This mod has been released, see
https://forums.elementalgame.com/398661
This thread is the result of an idea I've been tossing around lately. This run is an experiment - either people will show interest, or the project will wither and die.
TL;DR: We need your help to design Elven city tiles.
A selection of a few of the completed buildings:
Right now, we have a few modders doing a lot of work on big projects. Joining a project can feel like a big commitment. The individual modder can sometimes feel that he wants to do something, but don't really have the time to see a project to the finish line. He wants to contribute, but not sign away his soul. Enter the community project. Your participation and contributions are just as much as you want them to be. A community project is many modders doing small parts to form a greater whole. The intention is to push content to the end-user as soon as possible. Rather than a few modders doing work on mods over many months, a community project is intended to reach maturity within a week or two. Once the project is done, the mod becomes public property and anyone can use it in the future for anything they want to.
For the first community project, I thought we'd put an elf race in this fantasy game. More precisely, I thought we'd put something that LOOKS like elves in the game.
General outline for mod to meet release conditions:
- Elves play as Kingdom with Kingdom technology and Kingdom magic (no custom technology or magic planned at this stage). This will ensure that the mod stays viable after the community project is finished.
- Elves have unique unit textures - they will look like elves ( http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn195/summersong/Elemental/Gaediila_0_2106408875-24.png )
- Elves live in Elf cities. In this case, they are Sylvan or Wood elves, so city tiles should look like they were built inside a forest. See more info below. (examples: https://forums.elementalgame.com/396593 )
- Elves ride Elf mounts (a larger variety of horses, including white ones).
- Elves wield elf bows. They have kingdom stats, but look elven.
- (Additional outline, not required for release): Elves wield elf melee weapons. They have kingdom stats, but look elven.
- (Additional outline, not required for release): Elves wield elven armor and elven shields. They have kingdom stats, but look elven.
Nit-picking stuff: For this community project, I will be the moderator. Translated to reality, that means that if a situation appears where the community is split between two choices, I choose one. It also falls on me to make sure that tasks are not duplicated (update this thread), and that the project stays usable after the game is patched. In extreme cases, I may turn down contributions if they lack quality.
If you are interested in helping out, post in the thread what you intend to contribute with. You can also e-mail me at outelf@gmail.com
Required Tasks
Red means the task has not been assigned
Orange means the task has been assigned, and you should preferably choose something else to contribute with
Green means the task has been completed (and the files have reached me)
Note: You don't need my permission to start working on a tile. This is just so that if you want to take your time working on something, you can reserve that task so noone can steal it from under your feet.
XML framework (Heavenfall with ideas from Wintersong). The mod requires an XML framework to link everything together. Specifically, the framework should include a non-invasive way to link the buildings together, a raceconfig, and a racetype so that custom factions may use everything.
Unit Textures (Raven X). Both female and male elven skins need to be made, I strongly suggest that you adopt the skins from fallen units, as they fit the models with pointy ears. In particular eyes, eyebrows and mouths need to be cleared up to appear less goth.
Bow models (3dgrunge)
Melee Weapon Models. In this area, anything is welcome.
(3dgrunge)
Extra assets:
New colours for apple trees and swamp trees
Example of completed buildings: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5113/elemental1285328784.jpg
City tiles. By far the largest part of the mod, and the part where we will need the most contributions. There is a HUGE freedom here for contributors to put their own flavour on buildings, but keep in mind that the theme you go by will not be reflected in all the other buildings.
There are two key words that I want to stress here. First, the elves live in the WOOD. That means their city should look like it could be part of a forest - elves are one with the forest, and all that. No cleared fields, no huge arenas for training. And please, try to mix the trees you use - both leaf trees and pine trees. Secondly, the elves live in a CITY. They do NOT live in tents, or miniscule huts on top of large trees. Buildings are absolutely okay.
I strongly recommend that you do NOT use a ground decal, for example something that makes the ground look beige or dusty. These decals have significant clipping issues in game, and frankly look off in a forest city.
I strongly suggest that you use LESS than thirty models in total. This is to make sure that the city can be viewed like any other city. In this area, I will be rather strict and may edit buildings.
Buildings MUST be built on the right amount of tiles. If a building requires 1 tile, it MUST use 1x1. If it requires 4 tiles, it MUST use the 2x2 format. Any building that doesn't follow this rule will be instantly rejected.
I must also insist that you provide TWO tiles for each building. The game can use a different tile while building something. I recommend that you first construct the final building and save. Then load, and remove some parts, add workers and ropes and whatnot, and save as something else.
I strongly suggest that you use the following colours when using the tile editor
While the colours may change for release, they will not change a lot.
