MegaGlest Refit - Norse

[-Archmage-]

Personally I don't like the name Stave Church, and I think there should be Thor.

Stave Church is unique, and accurately related. It should stay, but what do you have in mind for replacement?

Thor? I think I'll put up a poll...

Why not "Stavkirke" ("Stave Church" in Norwegian)?

I'm good with either!

[Omega]

Personally I don't like the name Stave Church, and I think there should be Thor.

Stave Church is unique, and accurately related. It should stay, but what do you have in mind for replacement?

Thor? I think I'll put up a poll...

Why not "Stavkirke" ("Stave Church" in Norwegian)?

I'm not sure about using foreign words that wouldn't be commonplace. They make things confusing. Personally, I'm fine with Stave Church, but as always, we're open to suggestions, right?

[Zoythrus]

I like using the Norwegian name, except for the fact that I want some naming standard. If one thing is in Norwegian, then all of it will have to be in Norwegian.

[-Archmage-]

This is looking a lot like Tech.... I think the Fort/Defense building, should be the main building. The disadvantage being that they do not have a small building for defense, and that their defense won't be able to fight when it's producing. It will also be very expensive to build another one!

[Psychedelic_hands]

I won't get to UV the man before christmas, sorry. Anyone else is free to if they'd like.
But I did finish my house last night (I think).
Here's a few quick snaps:

(click to show/hide)

Any feedback is much appreciated. Especially the kind which helps me improve it.

[MuwuM]

the house looks awesome ;-)

the only thing that I noticed is that the hay above the door doesn't really fit to the other hay ... could be solved with a bit modification in the texture...

[Hagekura]

I won't get to UV the man before christmas, sorry. Anyone else is free to if they'd like.
But I did finish my house last night (I think).
Here's a few quick snaps:

(click to show/hide)

Any feedback is much appreciated. Especially the kind which helps me improve it.

Woww great! This is one of the best building models for glest I've seen so far.
If you keep going with this quality, the MG refit project will get a great success.

[Omega]

Hey guys, obviously, Christmas caused a bit of a lull. I think we need to finalize the techtree.

According to the Google doc, this is what we have so far:


(the status of the Jarl is unknown and the food production is assumed)

This is my alternative proposal:



It's not a big change. The production of the huskarl, battering ram, and raider are moved to a new building (working name: arsenal). This is done because you can't produce and attack at the same time, and I fear the AI wouldn't use the defensive buildings correctly then. Likewise, they don't need an upgrade. As well, to make the cottage and farm worthwhile morphs, they will gain upgrades of their own in addition to producing more food (the price of the produced food would increase, but it'd be "more bang for your buck"). This makes them more worthwhile to get. The castle is renamed to longhouse, which I feel is more fitting, but it doesn't really matter much. The Jarl will be produced from this longhouse/castle, as he's the leader and the longhouse/castle is the main building, the heart of the faction. Finally, I don't consider the raven necessary. I see it as an unnecessary unit that the AI won't use correctly and doesn't really fit in. Feel free to convince me otherwise.

Now, upgrades. We really should decide on them. I think that the Njord faction should have less upgrades than the others, focusing more on brute strength than upgrading units. Thus, I propose (all working names):

• Honed blades: Produced by the armory. Increases the attack strength of all melee units.
  
• Tempered steel: Produced by the armory. Increases the armor and HP of most units.
  
• Leadership: Produced by the stave church. Required to produce the Jarl.
  
• Gates of Valhalla: Produced by the stave church. Required to produce the Valkyrie.
  
• Barren agriculture: Produced by the farm. Increases the production speed of all buildings. If MG acquires a way to apply different effects to different sets of units, I'd like to see it also increase the movement speed of all units. If MG also acquires a way to modify harvesting speed, it should increase that as well.
  

So, if we can get an agreement on the techtree layout and the upgrades, I'll create the folder structure in the repo and modify the Google doc accordingly.

I also added a column to the Google doc (as well as changed the orientation to fit more information in) for the modder. Could all modders please leave a note when they choose to make any models, so we don't end up with multiple people doing the same model or confusion as to who is doing what, etc.

[MightyMic]

Alright, here is what I have of the castle so far... it's a lot lighter than Hand's longhouse, so it might need re-texturing. But tell me what you think

[ElimiNator]

Looking good, maybe add barrels or weapons around it, and yes darker texture.

