Section1: Current State of Dawn Of War Mods...
Healthy Mods (showing signs of activity):
o Adeptus Custodes Mod
o Annihiliation Mod
o Battle Fleet Gothic Old Forums
o Chaos - DeathGuard
o Chaos - Khorne WorldEaters Mod
o Chaos - Iron Crusade [Iron Warriors] Mod (Relicnews)
o Chaos - Thousand Sons Forums Old Official Forums Old Relic Forum
o Chaos - Thousand Sons (El Perro's project)
o Codex Evolutions (Relicnews)
o Daemonhunters: Inquisition - Daemonhunt
o Dark Eldar
o Dawn of Empires Fantasy TC Mod (Relicnews) (Old Relicnews)
o Depth Of Heresy
o Dogs Of War (Relicnews) WarHound Mod Official Site Titans Mod Relicforums thread
o DoW40K / C2C: Firestorm Over Kronus Older Forums Oldest Forums
o DoWPro Old Forums
o DoWXP DoWXP (Relicnews)
o Harlequins - The Dance Macabre Old Forums
o Horus Heresy Campaign - Visions of Treachery (Relicnews)
o Horus Heresy Multiplayer Mod
o Imperial Guard - Armoured Company and Storm of Existence
o Imperial Guard - Brothers in Arms
o Imperial Guard - Death Korps of Krieg
o Imperial Guard - His Righteous Mod Old Forums Older Forums
o Imperial Guard - Praetorians Relicnews
o Imperial Guard - Steel Legions: Armageddon
o Imperial Guard - Valhallens (Relicnews)
o Imperial Guard - Voystroya First Born
o Killzone (Relicnews)
o Ork Clanz (Relicnews)
o Skirmish Advanced AI Project
o Space Marines - Blood Angels
o Space Marines - Crusade of Penance
o Space Marines - Dark Angels (Relicnews)
o Space Marines - Deathwing Old Forums (Relicnews)
o Space Marines - UltraMarines (Relicnews)
o Space Marines - Space Wolves (Wolf Lords)
o TableTop RoundUp
o Tau
o Tyranids Old Forums
o Tyranid Painter (Lokkee's Project) (Relicnews)
o Tyranids - SplinterFleet (Relicnews)
Unhealthy Mods (not so frequent updates or none at all):
o Call Of The Wild
o Cerberus (Apocalypse)
o Chaos - Black Crusade
o Chaos - Lost and The Damned (Sparkys)
o Chaos - World Eaters
o Chaos - Wrath of Chaos: Endless Crusade Old Forums
o Crusade of Redemption
o Custodes of Holy Terra
o Daemonhunters New Forums
o Empires of Ambition (TC Mod)
o Eye of Terror
o Fantasy Warhammer
o Heroes of the Imperium (Relicnews thread)
o Honour the Astartes
o Imperial Armour
o Imperial Guard - Armoured Company / Cadian Inquisition
o Imperial Guard - Deathworld Veterans
o Necromunda
o Risen 2012 (Total Conversion)
o Space Hulk Space Hulk 2
o Space Marines - Adeptus Aviatus
o Space Marines - Black Templars
o Space Marines - Black Templars 2
o Space Marines - 13th Company (Space Wolves)
o Space Marines - UltraMarines
o Tanith First and Only
o Total War
o WitchHunters - Sisters Of Battle (Adepta Sororitas)
o WitchHunters - Sisters Of Battle (Dawn of Faith) (link to DH mod instead)
Discontinued Mods (sadly not with us):
o Chaos - Mark of Chaos
o Age Of Stars (A StarCraft TC Mod) Age Of Stars Forums!
