Melita:The Cursed Cure (playable finally) V1.1
 

READY




My first ever mod is ready to be played.
Well I say "first mod" but I did do a little bit of work on the Dom3000 mod ages back. After returning back to the game I have decided to create my own mod, doing everything alone (except ideas I guess).

My vision for Melita is an EA nation based on the early people of Malta. A people who were advanced for their time, building what are now the oldest known free standing structures on earth. The Ggantija temples far predate even the pyramids.

other than personal knowledge (I was born in Malta...surprise surprise), the following link gave me ideas on how to set up the heirachy in the glorious land of Melita:

http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/ar...altaskulls.htm

I also found another article which mentions Dwarf elephants and hippos on Malta (sadly now fossilized...I want a little hippo) which I am contemplating on how to add in, the article is:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...g4.html?cat=37

and looking back now at what I typed it really looks like a history lesson. All apologies but I'm really eager to hear advice and ideas. Malta isn't a country many people know much about, and the information in those links was new to me (a native)

As already mentioned, not yet playable, no where near playable. Just got the ideas (NOT ENOUGH!!!) and a few sprites (many more to be added probably).


Sacreds are everything with the elongated serpent like heads, based of the description of supposed religious leaders from the first link. They recuperate from afflictions but have increased encumberence. The serpent-faced priests (shown kneeling) suffer more greatly from the painfull and encumbering effects of their protruding skulls = more encumberance (bad for nations best mage-priests, will be balanced by making them magically pretty awesome) aswell as map-move 1/low ap.

Magic mainly nature with earth, death, blood, with a little astral and fire. I don't want them too C'tissian so no water pick, and the only poison resitant troops are cap only sacreds, cap only to prevent use of C'tis' "poison everything" tactics in the midgame.

50% poison resistance to sacreds, 100% to the sacred commander with the discoloured skin and dual weapons(trained to withstand poison further perhaps, to become closer to the thematic serpetine goddess.)

Fanatics (bare chested with 2 axes and green markings painted on body) will be beserkers.

3 varieties of cheap chaff given just a shield, weapons used would be things they'd likely have at home (pitchfork, scythe, woodaxe). No armour



Edit: After 2 years, finally ready for release

Attachment 11966

Names are in Maltese, pronounce x as sh, j as y, g as dz. Don't pronounce gh - its always silent.


To Do List:
-suitable graph colour
-improve flag (little rushed)
-balancing
-better descriptions
-some way to get Fanaktu to auto-berserk
-cheap, recruit everywhere blood hunter
-compatability with major mods (atleast CBM)

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Sounds great.
And very in-step with the game itself.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

It means alot to hear (or ugh read) that.

I just added a couple of summons:

1)a sacred snake of sorts, has a feathery mane/crown. Sacred, standard, maybe some magic
2)Ancient undead fossil pigmy elephant (hell yeah!), size 3, trample, fear +0, high protection, relatively low health

I'll be giving them maltese names, but for now they shall been known only by their physical descriptions... my mother tongue is sleeping apparently.

I'll get to work on attack sprites for the others tommorrow.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

The graphics are looking cool, I especially like the commanders.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

New attack sprites.

Just the banner and nation flag left before I can start modding em in, I'll admit that the modding will probably take more time than really necesarry since I find it a little bit boring in comparison with making the sprites (aka THE FUN PART - other than playing the completed product.)

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

That's really cool, especially the sprites, being physicaly (or mentally) incapable of making a decent looking sprite on my own. Interesting theme to, and those summons are especially inventive.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Yeah I was quite proud of mah 'ancient undead fossil pigmy elephant' both because it's such a cool thing to say and because skeleton sprites are so difficult to draw. Especially when it's an unusual shaped animal like an elephant, I started off using the behemoth sprite to guide me but I ended up needing to rub out 90% of the original sprite and redraw it all in myself

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Awesome sprites dude.

Looking forward to playing it, could very well qualify amongst the "regular" mod nations when finished.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Yep that's what I'm aiming for.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH *pulls out hair*

The mod is so nearly done, everything modded in with the exception of heroes and summons, this is what makes it painful.

I've ran into as few problems to do with images, I'd really appreciate some help.

1)My mod banner isn't showing up, i've tried both the sizes described in the manual and saved it as a .tga

2)The program I am using to create the sprites keeps recolouring 255,0,255 magenta from my shadows in 240,0,240 magenta when I save the files. I'll probably just put my sprites into good old ms paint to get around this.

