Narnia: Total War?

[ca_landrum]

Okay, first off--I am NOT a modder. I can't mod to save my life. My question is this: how hard would this be? You could start basic and have a few fairly diverse factions on hand for a campaign.

The only thing I see hard is this: talking beasts. Narnia would naturally have to be a powerhouse with nearly miraculous resources (then again, maybe not). You would have to figure out Centaurs and Minotaurs and Gods and Goddesses and different animal-based armies with very few humans. Narnia would be the tough faction, but then again all this maybe be extremly easy and I could just be overthinking.


FACTION IDEAS:

Narnia Under High King Peter
Archenland Under King Lune
Calormen Under Tisroc ???
The Telemarines Under Caspian the I
The Seven Isles Under Govenor ???
Galma (Pirate Faction, Under Admiral ???)
Calormen Rebels (Could Be More than One Faction like in BI)
Black Narnians Under King ???

Set in: The Golden Age (End of LWW, All of HHB)

Is there anyone out there who actually thinks this might be worth considering?

[Epistolary Richard]

It has been suggested before (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55769&highlight=narnia) though it didn't create much interest. While such a mod would be possible, it would take an awful amount of work from a pretty skilled modeller/animator due to the sheer number of fantastical creatures involved - over a year at least. Short of such a person making a Narnia mod his magnum opus I don't think that we'll ever see one come to fruition.

[Bwian]

Any mod can be worht doing if you have the technical know-how to assess it's feasability...the understanding of thRTW engine to tweak the story to fit what can be achieved...and the modelling, texturing,animating and coding skills to build the art assests you will need to go with the text work.

If you lack even the most basic modding skills, you will not be able to do any of the work yourself. Not even the working out how bit! I can give you a few pointers....but thats it.

1) Centaurs. Impossible if you want them to work well. I made some before....but when they die, they break in two in a VERY unrealistic way. Even if you change the death animation routines....the game will seperate the parts.

2) Minotaurs....easy. Just a new mesh

3) Animals...if you want them to walk upright and be humanish..then it's easy. Otherwise, you will need to use variations on the elephant skeleton. Horse and camel skeletons do not have an attack movement of their own...so if you used a horse with an invisible ridr...it would just walk up to the enemy and have no visible attack to cause the enemy to fall over!

4) Gods and Goddesses ... easy. Just humans with super-stats

The only problem is...IT'S A HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK. Once you start bringing in a few new units, you completely change the balancing. You cannot do this without MONTHS of work just to make a Narnia faction. More and more work to make it playable..... Forget it. If you can't start it........forget it.

[Thorn Is]

Animals...if you want them to walk upright and be humanish..then it's easy. Otherwise, you will need to use variations on the elephant skeleton. Horse and camel skeletons do not have an attack movement of their own...so if you used a horse with an invisible ridr...it would just walk up to the enemy and have no visible attack to cause the enemy to fall over!
.

could use the doggies and maybe the exploding pigs ... ~:confused:

[ca_landrum]

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Who knows, maybe when MTW II comes out I'll use that to start learning and see if i can't develop anything narnia. thanks guys.

[Bwian]

Dogs and pigs can only have 1 mesh/skin set. You can't put 2 different dog meshes in game...it just won't let you. That's why it's no good for a project like this :D

You can scale and adjust the elephant skeleton to make it fit most quadrapeds, though there would be some workarounds needed.

[ca_landrum]

Well i've donwloaded caligula and am messing around on that, so we'll see. any suggestions?

[Epistolary Richard]

Errr... Caligula is a unit stat editor. It's not going to let you edit the models themselves.

[Roman_Man#3]

is there any tools you can download from this site that edits models?

[spirit_of_rob]

To edit models you need 3ds max which is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination and the import/export script by vercingetorix.

[Roman_Man#3]

ok, thank you

[Lord Liendecker]

It has been suggested before (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55769&highlight=narnia) though it didn't create much interest. While such a mod would be possible, it would take an awful amount of work from a pretty skilled modeller/animator due to the sheer number of fantastical creatures involved - over a year at least. Short of such a person making a Narnia mod his magnum opus I don't think that we'll ever see one come to fruition.

actually narnian total war is completely possible.

http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/leopards.jpg

:D Hoggy did some real work on his Blue Lotus mod, maybe you can get some more ideas by looking at his forum. I think narnia is a good idea.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41920

here's some minotar-like models
http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/rebelbear.jpg
http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/rebelboar.jpg


http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/copdrag.jpg
those dragons are way too asian but its an encouraging idea. You could have dragon island units or ettinsmore mercinaries units. Those are made from the elephant skeleton but you probably want to make it more upright, less thin, and with a more variety of actions.
http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/wang.jpg
if you made their heads smaller you could have some good ettinsmoor giants

and if you took these guy's horns away.
http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/giant.jpg



I'm thinking TASH
course he'd only be a one unit hero or general or something.
http://www.awrate.com/chrishogg/images/shiv.jpg

I know the warhammer mod also has some new skeletons that you might want to look at like the skeletons and goblins, there are also more demons in the blue lotus that you might want to consider using. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

And I'm sure hoggy could help you turn out a new skeleton for centaurs if you asked him to. He's been pretty busy on the Blue Lotus mod but after he's done im sure a centaur or someother unit wouldn't be too much trouble if you had the rest of it underway.

