Friday, November 11, 2016

Africa and Oceania

Update: After learning how to improve map visuals I went through some of the maps from the African update (around half of them) and improved their textures and props. I also added Nomad support for the new maps that didn't have it. New Asian maps have also been added and more African maps are on the way.


Note: Forgot to mention, if you get "Out of sync" in multiplayer, go to where you have the game installed, delete the RMM folder and run the Patcher, then try again.

The long awaited (took more than I thought) big awesome update with new maps from Africa and Oceania is here!

A total of 19 new maps, plus fixes, changes and additions to existing maps are part of this update. Including new animals and natives for the new maps.
One of the fixes adresses the bug which caused starting units (such as explorers) to not spawn at the beginning of a game. This bug should no longer occur on any of the "official" maps.

Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that none of these maps were made by me from scratch, they are made by the community map creators Garja, Neuron, R.F. Gandalf and Durokan.
All maps are, however, modified by me to fit the African and Oceania themes.
Proper credit has been given for each map creator ingame during the map loading screen.

I also have to mention that the new loading screen images for the new maps are taken from the Wars of Liberty mod, although they are also modified by me to fit the project.


Now, let's go through each of the new and old maps from this update:


As mentioned above, all maps received the "starting units do not spawn" fix and Control Flags have been removed from all maps. The only Control Flags still present are the ones each player starts with and the ones from Trading Posts.

Water Maps: a new map option which randomly chooses between all water maps; water maps are maps with a water homecity flag, and are basically all maps not present in the Land Maps option.

Sahara / Large Sahara: a large, arid desert where all resources are concentrated around oases.
Congo / Large Congo: a dense jungle where the numerous trees are both a blessing and a curse.
Nile River: a river splitting into the resource rich Nile Delta.
Savanna: the iconic African Savanna, a grassland filled with exotic wildlife.
Madagascar / Regicide Madagascar: a huge, isolated island in the middle of the ocean.
Kilimanjaro: the peak of a dormant volcano.
Unknown - Inland: replaces the old Unknown map which was extremely bugged; the new map randomizes between properly made terrains with some African flavor.
Unknown - Coastal: same as above, only that it randomizes water maps.

Australia / Large Australia / Regicide Australia: the gold rich Australian Outback.
Indonesia: a large archipelago with diverse wildlife.
New Zealand: the last major landmasses settled by humans.

Rockies - Lower: a valley in the Rockies mountains; to contrast Himalayas - Upper.

Irrawaddy Valley: a valley surrounded by wood rich canals.
Khingan: a very randomized map inspired by the AoM Acropolis map.

Guinea Coast: coming soon.
Sahel: coming soon.
Great Zimbabwe: coming soon.
Horn of Africa: coming soon.


Regicide Yellow River: now actually looks like Yellow River.
California / Ozarks / New England / Plymouth: cliff texture inconsistencies/bugs fixed.
Pampas / Sonora: increased map size.
Plymouth / Orinoco / Texas: added more trees; for Texas this is actually a bug fix since the map was always suppose to have random trees but the codes were bugged.
Winter Wonderland: added proper mercenary and KotH support.


Besides these map changes, the new African animals are the Zebra and Dromedary and the new natives are the Saltpeter and Dahomey.
Also, added proper Mongolian voices for the Mangudai and Mongol Scout and Korean voices for the Wukou Pirate and Wukou Jong/Junk.
New voices have also been added for the new Sufi native warrior, the Bishari Archer; instead of making a new elephant unit for Saltpeter which proved difficult, I instead moved the War Elephant to Saltpeter and added a new camel archer for Sufi.

And this should be about it. As always, if you find any kind of bugs make sure you let me know so I can fix them as soon as possible.

Thank you for your time and as always, thank you for playing!