3)My sprites (with the exception of the flag) are coming out quite small, closer to human than markata but still noticeably short. I have made all my sprites on a 128x128 pixel canvas if that would have any effect. They are aligned in the centre on the bottom of the canvas.

thanks in advance.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

I'd ask over here : http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

Some of the most helpful and knowledgeable modders are banned from here for obscure reasons and have set up camp over there instead, I beleive you'll get good answers fast there.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

I've actually solved the last two myself, or atleast know what the problem is.

It seems my sprites coming out small is simply because...they are small. In the creation process I was judging their height up against the sprites of spies and deer tribe archers from organised sprites folder. And spies and deer tribe appear to be shorter than your average man, that's something I never noticed before. So yeah apparently I need to be redoing those sprites...gah the drag.

Still no solution to the Banner yet, I'll look over my modding again before asking on the other forum.

Edit: Banner fixed, I forgot to put .tga at the end of the file name inside my mod .dm file. I feel like an idiot. On the bright side I fixed everything by myself with no help wooh?

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

So yeah guys, just resizing the images and Melita will be ready to play. It's getting late, and I'm paintballing all day tommorrow so it may take a few days.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Just a couple of comments on the ideas so far. I'll leave the modding tricks and sprite suggestions to those that actually know something about that and focus on gameplay elements from what I can glean so far:

* High Nature and Death magic, with a bit of astral and 50% PR on your troops sounds like it could play very similar to (EA and MA) C'tis. Would be even more so if you add water (even a water random) Look for ways to differntiate. Possibly blood could provide a different angle.
* Adding water, even as a random only opens the way to the nice 'poison the whole battlefield' strategies C'tis is fond of. You'll have to decide whether the usefulness of the tactic outweighs the C'tis-copycatting or not.
* If you stick to only N/D/S/E that means quite limited magic, which has to be somehow balanced. Being powerful in those paths is one way of course. (And apparently you plan on your mages being 'pretty awesome', at least the main ones.) But would they be recuit everywhere then, or capital only? If capital only then probably you need either more diversity, or your non-capital mages have to be pretty decent too. (And E/S which I have the impression you're going for on the non-sacred mages has some good synergy. If they have a good number of paths they could be quite powerful) This would also make them less C'tissian, but I don't know whether you want a decent chunk of your battlemagic to be away from your two main paths.
* Another way to balance limited magic is by a strong troop lineup, but I don't have the impression you're going that way? Unless the sacred is absoltuely awesome.
* If the barechested fanatic indeed has no/very low protection he's quite likely to die from even one hit (assuming human-range hp) and thus never get the chance to go berserk naturally.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Thank you Amhazair for giving me food for thought, this is the sort of comments I want.

I agree I'm looking pretty C'tissian. I feel like making the serpent-faced priests sort of staretsy but with different paths, Perhaps strong nature with some death and blood with fire and astral on a random pick. I think this could make them play like an interesting mix of C'tis and Pangea. The diversity is also good and only misses water and air.

The poison resistance is only on the sacreds, so I'll try to hit a balance between having them cost effective enough for early expansion, but not so cheap that they can be expendable enough to risk posoining to death with C'tissian tactics before you research the spells to boost their resistance. They'll be cap only too so it will limit the useage of C'tissian tactics with the sacreds in the mid/late game when resistance boosting spells will be useable, I'd expect to see people playing them differently from C'tis.

The fanatics are pretty disposable and actually may find some use without the beserk. They have two attacks and high basic morale after all. I might add a weak blood mage-priest who will thematically reside as a cult leader amongst the fanatics. They could serve as cheap blood hunters (since the only other blood pick is on my strong mages) and I'll add a national spell or 2 to cause area beserk to spark em off. An interesting tactic would be to use poison warfare to make the expendable fanatics turn beserk. The poison will probably kill them but it gives them a great boost to bring the fight to tough enemy troops and thugs.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (not yet playable)
 

Sorry for the double post, but i think its understandable considering the circumstances.

2 years ago I began this mod, it was nearly ready for release, but then like the Pantokrator himself i disappeared suddenly without a trace. Perhaps it's ambitious comparing myself with ol' Panto, but hey, atleast I came back (more than he can say).

Not only have I returned, but I brought a present. Enjoy playing EA Melita guys, it still needs some work so be sure to tell me all your thoughts. Sorry for the wait.

Re: Melita:The Cursed Cure (playable finally) V1.1
 

Mentioned before, but you should cross post over here as well:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

Nice mod! Good job!