Scandinavia Overhaul Beta (banners, units)

[VltimaRatio]

Stainless Steel 6.4 submod. A project I've been working on to replace the scale armor and animal pelts used by Denmark and Norway with something more accurate, while adding some new battle banners and some new unit cards. Early era units are affected only. Might not be balanced in terms of campaign play. This is still a beta, but I'm taking a break from it so I figured I'd release it as a beta to see what people think. Note that I was too lazy to make LOD variants for the most part so it won't do wonders for the framerate if running on a slow computer.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=4103

[Andytheplatypus]

Very cool. Do you plan on doing more? +rep

[Lifthrasir]

Good job and very interesting

Any sources you'd like to share about these banners? Accuracy is our "main goal" in SSHIP. I'm re-skinning the Fatimids (Egypt) ones now and I'm planning to do that for most of the Muslim factions. I'd be grateful if you can share any info about Norway and Denmark to let me do the same for these factions as well. Many thanks in advance.

[VltimaRatio]

I guess it's not entirely accurate, it's kind of a mashup of different illustrations I've found that themselves may not be entirely right. According to wiki the lion as it appears is actually a 20th century version of the coat of arms (the 12thC version looks pretty similar so I just went with it), the axe was added to it a bit later than 1100 but it's not a major anachronism really, as it refers to king Olav the Holy who would have been a major religious figure. Finding an accurate depiction of medieval banners is kind of hard anyways. The crosses and stuff are inspired by different illustrations and actual Norwegian coats of arms of modern places, while they may not be medieval in origin they could certainly pass as medieval (the reskin of the knights is heavily inspired by these). Anyway, I could send you what I found in terms of pictures (modern and medieval). For example I found a 12thC figure of a knight on horseback and a woven image of a rider with actual heraldry I'm using as inspiration for the cavalry.

Might do other factions too as I like working with textures. Norway was a priority because the banner was inaccurate, Denmark got a reskin with SS and looks all right as it is. I guess I could do one just to tie it in and make the style similar though.

Also, screen of WIP units

[Andytheplatypus]

You havent given up have you?

[VltimaRatio]

No, just busy learning MS3D. Trying to move beyond basic kitbashing even if its just doing some minor edits of the actual meshes. Almost finished this unit, basically the scandinavian version of the Miles. Also done a bunch of others, but my desktop and mod folder is a mess of files and I'm at the point where I'll have to reinstall SS and individually add each unit in an orderly fashion, then do some final adjustments etc.

[k/t]

Cool.

[VltimaRatio]

Preview of near finished levy troops (mostly new attachments) and Denmark banner.

The Scandinavia overhaul mod will probably be done this week once I sort out the details and get it stable, won't be as extensive as I envisioned as the unit limit seems to be reached and I get CTDs and stuff like that all the time when I add stuff. Besides, I'm getting weary of notepad, CS5 and milkshape for now. Might do something bigger for SS7.0 when that comes along though.

[Andytheplatypus]

Might do something bigger for SS7.0 when that comes along though.

You will be waiting a while.

[VltimaRatio]

Looks like it might not be that far away. Started working on this again with some new concepts, units are now inspired more by the Uig chessmen http://www.warfare.uhostfull.com/12/...en-warders.htm. This is probably more accurate than the old version. However, UV mapping original models didn't work out so I'm borrowing some components from Novgorodian and Polish units already in Stainless Steel (helmets especially). It's only a sub mod so that's probably fine, right?

Some WIP screens (already a bit outdated) below

[Melooo182]

It's only a sub mod so that's probably fine, right?

yeah

Good to see progress

[VltimaRatio]

If moving stuff around is fine I might do a more extensive visual overhaul after this mod, depending on whether the regular, inter-faction units are unchanged in 7.0. That brimmed helmet of the Polish nobles looks far better than the sergeant helmet in vanilla and the vanilla levy shields are a bit dull... But anyways, updated the triangular and tear-drop-kite-whatever shields with a new model, and I'm trying to develop a color scheme that looks convincing (both Denmark and Norway used a lot of red but they should look different enough on the battlefield).

[Jolenko]

Looks exceptionally great! Keep up the good work What's the status report of this mod now?