Hard to believe that even after 10 years I found myself loading TA:K, its utilities, units, etc up on my PC after finding everything on an abandoned 30gb HDD "time capsule" in the crawl space.

I then decided to google TA:K and lo-and-behold found this site.

The battle reports have been interresting to read and all the other comments on all the various units I made. I never did play online against anybody in TA:K, just LAN, which is also the reason the Azurians and such were quite overpowering. The versions you guys have are quite old compared to my 'old' files haha. Alot of bug fixing was done, good example would be the Veruna mortar having the correct mortar firing sounds, etc.

In either 2000 for 2001 I lost access to my site - TABDD, tried to move it off Tauniverse but was unsuccessful so I faded away into the background.

In 2005 I had the urge to work on some TA:K stuff so it got installed again. This time I rebalanced every existing unit and than came up with some NEW stuff:

I posted the single image below in the forums but never released the file online as there was no interest in 3rd party stuff for TA:K due to the large number of imbalanced units - of which I'm definetly guilty of, haha.



The race/side linked above is called the Shinto; they're a fairly modern race, kind of a mix between Creon and Veruna but with a Japanese vibe. And yes the dragon tank is based off of Chrono Trigger and it does breath fire when it opens its mouth.



Another project that I made was something I refered to as 'Castles' basically the general premise was that you started off with a huge Castle structure (factory) and could build an amount of tier 1 units (using my rebalanced stats) which consisted of only Aramon units:

Swordsman (melee) - Archer (ranged) - Catapult (siege) - Builder (which had weak limited ranged attack) and a Knight (expensive melee calvary)

The builder could build walls and Outposts on lodestone sites which could produce units (not shown) and farms that produced mana.



The Models for the Castle, Outpost and Farm are of course new, they're based off the Aramon style but you'll notice a big difference if you look at regular Tier 2 Aramon castle.

The best part of Castles was that it was strategic, no towers to hide behind and formations and how you placed your units mattered alot. Even the AI was able to play it quite well, with the custom maps I made being so small battles started very quickly and pathfinding wasn't an issue; quite fun.

A few other units I created but never released among other things we're a Skeleton Catapult for Taros, A Dwarven Tank for Veruna (With a tortoise shell like top) and a Mobile Trebuchet (its pretty big) for Aramon.


My TA:K version is modified in such a way that its version 2.0 - BUT - I repackaged Creon to work with it (25mb suprisingly!) and the only real change was that instead of freezing a unit they stone it since that parts not in the 2.0 exe. Why do that? Because of the goofy limited races shennigans that Cavedog setup with their 3.0 patch.

My only question for you guys is did you correct that oversight in the 4.0 patch I've seen listed multiple times on the forums? Or is that the intention of TA:K Switcher.

- Thanks.

Welcome back warped mind. It's good to see old moders back in tak.
The shinto race looks freaking awesome man. Can you upload all the tak stuff you have? I'd love to test it all. All I have is what I'v uploaded in the download section in forums.

Alright here's 11 units for you to play around with, make sure you read the README to get it working.

http://download541.mediafire.com/pfk4aidhtubg/k1do569x5ycp7dy/Warped_Minds_Bonus_Units.rar


The pack contains:

Aramon - Martyr, Airship, Mobile Trebuchet.

Veruna - Balloonist, Mobile Mortar (firing sound fixed!), Harpoon Tower, Dwarven Tank and the Zepplin Transport.

Taros - Skull Catapult, Scorpion .

Zhon - Elvin Archer



The file also contains the rebalanced stats for every TA:K unit (minus other 3rd party) the only catch is don't use CREON as I've eliminated a few of the CREON units in my game and therefore never put rebalanced stat FBI's for them. You'll have to run the rebalanced stats if you want to give these units a proper go, otherwise their stats won't match up with regular TA:K at all.

Read the README for all sorts of unit stat info and other changes made, I think you'll like it.


Enjoy for now, more to come eventually.

Welcome warped mind!

May I first say that the japanese race looks friggin' amazing! Really nice models you've got there, so good they could actually be cavedog originals.
That game mode you described sounds really cool as well, is it a scripted map?
The new server was supposed to make it easy to play mods online but i don't know how far developed it is atm.
The tak switcher is used to easily select mods for the game, thats the main purpose but it also fixes that oversight. For some reason it wasn't fixed in the patch... no idea whhy but a new patch should be made just to fix that problem, with maybe some of those other things clay mentioned a while back.
You need to upload your stuff, your HDD is like a holy grail of tak!

XD siiiiiick

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That game mode you described sounds really cool as well, is it a scripted map?

Its actually a 'side' you select and you start with the Castle, although I've been messing around with how to make the AI better and accelerate the starting game for regular play by combining regular and the castles concept... What I just typed probably won't make alot of sense... but it does to me.

The Shinto race was about 95% complete, the only thing it lacked was a proper god unit which I had in the works, they even have their own race selection button for the GUI which is kinda cool. I'll probably post them up in the next while since they're a small 4.5mb file.

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For some reason it wasn't fixed in the patch... no idea whhy but a new patch should be made just to fix that problem, with maybe some of those other things clay mentioned a while back.

If such a patch could be made to re-enable multiple races from pre 3.0 patch days that would be really keen. I enjoy playing 1vs7 AI game with all different races. :-)


Below is a bit of a teaser image, its the last release version of the Azurians from the year 2000 compiled on February 22nd, looking at this stuff is like opening a time capsule.



Good enough for the year 2000 but 10 years later they need ALOT of work. I'll probably update the models and stats at the very least.

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You need to upload your stuff, your HDD is like a holy grail of tak!

All in good time. ;-)

In the meantime, fire up the units I posted, give me some feedback.

So today while balancing the unit stats for the Azurians to be similar to the little pack I released with the rebalanced stats I made this. Its a new model for the Level 1 Palace.



The lack of window ports on the side towers facing toward the roof is intentional.

Let me know what you guys think of the new design.

Thats waaay better, how do you make such good units for this game?

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Thats waaay better, how do you make such good units for this game?

Haha.... After 10 years something should have improved.

Another teaser, this time the Tier 2 fortress.



They of course look better from the proper angle ingame, however its neat to see them from a different angle. Its going to take awhile to get through all the structures and then its onto the individual units, I'm already probably going to axe a few, any building/devices will look alot better.

Finally here is a random in game shot of stuff done so far, the 'build pads' for the Palace and Fortress are just temporary (probably) since I plan on making a custom translucent texture for that later.



Once the Azurians are redone I'll post them and the Shinto race shown in the first post up for download.

nice! Those buildings really remind me of something from halo I'm thinking the spaceships, they're so smooth and shiny looking! If you can get all the other structures looking as distinctive and good as this they will be awesome, before everything looked a little too similar.

Finished the model for the Mana Vault today, as you can see (Below) it integrates with the Wall and Spear Tower so you can have a really clean looking base.



The texturing on the Palance and Fortress roof aren't quite so clean when you don't have anti-aliasing on ingame so its not quite as smooth as the Halo Covenant structures. ;-)

*EDIT* The Hand of Pandora is below, the parts around the crystal at the top spin against eachother which looks really good ingame. On a side not I'd wanted to make it taller but anything higher than that and the TA:K engine inverts rotating bits just like the origional TA engine did, go figure.



So ends this update.

awwwwwwww this was just getting awesome

I don't mean to break the stride of this post, but....Warped Mind...? You didn't used to go by Uninhabited Mind, did you...?

That was fast! LOL!

Dude, I've been looking through this post, and I gotta say, it's nice to see people still adding things to this game, freshening it up a bit after all this time. And this is some really nice work you're doing here too.