For narnian total war youd probably have to make from scratch: dragons, dryads, griffins (im sure flying units are not out of the picture), centaurs, owls. Elk, wolves, dryads, minotars, giants, underworld people (maybe), dwarves, marshwiggles... you could probably alter from existing skeletons, unless you wanted them to look very unique.

[spirit_of_rob]

If you'll read no one actualy said narnia is impossible,

Just difficult alot of work.

Blue lotus is made by Hoggy who is basically a modeling genius from what i can see, therefore any mod that needs to make this kind of changes to the basic game needs a modeling genius and there arent many around.

[Bwian]

Just to give youa bit of a reality check on 'skeletons':

1) NOBODY has made new skeletons for the animations. All the things Hoggy has done have used basic, simple RTW stock skeletons. Some have been scaled, but none have been changed in any way, shape or form. I have done a lot of messing with skeletons and animations for my Metal Mayhem mod, and I know exactly what can and can't be done. New skeletons cannot be done. We have not got the tools to do it.

2) Centaurs ARE out of the question in any real sense. You can only do them as a 2-part rider/mount approach, and this looks appallingly bad when they die.....

3) Do not bother even trying to make flying units. They don't work in any way that would help you. All the units are treated as if they are on the ground. You can make them high up in the sky by shifting the animation routines to lift them. They would look like they were airborne....right up until the point where the enemy troops walked up to the 'ground' under the flyers, and started killing them. Also....arrows would not be fired up in the air...they would hit the ground under the flyers and cause casualties. Looks utterly daft! You also can't fly over units...they cause disruption as if they were on the ground again.

4) Giants. Easy...just scale up the existing skeleton and re-scale your mesh in EDB to match. Proportions, however, remain human normal.

5) Dwarves. Not good really...they are just scaled down units. Look more like hobbits than dwarves, since they can never have the correct 'bulk' for a dwarf. They end up looking like heavily armed children!!!!

6) The 'dragons' in Hoggy's mod are mapped straight onto an elephant skeleton. This is why they have such a humped back and legs proportioned like they are. I have made dinosaurs ( T-rex....Stegosaurus...Sauropods etc ) using elephant skeletons...but I could NOT make an ankylosaurus due to the different leg proportions. The relationship of limbs to body is fixed. You CAN be clever with it....I did a new animation set for the elephant that turned the trunk into a Brontosaurus neck ( and the legs actually hinge differently )

7) The leopards use the dog skeleton. Easy to do...but you can only have ONE mesh for dogs. The game won't let you add a second kind of dog.

8) The guys with animal heads are just ordinary human skeletons with the mesh altered to make the heads bigger.

9) The four-armed units do NOT have all four arms moving like you would expect. There are simply not the bones for it. You can make the extra arms as part of the mesh...but you can't animate them independantly. I believe ( haven't looked closely ) that the 'spare' arms are linked to the upper arm, with the lower arm of just the 'real' arms linked to the elbow and hand bones. The swords on the spare arms are just mesh. It's how I did it on my 'insect man' test model, and it works quite well. The arms DO move in synch with each other, and you get the illusion of a multi armed thing.

Hoggy is an extremely talented modder, and a top notch modeller. The tricks he has used have given the game a very unique look, and have made the best possible use of what the RTW engine offers...BUT he cannot break the fundamental rules. DO NOT FORGET THIS.

A fantasy mod can be made, but you must work within the game limitations. I want some odd-proportioned units for Metal Mayhem, so I am making units as cavalry. You can scale top and bottom halves differently and change the join position. It makes for some really interestig combo's. They also break apart when killed...which I like! I have a lot of animation tricks to make rolling/tracked and walking droids....plus I have spinning, snipping and bashing attack anims. All done with the same sort of tricks. LOTS can be done....but you are stuck with the stock skeletons

And lastly....if you want Undead..thats EASY! Just check out my undead mini-mod.

[wlesmana]

6) The 'dragons' in Hoggy's mod are mapped straight onto an elephant skeleton. This is why they have such a humped back and legs proportioned like they are. I have made dinosaurs ( T-rex....Stegosaurus...Sauropods etc ) using elephant skeletons...but I could NOT make an ankylosaurus due to the different leg proportions. The relationship of limbs to body is fixed. You CAN be clever with it....I did a new animation set for the elephant that turned the trunk into a Brontosaurus neck ( and the legs actually hinge differently )

It's not even that simple, to emphasize on how hard it is to do on RTW's engine without official tools.
The current CAS exporter, 0.79b, has a bug with the Scene Root turning animation. This is where the left-right turning animations would be done in full instead of partially as needed.

When your soldier/animal is fighting, they'd do a turn to position themselves in order to face an enemy. The angle is set by the engine. But the animation itself is a full 90 degrees turn. With the tool we have now, the pivoting is not exported correctly, to a point where the engine would turn your soldier/animal in a full 90 degrees turn ALL THE TIME. So if you modify the turning animations in ANY way (even just re-exporting the original ones), this bug would happen. In-game, your model would get into a disco groove, because he cannot turn right or left for anything less than 90 degrees. They'd turn 90 degrees left and right all the time, trying to face the designated opponent, unsuccesfully. :dizzy2:

So the only way to avoid this bug is to use the existing turning animations, creating a slight glitch in animation transition if the ready stance is different than normal.

Since this applies to animal skeletons/animations also (since last I experimented), the stegosaurus would bend down his neck and bury his head under the ground, following the original animation, when turning left or right. If you modify these animation, he'd disco around.

(PS. I might be wrong. Please prove I'm wrong :wall: )