Barbarians Unified
 

Alright then. I'm not tech savvy in the least so hopefully I don't screw this up. If I do, have a good laugh on me and revel in your l33tness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

This is my very first mod. It's posted in my mod help thread but I'll remove that and put this here. The basic premise is that all those different barbarian and animal tribe indy's are now unified and playable. With some tweaking by me. This is a late age nation. And is not anywhere near done. Basically, I have the recruitable units where I want them (I think) and a new pretender. There is also a hero unit but I've never gotten him to appear, so I probably did something wrong there.

Also, the new pretender, (Revenant of Shardik) still has a purple shadow. I tried, I really did, and you can see a small black line in the shadow where I atleast got that to show up as shadow. Anyways, details:

Pros:
Cheap and numerous troops.
Several sacred units.
Great melee units.
Good mix of magic commanders.

Cons:
Not well armored for Late Age nation...at all.
Not that good of missile units.
No national summons (later update)
Only one hero who probably doesn't show up.

Now come the thank you's!
Thank you Sombre, Wish, Edi, Paradoxharbinger, Psientist, Foodstamp, Ballbarian, and Gandalf Parker for your fast and helpful replies to my oh-so-noobish questions throughout. You were all a great help. Special thanks to Foodstamp for your Haida Gwaii mod, which I used as a template for this one. It even has the Haida banner until I can make one of my own. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Special thanks to Ballbarian for the wonderous banner. Special thanks to Edi for his extensive Units and weapons DB. And special thanks to Sombre for the sweet graphics (he made the Bear pretender and the hero unit that may or may not show up- which is too bad because it looks awesome!) If this were the Oscars I would be played off the stage so I'll end once more with a thank you! All of this has inspired me to make even more mods in the future.

Haha! I did screw up. You may need to make a folder named Barbarians in the mods folder if you download this. I...am...retarded.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Hmm. I think you need a bit more practice putting zips together. Right now the file contains two versions of the mod - one that goes wherever you extract to, the other that goes into the barbarians subfolder.

A zip is attached which sorts out this problem and fixes up the bear pretender graphic too while I'm at it. Just to get you started.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

LOL!! I told you, not tech savvy at all!!! You've saved my bacon once more Sombre.

I see myself as more of the developer and designer type of guy. I would certainly feel more at home letting other people actually create my ideas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

No problem. I just pixel-resized the bear to 200%, that avoids the blurring you get from smart sizing him - which was causing the shadow to no longer be 255 0 255 and thus it turned up as actual purple/pink.

Sadly in the world of modding good ideas rarely count for much on their own. Still, if you present a really interesting one maybe someone will adopt it like I did with the Ulm Reborn mod.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

i feel extremely retarded having to say this but...

how do i install this mod? i cant seem to figure it out.

and by "cant seem to figure it out" i mean "i've put the mod into the mod folder, enabled the mod in the game, but then when i got to start a game i get an error message in a language i cant understand"

something about not being able to open haidaflag.tga

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Något Gick Fel is Swedish and means "something went wrong".
In the "barbarians.dm" text file, there's a line:

#flag "./haida/haidaflag.tga"

Which tells the program where to look for an image called "haidaflag.tga". Now it looks for it from the place where the original mod, Haida Gwaii (I hope I didn't butcher that) would put the file. You have to either install the original mod, or change the above line to:

#flag "./barbarians/haidaflag.tga"

The line is at the end of the barbarians.dm.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Holy crap! You mean to tell me people have actually downloaded my sad little attempt at modding?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

It is woefully unfinished, I never could get the shadow right on the bear pretender Sombre made me and the units are simply grabbed from the game itself. About the only thing I like about it are my unit descriptions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

At one time I had a lot of ideas for this mod but RL has a way of taking over and now I'm reduced to forum lurking (Love the new mods going on too, by the way. This is easily one of the best modding communities I've ever seen).

So if anyone wants to take this over and totally redesign it as they see fit, it won't hurt my feelings at all.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

haha yeah I downloaded it. I had always thought having all the barbarians together would have made a good nation.

while it might be a 'sad little attempt' i still found it interesting and it is still a world ahead of what i know how to mod... altho i'm fiddlin' around with stuff, learning how it all works out.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

BanderLover!! I may attempt this on my upcoming 4 day weekend! (woo!) I think I could 'sup up' the mod in a day.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Juzza Please by all means do so! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

If you like I can PM you the rest of my thoughts/ideas on what I wished to accomplish or I'll just let you go with it. Either way is cool with me.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

That'd be cool, cause I haave no idea where you were going with this!

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

I downloaded it. It looks good, and the graphics you do have look fine. I'd really like to see this mod expanded, and I'd love to have some more information on where this mod is headed, if you want to explain it to me too.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

BandarLover... maybe... you could just post your thoughts/ideas here?