[Omega]

The area near the door shows the wood as being very thin for such a large building. Perhaps thicken that area or add a vertical log. And how tall is this building? The door should be at least two Blender units tall, to fit a humanoid unit. It might be necessary to raise the roof over the door if it's not at least two units tall. I agree, the texture could be a bit darker, which could be as simple as tweaking the levels of the textures.

As per eliminator, barrels or weapons on the walls could look really good. There's some shields and axes on the WIP armory model in the repo if you want to use those. But anyway, nice work.

[Psychedelic_hands]

Nice job again Omega  . I agree with almost everything you said.

MightyMic, nice! Maybe try experimenting with gimps colour tools to see if you can't get your textures to sit better with each other. It's like painting, your palette is the most important part. Also use a Lattice modifier to give your second roof a bit nicer shape. And adding more detail to it as well maybe because it looks sort of dodgy compared to your other roof.The top of the building looks great, just the base needs some work.

And of course what Omega and Elim said. But don't make it too dark. I've tested my building out in GAE and it looks fine, but I suspect it will look too dark in MG... I may have to change it.
Make it a bit longer too, it's a bit wide to be a long house .

[-Archmage-]

I agree with Omega. One big thing I noticed is that the thatch/hay 'secondary roof' just cuts off. I suggest use of my armory texture for the hay, it's pretty much tileable horizontally and it has alpha'd out bits of straw, that look more realistic.

I plan Njord to have 1 folder for all models and textures, that way we can use bits of other textures and get better graphics and better loading times!

The textures look pretty low resolution, I'll check it out in Blender though. A tip: Use tileable textures! One of my mountain models in JungleHD has a massively sharp texture only because it is tiled well. To tile something simply scale the UV up and you'll notice that in Blender when you go past the edge of the texture it starts to tile. This effect transfers perfectly into Glest. As to generating seamless textures, you can use the Make Seamless filter in GIMP for a quick, cheap and dirty job, or you can get the resynthesizer plugin for GIMP which does a terrific job!
Another important thing to do is to optimize the UV, aim to have little space that is not used!

[Zoythrus]

Hey Omega, I can agree with you on all of the stuff that you said, sans some of the upgrade names (I know that they're WIP, but still). Things like "Leadership" and "Gates of Valhalla" could use better names, such as "Heart of a Warrior" and "Valhalla's Blessing" respectively. The other ones sound like upgrades you'd find in the Vbros packs (no offense, Vbros).

There was a unit that we didn't add to the doc which Arch, Hands, and I had discussed - the Berserker. After the Stave Church has been created, Spearmen and Axemen could turn into these guys, which would get improved strength (across the board, so they lose their specialties), and maybe get enhanced HP and regen. As an added bonus, I was thinking about having them lose their "infantry" status, meaning that there's no effective counter (aside from just beating their skulls in).

The Ravens aren't necessary, they were just in there as an idea.

EDIT: I noticed massive similarities in the names of the "Axeman" and "Axe Thrower," so I renamed the latter to "Skirmisher." That should eliminate any confusion.

[Omega]

There was a unit that we didn't add to the doc which Arch, Hands, and I had discussed - the Berserker. After the Stave Church has been created, Spearmen and Axemen could turn into these guys, which would get improved strength (across the board, so they lose their specialties), and maybe get enhanced HP and regen. As an added bonus, I was thinking about having them lose their "infantry" status, meaning that there's no effective counter (aside from just beating their skulls in).

I like the concept of the berserker. I'm not sure what you mean by "lose their infantry status", though. Do you mean to give them an armour type that doesn't have the same weaknesses? Personally, while I think the berserker shouldn't care about pain, I don't think they should be more immune to damage. If anything, their extreme strength should be offset with weaker defensive. In fact, an interesting concept might be a unit with average HP, very high strength, very low armor (and possibly a more vulnerable armour style, such as organic), and a very high HP regeneration. The high HP regeneration would be the most interesting concept. They die fast if you concentrate on them, but if left alone, they can wreck havoc.

At any rate, I always imagined berserkers as people who disregarded their personal safety for aggression.

