1866: Reloaded mod for Mount & Blade

This is a fan-made expansion of the original 1866 Mod for Mount & Blade, with the best additions of the Resurrected mod included, and with my additions of storyline fixes, tons of new Western-themed music, upscaled textures, and more in order to provide the definitive 1866 Mod experience.

Here's the summary ChatGPT wrote for me:

The 1866: Western mod for Mount & Blade offers players an immersive journey into the American Wild West of 1866, providing a comprehensive total conversion that transforms the game's medieval setting into a landscape characterized by vast prairies, dusty towns, and the rugged charm of the frontier. This mod introduces players to a rich tapestry of historical elements, including iconic weaponry of the era, authentic attire, and diverse factions inspired by the complex dynamics of the Old West. From lawmen to outlaws, players can choose their path, engaging in intense gunfights, cattle herding, and strategic battles amidst the backdrop of a dynamically evolving Wild West. The mod's meticulous attention to historical accuracy and its incorporation of Western aesthetics contribute to an engaging and authentic experience, making the 1866 mod a standout choice for those seeking to immerse themselves in the untamed spirit of the American frontier with the gameplay of the Mount & Blade universe.

I first played the 1866 Mod probably over 10 years ago. Since then, even today it stands as my favorite game mod of all time, and is legitimately one of the best Spaghetti Western game experiences you can find. However, it wasn't without its flaws, namely an unfinished main questline, limited soundtrack, unfinished scenes, minor bugs, limited item and troop variety, and some dated texture graphics owing to its age. The Resurrected mod by blaise.alexander breathed new life into 1866 by adding in some great additions, but common QoL changes, a better soundtrack, and minor polish were still wanting.

That's why I began to address every niggling issue I found with the mod (and, indeed, Mount & Blade itself... looking at you, cattle escort missions), and after about a month's worth of non-stop work and research, doing everything I possibly could without access to the original module code, I felt somewhat compelled to publish my work as a thank-you to both blaise.alexander for reigniting my love for 1866, and of course to the original 1866 developers for their incredible work.

• Tons of QoL improvements--taken from the TaleWorlds 82 Tweaks Compilation thread and others--to make gameplay less tedious, some quests less frustrating, and to make effort more rewarding.

• Reverse-engineered free-camera mode code has been added to more scenes, so that the battle continues even after the player has KO'd in even more scenes.*

• New, higher-quality, accurate sound effects for firearms, made from Hickok45 videos of the very firearms the sounds are for, painstakingly implemented to be as accurate as possible in-game, as often as possible.**

• Upscaled UI, environment, item, character, and many more textures to make the game look crisp on modern PC monitors.

• Brand new, custom-made UI with a Western flavor (new elements made by me, but some elements adapted from the Resurrection mod and altered to make text/items more legible) to make menus higher definition, and more legible.

• Thorough rewriting of various untouched vanilla M&B dialogue lines to make them fit into the era of the mod, as well as spelling and grammar fixes to numerous 1866 lines.

• New spaghetti-Western, Mexican, Indian, American, and regular Western music--from a whole host of sources including games, movies, and TV shows--all with high fidelity, and coded to play in appropriate situations thanks to a painstaking process of research and reverse-engineering, to help keep the player fully immersed in their character's shoes.***

• New (optional) voice lines for Mexican commands with better pronunciation, quality, and (hopefully) grammar; and new, creepy voice SFX for zombies.

• Main quest changes to keep incomplete quests from getting permanently stuck in your log, or from ruining your game, and without erasing all of them altogether; also complete-but-not-fully-implemented side quest changes to make them completable, with their own reward tiers, and with appropriate dialogue.****

• AI pathing fixes for certain scene locations.

• All the new items, skins, animations, guns, troops, objects, and scenes of the Resurrected mod, but without some of the jank (like broken music, certain item inconsistencies, certain troop issues, UI illegibility, etc.)

• Probably even more that I can't remember, since I started modding 1866 over four to seven years ago and, over time, built it to into this.

1) IMPORANT: This mod and all versions of the 1866 Mod are ONLY for the original Mount & Blade v1.011 from TaleWorlds--NOT Warband, NOT the version from GOG, and NOT the version from Steam.

