Hello everyone!
In this topic I want to share with you my experiences as a developer of the Floris Mod Pack. I know that I'm not the most active person on the forum, so with this I want to show you that I'm still alive and kicking, and what I'm working on at the moment. I won't post on a regular basis, just once in a while.
Without any further ado, let me tell you what I've been working on the past time.
After the release of 2.4, I didn't immediately start working on the next version. Instead, I participated in an AAR contest on the Paradox forums. For the game Hearts of Iron 3 I made an AAR about the Governator travelling back in time to help Hitler send paratroopers to Paris to fight Belgian terminators in order to free Iceland from the evil Danes. Not only had I to learn the game (in which I suck, by the way), but also write ten chapters. I managed to do that in time, and now the judges of the contest are taking their time to come to a good result. Hopefully I won't do too bad . Since I finished the part for the contest I put all my spare time in the development of version 2.5.
The upcoming version will be quite different from the previous ones. First of all we're not going to maintain the savegame compatibility, as was decided in a poll. In previous versions we couldn't rearrange things neatly: the code became a cluttered mess due to that. This is one thing we're fixing right now. It's important to do, since this not only makes coding easier, but will also fix some bugs and opens up new possibilities previously not possible.
Another thing we're about to do different, is the different packs we'll be releasing. Until now there were two packs: the Floris Basic mod pack, which is basically just a bunch of extra items and improved graphics, and the Floris Expanded mod pack, which is the real deal with everything. For version 2.5 we're going to release three packs: the two I made before, plus a new pack with all the code but without any fancy graphical features. Both this pack and the Basic pack can be combined to one 'Expanded Lite'. Hopefully, with this setup, more people will be able to enjoy the mod. Let's call this third pack for now the Code pack, until I - or someone else - comes up with a better name.
Now, what have I done the past two weeks? I first started with rearranging the troops. All Swadian troops are now together, All Rhodoks, all... you get the idea. Until version 2.4 they were spread out over the file, which was pretty difficult to edit as anyone who made their own troop tree can tell. This wasn't that much work. But also all those troops had wrong id's. This is not per se the same as the name of the troop: an id is an internal name the source uses to identify that certain troop. It has nothing to do with the name displayed in the game. Some troops had pretty strange id's compared to their names, making it pretty hard to see in the code what soldier we're actually talking about. For example, the 'Swadian Skirmisher' had the troop id 'swadian_5b2'. To make things easier, I renamed all these id's to reflect their names. So this 'swadian_5b2' became a 'swadian_skirmisher'. That should make things a lot clearer for everyone diving in the Floris source. Unfortunately I thus had to rename all the id's used in other parts of the source to reference. I had to go through thousands of references to check them and rename where necessary. That took quite some time as you can imagine.
This rearranging of troops has immediately opened up some nice features. I finally added the custom troops! I know quite a lot of you wanted them in, but unfortunately adding them would break savegame compatibility. Since that's no issue anymore, I added them. I designed a new troop tree for them, but I still need to go over that a few more times before I'm fully satisfied. Another thing I added, are the Troop Heroes. Troops of tier 6 - that have no possibility to upgrade to tier 7 - will now have a chance to become a companion, with a maximum of 4 of such companions. Another reason to go for these troops in the tree. This code still needs to be checked for bugs etc, but at least I'm now able to implement this.
Another thing I did was adding different town walkers, village walkers and spy walkers for each faction, giving local villages and such more coloure locale. There were already different ones for the Khergit and Sarranid, but the other four all had the same kind of villagers, with the same equipment and the same faces. That will be different now. I still need to tweak them (giving them items, stats etc), but at least they are now present in the code.
While I did this, I also added 5 new companions. Quite a while ago I had made a poll to see how many new companions people would like to have. The result was split between just a few, and really a lot. Since really a lot is going to take quite a lot of work, I went with just a few. There is more to do than just adding zillions of new companions . Anyway, I didn't just add them: I incorporated them. Remember the Companions Circle, which points out which companions (dis)likes which? I basically redrawn it, incorporating all new companions, including Floris. The old companions now acknowledge the new ones. I still need to rewrite some of their lines to match the new relations tho. Even more, I still need to write all the lines of the new companions... But at least their code is done.
During my work on the troop tree and such, I also played a little Warband. To be exact, I continued my game for the Me, Floris AAR. But six months have passed, and I still haven't got enough material to write a new chapter. So I'll need to continue to play a little more, since I intend to make chapter 51!
I also tried to do some mipmap fading: this would give a really great graphical effect without any extra load on the cpu. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do this in the Gimp. The tutorial shows how it easily can be done in photoshop, but unfortunately I don't have that program. I tried to find a tutorial, add-on or anything to show me how it's done in the Gimp, but I haven't found it. So for now I'm leaving it. Too bad.
