Blue Lotus: Total War

[hoggy]

edit:This thread is the original thread started in october moved from the modding forum. It has a lot of the background info and early development stuff up til 8th Jan after which point we moved to this sub forum:


Blue Lotus: Total War
BLTW is a mod I’m planning on doing for Rome Total War. Set in a fictitious land of three continents the Mythology of China and Japan blend in an epic campaign with absolutely no grounds in historical reality. In the center of the world lie the fickle drunken gods in their impassable mountains reigning disasters upon the hapless humans. Below them the forces of evil are stirring, demons and evil beast of every kind who’s only plan is to destroy the world. Facing them are two squabbling human kingdoms beset by infighting and feuds. Only Total War will decide the fate of the world!

Essentially a bit of fun, I’m hoping to do most of the art myself (slowly) but could do with a hand with modding the campaign later on if anyone fancies it. I’ll just post progress up here and if anyone has any ideas for unit types (with visual reference that would be much appreciated) post it here. I’m going to be drawing on Chinese and Japanese mythology, cinema, fiction and random imagination etc as a source so there is no real constraint. A lot of the ideas for the mod will obviously change according to the future moddability of RTW including number of factions etc.

[hoggy]

Here are my initial thoughts on the army lists:

edit: see Army List Thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41921

[hoggy]

I'm going to try, if I get time, to do little concepts of all the units to get an idea of what they'll look like. Here are some for the japanese infantry and demon infantry (smaller units)

edit:see Arm List here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41921

[radcan]

I have to say mate i hope this mod goes weel as im well lookin forward to kickin some demon ass with some shaolin monks or even just looking at some snow monkeys lol. kepp up the good work lad .


Buy haggis. Keep Scotland out of poverty.

[Thoros of Myr]

Love the concept work. The snow monkey infantry is classic. What's the inspiration for the basket ronin lol?

This popular Japanese fox charactor (kitsune?) might be something to look at.
http://www.coyotes.org/kitsune/media/TheFoxDance.jpg

Will the three continents be caricatures of say china, japan, and korea?

[d6veteran]

Great idea for a mod. Need magic abilities for the demons.

[bthizle1]

Though I am not all that into fantasy..this mod looks good so far..keep us updated please.

[Duke John]

This thread will be certainly one to watch. Your concept art is once again fantastic!

There is one thing that you should think about. At the moment it is impossible to make a campaign without the Senate. The game will crash when pressing the faction detail button. Here is a wild idea to use the Senate:

The Monks (I'm sure you can figure out a better name)
There are 2 warring factions, but the Monks are somewhat inbetween in the beginning. But they want the Japanese and Chinese to forget their issues and start fighting back the Demons to whatever Hellhole they came from. Rome could be transformed to be their religious capital.

Alternatively you could go for something like this:

The Senate from Hell (I have no creativity whatsoever)
The Demons came into the world via a gigantic gate to another dimension. This gate is Rome. The other factions must capture that gate (it's the hardcoded goal of the game). The Senate from Hell commands 1-3 demon factions to destroy mankind. But there is nothing to stop these demon factions to grab power for themselves and overthrow the Senate from Hell.


...hmmm yeah...

Great art, Hoggy!

[hoggy]

The monk idea sounds good. I might put them on their own mountainous island.

[buujin]

sounds fantastic hoggy, i wish you the very best of luck.

If theres anything i can do to help let me know, i have some experience in modding but none in the way of graphics.

[Thoros of Myr]

This might provide some inspiration http://www.wizards.com/magic/display...set=chk&page=1

[hoggy]

finally after much head bashing got my first Blue Lotus unit model in game using Vercingetorix' fantastic tool:

edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy
Doing some work onthe campmap now, cheers for all the positive feedback.

[Thoros of Myr]

Excellent work hoggy! It's coming along nicely.

[troymclure]

wow nice artwork mr hog, i'm also a big fan of the premise, let me know if you need a hand with anything i'm fairly useless but more than willing to help anyways:) this mod looks like it has muchos potential.

