Biddy

As the name already suggests, I am doing a complete War of the Ring overhaul. As I am a one-man-team, it is progressing quite slowly. It started out with some minor changes, like adding more commandpoints to army leaders. But with time, my ambitions grew bigger and one day, I decided, it was time to make it public for everyone. As modding is really time consuming, I can not say when it will be finished. To be honest, I cannot even give a vague guess. There are times, where I can get a lot of work done and there are also times (like at the moment), when I am busy with university, hobbys, holidays or something else and don´t do any work in weeks.

Simple answer is "YES". I appreciate every help I can get. So if you want to see the mod done, feel free to send me a message. It does not matter, wether you have modding experience or not. There is lots of work, that can be done by a total beginner without any experience at all. So feel free, to message me.

 

There is one thing I desperately need, which is a skilled mapper. I have no knowledge of mapping whatsoever and I need a total of 108 maps to finish my project. So if you want to help and know somebody, I would really much appreciate it!

Lots of war of the ring mode is hardcoded. That means, there are very little possibilities of changing those things. In some cases, one can work around it, but most of the time, you just have to accept, that certain features are set in stone. So here is a list, of things, that are not changeable and will not be included in my modification:

 

• Number of Players in Multiplayer: Can not be above 2
• More than 4 army leaders: Will always crash the game, once more than 4 are in one skirmish
• More than 4 Buildings per faction on the living world map: The AI will only build 4 different buildings. So if you try to add more, she will only produce one type of units
• Induce any kind of change on the living map during a game: There is no possibility to add conditions for anything on the worldmap. This includes things like changing a army leaders, purchasing upgrades, leveling buildings etc. etc. There is simply no possibilty of adding new features in world mode

I´m sure, most of you still remember the great RJ-RotWK-Mod which was sadly shut down a few years ago. It included a Wotr-preview
for the next version with 108 territories. There were still some bugs as it was only a beta but nevertheless it was leagues beyond
the vanilla Wotr-mode. The project was never finished but the teamleader robnkarla uploaded all necessary files to the3rdage.net with
permission for everybody to use in their mods.

After some struggle, I finally managed to get it working which means a total of 108 territories and 10 regions for you to fight on.
The existing scenarios and some new ones I mentioned earlier will be fully playable on the new map.

 

The new territories include all the ones present in the BFME I good and evil campaigns and many more, like Dorwinion, Dol-Amroth or Tharbad.

 

The vast number of territories created a problem I am facing at the moment. As RotWK and BfMEII only provide about 65 usable maps, some
of the territories are still without a map to fight realtimebattles on. I´ve never created a map on my own and do not intend to start doing so.
Of course I can not just start adding custom maps to my mod, without permission of the creators. So again, if you have mapping experience, or know anyone who has, feel free, to contact me

At this point I have to say that ALL credit for this new livingworld belongs to the RJ-RotWK-Team and specifically to robnkarla!!!!!
I can not imagine, how much time it has cost to create such an amazing piece of work and I would like to thank the whole team for
providing it. They did like 90% percent of the necessary work and I want to clarify that I only did some coding, wich is in no way
comparable to the effort they put into this!

 

 

As the vanilla texture for the world map didn´t quite live up to the improved worldmap, I decided to create a new one. I quite happy with my results, but decide yourself.

New version

http://i67.tinypic.com/2mcsze1.jpg

 

Old version

http://i63.tinypic.com/35i3rdw.jpg

Did you always want to fight the forces of evil with elves, dwarves and men side by side? Do you want to conquer middle earth with an army of uruks, trolls and the goblins of the misty mountains combined? This will be possible in the final release. Therefore I added two new factions

• The free peoples, consisting of Men, Elves and Dwarves
• The two towers, consisting of Mordor, Isengard and the Misty Mountains

I am totally aware, that this is not balanced in any way. Either way, it´s quite fun to play . Please note, that the new factions won´t have an AI and will be for human players only

Always wanted to use your custom hero as an army leader? This will be possible as well, albeit as an completely optional feature. If you choose this option, your CH will replace one of the vanilla army leaders, which will in turn become an regular hero for the game.

This one was a pain in the ass, to be honest. It alway bothered me, that the one ring, after which the whole series and especially this mode is named, does not play a major role in it. In the past, you could find the ring in every skirmish map again, build a fortress, save a huge amount of money and then build a ring hero, which you might use for 5 minutes. After lots and lots of trial and error, I managed to install a system, which is way better in my opinion.

 

Each map will have a small possibility to spawn Gollum at the beginning of a skirmish (something like two percent or so. If you manage to find Gollum and retrieve the ring from him, you are now able to give it to any Hero or special unit temporarily. They will be able to transfer the ring to other maps and will keep it, until they are killed, or you deliver it to a fortress. There you will be able to recruit the dark lord Sauron or the lady of storms Galadriel. Those will then stay for the rest of the game as a regular unit. Please note, that it is not possible for them, to become army leaders, as they must be recruited in an real-time-match. In turn, Gollum will not spawn again, once he was killed.

 

For this it was necessary, to do some workarounds, as the game originally does not intend, to make the ring transferable. This means, if the hero, who is holding the ring dies in an simulated battle, or if you did not transfer the ring from the original unit to a hero, it will be lost. I know, this is not the most elegant of systems, but it is working quite well and I do not see a better possibility at the moment .

-Commandpoints
As I´ve already said above, army leader´s cps have been increased. As a result, it was also necessary to increase the
cp of most territories to enable a decent defense against the larger invading armies. Army leaders will now have 1000Cp

-All units available
It always bothered me, that the new eliteunits, added with Rotwk wouldn´t stay after realtimebattles and weren´t buildable
in worldmode. You can now add units like Dwarven Zealots, Noldor Warriors or the Knights of Dol Amroth to your army.

-Complete Sound-Overhaul
I´ve wondered, how to increase the lord-of-the-ring-feeling ingame and one thing that came to my mind were the sounds used ingame.
A vast amount of new sounds like marching armies or cheering units and music has been added to the game.

-New Campaigns
I intend  to add some custom scenarios to the already existing ones. Things that came to my mind included a Last-Alliance-Scenario

or a 1v1 Scenario between Rohan and Isengard with Rohan controlling more territories but Isengard having the larger Army.

 

-New Artwork

This does not mean new skins for units, but a wide variety of new Factionbanners, Armybanners, Territory-Palantir-pictures etc., etc.