I`m stupid, ignorant programmer and i want to help Just don`t know how

Kyogre, have you given any thought to the format of the campaign? Meaning, do you want it in the same style as Elemental's Book 1 where you basically play one hero (Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, whatever) and play the story from their perspective, or where you're more detached and participating in all of the story's events?

For example, if you're just playing Frodo you'd have an extended Shire and Bree section, you'd miss Helm's Deep, assault on Minas Tirith, but you'd experience inside Mordor. If you play as Gandalf, you'd have a bit of Shire, some Weathertop pew pew, Orthanc capture, Balrog fight, etc that Frodo never experienced.

Or you could be the abstract player, the hand that moves all and you play out the story essentially from the narrator perspective so you experience everything and play out the entire story from beginning to end, controlling all the heroes through their various journeys.

The former would be easy to create, and would allow for multiple variations of the campaign (one for each major character). The latter I think will run into more engine limitations (like how do you check that it's Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas going to Theoden and not Frodo and Sam?). I don't think the event system is robust enough at the moment to make sure that the story is properly followed. It just wouldn't work to have Frodo fighting bravely in the siege of Minas Tirith, while Gandalf nukes Shelob with his spells and crisps up a bunch of orcs to slip into Mordor and go to destroy the ring.

Right now, I'm thinking of going with the first option. Each main character (or group of characters) gets his own campaign. Frodo and Sam would go together, Merry and Pippin (until Isengard falls), Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn. The "main" campaign will follow Frodo and Sam, and additional characters will join their party as you get to the necissary points of the game. When you get to Crickhollow, Merry and Pippin join, get to Bree and Aragorn joins, at Rivendell everyone else joins. The "side" campaigns get unlocked as you reach certain parts of the "main" one. After the breaking of the fellowship, you will unlock two new campaigns, Merry and Pippin, and Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn. 

And then of course there has to be an evil campaign as well   It will be more like the regular sandbox mode, but with the addition of trying to find the Ring while waging war with everyone else.

I'm also thinking of (depending on if this is possible or not) putting in a kind of tower defense mode. All you get is Minas Tirith and a small army, and you have to fend of increasing attacks from Mordor. You can't really "build" more units, but occasionally you'll get reinforcements from Gondor's allies. The goal is to hold the city until the Ring is destroyed (after X turns or something like that).

It's great that you want to help, but honestly, I'm not looking for help. This mod will take a very long time to complete, and I don't want anyone to "sign up" thinking otherwise and then being unprepared for a very long, mostly thankless slog. If I ever end up having a real "team," I want them to be people I know will stick it out to the very distant end (barring unforseen real life problems like illnesses, etc).

This sounds great, but I don't think it's actually possible to "unlock" campaigns in this manner. I'm still trying to figure how Book 1 does some stuff (can't find an xml with any of the conversation triggers or the like ) so I'm not ready to say that some kind of condition based unlock won't be possible, but the game just reads all the files when it starts, so if the Mery/Pippin and Legolas/Gimli/Aragorn campaign files are there, they'll probably show up from the start.

And then of course there has to be an evil campaign as well   It will be more like the regular sandbox mode, but with the addition of trying to find the Ring while waging war with everyone else.

So kind of a more traditional TC, all the new races and their content, but different master quest to "win"?

This I think will largely depend on how much AI control we have. This mode would have to be completely scripted and I don't believe at the moment we can give AI a unit and tell it to attack something.

Yeah, that could be a problem. If I have to, I could settle for just having them all available from the start. I haven't messed around with the campaign much to see how it works yet, I've been too busy with trying to get models in-game.

Yeah, basically. It will pretty much be the same as the regular sandbox play, but with the addition of characters from the story.

I would be willing to get that it will almost certainly have to wait until we get access to the Python code. I think a lot of stuff I have planned will probably have to wait for that, so until that happens I'll be pretty much focusing on the art.

As i see nothing is happening with mod, because you are waiting for 1.1 patch?

Things are happening, there just isn't anything interesting worth posting about. I have some poorly textured models in-game, and I doubt most people want to hear, "well, I changed some XML today." There will be updates when there is something interesting to post about.

This is a long dead mod I take it? 

How can it even be a mod for this game when the post was written in 2009?

It's not dead. I've just been busy with other things, and I don't have any work on the mod that make good screenshots

These forums were around for a long time before the game actually came out...

Good to know that the mod is still on.

I must say compared to Civ 5 this games mods are very slow coming - I guess the tools are not up to the job yet. I have not seen one accessable mod yet.

Yeah, the problem is that there's just not enough modding functionality available for the big mods yet. As this comes along, so will the mods (assuming the modders don't get bored with the game and move on). Having said that, there are some good weapon, faction, and spell mods available, but no complete conversions.

If you're getting impatient, why not try to make one, yourself? It's really not that hard.

Really? I haven't seen a single significant Civ5 mod yet (nor have I seen a significant elemental mod). Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. Where can I find the great stuff?

Your´re right. The Civ5 mods till now are basically balance and interface mods.

LOL@ people thinking a truly great mod can come out so soon after a games release... truly great mods take years to complete... A great example is Cold War Crisis for C&C General zero hour it took at least 4 years if I recall correctly and it is one of the best most realistic mods for that game out there!

Does that mean your mod is done then? Let's see it.

With regards to magic in lord of rings - their was more in there than you think.

I beleive there were 7 wizards on the council - white, grey, blue, brown and 3 more that tolkien intentially did not mention so that others could write about them.

They were all "amgelic" beings, immortal unless killed. Gandalf the grey dies fighting the balrog and then is reborn as gandalf the white.

The elves could make magic items and taught technology to a group humans, who became longer lived (the rangers). While there was not much in the way of fireball throwing by humans, they did have lesser  subtle magic like voice control and healing touch.

There are still supernatural creatures in the world post war of the ring (4th age).

the white wizard did toss lightning around and weather control in the fellowship of the ring.

It is a low magic world, not devoid of magic. 2nd age was high magic, 3rd mid-level  1st age was the age of legends !!!!

EDIT: the world was originally flat when it was created but become a round globe at the end of the 2nd age i believe.

There were five wizards; white (Saruman), grey (Gandalf), brown (Radagast), and two blue. According to the Unfinished Tales, the names of the two blue wizards were Alatar and Pallando. They both went into the far East, evidently to help in the war against Sauron in some way, but little else is known about them. I do not know of any instances were Tolkien said he did that on purpose in order to let others expand on their stories.

Yes, but we was reborn at the behest of the Valar. It wasn't his own magic that brought him back.

The Rangers are the decendents of the Numenoreans. As a "thank you" to the men who fought against Morgoth, the Valar gave them the land of Numenor and increased their lifespan. When Numenor was cast down, the survivors arrived at Middle-earth and founded Gondor and Arnor. The Rangers are decended from those Numenoreans. The elves did give them technology and whatnot, but they did not give them extended life.

In any case, most of the magic in LotR is not similar to the magic currently in Elemental. Things like the rings of power, Palantir, Saruman's voice, etc.

In the movie, yes. Not in the books. I made the same mistake at one point

That was "God" intervening and destroying Numenor. Acts of God are certainly not something the player is going to be able to control

hmm your right there, seems there were five.. odd now i have to remember where in the past 15 years or so i got that impression - been awhile since i read fellowship. I did not mean to imply that gandalf came back uner his own power   

I do remember that tolkien intended for others to write stories set in his world mythology, now i just have to remember why i think that...sigh.