Mod Nova Deus II v1.22 (w/ New Content) - Page 6

Agrajag · #51 December 30th, 2006, 07:40 AM

Wow, great mod, thanks for your hard work!

But now for some (hopefuly constructive) criticism:
1) Lich and Master Lich have bright green pixels on their legs and on the ends of their (cool) clothing, why is that? I'd expect their tattered robes to look like tattered robes (unless they are somehow magical), the green glow in their mouths is cool though

2) For some reason I can't help but think the vampire queen is wearing pajamas, maybe if her shirt and pants were a bit brighter? Or maybe if she had some jewelry?
3) I really like the "high fantasy" Pheonix

4) Lord of Decay looks pretty cool too

5) Lord of Destruction could use a slightly bigger axe (if it can fit :X)
6) The crone is greatly improved

7) Changer of Ways is pretty cool too, I like what you did with the shadows

8) Hooray for Lord of Fertility!

Endoperez · #52 December 30th, 2006, 09:19 AM

Wow... I always thought #shapechange always gave #seccondshape, automatically...

Good thing that I tested the Phoenix before "correcting" you!

Phoenix - the firebird is very impressive image. The Phoenix, as it is now, doesn't fit that image, but I almost wish there was something else to use it with.

The Heron image is also very, very good. It has just one flaw - against the default dark-red background, it's beak vanishes. There's too little contrast between the beak and the background. Even so, the new heron image is better than the old one.

The rainbow mages are VERY fuzzy on anything but Best filter, at least in my monitor and resolution. The colors just blend together. I noticed this especially with the Great Sorceress; the light hair and the white robe blend in unless I check her description or make the commander icons bigger/zoom in on battle. Vampire Queen and the bigger pretenders are fine - I can't see the details of their faces, but I can tell between cloak, cloth and skin. The Lich and Master Lich look somewhat strange as well. It might be just that their color and the dark red background not working for me.

Lord of Pleasure is insane. Nature 5 and 160 points means that he's the cheapest way to get Nature 9 bless. One less starting dominion matters less because he starts better Awe than is available from Dominion 10. Being a demon is a problem, but having a Devour Soul attack is just insane - only one summonable creature has it in base game, and it's a unique, national summon of C'tis. You should bring it more in line with the other pretenders. Perhaps a Nature version of Moloch (N2 B1), Awe +1, and two default weapons (Magic sceptre, and new Touch of Enslavement (enslave, att 0, def -2, length 0, mr negates). It's physically bigger and more powerful than Moloch, but doesn't fly, so it could have the price of a Titan with similar magic (w and 1 or just 3).

Ragnarok-X · #53 December 30th, 2006, 12:17 PM

Heavenly Messenger seems kinda imba. I played him and gave himn earth 4 for Protection and blessing. I then hastly forged a sharp blade and began attacking provinces defended by militas. Because of his awe 4 he will rarely (read: not) get attacked by troops with morale 8-10.

Shovah32 · #54 December 30th, 2006, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Ragnarok-X said:
Heavenly Messenger seems kinda imba. I played him and gave himn earth 4 for Protection and blessing. I then hastly forged a sharp blade and began attacking provinces defended by militas. Because of his awe 4 he will rarely (read: not) get attacked by troops with morale 8-10.

Try a dom10 virtue. He starts with dom4 so getting there is easy and he starts with a good weapon so can start killing straight away.

zepath · #55 December 30th, 2006, 02:13 PM

Ighalli, the pillage bonus just seemed appropriate. The description for the Lord of Destruction is actually taken (in part) from an entry in the "Warhammer Fluff Bible" on Khorne, the Lord of Destruction. The pretender itself was based on Khorne whom I could not see withholding from a little pillaging on account of his preference for a battle between warriors. After all, to the victor go the spoils and I'm sure Khorne would dig on the spoils like any good warlord-god.

Agrajag, the new liches are actually sprites I took from my Dom 2 nation mod Necropolis in which they were semi-undead priest kings with an ancient Egyptian flair. At the time I suppose I meant their jewelry (if that's the appropriate word) and greaves to be composes of some strange other-worldly material that glows green much like the bane weapons. I like the way they look now... it says, "Yea, that's right, I'm so powerful I can make crap glow different colors," but as Endo also mentioned them I may mess around with the sprites and see if I can make them better. The Vamp Queen sprite is a very close approximation of the one originally found in Dominions. Do you think an outright white garment would be better? As for the Lord of Destruction's axe, I don't think it can get any larger w/in a 128x128 sprite. It's quite a large axe as it is!

