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

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The Great Gate of Minas Anor lay broken

Hey all

I don't have a particular big update today, but here goes.


Veterans of Minas Anor
When the Great Gate of Minas Anor lay broken before the Host of Khôragan and the lower levels of the city burned, King Eldaravir realized the futility of further defending his City, and ordered the Captains to gather the remaining citizens and defenders of Minas Anor so that they could collectively escape across the passes of Mount Mindolluin towards the vales of Lossarnach and into Lebennin. Now, these Veterans of Minas Anor make their stand on the west bank of the Celos river, refusing to allow the land of Lebennin to fall like Minas Anor did.
They are the basic spearmen unit of Gondor. You can find other pretty nice descriptions of units by Matias here.

"The shite's blue!" you say? Well yes. I've overhauled Gondor so that pretty much all units now apply for Housecolour. And the great thing about it is that all of them look great in many variations! Even pink!



And for all, behold the beauty of Matias' awesome Rhûn buildings; In-game!



Hope you enjoyed some in-game screenshots for a change!
That's it, take care!

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Knights of a golden ship and a silver swan

Hey everyone!

Now it's over a year since the last update, and it's been over 5 years since I started on this mod(!).
What have I got today? Remakes... Yes, damn the self criticism.. I wanted to improve those who bears the token of a golden ship and a silver swan..



Eranoth, the Prince of Dol Amroth, has been redone. He wears a cape, a sword and no helmet to distinguish himself from his knights.



And of course his Knights of Dol Amroth has been redone to fit. No, they don't come dismounted. They have been assigned to the be only cavalry unit that Gondor has, as I have been doing some pre-balance work, trying to settle the factions with a decent amount of unit types that resemble their overall theme. This means that Gondor will have infantry as their main focus again, while Rohan will be more cavalry oriented and less about infantry than they are now. Same applies for Harad and Rhun and their themes. If you visit the site, you'll see an outdated category of how it used to be.

That is all, if there's anything you wonder let me know!

Keep your eye on the horizon, I've heard reports of Haradrim gathering an army in the South...

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The Update after Christmas

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

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Techtree updated

Hey all, pardon the wall of text. It's about the changes in the techtree, so if you don't care, the sweets are at the bottom. If you care, but don't want reasons, just go to the site to see it. Thanks

So I come to you know with the updated techtree. The reason for this is because I've never thought about balance before, and just wanted cool stuff. Cool stuff is, without a doubt, cool, but cooler yet when they've got a purpose
So now I've gotten around updating the techtree, by mostly removing units acctually. Rhûn is the only faction that made it though without a scratch, so to speak. The rest had units removed, and altered purposes. I will give each and everyone a reason to why I removed them, hopefully some of you will be sorry to see some of these units go:

So, let's take Rohan first. The only unit they got removed was the Knights of the Eastfold. The reason for this was because they're practically a duplicate of the regular Rohirrim. I really wanted to give Rohan some diversity when it comes to cavalry, but don't see many options. They're basically a horse based faction, with spam of Rohirrim Cavalry and Rohirrim Horse Archers The Royal Guards are currently an Elite Infantry horde. Why there's both a mounted and unmounted one in the render for them is because the King Eothain is able to summon two battalions of Mounted Royal Guards. I am considering switching this a bit, so that Mounted Royal Guards are the Elite Cavalry unit of Rohan, and the Infantry could only be summoned by Eothain. This would give Rohan a more horse based faction apperance, and lessen infantry while gaining cavalry. At the moment, they've got 2 cavalry and 5 infantry! I'm also considering removing the Spearmen of the Westfold, since Royal Guards are better at their job, and Eastfold lost it's unit. I don't like to play favorites, so we'll see..

Harad lost the Desert Spearmen, Serpent Guard, Half-Trolls and their leader. The spearmen went because they're a fodder duplicate of Rhûn's spearmen, and I don't really like spam fodder units. Serpent Guard went because of Harad's excessive Elite units. Either the Serpent Raiders went, or the Serpent Guard. I think they should have an elite Cavalry given their vast land area They had 4 elites, they've now got 1. Last are the Half-Trolls. I didn't really know anything about them, 'cept for their White eyes and red tounges. And I don't really have any neat ideas for them, so, they aren't in anymore. They'll manage fine without, and I'm already pushing my luck with the Evil Dwarves for Rhûn Don't want to do something drastic here aswell. They're leader is also thus gone

Gondor... heh, where to start? There's been a giant change here. First of, the Swordsmen have been replaced by the Men of Anfalas, which have basically replaced them. The Men of Lossarnach and Men-at-Arms of Dol Amroth have been completely removed, due to their "I'm a duplicate with an axe, and here's my duplicate friend with a two-handed sword" attitude, and last there's been a change with the two Guard units. They Fountain Guard have been removed completely, reason which I'll present to you in a quote:

would have remained at their posts even if Minas Tirith burned all around them

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