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So this has been a sorta mini-project I’ve been working on – we’ll see how far it goes. If nothing else, along the way I’ll be improving the editors as I run into snags.
I want to create a Gemfire mod for DoaE just to see how "possible" it is. We can modify text, officers, and battles so far.
However… we can’t modify one thing easily that would make a "total conversion" possible.
The same tool I used to grab the portraits from DoaE can also do insertion, though. So, for a Gemfire mod… grab a portrait from Gemfire, resize (or pad) it since it’s a different size, hope my image editor doesn’t change the bits-per-pixel (grr), insert it into DoaE over Liu Bei’s portrait.
Presto! Yes, that is an in-game shot :) The palette for "White" portrait backgrounds is perfect for Prince Erin. How lucky. Guess my "mario" mod wouldn’t be impossible either.
If anyone’s interested, I can put together a mini-FAQ on how to use FEIDIAN to do stuff like this.
I am definitely interested in learning how to change portraits.
Heck, it would be nice to change graphics.
I’m still debating how to set things up. Ander and Eselred should probably be the biggest, so Wu and Wei do seem appropriate.
I’m going to try and do some interesting things with Pender’s betrayal if I can. It depends on how malleable events are and that’s something I intend to pursue once I’ve got all the other stuff hashed out.
Gweyn will only play a role as figurehead – she’ll take the place of Liu Bei, actually. The story will be that she allies with Erin right at the beginning, thereby lending him legitimacy (and therefore being a decent character to take Liu Bei’s role of plot-device).
The major sections are:
YT
DZ
Yuan Shu
Yuan Shao
Jing
Shu
Wu
Wei
I’d like to keep things geographical-approximate, but that could stretch things thin general-wise. For example, Garth as Yuan Shao makes sense, but he has a grand total of 3 officers.
The available enemy families are:
Lankshire (Eselred) [big]
Lyle (Ander) [big]
Coryll (Lars) [small]
Chrysalis (Garth) [small]
Flax (Eric) [small]
Molbrew (Leander) [small]
Tate (Terian) [small-med]
Tudoria (Eadric) [small]
Divas (Loryn) [small-med]
Lankshire + Tudoria – Wei
Lyle – Wu
Divas – Shu
Tate – Jing
Chrysalis – Yuan Shu
Flax – Yuan Shao
Coryll – Dong Zhuo
Molbrew – Yellow Turbans
That seems mostly appropriate.
I’m planning to have the wizards as powerful strategists, but you only get them when Eric "would" (i.e. you can get Skulryk after Leander, but Empyrion only after beating Terian). They’re going to have set soldier-counts, to reflect the fact that they’re nice for a while, but later it’s better to just get Lancers or something :) Kinda odd since Zendor’s arguably the most useful, but doing the fixed-soldier thing seems right.
Mini-Tutorial
FEIDIAN is here. You want to download the main program and the Tileset linked on the given page; to get all the portraits from DoaE, use the command line:
php feidian.php -cr nes8,6,128,0x008810 doae.nes output
i.e. launch FEIDIAN in "read" with a custom tileset (-cr)
use the NES8 tileset for color (nes8)
each portrait is 6 tiles wide (6)
there are 128 portrait entries (128) [note for Liu Bei's portrait alone, you'd just use 6 since each portrait is 6 rows]
start at address 0x008810
use the rom doae.nes [or your rom name]
export to output8x8.bmp
that gets you the first set of 128. The second set is separate:
php feidian.php -cr nes8,6,128,0x00C810 doae.nes output2Note this will just give you a HUGE bmp with 128 portrait rows on each.
To insert, you reverse this process; for a single portrait, you want a 48×48, 2bpp BMP (if you can find an image editor that can *make* one, let me know! Paint, GIMP and Paint.NET all failed me; Paint can *save* one if you open one that’s already 2bpp)
then you do
php feidian.php -ci nes8,6,6,0x008810 erin.bmp doae.nesto replace Liu Bei’s portrait (at address 0x008810) with erin.bmp.
I use Tile Layer Pro.
…hmmm, I just realized that I can severely cut down on the number of generic portrait parts… but are the results acceptable? It’d certainly open up room for more unique officers (10 new unique portraits! HAH!), but the generics would become…. genericer. Current idea is a flag with the force’s color and either a helmet or an advisor hat.
Tile Layer Pro is decent, but it’s also a bit of a pain to use since you have to assemble the portrait manually.
There are a total of 42 (and 2/3!) possible unique portraits… I’m not sure whether I’d rather go the route of medieval-ing (fantasizing? errr….) the generics or just adding more uniques and making the generics blank or a flag (that’s a good idea).
But then if I go too far, then I should really get rid of the TK motif globally (which might not even be too hard; just change several other small bits)… and then I’d want to change most of the battle sprites… and yeah. That might be a bit more work than I’m up for ;)
Each force leader should have unique portraits; not sure about the wizards. Might be nifty, I suppose.
Well, you could simply use a gem to represent the wizards and the crown for the Dragon.
There’s still the officer question, though… Gemfire has only 64 officers, so you’ll have to either invent new ones for the DoaE port, or do a lot of repeats.