Endoperez, I thought a black beak was cooler but I'll lighten it a bit for the next version. As for the rainbow mages -- I assume you mean the Crone and Great Enchantress -- I will tweak the contrast and sharpness of both and we'll see if that improves them at all. I'm running the game on a relatively new Dell XPS at the highest settings and I wasn't thinking that they might "blur up" on other machines. I agree the Lord of Pleasure needs a higher points cost at least. I'll also factor in your other suggestions when updating. Do you think the Lord of Destruction, Changer of Ways, or Lord of Decay are also over-powered?

Ragnarok-X, the Messenger is essentially a Virtue with Astral and a reduced additional paths cost, opening him up for a number of powerful strategies. You are probably right though and I may reduce his starting dominion to 2 and hit points by ~33% in the next version.

Sandman · #56 December 30th, 2006, 02:25 PM

I'd reduce the point cost and magic levels of the magic-5 pretenders, it's kinda out of synch with official pretenders, which never go above magic-3.

zepath · #57 December 30th, 2006, 02:39 PM

Sandman, that was purposeful. All four are based on the Chaos gods of the Warhammer universe who have rather distinct characters already. It wouldn't be very fitting with the lore of Khorne, the Lord of Destruction for example if his Blood magic were only level 3 or if Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, wasn't capable of casting the Eyes of God (w/ only Astral-3). I thought about making them more in sync with the "standard" pretenders, but decided against it.

Agrajag · #58 December 30th, 2006, 02:54 PM

Quote:

zepath said:
Agrajag, the new liches are actually sprites I took from my Dom 2 nation mod Necropolis in which they were semi-undead priest kings with an ancient Egyptian flair. At the time I suppose I meant their jewelry (if that's the appropriate word) and greaves to be composes of some strange other-worldly material that glows green much like the bane weapons. I like the way they look now... it says, "Yea, that's right, I'm so powerful I can make crap glow different colors," but as Endo also mentioned them I may mess around with the sprites and see if I can make them better. The Vamp Queen sprite is a very close approximation of the one originally found in Dominions. Do you think an outright white garment would be better? As for the Lord of Destruction's axe, I don't think it can get any larger w/in a 128x128 sprite. It's quite a large axe as it is!

I see.
1) You don't have to change anything, you should do things they way you think they look best. If the green glow bothers me, I can just edit it myself

2) I think an outright white garment would be better. In fact, I tried some tweaking (though I didn't save the tweaked version) and both black and white clothing looked better than the grey. (Be aware though that I'm not talking about the cloak, just pants/shirt)
3) It is a large axe - bigger than most humans :O
However, it looks puny comapred to who's wielding it. Looking over the .tga I see you can make it 8 pixels longer. (The problem imo is only in length, not in overall size.), I tried just moving the axe head to the side and duplicating the shaft to fill in the blank, but it looks pretty obvious that the shaft is just a paste, and thus ends up looking wrong.

Wauthan · #59 December 30th, 2006, 03:41 PM

Many thanks to you Zepath for taking the time to make this mod. I'm very happy with your alterations on the crone, and I'm very grateful that you accepted that suggestion. Many of your other graphics were also instant favorites. I quickly incorporated them into the game and they look perfectly splendid.

May your muse never grow silent.

Sandman · #60 December 30th, 2006, 03:41 PM

Quote:

zepath said:
Sandman, that was purposeful. All four are based on the Chaos gods of the Warhammer universe who have rather distinct characters already. It wouldn't be very fitting with the lore of Khorne, the Lord of Destruction for example if his Blood magic were only level 3 or if Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, wasn't capable of casting the Eyes of God (w/ only Astral-3). I thought about making them more in sync with the "standard" pretenders, but decided against it.

But the Oracle and the Sphinx can't cast Eyes of God either, the Moloch can't summon devils, the Great Mother can't summon vine ogres, etc.