Right now I'm working on the items. I already put them in the right order (which took me a few days to do... 2000+ items are a lot), but now I'm doing something even better: I'm checking each item and see if I want to keep them in the pack. In previous versions I couldn't remove items due to savegame compatibility, so there are still some ugly or useless items that need to be removed. While I go through them, I'm making sure that each faction has a completely different style, even more than they currently have. So women of different factions should have different dresses, farmers should wear something different, soldiers should fight with other weapons, and so on. I already had done this to a certain extend, but right now I'm checking it all and doing it better.
While I do that, I immediately sort out items for two different packs: it's my goal to have around 600 items in the code pack, and around 1800 in the expanded and basic packs. These 600 are as much as there are items in native, but mind you: they won't necessarily have to be native items.
I started sorting the books. That wasn't much work: with two I changed the mesh (I had to change the texture of one of these two for this), but for the rest it wasn't that much work. I also enabled another screen at the 'View items', displaying all food and books and such goods. It won't show the details for now. Maybe I'll figure that out one day, but for now it has no priority. Here, let me show you an overview of all books:
This reminds me that I should check some textures on overly darkness. I'll do that later.
Quite a lot of people have asked me about a dress I once made for Arwa the Pearled One. But that one was made in gimp, a photo editor. I now made a more revealing dress for her in-game, as can be seen over here:
I'm not yet sure if I should let her keep these big boobies, or that I should reduce them a little bit. I'll keep playing with them until I'm satisfied .
And not only I worked on Arwa's dress after the books: I'm now sorting out all dresses so that each faction will have 2 commoner dresses, and 5 royal dresses. If there aren't that many present in native, I'll create them. There will be mainly colour variations, since I'm not that good in creating 3d-objects. But that can give a lot of fun too! Here, let me show you a newly coloured khergit dress for our noble ladies:
This is what I'm doing right now. I still need to do the dresses for the other factions. once that's done, I'll move on with the next objects, probably the horses. I estimate to work for at least another two weeks full time on the items. but, knowing how I always make too optimistic estimates, this will probably be more like three or four weeks work...
I would like to thank you for reading this long text, and hope to tell you more on the development of 2.5 next time!
In this topic I want to share with you my experiences as a developer of the Floris Mod Pack. I know that I'm not the most active person on the forum, so with this I want to show you that I'm still alive and kicking, and what I'm working on at the moment. I won't post on a regular basis, just once in a while.
Without any further ado, let me tell you what I've been working on the past time.
After the release of 2.4, I didn't immediately start working on the next version. Instead, I participated in an AAR contest on the Paradox forums. For the game Hearts of Iron 3 I made an AAR about the Governator travelling back in time to help Hitler send paratroopers to Paris to fight Belgian terminators in order to free Iceland from the evil Danes. Not only had I to learn the game (in which I suck, by the way), but also write ten chapters. I managed to do that in time, and now the judges of the contest are taking their time to come to a good result. Hopefully I won't do too bad . Since I finished the part for the contest I put all my spare time in the development of version 2.5.
The upcoming version will be quite different from the previous ones. First of all we're not going to maintain the savegame compatibility, as was decided in a poll. In previous versions we couldn't rearrange things neatly: the code became a cluttered mess due to that. This is one thing we're fixing right now. It's important to do, since this not only makes coding easier, but will also fix some bugs and opens up new possibilities previously not possible.
Another thing we're about to do different, is the different packs we'll be releasing. Until now there were two packs: the Floris Basic mod pack, which is basically just a bunch of extra items and improved graphics, and the Floris Expanded mod pack, which is the real deal with everything. For version 2.5 we're going to release three packs: the two I made before, plus a new pack with all the code but without any fancy graphical features. Both this pack and the Basic pack can be combined to one 'Expanded Lite'. Hopefully, with this setup, more people will be able to enjoy the mod. Let's call this third pack for now the Code pack, until I - or someone else - comes up with a better name.
Now, what have I done the past two weeks? I first started with rearranging the troops. All Swadian troops are now together, All Rhodoks, all... you get the idea. Until version 2.4 they were spread out over the file, which was pretty difficult to edit as anyone who made their own troop tree can tell. This wasn't that much work. But also all those troops had wrong id's. This is not per se the same as the name of the troop: an id is an internal name the source uses to identify that certain troop. It has nothing to do with the name displayed in the game. Some troops had pretty strange id's compared to their names, making it pretty hard to see in the code what soldier we're actually talking about. For example, the 'Swadian Skirmisher' had the troop id 'swadian_5b2'. To make things easier, I renamed all these id's to reflect their names. So this 'swadian_5b2' became a 'swadian_skirmisher'. That should make things a lot clearer for everyone diving in the Floris source. Unfortunately I thus had to rename all the id's used in other parts of the source to reference. I had to go through thousands of references to check them and rename where necessary. That took quite some time as you can imagine.
