Black & White 2: Redux Version 1.7 news

Hello everyone,

I hope you guys are staying healthy as a new version of the Redux mod is nearing its public release. Most probably this version is content-wise the biggest so far. The AI got some neat changes preparing it for a future patch, how the game represents good and evil was improved, the influence system received a major overhaul and the most outstanding part the remastered music.

As you might've guessed I couldn't do so much work alone in this short period of time, so I want to point out many, many thanks to Vociferous who did all the music and textures and we are really excited to hear your thoughts about the new update. Also make sure to check out Vociferous' youtube channel which you can find right here: TFS | Vociferous

Music

First of all the music. Vociferous did an awesome job remastering many of the Black & White 2 soundtracks. Currently finished themes are:

• All 4 epic themes including siren, hurricane, earthquake, volcano
• New ultimate good and ultimate evil alignment music for the greeks, carrying over the flair from Black & White 1
• A new credits song
• Various new quest themes
• New ambient themes like the evil creche music

In addition to the music listed, it is planned and already partially done to recreate the Black & White 2 combat music. However it doesn't made it into the current patch as it isn't fully finished yet.
If you want to have a taste of the new music you can listen to the hurricane, earthquake and volcano themes on newgrounds: Apocalyptic themes

Textures and Ambience

Next up the textures and the with them connected ambience. We thought that good and evil wasn't represented at its full potential so far, so we decided to give the textures a bit more personality, as the good textures are generally a bit brighter now whileas other good alignment textures were changed in color drastically. Also the evil textures generally received a darker look to them.

Besides you might know the system in Black & White 1 where sky colors and lightning were altered when you moved inside the influence ring of another god. This is now also integrated into the Redux mod. To conclude the textures and ambience you can see two screenshots below which show the gods playground with the new changes:

Influence System

As already mentioned the new patch will also feature a completely changed influence system, shifting the focus of placing the buildings nearby the influence ring to maintaining a large population which in the end will extend the influence for the most part.
Most significantly buildings don't have an own influence ring anymore as the town centre is now the only base of the influence ring which gets stronger the more villagers and the more buildings you have.
Below you can see a town equipped with the new influence system with around 275 villagers:

In the end here is the full change log for the next patch. You can also find the changelog in the forum:

Additions

• Added new music
• Added new textures
• Added alignment based skies and light effects
• Added a new influence system similar to the one from Black & White 1. The influence ring is now fully based on the town centre
• Added cheats which are unlocked on a second playthrough
• Readded last land soldiers and catapult

AI

• Improved how creatures decide to use aggressive miracles (Depends on creature soldier level)
• The AI will now try to keep troops outside of enemy influence if they have nothing to do
• Rebalanced how many troops the AI will recruit in late game on easier difficulties
• Improved static platoons AI
• Increased AI platoons chase distance
• The AI will now properly retreat its troops before a scripted event happens on hard difficulty in the 3rd japanese land
• Changed how the enemy god will throw aggressive miracles in the 5th aztec land
• AIs won't fire epics nearby own troops now

Balance

• Lowered productivity bonus fields give other fields
• Changed some trigger times in campaign
• Slightly changed the firerain spell

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where platoons would show incorrect health values for undead platoons
• Fixed a bug where advisors would comment the aztec prison incorrectly in the 4th aztec land
• Fixed an issue where the enemy creature wouldn't despawn after win in campaign
• Fixed an issue where the enemy creature would spawn nearby the player town
• Fixed combat music playing even though nothing happened
• Fixed a bug where objectives sometimes didn't count in the last land
• Fixed many speeches which interrupted themselve
• Fixed an issue with too many attacks at once in the last japanese land
• Improved performance in land 7, 8 and 9
• Fixed a bug in the lost sheeps quest where the farmer wouldn't appear if a specific house was deleted before
• Fixed missing texture files which leaded to the game crashing in loading screen when loading 'minspec' texture files
• Fixed skirmish AI not building specific attacks on special towns as intended
• Fixed enemy gods not throwing miracles at catapults
• Fixed enemy gods not firefighting
• Minor AI platoon fixes carrying the wrong flag
• Changed how the enemy creature is spawned in the 4th aztec land to maybe prevent some issues
• Fixed a number of other minor issues

Maps

• Changed gods playground to represent alignment much better
• Updated landscape of the first japanese land and fourth aztec land
• Reworked weather system to rely more on alignment
• Changed day and night cycle duration to what it was in vanilla
• Changed trees amount on skirmish maps

Music

• Added new music to all epics
• Added new ultimate good and ultimate evil alignment music
• Added new evil creche music
• Added a new greek worshipperchant
• Changed the credits song
• Changed music in the quest 'Skeleton Bashing'
• Difficulty now also influences global combat music
• Music is no longer stopped at the end of a volcano spell

Other

• Added the piper tune to the kidnapper in the first japanese land
• Moved piper to the mine and removed his house
• Improved again marauders quest in land 4
• Campaign AI alignment is now set to a fixed value
• Rebalanced many alignment values you gain
• Changed position of the gods playground scroll on the 4th land
• Relocated the aztec town centre in the 3rd aztec map

Textures

• Changed textures of greek buildings to represent alignment much better
• Changed evil ground texture to have a darker look
• Changed god hand textures