Mod: Caelis Immolatum ON HOLD
 

Apparently, balance is not appreciated here. Therefore, I will be putting this and any other mod I am working on on hold until this is rectified.

Good day.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Would this be an additional nation rather than a replacement? I think that would be cool - a splinter faction of Caelum perhaps, that got caught up in the struggles with Ermor (while the rest of Caelum were off somewhere else). I think that would be good, it'd allow for a Fire-Caelum vs Ice-Caelum game.

Sounds like a good idea anyway, I like the concept.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Yes the AI is smart enough to have flying units walk/hop/slither along until they are in range to fire their weapons. It can be observed with Caelian shortbows in the CB mod quite regularly. So javs would work fine.

I like the idea of Caelum adopting ermorian style tactics. Roman troops were copied by several nations in the time of the empire, right?

It's slightly harder to manipulate the vanilla graphics than you might think though, due to a lack of 'perfect' vanilla sprites - there are methods but I'm not a fan of them and they are quite time consuming. Something like sticking an ermorian style tower shield on a spire horn troop should be easy, but it really isn't.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

As far as the art involved, Sombre, I'm referring to more a straight palette-shift; e.g., turning a Seraphine's robes red.

Okay, the initial responses are solid, so I'll 'get to work' on it. If I wanted to do a new nation, which slots are open for it?

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Where could I find out about methods for extracting sprites for the game? Why are they so hard?

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

PS VedalkenBear, I look forward to see what you produce with this, make sure to keep us up to date/bounce ideas off us.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I don't know if it's hard or not; I just don't know how to do it. :p

So far, the only unit I've made is the High Seraphine. Typical Caelian stats, No leadership, Stealty-2 Preacher... question, though. Can you even mod the inquisitor ability onto a commander? I don't see it in the modding manual...

I plan on giving the Raptor 'sacred summon' the Howling Bow, or (if I can get it to come out right) a javelin-equivalent.

And, in true dualistic fashion, I plan on giving a new Pretender God that has two forms; in one, very much a classical Virute or some such; in the other, something very close to a Moloch or Prince of Death, but has an attack or some such that generally takes control of undead (or something along those lines).

I _really_ wish there was an attribute called #undeadawe, or fear that _only_ worked against undead. As it is, the Raptors are probably going to be used against non-undead, as opposed to be anti-undead researchers.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Mages for Caelis Immolatum:

Spire Horn Seraph: FFAA (FA 100%)
Spire Horn Seraphine: HH(FA 100%)
Caelian Seraph: FAWW (FAW 100%)
Caelian Seraphine: H (FAW 100%), +2 Research
Harab Seraph: FADD (FAD 100%)
Harab Seraphine: H (FAD 100%), Stealthy (+0), Spy

There's basically a direct clan-by-clan shift here, with a slight deviation for the Spire Horn Clan (they are traditionally weaker in magic, I wanted to keep the Caelian HH Seraphine in PD, and I didn't want a sacred Communion Slave). Current prices look like it's going to be 200g for the Seraphs, and 100g for the Seraphines (this is not including the High Seraphine).

Is this magic too weak or strong for ME? It seems comparable to others (particularly Machaka).

With this path, it looks like I'll be making two national summons for each tribe, one that is (AACC, where C is the tribe's magic type) and missile-oriented, and the other that is (FFCC) which is melee-oriented.

Oh, and this mod probably won't have any temperature preference (or it prefers 0).

Edit: After more thought, I have decided that all of the Seraphines will be reduced in magic to (FA 100%) random. In exchange, the Caelian Seraphine will receive a +2 Research bonus, and the Raptor Seraphine will gain Stealthy(+0) and Spy. (The Raptors were the ones that found out the dangers of Ermor's path.) The Spire Seraphines will not really need an adjustment. All costs (for the Seraphines) will stay at 100g.

Very likely the High Seraphines will also gain the +2 Research bonus plus the Spy trait, to represent all three tribes.

Edit: I sort of noticed that there was not enough Fire/Air going around (it was all second fiddle). Also, the only real reason I was including Astral magic was because of Caelum's current summons (The Spentas and the Yazatas). As I plan to create my own Yazatas (clan-specific) and I can always just change the path/cost on the Spentas, I'm dropping Astral magic from the nation. This is going to make the Spire Seraph FFAA (FA 100%), to give the nation the ability to have some overall good magic.