This rearranging of troops has immediately opened up some nice features. I finally added the custom troops! I know quite a lot of you wanted them in, but unfortunately adding them would break savegame compatibility. Since that's no issue anymore, I added them. I designed a new troop tree for them, but I still need to go over that a few more times before I'm fully satisfied. Another thing I added, are the Troop Heroes. Troops of tier 6 - that have no possibility to upgrade to tier 7 - will now have a chance to become a companion, with a maximum of 4 of such companions. Another reason to go for these troops in the tree. This code still needs to be checked for bugs etc, but at least I'm now able to implement this.
Another thing I did was adding different town walkers, village walkers and spy walkers for each faction, giving local villages and such more coloure locale. There were already different ones for the Khergit and Sarranid, but the other four all had the same kind of villagers, with the same equipment and the same faces. That will be different now. I still need to tweak them (giving them items, stats etc), but at least they are now present in the code.
While I did this, I also added 5 new companions. Quite a while ago I had made a poll to see how many new companions people would like to have. The result was split between just a few, and really a lot. Since really a lot is going to take quite a lot of work, I went with just a few. There is more to do than just adding zillions of new companions . Anyway, I didn't just add them: I incorporated them. Remember the Companions Circle, which points out which companions (dis)likes which? I basically redrawn it, incorporating all new companions, including Floris. The old companions now acknowledge the new ones. I still need to rewrite some of their lines to match the new relations tho. Even more, I still need to write all the lines of the new companions... But at least their code is done.
During my work on the troop tree and such, I also played a little Warband. To be exact, I continued my game for the Me, Floris AAR. But six months have passed, and I still haven't got enough material to write a new chapter. So I'll need to continue to play a little more, since I intend to make chapter 51!
I also tried to do some mipmap fading: this would give a really great graphical effect without any extra load on the cpu. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do this in the Gimp. The tutorial shows how it easily can be done in photoshop, but unfortunately I don't have that program. I tried to find a tutorial, add-on or anything to show me how it's done in the Gimp, but I haven't found it. So for now I'm leaving it. Too bad.
Right now I'm working on the items. I already put them in the right order (which took me a few days to do... 2000+ items are a lot), but now I'm doing something even better: I'm checking each item and see if I want to keep them in the pack. In previous versions I couldn't remove items due to savegame compatibility, so there are still some ugly or useless items that need to be removed. While I go through them, I'm making sure that each faction has a completely different style, even more than they currently have. So women of different factions should have different dresses, farmers should wear something different, soldiers should fight with other weapons, and so on. I already had done this to a certain extend, but right now I'm checking it all and doing it better.
While I do that, I immediately sort out items for two different packs: it's my goal to have around 600 items in the code pack, and around 1800 in the expanded and basic packs. These 600 are as much as there are items in native, but mind you: they won't necessarily have to be native items.
I started sorting the books. That wasn't much work: with two I changed the mesh (I had to change the texture of one of these two for this), but for the rest it wasn't that much work. I also enabled another screen at the 'View items', displaying all food and books and such goods. It won't show the details for now. Maybe I'll figure that out one day, but for now it has no priority. Here, let me show you an overview of all books:
This reminds me that I should check some textures on overly darkness. I'll do that later.
Quite a lot of people have asked me about a dress I once made for Arwa the Pearled One. But that one was made in gimp, a photo editor. I now made a more revealing dress for her in-game, as can be seen over here:
I'm not yet sure if I should let her keep these big boobies, or that I should reduce them a little bit. I'll keep playing with them until I'm satisfied .
And not only I worked on Arwa's dress after the books: I'm now sorting out all dresses so that each faction will have 2 commoner dresses, and 5 royal dresses. If there aren't that many present in native, I'll create them. There will be mainly colour variations, since I'm not that good in creating 3d-objects. But that can give a lot of fun too! Here, let me show you a newly coloured khergit dress for our noble ladies:
This is what I'm doing right now. I still need to do the dresses for the other factions. once that's done, I'll move on with the next objects, probably the horses. I estimate to work for at least another two weeks full time on the items. but, knowing how I always make too optimistic estimates, this will probably be more like three or four weeks work...
I would like to thank you for reading this long text, and hope to tell you more on the development of 2.5 next time!