[Zoythrus]

There was a unit that we didn't add to the doc which Arch, Hands, and I had discussed - the Berserker. After the Stave Church has been created, Spearmen and Axemen could turn into these guys, which would get improved strength (across the board, so they lose their specialties), and maybe get enhanced HP and regen. As an added bonus, I was thinking about having them lose their "infantry" status, meaning that there's no effective counter (aside from just beating their skulls in).

I like the concept of the berserker. I'm not sure what you mean by "lose their infantry status", though. Do you mean to give them an armour type that doesn't have the same weaknesses? Personally, while I think the berserker shouldn't care about pain, I don't think they should be more immune to damage. If anything, their extreme strength should be offset with weaker defensive. In fact, an interesting concept might be a unit with average HP, very high strength, very low armor (and possibly a more vulnerable armour style, such as organic), and a very high HP regeneration. The high HP regeneration would be the most interesting concept. They die fast if you concentrate on them, but if left alone, they can wreck havoc.

At any rate, I always imagined berserkers as people who disregarded their personal safety for aggression.

Yes, you're right, I meant that phrase as "they are no longer deemed 'infantry'."

If the idea I posted wasn't well received, I would have done something very similar to what you had suggested. To be honest, though, I think that a unit that had no "type" would be a very interesting concept. That would mean that there's no effective counter aside from just attacking them until they die. Maybe we can keep that idea around for another faction's heavy infantry.

EDIT: Due to similarities with the units of other factions, I have made the "Spearman" into a "Halberdier."

SECOND EDIT: Arch told me that he thinks we should only have the hovel go up one level, to the cottage. Two levels for the hovel, but three for the camp.

[-Archmage-]

I kinda think the citadel is too strong, and simply that we should only have 2 defense units. Especially considering this faction is supposed to have weak defense.

[Omega]

I kinda think the citadel is too strong, and simply that we should only have 2 defense units. Especially considering this faction is supposed to have weak defense.

Would be fine by me. The Romans should be the defensively strong faction, anyway.

[-Archmage-]

I kinda think the citadel is too strong, and simply that we should only have 2 defense units. Especially considering this faction is supposed to have weak defense.

Would be fine by me. The Romans should be the defensively strong faction, anyway.

I think Romans should have highest defense and second highest attack, matched by a longer process to get to the most powerful unit.

[Zoythrus]

I kinda think the citadel is too strong, and simply that we should only have 2 defense units. Especially considering this faction is supposed to have weak defense.

Would be fine by me. The Romans should be the defensively strong faction, anyway.

I think Romans should have highest defense and second highest attack, matched by a longer process to get to the most powerful unit.

The original plan was to give the player a choice: do I spend a buttload of resources to make this awesome defense, or do I use it to make an army? I wanted it to be Extremely expensive, to keep the number of defenses down, but yet if you could manage to scrounge up enough resources (and keep it alive long enough during the upgrade process), it would be worth it. Also, it's historically accurate - Vikings didnt like to fight for the same land twice.

[Psychedelic_hands]

I like the Njord's current tech-tree.
It is actually something different rather than them just having "weaker defences".  The whole building upgrade system is pretty nifty, I don't think it has really been done in Glest before.  I also would vote to keep the Hovel-Cottage-Farm upgrade path, as that's something cool and unique too... Plus I ready have modeled the farm and started on the cottage...

Hopefully it will make me reminisce about my AoEII days...

[Zoythrus]

I like the Njord's current tech-tree.
It is actually something different rather than them just having "weaker defences".  The whole building upgrade system is pretty nifty, I don't think it has really been done in Glest before.  I also would vote to keep the Hovel-Cottage-Farm upgrade path, as that's something cool and unique too... Plus I ready have modeled the farm and started on the cottage...

Hopefully it will make me reminisce about my AoEII days...

"Different" is what we strive for. We're keeping the Citadel.

[Omega]

So keep the citadel, but still go from cottage to hovel?

[Zoythrus]

If Hands has modeled it, why let it go to waste?

[-Archmage-]

So we're gonna give norse the best offense and the best defense because it's nifty? If we're gonna make a faction strong like that it should be the legion. They were actually that powerful.

@Hands: I'd like to switch your "farm" model to be the longhouse, and the "castle" model to be the barracks. Your longhouse model looks like a longhouse, no one in a million years would guess "farm", and I don't even think we have a 'castle' unit any longer.