Greetings once again, everyone.
In all of the years of development of Rise of Three Kingdoms, one thing that we have striven hard to do is put historical authenticity at the forefront of how the mod looks and feels – from the arms and armor of the soldiers on the battlefield, to the biographies, events, and missions of the characters and factions. Despite a relative lack of comprehensive information on some things, I believe we have done a pretty decent job of bringing to life the real, historical Three Kingdoms era and promoting a true story that is just as interesting and intriguing as the popular fictional Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. However, one specific area that we had not addressed, in the historical-accuracy department of the mod, was that of the battle models for the famous characters of the era. Mostly they were pulled from Dynasty Warriors which, while the models looked interesting and were recognizable to many, were not in any way, shape, or form compatible with our vision of the era’s historicity. In fact, with the period accurate or authentic armaments for the hundreds of different units in the mod, the DW character models just do not fit in aesthetically and stick out like a sore thumb. And that is where this latest update comes in. For the past nearly 5 months, I have been working diligently to port over characters from Total War: Three Kingdoms. Say what you want about the game itself (it was trash), however the character models were amazing. Not only were the models, textures, and assets of specific characters painstakingly converted and rigged to work in Medieval 2, but I also took the liberty to take individual assets and kit-bash fully fledged characters. The latter was necessary because, while CA made some great looking characters, there was a noticeable lack in unique character quantity and some important characters were never given a unique model. Additionally, a kit-bash was performed if the existing character model just wasn’t what I envisioned for the character. In any event, the bulk of time spent on this update was dedicated to the unique characters and bringing them in line, both aesthetically and quality-wise, with the rest of the mod. All told, 49 unique character battle models have been added in this update, with the all of the major factions also receiving a new generic battle model (with face variations) as well. So, without further ado, here is an example of what I have been talking about. Here are the famed Five Tiger Generals : Huang Zhong, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu, Ma Chao, and Zhao Yun – all brought to life in Medieval 2 using TW3K assets.
Here is another image of a few characters that were kit-bashed, due to the fact they either didn’t have unique models or I felt their existing model didn’t fit how I thought they should look, and so some work had to be done to piece together a coherent character model . This was a particularly time consuming process, as the model pieces needed to be fit together and portions edited or removed, with the assembled model sections then placed onto the created texture files. Not overly difficult, especially after five months of doing it consecutively, however it definitely burned up a lot of my free time. Below you can see the in-game models for some specific kit-bashed characters: Wei Yan, Zhu Huan, Lü Meng, and Pang De.
While the characters and their models are the main focus of this update, a lot of time was spent on updating and giving some love to the models of various units. This included not only adding in some updated assets (like shields, armor, etc.), but also fixing any issues with the existing models themselves (incorrect vertex assignment, texture issues, body proportions, etc.). While there were quite a few that had very minor work and fixes done to them, some, such as the Energetic Tigers, White Plume, Flying Cavalry, and Northern Army Companions, had some significant improvements and/or upgrades to their existing models. In the screenshot below, you can see the improved unique unit for the Liu Clan, the White Plume, posing in formation against a sunset backdrop.
This update was rather large and extensive, with a ton of work done that did not incorporate character or soldier battle models. One such thing was a rework of the economy system. Overall, income has been greatly reduced, as were building costs, and agriculture now constitutes a much greater proportion of your income. In the 2nd and 3rd century in China, agriculture was the backbone of the entire nation. It was the greatest producer of income throughout the country, provided stability to population and subsequent famine or unrest, and was absolutely vital to field armies on the field and conduct military operations. As such, agriculture has been brought to the forefront in the economy and now also plays an even more important influence in population growth. In conjunction with this, infrastructure will play a more prominent role in both the economic viability and population growth of individual cities and commanderies, with the influence of local magistrates and governors still being important, but playing secondary to the local infrastructure itself. So, the more you improve the infrastructure of a city, the better off it is going to do. Also, on a final note, the Yellow River no longer greenish – it is now the yellow-brown color it is supposed to be. So there was a blue-green overlay for water, that I didn’t know existed, and it was literally impossible to create any shade of yellow for the Yellow River. However, once I managed to locate and edit that overlay, we were in business. I just felt the need to mention this, as the green hue of the Yellow River had bothered me incessantly every time I saw it.
All of the changes for this update are fairly extensive, and far too much to fully explain in detail here, so please check out the complete changelog on the update's download page for a full list of changes.
The Version 6.3 (Yankang) Update can be downloaded here and has instructions on how to properly install the patch (extract .zip contents into main Medieval II Total War folder and allow to overwrite). Once an installer for this update is created, the included .zip file will be replaced with the installer.
Important notice: You must have the Rise of Three Kingdoms v6.0 Full Release and RoTK v6.2 Update installed prior to installing this update. This update is NOT save-game compatible (will break saves).
Happy gaming!
very nice!