[hoggy]

Here are concepts of some of the 'heavier' Demon faction units in the armylist:
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

and the basket warriors in game:
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

[caspian]

Those Basket Warriors are wicked!

Are you going to include the Chinese Vampire? The ones that have that paper ward pasted in front of they're faces.


But this guy has had the ward removed

Any Shinto or Buddhist Priests? I seem to recall they use red chopsticks to exorcise demons, carry staff chimes and have big bamboo hats.

[Duke John]

Your imagination is just incredible! Very nice work, but I think the basket warriors forgot they had a very large basket on their head when trying to hide in the open

I fooled around with the effects for the use of fire-arms and at one point I had a rolling jet of smoke that grew larger and larger went over the unit and disappeared. It would be pretty easy to transform that into fireballs, lightning, jets of ice, you name it. The effect itself doesn't affect units, but you can make an "underlying" invisible/very small projectile that hits the enemy.

[Ypoknons]

Man that is very nice and is a really nice change of pace from historical mods (which are great too) - fruther on in the development process, perhaps the land or sky textures would changed to create a better feel?

Of course more units ! :D Love the Asian style.

[hoggy]

glad you like them, I'll look into the vampires and magic effects, both sound good. I've only got a Gforce2 at home and an old computer some some of the shots aren't as nice as I'd like. Here are the standard samurai swords and yari samurai:
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

[NagatsukaShumi]

I don't suppose you've ever played Onimusha hoggy? If so, that would be a very good resource for idea's for the demon samurai type units.

Sterling effort hoggy, your work is amazing and your idea's look very interesting, it will be very enjoyable to go stomping around with demonic elephant troops and the undead samurai running around at their feet.

Truly looks amazing, good luck!

[Duke John]

You can edit the army banners very easily. They are all in one image: Data\models\textures\standard_Faction.tga.dds

For whatever it is worth

[the_mango55]

This mod looks amazing, I cant wait to see more of it.

A faction suggestion I have is perhaps a Mongol type somewhat barbaric faction based mainly on horses and horse archers espescially, but with limited and fairly weak infantry.

Infantry
spearmen
swordsmen
bowmen
Shaman (hero)

Cavalry
Light lancers
Heavy lancers
Heavy sword cavalry
Horse archers
Heavy horse archers
Great Khan (hero)

Special Units
Siberian Tigers
Heavy War Wagon - this could be some kind of huge wagon drawn by 6-8 horses, it would have archer holes and perhaps also have a few ballistae firing out. As well as having huge blades on the wheels to run through enemy formations. Of course there could only be a few of these in each group.

[hoggy]

top idea Mango, I'll look into it. I'll probably need more than just the three factions, was thinking of possibly Indian/Tibettan also?
Cheers DJ for the banner tip, I wondered where they were. first pass on the evil and japanese faction banners:
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

[hoggy]

Here are 2 more units, heavy 2 handed Naginata troops vs the 'dead samurai' :
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

[DeadRunner]

nive hoggy i am waiting for a release

[tombom]

Looks absolutely amazing. Very imaginative and very original. As I promised before release of Rome, I'll help in doing what ever you like in text.

[hoggy]

Cheers Tombom, at the moment I'm going to plod through getting a head-start on the graphics as it's a pretty huge job but I could definitely use your help when stuff is a bit more together.

edit here are some Rokurokubi (long necked demons) :
edit: link temporarily removed - hoggy

[tombom]

I think you might want to think of a special unit for the japenese - right now they look slightly boring. Maybe dragon chariots? (I'm unimaginitive

hoggy, I have linked this thread over in a thread about what mods exist at the com. If you don't want it, I'll delete the post.

[Hagbard la Suede]

Wow!I'm amazed at the speed and quality of which you create new units :)
I'm not usually into asian warfare,especially not the fantasy one,but this looks good.

[the_mango55]

does RTW currently support huge units such as Wang Liang or the copper dragon, which probably has to have a new animation?

This is my new most anticipated mod now, it simply looks incredible! Keep up the good work