Ancient TW2: Eastern Empires

Great update Macsen .....
Im just as excited as you are with Stazi's new discovery ! & to implement it beginning with the Greeks , nice .
Good luck with those Babylonians & spamming ships .... perhaps breaking parts of that region into a few extra provinces ?
Now ! ..... :idea2:
About those unrecorded Illyrians & Thracians , we can use Slavic & Bulgaric names with a proto twist .
Really doesn't affect gameplay anyways .
Custom battles ........ a must have ! as Historical Battles become possible then .
keep up the brisk pace :2thumbsup:

I have a decent supply of names for the Illyrians and Thracians, just no real leaders to place. The Illyrians use Albanian names, as the Albanians are the last descendents of the Illyrian tribes - makes the faction name list unique, anyway, even if it is bit of a fudge :2thumbsup:

I'm about to open up a Median faction thread, and you'll want to see how the province resource is working for them... I can finally implement an idea that I had long ago.

Greek province resource ideas are developing - I will have Greek homelands, and also 'colonisable' provinces, with different tech trees. This will come into its own for Alex campaign, which is now going to need a major overhaul. I think my first beta release will be JUST Rise of Persia, so we can get some beta testers to check out the radical changes in this scenario.

I have just downloaded that new BIF, so will start playing with that later - I was thinking the skin tone is more Indian than African, so intend to use it for the Isvasa and Prasika units, that will distinguish them from the more professional Gandharan troops. I might need to make some weapon and shield changes, but that's fine. I also downloaded a fresh copy of Duke John's tools and BIF package (the one where I got the Thracian Peltasts from) and there is more in there I can use for some diversity. I really will have to have a clean out of textures folders though.... It also means (I believe) that I have now fully retrieved all the tools I lost when the last PC died. I'm not thinking of any campaign map changes at present, but with LMM4 back in the toolkit, I probably won't be able to resist the temptation forever... :clown: I think I'll buy a dedicated data stick and store copies of all my tools and installers safely away from the hard drive.

I'm also thinking ahead to Diadochi, and am toying with maybe having two versions of that -- one with a massive stack of Celts in Dacia so the Celtic invasion can be implemeted - I think they'll have to have the FN_07 (Viking) slot which is so far unused in any of the Eastern Empires scenarios. BUT that is looking too far into the future for now...

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Originally Posted by macsen rufus

....I think my first beta release will be JUST Rise of Persia, so we can get some beta testers to check out the radical changes in this scenario...........................................I have just downloaded that new BIF, so will start playing with that later - I was thinking the skin tone is more Indian than African, so intend to use it for the Isvasa and Prasika units, that will distinguish them from the more professional Gandharan troops. .......................................................................I'm also thinking ahead to Diadochi, and am toying with maybe having two versions of that -- one with a massive stack of Celts in Dacia so the Celtic invasion can be implemeted - I think they'll have to have the FN_07 (Viking) slot which is so far unused in any of the Eastern Empires scenarios. BUT that is looking too far into the future for now...

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Count me in Mac ...:yes:, I'll beta test the factions you'd like me to .

I'm glad you like that bif , its the original Hellenic one with the skin tone changed probably by BKB & the the almost Scythian type headpiece ? is a nice extra .
Anyway I look forward to you putting it into the Gandharan lineup as it is .
At a later date that bif also will have a top & footwear , along with variety of headgear & no headgear :yes: , but thats way down the line at project 9 at present .

About the Diadochi , yes I agree separate installs is the way forward ! the more free textures/men folders we have the better :yes:
makes for many new scenarios , I had this very same idea for a new version of HTW ( Magna Graecia) with the Greeks united & heading in different directions .

Well, I may as well start with the bad news... I managed to break RoP quite badly :no: In the midst of making some major progress, I started up a campaign to find that all my kings were nameless, and every soldier was called ' ( !!! à ', except the rebels, who were also totally incognito. Worse, CTDs on battle. It took me four hours or more to track it down, and lots of swearing.... in the end it turned out to be one single number out of place when I ported the Babylonians and Lydians into 'facshield-safe' faction slots (FN_24 and FN_26 >> FN_14 and FN_16). I'd managed to overlook the allocation of princess names, and the presence of one reference to 'FN_26' in the HEROES file caused all the hastle.

And the good news of course, is that it is fixed and now running PLUS the Alexander campaign is back in and fully compliant with all the innovations introduced for RoP.

