The Special Extended Edition: Director's Cut news

G'day ModDB,

SEE has come a long way from Beta 4.5, which was released in 2007. But the mod's future was bleak in 2010. Nazgûl posted this at Revora Forums:

Nazgûl wrote:

We might have reached that stage in modding that I swore would NEVER happen to SEE, mostly due to the enormous community project it did become, quite fast, through all them joint efforts to pile up loads of quality assets for this production. Quitting would mean I fail EVERYONE who contributed with hard work in hopes to see this production through. I think most of the prominent modders at T3A - especially modelers - has, more or less, and at one time or another, been involved in SEE. That's why this is a very sad day indeed, as I've just been told by my current team of coders (Ridder Geel and Ridder Blauw) that SEE might be in such bad shape, coding wise, that it suffers from irreversable bugs... I've struggled for years with Worldbuilder and getting SEE assets in there, for me, for coders, for mappers and most of all, to set up AI bases and gameplay just like I did for all other factions in SEE - meticiously. But I never reached a fully workable solution for WB regarding new stuff, not already in game or modified from vanila game stuff, which is the main reason I got stuck when adding "EvilMen" (Rhûn & Harad combined) as the 7th faction.

Read the full article here.
Forums.revora.net

Furthermore, many other mods around this time were dying off, with only a few surviving. However, four years ago Nazgûl gathered the support he needed and was able to start the mod again. This time as The Special Extended Edition, Director's Cut. It is a mod for The Battle for Middle-earth II and has been in development since then.

Nazgûl wrote:

Now, due to reasons explained HERE, unfortionately and as much as I hate it, I have only one option left... starting over from scratch, as aparently I'm the only person I can fully trust. The problem is I haven't coded in years, so this means that this attempt will take a LONG time to even get ANYWHERE close to what SEE is/was after Beta 4.5. I'm gonna have to go through ALL old lists, topics and notes to make sure I cover as much as possible of what SEE is. My plan is to try as hard as I can to do the follwing thoroughly and methodically:
Phase #1) Add all planned factions, structures, units and heroes - models, textures and skins (which means I still need help from modelers with a few units)
Phase #2) Start making them all unique as in adding powers and abilities.
Phase #3) Spell books for each faction
Phase #4) AI (this is where I will defenitely need help)
Phase #5) Balance
Phase #6) Make sure all maps from BFME1, BFME2(CE) as well as RotWK are in game and adapted and/or cutomized for SEE (depends on NJM and other mappers)
Phase #7) Polishing (coding, models, textures, skins & art)

Read the full article here.
Forums.revora.net

The first faction, The Misty Mountains, will be showcased on ModDB during the next couple of months. Progress will be started on Erebor during this time. Stay posted for more news.

You will be able to download the Beta 4.5 on ModDB in the next couple of days.