More Troop Types?

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:17 pm

Ave,

I've been looking into the possibility of introducing more troop types into Legion Arena.

At the moment, we have the ability to mod the existing range of troop types that came with the game, and that's all.

I've checked in the other sections of the Forum, each and every game from Slitherine so far has been modded.

If you look at the sequence of their releases Legion, Legion Gold, Chariots of War, Gates of Troy and Spartan.

Each and every one of them has been modded into the following game and further.

Why, because they all have the same basic structure. I believe Slitherine re-used Legion as the model for all games that followed. If you care to check out the files in data, in each game you will see the same files. This means that if you can match the graphical formats you can roll all troop types from the first and all subsequent games into the last game, in theory. It's a lot more complicated than that but this is just an opening post on what might be possible.

To be continued.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

duncan · Post by **duncan** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:24 pm

When I tried to mod "Spartan" (Byzantine Empire Mod, asdly formatted into fat 32 by mistake some time ago

), I found easy to give the units new names and new statistics, but I couldn't work out how to change the graphics from the original game, so I ended up playing with archer cavalry stats but with the heavy cavalry original graphics and cards. In fact, that's what Slitherine's been doing in LA. Greek or cartaghinian units are roman/celt models rearranged. Anyway, Slitherine gave me great help then, so you can ask them if you want. Slitherine might be small, but they're amongst the most helpful game designers of the game industry.

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:15 pm

duncan wrote:When I tried to mod "Spartan" (Byzantine Empire Mod, asdly formatted into fat 32 by mistake some time ago :cry: ), I found easy to give the units new names and new statistics, but I couldn't work out how to change the graphics from the original game, so I ended up playing with archer cavalry stats but with the heavy cavalry original graphics and cards. In fact, that's what Slitherine's been doing in LA. Greek or cartaghinian units are roman/celt models rearranged. Anyway, Slitherine gave me great help then, so you can ask them if you want. Slitherine might be small, but they're amongst the most helpful game designers of the game industry.

Ave duncan,

It would seem that each game produced it's own team of modders. If you know or are still in contact with any of them can you get them interested in Legion Arena?

When you played Spartan, can you remember if the graphics and animations were as good as they are in LA? The file in LA named proxysquads.txt comes from Spartan. If you care to check it out you will see some mouth watering troop types, ie. horse archers, immortals and many others. Can you remember much about them?

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

duncan · Post by **duncan** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:41 pm

"Spartan: Byzantine Disaster" Mod Team was formed by...Duncan!!!

, that was the main reason for its complete failure. Also, I started working on it when Spartan was about 1 1/2 years old, so there was no real interest in it. But many users tweaked the .txt files to make the game harder, or to give skirmishers less ammunition (in Chariots Of War). Slitherine released a couple of mods too, and the .xls tool, which was unvaluable. Many of the people from this days are not around or just pass by, but some others are still here.

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:56 pm

duncan wrote:"Spartan: Byzantine Disaster" Mod Team was formed by...Duncan!!! :D , that was the main reason for its complete failure. Also, I started working on it when Spartan was about 1 1/2 years old, so there was no real interest in it. But many users tweaked the .txt files to make the game harder, or to give skirmishers less ammunition (in Chariots Of War). Slitherine released a copule of mods too, and the .xls tool, which was unvaluable. Many of the people from this days are not around or just pass by, but some others are still here.

Ave duncan,

You poor fellow, you have my sympathies.

So, you were the main modder of Spartan, please, tell me all about it?

Have you seen so much interest, this early in a games history, before?

Do you still have all of your files and notes, if you do, may I have copies of them?

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:01 pm

We'll give more help when CoM is released. Until then we're snowed under - sorry guys!

duncan · Post by **duncan** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:12 pm

So, you were the main modder of Spartan, please, tell me all about it?

No, I wasn't, I was more like Peter Molyneux: tell the world about how great your game is gonna be and then nothing

.
If you're interested...

http://www.slitheri.100megs21.com/eslit ... c.php?t=58

I would gladly reinstall Spartan and try to mod it, because i really LOVE that game, but I realized I can't do it alone (specially when I'm formatting my windows partition every six months and I forget to back-up). If anyone's still interested, i would gladly give him/her my help and all my notes. Feel free to PM me.

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:04 pm

iainmcneil wrote:We'll give more help when CoM is released. Until then we're snowed under - sorry guys!

Ave Iain,

Not to worry, we do understand, and we'll look forward with much "chomping at the bit" to a time when you've managed to dig yourself out of all that snow.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:18 pm

duncan wrote:
So, you were the main modder of Spartan, please, tell me all about it?
No, I wasn't, I was more like Peter Molyneux: tell the world about how great your game is gonna be and then nothing :D.
If you're interested...
http://www.slitheri.100megs21.com/eslit ... c.php?t=58
I would gladly reinstall Spartan and try to mod it, because i really LOVE that game, but I realized I can't do it alone (specially when I'm formatting my windows partition every six months and I forget to back-up). If anyone's still interested, i would gladly give him/her my help and all my notes. Feel free to PM me.

