After it's release in Europe in 2005 I've been playing Children of the Nile many times. Somehow, like most of all games, it's been forgotten over time.
In December 2011, when I rediscovered it, I decided to install and play - just to become frustrated by the poor graphics. After spending some time playing around, the idea of the H.orus T.exture O.verhaul P.roject was born.
Since the game didn't allow any changes to it's models back then, the only way to achieve a better visual outcome was to edit the textures. And that's exactly what H.T.O.P. does!
The original textures all share one characteristic: they have a very low resolution. Thus, I have redone some textures with at least doubbled resolution to achieve a much more qualitative picture in game. Now you actually had a reason to zoom in and watch your beautiful city boost of life!
This was back in Feb 2012 - much has changed since then.
Soon I became really addicted to the idea of giving the game a loo,k that was much more up-to-date and I started the crazy approach to redo all the texture of a whole game alone.
Of course, doing everything from scratch is a very time consuming process. So this project has yet taken many years of constant work on the textures, trying to find the most satisfying look, while not breaking the game's atmosphere. Luckily, most of the work came to an end and the H.T.O.P. was considered complete.
Years passed by, until I suddenly became aware of another possibility: Editing the models of the game was finally possible and the idea of the H.orus M.odel O.verhaul P.roject or H.M.O.P was born.
Since then, I am actively working on enhancing and improving the game's visuals, trying to make it a little bit nicer with every updated model or texture I finish.
Sail the Nile, dear visitors, but beware: You may fall in love with this beautiful game as much as I did once and you won't be able to get your eyes of the magnificent life in ancient Egypt!
Sail the Nile, dear visitors, but beware: You may fall in love with this beautiful game as much as I did once and you won't be able to get your eyes of the magnificent life in ancient Egypt!
Horus
what apps/tools do you use for retexing those troublesome dds files? Photoshop cs5 with the Nvidia dds plugin?
ReplyDeleteI use a nice freeware programm called "paint.NET", which is able to read dds and has lots of nice editing features. Sometimes I use Paint shop pro for the complicated work, too, but the dds plugin doesn't work really well
ReplyDeleteHi Horus! Love your texture mod. Do you know if there is a way to add new music files to the game? I know that there is a music folder and you could replace the mp3's and rename them, but is there a way to keep the original songs and add the new ones as well?
ReplyDeleteHi, as far as I know, you can add custom music and I once did it, but I don't remember if it was just replacing existing ones. Maybe try it out and report back :)
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