Dawn of War II: Black War

[Shuma]

"Hi! I'm Shuma! You might remember me from such mods such as Shuma's wargear room and... That's it, my career is just starting"

Purpose of this mod:

The purpose of this mod first and foremost is to bring the fluff and lore of Warhammer 40k to life in dawn of War 2's multiplayer mode while keeping intact the core mechanics of the game, additionally this mod will seek to bring back some of the loved elements from Dawn of War I to life and expand upon the gameplay of Dawn of War 2, mainly by adding new units, upgrades, wargear and abilities to the MP portion of the game.

The first step of this mod will thus be to update the existing races in the game, mainly by adjusting squad sizes and visual appearance, the second step would be to expand the races by adding new units, new abilities and wargear, and the third and final step is to implement new features into the game, such as the very missed listening posts.

In short, you could call this mod a fan made expansion to Dawn of War II.

What this mod isn't doing:

This mod does not seek to add new races to the game, mainly because we cannot do so properly at the moment, if that changes in the future then this could change in the future.
This mod is not a closer to codex mod, while this mod will use information from the official codices from the races, it does not intend to translate the tabletop game to dawn of war 2.
This mod doesn't seek to change the campaign, art assets made by me will like always be released in the Shuma's Wargear room thread and can be used freely by anyone in the community in their own mods, however this particular mod only plans to change MP.

Current Team:

Shuma, lead, modeler, texturer, unwrapper, coder, animator, rigger, etc, etc.

Looking for:

Nothing at the moment.

Credits:

-

Mod's "fluff"(will be edited as the mod progresses)

Spoiler

Imperial Astropaths detect anomalies in the warp in the northeastern corners of the galaxy.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Probe skulls have continued to transmit information from the planet Trandos ever since it's fall.

A Tyranicus praefactor of an unidentified Hivefleet is spotted by a probe skull in the ruined planet of Trandos which was crippled by Eldar raiders centuries ago. Surprisingly no other creatures appear to have been spotted by human survivors, probe skulls or the remaining Eldar in the system, the beast disappeared in the city after slaughtering a group of eldar warriors.

Blackwar updates will now be posted here instead of the Shuma's wargear room thread.

Initial Changes:

Space Marine commanders:

Captain.
Terminator Librarian.
Chaplain.

New units:

Sternguards

Ork Commanders:

Ork Mekboy changed to Big Mek.

New units:

Killa Kans

Eldar commanders:

Autarch
Farseer
Warlock

New units:

Dire Avengers

Tyranids:

Hive Tyrant
Tyranid Prime
Broodlord

New units:

Hive guard

Chaos commanders:

All 3 of them changed to undivided, can choose one of the 4(3 in the case of the sorceror) gods to align themselves with at the beginning of the game, note that this isn't a mark upgrade this is an actual alignment that will change the visual appearance of the commander to fit the god you choose to worship.

New units:

Rubrics
Khorne Berserkers

[Misterpeanut288]

Good luck with your new mod Shuma I am eagerly awaiting to see more of your work for this mod.

Edit: Nevermind should have paid more attention when reading your post.

[Shuma]

Heh thanks, 3 sternguard armours done, 2 to go:

[Tyron]

Shuma you beast!

[Shuma]

New Sternguard helmet.

[jianjian94]

I too, am eagering awaiting this mod.

Btw, I'm back on the forums after months of absence!

[Shuma]

Sternguards are done:

Spoiler

Dire Avengers are next.

[Tyron]

Looking amazing keep up the great work

[Hellcobra84]

Good luck with your new mod Shuma

[General Kong]

wow, brilliant sternguard, im definantly keeping an eye on this

[Adratus]

looks good, keep up the good work and good luck

[Shuma]

"Hurr i'm a Durr Avengur"



Helmet is done, model of the body is done but i got to tweak the textures and animations for the body. The Exarch will be a bit of a pain since he has 3 different sets of weapons(Spear and Shield, 2 guns and Sword and wrist gun)

Edit:

Herp, i forgot my bandwith ran out:








In-game test.

[Supernaut]

Just a quick question, I like the helmet for the Dire Avenger but are you going to change the texture for the plumage/hair/fluffy shit at the back to be striped (also maybe team colourable) as they are generally depicted in the official artwork?

[GrimDark]

"Upgrade to Pro today!
Bandwidth Exceeded
Photobucket"

Shuma, stop using sh*tty image hosting service.

Umm... A question: Do you edit the normals (texture) too?

[Shuma]

@Supernaut:

Saving that for the Exarch to make him stand out more.

@Grimdak:

Hah, and yeah the only textures i sometimes skip is the dirt texture.

[Hollow]

The idea looks very good so far!. Although hmm, the Commanders for chaos will be the same as vanilla or maybe will Be Chaos Lord, Sorcerer and Daemon Prince as many people would like?.

