Chivalry: Total War public beta released
As announced a week ago, here comes the public beta for Chivalry: TW
Get it on http://www.stratcommandcenter.com/ch...downloads.html
This works with RTW 1.5 (and also with BI 1.6).
Here's the readme, as I'm too lazy to write something proper atm ;)
Chivalry: Total War - a total conversion mod for Rome: Total War
version 0.34
http://www.stratcommandcenter.com/chivalry
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1. Introduction
1.1 Historical Overview
1.2 About the Mod
2. The Mod
2.1 Features
2.2 Status
3. License
3.1 Copyright
3.2 Submods
4. Credits
4.1 Current team members
4.2 Earlier/inactive team members
4.3 Special thanks
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1. Introduction
1.1 Historical Overview
Europe in 1072 - a divided continent. Looking at the cultural map, we can find three completely different traditions: The western and northern European Latin (or Catholic) Christians, the eastern European Orthodox Christians and the Muslims, who control most of the southern Mediterranean.
It won't be long before these cultural and religious tensions are going to explode, in the first crusade - but more about that later.
For the time being, let's concentrate on the differences within the larger culture groups: The Latin kingdoms and counties, nominally subordinate to the authority of the Pope - who claims to be God's surrogate on earth - are constantly warring each other. Only six years ago, the Norman (French) counts of Toulouse started their invasion of the British isles and defeated the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, conquering the land instead of plundering it like their Viking predecessors.
In 1060, the Normans invaded Sicily, and now, 12 years later, they finally succeeded in taking it from the Unbelievers, thus establishing a large principality in southern Italy.
The constant warring between the German counties, the French and other major powers makes this one of the bloodiest centuries known to mankind - and in Spain, the Christian kings of Castilla and Aragon started the Reconquista - as they call the conquest of the Moorish lands in the south of the Iberian peninsula.
The Moors - saturated and contented with their holdings, concentrated on culture instead of fostering their defenses. They didn't see much of a threat in the Christians, and they were more or less right as it took the Spanish more than 400 years to unite their kingdoms and claim the whole of Iberia. These centuries presented a constant period of war only disrupted by short periods of relative peace.
Further to the east and north, the Central European powers, the Danish, the Hungarians, Polish and Bohemians - all fresh upstarts if seen from the point of view of the dominating power in that area, the Holy Roman Empire (later to be presented with the suffix "of German nations"), whose Emperor is the successor to Charlemagne.
Although nominally the head of the Empire, the Emperors are more like a figurehead for the local lords, and vastly depend on their Hausmacht (their personal army) as opposed to the loyalty of their subordinates. This makes the situation of the Holy Roman Empire both strong and fragile, and the might of this faction stands and falls with the ability of its leader to suppress the inner strains and unite the counts of the German lands under one banner.
The eastern part of the continent is controlled by the Orthodox Christian factions of Novgorod, Kyiv and, of course, Constantinople.
Constantinople, or the Byzantine Empire, once the largest and mightiest country of the known world and righteous successor of the Roman Empire, is gradually drifting into insignificance. She already lost most of her holdings in Asia during the first millenium and is under increasing pressure by the Muslims.
Orthodox Christians don't accept the claim to superiority of the Pope - this lead to the Great Schism of 1054 - and merely regard him as equal to the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem.
Ah... Jerusalem. The Holy City which had been taken in 638 by the Muslims, and to which an ever-increasing number of pilgrims travel each year to express their devout faith in God. It shall soon become a place of slaughter and inhumanity when the Frankish crusaders seize and rape the city, killing most of the Muslims and Jews who live there.
But the Muslims aren't much better: Divided into Shiites and Sunnites which are again split into a large number of different schools and denominations, they are bickering amongst each other just as much as the Christians - and they tend to apply equally brutal means. The age of science that took place during the last few hundred years in the Islamic orient is drawing to an end and only a few glorious characters give us a glimpse of the glory of the earlier days.
Another problem is caused by the discrepancies between the Arabs and the Turks.
This, together with the struggling between the Shi'a Fatimid Egypt Caliphate and the Sunna Seljuk Turk dynasty who recognize the Abbassid Caliph of Baghdad, decidedly weakens the oriental Muslims - thereby allowing the First Crusade to succeed.
1.2 About the Mod
Chivalry Total War is a historical modification of the game Rome: Total War. Its aim is to recreate the historical period of medieval Europe from roughly 1072-1500.
