New Mod--Lycans!! 0.2 Beta

[Yerevans]

Hi you all ,i usually just read the forums, and never post cause as you will notice i always forget were i posted,but i will try to keep this one fresh

First , i would like to say thanks to all the modders here, i try to download and play a little of every work that i find, and because of that, was inspired to make my own mod.

About the nation....

Werewolves that want to rule all, pretty simple, i really like the call of wild spell, and think that the werewolves were underestimated. ( i like dogs too, but cats no)

Military-- Strong, reg units, High attack, low defense(i guess,) good stealthy, assassin units

Magic--- blood(maybe too strong??) Astral, Nature, fire

Priests---Average???

Aim to be:

A fun nation, that should be played aggressive , using stealth troops to assassinate, and disrupt enemy lines, and
medium armies that can endure much punishment to conquer fast. right now they seem to have a morale that is just to good don't know why, because the numbers don't seem that high...


The hardest part is not to overpower them, cause i find out reg is way powerful in battle, but i haven't played a long game yet, cause i always drop when the micromanagement get really intense, and i'm always changing things.So any tips are welcome.


About the help!!!

"Black aura"on sprites is getting fixed, thanks for the tips, will be out on next version.

And as you may notice i don't have a single artistic skill, so all these sprites are basic placeholders, if some good soul want to remake them, or polished them, fell free i will give you all credit,cause i probably won't change them much, simply cause i don't know how.

Some help will be needed to spell check every thing cause my english is awful as you may already notice......

About bugs....

Some bugs i'm aware of

---pretender not nations spec(no idea why)
--- magic req for spells (the command seems to be written right)

the dm file brings some thoughts about them, but please fell free to inform any you find.

i guess thats it, i'm felling sleepy now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And hope you all enjoy this one, i'm planning to make some others...


0.2 changes
(will be listed tonight)

[Juzza]

OOOkay! first! you are EVIL cats rock, secondly on a slightly more serious note, if I were to take a guess I'd say it's you're conversion method, From jpeg or bitmap or whatever to TGA, I use Corel Draw, but you usually need to pay for that, Gimp and Infanview should work just as well, um, jus; google them when you have the time, cause I don' have links on hand.

Though, it could also be that when I first started modding waaaaaaay back in dom 2 I was using JPEG files which! when you open them in paint and I guess in some other programs, blur colours about everywhere and that'll mess up a 0 0 0 black colour cause it'll mix it the tiniest bit and it'll be visible.

[Yerevans]

oh yeah, you are right, i have used paint to edit and jpg, going to try another format, and Gimp, thanks by the help



Arg GIMP rules!! soon i will be able to correct the dark aura from them all!!, now i just need to polish them, but wow this program make things way easier!

[llamabeast]

I'm also a biiig fan of GIMP.

[Juzza]

I'm not personally! I just had it suggested to me, I don't have the foggiest of how to use it!

[Valandil]

I like GIMP alot. Lots of tools, incredibly simple to understand, actually runs on Vista. How/what is Infanview (sp?) never heard of it before.

Re Juzza: Well, where's the werecat mod, then, eh?

[Sombre]

Irfan view is more of a file viewer / converter / organizer. It's free.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'm your tutorial man when it comes to graphics programs.
Got GIMP or Photoshop questions, I can find your answer. Sometimes even in a video format. I've even found tutorials on the original ms paint that allow you to do things with it the original programmers never intended.

[Juzza]

Re Valandil: I'll make one! ......... sometime!! and it'll be better than any of the five or more werewolf mods that've been made.

[Yerevans]

oh come on is this bad????
ok i made this one for my personal use, but decide to share cause i played on a way that the others races don't allow much,but i know it really need to improve

hehe ok i'm not an expert on the game , never finished a really big game, so i have no late-game tactics, but the concept is that bad?? and i only saw one werewolf mod out there that is abrasomething, really good i must say, but i always thought that wendingos were apes, like yetis and stuff

and i need to change my epithet because of that one hehehe, damn...

so any sugestions??

[llamabeast]

Not bad at all, why do you say that? Everyone's just offering you tidbits of advice and offers of help as far as I can see - except for Juzza, and he's all cat crazy!

