[MOD] Thedas Kings - a Dragon Age total conversion.

[ngppgn]

Thedas Kings - a Dragon Age total conversion.

Set in the fascinating world of Thedas, this mods aims to bring to CK2 all the epic adventures, social upheaval and dark fantasy drama provinded by the setting of the Dragon Age games, books and comics.

Planned features:
-Play as any of the human realms, as the declining dwarven kingdom, as the roaming dalish clans or even as the misterious qunari society!
-Experience the perks and perils of wielding the power of magic.
-Face the chaos brought forth by the darkspawn and the Blights.
-Manage the political forces which try to thrive and dominate within your realm
-A whole map covering both surface and underground Thedas.
-A host of new events to immerse you in the setting.

(DISCLAIMER: Beware that these plans may take a time to be realised which is proportional to the size of the current team, though!)

DOWNLOAD

It has taken much longer than wxpected, but we have at last assambled a pre-alpha version of the mod, which is technically playable for 2.3.6, but has no content, here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/z2e7zp60ekwasnb/ThedasKings.rar

THIS IS PRE-ALPHA AND THUS VERY CONTENT-INCOMPLETE. We welcome any feedback, but please bear in mind tht this is not representative of the final/envisioned state of the mod.

There is a "Better looking characters" submod. Use it only if you have the Norse Facepack DLC.

Down this post is the changelog, known issues and integrated work for this release. (Changelog might be incomplete/inaccurate due to two computer losses that might have affected the mod.)

If you spot any issues, port them here and will fix them. If you have any idea to improve the current state of the mod, go ahead and tell us!

And specially if you want to directly help the developement, don't hesitate to step up!

CURRENT TEAM
ngppgn - developement leader - jack of all trades, master of none
Patroclusmega - scripter
NerthernMarshall - scripter
Soren - scripter.

PAST CONTRIBUTORS
(under construction).

We are still looking for help! Dedicated artists, mapmakers, flavour-writers or scripters are always welcome!

SCREENSHOTS
(under construction)

CHANGELOG:
version 0.0.1 build A

Spoiler

JOBS
-Changed gender restriction on jobs so that every non-qunari has gender equality.

MAP
-Added some topology
-Fixed duplicated color in provinces.bmp

TITLES
-Added fereldan, orlesian, and default (quasi-orlesian) localisation for landed titles.

RELIGION
-Tweaked the cardinal mechanics so that both the orlesian chantry and the disciples of andraste cult (were it able to create its own "red divine" (non-cannon) have a college of 10 cardinals.
-Added custom religious icons

CULTURES
-Added name lists compliled by caston_folarus, crwebb, and ngppgn
-Added culture-related character bonus by homeworlder (not as traits but character culture modifiers)
-Split culture files by culture_group for better management
-Redistributed facepacks: Now Antivans look greek and Tevinter look iberian.
[\SPOILER]


ASSETS FROM OTHER MODS

Spoiler

The minimap interface has been adapted from Elder Kings (with permission). Thanks to Korbah and the rest of EK team
Part of the code and assets from past iterations of Thedas Kings has been used. Thanks to Chalkface and other contributors.
The modding process has made extensive use of the mapfiller tool by JonStryker.

KNOWN ISSUES in current build

Spoiler

MAP:
-General ugliness
-incomplete topology, terrain and trees
-the colormaps could be improved to better blend in with terrain textures
-there is an issue with topology that make rivers display as sea texture
-many events (particularly those from WoL) have been removed while being adapted/repurposed.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY
-there is almost nothing in the way of Dragon Age mechanics (this is a pre-alpha dev version!)
-under certain circunstances, the caste inheritance does not work correctly. We are looking into this. - potentially fixed for next build.
-The forest character behave like any other character, waging war, ploting, etc. - fixed in next build.
-The forest characters get the "human race" trait because of an oversight. -fixed in next build.

HISTORY and SET UP
-There is nothing in the way of title history, and not much in the way of character history (yet)
-Every province outside ferelden has 7 unbuilt holdings. - fixed in next release
-Many places have placeholder names. We are looking into better names. Feel free to make suggestions!

GRAPHICS
-Darkspawn have no portrait set at the moment. Using musilm as a placeholder. Same with elves and celtic portraits.

Thanks to Paradox for the amazing modding plataform which is CK2, to Bioware, for the incredible setting which is Dragon age and to this community, for it's help and support.
Special thanks to those modders which have patiently answered in occasion obvious question and offered unvaluable advice.

 

[ngppgn]

MOD PROGRESS:

Status: pre-alpha

Last build: 0.0.1 A (for 2.3.6)

Currently doing:
-trying to complete terrain and topology maps
-writing an event-chain for joining the wardens.
-writing chain for magic passing down to children and manifesting itself around puberty.
-compatching for 2.4

DEVELOPEMENT DIARIES AND POGRESS UPDATES: Coming soon!

 

[ngppgn]

reserved too

 

[ngppgn]

QUESTIONS FOR THE COMMUNITY:
There are some fields where we can use some additional advice and suggestions.

1) Where to use each portrait pack? Currently, we are using norse for dwarves, russian for the alamarri group (avvars, fereldan and chasind), western for orlesians and marchers, greek for antivans, and iberian for tevinters. Those are more or less settled.

What to do about anders, and rivaini faces?

Also, what to do about clothes and headgear? Barring problems of clipping, clothes faces and headgear can be mismatches between different portrait pack.

