"War of the Ring" thread

[Keir Maxwell]

Hi all,

I started work on a LotR mod a couple of nights back and the issues involved are huge.

My intention at present (open to change) is to basically hack the existing races to make the mod as compatibility with other mods is fairly irrelevent.

At present I'm working on Morder as it is the most difficult. The first key design question is how to represent orcs/uruks and the best idea I have had so far is to see if its possible to hack the Desert Tomb Ctis so that instead of summoning undead you breed orcs.

I am not planning on including the quest to destroy the ring in the initial mod as, while probably do-able, the added game balence question are somewhat overwhelming and likely to produce a poor product unless given the consideration necessary. Basically Gandalf will have taken Frodo and the Ring to Rivendell rather than going to see Saruman. Elrond hides the ring with enchantments and they prepare for the upcoming war. The full mod with quest can follow.

In terms of magic I'm primarily looking at priestly/unholy powers plus extra starting spells as appropriate - mainly strategic like the ability to summon an orc raiding party in a distant province. The rest of the magic system (research, site searching etc) will be left out as much as is possible.

Sauron will have an income of death gems to represent the "Will of Sauron" which he will have to choose how to spend providing alot of the strategic options for Mordor.

I'm fairly comfortable doing graphical changes, creating new images (like an eye banner) etc but I'm not strong on scripting/programming so I will be needing alot of help from those eager. Working out unit equipment and stats is something I am very well placed to having done the same for Middle Earth in a number of different formats.

A couple of people have offered to help so far - Liga and MStavros and this is a great start.

I have a few nice maps including one that arrived in the mail the other day from as an ad from NZ post (the advantage of being NZ right now re LotR). However most of the maps I have will require a reasonable amount of work editing so if anyone has a particularily appropriate map let me know.

I would like to stress that this is a big project and one I cannot guareentee to complete or do justice to alone. I am happy to make all my work available to everyone and hope that one way or another we end up with a good mod regardless of who actually pulls it all together - I would like to but I'm conscious of real life pressures and don't want to build false expectations.

Mordor troop stats to follow.

Cheers

Keir