New Mod - The Nephilim

[moodgiesanta]

Hey folks, I'm currently in the middle of making a mod. It replaces Jotun with a race called The Nephilim, based loosely on the Book of Enoch. It's playable right now, and shouldn't have any huge issues. It isn't done, as I have to change some things and add several things.

Features:
A new pretender: The Fallen Virtue
A new race consisting of evil Nephilim Giants, twisted other Nephilim, human slaves and, of course, Fallen Angels.

Features I want to add/will add sometime:
National Heroes
Change to a couple of blood spells
A better looking banner
Balance

Is there a way I can use the graphics of an existing unit for a new unit? I want to do that for the national heroes. In fact, I don't really have any graphical talent, so I am pretty much out of luck for national heroes unless I can copy existing graphics. Also, if you are willing, I would appreciate input on balance. Actually I'd appreciate any feedback. There are some strong units in this nation, but there are also issues of supply, compounded by the lack of assured nature mages. Also that Fallen Angel unit is really, really expensive. (One of the pressing issues is increasing the cost of the blood spell to summon the Fallen Angel substantially.) Still, I think the nation is overpowered.

[Endoperez]

I don't know Nephilim, but I'm eager to meet them.

About the balance issues:
IIRC, you can give unit negative supply bonus, making it eat more than its size would suggest.
One obvious limit is random picks. If your Nephilim mages only have elemental OR sorcery randoms in addition to their base picks, they will be limited at least a little.
You could make Fallen Angel national spell, only accessible to Nephilim, and balance it only for them. That would allow it to be very expensive. Or you could replace Ulm and make the Black Forest's Sanguine Heritage spell the one summoning Nephilim's Fallen Angels.
If they already are unbalanced, try not to give them cheap, good and cost-effective mage-types. At the most, give them two of the three. Cheap crap with Sorcery random as their ownly cheapish Blood hunter would be easy replacement of Vaetti Hag, but could be e.g. 85 gp. to make it more expensive. Or give them mages that only excel at Blood, or summoning (ala Machaka, but with less offensive paths). Or make their good mages very expensive or very weak. Vulnerability to element would make them more suspectible against enemies. Weakness to lightning?
Also, read through the modding manual and see all the possible negative abilities you could give them, starting from enc. etc.


There is no easy way, but I have figured out one way to snatch graphics. It includes taking a screencapture of non-filtered, windowed Dominion showing unit description, editing the almost-back background to truly black and, to magenta for shadows. It only gives you the spr1 files, and you can't get a good capture of spr2 because it has to be taken in battle. Spr1 can be edited slightly to make working, if crude spr2.

I can snatch the spr1's for you, just tell or PM me the units' names or preferably numbers. If you want, I can also try to make some kind of spr2's. The work isn't hard, but it takes some time, so you might have to wait until my exams are over (two weeks) until I get to work on this.

[FrankTrollman]

Someone has already snatched the spr1s.

http://www.dom2minions.com/~minion/icons/

Note that there isn't a command to directly change the name of a national hero, which is sad. That's why most set-ups simply have the same name for national heroes and different art. I think that you can create a custom nametype and then define the new nametype as having only a single name in it, and then assigning that nametype to one national hero. AFAIK, that will only work for two heroes, however.

-Frank

[Endoperez]

FrankTrollman said:
Someone has already snatched the spr1s.

http://www.dom2minions.com/~minion/icons/

I thought those sprites were half the size they should be while having normal-sized background... I tested it quickly, and at least for me that Niefel Jarl is only the height of a mounted human. Here is a bmp of correctly sized Niefel Jarl. Hopefully the transformation to bmp didn't ruin anything.

[moodgiesanta]

Thanks very much for the bmp, Endoperez. But I do have a question: How the heck do you make it to where the background is invisible for a sprite? Every one of the ones I've tried to make has a gigantic black box behind it. How do you get it like that BMP you posted? I attached an example image that I cannot get right to save my life.

[Endoperez]

The black background has to be (0,0,0) black. Screenshot from Dominions has colors that are almost pure black, but not quite, like (0,2,1). White would be (255,255,255), and as the difference is as small as it is, it is impossible to decipher the difference with human eye,

Do you happen to use Gimp, by the way? I hear Gimp has some scripting capability, and I might be able to put together a script that generates 128x128 unit picture with correct background and shadow.

[moodgiesanta]

Endoperez said:
I don't know Nephilim, but I'm eager to meet them.

About the balance issues:
IIRC, you can give unit negative supply bonus, making it eat more than its size would suggest.
One obvious limit is random picks. If your Nephilim mages only have elemental OR sorcery randoms in addition to their base picks, they will be limited at least a little.
You could make Fallen Angel national spell, only accessible to Nephilim, and balance it only for them. That would allow it to be very expensive. Or you could replace Ulm and make the Black Forest's Sanguine Heritage spell the one summoning Nephilim's Fallen Angels.
If they already are unbalanced, try not to give them cheap, good and cost-effective mage-types. At the most, give them two of the three. Cheap crap with Sorcery random as their ownly cheapish Blood hunter would be easy replacement of Vaetti Hag, but could be e.g. 85 gp. to make it more expensive. Or give them mages that only excel at Blood, or summoning (ala Machaka, but with less offensive paths). Or make their good mages very expensive or very weak. Vulnerability to element would make them more suspectible against enemies. Weakness to lightning?
Also, read through the modding manual and see all the possible negative abilities you could give them, starting from enc. etc.


There is no easy way, but I have figured out one way to snatch graphics. It includes taking a screencapture of non-filtered, windowed Dominion showing unit description, editing the almost-back background to truly black and, to magenta for shadows. It only gives you the spr1 files, and you can't get a good capture of spr2 because it has to be taken in battle. Spr1 can be edited slightly to make working, if crude spr2.

I can snatch the spr1's for you, just tell or PM me the units' names or preferably numbers. If you want, I can also try to make some kind of spr2's. The work isn't hard, but it takes some time, so you might have to wait until my exams are over (two weeks) until I get to work on this.

Thanks for the feedback. I already have negative supply bonus on the creatures that need it. They have a blood-only mage with a research penalty, an elemental random one path mage (I think I'm gonna change it to wear some armor for encumberance), and the ridiculously expensive Fallen Angel.

I saw the website with the sprites, and downloaded a few as well. I have the Niefel Jarl sprite color-shifted and resized (need to add magenta), but it wasn't included because when colorshifting, the background got shifted as well so I need to re-shift that color back (and it was very late). So later, in a few days, I guess.