Hey.
I'll start out by shortly introducing myself. Red Wars has been changing owners a couple times by now, and I feel like it will be easier for you to trust me if I reveal a couple things about myself. Don't worry, it'll be straight to the point. If you don't care who I am, just skip ahead.
I'm Reus and I first started modding Mount & Blade back in 2011. I was terrible at it, but with time I improved. I briefly worked on a couple smaller mods back then. Got on the team of Gallipoli 1915 but the lead developer disappeared from the scene, so it was short-lived. Eventually I started working on a small project myself which eventually was mashed together with a project by Robin, also known as cwr - a Perisno developer. It didn't work out but eventually I joined him and the others on the Perisno team in 2015. I'm still a Perisno developer, but I mostly do some community management at this point as I have gained more interest in Red Wars and other things. I also developed the custom Bear Force II and Perisno ModDB pages plus graphics and artwork for the Third Age: Reforged mod for Medieval II.
This turned out a bit longer than I thought it would be, but I think it'll do. You can also find me on the Mount & Blade Community Discord server, Subreddit or the TaleWorlds forums. I'm SirBackstay on Reddit. Hit me up if you have questions or just want to talk.
Either way, let's get to the good stuff.
As you may already know, Red Wars has been undergoing some changes recently. Originally the development was ceased in May 2016 and it was turned "open source" - another topic I will talk about later in this article. A year later in May 2017 it was picked up by Lor Dric, but he quit modding entirely one year later and dropped all of his projects. This is where I stepped in to pick up the mod and continue it. I am currently working on a big ass Red Wars 2.0 patch with the main aim of improving the overall quality and polish of the mod.
Red Wars 2.0 will feature big reworks for factions, troops, scenes, sounds, music, and more. A real thicc patch all around. I don't have any screenshots to show you yet, as I have mostly been fixing and changing things that you can't really take screenshots of. I am however currently writing a development blog where I go more in-depth with what I'm currently working on and what I have finished so far. Hopefully I can sneak in some screenshots of new scenes, but I don't think I'll have new troops ready for it in time. These development blogs will be consistent and I will release one every time I feel that I have enough unique content to showcase. You can also follow progress through our new Trello board. It's not quite finished yet, but I will keep it updated. Feel free to suggest changes and report bugs here on ModDB or the forum board so I can pick it up and work on it.
I don't have a current estimate for the release of the new patch, as I have to fit the development around my schedule. I have school and a job to attend to as well, plus other real life projects. Don't let this discourage you, however. I'll get it done. And bear in mind it'll be a big patch; I don't do these frequent small patches with only a couple changes. I think it's very inconvenient since you would have to manually re-download them every time.
Lastly I want to address the Red Wars source. Previously we have witnessed the Parabellum scandal. A mod that used Red Wars as a base without permission and then went on to steal assets from other mods and even sounds and artwork from Battlefield. Horrible, I know. Eventually Parabellum was taken down from ModDB for copyright infringement. Recently, however, I have heard that the developer is putting together a big new patch for the mod. People are even making sub-mods, claiming to use Parabellum as base. It's ridiculous to the extent that it gets funny. The sub-mod just renames things.
I'd just like to clarify that Parabellum and its "sub-mods" are not allowed to use our assets.
For the people asking "How did Parabellum not have permission? Isn't Red Wars open source?" I'll give a short answer. No, it is not open source. But I hate short answers, so I'll give a better one.
In this old article from when the original developers ceased development in 2016 talks about how Red Wars was going open source. However, if you read the actual article you can see that only the code is open source. None of the assets are. And this is because Red Wars does not own the majority of its assets. A lot of the assets were outside jobs and Red Wars has been allowed to use them. We don't own them and can therefore not make them open source for anyone to use. This means that Parabellum was not allowed to use any of the assets. Only the code is open source.
Furthermore, future Red Wars patches are not going to be open source. Not until development is finished, which is likely when we've all moved onto Bannerlord. The 1.9 source has also been taken down, as I don't feel it's fitting when a 2.0 is in development anyway.
I think I have said everything I wanted to say for now. Stay tuned for the upcoming development blog where I will showcase some new things. You can stay updated on the progress through our new Trello board. Bear in mind the Trello board is not finished yet. It doesn't include all changes that need to be made, and it also doesn't include the majority of things I have finished so far, so don't let it discourage you. I will also occasionally post new screenshots here on ModDB.
See ya later,
Reus.
Good luck man! I believe in you!
Thanks!
tfw the same Reus that you bully on the discord is actually a big shot modder
We made it, momma.
I really hope you can fully expand on the game
i hope you can somehow impliment locomotives
The passage of time was sped up to such an extent that the mod became unplayable for me; hope you can address this.
Reus, thanks for step up and continue the development of this mod.
Can't wait to see what you have to show!
Another copyright fight? You have my sympathy.
Feature requests (beware, there're a lot of them):
1. Melee with grenades.
Though not necessarily authentic, it feels badass. Also it provides a last resort for grenadiers (most likely players) who are not properly armed with a tactical shovel.
2. Faster horses.
Mostly for game balance. Cavalry are elite troops in the troop tree in most factions, but they are weak and cannot beat the same amount of riflemen. A 1.5x multiplier for speed attribute for all horses seems alright for my testing. I also cut manuver to 50% for all horses to balance the change.
3. Spray and pray machinegunners.
Mostly for game balance. Let them spray more rounds on each firing with increased the full-auto dispersion punishment. This creates a suppressive fire effect and somehow limits the effectiveness of a single MG against a single enemy unit.