City Cores (all are 4 tiles!):Being Built (oddrheia)Level 1 (oddrheia)Level 2 (oddrheia)Level 3 (oddrheia)Level 4 (oddrheia)Level 5 (oddrheia)
Regular Buildings:Workshop (Heavenfall)Watchtower (Jharii)Study (Jharii)Arcane Laboratory (Jharii)Merchant (Novaburst)Hut (crystlshake)House (Kalin)Barracks (Kalin)Command post (Kalin)War College (Kalin)Market (Kalin)School (4 tiles!) (jshores)University (4 tiles!) (John_Hughes)Trade Center (Kalin)Bazaar (4 tiles!) (Kalin)Pub (HooblaDan)Inn (Kalin)Great Theatre (oddrheia)Town Hall (Heavenfall)Palace (4 tiles!) (oddrheia)Irrigation System (Heavenfall)Guild Tribunal (Kalin)Mining Guild (Kalin)Smelter (oddrheia)Blacksmith (oddrheia)Farming Guild (crystlshake)Granary (crystlshake)Great Mill (4 tiles!) (oddrheia)Construction Yard (Heavenfall)Temple of Essence (oddrheia)Monastery (Heavenfall)Tower of Ereog (fairwater)Abbey of Izil (4 tiles!) (oddrheia)Missionary Hall (John_Hughes) Embassy (oddrheia)
Harbor (crystlshake)Super-unique buildingsMint of Ruvenna (4 tiles!) (oddrheia)Hosten's Library (4 tiles!) (John_Hughes) Wall buildings (the improvement built to make walls - these automatically upgrade)Hedge Wall (oddrheia)Fort (oddrheia)Fortress (oddrheia)
City wallsCitywalls (level 0) (Heavenfall)CityWalls_Hedge (level 1) (Heavenfall)CityWalls_picket (level 2) (Heavenfall)CityWalls_Advanced (level 3) (Heavenfall)
Shards (all these are 4 tiles):Fire Shard (Kalin)Water Shard (Djohaal)Earth Shard (Djohaal)Air Shard (Djohaal)World Resources (all these are 4 tiles):Iron Mine (John_Hughes)Ventri Mine (John_Hughes)Stone Quarry (John_Hughes)Clay Quarry (John_Hughes)Marble Quarry (Heavenfall)Farm (Heavenfall)Wheat Farm (crystlshake)Apiary (crystlshake)Orchard (crystlshake)Stable (crystlshake)Crystal Foundry (Kalin)Scenic View (oddrheia)Refugee Camp (John_Hughes)Oasis (John_Hughes)Gold Mine (Heavenfall)Lost Library (oddrheia)Ancient Temple (oddrheia)Lumbermill (be gentle!) (John_Hughes)
Diplomacy buildingsShrill (Kalin)Drath (Heavenfall)Dragon (oddrheia)Spider (oddrheia)
Contributions are mailed to outelf@gmail.com or uploaded and linked here in this thread.
The following is a point of reference for the maximum zoom, it looks like just about anything smaller than half a person is pretty much lost unless it has color contrast (like flowers perhaps)
EDIT: Looks like a new version update just came out with increases in map performance.
Grabbing the rest. You guys are slow as hell! All you got to do is delete the plantlife, things hidden under buildings noone will ever see, limit pedestrians to 3 each, remove all the vines and such. We're not looking to make a 50% less demanding buildings. We're trying to make it 10% less demanding. If you can push that to 15% or even 20%, great! But you shouldn't be remaking any structure. As long as the general structure remains intact, and there are no obvious empty spaces, you're good.
I fixed the thing with the water tank in the great mill, but the tree in the harbor should stay. It's there for support, not as part of the ship.
Edit: For the stable, I'm going to go in and make it so that horses are always seen, even when zoomed out to max. They're a huge part of the design you've made, and once they get hidden, it looks... not so good.
did you get the newer version of the hut put in?
I kind of like the one that's in now better. But I'll leave the decision up to you.
If you still want to change, please mail me the latest hut xmls. I've got about 10 copies of every xml now and it's starting to get confusing.
Ive just sent it along, the originals of the version 2 hut and the low count ones. The old version was an ok idea but was kind of lazy- with the trees coming from the roofs. Im not sure which looks better in groups though, since the old version looks to create a nice canopy effect. Ill let you decide, as they probably both present a different feel. The newer one is more urban while the older one is more rustic/natural.
screen cap of new version:
Then I'm going to stick with the one currently in-game. It flows really good with all the other buildings.
I've detected a bug with the fortress building, that's fixed now.
Edit: I'm off to bed. Then tomorrow I'll put up a new release thread, if no more bugs are reported.
Edit2: Fixed horses in stable both versions to LOD7, fixed goldmine tents in HQ version, fixed watercontainer in lumber mill in both versions.
You guys are awesome. I am definitely looking forward to trying this out, and contributing on the next community mod. Good Job!!!!
Do you think the Orchard stone spire is too big compared to other in game structures? I noticed that its on par with the palace for height- which might be a bit too majestic.
Whoa, I didn't expect thing to go by so fast. Sorry I was a bit busy today (and tomorrow too, unfortunately), so I won't be able to really give it a serious test until the weekend. But judging by your pace it'll be done by then, heh.
Having said that I think it would be a better idea to separate the HQ and the LQ version of the mod into two separate packages. Let people decide which to install and use. The reason I say this is because we are adding quite a bit of tiles in this mod, and it's causing a negative effect on game launch xml loading (the tiles are loaded and parce when the game start). So if we were to include both the HQ and LQ version together, it doubles the load time needed to parce the files, which is wholly unnecessary since most people will just use one or the other.
