Returning to FINISH the project

[cegorach]

Yes it is me, yes I am alive and YES I have the files and I intent to use them.



I am not going to bother you with my personal problems and there was a lot of them during the several months of my absence. Nothing too pleasant for sure...


Anyway, I know I owe you something, owe you A LOT in fact and this is the main reason of my presence here.

The second is obvious - I really liked working on this mod, I've spent a lot of time and -let's be frank - money to buy all the necessary reference books and other sources. I like the mod and I want it to be as good as possible and 1.5 is FAR from perfect.



Enough with the obvious.





I am going to re-work a lot of ideas and I will need some time to do so. I didn't play Medieval for months so I will need to re-learn some of modding, but I am quite sure it is like with riding a bicycle - you cannot forget everything you know. I hope so.

THis means it will take some time - despite the fact that I have almost 99 % of necessary work done. Or rather HAD.


That is because I want to make some changes:


I am planning to prepare TWO installments of the mod. One will concentrate on earlier period - say to 1600.

This should allow adding some addtional units and factions and especially some animation - if I will be able to add them.

I would be interested in adding the Aztecs, the Mayan and the Inca warriors if possible - for custom battles and MP, but still...





Second period would deal with later years - from 1570 to early XVIIIth century so probably INCLUDING the War of Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War.

This way the game should feel a bit different - slow paced early period campaign with phalanxes of piekemen killing each other and supporting arquebusiers and more dynamic later period with stronger musketry and artillery.


Armada CAMPAIGN and English Civil War campaigns wll be included as well - they are smaller and easier to accomodate so should be available in both installs.




Now I need to read some threads and see what changed since I've fled the field.

[cegorach]

All that means that I am going to correct mistakes and errors - as far as it is possible of course.

It is an old game, but has its charm and many, many ignored/forgotten/unknown possibilities and as promised I will use them.

[Rick]

Very good to hear from you again. Looking forward to the finished product. I hope your personal life improves from now on. It's been a rough few years, I've been out of work for two of them.

[cegorach]

I am sorry to hear that.

Fortunatelly I didn't suffer from such problems.


Anyway - the mod is being downloaded every day with over 1000 downloads since I've posted the latest link to the patch.

I think I will start with earlier campaign - removing some entries should leave space for about 50 units if not more which would be moved from custom battle/MP section with a couple created using more recent data I've managed to gather.

[Chloe]

This is very good news cegorach, this time period is one of my favorite!

[zweihander]

Are you still here now?

[Ludens]

Are you still here now?

I am afraid not: this forum has been dead since 2009. You could try out the TWC to find active R:TW/M:TW modifications.

[zweihander]

I am afraid not: this forum has been dead since 2009. You could try out the TWC to find active R:TW/M:TW modifications.

PMTW2.0 seems would never release, I'm now doing some improvement on PMTW 1.5 and plan to release somekind of 'unoffical patch'. But I still want to make a contact with cegorach and ask if he can send me some 2.0 files...

Yes, I also go to Twcenter.

[Ludens]

PMTW2.0 seems would never release, I'm now doing some improvement on PMTW 1.5 and plan to release somekind of 'unoffical patch'. But I still want to make a contact with cegorach and ask if he can send me some 2.0 files...

Yes, I am afraid that this project has been abandoned.

There are E-mail and MSN links on cegorach's profile: you could try to contact him via those.

[cegorach]

Let's improve this mod.

Unlikely it will be a true 2.0, but we can deal with some changes.



I should be able to assess what I have till 29th February and more later move step by step.


The new map would be a key change - the original idea was to cut some provinces in certain areas and create new provinces such as Azores, Royal Hungary and Eastern Prussia. If this is done properly who knows.

[Stazi]

The new map would be a key change - the original idea was to cut some provinces in certain areas and create new provinces such as Azores, Royal Hungary and Eastern Prussia. If this is done properly who knows.

I think adding all small Azores islands won't look good so I added Sao Miguel as a representative.



It's just a quick example. It still needs some extra touches to better match the original map but I'd like to know if it's what you had in mind? Modifying the LBM background map for displaying borders is even quicker. btw I have to find the MTW font to add names.

[Ludens]

Let's improve this mod.

If you are serious about improving this mod, I can move the forum from the Archive back to the main Hosted Mod section.

[cegorach]

If you are serious about improving this mod, I can move the forum from the Archive back to the main Hosted Mod section.

Yes, thank you Ludens.

I do believe that MTW VI section (if there is one) is better. Connections to RTW are too misleading.


EDIT - also can I get moderator powers for this sub-forum.

There is quite a lot of mess I need to clear before it looks like it should.

[cegorach]

I think adding all small Azores islands won't look good so I added Sao Miguel as a representative.