Also, make all dedicated machinegunners stay very high-tier in troop trees.
4. Enable "advanced formation" in module settings.
So that players can use commands like "form 2 lines" etc. Pretty necessary for handling fights consisting cavalry & firearms.
5. Let axe gun swing with cut damage.
Self-explain.
6. Code certain items with skill bonus or scripted effects.
For example, high-tier caps and uniforms boosts leadership skills and/or morale of soldiers of corresponding faction, while gas-masks and helmets provide no skill boosts but better protection.
Flags provides morale or a large range of very slow healing aura for AI units.
Such codes will make the game feel a lot more interesting.
7. Add a bolt handling sound for rifles after firing.
This can be done fairly easy with item/weapon triggers. Makes the fire fight a lot more immersive.
8. Add Diplomacy mod.
And modify it to suit the Red Wars' backgrounds. Wow.
9. Firearms rebalance.
Many modifies shall be done to most firearms. They should reflect authentic characteristics of certain firearms, while exaggerate some of others. But generally, they should let players feel "oh, it's exactly what xxx gun should be."
Prices and tiers should be considered. And while it's a whole game balance thing, leaving some inbalances will make the game feel more interesting and authentic.
Also, most pistols should reload a little slower and be a little less accurate, to balance the use of melee in close range.
That's about the end of that. I'm glad you're still reading. :P
Note that while many of those requested features aren't difficuly to achieve, some needs a lot of work. I hope these requests will not be a burden, but a direction on how to improve and polish Red Wars.
Thanks for the heads up on these things. I've added some to the Trello board - I'll look into the rest as well at one point. Rebalancing overall is of course an important thing that needs to be done.
And here it comes:
10. Enable modifiers to firearms & cartridges.
Modifiers give meaning to players to spend currency on better equipments, as well as limit the loot incomes to allow longer period of "striving for cash". In short, modifiers make the game interesting. You may want to modify the effectiveness of certain modifiers to better suit Red Wars.
Huh, that means that I've got to stop working on mines too. I actually retrieved the source code of 1.90 before it got taken down. Welp, it's a good thing that I didn't release anything.
I checked the Trello board of Red Wars, and I think for the bugs section, "the lords staying outside the settlement/castle instead of going in" should be included. Another thing I saw in the "New Features and Changes" section was that you included the Battle for Yugoslavia OSP (which I guess you're intending to use). Another OSP I suggest you should use is the Finland at WW2 OSP, as it could potentially contain stuff you could use (well it helped me while I was modding this game, so it could help you I guess).
Some stuff that you might want to add is having the AI shoot the automatic guns automatically. The AI currently fires these automatic guns one shot by another. Another thing that would be nice is more weaponry, uniforms and melee mode for guns and other weaponry (rifles, pistols, etc). Perhaps more ways to make money, as eventually when your party gets larger, the more harder it is to make money. Fighting against other lords can be very costly and difficult.
One more thing, you might want to fix some of the guns in this mod. Some of them are a bit messed up. The Albionic Army Rifle, whenever it switches to melee, you can't melee. Whenever you attack, you do the polearm attacks, but the reticule in the middle indicates that it's a rifle. So you do no damage. I found some of these stuff while editing this mod (and fixed it). Problems like this are scattered around the mod (though I think there are few problems like this).
Thanks for the heads up on the Finland At WW2 OSP. I would almost presume that it was already added since Red Wars mostly runs on OSPs, but I guess maybe it isn't.
I personally don't have anything against people who snatched the latest source code before I took it down. Not anything I can do about it, and I think it's great that people are able to make their own versions of it - for personal uses, of course. As mentioned in the article, the main reason we can't allow other mods to use the source is because we don't own the rights to the assets. The code is still open source and can be used in other mods. But the future ones won't.
Yeah, the Trello board isn't finished at all yet. There are a lot of things that I still need to add - mostly bugfixes as there are a lot of those - and there are also a lot of finished things that I haven't added to the list yet. I am also aware of the fact that AI can't use the autofire on automatic weapons yet. I'll look into the money issues as well. If you made some fixes yourself for various bugs you're welcome to throw them at me in a private message. The new patch is a big project so I welcome any help I can get.
The Red Wars' Third Era is upon us :D
No but really very cool that the project continues. All the good luck with the upcoming patch!
Thank you!
Good luck man! Looking forward to it!
Cool
You seem very promising! I love that you are mentioning potential plans for when Bannerlord comes out, that would be fantastic.
Please fix the item call veagirs uniform is bug as hell! Also may be a feature that you can join white veagirs?
why I can't open warband mods in the site?
This is one of my favorites. Thank you for your effort.
This is a really fun mod, thanks so much for the work you're doing on it! :)
Just to give you a heads up, some of the music tracks get stuck looping during gameplay (at least in my experience). For example the "min_fight_as_albion.ogg" song keeps replaying non-stop well after I've finished a battle.
Really looking forward to the next update! I'm keeping my fingers crossed we might see more depth added to the White Khergit faction down the road, it'd be cool to join those guys and restore the Khergit monarchy. :)
Man, I've just read it recently and all I can say is that I am very flattered. I've been looking forward to the progress of this mod, The Red Wars, for a long time and I'm very glad that it's coming right back on its track again!
I wish you the best of luck for the development of this mod and if I have any ideas, I would like to share it with you! Thanks!
Good luck with your work .
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