As a small aside, I put the 'clan specific' path back into the Seraphines' random.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Sounds interesting(aswell as a great nation for the phoenix), i'll be sure to playtest when you release it.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

For the units, I'm going to do a somewhat basic approach. Two (maybe 3) units per Clan. To wit:

Spire Horn:

These are the 'anti-undead' troops. They will have magic weapons (dunno if I'm going to keep the ice weapons or go with something fire- or shock-related). I might go dual-wielding with them as well, to make them the 'offense-minded' meleers.

Caelians:

The bowmen. Probably will give the 'better' unit a Composite Bow, but also try not to obviate the choice between the two.

Raptors:

As alluded to earlier, the Raptors are going to be _roughly_ flying Legionnaires. Definitely are going to have a higher resource cost than 'normal' ones.

I'm also toying with the idea of giving the Raptors, Spires, or both an armor that would give them an Air Shield value (probably ~30-50%). If any of you have ever seen Caelum 'in action', it can be pretty depressing the amount of friendly fire you get.

Anyway, still not doing a lot of coding; just looking at ideas for now.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Sounds good, specifically the spire horn guys. I dont know why but i see those spire horn guys as minor berserkers(maybe +1 or +2) wielding magic hammers, again no idea why but i can just picture them flying down in a berserk fury crushing the undead from above before quickly flying over to the next group to continue the slaughter.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

That's an interesting idea. If you don't mind, I think I'll incorporate those as the Spire Melee Yazatas.

Any other ideas floating around I can shamelessly exploit? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

A flying crossbowman! I want it right now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Oh, I have something _much_ better than flying crossbowmen on the way.

Besides, this is looking a bit like Marignon as it is. No reason to make it even closer. :p

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Fine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif *cries*

I think the caelians(is that right), after losing their mammoths, would have realised that they still needed some sort of 'tank' unit to hold off the ermorian hordes. I cant really think of one at the minute but i'll try.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

That would be the Raptoran Legionnaires. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I know they will be tough but i meant some really big, really tough front line unit to replace the mammoths. I wouldnt think raptors, even well trained and armoured, would be that great at holding the line for an extended period of time. Maybe some sort of large ice creature from a national summon or some sort of construct made of ice and bone(seems a bit like LA atlantis but would fit with the caelian/raptor/ermorian thing the mod seems to be going with)?

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I know you mean palette shifts - those are easy, but extracting a perfect sprite from the game is HARD. So what you propose isn't simple at all.

Seriously, I just redraw most of this stuff from a screengrab rather than trying to extract it perfectly. And that takes time, effort and maybe even skill.

The best person at extracting sprites here is Singularity. He posted a method up a while back and you can see some damn near perfectly extracted sprites in his DominionsPlus mod. I suggest you search for the method. Every perfectly extracted sprite available to me is a big bonus, I just don't want to do it myself because the process is long and difficult :]

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Shovah: I don't want this to feel very 'icy' at all. So no ice summons (necessarily). If I did go that route it would be something like an icefire elemental.

Personally, I don't think that this mod is going to _need_ a 'hp soak' unit, especially as a national unit. These guys have Fire/Air, Fire/Water, Death/Air, _and_ Death/Fire. Their combat magic is going to be brutal enough as it is. Therefore, they don't need to outlast the opponent, _per se_. They just need a bit of time to work their magic. Which is why standoff weapons like bows and (especially) the javelins will be so good for them.

Besides, it's not like they have the combat summon spam options closed to them either, y'know?

That brings up another point. Short of brute-forcing a Purgatory dominion, is there any way to pull these guys up short of exploiting the Undead themselves?

Sombre: Hm, I'll look into it. Maybe sometime this weekend, but there's something going on that might actually stall the mod for a while.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I dont think they would really need a hp soak unit either(although the javelin guys will only get around one round of firing so not exactly standoff weapons) but i just thought that the caelians would have missed their big hairy friends http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Give me atleast one fairly large summoned unit and i will be happy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

There are any number of 'large summoned' units that this nation will be able to summon. About the only 'non-Caelian' national summon I might consider is a Phoenix (at ~Conjuration 8).

