War Wagons

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

Anyone have an idea how we can create a war wagon unit?

[Norseman]

I read part 10 (models and artillery) in Wellingtons excellent topic on unit modding, and it got me thinking about how to make a wagenburg unit.

The idea is basicly to use an already existing artillery unit, and swap the modeltextures of the cannon with a model of the wagon, which already exist (Personally i would happily sacrifice the organ gun or serpentine to get a wagenburg).

The projectile could be changed in projectiles.txt to have the effect of a salvo of a few handgunners and a small cannon imagined to be on(inside) the wagon http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
When they run out of ammo, after maybe 2-4 shots, the crew deployed behind the wagon would be free to use as infantry, while the wagon would continue to be an obsticle for any attacking unit. The crew could maybe be 40 men with flails.

I dont know if this is doable. Although i have made several units for my own little mod i have never touched the models. I can imagine animations may be a problem, but we dont need any for turning and shooting.

My own PC wont be up and running again until late next month so i cant try this myself right now, but maybe someone else know if this at all possible. Has anybody any experience with changing models? Any thoughts?

[Razor1952]

From what I've read its not possible to mod the artillery units graphics. These units were modelled in 3d then proprietary filtered to give the animation files like .txx. Unfortunately they can't moove.

What you can do is build a new artillery unit based on one of the projectile units like naptha throwers. These will be able to moove.


As there are no likely already built basic files to modify you will have to create these from the ground up.

You will have to build (as I understand it) 4 viewing positions x ~6 actions x 12 frames to get the basic bifs. then the files which describe how to use those graphics.

Maybe someone knows of artillery made before for regular MTW?

Cetainly NTW has this type of modded artillery, (excellently drawn I might add).

The way is open for graphic minded modders to create some mooveable artillery.

If I can get my mind around Gmax(free 3d modelling software) I might be able to help you.

[Razor1952]

from Wellington's excellent post
" if you do this you have to consider there are 6 basic (sometimes more) actions that are ALWAYS associated with a unit. Of these 6 2 are sometimes the same ('run' and 'charge&#39http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif. Therefore we have 5 MINIMUM actions, 4 camera-angles per action and 12 frames that represent the cycle/sequemce of any action. This gives a minimum of 240 images to be drawn for the hi-res BIF's (the lo-res BIFs can be created from the Hi-res by merely resizing)

In practice your talking, on average about 7 actions per unit - so work that out Not a proposal for the faint
-hearted."

[Duke John]

It is possible to make a War Wagon. It will make things easier if you make it immovable and more like a missile tower. You can do this in the following way:
- Make a BIF with the War Wagon viewed from 4 directions, the following actions are needed; standing and dying or more like collapsing.
- Make a BIF with the crew that can do the following: standing, shooting, (reloading), fighting, dying.

Now the number of actions isn't that large. The Wagon is very easy to make with a 3D modelling program since it doesn't require alot of animation. You might want to make the crew the following way:
- Open up bifreader, load a missile unit and extract the frames
- Make 12 new frames and copy the actions: standing/shooting/(reloading)/fighting/dying.
- Paste duplicate actions next to each other so that you have 3 or 4 crew members.
- Save the frames as BMPs
- Write the image rectangles for both the wagon and crew
- Combine both with the wagon as mount and crew as rider.

Good luck,
Duke John