[Humakty]

I had a look at it yesterday and it seems real nice to me.
I am a big fan of werewolves, as opposed to vampires (RPG).
If you want people to play your mod, I think you'll have to get rid of those dark auras...
By the way,Juzza, I downloaded and had a look to most of mods, and I find this one quite unique. Were did you found those 5 WW mods ?
PS: I'll have a look at spelling, and PM you if I find something.(my english is NOT perfect either)

[Sombre]

What 5 ww mods?

There was one called Lunacratera.

One with Wendigos or Wittigos or whatever they are.

[Yerevans]

well black aura is gone now!!
people can play it !!!haha

and i got a 3 year long game now,that help me balance some thing so morale go down,defense got lower as well, gcost raised a little bit, corrected a spell that had the wrong fatigue number, and thought about a really cool strategy...

reg mages and communion is to overpower?

[Juzza]

Well, okay, I over-exaggerated but there have been at least 1 or two other ones, so Yerevans! make this one stand out!!

[Valandil]

This was totally necessary. Thanks to mytheology for the head. (Solomoriah.tga)

http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/4636/raksharse1.gif

[Juzza]

You should double check all your attack sprites, the Heart rippers have a black aura. If you make the Alpha Heart Ripper a Prophet you can raise dead with it, cause it's a demon, if you've got a problem with that. You should just take away the demon tag and say like, the Alphas are so much smarter than the the rest of the heart rippers that they've managed to loose some of their demonic traits. However! I don't know if you have a problem with hem raising the dead or not.

[Yerevans]

Hum... i didn't want to remove the demon tag cause its suppose to be a weakness to him, i don't know if i should remove it or no, it not really thematic to have him raising dead, at first i thought to give the nation dead magic as dog are always playing with bones, but then i thought it could get them too powerful, and the always end up destroying any bones you give them hehehe, not quite sure about now, opinions needed on that one...

oh and Valandil, i didn't get your ,message right, what about that raksharse, your making a mod with them???

and also i'd like to thanks Humakty for helping me out making the texts corrections that will be on the next version- sorrry about the attack sprites i guess i forget a few ones-(and also i didn't make some shades as well)

It will be out as soon i make some units, especially the Cerberus which i haven't found on the game db, and i think its a great absence when it comes to mythological creatures....anyone willing to do a sprite on that one??? hehe cause its getting to be a hard mission, to make a giant three-headed dog from hell( i know that actually it guards the entrance to the world of the dead).

[Valandil]

Umm, Juzza was talking about cats being superior to dogs, therfore, I assumed werecats were superior to werewolves. Hence the werecat image.
Nothing serious.

[Humakty]

I tested them on a medium map (200+ provs), against correct factions ( had man and arcos has neighbours).
I did not play uberbless (nothing above 6), but had strong scales.
I used vargulfs as main shock force, with some varied support. I did not used LG elite, because I went in an early double war, and couldn't pay for their unrest.
It appears to me that this faction is a bit too complete.Having a varied and powerful army plus varied and powerful mages is maybe a bit too much (they have a big access to four paths (B/F/S/N).
You could strip off the flying ones, so as to reduce the strategical diversity of this faction, and replace them by a powerful assassin (black fury : a frenetic female werewolf assassin, with fear or awe(think awe would work great)(comes from a RPG, so much for your historically acurate search, but I couldn't find something original in folklore), which would be great combined to their spies.
I love those fur people, and I'm looking forward to the next version.
PS : I don't know how to draw(stick man is my upper limit), but I could do anyhting else about the black fury, contact me if the idea pleases you.

[Humakty]

As Yerevans has disappeared since almost a year, I going to publish an update for this mod, just to make it compatible with actual patch.
I'm gonna put on hold one commander and one unit that do imbalance the game (flying demon werewolves is a bit much for me, hopelfully they're not ninja pirates).
I'll not go further into changing this mod for the moment.

[Humakty]

And here it is, I also changed some names to avoid meaning redundancy.

If anyone as any changes, remarks and/or original (were)wolves graphics to contribute to this mod, he is welcomed and thanks a thousand times.

PS : I haven't checked if national spells work.

[JaghataiKhan]

The name of the werewolf shamen, "Kurtadam" means werewolf in Turkish. :) Not to mention its description is quite Turkic in describing cultural meaning of a werewolf.

My Ukrainian teacher was very surprised when she learned our culture considers the wolf as a good,sacred and valiant animal. She said they see it as evil.

The first post's link was weird, it's made right alongside bogarus' unit list!

