Mod Age of Wonders Mod

Zylithan · #1 October 18th, 2007, 11:11 AM

Huge AoW1 fan, also a fan of the others. Sounds like a great project.

Professor_Dyar · #2 October 18th, 2007, 12:59 PM

Great to see a turnout! I will need some HELP for some of this, mainly unit descriptions and some of the graphics. I think it's doable from what you say, though.

I don't plan on including AoW graphics into the game - this would wreck the character of the graphics and make everything look strange. The only graphics I really plan to add will be the ships and siege engines (maybe 15 sprites there), and I will want to re-color some heroes. For instance, if I could get the images in the game to play with, I could create a very good Julia using the Tuatha Sorceress and bitmap, and I could do similar for most of the other wizards.

As an example, I'm looking at the first race right now... that's the Humans, who will be based on late age Man. Most of their units need new unit descriptions, but that's about it. The Tower Knight needs to be renamed and would like the middle age Man's knight graphic (blue coloring instead of green), but that's another in-game addition. The Magister Arcane needs to have his spheres changed to include more fire and less air. So it looks like the only units that the Humans really need are the Musketeer and the Air Galley. The Air Galley will need a new graphic, so that's one sprite (out of a hundred...). I'm not even sure that the Musketeer does; the musket is a new weapon, but the tools to make it look like they're already in the game.

Edi · #3 October 18th, 2007, 01:54 PM

Beren (sorry, but I've known you too long to start learning new names for you

), since you haven't been around here for too long (as a registered member anyway), I have no idea what you already know. So I'll start with from scratch.

The first thing you need is the Dom3 DB, which gives you all the unit numbers, stats, random magic masks and a lot of other stuff. The link is in my sig. Then you're going to need the sprite collection Kristoffer released. That can be found somewhere on the forum here.

The modding manual has a lot of the other stuff you need in some of the more obscure tables (flysprites, sound samples etc) since those have not been independently documented anywhere.

The more experienced modders here (Sombre, Foodstamp, Amos, Endoperez et al) can probably give you a lot of tips on how to optimize some things and get normally unmoddable things done (copystats features prominently in that). Endo is also a pretty good hand at recoloring and modifying the sprites from the game. So you can ask them for tips.

Be sure to check the modding related bug entries in the shortlist thread on the main forum like Sombre said, since that's really going to bite you in the description department. Hard limit is 183 descriptions as of the current situation and it is currently not possible to mod descriptions separately like weapons and then assign them to units. Which means that units with identical descriptions will still use up separate descriptions out of the total available.

Professor_Dyar · #4 October 19th, 2007, 04:09 PM

Thanks for telling me this!

I had the DB, but it was an older version. I'm not sure I understand the 183-description limit: is it possible to activate multiple mods that collectively go over that limit, or is that a truly hard limit in the game?

Edi · #5 October 19th, 2007, 04:49 PM

Yes, it's hard limit for descriptions added by mod. You can go over the limit via multiple mods or just one megamod that has that many descriptions. Any more than that and they start getting overwritten. It's a limit that seems to be set in stone, but it was discovered through trial and error and probably has something to do with array sizes reserved for that kind of things.

I have not tested it myself, I've compiled those bug reports just on the basis of what Sombre, Ich and the others have said, since they can generally be trusted to report things in depth and accurately.

Juzza · #6 October 19th, 2007, 06:32 PM

I really liked AoW 1, shadow magic was frankly a bit of a let down for me, but still very cool, I might be able to help you with some unit graphics, not ships or siege weapons, but for those you should look through a bunch of other mods, I've very sure I've come across 1 or two mods that have some artillery in dom 3 and 1 or 2 in dom 2, Oh! one of them is on the illwinter home page ( http://www.illwinter.com ) it's a two nation orc one.

But anyway, you can give me some tasks with units and I'll do my best, if you wanna see my previous work check out the "Pirate Nation" it may be on the second page by now.

Tyrian · #7 October 20th, 2007, 12:48 PM

It's a very good idea. I tried to make an AoW mod but I don't have skills for graphics and I give up for this reason.

Another problem is the transport unit like the air galley. There isn't any similar system in dominions. The only idea I have to simulate this is to give supply bonus for transport unit.