Hello Beren,

You are correct in that no new abilities can be made. Thus all the abilities that I’ve mentioned are based on existing abilities. Some of them will be modded in terms of the visual effects chosen, others in terms of the damage types and so forth. But all listed so far work quite well. The same will hold true for spells. For example, I have entangling woods, flash floods, rockslides, and so forth, that all work quite well, though there are a few glitches that I need to iron out.

Melkor’s sphere is definitely the most diverse, although the others are more element based than alignment based. Keeping all the useful spells and giving each sphere five spells per level, not many decent spells are left over for a cosmos sphere. The few nice remaining spells I thought I’d use as rewards of the Valar.

Thank you for the feedback on Gandalf and Saruman. I’ll follow your advice there. Also, on the steed of Rohan, I’ll make it grace of Manwe as well.

Now, in regards to gunpowder, while explosives existed (firecrackers, tricks of Saruman—and I’m keeping those) nowhere in Tolkien, at least that I’ve read, is there mention of guns. In the Hobbit, Goblins are credited with many of the devices that kill many people at a time, but this refers to our world, not the Hobbit’s. There are plenty of abilities that can replace the gunpowder ones also, which makes the decision an easy one for me.

What I’m curious about is whether there are any abilities not in Shadow Magic that you would like to see in a Middle Earth mod. Some abilities are quite flexible in terms of what you can achieve. For example, in another project that I was working on, I managed to get a working Invoke Death ability out of Strangle, and Blood Lust out of Shadow Walking. Also, if there’s anything that doesn’t seem to fit and shouldn’t be in such a mod, I’d like people to mention those things too.

Thank you for all your feedback so far!

i'm wondering how you will do trample too but there IS a poison breath attack. Beren must not have gotten the memo.

Concerning spheres, there is no reason why a single spell cannot belong to multiple spheres, just as a spell could easily belong to no sphere, not even Secret (which would disable it). As such, there is no reason why you couldn't add a seventh sphere of your choice - the only problem would be that everybody would have access to it.

As for guns, again I am not objecting to your taking them out - only to the statement that others have made on this board that they must be taken out. I am curious as to how you turned Strangle into Invoke Death, or Shadow Walking into Bloodlust!

Hello Beren,

And I'm pleased to say that I've had some success recolouring various Elvish units, and so we seem to have three fully functioning Elvish cultures now: Noldor, Teleri, and the Fell. They all look different enough to satisfy me too

Regarding abilities, for some reason I hadn't realized that the maximum assignable damage was more than 20. And so, for Invoke Death, I changed its damage type to "death," gave it a damage value of 99 and watched what ensued. Occasionally, a unit would not die when hit due to low damage, but for the most part it works really well. And the ai seems to use it decently, which is always tricky when changing abilities.

The blood lust was done by changing attack and damage values for Shadow Walking, changing the spell icon, and substituting the "fury" fx for the shadow walking one.

So, no completely new abilities, but abilities that are new enough to make the game feel new, I hope!

Can you think of some naming ideas for Holy Bolts, Fire Bolts, and Lightning Bolts?

Cheers,

Brad

Hi Brad,

I do not like calling #12 Steeds of Rohan either. While wonderful horses, they were not really magical.

In terms of the renaming issue, I would point you to the final appendix in the Sil - titled ELEMENTS IN QUENYA AND SINDARIN NAMES. This could be what you are looking for. You might need to actually do a little "inventing" yourself, but the spirit of Tolkien would be there. For example, you do not want to use holy or death, but their Tolkien equals are "aina" and "gurth" and already there is a different feel to them. You could look for something to combine that with or just leave them as is.

If you want more specific input, I would be willing to venture a few. However, it would be easy to get lost in this area and rename many items, spells, etc..

Hello Katieandbo,

And thank you for your response. What I would like is something that is not language specific to a given race, but simply Tolkien like. So, instead of death, something to do with Melkor, shadows, ect. Instead of life, something to do with Valinor, Varda, and so forth.

I'm actually quite happy to rename most of the spells and abilities...it's not much work to actually do once I've got the ideas. I've been concentrating on recolouring units lately, and so have not had much time for naming and so on. So, any thoughts you care to share would be very welcome.

Cheers.

Well, just a little backstory: the original power of Melkor - before he became evil - was the extremes of nature, "immoderate" heat and cold. I wonder if you could work that in somehow.

