mordheim themed PC game mod

Hi there. I am a long time lurker of these forums, mainly finding enjoyment from the galleries and custom rules people make. I love Mordheim, and it is by far my own favourite GW game.

Another game I love to bits is a little known PC game named Age of Wonders. For years this game has benefitted from numerous brilliant mods. Until recently it was not possible to edit some key parts of the game, such as names and certain images, but in the past few weeks the sole remaining members of the now dead AoW community had a few breakthroughs.

If you are not familiar with the game, Age of Wonders is a tolkienesque fantasy strategy game. On the surface it seems akin to games such as Heroes of Might and Magic, yet i find it a lot more fun. The game benefits from a turn based battling system, and customisable heroes. Another key feature is a PBEM (play by email) multiplayer option, that allows players to play their turns, and transmit the game data via an email system.

As a result of this i began planning a full Warhammer based Total Conversion of the game. Changing race names, spell and ability names and graphics etc to achieve this. The point is to play my friends around the country easily via the Pbem.

It occured to me though that it may be more fun to adapt the game to Mordheim enstead. Either conversion has its pros and cons.

Ultimatley I want the game to be enjoyed by the most worthy audience. As the AoW community seems to be almost non-existant, and Warhammer players already have Mark of Chaos to toy with digitally, I would hope this to appeal to you guys if a mordheim PC game is what you would like to try?

The game is old, very old, and it would be Mordheimesque, not Mordheim due to its limitations.

You can get the Demo of AoW here

If people arent too interested by this, then I will carry on with the Warhammer adaptation for now, but otherwise it would be a wonderful to unite this great international community we have here.

oh yeah, is this topic in the right place??:S

cheers!

ben

Age of Wonders!
there's a game I haven't played in a very long time!!
I used to be totally hooked on it!

I would very much be interested in a mod, but, how would you approach it? as mordheim is city based, and Age of Wonders has these vast lands to roam trough?

Perhaps going for a more rural setting would be key? Empire in flames or BTB per example?

I would definitaly like to hear your thoughts on this as I loved the game back in the days where 3D was a thing no one had ever heard of

well the sneaky thing about the mod, is that almost all unit construction would happen in 'builders guid' style buildings, the graphics of which i would redesign into houses or maybe a camp. the overall map would be redesigned to appear like a city, so imagine lots of eye candy, thousands of dungeons etc. cities themselves would most likely not appear at all, or if they do, one per player as a base camp.

in the advanced map editor you can change battle maps, so they would be transformed into the more dense mordheim terrain.

if there were 12 races (ie, 1 pure 'good', 3 'good', 4 'neutral', 3 'evil, 1 'evil')

what would you choose.

another thing to consider is that there wouldnt be any controls on who hires what essentially. so there may not be a beastman team, but i could make a guild that builds beastmen. because of their allignment, it would only be viable for 'evil' races to hire them.

It sounds great

(how about making a Mordheim mod for Myth II Soulblighter? it has a lot of the mechanics there and you can make your own sprites and add them )

I'd play it for sure. I remember spending hours playing Age of Wonders. That game must be 10 years old by now.

the mod is still very much in planning stages, but heres a little update.

the way i am getting around some of the renaming, is by playing it in
french, but messing with the translation files. i can either keep any
text in the original english, or simply reapply any text over the
french so long as it has the same (or less) amount of letters.

so...the races for the game will be (with alignments)

PURE LAW
sigmarite (aka sisters of sigmar)

LAW
elves (high elves/wood elves - non specific)
dwarfs (dwarf treasure hunters, hired swords etc)
bretonia (one 'n' sadly)

NEUTRAL
Bandits (hochland and stirland flavours, pirates too)
Northmen (Kislev, Norse)
Fanatics (Witch Hunters and other crazed folk)
Mercs (Mercenaries spelt with 6 letters, all other humans, very long list)

EVIL (or 'KAOS' if 4 letter chaos isnt too cheesy? ill leave it up to public opinion)

Skaven (all clans)
Orcs (Including goblins, hobgobins etc under this racial umbrella)
Undead (Vampires, ghouls, zombies etc, all bloodlines)

PURE EVIL (or 'CHAOTIC'/'PURE KAOS' all anti undead spells from AoW
would now affect Chaos units, so 'turn undead' ability would now
effectively be something along the lines of 'turn chaos')

Chaos (Beastmen, Possessed, Daemons, Carnival etc)

Other races such as token Lizardmen, Ogres etc will be under the race NONE.

I decided to create 4 different human NEUTRAL factions for this to represent the human dominance of the game in player terms.

