great if you could name the animations set according to movement speed. In RTW, there are 4 movement speeds for both infantry and cavalry: fs_slow_xxx, fs_xxx, fs_semi_fast_xxx, fs_fast_xxx (horses are a bit different, but we don't need those).
To tell you the truth, I have little clue about animations above using them. Consequently, I cannot judge the workload you'll have to manage. If it is too much, tell me. Otherwise, just take your time. As for me, i'll try to punch out about 3 units a day - the most difficult ones (except the Dragon) are finished already anyway.
Thank you again,

[Belail]

Hi there I just wanted to thank you for your hard work on this excellent mod and carrying on a great game. Thanks, again.

[Rinsui]

No problem.

[Ticu]

Alright Rinsui, I'll use the archer animation instead I guess (since I've tried modifying the default xbow animations around 7 times)

I believe I could create those desired speeds, though it might take me some time.

Also, should we be holding our modding discussions in the feedback thread, or would it be better if we sort of... transfered the convo somewhere else and left the feedback thread for the feedback. :P

I don't really mind, but it is just a suggestion.

[Rinsui]

Yes. I just opened up a new thread. Please read on there.

[kitagata]

Hey, just a small error I've found lately.
The Barac Guardsmen don't have a description appear with their pic and stats during battle, and their description is actually on another unit. I think it's the peasants or militia unit.
Also the thunderbombers make the archer fire sound when they throw their bombs. The javelin sound would make more sense. I think this can be fixed in export_desr_unit.

Next, I was going to give some chanting sounds to the warrior monks, but when I click the chant button, nothing happens. It may still have the effect on the surrounding men, but they don't perform the chant animation or make sounds. I haven't looked into why, but maybe there's a mistake in the texts or maybe chanting isn't compatible with the two handed animation.

Lastly, again about the snow monkeys, since there are five voice categories in a culture, is there really a problem in taking up one of the Egyptian ones so that they sound right? The mercenary snow monkey unit will make the monkey sounds for any faction that hires it, but the ones recruited by the Yomi won't unless I take a voice category.

I'm working on making a bunch of generic grunts for the Yomi soldiers (Medium1), a voice for the geisha and hags (Female1), a wang liang and hanya voice (Heavy1). So I figure that leaves General1 open for any additional need and Light1 open for the monkeys. Same for the Chinese with Son Goku. I don't imagine there will be need for that many different voice categories, so taking one just for that unit ought to be alright.

Lastly lastly, I noticed some of the music in the game is from an old game called Rise of the Middle Kingdom. I used to have it, and still have the sound files. If you want I could give you the rest of the music. I browsed through it and it is all very suitable.

PS I give in. I'll ask, why are the Chinese Elite Cavalry now Hooker Cavalry?

[Rinsui]

Thanks for the hints. Punching out 3 units a day takes about 3 hours, you know - there is *much* more to do than just writing descriptions and changing names. Actually many units have small skinning or animation mistakes, so I sometimes simply don't have the time to check the details.
Barac Guardsmen descr: corrected
Thunderbombers sound: not corrected; I know what you mean: there is an archery sound before they actually throw their bombs. Well, I guess you know better about that than me...?
Chanting sounds: Yes, I also noticed that. This might turn out to become a problem. If everything fails, we can skip the chanting and simply have them inspire nearby troops without chanting (like a legionary eagle). Less beauty, same effect. Ticu is working on new animations already. Perhaps we could stress his good will even more, haha!

Snow monkey sounds: I am not sure they will actually use their new sounds when "mercenaried" by other cultures. This will have to be tested first once the campaign is up again. A little more patience please. BTW, the Yomi will no more be able to "normally" recruit the Snow Monkey Infantry.
Ah, haha. Yes, the "Hooker Cavalry" ^^. I did hesitate for a long time about the name - after all, there are some kids playing this game, too. You'll understand once you read the unit description, and consider the general "character" of the Yuwan (this Sunday).
I don't mind about still more new music, but I consider it somewhat low priority. The pieces I used are samples of Jeff Alexander's works that are provided for free on his homepage - so there is no legal issues.

[saulot333]

Hi, I tried this mod when it came out time ago and I found it great. I helped a bit Moros and the others in stabilising the campaign and rebalance battles and campaign. Today I installed your version and I found it really great, even in this early stages. I think that this team have done a great work and I want to thank you all for it. I was also wondering: could I volounteer to help? I'm no good in the graphic department, but I can help you in the stat testing and balancement, tech tree, building coding and text editing in general.

[kitagata]

Hey, I was browsing the latest changes and noticed the Shadow Warriors don't have bomb sounds, and they make the archer fire sounds. So I went ahead and fixed it as well as added some 'ook ook' sounds for Son Goku. Check the file linked below.

http://files.filefront.com/sound+fix.../fileinfo.html

Also included two common use Indian tracks I was given and cut a little. Might be good for Krishnapur.

Has anyone considered adding a small horde unit based on gaki or the impish demons? You see it in lots of Asian myths and art, and I think it would be very fitting of the character of the Yomi.
It probably wouldn't take much more than copying and rescale-ing a skeleton and then modding the bakemono or hanya model a bit. Or maybe just use the kappa skeleton.

Here's what I mean: (tab open the links, as they don't like letting you go back.)
http://bp3.blogger.com/_uEwOmLfNbOk/...00-h/gaki1.jpg
http://bp1.blogger.com/_xQwP8MNj0EA/...1216_001_l.jpg
http://bp1.blogger.com/_xQwP8MNj0EA/...1900_001_l.jpg

To Saulot333, I'm just a party crasher on this mod so my words aren't worth anything, but I hope they accept your help. I remember the good fixes you had for the first beta.