Alternatively, make sure the "other" (non default) tiles are in a folder that the game doesn't look at when starting up, then put instructions on how to use one over the other (although I think it's a bit more confusing this way).
I'm just going to rar them up and let the user unpack if he wants to use them.
Got busy here too. Can't give it a proper run until tomorrow at best, will sneak a peak to take screenshots today though .
Heavenfall, I mailed you the tiles
Crystlshake, Just opened the tile in the editor and I agree that the spire needs to get scaled down a notch. It looks really good, but it is a little out of proportion with the rest of the tiles.
The problem is, with several modders working on tiles, we don't really have the sense of overall scale and the screenshots are a bit hard to judge it by. Discrepancies happen. I think we got lucky that there aren't many of them .
That's what ze beta is for
For the next project, we will definitely post reference tiles.
What's even more magical is how we ended up with more or less the same pedestrian size - it's very different from a normal kingdom town, but still somehow we all got it to one size +-10%.
Well done lads. Count me in for another when and if the time comes. Great bunch with solid leadership.
P.S. I will be playing Elves and reporting back and or fixing tiles as I go. Do we have a Dead date for fixes?
No, Updates will be continuous as necessary.
Edit: John_Hughes, just so there's no confusion, I still am waiting on your optimized tiles.
@Heavenfall
Could you tweak the lumberMill's waterfall. Seems a gusher has erupted, or I will and resend?
It's been tweaked. What do you mean, resend? I haven't gotten an e-mail from you.
enroute. Should be done tonight.
The latest update right now is that I've added 7 of 3dgrunge's melee weapons as clones to other weapons (they look fucking awesome). I'm not adding the bows for now, because since 1.09 we can't make a skin apply to items in the left hand (which means all the bows = pitch black).
I've sorted out everything odd in the sovereign creation screen, which means I removed the equipment sets used for diplomacy units, and also some other gear they use like statless weapons and so on.
I've also fixed the horses, I think we ended up with 6 different colours of horses ranging from white to grey, light brown to dark brown.
Just sent the 5 Tiles. Hope they look OK. Please let me know upon receipt.
Oh I just assume they're ok. I'm sure I can trust you with that.
Packing release now.
Released 1.0 in https://forums.elementalgame.com/398661
I thought we could use this thread to discuss what's next for the community projects. What would you like to see added to the game?
A Cult based faction. A Cult can be anything. Good, Bad, Dishonest, Evil ( ), Neutral (stay at home types) Expansionists etc. etc.
I was thinking a Anti-Evil Cult to help control the Rising Undead.
Other than that I am easy.
Well, part of me thinks that it would be a good idea to continue with creating "standard" fantasy races. That way we are dealing with things that a large number of people are familiar with, which will encourage more people to get involved. Since we (well i only made one tile, so more like "you") just finished a race that will sit on the kingdom end of things why dont we make a race that would fit on the Empires side of things.
Potential races could be
- Orcs
- Dark Elves
- Skaven (warhammer)
Or of course we could always just move onto Dwarves!!
boogiebac has released a pre-alpha version of their modding tools, so I believe it should be possible before the end of the month to import an animated new model into the game. That would be required for Skaven or Dwarves. Note that if we use a custom model like this, it will require extremely heavy work in the model department as no armor and no clothing will fit.
Orcs could be skinned from the Fallen peasant that is already in-game. I would personally like to do Orcs. However, as I look through the Empire tiles I can't help but think that almost all of these could pass as orc. That is to say, an Orc race would be something much smaller in terms of tiles, and would probably focus more on weapon and armor models.
Dark elves - bleh. Just did elves.
The community project isn't necessarily limited to just doing races. Let's think outside the box!
How about the wizard tower thing https://forums.elementalgame.com/398675 ?
Or how about working with Raven X to finish the Undead Rising mod?
Or how about expanding greatly on the concept presented here? https://forums.elementalgame.com/396461
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm just expressing my own opinion here. I don't make any decisions anymore.
Just bouncing some thoughts around, and keep inmind i have no idea how the XML or engine works so what I say might just be unrealistic.
- I think it would be neat if we could build a "living world mod". A mod that aimed to add in alot more random events, or events that were depended on the choices players made.
Ie. You build a lumbermill on the side of a great forest that werewolves, ents, or anyother sentient forest beings live in. The mill begins to disturb thier way of life and the group depending on who they are either asks you to destroy the mill or they just start sending small raiding parties to harass your city.
Now you have some options here,
- you could send an army into the forest and battle it out with the creatures
- you could send some adventures in and go on a quest to cure them (werewolves)
- you could send in diplomatic missionary to smooth over relations.
- You could gain access to a special spell that would turn all the werewolves back into people.
Each of the options uses one of the tech trees and each could have a set of diffrent rewards and or punishments. The neat thing about it would be that the series of events would be onset by the choices the players make in the game world. That way we creat a living world.
We could set up any number of these scenarios, and they could be tied to specific geological areas, and common actions that players would take in those areas. That way we could also develop a sense of place.
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