| Chronicles of Middle Earth (COME) is a multiplayer open world mod that allows players to venture out in the LotR universe. COME brings a very new type of gameplay to Warband, ie. the Open World perspective. The mod will host a real open world aspect of our favorite game, where players will be able to travel between servers (the open world being the interconnexion of these servers). For those who remember, this will be the exact same system which was used in my old mod: New World Conflict. The mod partially uses the same system than Persistent Mods use for their persistent world game-type. However, we have made the decision to change this boring old persistent world game-type, and make it more interesting for the players. It is why we have completely redesigned it, and evolved it into this new concept: the Community Role Playing (CRP); a mix between the existing Persistent World system (with castle conquest, factions administration, money system and professions) and a more community-focused system (an inspiration of NW community, with regimental events and player regroupements in historical regiments). In fact, CRP will bring long term community participation, especially for the faction administration / evolution aspect, diplomacy system and massive community events (will be under the form of Battles, if two or more factions are in war). Also, we can’t forget the fact that all players will have to roleplay with their character; they will have to respect some basic RP rules. Obviously, more details involving the CRP concept will be mentioned below. To summarize, the players will have the possibility to make a name for themselves in the lands of Middle Earth by joining their favorite race & faction, fighting against or alongside the dark forces of Sauron, doing diplomacy with foreign races & factions, having a profession, owning a house (you heard right!), and much more. | 
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| The mod is based on the contribution of the community in terms of development (3D modelling, texturing, animating, and even coding). Especially our Community Contribution System; the general purpose being to ensure that each member of the community can participate, contribute according to their time and motivation, and especially without the obligation to join our official development team. We believe that this volunteer contribution from the players will ensure the mod will have fresh life breathed into it for our community’s enjoyment! COME has the particularity to be partially in Open Source (OSP), so partially at the disposition of the Mount & Blade: Warband community! Why partially? Only because that are not all resources of the mod who is in OSP. Some resources are under copyright, but most of all are totally in OSP. Although, take note that contributor will have the choice to share their work in OSP or give us the authorization to use their resources (reserved resources in this case). However, we hope and encourage contributors to share their resources in Open Source. |
The most peculiar aspect of Chronicles of Middle Earth is certainly attributed to the Open World system. Unlike Persistent mods, COME will host more than one server for this multiplayer mod universe. Indeed, we are proud to officially announce that for the first public and playable version of the mod, we will put forward 3-servers with Open World, which means that it will be possible for the players to travel between three servers to evolve in the universe. Obviously, the 3-servers with Open World will be an early version of the project that we want to launch; this one will be used as a test of some sorts, a prototype where it will be possible to do experiments (offering instances to identify the errors that we could occur in this project, and prevent those errors). Indeed, we plan to do something grand and ambitious with the community. We effectively plan to make, at long term, 8-servers with Open World with the most known and iconic regions of Middle Earth. We think that the Open World version could be the most desired and coveted final version of our project. However, take note that we will process step by step to reach this final Open World version. In fact, we will add only one more region, so one more server to the Open World, each 2 to 4 months, and this, only if we are the support and especially a huge contribution/participation of the community. In summary, if you show us your enthusiasm, you will certainly have the possibility to evolve in an amazing, expansive and immersive Open World! To make this possible, we effectively use the Combined World script, which comes from the well known Persistent World mod, as a basis for our own Open World System. Admittedly, we have made several modifications of this script to have a perfect adaption for our concept design and desired effect for gameplay purposes. Technically, our Open World system works in a simple way: to travel to another region of the world (so, to another server), players simply have to go to the map border of the region (ie. map border on the server) and use (click on “F”) scene props dedicated to the travelling. By doing this, players systematically activate the Travelling system; so, he is kicked of the server and must join the other server where he has travelled. Obviously, this player can’t back on the server that he has left, because his character isn’t in this region of the Open World anymore. Be sure to take note that the equipment, class and faction of the players will be saved when they travel. A demonstration video is actually under production to show you how this Open World system works. | 
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Here lies more information about COME gameplay. Warning! This section contains a lot of text and specifics about the mechanics in general. You can skip this section if you don’t want to read into it or if you want to be surprised when you play the mod at release.