Taking another look at DoaGemfire…
Here’s the number of generals per side in a scenario, along with the number who serve them in at least one scenario and the scenarios they show up in:
*Lankshire: 9-17 (22) [1234]
**Blanche: 5-9 (13) [1234]
**Lyle: 4-8 (13) [1234]
*Tudoria: 5 (5) [4]
*Tate: 4-5 (5) [234]
*Flax: 3-4 (5) [123]
Divas: 4 (4) [4]
*Chrysalis: 2-3 (3) [12]
*Molbrew: 3 (3) [12]
Tordin: 3 (3) [3]
*Coryll: 3 (3) [1]
So my suggestions:
Turbans = *Coryll
Dong Zhuo = *Molbrew
Yuan Shu = *Chrysalis
Yuan Shao = *Flax
Jing = *Tate
Shu = Divas
Wu = **Ander
Wei = *Lankshire
Jin = *Tudoria
And now for who to genericize…. comes in the next post!
Okay, there are three ways to determine who sucks so much they should be a generic: (note that for each general we use the highest of each stat they get in any scenario — Pender "Lu Bu" Blanche, for example, uses the 96 war and 80 int form scenario 4, and the 32 charm from scenario 1.
(1) Sort by by each general’s highest stat.
(2) Sort by the sum of the three stats.
(3) Sort by a weighted sum of the three stats (I use [best*4]+[mid*2]+[worst*1]). This reflects how Li Ru (18/200), for example, gets much more from +50 int (which’d let him stay in the party until Zhuge Liang!) than +50 str (which, well, doesn’t really do anything!).
Worst by highest stat:
(1) Arkin
(2) Aigle
(3) Francis
(4-8) Andrew
(4-8) Kneulf
(4-8) Seagal
(4-8) Lenne
(4-8) Eselred
(9) Nicolay
(10-11) Randal
(10-11) Cairn
(12) Eustace
(13) Sarthe
(14) Esok
(15) Garth
Worst by sum of stats:
(1) Arkin
(2) Seagel
(3) Francis
(4) Andrew
(5) Kneulf
(6) Eselred
(7) Randal
(8) Sarthe
(9) Walther
(10-11) Bradley
(10-11) Aigle
(12) Nicolay
(13) Elias
(14) Lenne
(15) Veen
Worst by weighted sum:
(1) Arkin
(2) Francis
(3) Seagal
(4) Andrew
(5) Kneulf
(6) Eselred
(7) Aigle
(8) Randal
(9) Sarthe
(10) Nicolay
(11) Lenne
(12) Cairn
(13) Walther
(14) Esok
(15) Elias
It is assumed that Eselred keeps his face (due to being an Elvis wannabe and such) and that Garth also keeps his face (how can we turn down Huo Hu’s request!?), so even those lists give only 17 names! So I did some fooling around with excel; since two faces are used by Gem & Dragon, and two more are used by generics, that means 26 of the 64 officers get genericized. These are the ones I recommend based on sorting of the average of their three rankings in those categories:
Shabard
Carlyle
Galford
Gerard
Jerras
Alain
Anise-F
Fuster
Veen
Aiden
Bradley
Eustace
Esok
Elias
Cairn
Walther
Lenne
Nicolay
Sarthe
Randal
Aigle
Kneulf
Andrew
Seagal
Francis
Arkin
Yes, we’re about four shy of including Raith (who has 94 war, but 39 int and 40 charm, meaning he’s 8th ranked in max stat and 49th in total max!)
I still like the idea of this mod, but to be honest I doubt I’ll get around to it :) I just don’t have the patience. I wouldn’t mind planning it out in the hopes of getting a better start once tools are in order, though.
I’d like Yuan Shu / Shao to at least be Coryll/Flax or something. It makes no sense for Garth to join Flax, but Lars is a bit closer to making sense…
Just edit the story a bit; the anti-dong zhuo coalition, for example, could be a round of smashing Leander for not fighting Eselred or something.
After all, Leander DOES tend to get beaten up by Ander, Tate, Eselred, and even Erik…
Finally, keep in mind that SOME chnages have to be made no matter what. Your suggetsions, for example, moves Tudoria, Lyle, Flax, and Coryll to the opposite sides of the map!
So I've been on a gemfire binge lately; any update on the mod?
Ideas, from looking at the map…
Turbans: Lankshire 1
Dong Zhuo: Lyle 1
Yuan Shu: Terian
Yuan Shao: Lyle 2
Jingzhou: Lankshire 2
Shu: Flax
Wu: Lankshire 3
Wei: Lankshire 4
Jin: Tudoria
Garth = Gongsun Zan
Molbrew = Ma Su, Ma Liang
Loryn = Jiang Wei
Lu Bu 7003 = Ander's last gasp
Zhuge Liang = Gweyn (sorry, no 255 int until you turn Geolug!)
Sima Yi = Eadric
Pang Tong = Terian (with good but balanced stats)
Jailed shu guy = Lars (who actually joins!)
It'll be something like http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/6643/ishmeriadoae.png ; — remember, Lankshire canonically *starts out* with half the map, so it only makes sense that half the battles are against Lankshire. As for Ander, presumably, he was defeating chrysalis while you're busy repelling Eselred's first invasion.
These are all great ideas, but if I were going to work on DoaE stuff I'd probably finish the map editor before anything else.
This does spark my imagination a bit, though. I get in Gemfire moods myself, so maybe when the next one hits me I'll get back to work.
Ya I've been real busy at work so have kind of dropped the ball at looking at the DoaE tool or the Gongsun Zan mod I had started. Will see which one of us gets time first to look into it… There will be a big learning curve for me though for Destiny of an Editor.
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