Gonna take a look to your work, as always, it´s awesome!

Hollow

[Dazz]

Looking good, as always!

[General Kong]

can choose one of the 4(3 in the case of the sorceror) gods to align themselves with at the beginning of the game

hold on you mean 4 chaos gods? or 4 heroes?

if four chaos gods i hope the 4th one will be malice, hes my favourite chaos power

[Bastonne1]

looking to be a cool mod, Shuma. Have you made plans for Retribution and the Imperial Guard (the Hammer of the Emperor)?

@General Kong: He means the 4 Great gods of Chaos (Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Nurgle). The reason the sorcerer only has 3 is because Khorn despises all sorcery, so there is no such thing as a Khorne sorcerer.

[Shuma]

@Bastonne:

You got it right with the Chaos Gods and i'll expand below, as for Retribution, see below too.

@Kong:

Ah yes, Malice, the remaining dignity of Malal. Not really, i mean there's no way to represent him art-wise or gameplay wise since he hasn't been expanded upon. I guess i could make an alternate quartered team color scheme for Chaos Marines so that you can make the sons of malice, although that would be way down the line. But maybe you could ask Hangar 8 if that's on his plans, he did make a 5th color for the Spezz Mahreens.

Anyway, let me expand a bit on what i meant by the Chaos Heroes, the Chaos heroes are still the Chaos Lord, Champion(NOT Plague Champion) and Sorceror, however they're undivided by default so lets say you choose the Chaos Lord, you start the game and get your Chaos Lord and Heretics, now the Chaos Lord would have assorted wargear that you can buy, say 3 armors and 3 weapons, power sword, chainaxe, combiflamer for example, but instead of accessories like the iron halo and icons he has the ability to choose on of the 4 chaos gods, Slanesh, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Khorne(The Sorceror wont be able to choose Khorne) so choosingo ne of this will be similar to when the FC upgrades terminator armor ie there is no going back, so say you choose Nurgle as your Chaos God for the Chaos Lord, now the Chaos Lord's model itself changes to the Plague Lord and the wargear you can buy for him changes, now he has the ability to buy the Manreaper, the plague flamer thing, blight grenades, etc.

In other words this is a way to get around the 3 hero limit we have now, of course this will bring one huge problem to the Chaos side, balance, why? Well all their heroes would be incredibly versatile and how do you price the ability to choose a god, do you make it so expensive that you can only buy it in tier 3? Or do you make it almost free so that you can choose it from the start of the game? What if the player chooses to be undivided and your enemy decides to compose his army of xyz to counter your hero and then bam! You change your hero to Slanesh and the enemy's xyz army is fucked in all possible holes for eleven days? That's going to be a big issue, but that's why i'm leaving balance for last. So, to summarize Chaos will in essence have 14 heroes, undivided/nurgle/slanesh/tzeentch/khorne lord, undivided/nurgle/slanesh/tzeentch/khorne champion and undivided/nurgle/slanesh/tzeentch sorceror. Making and balancing this will be a clusterfuck but i pledge myself to the Dark Gods, at least until the Necrons get here.

The other thing i'm not sure on how to do is the god specific units, at the moment i don't plan to have the roster change depending on your hero though.

Now, for the retribution thing, first than all an update. The Dire Avengers are mostly done, just got to make their textures so they should be done in a day or two at the most(not counting the Exarch), after which i'll release the Sternguards and then i'll put all work on this on hold, why? Retribution that's why, it's coming, march 1 is the release date, the beta comes even before that, soooooooooo.... I'll start some work on the Death Korps of Kreig as soon as i'm done with the Dire Avengers, then when i'm done with the Death Korps i'll continue work on this and make the Dire Avenger Exarch.

Or, i might finish the Exarch first(that guy needs brand new animations) so it depends on how i feel at the moment.

Actually, Dire Avengers themselves new animations but for the common dire Avenger this is mostly just adjusting the animations of the guardians, ie make them stand straight when firing, and moving instead of parodying necrons like the guardians do, but the Exarch needs pretty much entirely new animations for all his weapons(2x shuriken catapults, sword 'n gun, spear 'n shield).

[jianjian94]

*tear* Shuma you're a miracle worker

[Helpless]

can you release those dire avengers helms for GU's as a mod for guardians?

[Shuma]

Yes, both the Dire Avengers and the Sternguards will replace stuff, the Sternguards will replace the SM epic armor, or something. I'll have to see that in more detail since marines get a lot of crap added to their armor as they rank up, and the Dire Avengers will replace guardians on all ranks, because i honestly think that that not having Dire Avengers in any of the DoW games is one of the stupidest fluff breaking things Relic does and i still do not understand the reason for it.

