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Warhammer Dark Omen Forum | Modifications | Campaigns (Moderator: Malus)
Undead Campaign (Countess's Journey)

[CidHalsey]

So, for my own amusement I thought I'd start writing an undead Campaign, because like everyone else, I've done the orginal to death. Now my coding skills are perhaps not quite as l33t as everyone elses, but I have a few idea's here and there. For the moment I'm going to settle for taking the orginal missions, and litterally mirror imaging them. Replacing human with undead, and the adversaries where applicable with humans. I'm not sure what, if any, role orks and goblins will be playing.

So far I've finished the First level, good old trading post.
Commander Bernheart and his loyal cavalry bodyguard have been replaced with my new central character, Countess Contressa, and her hardy bodyguard of 11 Wrights. The Grudgebringer Infantry became a unit of Skellies, lead by a Weight, the Crossbowmen became a unit of Skellie arches, and for completeness sake, the cannon became  screaming skull chucker.

The adversaries I themed as best as I was able. The first wave is a hardy block of Empire swordsmen, well armoured and skilled, backed up with a sizeable block of Imperial Bowmen. When they fall underattack, they are backed up, (perhaps a little inexplicably) with a swift moving unit of Glade Guard, and a unit of  experienced and tactically sound Wood Elf Archers.


After I playtested through, it seemed a reasonably challenging encounter. Mostly because the Infantry are more than a match for the Skellies, and refused to break, and the wood elf archers PWN slow moving wrights. Still, advise, imput, suggestions etc are more than welcome as I tinker along.

And like I said, I'm just doing this for myself. Anyone who wants a copy is more than welcome, and can do whatever the heck they like with it.


Download

[CidHalsey]

*continues rambling briefly*

Much like the orginal Campagin, it's going to be split into segments following a single storyline. If anyone beyond me becomes interested, I'll use my creative skills to draft it up, short storylike.

It's following the quest of a Lamhinian (ugh, spelling fails and my vampire counts armybook is in another country. <- You think I'm joking?), Vampire countess, (Orginally from Bretonia) to take over the Empire, and unseat Karl Franz.

The first mission stages at a small village that the Countess was hiding at, the tiny, (It has like, what eight on sceen inhabitants?) already enthralled to her will. Unfortunately, being as for our puposes the village is on the outskirts of Loren, the Wood Elfs discover this, and inform their neighbourly human friends, being as it is in both their best interests to Terminate the countess as soon as possible.

After the attack, the countess regroups her surviving forces from the bodies of the dead, when she is intercepted by one of her Lackies, a Necromancer called( I forgot, and I'm to lazy to reference my notes) he informs her that the woodelfs did not discover her alone, and were in fact tipped off by a source in the nearby and more sizable town of *squiggle*. It is imperative his mistress travel to, and destroy the town before knowledge of her existance and idenity become even more knowledgeable than they already are...

[olly]

Sounds Cool and should be great to play, I look forward to playing it!

[CidHalsey]

Rodger that. I'll have the demo up sometime tommrow. There's this torny thing that unexpectedly got in my way... So I won't make much progress tonight and tommrow. However, I already know what I'm doing for the opening three missions, so now it's back to attempting to balence.

Focus of this is on realism here. Unit stats are taken directly from Fantasy. (At least, as directly as my memory allows from about a year back) and hero units will frequently appear in stylish fashions. Most opposing battles of any note will have some form of general in the opposing ranks, wizardly, or not so wizardly.

I'd ask everyone to not abuse the 'Teleporting regiment of wrights bug' to much, but then I know I'm not going to be able to resist it myself...

[CidHalsey]

Okay! Yay for me.

Part One is tentatively complete to a playable level.

Existing bugs/Errors -

Some units are misnamed, owing to the nonexistance of the units I wanted. However, this should not pose much of an issue.
(Example, in level two the two units of Imperial Halbadiers are actually Brettonian Men at Arms, and the Archers are Brettionian Peasent Archers.)
The Armybook pages suck ass. For example the Vampire Countess page is blank. <-- I have no clue how, or if it's possible to edit these. If I discover it is, that will be corrected.
Banners on the army book menu are all off. (Not a clue why. Working on that.)
The Trolls in the Siege of Bogenhalfen don't have a banner. <-- Really? Crap. I thought I fixed that. Suggestions please?


An finally, here's a terribly brief summary of the background surrounding each mission. Mission One is covered above, so...

Mission 2  - Heading South to the Town which divluged her existance to the wood elves, the Countess discovers the Guard of the aformentioned town advancing on her. Deploying her troops, she awaits in ambush, unaware that two units of Knights of the Realm, lead by the Famous Knight of the Grail, 'Sean De France.' are nearby, and will intervene at the first sign of battle...

Mission three -

Arriving at the town, the Countess discovers something curious. The people are wandering the streets in a daze, and a rival band of undead is well established in the graveyard. Approching, she begins to clean out the town, only to discover her sister, Countess Lucdia, is both the souce of the undead infestation, and the individual who told the elves of her wereabouts.
(The Unit surrounding the rival countess is the remainder of the town guard. Yes they are human, they are enthralled by the Lahamian, no they won't break, because that would be too easy.)