Ave duncan,

Whilst I would dearly love your notes on Spartan, I don't want to get side-tracked by getting involved with modding Spartan. I must put all of efforts into trying to mod Legion Arena. I can't spare the time to learn a different game, I've just about managed to learn this one. I leave the decision to you as to whether you wish to share informatiom or not.

I'm sure you can understand.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

PS. Wasn't Peter Molyneux the head honcho at Bullfrog with the "Populous" series?

honvedseg · Post by **honvedseg** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 3:32 pm

The data structures from the earlier games (Spartan, CoW, Legion) seem similar to those used in LA, and the naming conventions appear to be the same for many items, but there has been a lot added. Graphically, there appears to be no interchangability, as the animations and texture files for LA bear little resemblance to those in the older games.

I think you will find that editing the unit stats and performance will be fairly simple, once figured out. The actual animations and unit behaviour may be a lot harder.

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:08 pm

honvedseg wrote:The data structures from the earlier games (Spartan, CoW, Legion) seem similar to those used in LA, and the naming conventions appear to be the same for many items, but there has been a lot added. Graphically, there appears to be no interchangability, as the animations and texture files for LA bear little resemblance to those in the older games.
I think you will find that editing the unit stats and performance will be fairly simple, once figured out. The actual animations and unit behaviour may be a lot harder.

Ave honvedseg,

I fear that you are quite right but we live in hope. I'm aware that most of the structure from the old games is similar and in some cases identical. I'm also aware that the animation file extensions are different, .pcx for the older games and .xan for Legion Arena. What I'm looking for is some way to convert .pcx to .xan. If we could achieve that we would really be on to something. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

Redpossum · Post by **Redpossum** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 11:26 pm

Ahh, Speedy, download the Gates of Troy demo and see for yourself - there's no graphical comparison at all. Legion Arena is a whole generation of game advanced over GoT/Spartan.

Don't get me wrong, I still play Spartan/GoT, (I own both), but then again I am not nearly as focused on graphics as most people.

spedius01 · Post by **spedius01** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:14 am

possum wrote:Ahh, Speedy, download the Gates of Troy demo and see for yourself - there's no graphical comparison at all. Legion Arena is a whole generation of game advanced over GoT/Spartan.
Don't get me wrong, I still play Spartan/GoT, (I own both), but then again I am not nearly as focused on graphics as most people.

Ave possum,

So you're saying forget this notion of mine to roll all the old games into Legion Arena. Why, because of the incompatability of the graphics. Couldn't they be tweaked?

You're also implying, without actually saying so, that I should concentrate my efforts on modding Legion Arena and leave the old games alone. (I really can't spend time learning any new games at the moment. I've downloaded the Spartan demo, just to see for myself, but didn't go any further than the opening screen.)

Two excellent points, possum. Maybe the old games are an unnecessary distraction and I should listen to the unspoken words of a wise and elequent person such as yourself.

A lot depends on exactly what aid Slitherine can provide for us. How much time are they prepared to spend on this modding exercise? Are they prepared to provide any new troop types? Are they willing to do any more work on Legion Arena? Are their sites set on their new project? I guess all will be answered in February after the launch of Cult of Mithras.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

Redpossum · Post by **Redpossum** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:24 am

No, I wasn't trying to discourage you. I was just saying that a simple transfer isn't going to work, that extensive re-working would be required.

I mean, the figures aren't even on the same scale, and they didnt do the video capture thing either...

Post by **pipfromslitherine** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:53 am

XAM files are constructed in a very painful way from motion capture data, meshes from MAX, and then some external data. We have no plans to release the tools needed to make new 3D unit data, simply because the pipeline is so painful that we would need to actually spend time writing the tools - which we will never use again as we are already moved on to a far friendlier pipeline for future products. Sorry!

That said, creating a new unit, even if the pipeline was there, is far more difficult that it was in Spartan etc, where they were fairly simple sprites.

I know you guys are champing at the bit...

Cheers

Pip

Redpossum · Post by **Redpossum** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:11 am

Hmm, OK, the bottom line would seem to be -

We can re-skin existing units.

We can create new units using existing models.

We can modify the stats of existing units.

fatetriarrii · Post by **fatetriarrii** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 8:42 pm

Yes, I believe taht , as of this moment, we can everything BUT make new models. So the new ones will look the same as old ones, unless you make parts invisible.

More Troop Types?

More Troop Types?

Mods

Re: Mods