17th Century Warfare Mod

[jwalstab 10]

Hi Everyone,

I have never been into modding for the series, however have always played around in the map editor. Infact I have never really had a reason to want to mod. Not sure if this is the right forum for this but I am highly interested in making this mod, so just a few questions before I begin as to what is currently possible impossible.

Anyways I plan on doing the following things:

• Creating a few new skins for soldiers (bright coloured strapped uniforms)
  
• Creating a few different muskets as well as figuring out how to make the muskets rest on shoulders while they walk
  
• Creating (or editing) a formation that allows soldiers to fight in blocks, removes the desire for the units to go prone, and if possible can make the units fire by rank (I doubt this will ever be possible but correct me if im wrong)
  
• Creating a band unit
  
• Creating a cannon unit
  
• Possibly creating a ridable horse, however doubt I will ever have the skills and time for this
  
• Create some kind of melee system for bayonets (don't even think the engine supports melee, maybe set it as a gun mode with no effects and extremley limited range?)
  

I am mainly unsure about the formations and melee, as I have not read anywhere that they are possible to edit in.

Basically I do not care about historical accuracy or anything, just want to be able to recreate a few 18th century battles on the field and see massive potential for this.

I would appreciate any feedback as to what you think about this project and whether or not this will be possible within the engine before I begin undertaking it, as I am highly motivated for the first time to begin a serious mod.

Thanks to anyone who has any information before I embark on my challenge, and I apologise if this should be posted elsewhere.

Edited July 16, 2009 by jwalstab
Changed 17th century to 18th Century

[Door a jar 0]

Good luck on your mod!

It's certainly something I would be looking forward to playing. I don't mean to be a prude, however, but I think you want your mod to be an 18th century mod (17th century would actually be 1600s -18th century would be the 1700s which fought the way you described).

I'm not sure if it's available any more, but there was a napoleonic mod (19th century) for the original Operation Flashpoint, it was a lot more basic than you described, but it had a lot of units and was really rather fun. If you can find it, or anyone else can for that matter and post a link you might be able to get a few ideas. If I remember right there was even a Waterloo map that went with it.

-Cheers

[Litos 10]

Great idea! I am very much looking forward to play that. Sorry I can't give any advice, I'm not a modder, but good luck, I hope I see your mod release sometime soon!

[jwalstab 10]

Thanks for the support guys, and yes 'Door a jar' you are correct I was refering to the 18th century, and not the 17th century, my mistake!

Anyone got any feedback on how well the engine will handle this kind of changes?

[STALKERGB 6]

am i right in thinking that infantry doctrine changed somewhat in the 1700's, so rather than the soldiers marching with muskets/rifles against the shoulder they marched more as you would hold a modern weapon, or at least light infantry and scouts followed the newer "modern" style. Its just that it might make things easier in the animation department.

For getting everyone to stand in a line i wonder if it would be possible to change the "Formation line" spacing so that everyone is really close, although there wouldn't be ranks it might be a start.

A cannon wouldn't be too hard to create, making it mobile could be harder but stationary i would have thought would have been reasonably easy.

[MrMisty 0]

There was a mod like this for Half-Life/HL2. It was a blast to play online with a lot of people.

I'd be willing to help you out with this. I'm experienced in modeling, but not so much in addon making. However, I'll see if I can work up a few things here you can use if you want to put a team together. I know I could use the experience.

[STALKERGB 6]

@MrMistym in the HL2 mod didn't you have to load the gun manually? or am i thinking of a different mod?

[MrMisty 0]

You had to press "R" to reload but that was it. It took forever to reload though.

[Hvymtal 1251]

yes, well so does a real musket! Rifled Guns took even longer!

[sholio 10]

another thumbs up

would really like to see a proper slow paced large scale fps like the one for ofp was

for the sake of getting the thing done, i would recommend to first focus on getting the guns into the game and completely functional and release those and then start working on the soldiers and then later other stuff if motivation holds up

doing and releasing stuff in the order of importance

there was a samurai addon for ofp so you could try see how melee was done there - if it's still applicaple for A2

[MrMisty 0]

I've started working on a basic musket, I'll post what I've got so far. Keep in mind this is not done yet. I still need to add the flintlock mechanism. Although I haven't textured it yet I put in a couple shaders on it for now.

Here area a couple of renders:

[quiet_man 8]

there was a mod for arma I think for the american civil war ???

QuietMan

[jwalstab 10]

MrMisty, wow that looks awesome!!! I think if we start contributing models and ideas in this thread we can make something happen quiet quickly! Thanks mate for the support an enthusiasm.

I have also started creating a musket in 3Ds Max (doesn't look as good as mrmistys), and will go from there as per one of the suggestions here.

While I am moddelling the musket, I have taken a look around and there isn't really a straight forward how to make a simple compiled .pbo gun mod (like converting, where animations are made, config files etc.).

Also is there a tutorial on simply re-texturing the uniforms of soldiers... I don't think it would be to difficult to do and could probaly figure it out, but a step by step tutorial would be simply amazing.

Edited July 24, 2009 by jwalstab

[MrMisty 0]

I really haven't found a single tutorial that take you from the beginning to end creating an addon. I've been reading all of them I can find and just putting the info together. Right now I've learned how to import, create & name LOD's, and what named selections are required for a weapon. I'm still kinda confused when it comes to the different shaders involved, but I'm starting to get the picture.

The best advice I can give you is this: Read everything relevant on the PMC Editing Wiki, then read it again. Next get the BI tools, download the BIS sample models. Just 10 minutes studying those models cleared up so many questions I had. Any other questions, search the forums or just ask.

As for the musket: I'll be gone this weekend, but I would like to have the model finished early next week, so I can work on the textures.

[Hvymtal 1251]

Ok, here's a hint about names with 17th century muskets: British musket = Brown Bess :D