Woah, this topic really took off. Allow me to present a concept for a possible storyline:
First of all, the setting. This concept goes the full fantasy route with the kingdom of Esther. The name's not important, pick whatever name you want. This kingdom is large and diverse. From mountains to forests to deserts, it's got everything, including six provinces, each ruled by a faction. The kingdom of Esther was ruled by a royal family of paladins for centuries before a plague of unknown cause wiped out the royal family, devastating the countryside. After ten lawless years, we now have seven factions competing for the right to rule Esther.
- From the northern province of Mermia comes the Norsemen. The northern province is a rough tundra dominated by mountains and coniferous forests. They are strong willed, hardy, and blunt. Their focus is brute strength, and combat-wise, they're an offensive powerhouse. Difficult to control and expensive, but a hardy group of experienced warriors with reasonable defensive might.
- South of Mermia lies the forestry wonderland of Olmas, home of the native Woodsmen tribe (formerly known as the Indian faction). They've been locked in a thousand year struggle with the Norsemen, to a point that neither side knows why they fight. The Woodsmen are cunning and devious. They lack the offensive strength of the Norsemen, but make up for that with their carefully placed defenses and traps. Their massive population and strong knowledge of the forests allots their survival. Whereas the Norsemen prefer hand to hand combat, the Woodsmen keep hidden in the trees with ranged weapons.
- To the east of Mermia and Olmas lies the dark, barren mountains of Tyrosa, where the Wizards' Republic rules (formerly known as the Magic faction). The Wizards are intelligent and cold, largely populating the mountain range. Lacking strong defenses beyond the mountains, their offensive powers are largely from powerful spells with large blast radii. The seclusion of the Wizards, however, has lead to deep mistrust. They've been at war with the Brotherhood for the last decade due to beliefs that the other was the cause of the plague which wiped out the Paladins.
- Further east, on the other side of the mountains of Tyrosa, lie Antor, ruled by The Brotherhood (formerly known as the Tech faction). Well-balanced in combat, the Brotherhood overthrew the previous government a hundred years ago using a combination of careful tactics and propaganda. The Brotherhood houses a steep distrust of magic and all things arcane, so were quick to blame the Wizards' Republic for the plague that caused so much distress across Esther. The Brotherhood is the most balanced faction, being composed of a mixture of offensive and defensive units with a share of melee and ranged units.
- To the south of all this lies the desert province of Cathartene, ruled for as long as anyone can remember by the Desert Tenacity (mixture of the Egypt and Persian factions, since this is our own universe, and the Egypt faction is too obvious of an Egypt rip-off). Diverse and an economic powerhouse, Carthartene is the largest of the provinces, boasting a large population, but the desert provides poor natural defenses. The large and diverse population is the Desert Tenacity's greatest asset in war. Thankfully, its merchant position has allowed the Desert Tenacity to escape accusations for the cause of the plague, but the Tenacity has its own ideas.
- And to the west of Olmas lies the plains province of Atland, ruled by The Legion (formerly known as the Romans faction). The Legion is a lawfully neutral faction, with the highest position being judge magistrates, whom roam the land in hopes of providing justice. They persecute crime and resolve wrongs. All the provinces respect the rights of the magistrates. While The Legion points no fingers at the cause of the plague, they have devoted all their resources into finding the source, and have suspicions of their own. In battle, The Legion has very strong defensive capabilities with comparatively powerful offensive capabilities. While the common-folk tend to have a distrusting attitude towards magic, the magistrates have been known to use magic when they deem it necessary.
In the center of the country lies the neutral hold of Ebum, the palace once held by the paladins. It has lied dormant and abandoned since the fall of the paladins.
And a map of what that would look like:
And a quick overview of the factions following this storyline:
So what's the reason for all this back story? Well, I could argue that the story is the most important part of a game. It binds the game together. It's the glue that holds everything else in place. Also, it makes it possible to have a memorable campaign. You probably noticed all this stuff about a plague in the faction descriptions. That's the basic premise for the scenarios. Every faction would have their own branch of scenarios. It always starts out with "who unleashed this plague?". The factions go to war against each other as they carry out their suspicions or other factions carry out their own. Ultimately, none of the factions were responsible for the plague, but rather the paladins were eradicated by an invader that wished to usurp the thrown. As proven by our own actions, the death of the paladins turned the factions against each other, providing an easy route to conquest. In all six different campaigns, the final scenario is a "boss battle" against a powerful foe capable of producing swarm units against you, unleashing powerful area attacks, etc. This is the only aspect that isn't currently possible with MegaGlest, as there is no way to create a faction that is unique to a scenario (does not appear as a choice in custom games). It would, however, be an incredibly simple feature to add (all that's needed is custom games to not show the faction as an option).
Anyway, if we're serious about revamping MegaGlest, it's obvious that Softcoder is non-committal, but that should not matter. The MegaPack and its resources are all CC-BY-SA. If we can finish the mod, then the MegaGlest developers can choose for themselves if it's better than the MegaPack (also, can we seriously call it something besides "the MegaPack"?). The worse that can happen? We have a full blown epic mod.
At any rate, I think the first thing we need to do is decide on the storyline. I submitted my concept above (note that all names are "working names" and can be changed, the key point is a backstory that combines the factions as well as making the factions fit together rather than being a jumbled mess from all eras). Once we have a story, we can take a closer look at the techtree. We can determine which units should go, where new units should be added, units that could be tweaked, etc, to fit within these descriptions. From that point, we can look at the media. What models should be redone? Obviously the Norsemen, Indians, and such as mostly retextured stuff. Might have been fine when the MegaPack was first released, but that's simply too low quality today. So figure out unit by unit which ones deserve new models, and make a list of them. People can then choose what they'll model and submit it to the dropbox repository.
I propose that we set a hard rule that when uploading a model to the repository, you must upload the source files as well. The reason for this is that someone who's a better animator can reanimate the model, or perhaps someone notices the texture isn't mapped very well and wants to redo that. There's a lot of different ways that models could be tweaked in the future, so the blend file (etc) should be made available.
As for an avenue of communication, I'd prefer the forum boards. While not being as real-time as, say, Skype, they provide better formatting, allow multiple threads of discussion, are easy to post images in, and so on. For quick, real time discussion, IRC might be a better choice than Skype, as it doesn't require an account or the like. Alternatively, we could use a publicly available Google Doc page. It would make it possible to have a techtree outline while allowing people to add comments and change it as they like (with modifications viewable).
At any rate, if there are enough serious people interested in this project, I am interested in helping as well. I don't know how much time I have on my hands in the future, but would like to throw my hat in the ring for the scenarios process. I also am capable of modeling, texturing, and animating, however, my animation skills really suck and I don't understand the animation method used by some others like John.d.h (I'd a tutorial, by the way).
EDIT: Also, while we're rethinking the MegaPack, I'd also like to propose we consider adding a hero unit to each faction. The hero would be a unit that there can only be one of at a time. It'd be very strong, but very expensive (so bit loss if it dies). If possible (via future feature), I'd like to see a "cool-down" before another can be produced. Each faction would have a unique hero unit fitting to the faction's theme. For example, I already mentioned magistrates as a key character for The Legion. They could be a powerful regular unit (like the general), or it could be a one-of-a-kind hero unit with power to burn. The Wizards' Republic, for example, could have some type of arcane beast. A godlike being (not "Thor", because this is our own universe) could be the unique unit of the Norsemen. Just possibilities.
