This is a great looking mod.  Need some Werewolves though.

I'm sure we can work something out my friend . Thanks for hosting the mod in another place. Good looking out man.

Actually, we've done something like that already, see this pic:

I agree on what your saying, but, the undead need a base unit that's easy to get. I don't want to mess with base stats or anything like that any time soon as I know about some of the changes coming up in future versions of Elemental and there will probably be some pretty heavy re-balancing being done when the combat engine and mechanics are re-worked. I'm also working on making a totally unique tile set for every building the undead have. Their housing structures are tombs and crypts. See below:

Note: Ignore the white block behind the two guys, that's the effect marker for the fog. Also notice the custom tomb stones that have been added (made by Civfreak)

This structure replaces the "Shanty" in their housing for the next version. As for your idea which we incorporated a while ago in the techs (coming next version) that will be for more specialized units (like Liches and Death Knights). Still, we're holding off on some things until the game is more stable from a development standpoint. Plus future patches are probably going to break a lot of Mods so I can see many of the modders slowing down until they know things won't be broke and constantly need to be fixed every week, that and we're waiting on more tools from Stardock. Until Stardock gets things more finalized there's a lot of things being held back.

Howdy modders, really like how the Undead race is shaping up.  Just wanted to point you over to the excellent new bone bow that 3DGrunge posted yesterday.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/398027/page/1/#replies

The goodness is in Post #22.  Between the bone bow, cleaver, and skull mask I thought there was a lot of great thematic flavour that could be dropped in to the next package (maybe subbed in for other Empire weapons).  Keep up the good work, these community modder projects are going to be what makes Elemental great!

His Bone Bow does look pretty cool. Heavenfall has a Scythe I'd like to put in a future version as well. I'll have to ask Grudge if I can use the bow. "Undead Rising" isn't exactly a community project though. It's mine with some help from some of the Dragonlance Team members. Actually, at this point, with a Great Deal of help from my Dragonlance team-mates. I guess we can consider it a Dragonlance Team Side Project. However, I'm always up for asking the rest of the community for help and input. John Hughs (the Very Excellent Tile Maker) made a Undead Windmill I'll be throwing in with a later version, and I think Impinc may be making a tile or two (haven't talked to him today to know for sure). We're all for accepting help from the rest of the community though .

When it comes time to do custom spells and abilities though I'm still retaining direction control there over what goes in and what doesn't. I'm not going to put anything in the mod that unbalances the Undead against the other Elemental Races. They need to be on equal footing, in their own ghoulish undead way of course . My goal here will be that when they're completely finished, any Elemental Player, even the kind of player that doesn't like using Mods, will want to download them and add them to their game. Game Purists don't want to add anything that unbalances or clashes too much with the base version of the game, and as an ex game designer myself I respect and understand the need to maintain balance in a fair and fun game. This way people who want to play the game the way it was meant can add these and not have to worry about them having a major game impact, while still adding more to their fantasy setting.

Lets face it, almost all Fantasy Fans expect there to be some "Undead" in there somewhere. It's par for the course and even now I think it was a big mistake in design not to include them. I can fully see not wanting to add the standard fantasy races and such, but in a world of "Magic", well, "Necromancy" is a BIG part of "Magic" to me, Undead just need to be there. That's just my opinion though. With Undead Rising I want to keep it so that the game purists won't have a reason Not to add them, no one will have to worry about them having a unfair advantage, and visually they'll bring a lot to the game. I'm sure Heavenfall has similar goals in mind heading up the "Community Elf Race" and would probably echo a lot of my sentiments here.

Thanks for pointing out that bow, Agrippa, good looking out man. I'll make a mental not to ask Grunge about it.

What you guys have done is really cool.  Might I suggest a little twist?  raising skeletons from ancient battlefields (older = stronger skellys / retain some of their 'battle experience.?).  Uses up tile. 

No worries, I happen to agree with you about the Undead being kind of a requirement for a Fantasy strategy game.  And I did not mean to imply any ownership issues, I am too used to the open source software idea where "community" is everyone using it rather than implying any level of control.

I also think wanting to keep it a balanced add in is the best path forward; towards that I was thinking of cracking open the XML to see if I could get some of the alt weapons mods to appear instead of the Empire defaults as a racial spec (cleaver instead of short sword, exact same stats, for example). So it plays equivalent, just has all kinds of flavour.

Would this be a bit of code you might have an interest in?  Have the Thanksgiving weekend coming up, and if I am going to code instead of play, its nice to know someone else would appreciate it....

I'm having this problem whereby the faces of the skeletons and zombies are not showing up, instead it just shows a blank face. The bodies shows up though. 

Edit: Ok, I found out that when i installed CPELF mod, i will get the blank faces shown below. Is there any work around for it?

