The History Of 'Age Of Legends'

How did a submod to make the GR-75 buildable turn into a massive total conversion with more playable factions than ANY Empire At War mod EVER? Why you shouldn't give up on your dreams...

Age Of Legends has nearly 35,000 subscribers, and the Essential Guide now has 360 free subscribers. Sign-up to become a paid subscriber today for just $5, or donate here to help me continue this passion project to keep the Expanded Universe alive. Paid subscribers have access to the entire back catalogue, most recently news on a really exciting breakthrough I’ve made to enable stateless faction play, coming first to the Vagaari Empire and then to other pirate and insurgent factions. Today’s free bonus post is a thank you to the whole community.

It all began in 2017.

I was playing Thrawn’s Revenge: Imperial Civil War (ICW), then at version 2.1, scratching my head at how to add a new ship. I wanted to add a GR-75 to the New Republic that they could use a bomb ship, or as a light fleet tender.

It took a while, and a lot of mistakes, but I managed it. I even managed to get the self-destruct to work. I was starting to get the hang of basic modding, and so next I added a buildable Imperial II-class Star Destroyer for the late era New Republic. And I wanted to learn to do more.

At that time, there was a huge amount of hype about the Yuuzhan Vong At War (YVAW) mod and its incredibly good looking art assets, which sadly never released in full. I really liked the gameplay of Thrawn’s Revenge and started to think that, if YVAW was still some years off, maybe I could add a basic Vong faction to ICW as a submod. At most I only imagined this would be a stopgap before the community’s attention, and frankly mine, went to YVAW.

The Empire At War community has always been extremely generous with sharing assets, and I knew that z3r0x had released a load of Yuuzhan Vong ships a decade ago; they appeared as a non-playable hostile faction in his classic 2000s mod. And the ICW team had made, but not used, a Yuuzhan Vong infantry model.

Adding a faction is far more complicated than adding a ship, but with some help, some online guides, and a LOT of trial and error, I had a rudimentary Vong faction set-up, using vanilla asteroid assets as space stations, z3r0x’s Yuuzhan Vong ships to provide a basic roster of 5/6 units, and an infantry model, supplemented with various Underworld units from the base game.

I approached Corey and asked if I could release the submod once it was ready, he kindly said yes, and in April 2017 the New Jedi Order Compilation mod was born.

The first ever picture posted for the mod on ModDB, it was then called the ‘New Jedi Order Compilation’ mod.

Work was going well, and I turned to the New Republic to modernise their ICW-era assets. I had no plans beyond the New Jedi Order era at this point, so I stripped out all of their early era units from the immediate post-Endor period and began with 25 ABY as their ‘Era 1’ (a decision I would later painstakingly reverse as the mod expanded in scope… but such is modding).

An early promotional image featuring some new hero units and the striking T-65 XJ X-wing.

I added the Mediator battlecruiser, the XJ X-wing, and some indigenous build units for the Bothans, Sullustans and Mon Cals. It was going brilliantly…

Early art assets for the many Mon Calamari units I added to the New Republic.

… And then the mod had a near death experience. I had a game-breaking crash I could not resolve. I tried everything, but nothing worked.

And then I gave up.

For a long time…

… but I couldn’t stop thinking about the mod and its potential. It was months later before I could bear to return to it, and eventually, after hours and hours of work, I identified the issue: the Coralskipper’s ability coding was wrong. I was incredibly relieved; the mod worked perfectly. And so work resumed.

And by January 2018, 6 years ago, it was ready for release. The first public build was called the ‘25 ABY Pack’ contained two core Galactic Conquest scenarios - ‘25 ABY: Vector Prime’, and ‘25 ABY: Dark Tide’ - with a third bonus scenario thrown in showing the end of the Galactic Civil War in 19 ABY. The mod had three playable factions: the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong (a first for any Empire At War mod to have land, space and galactic gameplay for them), and, after a last minute addition, the Imperial Remnant.

It was a submod for ICW, and eventually racked-up 3,000 downloads. Not bad at all for a humble submod in the pre-EAW Steam Workshop golden age. (You can still download it here.)

And the work continued. The plan was to have a total of five releases; one pack per year of the Yuuzhan Vong War. Then it would have been job done.

By July the next pack was ready: ‘Fall Of The New Republic’ was v0.5, and added a whole new faction in the Corporate Sector Authority and an expanded list of 6 Galactic Conquests, up to and including the fall of Coruscant.

From there it was onwards and upwards. I completed the entire Yuuzhan Vong War era, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my second favourite era of the Star Wars Expanded Universe lore: the Dark Empire era.

And I began to think how much fun it would be to start expanding the mod backwards to other eras. The Thrawns’s Revenge team kindly gave me permission to independently release the mod, it was no longer a submod depending on ICW 2.1 to play, and the two mods began to diverge. I guess they are now something like very distant cousins.

The number of planned factions was agonisingly whittled down to 16 - at the time this was the maximum, and the mod was broken up into different content packs focusing on different mini-eras of the chronology; this was my way of packing as many playable factions in as possible. And then something amazing happened: Petroglyph released an official patch that enabled virtually limitless faction counts, meaning the mod could be recompiled into a single project.

With the main storyline of the post-Endor period completed my attention turned to what became the Rise of Caedus. This remains the only Empire at War mod to ever depict the Second Galactic Civil War era, something I’m proud to have given to our wider community.

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That takes us more or less to the present day and the work I am now doing to move the mod from v1.3X status to v2.0. This is a huge long-term project, which I have deliberately broken down into smaller, manageable individual releases so that you get to enjoy updated and improved gameplay and new content sooner rather than later.

Thanks to the foundation laid over the last seven years, the official patches, and the support of all of you we’re now in a position where the future mod can feature 50 playable factions, countless Galactic Conquests scenarios and whole new gameplay mechanics.

I suppose if there’s one thing I’ve learned above all others, it’s to persevere. I wanted to make the game I wanted to play, and I’ve achieved that - with a lot more I want to do yet to complete the experience. So don’t give up on your dreams, and thank you for your support.

Thank you for being part of the journey.

— @Story_Continues