If the mod is intendend to single player too or coop vs AI, I think a good idea is to make separate single player variant. With some tweaks for better ai. For example, in my own private mod I am making some races playable only by AI. So, they have much better units etc. Also, some spheres are for ai, that way they contain only spells ai can use better way. It is possible to make 2 variants, good human vs evel ai and good AI vs bad human. With very enhanced ai races. I prefer single player now, but ai is way to weak ordinal way.

Hi Violet,

And tricks that you want to share for making the ai perform better would be welcome! I've looked at Web Server's mod for better ai, and adopted some of his changes but I'm always looking for anything that will make the tired old ai perform a bit better.

Also, I missed responding to Pawels' suggestion that the Istari be wizards. I'm not sure this would be implemented all this well. Gandalf ran around so much, he doesn't seem to suit a stationary wizard. Saruman, on the other hand, would make the perfect wizard.

The wizards don't have to be stationary, in my pbem games they often travel a lot. On a LoTR map, Gandalf can be a wizard without a tower, while Saruman of course has one.

Not sure about Radagast, he didn't play a very important role, so he can be just a hero (I'm not sure which race).

Blue Wizards - not much is known about them, I think they can lead the Easterlings or Haradrim in more speculative scenarios.

Melian can be a wizard too, she ruled in Doriath together with Thingol, who can be a hero.

Hi Brad/Stranger!

A LoTR Mod sounds very cool, good luck in this ambitious project.

I highly recommend getting in touch with Kirk and Awegust. They were developing a LoTR Mod some time ago, check this thread: http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=26,5084,0,365

It seems it has been paused/discontinued but maybe with your assistance they could get it done? To me it always seemed such a shame that project wasn't finished; the previews they provided were absolutely stunning.

cheers!

Hello Merk,

I sent you an email yesterday, but I'm not sure if you got it. I also emailed Awegust, and he indicated that he simply doesn't have enough time to work on his mod anymore. So, full steam ahead here!

Good to hear from you :-)

We were wondering if there were any updates available.

Yes: I've got the unit bodies sorted and the units made and documented in excel format for about 2/3 of the races (good and neutral). I am working on evil ones at the moment. I've also got most of the spells and abilities renamed, though I need to test some of the spells.

I've also started working on a map for "The Hobbit."

Fascinating and ironic - the map that I was going to release along with my Arda Mod was to have been a Battle of the Five Armies map. It seems we share quite a lot in the instinct department!

Hello Beren,

I'm not sure what I'll do with "The Hobbit" as a map, yet. I may make two maps: one, a role playing single player version, and number two a pbem five player version. As for now, I'm just trying to get the landscape right. I have a collector's edition Hobbit book, which has nice maps, but if you know of anything more detailed, I'd like to have a look.

Regards,

Brad

I don't have any really detailed maps that I think you could use, unfortunately (and what I have is on a computer that will need some work to connect it to the internet again).

That's all right, Beren Mainly, I'm interested in town locations for such a map. Clearly, one can scatter Gobbo towns around the north, woodsman villages around Mirkwood and so on, but if there some definite locations, I would prefer to use those.

The most detailed Middle Earth maps that I know of (including the stuff from The Hobbit) are there:

http://www.lords-of-blah.nl/mearth/mearthmap.html - black, white & red version

http://www.ititches.com/middleearth/ - colored version

The maps are a bit different, some stuff from one is not on the other, and vice versa.

[This message has been edited by PawelS (edited 12-09-2009 @ 04:10 PM).]

Hello Pawels,

And thank you for the maps very much! They are both a bit different, and have more detail than my map.

Also, if anyone knows of any sites with good non game affiliated middle earth art, I'd appreciate knowing about them.

Cheers,

Brad

[This message has been edited by The_Stranger (edited 12-11-2009 @ 02:22 PM).]

Brad,

Been over a month now. How is the project going?

Mike

Hello Mike,

And progress has been made...I think there will be a fairly substantial report by the end of the week!

Cheers,

Brad

Glad to hear that. I look forward to your post.

Mike

Well, it's a bit later than I typed, but here's the news:

Kirky Picardo, maker of the Brave New World Mod, had also been working on a Middle Earth Mod. We've decided to combine our efforts and hopefully produce a Middle Earth mod for the ages!

I'll be opening a new thread soon for updates, suggestions, teasers, etc.

Brad,

Thanks for the update. Will be looking forward to hearing more about the combined effort.

Mike