Something New is in the works

After much soul searching, I have decided this is something I have to do! I started trying to make a Myth Mod, but I just can't make it how I want it within the skeleton limitations. I might pick it up again if the situation changes, but until then ... I have a NEW PROJECT:

Allow me to set the scene:

It is the future, and mankinds continued growth and expansion has exhausted the natural resources and habitable space, and brought us close to environmental collapse. Colonies have sprung up to strip the asteroids for raw materials and to exploit what we can reach, but the far seeing know this is only a short term answer. The future of the species demands a new home.

Nothing suitable exists within our solar system, so probes are sent and the search begins for a habitable world.

Years pass, and the search is fruitless, until at last, a world is found. Is is primordial and hostile, but it is close enough to the earth in it's earliest days to give life a chance of survival with a bit of 'accelerated evolution'

So, the plans began to Terraform 'new earth'.

First to leave would be the automated factories, bound together in a vast cargo ship, they would be dropped onto the planets surface, there to mine resources, produce machines of ever increasing sophistication, and turn the planet into a new Garden of Eden. Every major corporation on Earth contributed, each producing their own specifications for their dedicated tasks.

Next to leave would be the sleeper ships. The human cargo sleeping for the century long trip to their new home, spreading the seed of mankind.

But...something went wrong. The machines built their roboti offspring, adaptive programming techmology allowed them to react to problems...to think for themselves. They worked, they spread, and they began to compete for certain rare minerals. And, being adaptable, it was only a matter of time before the factories machine intelligences began to see their rivals as a threat to their core mission....they began to develop new machines.

As mankind had done millenia before, these machines learnt to fight!

Ok..wafflng background story aside....I bring you 'Terra-War'

Cities are replaced by factories, key resources are the mineral wealth to build. Population is representing production capability, with all sorts of interesting options here. Most of which I haven't decided yet.... but...well !

Units will be assorted robotic creatures, some humanoid, some definitely not! There will be walkers, rollers, possible even hovering variants, but the military technology will remain very basic. The early units will be fighting with equipment designed as tools, but modified as weapons. Later will come dedicated war machines. Gunpowder and similar volatile chemicals will not be present, so brute force will be the order of the day, with some compressed air type weapons to supplement this later on.

Concept art is being worked on, along with a basec 'look' for each of the Factories ( factions )

No screen shots as yet, since there is very little to actually see. More to follow

A very ambitious project! Don't forget to add somewhere in your story that since the robots were primarily designed for terra-forming so the battlefield logarithms are a bit outdated, or some might even say stupid :wink:

Sounds cool Bwian and if the units are as good as they were in the Mythology mod then this should be great.

Not trying to be a partypooper here, but you stopped the Myth mod because of the limitations of the skeletons, then I wonder why you would jump into something this complex as it too will need very different skeletons.

Not true Kraxis ~:)

The Mythology mod required certain designs. It needed me to create creatures which were pretty much already defined in myth, and I needed to work to those forms.

With this, I define the shape....and I will make the shapes to fit the skeletons.

Also...when it comes to making machines, the animations can be used in a 'flexible' way, so to speak. I tried making Centaurs by combining units, but they 'fell apart' when killed. Looked wierd. Such things would be perfectly natural looking for a machine though. Also...I have experimented using just parts of skeletons.

I made a 'walker' using just the back legs and certain key sections of a skeleton, and it is fine. You just allocate the bulk of the mesh to the 'root' bone, and it is great. For an 'organic' object, you expect natural movement...in a 'droid...no worries. As I said.... this is intended to be something DIFFERENT :D

The thing I like about this idea is the need for resources. If you don't start expanding and getting the resources your faction will die out quickly. You should make the resources give huge bonuses to fit the storyline.

Also what kind of other factions would you have considering the culture types are hardcoded? Who will be the senate?

My last idea at the moment would be to give a neo-classical style to the units. You could make them have helmets and capes like ancient warfare but against robots. If you had army uniforms like at present I think it would give the wrong feel to the game.

Anyway good luck with it

The 'Senate' is the remains of the ships AI. It will have made a crash landing, and occupy a single territory. It has a reason to give 'commands', but I am not 100% sure how I am going to make it's tasks fit the picture.

As far as 'uniforms' go, there won't be any :)

I plan to use certain design features to give a 'faction' feel to each side. The factions are corporations, and they will each have a 'style'

This will cover either basic construction shapes, design features and such like or through colour schemes and trimmings. Working on that at the moment to get some concept art together before I start modelling.
~D

Very sneaky avoiding the difficulties of modern projectiles.

Very neat.

An idea: the general factions should not be created equal. The corporations would have been responsible for only a few tasks - maybe "United Minerals" being a mining faction, "Thor Energy" for managing power sources like reactors (equivalent of farms since robots don't eat?), "Tektroniks Limited" an engineering firm (responsible for building other bots), and other things. Each having their own strengths, weaknesses, and units.

The ship AI (senate) can lead a coalition of smaller factories that follow the original plans and try to continue the work they were meant for. Which in the AI's mind involves subduing the deviant factories.

An expansion to this mod (hehe that's far away) could involve the humans arriving...

Can't wait to see how this turns out.

Alexander... that is pretty much what I had in mind. ~D

I like the idea of the 'senate' faction continuing the original brief to terraform and prepare for human occupation. It gives them a reason to work together initially, and to fight against the other factions. Simplifies the senate commands to. Thanks for the suggestion!

