Whatever happened to Shattered Empires - (The rise and fall of a mod i

[LordBaraban]

Whatever happened to Shattered Empires - (The rise and fall of a mod in progress)

 

 

I've been asked by several people over the years since I started modding,

"Whatever happened to the Warhammer: Shattered Empire mod you guys were making back in 2009?", "What happened to all that cool
stuff that SpYnor made?" and "Why does Archangel2K have such a bad rep?" and most importantly - "What can we learn from what happened?"

 

It's actually a very long and sad story, but one in which some good DOES eventually come out of it, as evidenced by the 15th Century
Armour mod for Mount & Blade Warband, and the Witcher 2 Style armour and helmet pack I released for Skyrim, both of which contain assets that had their beginnings in the Shattered Empire mod.....

The story begins back in April 2009 when a group of us got
together to make a mod, that group included:-

Altazar - Project Lead and coder.

Nerevarine81 - Lead scripter and coder.

SpYnor - Lead modeller and texture artist.

Archangel2K - Modeller and texture artist.

EbudAaron - Textures and code snippets.

Funki - Lore and map design.

Baraban - Textures and unit configs.

Bastard'O - Map design and modeller.

We had a dream of creating a modification for Medieval II Total War, based on the Warhammer Fantasy universe, but rather than compete
with several other mods already in development, our goal was to focus primarily on the Empire itself, with Bretonnia and Kislev being dragged into an internal power struggle that was going on within the Empire.

 

The mod initially made good progress with some amazing work already being done on the map, basic units and even some very good textures,
many of which were initially posted on our private forums and links being circulated on our IRC channel.

In July however, the decision was made to convert our mod from Medieval II Total War to another game which was regularly being played by some
people in our group; called Mount & Blade.

 

A few of us, including SpYnor and I, initially protested to this; as we felt we had put a lot of work into the Medieval II mod and felt
that switching at such a late stage would have thrown things into disarray, more so as I had never played Mount & Blade before in my life, let alone learn how to edit the config files and create units for it, which, after all, was my speciality in Medieval II modding.

 

But after Altazar, Nerevarine81 and Archangel2K showed us the pros and cons, including the fact that our mod focused mainly on humanoid
combatants and that Mount & Blade would better represent that; while allowing the artists more freedom to create units and scenes in greater detail. We agreed and decided to move forwards together....

Things went well and for the next few months as we learned how to mod for Mount & Blade more efficiently, and we eventually reached
the stage where we had something relatively playable using a lot of our new assets. A lot of this was due to several of our group already having experience working with mods for Mount & Blade, as SpYnor had previously created several shields and weapons for the game, while Archangel2K was already a relatively senior member of the Prophesy of Pendor mod team, so we reached the stage where
we began to release some screenshots, which later appeared on some of the older, more obscure fansites, which a few of you might still remember?

 

Unfortunately later that year we suffered our first real setback, as Bastard'O was forced to leave the team due to real life issues as his
wife suddenly fell ill and he found himself having less and less free time.....

At that point Altazar and Nerevarine81 made the decision to take on more help in the form of play testers and additional artists in an
attempt to relieve some of the pressure we were facing in having to both create and test our new units, scenes and code in the game. Among those taken onboard were MadMan99 from Call of Duty fame, an amateur texture artist, coder and play tester with the screen name Krogoth, an additional texture artist named KylaHart and several other play testers who were given access to our shared files on Altazar's file server.

Things seemed to be going smoothly and progressing at an incredible rate; and it looked as though the dream that was Warhammer:Shattered
Empire could well have become a reality, when all of a sudden things started to go awry....

 

In December Nerevarine81 announced that he was leaving the mod citing 'creative differences' between himself and Altazar, saying that he
wasn't happy with the direction the mod was taking. This ended up turning into a nasty flame-war on our private forums and ended up souring the atmosphere amongst our team, but we pressed on, determined to continue.....

The fatal blow came in early 2010, when it turned out that our very own Krogoth wasn't who he had claimed to be... Our suspicions were
raised when he initially kept asking us for the source code, meshes and textures - claiming to need them to help make his own additions to the mod, as well as sending us random E-Mails with suspicious attachments, which it later turned out were opened by several members of our group....

 

Unfortunately Krogoth, as it turned out, had not only hacked into our forum and the accounts of several members of our group, but had also
infiltrated the Prophesy of Pendor board claiming to be another modder called Dejawolf and several other sub-mod forums on Taleworlds, in each instance he claimed to be a well known modder or texture artist looking to share his work or look at the work of others, all in an attempt to steal the hard work of other people.... During this time he had logged into other boards pretending to be SpYnor, Dejawolf and EbudAaron.

 

The damage he had done only came to light when people started to receive malicious messages from Krogoth and some of his alts, essentially boasting about stealing their work, or with getting other people banned from forums where he'd either hacked into their accounts or stole their
identity.... This sadly included SpYnor and Archangel2K, who both ended up being banned from the respective forums where they had either had their accounts hacked or their identities stolen.