| To fit with our Open World concept and as well as our mod’s general idea/intention, we find it appropriate to create a new genre, a totally new style of gameplay: the Community Role playing (CRP). To do this, we use inspirations from other games and mods trying their hand at the same purpose. This is especially the case with the Persistent World mod and the classic Napoleonics Wars DLC. Beyond these aspects, we can say that these two mods, renowned for their impressive role playing perspective, inspired us the most for some elements of the CRP gameplay. Others that come to mind are Naval Action, Neverwinter Nights and even Minecraft. The Community Role Playing genre works in conjunction with the community activity, and can only work with that! Without the members of the community, and the interactions between multiple players, the CRP genre loses all of its value. In fact, we can even say that the CRP is the element which makes this mod unique; we believe that no other game in the world has the same concept as of now, not even a MMORPG or RPG game. |
The CRP is oriented towards the PVP perspective, and especially the evolution of all players interactions in the immersive Open World. In fact, the main goal of the CRP is to, with the help of community interactions, make a retelling of the riveting stories of Middle Earth. We want it so the players can also rewrite the Middle Earth History with their own interactions, be they minor or major ones such as joining the forces of Good or Evil in the War of the Ring! This is will be made possible with our mod, Chronicles of Middle Earth; we want the mod community to write the their own stories into the tapestry of Lord of the Rings, from before the Fellowship of the Ring to the end of the Return of the King (and possibly even beyond). If this were to be achieved with the help of the community, we believe we may be able to accomplish many amazing feats for this mod! | 
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COMMUNITY FACTIONS
| For those wondering, when we speak of CRP, we mean: community factions. Being a community-oriented mod, community factions play a central role in COME gameplay. You might be asking what exactly are these community factions? To be precise, these are the factions who are playable in the mod in-game, but are administered, lead and organized by chosen players. Indeed, a faction is permanent; it is not like the nomadic clans or guilds of PW for example, of which may disband or disembark are anytime. The community faction(s) are active and established permanently. All in-game factions will be created and implemented by us, the Dev Team. It is effectively us who will create the official Steam Group of each faction (it is the central management system of the faction) and the sections on the official forum of the mod; this to say the Dev Team will always have a certain control and regulation on each faction, such as mentoring and peacekeeping. For the Faction Administration aspect, we will remind you that the Dev Team again who will choose the leaders of the faction. These chosen players will be handpicked from the community for their display of motivation, maturity, experience in clan/regiment/faction administration of similar games and their reputation in the community. In sum, the highly qualified players will be the ones selected for the role of administering factions. |
Another important feature comes after: the RP role of each leader of a same faction. Effectively, it will have officially be three leaders per faction, each leader having a different factional role. The first role will be Political: one leader, probably known as the king (or the equivalent), has to administer all affairs of the faction in cooperation of the two other leaders. As you might have guessed, this one is the main leader of the faction and must take charge of the community administration tasks of the Steam group and forum of his faction (diplomacy and internal administration specifically). For this aspect, some more in depth rules will come in play later on in development. The second role is Civilian: one leader has to administrate the Civil details of his faction (ie. ressource production, economy, housing and territory owning administration, and others). The last one is the Military role of course: one leader has to administrate the troops, organize battles and command troops, ie. Official Military Organization and applying a sense of cohesion to the best of their ability. | 
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| We have talked about factions, but what about clans/guilds/regiments, the groups of players? Indeed, to have a clear distinction between both, we can say that the faction is a little community open to all, which welcomes players whether they are alone or in a group and can leave it when they wish it. However, for the group of players, we can define them as private and organized clan with a specific identity. As such, there are private organization with their own internal rules. In this perspective, all groups of players have to do an official application to join a faction. Obviously, a clan must have the same race and identity as the faction they are trying to join. If their application is accepted, they systematically become an Official Organization (OO) of the faction. Another aspect of this is that in their application, the group of players have the possibility to become a Military Official Organization (MOO) or Civilian Official Organization (COO) with a specific specialization (mining, crafting, farming, patrolling, etc). More details will come in due time, but for the moment take consideration of this important rule: a clan name cannot be the name or similar name of the faction. For example, a Gondor OO can’t be known as Kingdom of Gondor; however Guards of the Citadel (which can refer to the Fountain Guard of Minas Tirith) could be accepted as Military Official Organization for example. |
DIPLOMACY SYSTEM
To continue with this section, we want to present the diplomacy system that will be established in this mod. In fact, we will tell you right now that the old characteristics of the Persistent World diplomacy system has been retired. The new diplomacy system will be the work of community support. In this sense, there will not be the random players who will be able to declare war or make peace at a whim, but instead be the agreement between all factional members! The diplomacy of a faction will work with polls on the Steam group of the faction, and like indicated before, it will be the job of the main leader of the faction to administrate this aspect.
