It's newstime again in the Tolkien Modding Community, the third time already this month. Making it more regulary seems to result in less work for me ^^
Released or updated mods
A big hello to the modding community to Balrog_of_Morgoth aka R3AP3R. He managed to finish the first version of his modding projects, Men of Darkness Overhaul, a submod for Divide and Conquer for Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms. His submod aims for overhauling the evil men factions and adds for this purpose new units, new models and textures for the factions Rhun, Harad and Umbar, further work is planned. You can read a bit more about the details here, while you can download the mod here after having read the mod installation guide.
Also I accidentally missed in my last article the new update for the mod 'LotR: Realms in Exile' for Imperator: Rome. The developers there have added new Realms and added three fiefdoms to Gondor, beside adding new flags (no more generic flags). Breakaway states now get unique flags generated from their culture. Also new wonders and modifiers have been added and the map terrain of the Eriador region - the easternmost portion of the map - got a large update. You can find the mod here
Activity at modding
It seems like ivanhoe95 is truly planning to rework his mod Blood in The West for Mount & Blade: Warband. At least he shows off some new retextured units. It will be interesting to see how it will evolve.
Staying at the same game, the developers of TLD Overhaul have made an update article about the current work at the Elves of Mirkwood. masoldo did a nice job at retexturing existing meshes and even though they don't look like in the films yet, one can be looking forward for the results.
At the mod Legends of Middle-Earth 5.0 for Age of Mythology: The Titans one can notice that Venlesh/Edu seems to be motivated by his progress and fiddles around with many things. Last thing he published was an animation test, so quick lip synch and animations for the cinematic models used in "The New Shadow" campaign.
Coming again back to the Total War series, one of the most actively (I know some projects are mainly discussed in the forum and not moddb but I can't be everywhere ^^) developed mods is still the relatively new one, Silmarillion: Total War. Mighty heroes and units found meanwhile their place into the modding project as well as placeholder creatures for the upcoming Uruloki, the fire breathing dragons.
It's always a pleasure to see with which new creatures for Dol Guldur the developer of Age of the Ring for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King are coming up. At some point I started feeling sorry for all the Orcs doing their duty at that place, it might be the new penal colony ^^
A good thing that lord_ellessar worked at the same time at a new unit for his modding project, Folk of Middle Earth (edain submod). The specialized pikemen which have spent their entire lives training to slay monsters might be happy about it that they only have to confront Trolls :D
Some activity can also be noted at The Strategy and Tactics Submod. Their last article informs a bit about Dwarven Riches and can be found here.
Some modding project of which I have heared nothing for a longer time, 2941 A.D: Fall of Middle-earth for 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant, seems to be awaking from its slumber. At least that's how I indicate that little article about drums in the deep but we will see in the next weeks what's going to happen there.
Rediscovered mods
Continuing from the last news latter, there are some other modding projects, some old and already forgotten about, which I rediscovered while looking around. Starting with Battle for Middle-Earth Cooperative Campaign, a modding project for original Battle for Middle-earth. It's hard to say something about the activity of it since it was only announced last year. kingfudgington seems to be active at the Age of the Ring modding project. Maybe he rested his work here for now. Maybe he abandoned it. Maybe he will give some response in the comments after tagging him. We might never know ^^
Some little modding work, still worth mentioning it, is the Helm's Deep map which has been created by Avelium for the game Castle Story. I have never read about that game before but some of you might know it and might want to give it a try. You can find the steam workshop content here
One big bag I still have to drop and that's another submod for Third Age - Total War which combines and links a lot of other submods. It's a long list and Third Age fans and modders might want to have a look through them if they didn't already do so. I also have to mention that the submod has one of the best namings I encountered yet, perfectly summarizing it's purpose: Forgotten Realms of Gathered Submods. Have a look at it here
Articles connected to modding
Gathering new team members is always hard for new teams if they haven't already established themselves in the modding community of their respective game. With this in mind I wrote a little article about modelling with Wings3D, in the hope some only-players-yet might feel the call of getting into modding. That programme seems however only to be used at the Mount & Blade modding community at which I am myself at home. First, I want to link of course to my article again, you can have a read about it here (sorry again to all BfME-fans who got accidentally a ping there). Second, I want to invite modders of other games to send me links for how to get started into modding at their game or to write themselves a little introduction article about one of the topics (scripting, modelling, texturing, mapping, etc.) for the Tolkien Modding Community here. I got already some bunch of links for the BfME series, I only need a while to see how to organise and write something up the best.
Tolkien in games outside the modding area
MikeTheEmperor has been a bit active at World of Middle Earth - WOME, showing off a blossoming Vale of Anduin. Have a look here.
And that's it for today. I hope I have made a nice and informative overview for you about the happenings in the Tolkien Modding Community. As always, should I have forgotten to show off the recent progress of some of your favourite mod teams, don't forget to comment about them below. I will mention them then in the next newsarticle. Feel also free to join the Tolkien Modding Community Discord! Have all a nice day!
Earendil
How the hell do I mention the article in my mods' page?
Hm, I don't think you can mention an article, only link it. You can mention the group however with @ and the name following
If developers of mods allow for the community to add articles to their mod profiles, then BcwBtm_Earendil can tag the mod profile in the article (with the group/profile tag function at the bottom of article editor). By doing this the article will show up in the mod profile's articles section and send out an update to the followers of that mod too.
This would be the best way to showcase awesome roundups and articles such as this imo, but will leave it up to you all to decide on whether you allow the community to publish articles on your mod profiles (or you could add Btm_Earendil to your mod developers groups too, which may be a preferred way of doing it).
Might be easier to become member of this group, give me a short note so I can give the rights for writting an article, and then write the article at the own mod page with tagging at the bottom this group here too. That's at least how I can push articles at two groups and one mod at the same time.
G'day thanks for both mentions to BfME: Age of the Ring and Imperator: Realms in Exile, I'm a lead mapper on both teams now. Realms should be getting a ModDB page soon, hopefully before December, I'll be able to share the gigantic map as each province is completed.
Nice to read ^^