Mod of a life's desire

From the first time I saw Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" I wished there would be someone to make an RPG out of it. The world of Nausicaa was just begging to be taken advantage of.

As any Miyazaki fan knows, there was no RPG made of it. However, being involved in a mod myself (www.strategyplanet.com/homeworld.macross) I saw that what there is not, there CAN be if someone works on it.

I didn't remember my wish for a Nausicaa game until I saw DOTA. Sure, I know there are many other mods or total conversions for WC in development but a little amount of modeling and skinning turned Grom Hellscream into a Spirit Lancer. So I said to myself "How much would it take to make a map (or a full conversion for that matter) that turns humans into Valley of the Wind militia, Undead to Ohmu or other insects of the toxic jungle and Orcs to Torumekians?"

Probably a lot more than a simple skin and a little modelling...

That's why I turn to anyone here in the forums with an idea of what I'm talking about. I can't ask for a full modding team cause that's like saying "I have this idea, now you make it happen..." so don't think of this post this way (unless ofcourse you REALLY want this mod to happen also). I'm only good at making skins tho. Not a modeller, not an animator.

What I'm asking is advice, technical info, tools needed or sites where I might find ppl with similar wishes for a mod. That's not too much is it?


Just to give you an idea of what I see for a mod this scale is:

Valley of the Wind replacing humans, with workers, riflemen, militia, Kite riders, gunships, heros such as Nausicaa, Yupa sama and any other appropriate characters

Torumekians as either Orcs or NE (doesn't really matter since most units will be modified to a large extent) with tanks, riflemen (machine guns), heavy fliers, Fire Demon, Queen and general as heros

Toxic insects as Undead with fully grown Ohmu, Ohmu Larvae, flying insects and heros as mutations of humans or insects.

I can understand that as a map this would weigh at a few MB's (even a dozen) but I don't see it heavy in effects. I think models is all this mod needs. The default WC3 effects are enough to fit it I guess...


Anyway, that's a lot of talk so I'll just wait for some feedback before I go on.

Cheers

.Loss, it sounds like a lot of fun. I hadn't thought of Nausicaa as the kind of thing you could turn into a game, but you've got the ideas behind it that could make it happen.

Now, the kinds of changes that you propose would take a lot of work and reworking to make something believable. You need to find extremely devoted people that understand how to model and aren't currently working on a project.

See where you might have a problem?

At any rate, I wish you the best of luck, and I'll be excited if I see that you're following through with this.

Well, thx for the insight. I appreciate it.

I got a very rough layout of the forces to be used in a Nausicaa mod and since there's no need for customising effects and no need for a 4th race, I am pretty confident that I could go through with it with just a little help.

I can go as far as balancing and tweaking, creating the custom skins and doing any concept art needed for units or Icons. Only thing I need now is a modeler who can do some basic stuff with animation.

You see, many of the models needed for a Nausicaa mod could be created from the default WC3 models. For instance Master Yupa could be a Blademaster with a modified model but with the same animations. Torumekian footmen could be made by altering basic stuff (helmets, shields) on a human footman and/or captain model and keeping the same animations. Valley of the Wind gunships and Torumekian Corvettes DON'T need animations. Ohmu and other insects are pretty simple in the skinning department etc etc.

So yes, I can understand this is not a small amount of work but in my opinion 2-3 ppl can go through the work needed pretty easily.

Ever since I started on the Macross mod I found out that small steps are always better than anything else when modding. I will start a thread about a mod and provide with concept art for whoever wants to help me with what I can't do myself.

C ya soon

.Loss, I looked and looked for my copy of Nausicaa but I can't seem to find it, which is a bummer. I'll try to squeeze in some Torumekian footmen-making time if you could post some shots of them for me to work from.

And you might want to start up a thread in the model/skin requests forum.
Link to it from here if you do.

well, thx for the interest and suggestions.

Thread is here, and a nice pic of the Torumekian footman also :)

http://www.wc3campaigns.com/forums/s...threadid=17635