A source of what could gently be called discontent amongst the Total War community of late has been the lack of modding tools for the most recent games. Empire, Napoleon and Total War have all been bereft of official utilities to alter and add units, maps et al, which was partly a result of the relevant files being compressed and thus tricky to edit. At last, the Creative Assembly have found a way to open things up a little more – releasing the complete, original, unpacked raw database XML (data from tables) and XSD (table structure and field properties) files for both Empire and Napoleon.
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We follow any lead if it’ll take us to a story, including our own comment threads where Creative Assembly’s Craig Laycock writes to say that they’ve launched their new Total War Forum. “I couldn’t/could care less!” depending on what side of the pacific you’re on, you may say. But if you do, says Creative Assembly, you get a personalised War Room where you can see stats from your campaigns, battles, achievements and HOW MANY YOU HAVE KILLED. “Pah!” someone will say, inevitably. All right, says Creative Assembly, if you do, you get a free unit for play in Napoleon. “Is it a Hussar? I love Hussars” says the Hussar fanciers. “It’s the 10th Hussars!” says Creative. “Huzzah! Hussars!” they say, and rush off. “What’s a Hussar?” says John Walker before resuming weeping.

Craig! Mail us next time! In other notes – er – I have a Creative Interview I really should transcribe. Soon! Honest!

So, the next Campaign for Napoleon: Total War will be in Sunny Spain. Top level features? New 32-region campaign map, a playable Spain and new agents (Priests, Guerrilla and the fancy-underwear-devotees of the Agent Provacteurs). You’ll find the full press-release below, which leaves me just time to say “Napoleon? Short fella, yes?” to wind up the historical purists before I press “Post”. My work here is done. (more…)

Creative Assembly seem pretty determined to court back all the guys who got a bit antsy with them about the state Empire was released in. Napoleon scrubbed up well, which seems to have upped the good will quotient, and now as an extra thank-you-please-thank-you, they’ve chucked out a free DLC pack for it. (more…)