Star Wars - Alderaan (2 years before the Battle of Yavin)- Shadows Mod

[rjord]

Hi all

I purchased Distant Worlds last week and upgraded to Legends yesterday.... am blown away by this game and have been busy modding.

I know there are 2 Star Wars mods here already which look great and in the last few days I have been working on my version of Star Wars.

This runs in Legends and my timeline for the mod is two years prior to Episode 4 : A New hope and of cause at this stage Alderaan has not been blown away by the Empire.

I have added new characters in it researching each race to see which characters were around at the time of Episode 4. Boba Fett is there......so is Slave 1 . For the kids...... Ewoks are in the game. The corellians are in the mod, the Naboo and the geonosians are there as they existed in Episode 4 times. Sorry.... no Jar Jar Binks or gungans lol . Han Solo and chewbacca should be there as well.

There are twi'leks and the Kaminoans (no longer in the clone business) and as I mentioned Boba Fett is back and he is not happy. Looking forward to a fight with Slave 1 when it makes an appearance.

I have also added the Corvette CR90 to the ships ,(who can forget the start to episode 4) new x-wings, a new b-wing.... a new Millennium Falcon....... Imperial ships next in line to be modded.

EDIT: Have added the Main Title screenshot for the mod. 31st May

Roy

[Mansen]

I'm just adding species to the game - haven't really thought about a timeline setting or even characters. Don't see why we couldn't merge everything eventually or at least make sure they are compatible with each other.

Those who want just the universe can do that, and those who want specific scenarios can add those.

[rjord]

This is truly a great game..... I used to play a game many moons ago called Rebellion but Distant worlds is a million times better.

Anyway...back to the Star Wars - Alderaan mod


Modding it as i go along and it is coming along nicely...... currently playing it with the music from Empire Strikes Back.
Have added more vessels and characters to it and fne tuning it as I go along.

A sample of some of the new vessels is in the screenshot below

Roy

[rjord]

Another screenshot for today showing the first appearance of a YT-1300 freighter at Alderaan. This is of course is the same model freighter as the Millennium Falcon.

Roy

[rjord]

Noticed in the screenshots above the Rebel flag was incorrect...... fixed that in the screen below however the default flag design I set in the race file is not being picked up when the game starts.......

Roy

[rjord]

The Empire....first ship

Roy

[dostillevi]

Awesome, nice work!

[Igard]

Off to a great start! I also played Rebellion, though here in the UK it was called Supremacy. Awesome game.

Keep up the good work!

[rjord]

At the moment I am going through doing probably the most diffacult section.......creating the characters for the mod. What a challenge. Once I have the characters for each of the 21 races, then work out their roles in the mod, their skills and their traits.

what I am doing is researching the races I have for the mod and getting the correct names, ranks etc for the species. Then getting the pictures to go along with the name and then tweaking the images for each character to make them work in the mod.

Now I have the Mandalores with Boba Fett in the mod so far, but it is almost impossible to find out who the leader was around Ep4....the name of their generals, admirals,scientists, etc. I found a really great source of these details for most of the races I have planned for but the site has nothing on the Mandalores... or the Mon Calamari ( though I already have details of the Calimari from another source)

So what I am thinking of doing is having the Mandalores being one of the non playable pirate races in the mod. Have to think about this one. I think if they are pirates then I do not have to worry about the names of the characters.

Once I have that worked out, what do I do with characters like Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, do I include Bail Organa who was doing undercover work getting information from the Empire and at the time of this mod Alderaan had not been blown up. Is Han Solo a character.... even though he did have some dealings with the rebels before Episode 4.

After the characters, look at the ships for the different races. For example, what does a Wookie frigate or destroyer look like. Did they have a fleet? Should the wookies be included if they did not have spaceships and were smugglers, pirates,etc.

I think it will be a long few weeks for me lol

Roy

[rjord]

I also have to do some testing. I see the existing mods have about 22 races included. I have to find out if this is a hard coded limit. for example, I have about 50 species I can include in the mod. Perhaps when the game starts it can randomly chose 19 out of the 50 species so it makes the combination of races in each game more interesting. Will test that in a few weeks time.

Roy

[Igard]

Wookieepedia should have all the information you need on Star Wars lore. If it's not in that, I don't know where you'll find it!

You can create as many races you like, I forget what the limit is, but it's pretty high. As for how many races you can actually start a game with, I'm not sure. It might be limited to 22. You're testing may uncover that if no one else knows.

I don't know if you'll need characters for a non playable race, but I'm pretty sure lots of people will want to play Mandalores. I'd say make them playable as they're very popular.

There is definately alot of work to do, but I'd say that's part of the fun! [:)]

[rjord]

Thanks for that info... my research of Star Wars has come up with a total of 563 species in Star Wars to choose from. Of course that includes many species on one planet such as the 17 species just on Endor...

good to know that there is not a small limit to the number of races I can add....... this will allow me to add the significant races in the Star Wars worlds and not include lesser known species such as the Giant Oysters on Calamari or the Sea-dragons on Drexel. The mod would not be the same if you have a huge fight going on between oysters and sea-dragons. So well known species only.

As for the starting races I believe the default limit is 19 and this would be the best limit to keep without having much larger maps. My understanding is that 19 is chosen from random from the total number of species.

The good news is that the Mandalorian Protectors will be in the mod. The founder called Spar was killed off in Separatist times and the Mandalorian Protectors were then lead by Fenn Shysa who died 23 years after the Battle of Yavin. Therefore Fenn Shysha is the leader of the Mandalorian Protectors in this mod with Boba Fett and a couple of other characters I found involved with the Mandalorian Protectors.

To tackle a huge mod such as this, my plan is this.
Start small and then expand the mod with updates so others can enjoy it as it is being developed and upgraded.

Igard, I looked at your Picard mod to see how some things were done.....saved me a lot of time in the last week. Great mod there.

Roy

[rjord]

Have added the little known race called the Ubese which should make the mod very interesting.

In Return of the Jedi Leia disguised herself as a ubese bounty hunter on Tatooine. They should be an interesting race in particular as they have a hatred of Jedi and were involved with the purging of the Jedi. What will they think of The Rebels.

This is a picture of the new race added

[rjord]

When I looked at the different traits to be assigned to each character , I suddenly realized how big a job this would be. Finding the characters for the specific race, finding and modifying their picture if one exists, reading up on who the character is and what role he took in events.....this all actually turns out to the easy part. The hard part is to assign a role to each character, then assign a skill to the character and then come up with character traits for that specific character.

The difficulty comes with the fact that the skills and traits to be assigned are dependant on the role given to the character. A daunting task with what I have planned.

But I have come up with a way to make this job easier . Using Excel, I have created a spreadsheet for each role and on each spreadsheet I have listed only the skills and traits that can be given for that specific role. So if I am creating a scientist, I go to the Scientist spreadsheet and this quickly shows that the scientist has 3 skills to chose from and 9 traits to chose from....assuming that the character has skills and traits. This method makes it easier than going through the 43 skills and 93 traits shown in the modding guide and trying to work out which skills and traits to use. I also put the positive and negative aspects of a trait on the same line to make it easier to chose either the postive or negative aspect....as you can not chose both which makes good sense.

Other modders have probably come up with their own methods, but I thought I would show below which skills and traits are available for each role in case this helps other modders out there. This will also help if the mod is upgraded to future expansion packs.

Roy

[rjord]

Leader Role

[rjord]

Ambassador Role

[rjord]

Governor Role

[rjord]

Fleet Admiral Role

[rjord]

Troop General Role

[rjord]

Intelligence Agent Role