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Ooh, a phoenix summon would be cool. You might want to make it a bit more powerful than the pretender though, since A1F1 wouldn't be so useful.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Llama: I had intended to, trust me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I might also make a 'Firebird' non-commander summon for them as well.

Think a flying Fire Flare mob.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

it may not be exceptionally tough but a phoenix will nicely fill the 'big unit' gap for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Hooray for VedalkenBear

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I've got some DomII Caelum sprites, a Dom3 raptor sprite, and I'm trying to find what, exactly, is making some Dom3 extracted sprites too big and some the correct size. Expect details early next week.

EDIT:
The Dom2 sprites, and 2 Dom3 sprites, attached. Base raptor, Storm Guard (spire horn wings) and several robes on the DomII sprites.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

You got one the right size??

How are you extracting them?

Feel free to modify and use my sturmheld/sternkind/sternheld graphics as well. They're in the Ulm Reborn mod and look a lot like Caelians.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I'm not sure. I took filter off, changed Dom into fullscreen, changed resolution, took screenshot - and it was of the right size. I tried it again, and got wrong size. I got it again, and got correct size. It might be due to going into fullscreen first, then changing resolution, but I'm not sure.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

: O

The implications of having the base sprites (no attack sprites but who cares, those are easy) so easily extacted would be huge. I'd be able to put out certain mod graphics like no tomorrow. This is from the unit display screen you get when you right click on a unit, yes? You change the resolution,.... then?

I have a widescreen so I'm not the right guy to give this a go, but DAMN this could be a big deal.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!

It works! It actually works! I turned the filter off (I'd tried that before to get graphics from the recruit screen in order to try resizing and cleaning them up) but then I knocked the resolution to 800x600 as well, something I didn't realise would actually help before.

And I just extracted a perfect (or damn near) peltast standing graphic.

This might be the most significant modding breakthrough so far. THANKYOU ENDOPEREZ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

In DomII, I just grabbed a screenshot when Dom was windowed (800x600 resolution), pasted it into MsPaint, removed the two hues of black that aren't shadow and recolored the two hues of shadow magenta. I had to use a black map and opacity 0 to get the background/shadow to just four hues, but it was generally worth it. I've posted the method here a couple of times, but haven't gotten it to work for Dom3 yet. Haven't tried it hard, though. :/

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Yeah I sort of rubbished that method you posted before because the consensus was that it didn't work and I never actually tried it at 800x600 fullscreen (it doesn't work at any other setting).

The minor effort of changing shadows etc is basically irrelevant to me. I was drawing the fricking things by hand just from looking at a wrongly sized screengrab of the game (using a blurry resize to get about the right shape/pose/colours) before. Now,.. wow,.. I made a new thread for this,... it's crazy good news.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Thanks, Sombre. Here I come thinking 7 new posts on my mod, and nary a one (except for I guess Endo's first) actually deal with the mod.

What a letdown.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Think thats a letdown? Every time i see a new post on this thread i think(hope) the mods been released http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Sorry about that.

Your plan is pretty much complete, and I don't have anything to add to that. Mechanics-wise, the nation is interesting and you might actually use the lightning-resistant troops for their resistance. I'd have to see more details before I can give any more advice, but it seems like an interesting and viable mod. Nothing too complicated, doable graphics (grab the LA caelum sprites from the sprite extraction thread if you need them), and all in all a project that will probably get finished.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Oh, can anyone give me a sprite of the Spring Hawk? I'm going to need to palette-shift it into a Firebird... (probably summoned somehow with the Phoenix...)

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Well the end result of this is that your graphics are going to be easy/easier to do.

If you want the springhawk sprite just add it to your recruitment screen with #addrecunit and then follow the sprite extraction stuff.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Attached are sprites of Great Hawk, Spring Hawk and a rudimentary, 10-minute Firebird done in Gimp. It's surprisingly flashy. All have white background (instead of black) and near-black shadows (instead of magenta).