The free version of Mount & Blade available at TaleWorlds (found here) is free to download as a demo. You can then activate it and unlock the full version using your existing Steam/GOG key. This is the only version of the original Mount & Blade that seems to work for this mod, and many others.

The GOG version of the game is NOT the same; the differences have never been explicitly stated, but many mods don't work correctly on that version. Install this mod on the TaleWorlds version of M&B, instead.

The Steam version of the game seems to NOT be compatible. Install this mod on the TaleWorlds version of M&B, instead.

2) IMPORANT: Crashes WILL occur if you don't patch the game's executable to be more memory aware.

This is because, from what I figure, the 1866 Mod's high-res textures overflow the game's awareness of your PC's actual VRAM capacity, and even more so with the textures provided by my mod.

For example, you could have 64GB of VRAM, but the game is only aware of there being 2GB. That's what the patch fixes, from my understanding, and it worked like a charm for me. It can be found at NTCore.com, and instructions for its use are provided there, as well as by my Installation Instructions below.

• OPTIONAL: If you don't want an original file being overwritten, find your game's directory, go in "Data", and make a backup of "Font_data.xml".

• Drag my mod's "Mount&Blade" folder over your game's directory folder (i.e., the folder that has the same name).

• Overwrite "Font_data.xml" when asked. The new one sharpens in-game text for larger, modern screens.

• Download the 4GB patcher from NTCore.com and use it to patch the "mount&blade.exe" in the game's main installation folder. A backup will be created by the patcher.

• Once downloaded, you can patch the game's executable either by: a) dragging "mount&blade.exe" over the patcher's executable, OR b) clicking and running the patcher, and patching "mount&blade.exe" through the program's interface.

• OPTIONAL: Choose an alternative Mexican commands voice, if you want. I recorded them to have better pronunciation, sound quality, and (hopefully) grammar than the original 1866 recordings, but the new recordings may not suit everyone's tastes, and the grammar might be hit-or-miss; hence they are optional. The files are located in the Mount&Blade -> Modules -> 1866 Reloaded -> Sounds -> Alternate Mexican Commander Voices folder.

• *On some scenes, the free-camera mode simply refuses to work, so the player KO'ing will still end the battle prematurely as it does in vanilla. This seems to be impossible to fix without access to the source code.

• **Some guns won't play their actual sound effect since many of them share the same sounds. I tried to compensate for this by making certain commonly-played sounds be more suited to the majority of the guns that share the sound effect, but there may be some outliers still, and I don't remember if these issues are fixable without access to the source code. In any case, it's still better than the original mod's and Resurrected's implementations, in my humble opinion.

• ***Some limitations apply for culture-based music, as some minor factions are hard-coded to be part of erroneous cultures--e.g., an American gang minor faction might play Indian culture music on the map while you're in the gang's territory. There is no fix for this without the source code.

• ****Some story quests may have paths that feel disconnected from one another. This was due to the difficulty of deciphering the code in the related text files, and due to being limited without the source code. Also, I think (but can't guarantee; it's been over a year since I modified the quests) none of the quests should get stuck in the log, and I know for sure that none of them will get your character permanently stuck in an unfinished situation, as fixing that was a priority.

• In some battle scenes, battle music may transition before the current track is finished playing. This seems to be a conflict with overlapping conditions under which certain tracks were coded to play, and is not fixable without access to the source code.

• Hunting game may still cause a slew of error messages to appear. You can safely ignore them and keep playing uninterrupted, but they are annoying. It's a flaw in the original mod and isn't fixable without access to the source code.

• An error window regarding a 3D object might pop up when exiting the game. I think they may be related to some asset(s) implemented by the Resurrected mod, but I'm not certain. Either way, just Alt+Tab to the desktop and close the window, or Ctrl+Alt+Del and open Task Manager to force close the M&B process. The error just seems to be a minor annoyance.

yellowmosquito and all the contributors of the original 1866 mod.

blaise.alexander for the new items, troops, etc. added by his mod.

See the included [Credits].txt file for Resurrected's credits.