For example, if the main leader sees that a majority of the faction desire a war against another faction, than he is obligated to start a poll for at least 24 hours. If the majority of members of the faction are in favor of a war, the political leader must immediately consult an administrator or a Dev Team member to confirm the diplomacy act. After a confirmation, our team will inform all community of this diplomacy on a specific thread dedicated to that on the official forum of COME, and the War will be implemented manually by us in the Open World. The same process is applied for other treatises such as Alliances, Trade/Non-aggression Pacts, etc.
WAR SYSTEM
The War system is one of the prides of COME. In fact, all wars, when they are declared, works in conjunction with the following system. Wars are primarily considered a community event, organized and recurring. To elaborate, each War can be ended in only two maneuvers: [list type=decimal] [*]A faction decides to sue for peace before the end of the War. [*]A faction wins the FT3 Battle format. [/list] A War is effectively under the guise of a community battle, similar to the Line Battles of NW for example, but take place in a specific region of the Open World. Although, some battlefields have been implemented in the Open World for this aspect. Refer to Middle Earth under a new light to see the number of battlefields available per region of the Open World. The format of a War is FT3, so the first faction to win 3 battles wins the War. Like specificated before, a battle is a community event which take place at a fixed time during a precise day. The goal of this is to have more players of both factions connected in the same time, to do a epic massive battle (ideally with more than 150 players on the server). However, take note that a War is also effective outside the battles. So, two factions in war can attack each other in forms of punitive raids in the Open World, and this applies to engagements in neutral areas as well. | 
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| Chronicles of Middle Earth brings a totally new kind of gameplay in this multiplayer community-oriented mod. Players will have the possibility to participate in some cooperative quests in the immersive universe, which will be named as a Journey. However, it is important to take note that Journeys are optional content in the mod. We effectively want the mod to have a certain diversity in terms of gameplay to satisfy all interests of the community; we know that some players like the solo/co-op kind of gameplay, and for this reason we decided to add this Journey system. A journey is concretely a reproduction of the iconic moments of the LotR story from the books, but under the form of challenge. These challenges put forward a PVE perspective, ie. the confrontation of players versus enemy bots. Indeed, each Journey will have the same goal; killing waves of bots with a special one (or multiple) appearing in certain circumstances. |
In a technical perspective, each Journey is present onto the open world, but in certain closed areas. In this sense, it means that players have to find these specific areas if they want to participate in these Journeys. On another note, more PVP oriented players will not have the obligation of partaking in Journeys or be involved in a Journey to progress. Although, it also means that Journeys, being specific moments of the iconic quest of the destruction of the one ring, are available in only precise regions of Middle Earth. For example, a Journey representing the fight against the Balrog could only be available in the Misty Mountain region. In addition, all Journeys are designed to be extremely challenging to accomplish, succeeded. Why you ask? It is because we want each Journey to inspire a sense of accomplishment for the players. We want to insist that the community should do regroupements for these Journeys, their own fellowships if you will. For this feature, each Journey contains 3 different difficulty levels: Hard, Very Hard and Extreme. Obviously, the greater the difficulty, the more bountiful the reward of the Journey: which would include a varying amount of money and rare equipment.
