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Beginning to Mod 0 AD - Mythical Pac. NW Civilization


Sasquatch
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Hi,

I am a longtime fan of both RTS's and world history, so naturally when I stumbled upon 0 AD I felt like I was right at home.

Age of empires is one of my favorite game franchises, and Ive played them all rigorously, including AOM.

In order to familiarize myself with the engine, I want to start off by modding in a custom civilization, based on the Pre-columbian societies of the Pacific Northwest U.S. and Western Canada and their Mythologies in a classy respectful way. (Groups belonging to this culture zone include Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish, etc.), these societies each have rich mythological and cultural histories that would be a great basis for an RTS civilization. Keep in mind this is an extremely broad range of cultures condensed into what is essentially a civilization that takes bits and pieces of these cultures and turns them into one all encompassing civilization that in ancient history never existed as a whole, (but you could say that about plenty of civs, like the greeks for instance)

The artstyle would be charactaristic of the Pacific Northwest in shape and form, but I would avoid copying real life designs as these are the intellectual property of the real life cultures and individuals themselves.

Take a look at some of these paintings for inspiration http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions...a01e.shtml#menu The time periods are quite a bit later than that which I aim to portray, but the traditional styles are there.

My rough template of which is below:

(Pacific Northwest Pre-Columbian Mythical Civilization, Placeholder Name)

The civ would be based primarily on infantry with archer support. Water will be vital and fishing weirs would be constructed in place of farms, but adjacent to the water much like a dock. Age up would be through a "Potlach" system, and would alter the look of the TC for each age.

The Map settings would require plenty of water, trees and foragable foods to mimic the environment of the pacific northwest. Agriculture was never really developed as there was little need with such plentiful resources. So renewable food sources would be fishing traps, fishing weirs and perhaps cultivation of clam beds.

Buildings:

Chieftan's house- A grand longhouse (plank house) that acts as the town center, this is where the leader of the village would reside in real life. Would be decorated with a painted housefront and a clan totem pole.

Longhouse- House, resembling the TC house but smaller.

War Shack- A small longhouse styled building bearing a large carved Sisiutl on the front, acts as barracks and trains first tier of infantry.

Outpost- Small outpost made of logs, for LOS and light defense.

Fortress- Stoutly constructed Longhouse surrounded by log Palisades, historically the cultures of the Pacific northwest coast constructed large fortifications on hilltops and even equipped them with rolling log defenses to fend off besiegers. Trains second tier of infantry and archers. see http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions.../warfo01e.shtml

Walls- See above,

(Storehouse)- Drop off point for resources, basically a little Cedar shack with a fire for smoking.

Marketplace- Market, group of small shacks that would facilitate trade.

Fishing Trap- Small fishing trap that can be harvested by canoes and villagers.

Fishing Weir- Large trap that juts out from land, can be harvested by villagers, pretty much what their farming implement is.

Clam beds- secondary farm

Shrine- Spiritual Building (one of 6 that allows further customizing based on a techtree like system, no limit to how many but progress based on a currency similar to favor in AOM, can have multiple, will be discussed in detail below another time)

Dock- Essentially a shack on the beach with some canoes pulled up to it, in later ages could upgrade to actual dock-like structure with decor. Produces all manner of canoes and mythical sea creatures.

Units:

Villager- Villager

Spearman- Bonus Vs. Wild animals, mythical creatures and perhaps cavalry (no cav in civ)

Clubman- Bonus Vs. Infantry

Hunter- Archer, bonus Vs. Animals, food gathering bonus

Atlatl- Skirmisher, bonus Vs. Archers

Sisiutl Warrior- Elite Infantry Clubman, Heavily Armored (Cedar Bark Armor)

Shield Bearer- Warrior with shield and spear

And more Infantry to come

Shaman- Powerful healer and has unique abilities, Build one with each Shrine

(Warchief?)

Canoe- Light attacker, gathers resources and transports, and trades

War Canoe- Stronger canoe with more firepower and more cargo space, can sling stones at enemy ships.