Within the game, which will most likely only have one map, there will
be a 'home' base, which noone can attack, and will have a teleporter
that can teleport units to the outskirts of Mordheim. This would
represent certain distant homes such as Uluathan, dwarf holds,
bretonnia etc and these would be the main location for producing units
of those groups.

NOW. here comes an option that could completely change everything from above, which ive been considering.

would people prefer,

A) what i have roughly outlined here, with races that are local to Mordheim, thus only allowing MORDHEIM maps.

or

B) having the 12 races more varied and tailored to a wider view of the
warhammer world. this would allow for a LUSTRIA map, AZGAL map, pretty
much anything really, but would mean that the races need to be chosen
very carefully. 1 Pure Good/Law, 3 Good/Law, 4 Neutral, 3 Evil/Chaos, 1
Pure Evil/Chaos.

Even if we have the crazy varied race scheme, and applied it to a
location specific map such as Mordheim, it wouldnt affect things too
much, just imagine having a lizardman leader, but no hirable lizardmen
in the city, so the bulk of the forces would most likely be whatever he
can hire (aka humans, dwarfs, etc)

i do love typing 'etc' today

whos still interested?

also is anyone a budding graphic creator? im going to be ripping alot
of other games material most likely (anyone played the warhammer mod of
civ III?) and if its not too time consuming world of warcraftgraphics.

sounds cool, haveing said that i have never played this age of wonders and so am unsure as to how compatible Mordheim would be with it. I personally like the sound of the second option better than the first. overall i like the idea and well done for giving it a shot

I've just started playing Dawn of War 2, and reckon that game has THE engine to build mordheim on! (small levels, warband sized armies, lot of special weaponry... etc.)

ooh, really want to try DoW2, but sadly dont have the PC for it. off topic though, i bought two xbox 360 controllers yesterday and downloaded emulators and roms for the genesis and snes, and quite possibly had the best gaming session with my friends EVER.

the only reason i am modding AoW is that i know the game pretty well, and i am no programmer and dont know how to model 3D characters for a decent DoW mod sadly.

I am working on a 'demo' currently, which will hopefully get the feel across, and may hopefuly inspire some nice people to get involved too if it gets around.

it would be amazing if someone could customise an old RPG like Never Winter Nights or Baldurs Gate into a Mordhem RTS.

just a little update incase anyone is following this.

some genius working on aow2 created a little program that can rename anything within the game to any string length. i tried using it on aow1, and guess what, it worked! so thats quite awesome for this project.....(i think this triumph is really lost on anyone who isnt me )

im going with a view of the mod being a more general view of the warhammer world, where some maps will have big armies, and there will also be mordheim maps, with a few skirmishers.

so, the races the game will have (now we can rename anything)

Race - Allignment

Lizardmen - Pure Law
High Elves - Law
Dwarfs - Law
Wood Elves - Law

Bretonnia - Neutral
Sigmarites - Pure Neutral
Imperial Provinces - Neutral
Norse - Neutral

Skaven - Chaotic
Greenskins - Chaotic
Dark Elves - Chaotic
Undead Pure - Chaotic

Chaos units will be available, as well other sub races.

NB, the 12 races are just a starting point for a player, a dwarf player could recruit any other race etc, so on a mordheim map, there would be a token lizardman with humans working for him.

I am currently also working on a very strong pixel aesthetic too for this. As this mod wont be able to compete with decent modern games, retro is the way to go i think.

Does Pixelhammer sound too cheesy?

This sounds good!

Are you doing all the artwork yourself? and what programs do you make that in? - if you need any help with that, I might be interested...

cool!
I have never played aow, but this sure sounds interresting.
I have some experience pixeling stuff, and in my opinion ms paint is the way to go

yes help is very welcome! i want everything to be anally standardised, so all the portraits for instance would face the same way, all the units would be from the same template etc (like zelda of FF sprites, veeery repetitive)

i was going to use photoshop, mainly for layering, so i can pixel over an image. ill get some examples up soon, then we can play about!

yeah let me know.. as PS is my thing anyway!

Hi everyone,

Did the age old forum-disappearing-trick, but I'm back now.

I have recently graduated, and left my posse of mordheimers from university, so the desire to make a Play-By-Email mordheimesque game has increased much!

If anyone is interested in furthering this endevour, please PM me, as I have a fantastic idea on how to share resources via a tool called DROPBOX.

If there are photoshop monkeys out there, and people who have a keen eye for game mechanics your assistance is keenly appreciated!

What did happen with this project using "Age of Wonders".
.......

Ren