Here is the screenshot

That's odd. I can't think of a reason off the top of my head why it wouldn't draw the face textures. Only thing I could think of would be a naming conflict in the texture files. 

I was MIA for when imp helped Raven fix it for the 1.09 patch. So I'm not as current as I could be. I'll download both of these version (elves and undead), look through the xml, and see if there's anything obvious.

Is anyone else having this compatibility issue with the elves mod?

Yeah I'm getting it too, and it's definitely from having both mods installed.

The only thing I see that is odd is that the undead don't have heads applied. Although why that would only be a problem when the elves mod is installed, I can't say.

Found it. In CPELF_Core_Skins.xml I have disabled the Sion head for all modeltypes. The head had no supportedunitmodeltype, and thus was applied to all modeltypes (=elves with sion heads sometimes). You guys don't apply any heads to your modeltypes, so it always ended up defaulting to the sion head. Now that I've disabled it, you're not getting it anymore.

I'll post a fix in a minute.

UR_headfix.xml

thanks for the fix 

This is odd. I've got the Elf mod and the Undead Mod and I'm not having this problem. The Elf files I have installed are the ones you and I worked on, Heavenfall.

So, why not "Fix" the Elf Mod instead of "Fixing" the Undead Mod? The Undead Mod wasn't the one with the problem as it was a elf head issue. The more curious question though is how come I'm not getting the error unless maybe the Elf files I have are older?

I think we're both to blame. The elf mod is to blame because we changed something for everyone, and you guys are to blame because you didn't apply heads properly.

If you've got another solution that fixes it for both factions, I'm all ears.

I kinda thought we had a rule not to change things that changed stuff for everyone? What in the elf mod changes something for everything, the heads?

We didn't assign any heads, honestly, because we didn't think we had to using a standard model with a new skin. Of course we had to make the new modeltype but I didn't know (don't think Dhuran did either when we did it) that it even needed a head modeltype.

No worries. I'll add the UR Headfix in the zip for the new update to UR when I finish the city tiles. No biggie. We should probably avoid altering stuff that changes things for "Everyone" in the future though.

Heavenfall, P.S. , thanks for watching over this while I was away. I've been sicker than hell for the last week or so and could barely get out of bed until I got my meds refilled today.

I think it's unavoidable in some cases. However, in this case, I didn't even think about how it would affect others, I just saw it as something obvious to change since the sion head was getting applied to every modeltype in the game, including the Fallen modeltypes. I sincerely did not think that anyone was using modeltypes without any (non-sion) heads.

I think the most important thing when changing stuff for everyone is that it is properly noted. I'll add it to the "info for modders" in the elf thread.

Thanks Heavenfall. I hadn't even gotten a chance to look at it (posted last night right before I went to sleep).

Seems like good practice to define a head type for the undead models. I didn't even know it was necessary, so I'll take the blame for this one. I just haven't been able to devote enough time this last month or so due to work + standard life events. So I wouldn't be surprised if I'm a little behind the learning curve right now.

Thanks again for the fix Heavenfall.

That's definitely up there on the "importance" list, but, I think the most important thing would be to make sure you don't change anything someone else might not know how to fix. What does this mean for future race mods? Will Every future race mod have to have a "head fix" so they work without messing with the elf mod?

How come the Sion head model was getting applied to every modeltype to begin with? Don't any of the other standard modeltypes have defined heads of their own or are they included in a given races standard model (perhaps pre-defined in the model its-self)? I'm a little confused there where you say "did not think that anyone was using modeltypes without any (non-Sion) heads". What about all the standard kingdom races? They don't use the Sion head as well do they? They don't look like they have pointy ears like the Sions do. Or are you talking about something that happened as you were making the mod?

When I originally did the Undead Skeleton Skin that eventually lead to Undead Rising being a full race mod, I based the original skins off the standard kingdom male skin. Originally it was just a custom skin for the standard human modeltypes. I didn't apply it to very many races either, only the ones that shared the same skin configuration with normal humans (so the skin would line up correctly). Of course that's changed since the past versions and right now the skin can be applied to quite a few models when making a new Sov. When it comes to the undead as a "race" in game though they should all be human when being used by the AI. They won't make undead Sions or anything, just normal ones. Eventually I plan on including some non-human types of undead, like undead mounts and perhaps a dragon-lich (Dracolich) but that will still be a bit off in the future after the game stabilizes as far as patches go because at that point we'll be adding in stats and abilities for custom monsters.

Perhaps after a few more races are done in the future we should consider compiling a special "Races Zip" which can add all the custom made races to the game at once and the makers of those races can all get together to make sure their work is compatible with one another's.

Heavenfall, just to clarify this for myself, and increase my own understanding. What did you need to change with the sion heads, and what problem were you facing that prompted you to change it?