[Gorb]

Because Guardians do their job cheaper and better (point for point, to use a Tabletop expression), and excepting the Craftworld of Biel-tan the amount of civilian Eldar that can don Guardian armour far outnumbers the number of Avengers stationed on the Craftworld?

[Ramrod]

Yeah, b-but... Dire Avengers are prettier!

Looking good as usual, Shuma. Are you gonna tweak the Avengers' shoulder-pack-vent thingies? Cause I notice you left the weird wraithbone "fins", which is a Guardian feature. The Avengers have a sort of camera/lamp on the left shoulder.

[Shuma]

@Gorb:

Yeah, but Guardians are meant to fight only when the craftworld is in direct danger, they're militia not soldiers. Dire Avengers on the other hand are soldiers and even their description says they're the core force of Eldar armies, their description also says that it's extremely rare to see an Eldar force without them.

@Ramrod:

I already have, they have those things in the pictures because those are the default eldar guardian bodies, i was just looking at how the helmet looks ingame.

[Gorb]

Shuma, this is where gameplay comes before fluff. Guardians are cheaper, can be fielded in larger numbers, have effectively the same weapons (6" difference in Tabletop doesn't really equate to much in a video game where ranges are balanced against each other for balance) and can do pretty much the same things.

Furthermore, DoW was created before the advent of 3ed when Dire Avengers got a few shiny Exarch upgrades. As for DoW II, welp, one would assume because they're portraying Ulthwe in the SP part of the game Guardians had to feature. And if Guardians featured, there is no possible way for Dire Avengers to feature without significant role overlap and/or redundancy.

[Shuma]

Well now you're just making me look bad, i didn't know Guardians were so important to Ulthwe. Anyway, Dire Avengers are done model and texture wise:




Might adjust some things here and there but that's pretty much how they'll look, next Scoped Shuriken Catapult, rigging and animations and then... Either Exarch, or start work on Death Korps, or a shiny terminator armor for the FC, we'll see.

Edit:

Stupid Photobucket.




I guess i'll find a better image host.

[Caeltos]

@Shuma
So the Dire Avengers are going to be ranked compatitable? I think that's what Helpess wanted to know.

[Shuma]

Yes they will. The Exarch sadly wont be, if he was he would replace all Warlocks.

[Caeltos]

Any update?

[Shuma]

Not on the Dire Avengers, but i am working on something interesting, all i gotta say is that you'll like it if you like loyalist scum, I'll post an update tomorrow or later today.

[-Delta-]

Emperor be praised Shuma

[Shuma]

Well i expected to be done with this today, but i'm not, so i'll just leave this here.

[-Delta-]

O.O WHAT COULD IT BE!?!?!?

[shadowninja0069]

hey shuma looking great budy,on my part i finaly figured out how to give termis swords and it works .

[Chaos Godstone]

Hmm... Terminator... , wait... you haven't modeled the heads of Arnie, Stalone and Bruce willis like the picture i've seen?

That round it's leg has been seen on the Terminator FooF, so I can only speculate a Termie Librarian?

[Shuma]

Hmm... Terminator... , wait... you haven't modeled the heads of Arnie, Stalone and Bruce willis like the picture i've seen?

Nah man, that'd break the game no one would beat Space Marines then. Anyway, here it is, Terminator Commander armor:




"What? That's it? That's what you were working on? Shuma i'm dissapoint"

Oh you.

Spoiler

Space Marine chapter master terminator armor. That sash thing on his right hip might change to a more traditional cloth.

Will need new animations.

[jianjian94]

Nah man, that'd break the game no one would beat Space Marines then. Anyway, here it is, Terminator Commander armor:




"What? That's it? That's what you were working on? Shuma i'm dissapoint"

Oh you.

Spoiler

Space Marine chapter master terminator armor. That sash thing on his right hip might change to a more traditional cloth.

Will need new animations.

OMGOMGOMGOMG!

Ever since i played the FoK mod for dark crusade I've been waiting for DoW2 to get a chapter master as well

[shadowninja0069]

the best termi commander ever.

[Shuma]

Now that's a sword.

[jianjian94]

Imho the wings on the sword are rather large. Maybe that's just me :P

[shadowninja0069]

now thats frikin awsome gj budy.

[nathaniak]

wow.

[Azariah]

ingame screenshooooots!!!!

[Dazz]

The rank 60 unlock looks awesome.

[jianjian94]

Besides the wings that sword looks awesome. I can imagine it slicing tanks apart! Too bad that's not possible ingame

[Gabriel Gorgutz]

Can we get two handed anims for the relic blade?

[Joekid13]

hi Shuma im joekid13 and i have to say love yur work and pretty much yur mod after its release so keep it up man we're all looking forward to what u can come up with next.

P.S love the terminator and terminator chapter master.

[Didsy]

Any updates Shuma?