The Return of the King
Posted August 9, 2022. By Lauri
After a short 8-11 year hiatus, and nearly 14 years since the latest release of The 4th Age, the Age of Men is approaching. If you're new to this mod, here's a short summary: Roughly 200 years has passed since the Fall of Sauron, and the Age of Men has come. The New Shadow looms, and peace between the Men of the West and the Men of the East and South has shattered once again. The strength of the East and South is massive, and both Gondor and Rohan are pushed back from their territory. You may play as Gondor, Rohan, Rhûn or Harad, with new heroes, units, abilities and spells. The mod retains the core gameplay of BFME1.
Here are a few pictures to enjoy, a mixture of both older and newer models. Read on after the pictures for informations about my plans going forward.
Fell deeds awake.
Now for wrath,
now for ruin,
and the red dawn.
When I left the mod and the modding community 8 years ago, the mod had gotten quite a lot done since the 0.7 beta. In fact, when I suddenly felt an urge to return to the mod a couple of months ago to complete the mod, or at least update it to work on the newest 1.06 community patch, I was surprised at how "little" was left to do on Gondor and Rohan, specifically.
Thus a motivational surge was kindled, and a lot of coding has already been completed during this summer. However, coding is also where most of the work left to do remains, and you probably won't get a lot of updates on new or updated models going forth, which is usually what's easiest to show off. I am kind of a perfectionist, so there is a lot of old models I would like to remake (I've seen how far the art in this community has come, and I want in). However, I would much rather be able to release the mod in a fun, functional and "as-bugfree-as-possible" state to you as soon as possible, and save potensial upgrades on the art department for after an initial release.
Therefore, the release plan is as following:
- 0.8: I want to launch the next beta when Gondor, Rohan and Rhûn are considered complete, while keeping Harad on the backburner. The reason for this is quite simple:
- Gondor and Rohan are both roughly 98% complete, including functional AI.
- Rhûn is roughly 95% complete, but that excludes AI. However, adding a functional AI to Rhûn should go along quite quickly when those remaining 5% are finished. I also don't have any problems with releasing this version without AI for Rhûn if that drastically reduces the time it takes to get it released.
- Harad is maybe around 40% done. They have their basic units and most buildings in-game already, along with a new spell, so you'll be able to play around with them in-game, but they are far from being complete.
- 1.0: Apart from potential bugfixing patches, 1.0 will be the next release thereafter, with a fully operational Harad also included in the mix, thus completing the original design of the mod.
- 1.1: A new round of bugfixing is likely to happen, along with balance changes.
While I make no guarantees, this is the plan I'm working towards. I'm pretty confident that 0.8 will be released within a few months or the end of the year, with or without Rhûn's AI, and after that I will simply have to see if I'm up for doing Harad as well. By the way, voice acting isn't included when I say a faction is "complete". I've enjoyed my summer vacation immensely working on this, but my job starts again tomorrow, and I won't be able to keep up the production I've had these past weeks.
Now, I'm working on this mod alone. While I've had help in the past, particularly from Mathijs, this was always "my" project. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like help, should you be interested in helping out on any of the following:
- Beta testing
- Voice acting
- Voice acting "supervisor" (writing the scripts, find voice actors, communication with them, etc.)
- Sound design (code voice acting into the game, but also making sound effects. I can teach you to code it into the game, as it's quite easy to learn)
- Less important for now, but I also don't mind help from:
- Mappers
- Coders
- Artists (2D buttons or images, 3D models and textures, units or buildings, props, etc.)
- Composer/musician (Rhûn and Harad scores comes to mind)
Just send me a message here on Revora, on Discord or ModDB if anything sounds interesting.
That's all for now. While I will still be posting here on Revora, feel free to join the newly created Discord server, or the mod's page on ModDB. You may even visit the mod's old website, though updating that site is not a priority.
Best regards,
Lauri
|
0 Comments | The Southrons
Posted February 17, 2011. By Lauri
Another day, another update, this time, Haradrim Buildings;
The main citadel for Haradrim Castles. I wanted a big boomer for this one, and I got one! The toughest and most durable citadels of all factions.
