New nation: NATURE rising 0.30
 

Nature Rising: mod for EA <font color="red"> now version 0.30 </font>

"A strangeness has overtaken the wilderness of Primevale, origin of all life. What was once
Wild is now tame. What was once asleep is now awake. Even the stones stir with life. All the animals
and nature itself are acting with an alien purpose. Nature is rising."

Strengths: strong preists and Nature mages. Two sacreds, access to flying. Very thuggable commanders. Forest survival.

Weaknesses: low morale (all animals, a rattail could ruin your day), not very good ranged weaponry, very little protection.

the version 0.3 contains these changes:

Updated to incude art by Juzza.
Lowered costs for most units
Changed picture for elephant, changed unit as well
boosted Vine queen nature to 6
Added descrips to some units
fixed names of some units
deleted eagle
added ants and killerbees
added start site
changed pictures
added two new pretenders
added scout/stealthy units
Vine queen domsummons killerbees

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Oh yes, and I am having ttrouble renaming some of the units, if some one could look and tell me what I am doing wrong that would be great.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Nagot gick fel! over the nations flag.tga .

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

opps, Let me fix that.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

No! I will not let you fix that.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I think its better now. Sorry.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

lol Shovah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

planned additions.

National ritual summons:

Rock Elemental
Nature Elemenetal
Treants
Call Animal Legion (like summon animals but 300+)

Planned Pretender additions:
The Primevale Redwood

The One Mind

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

They need a home site for gem income. Their magic, while high level, is completely in the nature path and is far too limited, particularly for EA. I think alot of their units are over-priced although I cant go into detail just yet. A 1 gold/1 resource size 1 insect could be good - a slightly more expensive, recruitable dragon fly could also be nice.

Im atleast pretty sure this mod isnt over-powered.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Thanks Shovah

I wanted to make the two sacreds capital only, but i could not get the site to work. I will try again.

The only nature was intentional, I see what your saying about the other EA nations. I want to try to leave it nature only and see. I will probobly have to change it, or make the nation MA.

I do really like the idea of adding a Bee/ wasp and a giant ant for 1/1 or 2/1. I have been intending to add insects from the start, just have not done it yet.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

or better yet... Dominion-spawning insects based on a hive creature. Look at the Insectoid mod, for some examples.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Yooou need to lower some costs!! things look a little over priced to me, um, I might be able to aid in some sprite making! just pm me, or post some stuff you need done, though there is a small problem. Are you #copystat these units and making new monsters or just modifying current units? cause doing somthing like adding gold costs to somthing like lions, from 0-50 might ahve an inpact on game play, um, I'm not actauly sure how much upkeep lions or any summons have, so to avoid that messy-ness copystating is a good idea.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Yea I am using copy stat, so as not to mess with other animals.



Thanks for the offer to work on the sprites!
I get a list together of spites together...
But off the top of my head the mod needs

A Huge friggin Redwood tree (like the treelords)
A silverbacked bear (size 5 I think)
a bee or wasp (size 1)
an ant (size 1)
a green glowing sphere (Size 2)

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

You know there's already an ant in the game? A load of them are created by the "Creeping Doom" spell.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

yeah, i know. i dont really like the way they look. Ants should not be white.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Cor2, I reckon you should get your old profile picture so we can recognise you more easily.

I didn't remember the ants being white, although I've hardly ever seen them. I agree that doesn't sound so good.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I thought they were kinda brownish, oh, also, another sprite you might one is

1) a proper elephant without riders

and disregarding sprites for a second your doing nature raises, you still need, Giant Spiders, wolves, possibly dire wolves, did you have great bears? um, moose theres probably more as well

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

ahh found ya!!

heres the sprite for the ant, it ain't white!!

you could probably use the Corpse candle sprite for the green glow as well, but I'm too tired to go and find that, I'll do it soonish to show you

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Oh I remember them looking white. thats good then. I will use them.

I dont like the idea of killer dragonflys though. That is just silly.

