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The Kingdom of Kush: A proper introduction [Illustrated]


Sundiata
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Take note: 

The first post in this thread was originally posted on January 15, 2017, and has subsequently been revised and re-written. The last revision was made on May 8, 2018. The following posts in this thread document the development of the Kingdom of Kush as a playable civilization for 0 A.D., featured in the latest stable release of the vanilla version of 0 A.D., alpha 23 (Ken Wood), on May 17, 2018.

0 A.D. is a free and open-source, cross platform (Windows/Mac/Linux), Historical Real Time Strategy game that can be downloaded at: https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-23-ken-wood/

 

 

 

A special thank you to all the people involved in the development, and everyone that supported us:

 

Edited by Sundiata
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A lot more Eye-Candy

(Each link has its own photo-album)

 

Ancient Empires is a Total War mod, that attempts to bring back some interesting civs, including Kush. This is a good place to start with ideas for units (I'm happy about most of the units, except I disagree with the use of greek style bronze shields. No evidence for that)

https://imgur.com/a/HtBcc

 

A variety of Meroitic Artefacts:

https://imgur.com/a/ZqiwE

 

Napata:

https://imgur.com/a/9WjCd

 

The capital, Meroe:

https://imgur.com/a/PgJe2

 

Musawwarat es Sufra:

https://imgur.com/a/bLXFk

 

Naqa:

https://imgur.com/a/wNc4d

 

Kerma (pre- 0AD), interesting because of architectural continuation in common structures:

https://imgur.com/a/QE1B3

 

Wad ben Naqa:

https://imgur.com/a/yLLUR

 

Kawa (Taharqa's temple):

https://imgur.com/a/0GtGB

 

People of Interest:

https://imgur.com/a/OOffX

 

Some more people:

https://imgur.com/a/BXmps

 

Edited by Sundiata
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@Wowgetoffyourselphone: Thank you :)

@Lion.Kanzen: I understand, and I'm not expecting any magic to happen or anything. I just thought the Kushites deserved a proper introduction. I saw the two posts you linked before, but I didn't think they did the Kushites any justice. I love the work you guys are doing, and I don't want to come in here with an accusatory tone. I just want people to have an accurate visual reference for the Kushites, and how they might be a valuable addition. 

And the term Nubian, in Meroitic history is problematic. The term "Nubia" only sees widespread use after the collapse of the Meroitic state, and is related to the rise of the Nobatae (Noba). In addition there are many Nuba speaking people in Sudan who essentially had nothing to do with Meroe. It's a term that refers to everything and nothing at the same time, confusing peoples understanding of the history of the region. It's a bit like equating Samnites and Etruscans with Romans.

Edited by Sundiata
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Even though the core development team is not adding new civs, there is always the possibility to create a mod (extension) for the game. There is for example a mod which adds the Chinese Han dynasty to the game: http://www.moddb.com/mods/rote

I am pretty sure you can find artists and developers who are willing to contribute to such a mod. Even in case you are not a developer or artist there is a lot you can do to initialize and maintain such a mod.

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1 hour ago, balduin said:

Even though the core development team is not adding new civs, there is always the possibility to create a mod (extension) for the game. There is for example a mod which adds the Chinese Han dynasty to the game: http://www.moddb.com/mods/rote

I am pretty sure you can find artists and developers who are willing to contribute to such a mod. Even in case you are not a developer or artist there is a lot you can do to initialize and maintain such a mod.

@LordGood is currently working on Zapotecs, which could be merged with the existing Rise of the East mod (see the discussion in the screenshots thread). Actually the Kushites (in the far south) would be a logic addition to the Hans (in the Far East) and Zapotecs (in the far west), at least in respect of most civilizations featured in 0 A.D (see also LordGood's post).

Edited by Palaxin
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Thank you for the replies!

On 15 Jan 2017 at 6:58 AM, balduin said:

Even though the core development team is not adding new civs, there is always the possibility to create a mod (extension) for the game. There is for example a mod which adds the Chinese Han dynasty to the game: http://www.moddb.com/mods/rote

I am pretty sure you can find artists and developers who are willing to contribute to such a mod. Even in case you are not a developer or artist there is a lot you can do to initialize and maintain such a mod.

Indeed, regrettably I'm not a programmer. My art contributions would also be quite meager (never got passed photoshop). If there is any chance of such a mod being developed though, I would love to do all I can to realize it. Hence, the "monster post" on The Kingdom of Kush. By the way, I love the ROTE mod! Looks gorgeous. I knew that a lot of people have difficulties actually visualizing "the Nubians", even if they sound good on paper, so I just wanted them to have a fair chance, by illustrating their complex history. In a previous discussion, @stanislas69 suggested I "need a pretty strong design document on the art side at least to make it interesting." So I thought I'd start with this post about Kush.

