Marvel Bronze Age Mod Announcement

[lazorbeak]

Update 1/18/15: I put up a new update of my data, complete with images!

Here's the picture file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ch...wlhc/M1975.zip

And the current data file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/f8...5h2d0e/cbh.mdb


This is based on Marvel's universe circa 1975, which is very close to the world depicted in the MU cinematic universe and shows like Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

[Hive]

Originally Posted by lazorbeak

I'm using http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/ as a resource for stats

Thanks for sharing this incredible site, it will be an enourmous asset to any Marvel mod maker.

[lazorbeak]

Hey folks I thought I'd post an update to say I am still working on this. I've got a pretty solid list of characters in excel and I'm gradually porting them into CBH. So far my demo runs with Spider-Man have been fun, although since he's practically on his own out there in my data he's been overwhelmed by villains a couple of times.

For those who are either unfamiliar with or could use a refresher on the Bronze Age, here's what several major characters were going through at the time:

Spider-Man is a college student dealing with the death of Gwen Stacy and the descent into madness of his friend Harry. He has recently begun dating Mary Jane Watson as she has developed beyond her "party girl" persona. A new villain called The Jackal has recently been plotting something behind the scenes.

The Avengers: The team has recently announced a line-up of Captain America, Iron Man, Wasp, Yellowjacket, The Beast, Vision, and Scarlet Witch. They have recently dealt with dimensional travel to the world of the Squadron Supreme (basically the DC Universe JLA), and in the 19th century they have recently caused Kang the Conqueror to disappear from existence (although he can and probably will come back). A rare moment in time when over half the roster is married to one another.

The X-Men: the all-new, all-different X-Men have just formed and Thunderbird has just died. The current line-up is Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Banshee. Mutants are still rare and are hated and feared. Jean Grey has apparently died and been re-born as the mysterious "Phoenix."

There's plenty of relatively new heroes on the scene, including Ghost Rider, Tigra, Hellcat, and Moon Knight. Characters that are about to debut but don't have any powers yet may be listed as civilians including Captain Marvel's friend Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) and high school student Richard Rider (Nova). Their heroic identities will be set as alternates.

Right now I have 57 names in the "heroes" column of my spreadsheet. I also have 141 villains before considering any generic goons, lackey organizations, or wandering dinosaurs. There's no guarantee that exactly those numbers will appear, especially if I find too many characters near the same level serving the same purpose (there may be a limit on low-level martial arts-based villains). Also unlike the default CBH data, a fair number of villains start the game either dead, in jail, or otherwise unavailable.

I've done probably too much research into the era to try to get a feel for characters, powers, and histories, but my goal is to make something balanced and fun.

[djthefunkchris]

Originally Posted by lazorbeak

I've done probably too much research into the era to try to get a feel for characters, powers, and histories, but my goal is to make something balanced and fun.

Looking forward to this very much so. I've a feeling I will try and import it, or combine it into mine for a personal mod, with the 70's as a timeline to go check out... although I will probably rename it the 90's, as I'm sliding Marvel's timeline dramatically to keep people In both DC and Marvel relevant to each other... In the 70's, Nightwing was still Robin, and Robin and Spiderman were sort of the same age... I know it's weird, but That's how I'm going to build the characters when I get to Marvel, with Dick Grayson and Peter Parker being my anchor, lol.

The reason I quoted that specific part, is because that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Balanced AND fun. Harder then what I thought it was going to be in the first place, but then again, I didn't look at the game mechanics hard enough to start with.

[lazorbeak]

I'm not sure if there's anybody still playing this game, but I've recently had time to work on modding again, after a few months of not really having the time to touch anything. My Marvel mod is looking really fun after a few test runs with different character types. I've done a ton of research on bronze age characters and have tried to represent the era both with the big names and plenty of lesser known characters that were around in the 70's. Ideally this will give me a base to make it really easy to build similar mods set at other times in the MU, since for the most part it will just be a matter of adding new characters. As mentioned in the first post, most of the characters people associate with the MU, including nearly every movie plot, comes from this era or the Silver Age. Only the X-Men universe has had major new characters show up post 1980.

I've got 52 playable heroes and anti-heroes. Right now I'm finishing up picking which villains to bring in and balancing the different locations.

As far as how it plays, I can say I haven't seen a mod that plays out the way this does. The biggest difference is I've used different power levels far more freely. If you feel like fights are too slow in the default data, this might fix some of those issues for you. Almost every "super" character has a "big" attack that does significant damage. As much as possible, I tried to give characters attacks you'd expect to see in a comic.

[Ockbald]

If you could post us a teaser, a demo or even some screenshots it would be nice if it isn't a hassle.

[Leeall76]

http://www.angelfire.com/comics/benriely/index.html

is a good site for resources for marvel and dc.

[lazorbeak]

Thanks, Leeall, but as I mentioned in my intro post on this mod, I'm already using classicmarvel and the associated indexes published by TSR in the 80's. While Ben Riely's page is a good resource for modern characters or non-marvel characters, it doesn't really help me much on a project like this. But thanks for the link.

[csale]

I'm new to CBH - and a little saddened by the lack of activity here. It seems like the potential for mods is fantastic!

Just wanted to throw some support behind your marvel mod!

[lazorbeak]

Hey everybody, I'm still not totally satisfied with everything, but I've got a playable version of this mod up. I would really appreciate it if people could give it a run through to see how it feels. I'm also sure there's still a few bios missing, personalities left blank, etc., that somehow slipped through the cracks. All constructive feedback is appreciated, thanks!

[lazorbeak]

Sad I haven't gotten much feedback on this. I am working on a 1.1 update that modifies a few powers, adds more relationships, and makes some other minor tweaks.

The plan is/was to build a 1984 "Secret Wars" era mod based on this engine, since that's the next big "turning point" at Marvel, with Byrne working on the Fantastic Four, the West Coast Avengers being created, the X-Men becoming more and more of a success and the resulting flood of new characters and locations being added as a result, and the Beyonder as a level 10 wildcard that whisks off a bunch of heroes and villains to fight each other for no apparent reason.

[raggy]

I've added a mirror link to this on my site here

[MrCanada]

Giving it a go and it looks good so far, but no picture pack makes it hard to get into.

Does anyone even have a link to a previously released one? I never found one.

[lazorbeak]

Originally Posted by MrCanada

Giving it a go and it looks good so far, but no picture pack makes it hard to get into.

Does anyone even have a link to a previously released one? I never found one.

I'm using Mr. Tricky's community graphics pack (found here: http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...d.php?t=511431 ) which works for about 75% of the characters. I haven't taken the time to do a full graphics pack, but comicvine and the marvel wikia both have images of every character in the mod.

[BobbyRogers]

Do you have link for 1.1? This mod is a reason why CBH can be a fantastic game. I am old school and love that era. I didn't think this thread was a release so I didn't open until today.