I noticed there is a tree image from the evlish nation mod, I might steal that one.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I was going to suggest that, I can change the colours around and add some little bits to that if ya want, but I'm not superstar, I'm not 'the' best artist.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Heres an elephant without a saddle or men on the top, unless you wanna use the model with monkeys on the elephant, but I don't think the men fit too well with the mod.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

You also said you needed "a green glowing sphere" is this sorta what you're looking for? I can change it around if your not happy with it.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

That sphere looks more or less like the Corpse candle, but that elephant definitely is something, alright.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

thanks alot!

The Elephant will be great!

The glowing green sphere is for a pretender, so it needs to be a bit more grand. Its supposed to be the embodiment of the spirit and power of nature, or some such.

thanks again.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Saber Cherry, an vibrant character no longer regular here, once suggested a nation of animals and/or vinemen. Her ideas were strange, but the ideas I remember being thrown about were:

vinemen, vine ogres and their recruitable versions with some simple equipment

aquatic 'killer whale' national summon, and killer tuna and other strange stuff

Any way, some animals that you might've missed:
great cat (second form of some Yomi/Shinuyama sorceress (uba?) summon, you can use the sprite at least)
horned serpent/sacred serpent of C'tis
demon toads of Mictlan (or non-demon versions of them)
Markata of the monkey nations, and perhaps atavi and/or bandar as well
tigers (the ones Tiger Riders of MA Bandar Log leave behind in battles)
Griffons and those lizards the Garnet and Jade Amazons ride
Black Hunters of MA Machaka also have second forms with just the animal
perhaps the serpents the Sauromatians/Pythians ride
Hydras/hydra hatchlings
the wolf form of Jotun Skratti (a size 4 giant wolf, bigger than the dire wolves)
Great Bears, the EA Ulm summon
Kithaironic Lions, cave/fire/frost drakes, wyverns (unless you intend them to remain summons)
Jaguars of Mictlan (I think they have a national Conjuration for those, but I might've confused something with their Rain of Jaguars spell)
great eagles who lead the black hawks of Call of the Winds

also, the carrion creatures reanimated by Pangaea are most often animals, and include undead moss-elephants

basilisk, cockatrice and other rare creatures from crossbreeding

phoenix could be used, perhaps for a hero

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Thans endo. I wanted to stick to real animals as much as possible, I think i do need to include some other big cats.

Many of those suggestions where in the first draft, but there was just too much stuff, it needed to be cut.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

You 'could' use this if you don't find anything better, I just fiddle around with a few things from a few different sprites, not really what I wanted, but it's what I ended up with.

oh, also I'm gonna see if I can make a good silverback bear now.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

oh jees, this is horrible, lol, sorry.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I've heard of iced buns, but iced bears? Madness.

What does a silver back bear look like anyway?

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

~looks sad~ it looks that bad??

silver back
 

I guess the idea is to look at the gorillas...

http://www.berggorilla.org/deutsch/f...cs/silberr.gif

Re: silver back
 

The silver can't be too huge a contrast to the normal fur though, or it looks very odd.

If you download Bandar Lover's barbarian mod, it has a bear pretender graphic I pulled from the Exile games. That looks a little different from the standard bear (it's grey not brown, for starters) and it might be better for basing a silver backed bear sprite on.

But Juzza's one is fine, basically, I was just kidding.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I think it's nice, but the careful shading you've done with the lighter white at the edge of the silverback has the effect of accentuating the edge and making it look like it has some height to it, as if there is a pile of stuff (icing) on the bear's back. I think if you redo the shading to remove the emphasis on the edge it will look really nice. You certainly seem to have the knack of subtle shading, and have chosen good colours for the back (people often use white rather than grey pixels for something that's meant to be white, which looks horrible).

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Thanks guys, I'm pretty decent at removing stuff and even making things a little bigger, it's adding things!! especially to animals! it makes it so much harder cause you can't copy stuff from other things quite so easily, which is the best way for me to do things, I'll attach it to this post once I've finished with the new one, unless someone else wants to have a go at it??