Regardless, I'd be interested in hearing what ideas you had for this. Even if it isn't super complex, I like the mod.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Ok, since my time is short, I'm essentially copy/pasting the PM I sent Juzza. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

My vision for this mod was a Late Era nation that was more magic oriented but less advanced military-wise. Barbarians, as a rule, should rely heavily on swarm tactics, but their units are far from chaff, maybe not well armoured but the equal or greater in offensive combat skills. The only unit I am rather unhappy with as far as looks go is the Bear Warrior. I had intended to make him look beefier, a little taller, think Ajax from the movie Troy. Included in the mod are also 1 new pretender that Sombre graciously whipped up rather quickly, and 1 hero unit, the Barbarian King. My intent was for him to be a very thuggable commander, but I never got him to appear so I prolly did something wrong command-wise. I had intended 2 other pretender types to go along with the bear (Shardik) and the Son of Frenrir (the 'Wolf' aspect of the nation): A large White Hart god and one 3 headed monstrosity (Think 3 wolf heads with deer antlers rising from each head on the upright body of a bear with goat's legs. My inspiration for this came from Mastadon's Blood Mountain cd. Check their website to see the cover art) that I don't know what to name yet. I leave any other hero types to your discretion. I could really only think of one other, an ancient crone type, with high magic and holy skills.

Those were my thoughts in a nutshell.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

Have you thought about repel? Length 3 weapon and high attack work well together... If the repel attack hits, it's Awe +0, and I think even shield-parried hits count. In an era of high armor and low defence, that should work well. Except for archers.

As for heroes... perhaps a very SPECIAL shaman. Bear and Horse and Toad shamans, well, those are pretty real-world. What about a Dragon Shaman, or Wyrm Shaman, or Shaman of the Tarrasque, or something. Besides magical power, he'd have powerful intrinsic abilities.
For the melee hero, say he wears the pelt of a Kithaironic Lion and give him Kithaironic Armor, with very good protection for no encumberance or defense maluses. Base mapmove 3, base encumberance 2, base attack/defence 15 for vanilla or more for Worthy Heroes level of power, etc.


National version of Dragon Mastery in Conjuration, perhaps renamed Beast Mastery or Dragon Tribe Initiation or something, for N1 or such, could work. Depends on how you rebalance the mages, of course, and if you keep the Nature 1 pick on all of them or not.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

For barbarian heroes, off the top of my head-instead of the undead bog giant skratti that jotun nations get, how about an immortal, undead bog giant warrior? I base this suggestion on the undead king (the skeleton king in the Aaaahnold version) that Conan gets his sword from.

A mammoth, whooly rhino, or sabre-toothed tiger would make an interesting hero too, since we don't see many animal heroes. For extra goodness, give them an armored slot, so we can see an armored version.

And if you want to run with the Conan theme, how about a hero based on the being locked inside the Tower of the Elephant?

Pretender-wise, how about an immobile Pretender in the form of a heap of skulls? Or one that's a fantastic SC but that disappears after only 1 combat, so that his people won't come to rely on him/her.

Finally, barbarians tend to attract sidekicks, if only for the comic relief, so maybe some stealthy or magely heroes? Or maybe some skantily-clad princess (or prince, for the lady barbarians) heroes with Awe.

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

I haven't got much done over this nice little holiday sorry, I'll be working on it more over the week, or weeks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

I have played about half way through a game. I am enjoying it alot. Here are some of my thoughts and suggestions in no order:

Its your mod, don't feel obligated to follow my advice.

I think the sacreds are too cheap, I would up the cost to 15 or 20 gold.

What is a Thane? The text leaves me a little puzzled. Maybe insert a sentence that says " A Thane is... A Thane does this..."

Mages are a little weak even for late age. Maybe add another 10% chance at a random on there. Or maybe relpace one of the two who get auto nature with a Toad/rain shamen that gets auto water or something.

I was hoping for a little more variety, I agree with the decision to leave out the Amazons (thematically they would never get along) but how bout some women warriors. How bout some chaff with rocks and sticks? How bout a huge guys with huge axes? Whatever you add more options would be welcome.


I like having access to troops with stealth/ pillage/ survival. very nice. Pillage is so cool and rare, I love to see more of it. Not sure I agree with the standard on the commanders however. Barbarians are not well know for their organization.

no starting gem site. we need one.

Everything is recruitable everywhere. It overpowers the nation. maybe make only one sacred recruitable outside capitol and make the big shamen capitol only.


One last thing. I think they should benifit from turmoil scales. As it is they benift from order, which is what they are fighting against. Maybe make some units autosummon based on turmoil?

Hope this helps!

Re: New mod: Barbarians Unified
 

I downloaded this mod and am having an issue with the tga files. Specifically, when I try to go and select a physical form for pretender it crashes and tells me it cant open ./mods/./Barbarians/bandarbear.tga I tried to remove all the tga files directly to the mods folder which didn't help. Could somone point me in the right direction plz.:confused:

Re: Barbarians Unified
 

I'm bumping this because I really want to play this mod but don't know how to fix my problem. Som1 PLZ HELP!!

Re: Barbarians Unified
 

If you're running Linux there's a chance the code refers to Bandarbear and the tga is called bandarbear, so because the capitalisation isn't the same, Linux doesn't see them as the same thing.

If you aren't running Linux I would guess you don't have the files in the right place - either you didn't extract them correctly, or you need to extract them to a different location.

Re: Barbarians Unified
 

Quick bump-by the way, a "Thane" is a ruler, possibly equivalent to a baron, but could have as high a rank as a king.