4.2 version is out - wow.

Updated for 4.2:
This is a dream come true

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Outdated:
Version 4.1 impressions and suggestions:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to bring some attention to 4.1 being out (thank you so much for removing the chinese characters from unit cards!) and share some of my opinions on this excellent mod. So here it goes:


1. Unit cards
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Previously, the obtrusive writing was the biggest obstacle for me to enjoy the mod (I couldn't see anything) - now hurray, it's gone! :D
However, I still experience some difficulties in seeing them, mainly the background colour is too dark:

https://i.postimg.cc/dtd5kwNB/unitcards-rotk.png

And in battles, they are too short:
https://i.postimg.cc/mZ797kRt/battle-rotk.png




2. Suggestion: to add battlemap unit_select voices (and 3 ways to do it)
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I personally hate missing selection voices (like "Archers!" or "Spearmen!" in Medieval 2 mods. So much that I fixed this issue for SSHIP, where I've literally added hundreds of entries.
In RoTK, the setting is different, therefore I can see three different ways this could be done:


A) Easiest way: Just apply mongolian voices to everyone. Not the most elegant or appropriate, but imo this could hold suspension of disbelief.

B) Easy way: Prepare 2 sets of voices (5 files each) for cheap units and for hardy/expensive ones. Voices could simply say "Yes?", "Yes, sir!", "Ready!" etc. in Mandarin and other languages.

C) Hard way: take voices from other games (like Three Kingdoms TW - if they have them, I don't even know) and apply to each unit class accordingly. So to pikemen, archers, heavy cavalry, special units and whatnot.



So this is it :)
Either way, thanks for making this mod guys!

Thanks for the input! For the unit cards, the blue (in particular) and green backgrounds are a bit on the dark side, although I don't see myself lightening those colors anytime soon. Perhaps in a few months I'll undertake that task to improve their visibility, but redoing them to remove the characters burned me out. As far as the cards being too short, they're actually the exact same 48x64 as every other mod. The reason they appear short is because other mods don't have color coded unit cards; they use a single background ui color with the unit card (with alpha channel) sitting below the unit status bar - the color coding creates a visible break between the unit card and the unit status bar. Check out this screenshot to see cards without color coding. If the cards were not color coded, they would be entirely brick-red from top to bottom, instead of grey like in the previous screenshot.

For voices, finding ones that work is going to be a pain. I'm not wanting to use Mongolian (although except maybe for the Xianbei) and I'm unsure if English would work for the rest of the factions. Rome II and Attila have English with accents but, again, unsure if they would sound appropriate. I previously looked into using assets from TWTK for voices, but apparently the modding community is (as of yet) unable to extract the sound files.

Thanks for the response :) I see it now, it explains why unit cards appear to be shorter in battles but normal in campaign. As for visibility, I think the only issue now is the men count that is hard to see. Just an idea, but maybe changing font colour could help somewhat in that regard. Reworking all these cards must have been quite the job indeed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seether

For voices, finding ones that work is going to be a pain. I'm not wanting to use Mongolian (although except maybe for the Xianbei) and I'm unsure if English would work for the rest of the factions. Rome II and Attila have English with accents but, again, unsure if they would sound appropriate. I previously looked into using assets from TWTK for voices, but apparently the modding community is (as of yet) unable to extract the sound files.

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Oh, absolutely. Chinese selection voices would fit perfectly (and there are plenty available) but then it doesn't match the other voices (taunts, following orders) which use English with mongolian accent as of now. On the other hand, English voices with chinese accent are almost impossible to find (do Rome II or Attila have them? They don't have chinese factions afaik). So yeah, I can feel the pain

I think I finally found some voices, but I need to look into this a lot more in depth before deciding whether I should try to update it or not.

Yay! Fingers crossed ;)

So I managed to change all of the voices for all of the various orders (general, heavy, light), as well as added all of the units in the mod to the unit_selection lists and gave them voices when selected. So that went well. However, I don’t have anything for longer speech sets, such as general speeches, ladders at the walls, general killed, etc., so those are going to have to stay Mongolian. Honestly, I don’t think that is a big issue and I’m pretty happy with how the battle map voice overhaul has turned out.

That sounds (pun intended:whistling) awesome!

4.2 is out

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gigantus

4.2 is out

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Wow. Just wow. There is much gold in there!

First of all - holy :wub:, affinity switch. I swear I completely forgot about it. I just tried this in DAC and got like 20 more fps in some places!
Why aren't all mods using this?


Secondly - voices are amazing, it makes units so much more "alive"
I also didn't know you could group units like that in export_descr_sounds_units_voice.txt:

Code:

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unit ZYhan_light_sword, HBhan_light_sword, JZhan_light_sword, JDhan_light_sword, XLhan_light_sword, BShan_light_sword, Heishan_raid, Nanman_han_infantry
                                    event
                                            folder data/sounds/Voice/Human/Localized/Battle_Map
                                                  ch_Idle_017.wav
                                    end

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Looks pretty tight and saves space :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Just let me post

First of all - holy :wub:, affinity switch. I swear I completely forgot about it. I just tried this in DAC and got like 20 more fps in some places!
Why aren't all mods using this?

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I added it to my Third Age repack as well as it's MOS submod., couldn't add it to Stainless Steel because of it's custom launcher. Bare Geomod has it by default.

I updated the the universal batch file thread with my BAT file coding.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gigantus

I added it to my Third Age repack as well as it's MOS submod., couldn't add it to Stainless Steel because of it's custom launcher. Bare Geomod has it by default.

I updated the the universal batch file thread with my BAT file coding.

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So glad it's effective :)

Regarding SS_Launcher.exe, do you happen to know how it could be reverse engineered? It's not a simple bat converted to exe, and universal batch doesn't start the mod. I would like to add videos to SSHIP, but the launcher autodisables them.

The universal batch file requires a CFG file named 'configuration' - simply copy and rename the 'default' one of Stainless Steel. Then edit entries in there as required.

If you have installed Stainless Steel from my repack then that file will be very detailed with explanation for nearly every entry.

... yeah that was the case:doh:

Sometimes obvious things are too obvious