 

At the time, this was thought to have just been the work of a lone troublemaker who wanted to steal assets from several mods for himself/herself. This was sadly not the case, as it turned out that apparently someone from another mod team saw a copy of Mount & Blade, bundled with the Prophesy of Pendor mod for sale via digital download on a dodgy Russian website that very same month.... Upon further investigation, Altazar
and Funki downloaded a copy to discover that not only were they trying to charge money for what was essentially a free mod, but that that it actually contained assets from both the Prophesy of Pendor AND our Shattered Empire mod, including several early versions of work that was being made by SpYnor, Archangel2K, Dejawolf and EbudAaron...... Coincidence... I think not... But I'll leave that up to you to decide.

By this point the damage was already done.

SpYnor felt utterly betrayed and had spent most of his free time trying to apologise to other mod teams and protest his innocence, but
ended up leaving the Shattered Empire mod, as he felt his name had been tarnished and that the mod would suffer if he remained..... He left taking all his work in progress textures and models with him, including an incredibly beautiful set of broadswords, bows, axes and several amazing shield designs.

Funki, who was SpYnor's best friend outside of the mod, ended up leaving shortly thereafter.

Archangel2K was going to leave also, saying that he was going to focus on helping the Prophesy of Pendor team iron out any problems
with their mod before departing the scene; also citing similar reasons to SpYnor, as he was deeply hurt that he'd been duped by Krogoth pretending to be Dejawolf and several other fake artists, but thankfully he was convinced to stay on for a little longer by Altazar, KylaHart and I, who all wanted to learn from him after seeing some of his tutorials and excellent advice on our forums.

 

By May 2010, it came as little surprise when Altazar announced that due to what had happened recently, combined with so many senior
team members leaving, he felt that he was no longer able to continue with the mod as not only was its reputation in tatters, but it had "Lost it's heart
and soul", to quote him directly.... This was a very sad day for us who'd been there since day one, but every cloud has a silver lining, as shortly
thereafter Altazar gave KylaHart and I permission to use any of the code, models and textures that had been worked on in the mod for our own personal use, provided that we also asked permission from the other authors.....

Archangel2K spoke to KylaHart and I on Skype and sent us several E-Mails showing us the work he'd been doing on the Prophesy of Pendor
mod, and even talked us through how to use 3DS Max, Milkshape3D and Photoshop, all of which we found invaluable, but the best part was yet to come.....

I expressed an interest in his armour and textures that he'd posted on our forums and even suggested that I could use some of it to help
with updating some of the Late Knights in the Stainless Steel mod which I was a big follower of, and he replied saying that as long as I didn't use any of the Prophesy of Pendor specific models and textures, I could basically do what I liked with it, providing that credit was given to both himself and another modder called Narf who he'd worked with on the armour sets.

 

This was the boost I needed to make a start on modding, and before the year was over, I had created:-

 

Armour with capes,

New textures,

And Orcs!!

 

And the rest as they say is history.......

But what can we learn from the fate that befell the
Warhammer: Shattered Empire mod, I hear you say?

Well, I've learned the following things, but feel free to
disagree with me, as this is just my humble and very subjective opinion:-

 

1. Always start a mod or project with clear goals and objectives in mind, and try to stay using the same game/engine whenever
possible, unless you have a very good reason for changing.

 

2. Never start a mod that is beyond the scope and abilities of you and your team. Always start small and improve upon it as time goes by,
preferably with updates. Fate has a way of throwing a spanner in the works and people can and do leave, and things will go wrong... If you're new to modding, take things slow and steady... Remember "Rome wasn't built in a day!"

 

3. For large projects, such as total conversions 'etc', try to recruit a fairly large and experienced team, and make sure there's a good
spread of talent, and/or people who can at least cover for illness, absence and with people leaving suddenly.

 

4. Always compose your team out of people you can trust as much as possible. Try and make sure they're all people whom you've either known
for a while, spoken to in real life, or at least have a fairly large online presence, including a Facebook/LinkedIn profile with mugshots and frequent
updates or are well known in modding circles, as they will less likely be someone with malicious intent, or are seeking to steal your hard work.... You don't have to be paranoid, just careful!

 

5. Try to keep any disagreements within your team as private as possible, everyone is different and a lot of people can clash over the
slightest of things, so it's best to keep such heated arguments as Private Messages or E-Mails.... Flame-wars between members of the same team on your forums, or anyone else's for that matter, can quickly spiral out of control and create a bad atmosphere for all involved.

6. Always support your team mates, in good times and bad. Always be there to help them if needed and don't be afraid to ask for help in return.

7. Have fun!! This is perhaps one of the most important and yet most overlooked point of making a mod, they're a labour of love and they're your creation, whether you're a one man team, or part of a large group. The moment it stops being fun is the moment you need to take a step back, re-evaluate what you're doing and figure out how to make it fun again, even if it means taking a quick break to get a fresh perspective.

Well I hope you've all enjoyed my insightful foray into the past and I hope this answers most of the questions a few of you had, as well as being informative, and I look forward to hearing what everyone else's thoughts are on the above.

Best,

Baraban Sternaxe (B. Robertson)

Edited February 27, 2013 by LordBaraban