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Nice, thanks, Endo. This is what I think of when I think of 'community mod'; a mod that the community works together to make. :p

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

If there's a fairly tricky of fancy looking graphic you need done, I can do it. I'm not the best artist here but I'm beyond the basics now :]

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Heh. If I just sit down and hammer this out, I may have a playable version of it later today. Have to go to school for most of the next 8 hours, though.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I had this mod in mind when I made my simple sprite-editing tutorial. You can find a red-robed Caelian Seraph from there, if you happen to need one.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Thanks mainly to the efforts of others, I am done with the graphics for the Seraphs and Seraphines. Considering I can't exactly see the scale of what I'm doing, I'm not sure how much difference can be seen between the Seraphs and Seraphines in each tribe. Through some cut/paste, I _was_ able to get a rather different attack animation by way of distinguishment (go go word creation).

I need to code up/dress up the units now. The first release will probably be without national spell (or modification of Yazatas/Spentas), just to see how the overall flavor goes.

How do you do the filepath for custom sprites?

Edit: Another question. Can you make something do _only_ damage to undead/demons? I see the triple damage effect, but is that it? ><

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Good luck with your sprites.

Filepath of custom sprites, if they are in CaelisImmolatum folder under \mods\, would be:
#icon .\caelisimmolatum\immolatumbanner.tga

And yes you can. There's the new Water spell "Cleansing Water": 5 points of AN damage to demons/undead only, on AoE 4+.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Endo: Should be up in a few minutes. As far as Cleansing Water goes, is there a way to tie that onto a weapon?

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Use #secondaryeffect and enter cleansing water as the weapon,... possibly? I don't know if CW exists as a weapon with a number. It might.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I'll look into it when I can. Right now, I'm intensely interested in what people think so far.

I realize the Spire Elite is probably quite a bit over the top, but he isn't meant to stay sacred _or_ Glamoured. I thought there was an #airshield command for a unit, but if there is careful scrutiny did not reveal it.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

It's Caelian, not Caeline. See LA Caelum and Caelian Seraph.

While your sprites are pretty good, I find the white and yellow wings way too bright on my computer's screen. I can't tell the wings' details. Attached is a version of your CIspireseraphine.tga that I edited to be more pleasing to my eye. I used Gimp's HLS function, chose yellow, and decreased both L and S. I also increased contrast a bit, to bring the details out a bit better. Raptors are good, and Raptor Legionnaire looks VERY, very good!
You could easily make all attack sprites look much better by moving them forward, and/or up, by a pixel or two. Then the Caelians would seem to move out towards the enemy.
It's also a bit distracting to see the all-new wing colors for Caelians, but at least this way we can tell the two non-raptor tribes from each other.

Also, CIspireinfantryaction.tga and CIcaelinearcheraction.tga are bad. You can see the top of the base sprite's wing to the right of their heads, and those don't belong there.

I like the three different Seraphines, but the poison resistance on the Raptor is quite odd. High Seraphine is also strange. The fire shield, mountain survival and stealth are useless on her (they're supposed to be too rare to go stealthing around), and Spire Seraphine's 50% fire/25% shock res is better than her 25%/25%/25% elemental resistances. Poison resistance is again just odd. I think you meant her to have Holy 3, because currently she's just a Spire Seraphine with low stealth and fire shield.

The three different Seraphs work VERY well. Nothing bad to say about them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

You shouldn't try to replace the base troops if you don't have to. The same goes for sprites. There's no need to create new archer graphics if you don't want to, because the old Caelian Archer and Blizzard Warrior graphics are unused.
Blood Armor's poison is useless against undead, and I don't see any connection to Caelum. Don't use a fancy modding command just because you can. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif In fact, dual-weapon fighting is useless against undead. The troops should have staying power against a horde of undead and let the priestesses banish them. Normal troops should have shields, perhaps kite or tower shields. Raptors should have shortswords instead of spears if they are legionnaires. In general, everyone could use a bit better armor if you intend the melee troops to be used at all. Plate Cuirass (14, -1, 2) is one possibility, and would be very close to Plate Hauberks the heavier legionnaires use. Also, PLEASE give all the melee troops Javelins! Finally we have a way to keep the Caelians in a formation, so that the whole group attacks the enemy at once! Even better, if they are on Hold&Attack and enemy reaches them before they're out of volleys, they back row will move to surround the enemy!
There's no command for airshield, but you could make a custom shield with very high parry value and a rather low protection value. Shields' protection doesn't affect their ability to block arrows. It's only affected by parry. "Amulet of missile protection", prot 1, parry 7, def 0, enc 0... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif You would have to give a custom #bonus weapon if you wanted them to be able to use two other items, be it two weapons or a weapon and another shield.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

Endo: Before anything else, thank you for the highly detailed feedback. Now, on to the chase!