o Balance/Fluff Mod: The Best of Both Worlds (Relicnews thread)
o Battle Droid (Star Wars TC Mod - Relicnews thread)
o Chaos Theory (Relicnews thread)
o Dawn Of Heresy (A Horus Hersey Mod) (linked to HH Multiplayer Mod)
o Epic Legions
o EXpanded(DowXP)
o Factions TC (Relicnews Thread)
o Frontline: Fathers of Order TC
o Fairness Mod (Relicforums)
o Full Scale Mod (Relicnews thread)
o Genestealer Cult
o Imperial Guard - Catachans/DeathWorld
o Imperial Guard - Elysians Old Forums - Age of Squad/Night Shift
o Imperial Guard - Warriors of Mars / Adeptus Mechanicus
o Mineworks
o Necrons
o Necrons (Eclipse Of Existence)
o Nomad: Fate Animalia (formerly Dawn Of Squirrels TC Mod)
o Ork - GrotFest (Relicnews)
o Pre Setup Battles Mod (Relicnews thread)
o SkyNet - Dawn Of Man TC Mod
o Space Dragons/Rhinoz Mod
o Space Marines - Archangels
o Space Marines - Fallen Angels
o Space Marines - Space Wolves
o Space Marines - WrathStalkers
o Tiberium Sun - Dawn Of Twilight
o Twilight of the Clans (Battletech TC/Mod) New Site
o Vermin (formerly Shaven TC Mod - Relicnews thread)
There are other mods but these are the major civ ones. All have links to sites of major interest unless otherwise shown.
Any news or any assistance needed on the unhealthy DoW mods? I take it the unhealthy ones need a little more participation or recruitment in areas that are lacking. Understandable too that this is the Christmas season and some of us have exams. I do hope things pick up in the new year as its terribly exciting the work you modders are doing!
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Section 2: HELPFUL MODDING TIPS TO ENSURE QUALITY
Update: Dec 24/2005
This is a brief list of considerations your team need to prioritize to "beautify" and accomplish when putting out a superior product. Its a real basic QA list, one that should be discussed among yourselves:
1) Keep unique file and _race names based on your mod (ie. tau_squad_research_1) and NEVER USE CAPS! NOTE: There are a couple of exceptions but in totality using any CAPS in any text especially for filenames is a big NO NO!
2) Leave a little space between buildings (ie. value of 2.000) so large vehicles can pass between. Also helps the Skirmish AI properly negoiate large vehicles around without bottlenecking (a major problem in RTS games!). **UPDATE: Generally, only unit-producting buildings should have this 2.000 value. Generators and Turrets normally do not. However, its best to test to see how easy it is to bottleneck your vehicles and large infantry squads in their own base and then increase the buffer accordingly.
3) Watch out for build/upgrade buttons that slide or appear out of nowhere. Keep buttons that are upgrades to another 'behind' the first upgrade button AND ensure to avoid "sliding buttons" and "pop-up" ones (buttons that miraculously appear in the bar when a prerequiste was satisfied). Exception: Tier2 Listening Post Upgrade Button should remain beside its Tier1 counterpart (grey-out, of course, until the Tier1 upgrade and other prerequistes are complete).
4) Don't forget about the center-drop down taskbar button! (the one that when yer cursor goes overtop a skull appears). There should be documentation how to do this as it has been done to add your own custom button there. **UPDATE: This can now be easily done. Consult the forums for info from mod teams that have accomplished this. It does work now!
5) Design your own custom UI taskbar based on your mod's theme. Be aware of design decisions regarding the mini-map, buttons, and info panels. A mod-themed taskbar adds considerable character and immersion to the faction the player is playing!
6) Keep distinct units buildable to certain buildings to make teching more interesting (try to avoid duplicating units in other buildings as much as possible - makes getting to those buildings more unique).
7) Always try to tweak/balance your faction/units against the existing vanilla ones (if you balance/tweak against the original DoW factions, then yer balancing against all other upcoming user-created factions!).
8) Ensure gfx captions/images for your units/buildings are present.
9) Ensure when near mod completion you include up to 8 pre-selected paint-camos (have an army painter competition among your beta testers to design the best paint schemes). Also ensure proper capitalization and spelling of these selectable schemes.
10) As above, have a slew of Badges and Banners for your mod (perhaps ones that do or not relate to your mod's theme). Hold a creative competition and use the best of the lot.
