The current Paladin should be only for the french and should use a different unit for other civs. The Savars are the best example. Teutons can easily use the crusader knights skin.
The Cataphract should use scale armor instead of the current with more rounded helmets.
They listen and have already addressed this. They say something like that would make the game use a stupid amount of RAM. Because of how that would be implemented, I presume it would use a stupid amount of RAM even if you toggle it off client side
lol that’s really weird. These are just enable disable skins, underneath it’s same unit with stats. If this was possible in HD, I don’t see why this is new thing now. The mod I have linked replaces almost all units with amazing skins.
Currently all you can do really is find a data mod or mod those old sprites into your game yourself.
But it doesn’t really change RAM usage. WHY should it? All it does is replace one sprite with another, sprites are loaded either way. Theoretically it could even reduce RAM usage as those old HD models have fewer frames. All it takes up is HDD space really
Almost all generic units in the game looking very Western European is one of my biggest issues with AoE2. If just feels so wrong to play civilisations like Aztecs or Ethiopians. It really sucks the enjoyment out of the game for me.
And I think it’s one of the diving factors behind people wanting more European civs despite already half of the civs in the game being European. I’m not the only one that things other civilisations feel wrong even if it’s subconsciously for many people.
I made a poll a while ago [poll] Cosmetic DLC and the willingness to even pay for regional skins is surprisingly high.
It can’t take up RAM client side if your client doesn’t even have the regional skins installed, can it?
As far as I know it was like 5 years ago when they said that and things have changed since then. They can also very easily make the regional skins a DLC that just simply requires more RAM then the main game.
Doesn’t mean it has to be payed, it could be like the hight resolution sprites DLC.
Chronicles now actually implements regional skins, so maybe they are testing the waters here.
It is interesting to see how close the sprites are the the default AoE2 sprites. Some units look very similar (like (Elite) Skirmisher) while others look pretty different (Knight Line).
It’s not due to RAM but rather due to disk space (Section @ 23:46):
For those who don’t want to watch the video: As AoE 2 is a 2D game, they have to render every single frame for all actions and 16 directions (in AoE 1, they had 32 directions) as opposed to the 8 directions of the original game. Units are rendered with 60 FPS which makes 960 single images for one action and all directions.
I think skins depending on architecture set could still work given that we already have this for Trade Carts and Kings.
Making the skins an optional download would completely eliminate this issue.
Also with Chronicles they just shipped one regional skin set plus 2 new architecture sets to everyone already and I have seen almost no one complain about the increased disk space usage of the game after the update.
But there are currently only 7 Kings and 5 Trade Cart skins (not counting Chronicles). If regional skins would follow this division then it would be a less then every architecture set.
I think the best solution for choosing regional skins would be to make it on unit by unit basis for every civilisation but I can see why that could be kinda confusing.
Not every unit makes sense to be treated the same way as the Trade Carts.
Some regions have similar cultures but very different weather (Northern and Southern Europe for example), while other civilisations have similar regions but very different points in time (Italy and Rome for example).
Some considerations: Weapons: Chinese use Crossbows, Japanese use Bows Religion: Christian and Muslim woman cover their hair in the Middle Ages Monks: Need to have the right skin according to the religion of the civ (Lithuanians and Vikings are Pagan while Poles and Teutons are Christian) Weather: Viking villagers should wear war clothes while South East Asians need a large hat against the strong sunlight. Skin colour: Ethiopians, Aztecs and Japanese look pretty different compared to each other irl Time difference: Civilisations range from Late Antiquity to Early Modern in AoE2.
So for example:
Ethiopians are black skinned and Christians.
Malians are black skinned and Muslim.
They can share most units but they should not share the Monk skin.
Italians live in Italy and have a lot of Renaissance elements.
Romans also live in Italy but they are Late Antiquity.
There are 1000 years between those so it should show in different looking units. Some Roman units skins could even be taken from Chronicles like the Palintonon.
Some Lines that I think could be drawn
Military units
Central American
European Late Medieval
European Early Medieval
Muslim/Middle Eastern
African
South(East) Asian
East Asian
Most Chronicles and RoR units are unsuited
Villagers
Central American
Northern Europe
Mediterranean
African
Middle East
South Asian
South East Asian
East Asian
RoR or Chronicles Villagers for Early Medieval civs
Monks
Central American
Catholic
Orthodox
European Pagan
Muslim
Hindu
Confucian/East Asian
RoR Priest as a wild card (Maybe for all Pagans, including European)
Siege
Palintonon for Early Medieval civs
Central American Siege units
Ships, Trade Carts and Kings
Already covered
Maybe add unique ships skins too instead of just sails
Say I want villagers with different skins per region.
Now, programatically, is easy; just make the same thing that with trade carts and monks, no big deal, right?
Let’s do this for Knights, spears, milita and all units.
Say we want the choice to NOT have regional skins.
Let’s look at monks.
Monks use different animation ID’s per region or civ or whatever. For, say, paladins, if I wanted toggable stuff, I would still need to download the default SLX and load it up in the RAM.
So, if you want regional paladins, you need 11×4 SLX’s (1 per action per region). But if you want that option toggled of, you still need 11×4 SLX’s, because you still need to load up the default animations.
If you replaced EVERY SINGLE UNIT with cubes, you would still need to load up ALL their SLX’s; to us, they would look like cubes, but to the game, it’s all the same: cubes, european paladins, regional paladins.
The game engine doesn’t care what’s inside those SLX’s, except for the amount of pixels
Yeah, honestly a ridiculous question…I don’t know how anyone can take this as an answer to the regional skins question. Imagine asking Cysion whether he planned to eventually have 200 civs, him predictably saying no, that would be too many, and coming away thinking you’ve just heard that “there will be no more new civs.”
Full or partial regional skins may still be on the table, unless they’re determined to go all-in on graphics for spinoff crossplay. I think BfG will be good for the game, but my biggest concern is competing for resources (and mainly graphics) with Medieval AoE2. With 74 new unit models of BfG you could have almost had maximalist regional reskins for swordsmen and archer lines for for all existing architecture sets (and much more if you did some partial or shared reskins). And with two new architecture sets, you could have had…two new (Medieval) architecture sets, Andean, East Asian, Black Sea, whatever. The BfG additions are all good of course, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll manage it in a way that doesn’t exclude the possibility of regional skins for the base game, (even if it means putting BFG in a fully separate mode like RoR with overwritten graphics).
Also, he claimed it would take “half a terabyte” (although he admitted he couldn’t remember exactly). My computer tells me the total file size of the graphics of all generic non-siege land units is almost exactly 1 GB, including both standard and enhanced graphics. There were 35 civs when DE was released, so it would have required an extra 34 GB. I admit this is an underestimate, because on release the game used a less compressed graphics format – but even so, it would be nowhere near half a terabyte!
what? You usually only load graphics into the graphics card, not into RAM. Even for that, aoe2 is a pretty lightweight game, I doubt a few extra sprites would blow up any PCs
(I am not a fan of regional unit skins, but this argument against them makes no sense)
