General Sun Interviews Rome: Total Realism

General Sun Interviews Rome: Total Realism

A few days ago I had the opportunity to talk with the guys from Rome: Total Realism on the latest version of their mod, RTR7. I spoke with their then-director, Desertfox, a few months ago and had learned enough to get myself inordinately excited about all the new gameplay changes and innovations that RTR was about to bring to the table. This time, with the help of the current director, Mark (MCM), I was able to discuss RTR with the down-and-dirty developers from each department. As a result, today I have a much more in-depth and much more interesting editorial-preview/interview for the community.

Mark hooked me up with Caius from graphics, niikeb from coding, Muzier from mapping, and Ruben from history. Each department pursues its own ideas and is thus able to be very innovative in that way. However, as Mark stressed to me, one of the key points of RTR7 is the new, almost academic, focus on historical accuracy. RTR in the past has been criticized for being inexact in its depictions of history, but from what I gathered in my discussions, those criticisms will soon become issues of the antiquity. Since the last version, RTR has brought in numerous historians, including four to five Ph.D students, to ensure the highest level of quality and research. Their internal discussions on history bordered on scholarly. In the past RTR and other realism teams has relied on the popular Osprey Publishing history books as source material for their works. But now the history department looks at primary evidence, or as Caius puts it, “gone are the color plates and scans for reference, in their place, carved stone and tomb paintings.” Ruben adds, “I draw on a huge amount of archaeological evidence, consisting of actual weapons and armor, relief sculpture, painted funerary images, frescoes, carvings, terracotta figurines, full size sculpture, even textile evidence and carved intaglio gems.”

The history department maintains constant contact with the art team and developers like Caius, working together to reconstruct historical units without depending on concept art like Osprey images. Mark, in his capacity, makes sure that the departments are well coordinated; in fact there’s one historian assigned to every artist, ensuring that all works correspond to the latest history. As Caius tells me, this has had profound impact on the quality of the units produced. “All units are now reconstructed, at least on my end, with constant contact with the historian.” The history department has worked very hard to categorize every piece of equipment and collaborated with the graphics department to get this in game, realistically. The result is such a level of accuracy that RTR will be presented at an international conference of historians, surely a crowning achievement for the most popular mod in the series.

But that’s not all that Caius had to tell me about his new units. Besides promising “stuff that is being saved for later that will blow peoples mings,” Caius informed me very matter-of-factly of the leap to 512x512 resolution textures then waxed lyrical on the new focus and previously unseen level of detail on unit weapons and other accouterments, right down to the hilts and pommels and blades, all differentiated by era. All of this will serve to “bring RTR units to life like never before.”

Muzier, the mapper and earth science guy, echoed Caius in a hauntingly similar statement. “What I am trying to achieve with the map is a world that is generally speaking ‘life like.’ It means you won't have individual ‘historical battlefields,’ but the effort is there to create a sense of realism all over the map.” This means that in RTR7, when an army crosses a mountain range, it won’t be crossing over the range as it does in vanilla, but through realistic mountain passes. Muzier personally has worked hard to ensure that when battles do occur, the map terrain is such that, “you should never find yourself on some crazily steep hillside.” A major component of the map’s vivacity comes from its vicinity to real life. As with the art team, Muzier and the other mappers has an army of historians advising them and triple checking to make sure that everything that is produced is up to snuff.

Muzier also took some time to address the new apparent tilt in the map. Fore mostly, he disabused me of the notion that it is a tilt. “Fact is though if you made a tilted cut out of a map, the geographic distortion would be distributed very unevenly.” Since the earth is a sphere, it is not possible to create a flat map without some distortion, the RTR map isn’t actually tilted, just adjusted for accuracy. Muzier said, “So, instead of cutting out a piece of an atlas map, we made our own map projection specifically tailored to suit the intended map extent.” But it is sizably larger and very different looking. niikeb said, “The tilt [adjustment] and the center of the map being Asia Minor puts a new focus on gameplay.”

niikeb is certainly the resident expert on gameplay. He answered my questions in that area easily. He first told me about the mini-factions, which are not full playable factions. “Currently we have 3 mini-faction slots, a Greco, an Eastern, and a Barbarian. Each slot will host roughly 9 different factions at game start with potentially 2-3 more to be added after the starting date.” This will allow them to create a total of 27 to 30 mini-factions in addition to the playable factions, busting the faction limit cap wide open. Each mini-faction has its own king, personality (for example mini-factions known for piracy will be pirates, sinking ships and blockading ports), and can be treated with in individual diplomacy.

Related is the idea of shadow factions, and like mini-factions they are designed to give the mod a sense of realism. But shadow factions are also different, “in 50BC Rome’s greatest enemy was Rome, and through shadow factions along with the Roman political system… In 50 BC Rome will be on the verge of chaos and the player will be able to choose to support either the Optimates and the Republic or the upstart Gaius Julius Caeser.” All this is designed to “really help you feel immersed in the game.”

niikeb also told me of another new RTR feature. This one allows the player to set army wages, and during wartime can raise it to boost military morale. I assume that the inverse is true as well, so during peace one can save some money. But niikeb also informed me solemnly that its inclusion into the game will depend on the approval of the history folks, since the relationship between pay and morale is rarely so clear cut in real life.

So that’s pretty much what I mined from a three hour conversation with Mark, Ruben, Caius, niiikeb, and Muzier (Desertfox provided the half-time show). I never know how to end these things… Well, from what I’ve seen of RTR, it will be something new and something amazing. All that remains is to pray for speedy winds.

I would also like some comments on this article in general, how did you like the style in which it was done? I purposely departed from what I felt was the lazy method of Q/A interviews. Was this more interesting, more readable? I know that it was much more concise.

Shoutout: RTR is looking for more historians and people familiar with coding. This is an excellent chance to work with the oldest Total War development team on the cutting edge of TW modding research.

Mark: We are ready to break new ground; those that want to come along for an exciting ride are welcome, from any background.

Disclaimer: This is not a review, this is a preview. I do my best to realistically present the best light on every mod in previews like this, but the article should not be taken as a statement of opinion or as a partisan endorsement. This is just a slightly gushy foretaste for a very promising mod.

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I would also like some comments on this article in general, how did you like the style in which it was done? I purposely departed from what I felt was the lazy method of Q/A interviews. Was this more interesting, more readable? I know that it was much more concise.

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It was a great read, in any case, although it looked quite a daunting lump of text. Perhaps some images?

Thanks Sun, great read and a good roundup too.

Thanks Myrddraal, I'll try to find something. It is a bit intimidating.

That is a very good, although I cant really define what exactly it is. An interview? a Preview?


But good nonetheless, and as Myddraal said, it could use some images, or at least some colour. Maybe change the font a bit.

That was a realy great read, I hope you grace us more often with these articles.