Mission four -

Sensing she might have temporarily overstayed her welcome in Brettionia, the Countess takes an abrupt hoilday, before any akward questions can be asked, and heads to the lush green lands of the empire to build herself a power base. On the way there however, she is once again ambushed, by a force of men wearing strange uniforms and guided by a suspious mage who flees when the battle goes against them.

(The human units in this mission are the Countesses personal bodyguard, and a unit of her personal Brettonian Milita. They are a combination of bewitched, enthralled, or scared.)

Mission Five - (The optional mission to Bogenhalfen should be taken.)

Arriving and settling in her choosen Imperial Town, the Countess begins to work her black magic on the local citizens. Digusing her undead guards in armour plate, and often leaving them camped outside the town, she slowly earns the trust of the citizen.
Then, unfortunately as luck would have it, the town is invaded by the forces of Urblad Big Head, a Huge Ork of some repute who enjoys favour with the local goblin tribes, largely by bashing their heads repeatedly. These goblins are famous for their hiding in the groud and popping up out of nowhere skills.

Mission Five -
Having crushed Urblad, the Countess sets off to attack his former Stronghold, and clense the local are of orks to prevent anything unfortunate happening to her new found followers. Her Guard stay behind to defend the town, and when successful, she will use her local milita to occupy the tower...

[CidHalsey]

So, yeah. Clearly I can't work out how to use zip files. I'm sure someone will educate me before long. Here's the rest. Obviously the first file goes in 'Gamedata/1PRAM' while the remainder go in 1pbat, BR01, BR02, etc etc.

[Ghabry]

To create a zip archive just right click the files and select send to -> zip compressed folder.

Are you sure that you uploaded your new files? They look like the old ones for me. And sometimes you upped the MRC.ARM, that is wrong, we need the NME.

[CidHalsey]

*eyes* You do appear to be right. Let's try this again shall we?

Look, it seems much more professionally organised now. Thanks for the tip!
(Feedback. Always need more feedback. Even really hardcore insulting types.)

[CidHalsey]

Okay, as soon as people who have had a chance to look it up so far, and I've had a chance to incorporate there feedback. I'll upload version 0.2. It's now playable (currently) as far as Great Forest, with maps finished up to Castle Drakenhof, although I'm dealing with a missing mage that makes great forest unwinable.

The banner bug in Bogenhalfen is fixed. There's just this curious feature where it doesn't want to be a troll. Currently it's an ork boy. Experiements over tonight will determine how it feels about being a spider or a unit or Scorpians instead.

Game is becoming relatively balenced. Although in the long term it looks like the player is doomed. Attrition rates are high and even knowing exactly what I'm facing some battles are particularly tough. Maxium use of all magic is a must. Not sure what to do about the Countesses personal unit. They seem a touch too durable, and can often clean up missions largely alone, outlasting every other unit by far. (Not suprising really. 14 wrights and a vampire is hard to sniff at even without the magical aspect.) Perhaps a reduction in size is in order?

The replacement for Axebite pass is becoming rather fun. The assisination of an Empire Elector Count, complete with runefang. Very bloody battle. Might need to prune down on the magic items a little, then again, maybe not. Having a lot of fun with those.


Anyway, comment away.

[Darkmancer]

I installed the zip and there's no changes?

[CidHalsey]

*blinks* Well that's feedback. Unexpected feedback. *frowns* I know it definatly should contain the correct files, and it works perfectly on mine. Provided I upped all the NMA files, rather than the other ones, it should work, since I don't even have the orginal unaltered files on this laptop anymore.

Are you running the full installed version of Dark Omen, from a cracked copy of Eng_Rel? (Because when I first started tinkering, if you actually let it look at the CD, it loads all the level files straight from disk, even if you use the maxium install.)

I'm uploading version 0.2 now, which I've just doublechecked and -should- work fine. Just extract the contents of the file directly into your Dark Omen directory.

[Ghabry]

Eh are you sure that you included the correct files this time?
The timestamp of all files is 1998/1999 and the content of the files looks like the original too.

[CidHalsey]

*blinks slowly*

Wow. This is epic.

File in Dark Omen directory? Correct file. Open with Wh32 edit? Correct file.

Copy file to directory on destop. Open file with Wh32edit. File has now magically reset itself to the orginal Dark Omen configuration. How neat is that? How does the file somehow magically remember it's orginal settings, and then reconfigure itself?

Gimme a moment here, and I'll see what I can do to fix this freakish oversight...

[CidHalsey]

So. It really is whenever I relocate the file to anywhere else, send to zip file, copy paste, whatever, it just morphs back into the orginal Dark Omen file without any modifications. I am suddenly at a loss.

So, new theory. Open my modded files in Wh32edit, then save them anew, rather than copying them. *tests*

[CidHalsey]

Okay! That was seriously boring. But this time the files saved as themselves rather than autoreseting.
Is it something nifty in Wh32Edit that keeps the orginal file code embedded in the file? Or is it some EA edit protection defence?

Anyway, regardless, this is the -Real- *cough* Mod. Edited up till Drakenhof Castle, (Although the map before that hasn't yet been done, nor has the Steamtank level or the Steamtank itself.)

My applogies for the mixup/error. I'll start doublechecking my files before I upload them, although I couldn't see this one coming...