I'm thinking I may push the start date back, and begin the game with Philip II in Macedon - with Alex himself present as a Prince, so you can 'train' him before launching into the Persians. I might even put in a really good assassin in case the heir presumptive gets impatient :clown: Anyway, I'll see how it pans out.

Given all this, you may be forgiven for thinking the beta-release will include Alex as well as RoP scenarios. You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment....

Oh, and all deaths on the field of battle now leave a body behind!

ALL BEING WELL... I aim to get that beta out over the weekend.

Wow !! Exciting .... I look forward to the beta testing .
& well done macsen , solving that was a relief to all of us .
Take your time & when ready upload .

Macsen if its ok with you ......
I think the time is ripe that we moderate the forum & I can write Ludens a pm.
This way we can create our own stickied threads along with compiling all threads in their right sections .
It could get really active here with Leith & myself on the graphics aspect & im sure on other topics also .
Let me know .

I've already PMed Ludens on that topic, as I did find moderator rights useful before, especially pinning things to the top of the board....

I'm glad you managed to track down the problem. Modding MTW can sometimes become extremely frustrating as a missing punctuation mark could force you to start from scratch.

I have tried out the proposed changes to the Alexander starting date, and am pleased to say it worked out very well. I shifted the start date back to 355BC, which was about four years into Philip II's reign, and Alexander was only 1 year old. This allowed me to 'force' the succession, and on my first try out Philip managed to kark it (no assassin necessary, but the 'dead drunk' trait might have helped...) on Alex's 20th birthday, when he promptly took up the throne of Macedonia, found his 'famous king' stats, and adopted the correct portrait image.

How did I get around the problem of the first heir always having the same name as the first king in MTW? Simply by placing a 55 year old heir in the startpos - who promptly died to be replaced by a regular general with a unit of hetairoi, leaving the way clear for his baby 'brother'.

Parallel changes have been made to the Persians, who now start with Artaxerxes III, soon to be succeeded by Darius III. I still need to fix the Darius portrait, but that's a five minute job.

This arrangement allows Philip to do the necessary subjugation of the Greeks and others, build up the army for Alex to use, and solves the problem of Alex dying of old age before he even crosses the Hellespont (because MTW starting kings are always aged between 40 and 50 y.o.). It also means that the Macedonian heroes don't all come along amongst the starting units. All in all, a 'win', I think :2thumbsup:

Brilliant work macsen !!
This idea can be used for the Persians as you have said , but also in future Campaign Scenarios & other Mods .

ps.... Can you open a Graphics Thread , just title it Graphics & in it I will open up 2 topics , cheers :bow:

I've been a bit quiet here of late, but fear not, progress is being made! Weird shifts at work have left me sleep-deprived and juggling time for modding.... however:

• New front end for ATW2:EE made
• Unit icons being reformed
• Three new battle maps made (be sure to invade Illyria from Dacia :2thumbsup: Oh, and from Macedonia....)
• The mess of original MTW castles showing up has been sorted (no more ballista towers when all you expect is wooden pallisades!)
• Pre-battle panoramas being created where they are missing
• Dead bodies finally really work 100% - but some tweaks still needed (all dead horses are still brown, regardless of their colour when alive!)
• Heroes and famous kings further tweaked
• Rebel mixes tweaked
• Economy reformed to increase the challenge for certain factions

The 'to do' list is far from exhausted:

• Please... somebody, ANYBODY ... find a copy of GDS to make LBM work simpler!
• New unit pipeline gets work as and when texture BIFs are available
• Shi Shed-loads of work still to do on pre-battle panoramas (ok, so this is cosmetic... call me anal... I just like my ducks in a row...)
• Custom battles still need some work - ALEX era still causes crashes, FIIKW...
• Oh, yeah, there's still the entire Diadochi scenario to do - but ATW2:EE v1.0 will be released before this is ready
• Miscellaneous (I'm glad they taught me how to spell this in primary school, it's a darn useful word :laugh4: )

Finally, thanks to the BETA-team who have pointed me in the right directions to find stuff I would have missed on my own :bow:

Great news Macsen !!
Your a champion mate , I will just love seeing those new units in custom battles .
& no problems about being anal ..."eye candy adds to the fun"
Ok , more luck re:GDS , I think I have a copy , give me a few days , I got it many many moons ago when we were nubes on here at the org .
keep up the great work .

That would be good if you have GDS lurking somewhere :2thumbsup:

UP only gives you 30 uses before you have to buy it, and PSP doesn't save into the correct sub-format of LBM (MTW needs the PBM sub-format, PSP will only do ILBM sub-format so far as I can see....)

