Lords of Midnight: Total War

[Horseman]

Greetings to all and apologies, this has turned into a bit of an essay!

Lords of Midnight is a game released back in 1984 on the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 that was at the time of release touted as a mix between strategy and adventure written by a man called Mike Singleton.

For more information visit http://www.icemark.com/tower/

Quite recently I discovered an online multiplayer version of the game (Midnight MU) originally developed by Jean-Yves and have spent many happy hours playing and discussing the games in the forums and during one such discussion an idea was formed.......why not make a Total War Mod of Midnight, so that is how we got to this stage! We are currently using RTW 1.5 as a base, but after some advice this may change at a later date.

For more information on Midnight MU (and for those who can remember the good old days of beating up on Doomdarks hoards) you can visit

http://forum.midnightmu.com/index.php

Though you do need to register to see most of the forums.

Right back on topic here.
My own modding experience started by making all factions playable, then the odd tweak here and there to unit stats, buildings and ancillaries. Using the guides on these forums I then devised my own personal Mod for RTW making it as I felt it should be. ZoR, no more fantasy units, many units added to factions depending on regions (creten archers for all recruitable in Crete for example) So as you can imagine moving up a level to creating a whole new world/map with all new factions has proven quite daunting. Quite quickly I had 2 willing assistants in Mitch23 & Major Defect (known as Starshatter in MMU) and that comprises our Mod team. We are enthusiastic but not experienced!

We have a basic map that works ok, have begun renaming factions and characters and are almost done with changing unit names and stats. We will then be looking to tweak ancillaries and traits a little before making our 1st release as a beta to a small group of players to test for balance at that stage.

Most of the graphics will still be from RTW and this is where we hit our biggest brick wall, none of us have the programs or the skills to create models. Now as this is a labour of love rather than an attempt to create a perfect match we are not to fussed if things aren't quite right. After asking around we have found some models we can "steal" (this is of course with prior permission, and with credit once it is released) for quite a few things, and massive thanks goto Dul Gulder (Master of None on TWC) for helping point us in the right direction here and also for providing some very good models we can use. But if there are any Modders with the skills/programs to assist us and you would like to help please feel free to send me a message

We still need to find a suitable "standing stone" to represent Lilths on the campaign map as well as replacing the characters that appear there. And of course the units themselves!

Thats it for now - I'll try and post some screen shots of the campaign map if I can work out how, just to prove we are making progress and I'm not making this up!!!!

thanks for reading

Mike

[Horseman]

Right if I have this right below you should see the plains of Blood in all its glory during winter! one thing to note is that the terain is very "square" whilst I have toyed with the idea of smoothing it all out a bit I quite like the look as its faithful to the original game (the map was broken into squares)



And hopefully below you have the lands of Corelay



Hopefully Mitch23 and Major Defect will come in with some of thier screen shots as they have better ones to use than me at present (they've spent more time actually testing than me as of late!)

[Aradan]

That looks very interesting, though I admit that being much younger I haven't *yet* played the original game - will do soon enough. Best of luck!

[Dol Guldur]

Most on these boards - due to age or location (and probably the former!) - will not remember The Lords of Midnight. So let me (who am one who by both age and location was able to play this when it first came out) explain a little more...

Mike Singleton created some great games in his time and The Lords of Midnight, and others, were way ahead of their time. LoM had 32,000 panoramic screenviews, superior graphics for the time, and a landscaping feature. It was labelled the first "epic" computer game I believe. Now remember, this was all on a computer with 48K of RAM! It came with a novella (the first game ever to do so I believe) and a very useful keyboard overlay (no mouses back then!).

It was the RTW of it's time ;)

Singleton drew a lot of his imagination from Middle-earth. Some may even be interested in playing the PC conversion (interface not quite the same as the original, and yes you can use the mouse now!):

The Midnight Engine - Lords of Midnight Scenario v0016
http://www.icemark.com/downloads/index.html
warning: 2003 kb filesize

I wish the developers of this mod the best of luck - being, ehem, a little older than the average devs what they now lack in modding experience will be more than compensated for in staying power I am sure.

The only drawback to this mod is that I now feel very old...

[Horseman]

Thanks for the messages of luck and for all the help so far Dol Guldur, I would like to take this oppurtunity to say i'm only 29...surely thats not old?

[Dol Guldur]

No problem.

No, not old - though probably in terms of relativity to other modders ;)

(and certainly not old compared to me!)

[Major Defect]

Well, according to some involved in this mod, I am clearly able to remember both the game and the original Roman occupation of these fair isles. Due to the terrible memories of that time, it is only right that the evil Foul be represented as the Roman factions in this mod.

Screenshot below shows Doomy on a tour of inspection to Vorgath to look at the defences of Doom Square. He has passed a village, doubtless having a bit of a rape and a pillage, and is contemplating whether to hire the mercenaries available (clearly expecting warmer climes...), or casually drop them down the closest fish mine. Muhahahahahahahaha.

Its just as well there are some more mature elements involved here to straighten ties, inspect shoelaces, make sure teeth are cleaned and check the spelling of these here whippersnappers..........