It's just a quick example. It still needs some extra touches to better match the original map but I'd like to know if it's what you had in mind? Modifying the LBM background map for displaying borders is even quicker. btw I have to find the MTW font to add names.

Very good. Azores are in general more useful to deal with a remote territory which is also in Portuguese possession.

I'll start a separate thread dealing with the map, which frankly speaking is the most important obstacle, more important than any new unit animations.

[Ludens]

I do believe that MTW VI section (if there is one) is better. Connections to RTW are too misleading.


EDIT - also can I get moderator powers for this sub-forum.

Done. However, it seems the admin misunderstood my request and moved this to the R:TW hosted section.

However, I just noticed that you already have a M:TW hosted forum here. What do you want to do with it?

[cegorach]

I'd like to treat it as a resource. There are plenty of useful threads I could use.

Is it too complicated to merge such subforums? Majority of later work was conducted right here, but that place has its uses.

[cegorach]

If merging is too difficult please close that forum, as long as it is accessible for data we've gathered I am happy.

This is the place to continue the project and it would be misleading to have two hosted PMTW subforums at the same time.

[zweihander]

btw I have to find the MTW font to add names.

Is it this file?
https://forums.totalwar.org/mizu/miz...alFontPack.zip

[Stazi]

Is it this file?
https://forums.totalwar.org/mizu/miz...alFontPack.zip

Thanks. I forgot about this pack. Anyway, I've found nearly identical font for campaign map called Livingstone.

[Stazi]

Some of my old findings which maybe you are not aware of.

Game engine can use not only 256x256 and 512x512 textures but 1024x1024 too. What does it mean? We can have 4 times more detailed, less pixeleted units or we can quadruple the amont of units. Each unit folder can be used for 4 totally different unit graphics, not only with different shields and weapons. Example:



As you can see the image contains 3 types of mounts (camel, warg and ring-wraith horse), all of them functioning in game as default camel (-4 attack to all horse based cavalry). They are declared in UNIT_PROD_FILE like this:

1
2
48

Camel
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

Warg
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

RingWraithHorse
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

To make them look different in game we have to add appropriate frame coordinates in ..Textures\Men\ActionsPage\ - modify Camel.txt and add Warg.txt and RingWraithHorse.txt. Coordinates can be easily tuned with ReadBIF 2.3c editor (Excel helps too). Similar procedure works for all units, not only mounts.

BUT this method has disadvantages. Units are 4 times smaller than normal units (half hight, half width). It can be partially countered by SCALE factor (24th column in gnome editor) but SCALE works in 0-225 range. Units set to 225 still lacks about 20-30% of their size comparing to old ones. So, you have to reduce the scale of old units to match the new ones or rework all of them to 1024x1024 textures. IMHO in MTW, units' are a bit too big comparing to castles/buildings so small reduction won't hurt.

That's all for now. If I find somethings else I will post it in this topic.

[zweihander]

This is an important and useful discovery!

Question: To a bif which size is 512x512, in the ActionPage file, 1 represent 2 pixels. Now, if a bif is 1024x1024, is it means that in the ActionPage file, 1 will represent 4 pixels?

And I am thinking of another disadvantage of this method: there are only 256 colours in one BIF file, if you put 4 units into one BIF, that mean the colour quality need to be reduce.

[Stazi]

This is an important and useful discovery!

Question: To a bif which size is 512x512, in the ActionPage file, 1 represent 2 pixels. Now, if a bif is 1024x1024, is it means that in the ActionPage file, 1 will represent 4 pixels?

Yes.

And I am thinking of another disadvantage of this method: there are only 256 colours in one BIF file, if you put 4 units into one BIF, that mean the colour quality need to be reduce.

Unfortunately, yes but it's not a big issue. Here, check the camel comparison.

On the left original camel bif using about 240 colors, on the right camel using exactly 50 colors (including background and shadow). While difference is noticeable (especially zoomed), during a battle and from a distance, its really hard to see those differences. Additionally, it's quite a big frame (110x110) so it contains relatively lot of pixels. Human soldier frames are smaller and need even less pixels and colors. So, we can easily put 4 units, 50 colors each, into one texture and we'll still have 56 colors reserve for faction coloring (31 colors), shadow, background, etc. If we use faction coloring (those pinks and greens) it even further reduce the amount of normal colors needed for the image. And, on the top of that, you can choose units using similar colors (for a single 1012x1024 texture) to effectively nullify the problem.

[cegorach]

Every day a new wonder. Never before the mod had so dedicated suporters. Thank you again.

I'd rather have more graphics than more detailed ones.

If we could throw all mounts into one file it could save a lot of useful space without any risk of CTDs cause by some graphics when added factions somehow manage to take them (almost alway through bribary).