Whew, I'm making a ton of progress on my next update so far. Here's a couple of quick shots before i go to sleep:
First of all, It bothered me that I only have 2 low level armors, and that they're both too dark. I'm still gonna add more low level armors in the future, but in the meantime I also made plenty of color variations and color-coded the low level ashigaru (the ones you recruit from the villages) and bandit units. They all no longer all look practically the same, and the brighter colors also change the atmosphere somewhat. I also changed the color variations of the existing armor to be more bright as well, and less subdued -- I rewatched Kagemusha a couple of days ago, to "get in the mood" for modding, and I realized I goofed and made the samurai too drab
Also notice that I improved the conical hat model by adding a simple chinstrap and a headcloth. I'm especially glad I finally added the headcloth, because it looked weird to me that the characters turned bald when they put the sugegasa and jingasa on. I also did a lot of minor improvements like this to most of the other existing armor models, but most of them are subtle
Other minor changes:
I fixed some errors where some units don't spawn with the primary weapon they should have (like some Yari Monks only having Wakizashis, or "Spearmen" having kamas instead of spears).
I renamed faction heads to be even more easy to identify. They're Great Lord instead of just Lord. I differentiated them before by adding "of (whatever province they came from)", but that turned out to be unsatisfying because they still had the same titles as their vassals.
I also renamed some of the samurai units so it is much more clear what you're getting: Tier 1 and 2 remain Kosho and Bushi (generic squire/page and man-at-arms respectively); Higher-tier basic units (aka ones that don't have Veteran or Elite) also remain the same, because they are supposed to have an eclectic choice of weaponry; But Veteran units and above now list their specialty (like Veteran Naginata Infantry or Elite Yari Cavalry). It should no longer be a pain to build the kind of army you want -- do you want lancers? or horse archers? Now you can find out more easily
Now for the future of the mod:
Making good progress on the buildings (those aren't the final textures for that particular one). I might release the next version with native castles, but the towns and villages should all be Japanese by then.
I might also start integrating mods I like into the next version. First one off the top of my head that I want is Freelancer. Probably not gonna add Diplomacy and instead write my own fief management system.
I'm keeping the faction count the same, but I'm probably going to double the number of lords, ladies, cities, castles, towns, and villages. I have such a big map, I don't want to waste all that space! I counted how much were in Brytenwalda and realized I should have just as much. I should count Prophesy of Pendor, etc, to see how much
they have. I wanna know how far I can push the M&B engine...