[Trumanator]

Its an old mod so its probably got the same nation # as Bogarus. You can go in and change it so that it doesn't do that. Just increase the number by about 10 or so. if you accidently have the same number as another mod nation its okay as long you don't enable both.

[Humakty]

The only good attachment is page 3 of this thread.
It's the zip.
Anyway, I'll start a new thread when I'll have cleaned up the graphics.
I'll change the names too.

[JaghataiKhan]

Requesting to shamelessly steal the Kurtadam and Vanquisher units as a summonable unit for my mod. :)

[Humakty]

I have no intellectual property on those graphics, even if I think Yerevans wouldn't like his graphics used in another werewolf mod.I won't sue you, but you'll be cursed onto the tenth generation(Have yet to determine what exactly(but it'll be long n' painfull))) :)

But for any other theme, you can use any graphics found in the mod.Beware some have strange shades around them, I'll correct them today or tomorrow.

[Humakty]

Since I'm engaged in another project (The Fabulous Warhammer Mod For Civ4 (We've just released a new version, come n'test it !!)), I won't continue working on this mod for, well, quite some time. If anyone wants to use any part of this mod to make the werewolf mod I dream of, he has my full agreement.
But remember it's YEREVANS who made it all, even if obtaining anything from him seems quite compromised, since he's no more on this forum.

[JaghataiKhan]

I'll put a tribute to Yerevans then. Changed the Kurtadam stats, increased strength but reduced hitpoints and defense due to excruciating effect of the transformation, removed blood magic and put 1 astral, and one extra nature magic.

[Sombre]

Since I'm engaged in another project (The Fabulous Warhammer Mod For Civ4 (We've just released a new version, come n'test it !!))

I keep seeing graphics from that mod and they look amazing. Why haven't we seen any warhammer dom3 nations from you? :]

[Humakty]

@ Sombre : I'm not talented at all with graphics, no sense of perspective maybe, or whatever it takes to do graphics. Even my writing is ugly ! I'm only doing XML stuff on the warhammer project, even if it is quite a job on it's own.

So to answer your question, I don't do a WH mod for dominions 3 because I can't do the graphics. As I'm not multi-talented, I must resolve to work with other people ! :)
(and the DM part seems rather funny/simple to do, so I don't think anyone would have a use for me)(dominions 3 mod seem to be solo jobs)

@ JaghataiKhan : Good luck, may the Savage inspire you with modding frenzy.

[Sombre]

Ah. Yes .dms are straightforward to do once you've planned stuff out, which anyone can do.

Shame we don't seem to have any artists around here since Zepath left. I still think anyone can learn to do fairly nice looking and quick graphics though. Just takes a bit of practice, trial and error.

[Aezeal]

Humakty, I think that for humanish nations the base game should offer engouh sprites which can be modified.. it doesn't give graphics like amos or Sombre have in their mods but the game isn't about the graphics but about the play. If it resembles what you want it should be enough (well that is my opinion)

For non human nations I'd only start on it if I have enough pics on the net to modify, which I must admit usually tends to lead to my base troops being a bit to large since most pics can be sized down to a 64x64 pixel sprite but smaller (which humansized troops should be) usually ruins them. Which is why my orcs look like giants I fear.
I think the whole base game should use larger sprites though, 256 for size 6 and 64 for size 2 (humans) would really improve the graphics. But that is off topic


HUmakty, if you want to work on a .dm file (and a challanging one I'll tell you) you could work on the dead space nation that is being made for the dominions 3000 mod by Nikelaos. He's working on some sprites for this very ambitious nation they are getting in slowly but there are some now and modding for them could be started and you'd just have to keep up with the output of his graphs (or if you can find out what he wants exactly with the nation (which I've not gotten out of him yet) you could work in advance). Since I'm working on a nation of my own I wouldn't mind someone else doing the .dm file for this nation (which I did offer to do so I'll do it if you are not interested).

[Humakty]

Well, I'm supposed to be working on the civ4 project, but I got so much more good playtime with dominions 3 (basic/mods/maps) that I can't refuse to do a DM file. So I'll do it, or die trying. I'm going to have a look at dom 3000 mod WARNING WHINING AHEAD : Since I mod, I've got no more time to test everything, Ah, freedom, where have you gone ? : YOU'RE NOW EXITING THE WHINING ZONE.
Am I supposed to contact Nikelaos ? Are there any info, yada, yada, yada....

[Aezeal]

Well I'll PM you since 'we are hijacking anothers post :D