At last all the pre-battle images are finished for the castle maps - a total of 120 new ones had to be made and converted to LBMs... and all the corresponding map .inf files had to be edited to match.

I've looked at the deadpage now, and it is rammed - no room for further tweaks after all - dead horses will have to stay brown, and dead elephants will remain as giant cow-pats.

More 'heroes' lined up for various factions...


With all that graphics work, it's been a very very very repetitive few days, but at least it's done now.

Great work Mac !!
I'd like to learn all that also , to help you out on mods coming up , but you can rum through it at a later date :yes:
no problems about the dead bodies , they can stay as is .....
More is always best , but does "more heroes" , mean greater numbers of higher star generals ?
Now that will be great !
cheers
D

"More heroes" will mean you're more likely to bump into the same people you would reading the history books... whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective :clown: But, yeah, some of them are good generals....

A quick run down of recent changes:

• Just for Leith - all buildings have info-pics for the end-of-turn 'building completed' parchments
• Tweaks to Alex campaign start-pos
• Some ammo tweaks for ranged units
• More unit icons uniquificated
• Extra heroes added
• Some border and map issues sorted

Things that still need to be fixed:

• Oh dear - 'winter' pre-battle panoramas - there could be HUNDREDS of these to make ~:eek:
• Find out why 'famous kings' don't always pick up their VnVs (regular 'heroes' are fine...)
• Got a few lbm indexing issues to fix
• Still a few units pending
• Still need to iron out custom battle entries in the unit_prod
• Looks like it's nearly time for v1.0 installer to be built ~:)
• ... then work on Diadochi scenario can be started

Hello Mac! That's great news indeed! I'm sorry I have been inactive on the forums for a while but the heat-which has reached unprecedented levels-coupled with long working hours have not given me much choice. Having said that I have finished doing a few bifs that you may find useful in your mod. I created them for my viking invasion 3 mod but some of them could work for EE. I will post some screenies when I get the chance.

Gooday Guys !

Macsen , well done on your swift progress :2thumbsup:,
I installed the Beta last nite before hoping into bed & i'll begin with the Ionians tonite .
I will also go thru some old discs & find the GDS & Ultimate Paint for you as well .

About those pre-battle screens , post up a guide on how they are done .
I'm sure those of us who can , would help out making it short work for the mods being made :yes:

& Leith , good to hear from you again ! ...sorry its been so hot in your part of the world .
& post up those pics , I'm also looking forward to seeing those Bifs .

cheers guys
D

Hi both,

Understood about the weather and work - I find I always seem to get more shifts when the weather's roasting and end up too exhausted to do much else. However, we've had bit of a wet and weird summer overall, though a few days in the mid-30s. Not much compared to what you'll get in the Middle East, but I have a cold-climate lineage so I melt easily. Looking forward to seeing any more BIFs that are around :bow:

On the pre-battle panoramas, the work is mostly repetitive, but I have developed a system to keep myself focused. The hard part is identifying which maps need doing in the first place. It's roughly this:

• Identify target map
• Open map with MTW Map Editor (set terrain and architecture required as you do)
• Find a suitable 'viewing point' for a good image (for castles, make this easy to find as you'll have to do it ten times...)
• Set elevation and angle correctly so screen-items don't obscure the view!
• F2, to make a screenshot TGA
• Exit editor
• Open TGA in Photoshop
• Crop/resize to 716x120 pixels, ensuring best image
• Change mode to indexed colour using LOCAL ADAPTIVE palette
• SAVE AS.... 8-bit BMP image with filename the same as the map name
• Open BMP with Ultimate Paint
• SAVE AS.... Aimga IFF format, being sure to use .LBM file extension, compression, and 'Adaptive with palette' option
• Again, filename must match the map name
• Place the LBM into the correct folder /battle/MapImages/[TERRAIN], where [TERRAIN] will be Lush, Arid, Winter, Rock etc etc etc
• Find corresponding .INF file in /battle/MAPS to ensure the 'new' terrain and architecture are listed
• IF maps left to do GO TO beginning ELSE stop for beer...

I'm very tempted to make all the 'winter' images a blank white screen with the caption: 'It's snowing and you can't see beyond the end of your nose' :laugh4:

And good luck with the Ionians, I look forward to hearing how you get on with them

more nuggets Macsen , thank you .
I have a rough idea on how its done ..... one day i'll be helping you with these :2thumbsup:
anyway , back to the footy on tv & on commercials the remaining sandals on the bif plates .
I'll be taking the Ionians out into the warzone tonite for the first time , it will be exciting !
cheers