11) Watch out for missing unit weapon upgrade/reinforcing buttons on the taskbar (usually seen with the no. "1" in an empty box where a unit's weapon upgrade button is not present)
12) If you use a custom HeavyCover icon for your unit, ensure it shows on top-right of unit during gameplay.
13) Background colours to build/research icons should be of the same colour/hue (maintain colour consistency!).
14) Don't forget about building animations when a unit or research item is being done.
15) Add more variety to idle animations for both static base defenses and ListeningPosts.
16) Add more variety to idle animations for your units (don't kill yourself doing this - its mostly a frill but does add tremendous immersion and personality to your models!).
17) If at all possible, design new explosive/weapon/ability effects (time and labour-permitting) that'll add incredible new flair and uniqueness to your work!
18) Adding new custom weapon/building soundfx and random voice-overs for your units is mostly a nessessity. Music is a mega-frill.
19) FUTURE-PROOF your mod!! ("forward-think" your work and how other user-created faction mods will someday play against or alongside your own! Integration is the key to a healthy battlefield which adds considerable diversity of combat) NOTE: WE STILL NEED OFFICIAL DOX how to get mods together especially when the format .rgd was introduced.
20) Skirmish AI comes afterward when many of the mod's elements are finalized - polish the mod first for humans then the AI follows naturally.
21) Regarding Skirmish AI - until we hear otherwise in the upcoming expansion, the Skirmish AI cannot do the following at present:
a) Garrison troops into transports and deploy them at an insertion point
b) Use non-standard unit abilities like Scout's Infiltrate or Squiggoth's Rampage
c) Use non-standard building abilities like Eldar Shroud/ Relocation (buildings that don't use an ability but rather a "passive addon" will use it as usual)
d) Squads that can "focus-fire" on enemy targets
e) Build turrets around Large Generators
f) Engineers that can repair buildings (repairing vehicles should be doable but who has time to do that during a game? :-)
g) Better AI communication/coordination with fellow AI allies
22) Create an Uninstaller for your Mod that DOES NOT unintentionally deinstall another competiting mod! This can be quite annoying.
23) Don't forget about Building Placement soundfx/animations. Its easy to concentrate on regular building soundfx (when you just click on it) but when a building is asked to be built somewhere there should be a sound and build animation (similar to the one, for example, when an SM player tells the Servitor to build in any area the pre-fab building drops from the sky and waits to be built).
24) Winning conditions like Assassinate and Take & Hold should be coded into your AI before release. If not, when the player or AI tries to use this game mode, the game will crash.
25) Watch out that you don't affect existing textures/colours in the vanilla DoW factions (ie. taking and using SM Dread textures for your own mod may actually affect the regular SM Dreads look without you knowing!).
26) Ensure you have the correct weapon effectiveness description set within the unit's info panel. This tells people what the unit (with the current weapon upgrade) is good against. Options are: "Infantry", "HeavyInfantry", "Vehicles", and "Building" or write anything that applies.
27) Building Damage Animations - this can be very easily forgotten. When any of your buildings are under attack they should show various damage effects at 1/3rd, 2/3rd, and destroyed stages. It can be as easy as more smoke rising or an extra flame discharging to denote level of damage.
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It will be updated from time-to-time. Hope you find it useful.
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Section 3: Outstanding War40k Units for DoW
Update: June 05/2005
Also adding this fabulous link showing all the units still outstanding to the game and someday may be added..
Outstanding War40k units (for consideration in DoW!)
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Section 4: Warhammer40k Titans!
Update: Oct 26/2005
Just thought I'd throw this together for anyone wanting a good idea what all these 7-20story (tall office-building high) machines and beasts the size of city blocks!
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Section 5: See Below for 3d Recruitment Help for Artists!
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It must have taken a lot of time as I have spent the whole day just looking around 4 of the sites you list.
Further, I haven't seen so much potential from a community especially acknowledging that all the work being done can be integrated together! Unlike other RTS games *cough* Generals/Zero Hour *cough*, in DoW it can all be brought together including the Skirm AI. So much fun stuff to come in the next months especially at expansion time.