2) In the next version we have names for fereldan and orlesian provinces, but the rest is sstill using placeholders, just like all the baronies. Feel free to suggest possible names!

3) Flavour events: if you have some idea for an event or event chain that could be cool to experience in the mod, let us know! More flavour is always good

 

[bontanel]

Underground Thedas? That sounds really amazing. Maybe some explantions/pics?

 

[ngppgn]

It's basically a mass of land "east" to the Amaranthine Oceans, with provinces representing the thaigs and road between them. The thaigs are situated at the same latitude as their surface counterparts.

Down the line, we might add "entrances": provinces which are part in the surface and part in the undergroun. But this is dependent on hoe does the AI behave. I don't want darkspawn hordes marching through orzammar to invade Ferelden!

I'll be posting screenshot when I get to my main PC.

 

[hiigara128]

Very promising and cool! Just a suggestion, but Fanol is working on a higher then Emperor tier for his Empires of God, so you might try seeing how far he is along on that for Orlais and Tevinter. Also, any ideas as to when the playable alpha will be along?

 

[ngppgn]

Well the pre-alpha is technically playable....;-). We plan on adding content little by little, updating the build every two weeks at the very least. I'm not sure when can we call it alpha, though, sorry.

As for "tier above emperor" I think he meant something like fusioning empires or so. We'll be keeping an eye on The Empires of God, anyway, thanks for the recomendation! Also, we now can play with the fact that equal-tier realms can be vassals of each others...hmm....

 

[blackbird667]

!!!!!! This could become my new favorite mod!! Definitely will be following along closely.

 

[DeamonBlackfyre]

FOR KING CAILAN! FOR FERELDEN!

 

[DeamonBlackfyre]

I would suggest that for the people who own the celtic unit pack for ferelden to use it. Also ferelden should not have the pagan wood castles.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

Would you like my help with the magic system you are going to need to write? My productivity levels are a bit scatterbrained, but I am a fairly capable scripter.

 

[TheAnguishedOne]

Very happy to see this finally released, even if it is in pre-alpha.

 

[ElBardo]

A second chance to bang Morrigan aaaawwwwww yeahhhh

 

[Kapitalisti]

Tevinter shall rise again!

 

[ngppgn]

I would suggest that for the people who own the celtic unit pack for ferelden to use it. Also ferelden should not have the pagan wood castles.

I really like the russian faces for fereldan, it has a feeling much like origin faces, specially for the older people, I've tried ruler designed Loghain and to me it's close enough! Or were you refering to clothes? Do you think celtic clothes with russian faces would be good?
Anyway, used a post for questions to the community, and one is about faces. That you for inspiring that idea

Would you like my help with the magic system you are going to need to write? My productivity levels are a bit scatterbrained, but I am a fairly capable scripter.

That would be nice. For the moment we haven't touched magic itself, but I'll be sure to drop you a PM when we are at it.

 

[JediBear]

This seems like it might be my dream mod. How's it coming, and what manner of help do you need?

At one time I swear I knew how to code. Maybe I could help?

 

[DeltaCortis]

greek for antivans, and iberian for tevinters.

I am curious what your reasoning for this is. Since the Tevinter are basicly fantasy Byzatines.

Anyway pre-Alpha looks really nice! Good work

 

[ngppgn]

I am curious what your reasoning for this is. Since the Tevinter are basicly fantasy Byzatines.

Anyway pre-Alpha looks really nice! Good work

Mostly climates in relation with skintones. Supposedly, the further north you go, the more the clime go for a template north-Eourope to a mediterranean and then a tropiccal one. It made sense to make tevinter skin darker tham antiva, then - and this seem backed up by the latest games, though they are pretty inconsistent at that: the mean tone of tevinter skin found in the game is darker than the antivan analogous (compare Dorian and his father, Alexius and his child, to the antivans in DAII).

This seems like it might be my dream mod. How's it coming, and what manner of help do you need?

At one time I swear I knew how to code. Maybe I could help?

It is coming at a slow yet constant rythm, now that all the (small) team has holidays. Help is always welcome, and can come in many flavours:

-without knowing the code, you can still provide names for provinces and holdings which are still placeholders, character and dynasty names for the different cultures.
-With minimal knowledge, there are tools that allow to create characters effortlessly to populate the least know parts of the world (which is almost everywhere).

-in general, coding history is pretty easy to learn, but it is a bit loabrious - some could say tedious.

-Events, decisions and objectives are the most useful things to script, but also the most complicated to learn. All in all, the scripting language is ridiculously easy: once you get the "grammar rules" so to speak, it's just a matter to getting used and familiar with the vocabulary.

-Additionally, if you have some ability manipulating, and specially creating grphics assets, that would be invaluable to us.

Drop me a PM if you are interested.

 

[DeamonBlackfyre]

I really like the russian faces for fereldan, it has a feeling much like origin faces, specially for the older people, I've tried ruler designed Loghain and to me it's close enough! Or were you refering to clothes? Do you think celtic clothes with russian faces would be good?
Anyway, used a post for questions to the community, and one is about faces. That you for inspiring that idea



That would be nice. For the moment we haven't touched magic itself, but I'll be sure to drop you a PM when we are at it.

I think it looks the best with western faces and celtic hair. And the Celtic unit pack for ferelden culture at least. The hair in the Celtic culture pack has hair that is in DAO.