Kolum Mod Project

[JaydedOne]

I'm starting this thread largely as just a placemarker for a larger project that I'm going to be developing over the next year or so. I'm taking my Dungeons & Dragons campaign, a campaign influenced heavily by Glen Cook's "Black Company" books and George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, and converting its armies to Dominions II one step at a time. Given that my campaign world centered on about a dozen different armies going to war with one another for supremacy over a dying, cursed land, I'm thinking it's perfectly suited for a Dominions rebirth, especially while I'm trapped at law school and unable to get a consistent D&D game going.

It's my hope to develop 12 complete army mods, including their own army-specific Pretender, their gear, their units, and heroes. I'm also hoping to eventually develop a map (and accompanying scenario) to place them on, although that's my least favorite part of this process and will therefore wait until the end.

ETA for this completed project, I'm thinking, will be a year's time, just because of the sheer scope that it entails. An army a month is awfully ambitious, but I'm hoping to be able to take significant shortcuts with the sprite development process in order to make that work out.

I'm not necessarily looking for other people to develop, as I don't want to take any steam away from Calrea. However, I'll be posting stats here and possibly incomplete and eventually complete armies at IW's site. I'd love to have suggestions on balancing armies with the current ones in Dom2 so that you don't necessarily have to buy completely into my vision to use bits and pieces.

Thoughts or helpful tips as I start out are much appreciated!

[ April 09, 2004, 16:57: Message edited by: Miguel Duran ]

[Tricon]

Oh please, do go ahead with this project!

But please: would you be so kind as to give ample background? I love a good campaign world and a good setting, but (in other games' mods) I continually have the problem that modders forget that the eventual players are not aquainted with "his" backrground. (From personal experience I call it the "why would red dragons and intelligent sword spiders form a military alliance" effect.)

[JaydedOne]

Originally posted by Tricon:
But please: would you be so kind as to give ample background? I love a good campaign world and a good setting, but (in other games' mods) I continually have the problem that modders forget that the eventual players are not aquainted with "his" backrground. (From personal experience I call it the "why would red dragons and intelligent sword spiders form a military alliance" effect.)

Absolutely. I plan on using as much room as possible in the flavor text areas of the army descriptions, unit descriptions, etc. I'm also likely to toss some developer's notes in along with the finished army .dm files to help explain my view on the theme of the army. Thankfully, my world's pretty low fantasy in most regards, so you're unlikely to find too much in the way of wacky pairings within the armies.

[Cainehill]

Awesome! Those series are amongst my Favorites (albeit I think Cook's "Dread Empire" series was better than the Black Company books), and, especially now that Illwinter has apparently made it possible to mod pretenders, would be perfect for Dominions. The Hanged Man, Howler, etc, all scheming and warring for Dominion.

And the ... critters from the far side of the Icewall certainly make an interesting nation, as do the Wildlings actually.

I'll be very interested in seeing how things go, and possibly willing / able to help out, as a near-scholar of those two milieus.

[JaydedOne]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Awesome! Those series are amongst my Favorites (albeit I think Cook's "Dread Empire" series was better than the Black Company books), and, especially now that Illwinter has apparently made it possible to mod pretenders, would be perfect for Dominions. The Hanged Man, Howler, etc, all scheming and warring for Dominion.

And the ... critters from the far side of the Icewall certainly make an interesting nation, as do the Wildlings actually.

I'll be very interested in seeing how things go, and possibly willing / able to help out, as a near-scholar of those two milieus.

Well, keep in mind that my setting is just heavily influenced by those books and isn't in any way supposed to be representative of them. While there are a few characters you might see sort of re-embodied in new forms, the terrain should be pretty much brand new to you. I know that someone else here was working on a Black Company mod but was still in the early going. They've got an incomplete Version on the IW site.

As it stands, I'm now sitting about and educating myself in PhotoShop which is, well, rough and slowgoing, particularly with two bad mice. Making sprites is probably going to be the slowest part of this project, sadly. What I'd really like are some tips from the pros on how to cut into the time consumption that requires.

[Ragnarok-X]

Sounds great. I hope you will update this thread with news quite regular !

[Zeikko]

Excellent! More mods, more playing. I hope you can finish the mod in the schelude and I hope it will be as good as u told. Maybe you could send/publish some alphas and betas so people don't have to wait so long time.

Added to the Mod Projects Link in order to give better advertising. You might want to ask for specific jobs or things done or what you are looking for Miguel in order to have a better response.

[JaydedOne]

Thanks Zen!

As a sidenote, the description on the mod link should likely be altered as I'm converting a D&D campaign world to a set of mods and that world is only influenced by, not actually a direct translation of, the Martin and Cook books.

As for what I need in terms of help, nothing immediately. I'll likely post a sample .dm file for the first army in the near future and see if people have any comments on the play balance issues. Those sorts of suggestions would be the most help -- otherwise, it's largely a solo project unless someone just has a burning desire to take my designs and write up initial .dm files or (better) draw up some .tgas for the units (as that's likely to be the most time-consuming part)

[JaydedOne]

Here's a question that's arisen as I'm developing my Kolum mod. I've decided that in creating the nation belonging to my Matriarch, I'd like to work off the C'tis Desert Tombs theme as it's very much in keeping with what I want. I wonder, however, whether developing such a mod will work.

Question 1: I'm looking at simply rewriting all units pertinent to C'tis Desert Tombs, so the theme in theory would work just fine. It's important to me to give the nation its theme-specific summons which I'm revamping considerably. I'm just wondering if there are any difficulties (aside from having to tell players through the design notes/nation descrips that they HAVE to choose the Desert Tombs theme in order for the army to be properly balanced) that come with developing a nation mod with the use of a specific theme in mind, particularly since I plan on using it for my Ermor (Ashen Empire) and Pangaea (Carrion Woods) themes as well.

(And yes, a game involving those three armies in my world WOULD lead to a great deal of bLasted territory. That's sort of part of its theme.)

Question 2: Let's say I include the Empoisoner's Guild as a starting site but rename the Empoisoner something like "The Matriarch's Hand" and restat it accordingly. Will including the site (assuming I mod the correct unit, as opposed to creating a new one) have any problems calling up my new Hand? I'd imagine not. Further, would it change the text on the site to read "Can recruit The Matriarch's Hand" or is that a defined bit of text as opposed to a "Can recruit X" variable?