I'm a total noob, so could someone, if they have the time, give me a rough outline of exactly what needs to happen to even think about beginning a new mod, and exactly what I can do to facilitate this. Basically a step by step plan of the earliest stage, so I can have a better idea of what is required, or what I can do to contribute.

As I said I'm not a programmer, but I do want to pitch in. I think 0 A.D. is awesome, and if there is any chance of a Kushite mod seeing the light of day, I want to do what I can to make it happen. If there is interest of course (but I believe there is)

@Lion.Kanzen Reading again through the discussion you linked, I realized you contributed more information to this subject than anyone. I had glanced over it but forgot, so my apologies for that.

Anyway, don't think I'm getting carried away with it or anything. I was playing around with some Kushite reliefs from a temple to Apedemak, and made an Emblem kind of thing. Not the most professional illustration, but it might inspire someone to make a way cooler one :P

Apedemak finfished.jpg

Edited by Sundiata
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Developing a new mod requires vision, research and persistence. The hardest part about a Kushid mod from my perspective is the literature, images etc. There is not a lot available, which means somebody has to research it and make it available to the 0 A.D. community. @Sundiata you did already an awesome job in that.

As far as I got it from your post a possible implementation could look like:

buildings:

  • temple: you have posted many images about the temple, that should be easy for artists to model it.
  • civic center: how should the civic center look like?
  • storage depot: how should it look like?
  • which house would you like to take? fig: 15b or 15e?
    • maybe using the double house 15b with a population capacity of 20 -> one of there specialties
  • blacksmith: how should the blacksmith look like?
  • fields: what is about there agriculture?
  • farm: what animals did they breed?
  • market place: how should it look like?
  • trader: did they use camels?
  • dock, naval buildings?
  • how should a fortress look like?
  • maybe they should have a stable -> good with horses and camels?
  • what is about the fortress? How should they look like?
  • towers and walls. How should they look like?
  • wonder?

units:

  • civic center: basic units -> woman workers, the spear guy with the cotton protection (fig: 20), horse?
  • garrison/barrack: archer maybe with near combat bonus, because of dagger (fig: 25d-1), and maybe axe warrior?
  • stable: horse archers, spear horses (fig: 25g), camel units?, chariots? (fig: 1)
  • mercenaries: Ptolemaic cavalery (fig: 25e), Sudanese tribal warrior (fig 25d-2)
  • siege wapons? Did they had some? What did they use?
  • special units: nubien bowman (fig: 25c), spear men? (shown in 6a.)
  • heros and threir capabilities?

specialties:

  • Iron production (they should have a bonus tech)
  • Archers can shoot poisoned arrows

However, there are some open questions about towers and walls? How did they use them, just to protect them from nomadic invaders or have they been very good at building walls and towers? What is about there agriculture? Any specialties, besides the iron production? What is about ships and boats? Have they bean good or bad in naval combat?

The first step, for me as software developer would be, to research more and try to answer the open questions. It does not have to be perfect, but should be detailed enough to start the development. I would constantly put all the information you collected into a repository. This way you can share it with the 0 A.D. community. The repository could be on Github, because there is already a repo called 0ADMods (https://github.com/0ADMods).

I am pretty sure the developer and maintainer of 0AD are willing to help you with it. I would be willing to help you with the specification and the repo stuff. However, I am not a 0 A.D. developer.

Edited by balduin
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My second step would be to create a new subforum for your mod and maintain it. I would also create a new entry in Moddb about your mod with title description and updates. Update it at least every 6-9 months, so that people should see that the mod has a maintainer and somebody who cares about it.

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The fourth step would be to create a playable version of the mod. By simply reusing all needed buildings and units from other civilization, and maybe I am wrong with that. After that I would start to rename them, which requires researching the names. And then try to balance them as own civilization, which requires testing. In the next months I would try to replace all the copied placeholder units and buildings with real Kingdom of Kush one, starting with the Nubian Bowmen. Replacing the units requires artists.

You should see the steps more like phases instead of clearly separated steps. However, it is easy to explain the software development with this "Waterfall Model". I also wanted to demonstrate, that a lot of work in the mod development does not require artistic and or development skills at all. A clear vision *, research, communication skills and persistence ** are needed to keep such a project moving forward.

* which you have

** because the development of this mod will take months and even then somebody has to maintain it.

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These guy deserve full civ. Placeholders I think can be Ptolemies buildings and Carthaginians buildings.

 

IMHO, the phase requirements can be number of pyramids build. Maybe 2 for town phase and 3 more fo city phase.

 

Maybe I add them to DE.

Edited by wowgetoffyourcellphone
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48 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

These guy deserve full civ. Placeholders I think can be Ptolemies buildings and Carthaginians buildings.

 

IMHO, the phase requirements can be number of pyramids build. Maybe 2 for town phase and 3 more fo city phase.

 

Maybe I add them to DE.

Yeah but having basic building as minifaction you have a point to start.

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