I ask because when we made the undead race, we didn't run into any head problems (which is why I didn't look into the head stuff at all).

The problem I was running into was that the sion head was getting applied to the custom modeltype. The reason you guys didn't suffer from it was that for you, the sion head ended up being the default (and only) head. I changed that by overwriting the old Sion_Head internalname and adding my own useless modeltype to it.

Every future race will need to apply their heads to their modeltypes. If they don't "fix" the sion_head just like I did, they'll end up with it getting applied, just like I did.

The sion_head was getting applied because it didn't have any modeltype assigned. ALL the normal modeltypes have heads assigned to them (unlike the Undead). The sion_head does not have pointy ears. I don't know why the sion_head, which lacks a modeltype, automatically gets assigned to new modeltypes.

Sounds like a good idea, but it would be even better if it wasn't needed.

The sion_head is just a bollocks remnant from poor coding that they left in by mistake. I'm sure they didn't imagine it would get applied to custom modeltypes. But it did. And I fixed it. And it caused this issue between the undead and the elves. And I can't think of any other way to make this work right with both mods, other than the fix above in this thread.

Edit: I'm wrong for adding something like that without thinking about the consequences. But you guys are also equally wrong for not adding heads in the first place. It was two stupid mistakes that conspired to bring us this glitch.

Edit2: The next time you add a new modeltype and you DON'T want 25% of your females/males to look like this:

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/6514/elemental1286836444.jpg

then you'll understand why I did what I did. Yes, that's an elf.

Ahh, I see. Honestly I was leaning towards poor/lazy coding of the model types for the races when I was typing up my above reply (by them not you, my friend). I was wrong though for being under the impression the Sion head had pointy ears. I thought that was a trait it and the Wraith head shared for some reason. I guess I just never took a close enough look at the Sion head. The reason why I didn't think it was being applied to the other modeltypes was because I didn't see it listed in the xml for the race of "men" when I was making the first draft of the undead skin before it turned into a team project, and of course, I thought it had pointy ears..lol..oops.

I also thought that perhaps for the more generic modeltypes that are re-used, like the standard human mesh, that perhaps it could have been built in to either one of the HKX's or one of the HKB's, just as some of the default skins over-ride custom skins through the DDS files unless you specify a new modeltype.

I wasn't saying either of us were wrong though, neither you for adding it because there really shouldn't have been any "consequences", nor us for leaving it out since we based the original XML's off the race of "men" so if we didn't add a head it was because one probably wasn't listed in the XML for the race to begin with. Originally, before I had Dhuran or Imp or anyone helping me with the XML, I based it all off a modified coreskin.xml and the base race.xml for "men", and then decided later to take the clothing style from the Wraith. I haven't dug enough into the XML lately to tell you %100 for sure whether or not they had a head type listed then, but I don't think they did.

It did teach us all a lesson though, which is good in the wrong run. Now we know we have to define a non-sion head type unless we want sion heads...lol.

Edit: Nm, I guess all the normal modeltypes DO have heads assigned. See, this is why I get people like you guys to help me with the XML on stuff like this

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, PEOPLE LIKE US?!

I have a request for the next update of Undead Rising. I will be doing this for the next update of Elves as well.

If possible, could you add one more faction (raceconfiguration) to play as undead? That way, we could have two undead sides fighting with, or against, each other.

After all the cool shit you've done for me and all the help you've given me, truly, I honestly hate to deny any request you would have my friend, but, unfortunately I have to deny this one. To me, in my mind, the Undead shouldn't have a "good" faction.

Elves, in most traditional source material (being most D&D realms) have an alternate evil version. These are commonly referred to as "Dark Elves" and the most popular kind of dark elves are the "Drow" from the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Drow elves have almost pitch black skin and white or light grey hair. This of course leads most people to think that all dark elves have black or dark colored skin and this is of course not true. There are other realms in D&D where dark elves look just like any other kind of elf, but the difference being, they are called "Dark" elves because they have been cast out of elven society and been made into exiles because they broke some law of elven kind, like practicing dark magics such as necromancy or in some elven cultures for choosing to marry outside the elven blood-lines. Dalamar the Dark, of Dragonlance in the world of Krynn, is a "Dark Elf" because he chose to worship the dark goddess of magic, Nuitari, and practice "Black Magic" under the tutelage of Raistlin Majere.

I'm truly sorry my friend, but I can not bring my-self to allow a good Undead Faction.

I could how-ever see a rare occasion for a good or neutral undead Sovereign or Champion. Perhaps an undead knight who some-how retains his memories from when he was alive and decides to take up the sword to eradicate evil so no more will suffer undeath as he has to. Aside from that though, I prefer if all the undead hate the living, and as such be the definition of Pure Evil.