aNaRcHiSt44

Ah, the Lord of the Rings Conquest. A game that had so much promise, and was practically guaranteed a bright future.
And then.....EA had it's way.
Pandemic didn't kill this game, no; the producers did.
Because if you noticed, ever since Pandemic has been under EA's yoke, their games have been.....declining.....in terms of support. Fun factor may be higher, but the many issues that the producer decides to make Pandemic not fix truly detract from both company's names. Lately, EA has been screwing over many of their developers; but with what they are doing by allowing Pandemic to make the Saboteur, allowing Bioware to do as they wish with Dragon Age and ME2, and all these other games, they seem to realy be finally attempting to turn around their horrid public image.

Anyway.....

Conquest, for me, was like love. The kind of love that sticks with you for about two hours, then disappears entirely.
It was extremely fun at first; I couldn't believe how big the battles were and the scale of some of the maps in the campaigns.
And then.....there was the horrid skirmish.
How I dread that dreary thing......playing as the heroes offline is about the only fun I have ever had with the game when I re-installed it recently, because the campaigns get old really quickly.
I mean, Pandemic did great with the Pelennor Fields and Black Gate missions, but the rest were mediocre at best. And then you have the mostly....well....moronic voice-overs that really degrade what could have been some nice sounds and music. It doesn't help that the graphics aren't all that good looking, although the unique art direction and stunning detail on some of the models does sort of help me away from calling it 'ugly as sin'.
The gameplay is pretty much rock-paper-scissors, or something far less fun; it usually degenerates into 'I knock you down with my block breaker, I keep hitting you, and knock you down again when you get back up' or 'haha I'm so uber-pawnage that I don't even fit into Middle Earth lore and shoot fireballs out of my wang!'.

Foolish design choices, gluttonous voice overs and the lack of any support whatsoever for the title-aside from two tiny DLC packs made somewhat stupidly for the consoles only-really crushed my hopes of a defining experience in an action genre for the Lord of the Rings. Ah well; for LOTR goodness I've still got LOTRO and BFME2, and if I'm desperate for effects driven RPG stuff, then Third Age all the way.
Conquest was my dream game. It turned into my wet-dream's nightmare.
(God forbid)

Think Conquest was bad? Tell me why. And please don't criticise my spelling; I'm Australian, so we spell diffidently. Oh, wait, it's differently now. I forgot they changed that

Ok, I was playing BFME 2 Collectors Edition a few minutes ago, and I was palying Helms Deep (no need for details )
Anyway, I started hearing the classic Rohirrim charge music from the third movie (Return of the King), and I had this strange idea for a map that would be severly hard to make, but at the same time, would be infinitely worth it.

Now, there have been many mods in our time from other games that have pushed the limits of the gaming genre, for example; DotA Allstars, which in turn inspired the RTS-RPG hybrid game Demigod.
My new one, is well...sort of ahrd to explain, so I'll just say it like this;

It begins with a cutscene that shows the suppossedly endless Mordor hordes advancing on and attacking Minas Tirith, and then it cuts to the newly appearing Rohirrim, with Theoden at the head of-seriously-about a thousand in-game Rohirrim. With them, of course, are Eomer and Eowyn. A cutscene starts where Theoden mimicks his movie counterpart with his speech before the charge, and then it shows his horse rearing up, and then the Rohirrim surge forward, with the camera following them from a view as if you were one of the soldiers, yet just above the units (so you can see them all). Anyway, what I was thinking was they are divided into five-ten groups of 100 each, with Eomer on the left , Eowyn on the right and Theoden at the centre. Anyway, it stays in the whole cinematic view as they charge at the Mordor forces, yet it relinquishes control to the player to send the cavalry every which way that they can see, whilst the camera still follows the charge. Essentailly, you watch a battle portrayed cinematically, yet you still get a level of control of where the soldiers go. Also, of course, they have to be under the effects of a Glorious Charge, although it has to be permanent and they don't need to have that colourful glow. After you've killed at least three thousand orcs (use a kill counter maybe), you watch another cutscene where you see orcs fleeing and the Rohirrim stop to recover, and then the camera turns to the advancing Mumakil (who have to be a lot larger than normal for this to look cool). Make about 10-20 depending on what works. Then, the same principle with the whole charge thing and control, although the Rohirrim will automatically switch to bows when the two sides clash. If you can survive for a minute (or whatever), you'll be treated to the camera turning again and you see Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas running to a large group of orcs with the Army of the Dead following.

Now, this map would require quite a few things to even be possible (and yes I know it would be a vast undertaking);
1. The RJ camera mod.
2. Modifying the unit balance and stuff for the map.
3. Allowing the camera to only follow preset paths (if possible).
4. Custom cinematics (not necessarily high-res).
5. Modifyig unit abilities and the like.
6. Though it isnt needed, if there was a way for the Rohirrim to fire whilst moving that would be great.
7. All audio from the films (dialogue, music, etc).
8. An allowance of only selecting units via the grouping buttons (not allowed to redo the groups).
9. An actual kill counter (or something else that would work).
10. Anythng else people can think of.

Again, like I said, this is probably an unrealistic goal for a map, but I believe that it *can* be possible, if true effort (and permission for stuff like the RJ camera) were applied.
The thing is, it's probably an idea that's never been heard of before, at least for the BFME series, but I'm not sure if it will be doable. Hopefully, with all the fine modders and mappers we have here today, it can become achievable.

LOOKING FOR:
Mappers
Modders
Permissions (for RJ camera and any other necessary assets)
A suitable team leader.

I'm none of these things; I'm only an ideas person when it comes to modding. Lastly, tell me what you think!

EDIT:
Oh and it would likely have to be for RotWK, although I remember that SEE (BFME 2 Mod) usesthe RJ camera as well, so I don't know whichever anyone sane enough to try this thinks best.

I just re-installed RJ and Rotwk and BFME 2 and such, and well.....I just played with an allied Brutal Mordor AI (I was Mordor too) against 2 Hard (I think they were) Gondor AI's in the new Osgiliath map........
Jeez.......I've never seen an Osgiliath map done so close to the movie representation........I mean, when I sent a massive force (like it used up 1300 CP,and the other 700 CP went to the other side bridges) with catapults and the like, and a big naval force as well, and Gondor rushed to defend......I felt like I was re-living the movies....BFME style.....

And Combe Valley is the most detailed and beautiful map I've ever seen......

What maps have you guys been amazed by in particular?

Ok, now, if any of you know me, I'm sorta a drifter guy; I used to hang out mainly on EAW modding sites, and then I switched to BFME sites (as well as just LOTR stuff in general) and now I'm just sorta doing a bit of each; I usually don't touch the internet that much anymore unless I'm looking at up and coming games. That's a sparing introduction, however quaint

Anyway, my point is, I've been writing enough ever since I was like 5 years old, as well as reading since I was like 3 , and I was wondering if there were any text things I could help with. I know this edition is only for fixing-up and balacing stuff, but I vaguely remember from my (enjoyable) time playing TEA that it did seem to have a lot of text issues. Now, whilst I know nothing at all about modding for BFME (aside from the very beginnings of the basics of modelling), and coding comes naturally to me as well, I was wondering if I could help compose the readme, fix up text issues, or in the case of missing text, provide some.

Yes, my credentials are rather useless on this matter, but it's so I can hope you can trust me Not like anyone ever has, but that's beside the point. It's up to ya's; I don't mean to infringe on anything, and if you don't like what I'm suggesting, then that's completely fine. I just want to help.

And yes, I've tried numerous times on mods to help, but then again, no-one ever replies when I do so eh. Again, up to you guys; from my point of view, I'm unreliable at best.