An irregular column to gather up some of the recent events of the Org modding community. Got news? A mod update? Recruiting for your team? Has your mod been overlooked? Send Epistolary Richard or GiantMonkeyMan a PM to get items included next time or post it below.

This Roundup was collated by Epistolary Richard, GiantMonkeyMan and Myrddraal.


Heavenly samples from Creating New Skies tutorial ; Aulue battle it out in Athurian: Total War ; Antoich Knights from The Crusades ; New Map from Alexandros


Rome Total War
Modding News Roundup

DarthMod 8.0 Released!
Darth Vader has stated that this is his ultimate (and final) version of Darthmod for RTW. We can't wait to see what he'll have in store for Medieval 2 Total War. For more info and links see the Mods Released section below.

Napoleonic Total War Previews and Trailers

Napoloeonic Total War II, is approaching the release of their first battle pack: Borodino. With this in mind, the Lordz have released a series of previews on units, napoleonic tactics and historical background, and epic cinematic trailers showing enhanced sequences of play.

1. Infantry Preview
2. Cavalry Preview
3. Artillery Preview

The Cavalry Trailer and the Artillery Trailer are at the bottom of the first post of this thread.

More advances made in battlefield terrain modding
Three major advances have been made recently in terms of battlefield modding. We've seen in-game shots of dramatically different skies from Napoleonic Total War 2 and Res Gestae and Duke John has shown us how to do it ourselves with a new tutorial on the Scriptorium.

Prometheus has also released a stand-alone modified grass pack as part of the Res Gestae mod that gives fuller foliage for your troops to march through.


Last but by no means least, Muizer has posted a great deal of in-depth research into modding battlefield level terrain generation _including_ insight into the descr_geography.db file. Check out his post here and also one of the new options offered here.


New on the Scriptorium:

Playing on After Alexander Dies by kburkert

Techniques and Tips for Skinning in Photoshop by satanae juda

Creating New Skies in the Battlemap by Duke John
A great guide by Duke John showing how to personalise your battlefields with new skies.


Mods Released

For BI 1.6
Invasio Barbarborum Flagellum Dei 463AD sub mod
A submod of IBFD - includes a variety of changes including Ice Torque's huge BI WarMap II.


For RTW 1.5
DarthMod 8.0 "Dark Edition"
The latest and last Darthmod for RTW with a variety of new campaign maps, units and the all important Darthmod formations and unit balancing.



Mod Previews and Updates:

Europa Barbarorum - Saka-Rauka & music

Res Gestae - The German Tribes

The Crusades - latest screenshot

Age of Darkness
Preview 3

Rome: Total Gameplay
Faction Previews
Seasoned Alcoholic has released a large thread showing many factions and their units in his mod.Campaign Map Characters and Banners

Alexandros
Lusted is now making an Alexander mod. It has only started but check it out. See also his Macedon preview here.

Invasio Barbarorum: Preview

Hegemonia City States:
The Illyrian Tribes

Mod Recruitment

Modding in a team can be an awesome, exciting experience allowing its members to develop a mod far greater than the sum of those it could individually.

The brightest, most innovative mods today are being produced by teams of modders - each working and developing in their own specialities – even where a mod is particular brainchild of a solo modder, they will often want help in specific areas or through lack of time. Teams can be great places to learn skills from the masters of the field, get to know new people and make those vital contacts with modders who you can then interest in your own modding ideas.

If you're keen to work with any mod team just contact their leader and see if you can help out. Here are a sample of just of few of the mod teams that have been recruiting this last month.

**********Are you a modeller?*********

There is a huge shortage of modellers within the community and virtually every mod team desperately needs more (or even one!) as modelling is required to make any significant changes to units within the game. If you are a competent modeller you would be welcome in pretty much any project in which you had an interest, and you would be able to make sure that any personal project of your own could be completed and fail because of this lack.

The community strongly encourages everyone able to take an interest in modelling and you'll find several guides available to help on the Scriptorium.

The only programme currently able to create models for RTW is 3DSmax, however it is $$$ :(. A free 30 day download is available - however that's not nearly enough time to get useful results. You can extend the length of your trial by uninstalling it when not in use. Also, there are means by which models can be converted from the now-unavailable Gmax into 3DSMax, so if one team member has 3DSmax he can convert models from several different team members.



Previous Modding Roundups
10 July - Bahamian Independence Day
1 May - Festival of Beltane
6 April - Thailand Chakri Day
3 March - Hina Matsuri 'The Dolls Festival'
2 February 2006 – Groundhog Day
5 January 2006 – Twelfth Night
4 December – Mexico Day of Artisans
1 November 2005 - All Hallows Day