Legendary Canoe- Giant War Canoe with Sails, wont be spammable (They probably didnt have sails in pre-columbian times historically, but since we are talking mythical time period theres no reason not to add one imo)

Mythical Creatures:

Orca Whale- Aquatic melee attacker, perhaps has ability to transform into humanoid form (as was the case in many cultures) and walk on land as special infantry.

Sisiutl- Big war monster kind of like a sasquatch, but with an instant kill. Perhaps other forms too.

Sasquatch- Salish mythical woodlands monster, melee attacker.

Wolfpack- Pack of wolves, pretty simple

Devilfish- Giant Octopus

Various Animal-people

Shadow Monster

Two headed mountain serpent

Thunderbird- Ultimate mythical creature, is summoned down from the sky in a blaze of lightning from its eyes that arcs and hits enemy units in an area, flies around and attacks them for a couple minutes, until it leaves.

Myth Powers:

Overgrowth- Ground blossoms in AOE, heals your buildings and units

Thunderbolt- Kills a single unit

Summon trees- Grows a group of trees for harvest or block way

A bunch of others i'll list later.

WIP

-------------------------------------------------------

My main goal is to get some basic models done and imported into the engine with a base, blank "Civilization" template if at all possible.

I'm pretty decent at modelling low poly building models, but really bad at UV mapping, getting better.

Minimal programming experience, but I learn fast.

I use Blender and Paint.net atm, but I'm experienced with gimp and photoshop. Prob end up using gimp.

Priority 1

TC

Villager

Clubman

Priority 2

Hunter

Longhouse

Dock

Canoe

Heavy armored warrior

Spearman

Shaman

Base environment

  • Cedar trees
  • Clam Beds and fish
  • Wildlife

Fishing Weir

Fish trap

Priority 3

War canoe

Market

Shrine(s)

Firepit doodads

Fortress

Walls

Outpost

Priority 4

Myth Units

Everything else

-----------------------------------------

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!

Edited by Sasquatch
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Heres something I whipped together, its just a placeholder but it gets the job done.

This would be the TC, Its just to show that im actually doing something lol, so its all just placeholders.

Longhouse1.png

I'm having trouble finding a blender friendly person template for the engine, I tried converting but no luck. If anyone could help me locate one that would that would be nice. I know I can't make animations for it through blender, but couldnt I use the ones that are already there?

Edited by Sasquatch
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Welcome and good luck!

The artstyle would be charactaristic of the Pacific Northwest in shape and form, but I would avoid copying real life designs as these are the intellectual property of the real life cultures and individuals themselves.

I wouldn't worry about it.

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Oh I figured that out in regards to using Collada files, I was able to import the structure meshes pretty easily as a test.

I did and am currently working a bit with UDK, and strangely the Collada exporter in 2.5 works just fine for that use, other than some issues with the UV mapping. I'll go ahead and use 2.49 for export.

My problem is unit models, since for some reason none (I tried 4 different ones that are .dae) of them are importing, even after removing the <diffuse> code portions.

If there is a blank collada humanoid for use as a template, that would be cool.

Here is what is supposed to be a Western Red cedar tree typical of the Pacific Northwest US and BC I did real quick, badly UV Mapped, but I figured that It would be useful. I did it to match the flora of the region, so I'm going to try to import it into Atlas and work on a showcase map. Ill make 3-4 variations of it.

155 Tris

cedar2.png

cedar1.png

Edited by Sasquatch
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Ok so I successfully imported a couple of my models into the Atlas editor, and I am beginning to configure the Actor files.

It looks nice, I've updated the model and am currently working on a couple more, including a cedar dugout canoe, I'll have pics in a bit. I've even set up a little test map.

I'm still having problems with modifying unit models, if anyone knows a solution. I don't have access to 3DS max, so I might just end up reskinning the base models until I find a better solution.

I'm slowly working my way through the code, and pretty soon I hope to have a small demo which includes a Unique TC for the civ, which can produce villagers, and construct a few different buildings, a house, barracks and storehouse.

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