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Marvel Bronze Age Mod Announcement


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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/ch3ca8rurzzwlhc/M1975.zip

 

And the current data file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/f8mcegfey5h2d0e/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.

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  • 1 month later...

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.

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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.

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  • 6 months later...

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.

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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.
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
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!
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  • 1 month later...

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.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
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/showthread.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.

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  • 1 month later...
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.

 

Thanks for the interest. Did you download the current version okay? I've been making edits as I play, and I'd say I'm pretty close to having 1.1 ready for download, but any feedback would be appreciated.

 

I'm also working on a pictures file to provide missing characters where possible, but I'm not sure when that will be ready.

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Yes I have been playing for a while as Spider-Man and then Daredevil. It is an enjoyable mod and I congratulate you on putting the time in.

 

I prob have a different idea about how the locations should be set up. I would have made a Hell's Kitchen for DD characters, Daily Bugle for Spidey, and focus on the travel settings to get some overlap and balance. That's just a personal view point for CBH, not suggesting any rework.

 

WWII era (Invaders, Red Skull alternate) would be a cool enhancement, but again not asking for you to invest your personal time to it.

 

But from what you have so far, the powers and attributes were good. Heroes aren't on steroids. Was pleasantly shocked that Kraven + Electro beat Spidey even with Spidey's high popularity. I'm away from that PC right now, and can't go into more specifics by memory.

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Yes I have been playing for a while as Spider-Man and then Daredevil. It is an enjoyable mod and I congratulate you on putting the time in.

 

I prob have a different idea about how the locations should be set up. I would have made a Hell's Kitchen for DD characters, Daily Bugle for Spidey, and focus on the travel settings to get some overlap and balance. That's just a personal view point for CBH, not suggesting any rework.

 

WWII era (Invaders, Red Skull alternate) would be a cool enhancement, but again not asking for you to invest your personal time to it.

 

But from what you have so far, the powers and attributes were good. Heroes aren't on steroids. Was pleasantly shocked that Kraven + Electro beat Spidey even with Spidey's high popularity. I'm away from that PC right now, and can't go into more specifics by memory.

 

Thanks man. I totally understand the locations issue, and it was a conscious choice to go more for "big, shared world" in most cases based on 1) fun, and 2) the more "anything goes" style of comics of the era, before Marvel became so large that editorial departments ended up being increasingly fragmented. I did set it up so that DD could easily move to the more "street" level area, but this is DD before Frank Miller's influence. I also wanted to make sure that Manhattan wasn't exclusively full of serious villains, so I definitely wanted Stilt Man and the Jester to be based out of the city.

 

I did set up the time frame for Conan and the Invaders, but actually adding that is a low priority.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

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  • 9 months later...

Just wanted to bump this. I've been working on cuts for some of the relatively unknown characters from the 70's, and also tweaking a few things.

 

Right now the game word has 62 heroes, 18 anti-heroes, 193 villains, and 25 wildcards. I'm not sure if Adam is planning a CBH two, but I should be ready for it. I've also been watching Earth's Mightiest Heroes on netflix, and it's pretty cool that obscure guys like Chemistro and Gideon Mace make appearances on that show.

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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="bearded" data-cite="bearded" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="32668" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Thank you. I appreciate your time and effort. Is the updated version available for download yet?</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I'll put up the updated data probably over the weekend. Unfortunately real life has kept me from working on images, but hopefully I'll get some of that done this weekend too.</p>
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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="lazorbeak" data-cite="lazorbeak" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="32668" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I uploaded the current data in the same file location, so the download link hasn't changed. I still need to finish up getting the picture files up. Anybody playing this, feel free to give me any feedback, as some character changes may have slipped through the cracks at some point.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> my download says version 1.0. Is correct?</p>
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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="bearded" data-cite="bearded" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="32668" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>my download says version 1.0. Is correct?</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> It's correct if the heroes/villains numbers are 62/194.</p><p> </p><p> Good to see you're enjoying it. <img alt=":)" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p>
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