The original purpose of the mod was to make a small medieval multiplayer mod that tried to capture the gameplay of Medieval: Total War. Since then the mod has tuned into a Total Conversion, meaning that all aspects of the original game (campaign, custom battles, historical battles etc.) are now converted into Chivalry's medieval setting (the exact features are listed below).
The 034 release is solely focusing on the Early medieval period (1072-1250). Because of time constraints we cannot include all the Era's at the moment (High and Late), though these are expected to be provided in future versions as soon as possible.
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2. The Mod
2.1 Features
*Over 130 new realistic medieval units- Modeled and skinned by our very own team members, unique only to Chivalry: Total War. Units sometimes also have multiple skin variations for different factions.
*21 completely new factions- Factions of significant medieval importance in all of our time periods.
*Medieval Campaign- Fight rival nations in the medieval world as one of 13 playable factions on a completely re-done and original campaign map with expanded borders and historical regions and settlements from the period, worked on specifically for Chivalry: Total War. Chivalry: Total War is the first Total Conversion modification for Rome: Total War to include a working campaign map. Also featuring new textures and models for just about everything that you see on the map.
Note: The rest of the factions will be playable soon.
*Balanced gameplay on the battlefield - balanced gameplay developed, refined and tested to perfection. Realistic and balanced unit speeds, increased battle length and realistic morale. Originally designed for better multiplayer gameplay.
*Revamped UI and graphics- An original UI suiting the medieval setting, along with menu backgrounds and other graphical components.
*Completely new music- Developed by independent music composers, Chivalry replaces all of the original music with tracks that are more suited to the medieval theme. Download seperately here <alpaca, insert link>
*New animations- Animations developed independently by Chivalry: Total War team members, including the crossbow animation and the lance animation.
*New Custom and Historical Battles- Play on nearly 50 new custom battle locations from spots all over the map, offering endless custom battle and multiplayer replayability. Fight off the mighty Byzantine army as the Seljuk Turks in the most significant battle of the era and smash the Holy Roman Empire at Bouvines as the French in two of our unique custom battles from the Early period.
2.2 Status
The mod currently includes the early era only. Most of its units are done, but there are still a few issues with models and skins. We didn't yet include custom buildings again, and a lot of scripts and features are still missing.
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3. License
3.1 Copyright
Copyright for all content of this mod (for exceptions see below) lie in the hands of the Chivalry: Total War team. The creators of the content have agreed to cede all their rights to their work to the mod team.
A user of this mod is allowed to change the content of this mod for his personal use only (unless explicitly stated otherwise by the mod team), i.e. he is not entitled to release changed models, skins, or any other file included in this release as his own work, even with due credit to the mod team. If any violation of this is detected, we will take immediate steps aiming towards making the download impossible.
These steps may include: Personal contact with the offender, contacting site admins to delete forum posts or remove downloadable files and posting in offending threads.
3.2 Submods
Submods are an exception to the above copyright statement. The process of becoming a Chivalry: Total War submod is the following:
- A submod team, or single person develops an idea for a submod, and may start to work on it
- The person/team contacts the Chivalry: Total War team (one of the mod leaders) asking for leave to release their content
- If the Chivalry: Total War team approves of the idea, it will allow the release of the submod
There will be two types of submods that can be allowed:
SP (single-player) submods - these change only non-MP (multi-player) relevant files, a list of these can be found on our website.
MP submods - these change MP-relevant files, therefore we will measure them harder than SP submods. This is necessary because Chivalry: TW is still a MP-oriented mod, and we do not want to split the community into lots of small mods that only change insignificant small bits and make the game versions incompatible nonetheless.
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4. Credits
4.1 Current team members
alpaca (Stefan Reutter) - mod leader, coder, scripter
militiaman (Peter Cooper) - mod leader, coder
Dirty Peasant (Fyodor Nadtoka) - skinner, modeller, animator
Adherbal (Lukas Nijsten) - skinner, modeller, coder, scripter (right now more of an advisor)
Hody - research, Bohemia
Polak966 - research, coding
4.2 Earlier/inactive team members
Kor Khan (Daniel Hungerford)
Robert D'Artois
Randarkmaan
Arakorn-Eir
CNSW
Andriyko
Lance
Drak10687
Darth Fenrir
Alin
BuuKenshin
VikingHorde
NinjaCool
4.3 Special Thanks
Testing and balancing:
Alexandros
AggonyDuck
Crow
Antek
Tom
Jhonny
Lu Bu
- Strategic Command Center - for forum and mod hosting
- Vercingetorix - for his awesome modding tools
- Edgen Animations - for the excellent music track
- Europa Barbarorum - for animations, and research on several modding aspects
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