~now attached~

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Hey Its been a busy day.

Thanks Juzza for the sprites.

That green glowy thing looks awesome. I am not too picky, i could use the bear. I guess i agree with llammabeast that it will look good with some teeks to the shading. I tried to make one and you should see how crappy it turned out. Anyway its about my bed time here. Maybe i will get some modding done tomorrow so you can see your sprites in action.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

okay, so I have too much time on my hands, and I'm not a skilled artist, so you know what that results in? lots of half assed stuff!!

I changed some tiny things from the that tree pretender and added an attack sprite, heres the zip.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

jus' wondering, do we have a good place in this mod for blood magic? nature has little rules or morality meaning blood sacrifices shouldn't be such a huge moral outrage for the followers, considering they will mostly be animals and mindless plant beings.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Hmm. Yes and no. I see your point.

I was envisioning the domains being largely free of living things of the two legged variety. Making blood slaves kinda hard to come by.

I was even contemplating putting Need Not Eat on all the critters and having a death dominion like ermor, but that is way too complicated and would not work for a variety of reasons. I also thought of giving them a supply bonus equal to what they eat so you could use the silverbacks to pillage the countryside, but i think that is redundant with such powerful nature mages.

I am reluctant to add any other paths of magic besides nature. But I think i will have to in the end. I can see arguments for earth and death as well as blood. for the momnet i want to boost what they have in nature and see if they can hold their own.


sorry i have not really set down and work on this again, i have been sorting through some more details in my head.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Nice tree by the way, it will do just fine.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

I might be disinclined to include blood and death, you might end up with another Pangaea (they're a bit dark-side-of-nature-y I think). I suppose a touch of air, water or nature might feel kind of natural. I'm not sure though, kind of thinking aloud. Possibly even astral.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

An idea if you want to branch the magic out a bit (and make them highly efficient) is to make a spell like Voice of Tiamat for land provinces, and make it Nature based. Make it 10 Nature gems to find all Elemental and Nature sites. Also, give them either nature summons for Living Elementals (think minor Elemental royalty) for the paths, or give them some randoms in Elemental magic could work out.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Wyatt Hebert

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Hey Juzza. The image files end up with big black boxes around them and pink shadows. They look like the right color I am not sure why the game is treating them like solids.... Take a look at the attached mod.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

which image files? it might be something to do with, oh crap!! I forgot to replace the black and the shadows when I did the colour changes!!

... want me to redo them? it's not too hard to jus' change the background colour and the shadow colour in paint, their the st purple and the standard black.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Yes, that would be very nice (redoing them). I need to learn the color numbers for the shadow and transparent, i can never get them right.

thanks Juzza.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

huh, um, I juuust realized, have you done any sprite modding before? cause, the black boxes and purple shadows get rendered by the game engine into

Black = totally see through

Purple = shadowed see through

this zip has everything in it, the tree pretender, a redon silverback, looks better now, I think, and I redid the green glowy thing too.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Yes, i have tried some sprite modding. Not to say it wokred very well. I knew about the shadows and transparent, but I never get the right shade so I need to look up the numbers.

I would also love to learn how people take images from things like Magic Cards and put them in the game. Never works fro me. I end up with an unrecognizable blob.


By the by, You posted some stuff in .bmp but the game needs .tga. I can convert it no problem though. I just hope it does not lose some quality.

THanks Juzza. I will see if I can work on this today.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Hey juzza, the elephant is not fixed, its not in the zip.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

There wasn't anything wrong with it, I took it right out of the huge directory, that Kristofer Osterman added, all I did to it was change it's back, it should look fine.

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Thats weird. I wonder why it show up in the game with a black box and a pink shadow. I used paint.net to convert it to a tga file, could that have messed with the colors? Any thoughts?

Re: New nation: NATURE rising early stages
 

Quickest way to avoid figuring out why that problem has come up is just to have Juzza upload it as a .tga inside a zip.