The stables, inspired heavily by the arabic stables in AoE2. Rendering in Max, I can't get to show alphas, but this is how the fence looks in-game.
And at last, the watchtower.. This is the weakest structure Harad has, being the only one that is entirely wooden. Ironically, it's just for defence.
And I've also got some in-game screenshots of the various buildings, including some that I haven't rendered. NOTE; The camp-floor are yet to be replaced, and there won't be a Darkness spell in-game. And of course, there will be a visible archer when I sort out that bug on the Watchtower!
Being an efficient son of a bitch, all are complete with destruction, buildup and idle animations! What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that Harad has, in theory, only 3 buildings left before all their structures are done! When taken into account that there was 8 only a month ago, that's pretty good progress!
Logging you out, Shepard.
|
6 Comments | The Update after Christmas
Posted December 26, 2010. By Lauri
Hey all, and a late Meriadoc Brandybuck to you all!
I hope you all enjoyed the last few days and spent them with loved ones, and not on a 11-hour flight like one of my brothers Today I've got a small update for you. As some of you might already know, I've recently been involved in a new project, The Peloponnesian Wars. That mod is for BFME2, and I enjoy working on that. That does not mean however, that I have left T4A for the kath hounds, by no means!
Today I've been working, or rather, re-working on Morgon, the Captain of the Citadel Guards. The reason for this is simple: I am getting rid of the Captain unit for the various factions. They have no purpose in the mod in reality, even though they are Captains. I just don't think they fit as a single unit in the fighting. They are not that strong or unique, and I believe that heroes will be enough to keep the armies going. Because I liked the concept of the Gondor Captains however, I decided to add more of them into Morgon, who himself is a Captain.
As you'll notice, he has a Sword-n-Shield\Bow toggle, something that I've wanted since I saw the animations cahik made for Einar, the fictional captain of Esgaroth (or Dale?) in RA back in the days.
That was all I had planned for today, when I remembered about a certain Archery Range I had made not too long ago. I was certain I had showed it before, but seeing through the forums and ModDB I didn't find it. So here it is;
I was actually quite pleased with that, and hope you'll be too. The reason I like it so much is probably because it reminds me of the Mediterrean\Arab culture's Archery Range in AoE2, one of my favorite games of all time! I'll leave it to you to figure out yourselves what models are tied to which rank
That's all for this time, you'll have to wait 'till next your for another update! Cheers
|
6 Comments | New beta released!
Posted December 19, 2008. By Lauri
Hey all!
It's time for a new beta for you all! This time around, much has been done to the mod... In addition to Gondor, Rhun are considered done, which means you can do head on battles with two complete factions! For the record, I'd say that Rohan is above 60%, if not 70%! A couple of heroes and a single unit missing, that's all... Means it's playable, but lacks heroes to lead them.. but spam units and that shouldn't be a problem
Go here to access the download page, or click here for a direct download.
I hope you'll enjoy the beta, and I really hope you won't forget two important things about it; Report bugs here Suggest suggestions here
And of course, if for some reason you can't get it to work, simply post in this thread, and I'll help you as good as I can
Anyways, that's it folks! Again, I hope you enjoy it, as it's my Christmas present to you all, even if you don't celebrate!
|
29 Comments | A spear day, a red day..
Posted October 25, 2008. By Lauri
Hey all, it's the 5th update of Rohan in a row... You could call me busy, or you could call me lazy, I'd go for both
Those are the latest additions to the mod That means, that there's really little left to do for Rohan to complete it, and that there's hope for another release before Christmas Which I really hope will happen, because last release was only because I was tired of modding, and I'm not that now
This also means that I'm finally done with reusing everything about Rohan... After I created the Rohirrim, I've been sampling so much of their skins, that many of the newest things are pure lack-of-making-to-uniques... Some are though, but not all
Anyways, that's it for this update I had planned to have a couple of anims with it, but I never got around doing those
|
12 Comments |
|