COME tries to reproduce, in the best way possible, all of the important and iconic regions / locations of the Middle Earth during the War of the Ring. Indeed, the mapping is very a important element for us as it will allow us to see many iconic locations recreated for COME. We see this as a pivotal function of the mod, as it allows players to be in total immersion of the game world.
THREE FIRST MAPS OF THE OPEN WORLD
The first version of the Open World will host three specific regions, which can be alternatively referred to as maps: Western Eriador, Eastern Eriador and Misty Mountains. Here is a little description of the constitution of each region in the early Open World:
Western Eriador
Type of map: Peaceful / Neutral
Races available: Hobbit, Bree-lander and Dwarf
Important towns: Hobbiton, Bywater, Bree and Zinlaz-bhanad
Number of battlefield(s): 1 (small)
Eastern Eriador
Type of map: Hostile
Race available: Angmar Orc, Hill-men
Important towns: Cameth Brin
Number of battlefield(s): 3 (1 huge & 2 small)
Misty Mountains
Type of map: Neutral / Hostile
Race available: Ñoldor, Dúnadan, Moria Orc and Gundabad Orc
Important towns: Imladris, Echad Adanath, Goblin-town and Moria
Number of battlefield(s): 2 (1 medium & 1 small)
UPCOMING MAPS OF THE OPEN WORLD
We plan to add other regions to the Open World. Here is the list of the regions that we think to add progressively, ie. one by each 3-4 months.
Rohan
Northern Rhovanion
Southern Rhovanion
Gondor
Enedwaith
Gorgoroth
*This list is temporary and unofficial for now, and as such it is subject for change in the future.
| The goal of the project is to make something unique for the community. We want it so that this mod is not only used, but also designed and created by the community. The contribution system is a good showcase of this practice, because every player can participate to the mod project by adding some of their own works to the project. We firmly believe that this sharing mentality will allow for us to put forward our project, and bring forth community participation in the form of modding. As you know, we need the support of the community in order to do this mod, allowing for something really great and innovative for Warband. Without your participation, this mod can never reach its true potential. To conclude, these last sentences will contain a few reasons on what led us to the open source aim of this project. As it was mentioned before in this presentation thread, NOT ALL RESOURCES PRESENT IN COME ARE IN THE OSP. Some of them are under copyright for the simple reason regarding the creator of these not agreeing to share his work with everybody. In these particular cases, we get the authorization to use them ONLY IN OUR MOD, so that means that you can’t use them for your own projects, except if you contact and get the authorization by the respective creator. At the release of the mod, all resources not in the OSP will be indicated clearly in our module. |
First of all, we are proud to show you an important part of the Western Eriador map. These are some of the previews of Bree, the town named after the land it is centered in:
Here is some of the new amazing 3D models for COME:
Hobbit Scene Props
Elve Scene Props
Tree Scene Props
Finally, here is the list of features available in COME at the moment:
- Open World System
- Instant Faction Saving and Loading when players travel
- Features from Persistent World mod (all resources & some codes)
- Features from The Last Days mod (few resources)
- Journey System
- Neutral Areas System (players will not able to kill each other in these neutral areas)
- Inventory Chest System (a permanent inventory available to players when they access to a chest prop dedicated to this purpose)
Steam Group:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/COME_Official_Group
Our website: TBD
Our Moddb page:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/chronicles-of-middle-earth
OFFICIAL COME DEVELOPMENT TEAM
LeGenD - Co-Founder & Lead Game Designer, Scripter
Illuminati - Lead Coder
McHaddish - Mapper
Drachantoter - Game Designer, LotR Lore Adviser
Efe Karacar - 2D Designer, Animator
William Bonaparte - Mapper
HONORABLE MENTION
DanyEle - Co-Founder & Old Lead Coder, Animator
Take note that we actively look for all the help possible.
So, if the project interests you and you want to join the Dev Team, please contact us.
CONTACT US
If you have questions for us or wish to join our Dev Team, contact me primarily, as I will be able to answer all your questions regarding the mod. My Steam profile is available below:
This looks amazing! Can't wait to see it in action. I can imagine droves of LotR fans will flock to this mod if it is probably advertised, even people who have no interest in Warband. How many slots will each server have?