I deliberately used Caeline as opposed to Caelian. Really, there's nothing to differentiate the 'High Caelians' from the other Caelians, and so I tried to make it a bit 'clearer'. If you think it's too jarring I can always change it back.

As far as the sprites go, I was trying for a definite 'difference by tribe' wing color scheme. As long as they're sufficiently different from each other (with the Spires golden and the High Caelians rather brilliantly white), I'm fine.

Sorry about the legacy on the two action .tgas. To make those, I basically took half of the left-hand side of the wing and pasted it on the right side. I thought I had erased the remnants but apparently not. I'm really not that comfortable with layers so I brute-forced each one.

The Poison Resistance on the Raptor units is supposed to show one of the fruits of their research into the undead; they are becoming resistant to the toxins they all too often have.

The High Seraphine is supposed to be an Inquisitor. I've been told that the only way to do that at the moment is to take an extant Inquisitor unit and #copy his entire block to the new unit, and then modify accordingly. I can definitely see their random including Holy (which looks quite possible but I may be misremembering), but if I can get them to be an Inquisitor, a Stealthy (spy, incidentally) Holy-3 Inquisitor sounds a bit overpowering.

I meant to give all the Caelian units #mountainsurvival, but that went away after a bit.

Re: the Seraphs, do you think they're _too_ good? I don't want them to be capital-only in the final version of the mod, but I'm not sure of the appropriate cost. It would seem something like 225 or 240 might be appropriate.

Re: the base troops, since all Caelians presumably belong to one of the three tribes, I would at the least have to put each unit in the correct 'feather color'. Also, the Caelians in this mod don't use the ice weapons and armor that the normal nation does, so I found it simpler to just make my own troops rather than use the stock ones.

Re: Poison, it's again the best way I could find to show the Raptor Clan's interest. I'd _like_ to give them 'Undead Awe', but that's not really an option. So I made them the ultimate pragmatists who guard Caelum against everyone _else_ so that the High Caelians and Spire Horns can rid the world of the undead.

Well, I'm not sure if dual-weapon fighting is useless against undead/demons. Against certain undead (i.e., the chaff), the banishment strategy would be better. However, when going up against the more thug-oriented undead (and demons), the upgraded Spire Horn troop gets two attacks at 13, with a Magic weapon, that does IIRC _45 damage_ (All depends if the x3 multiplier is before or after Str is added. Even if before, it's a 25 dmg strike.)

In the somewhat limited tests I've done so far, the protection on the troops seems fine. The 'normal Raptor infantry' gets spears, while the Legionnaire indeed gets a Short Sword.

Idea about Javelins for everyone is an intriguing idea, though I shied away from something like that to try to give each Clan a distinct 'feel'. If you like, though, I can sort of 'switch' the Raptors and the Spire Horns. Keep the Raptors with the Javelins but give them dual-weapons while the Spire Horns get the shields and the 'staying power' of melee.

Hold&Attack would seem to waste their Javelins, I think. But that's a tactical issue, not a 'design issue'.

Thanks for the idea about the 'custom shield'. I'll _definitely_ look into that.

Thanks again. I'll take it all into consideration and get back to you.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

This looks good. I have to agree with Endo that the wing colours look a bit psychedelic though. They're not the same style of colours as the dominions art in general. For example, normal Caelians are meant to have white wings, but because of the shading the pixels aren't actually very close to white. Similarly look at a priest's robes - you know they're white, but the colours used are darker, which gives a more realistic look and allows for more contrast.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance yet to think about more than just the graphics, I'll try to take a look soon if I get a chance.

Re: Mod: ME Fiery Caelum
 

I find this odd, since it's not that far off from what Caelum already has. It's probably an issue of shading, which I am pretty bad with already.

If someone wants to do a little project, take the High Seraphine and give her wings aspects of all three Clans. Think of making her wings look like they're 'dyed', but with roots showing (going through all three clans).

People think the Raptors looks okay; any suggestions there?