As far as the rationale goes, I have started off with the limitations I know RTW has, and have thought up a background that allows for this from the outset. I didn't want to fall into the trap of needing 'breakthroughs' in modding to do this.... with this, I have worked out what I CAN do, and started form there.

Are you going to use vegetation? Since we cannot edit trees and such I would suggest to use only desert to make it more alien.

What are you going to do with the rebels? Perhaps a primitie native alien race? Sand Worms (yeah yeah, from Dune) or other monstrous aliens might be a nice change from all the robots.

Are there going to be any humans? It may be a bit boring with out them. I think you should go for a full out civil war between the different companies/factories.

This could be the storyline.
The humans after planning to have left the robots alone for 100 years to make a hospitable world find that the robots have made little or no progress. Instead they are fighting among themselves for the natural resources. The humans create a coalition to end the war of the robots but becasue the companies (robot factions) have become independant it is not as easy as they thought. etc... war begins

This would pit three different classes against each other. The senate factions who continued to terraform the new earth but now the humans attack them because the humans see their army as a threat. The humans who arrive unprepared for war begin to build weapons factories and recruiting stations. The independant robots who have become individual factions fighting for the resources.

This could be an expansion or fitted into the original version.

Ideas on the look of robots. Just to clarify my neoclassical idea here is an example of what it could look like

http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/news/2003/07/09/17.jpg

Hmm...humans.

Now...I see what you mean, but bringing humans in brings with it all the problems I was trying to avoid. Any humans arriving would include a degree of military presence. This would mean fire-arms. And modern weaponry at that. I can't see an effective way of adding that in without serious complications. If this becomes possible later on, then this would be a natural follow on to the Mod. The Humans are going to arrive...well, they ARE on the way :D

Now...DJ...that is a good idea. I could make some simple 'stone-age' type creatures. Broadly humanoid, but definitely alien. There is no reason why their tech level cannot fit in very well. I will see what I can come up with on that front.

The terrain detail will be something I will have to work around. If I can only have limited terrain types and open terrain, then that suits OK. I can always replace buildings with interesting 'crystal formations' or whatever. The sort of polystyrene rocks that always adorned Star Trek sets ~D

Anyway.... I got 2 weeks holiday coming up which will be 100% PC free ( don;t know how I can survive...but I will try ~;) ) so I will be focusing on concept art and detail. When I get back, I want to be ready to model..... so don't worry if I don't post back here for a couple of days.

Your ideas are very welcome and have already added things to the melting pot I hadn't considered! Thanks :bow:

Hmmm, slight problem with having a desert landscape inhabited by wierd rebel aliens is that if the humans spent ages looking for a good planet to live on why would they pick a barron desert landscape filled with aliens.

It's supposed to be quite 'primordial', and that means lots of rock and vulcanism. I will have to see what I can do with this.

Maybee a place like Egypt's Nile delta. Desert but with some spots of lush vegetation. As you said yourself you could add models onto the battlemap. Maybee you could add some big plants or some big rock outcrops.

The only reason there are so many robots is because there is a lot of work to do preparing the planet for human colonization. There could be somewhat terraformed (greener) areas around the "good" robots and/or an agriculturally-oriented factory. The rest of the landscape could be varying degrees of desert (maybe icy wastes near the poles?).

I would think that the robots would be very utilitarian (is that the right word?) and not very humanoid, at least to start with. In thinking up designs, I think you should keep in mind what the original designers of the robots were thinking. Mining robots won't look much like humans, for instance. As the tech tree advances (robots are designed via factory AI) the robots can take on a more military-oriented design, or something like that.

Leave the humans out, at least for version 1.0. That should be a problem left for an expansion of kinds, I think.

Native fauna? Hmm. Are we assuming that the planet was mostly barren or not? If so, then maybe have like sand worms or something hive-minded. If the planet is not barren, maybe some cool lizards or mammals of large size... like elephants? Personally, I don't like the idea of native creatures... but that's me.

This is so cool.

As for humans have a Marius type event where a 'landing beacon' or some such thing is built and the humans land. But because they are colonists they bring little in the way of modern weapons as they believed the robots would have subdued any opposition. And on their arrival they must resort to using what the can for war and devoloping weapons as the robots did. Even have a crash landing where most military equipment is destroyed.

I think the mining and factory working robots should be non-humanoid but some of the later warriors should be humanoid as this will make them look really good.

Mars is barren, still it is good planet to start inhabiting. There are ideas of spewing huge quantities of CO2 into the air so an atmosphere is created. The planet could also be used purely for mining operations. We are depleting Earth's resources and with the evergrowing population there will always be the need for metals. Wether it is sensible if the journey takes 200 years is another story. I don't think humankind is picky about barren planets as long as there is a good gravity, temperature and a non-toxic atmosphere.

For the "Senate" ship AI, the single factory-city should be the actual landed ship.

Maybe name the ship "Manifest Destiny" if you don't mind ship colonization cliches.

OK..just to let you know this is still alive and kicking !!!

Over the last few weeks I have been 'without PC' so there has not been much progress on models etc, but work has definitely progressed!

12 factions now have outline designs for models, and a set of 'features' that give each side a definite look and feel. Also, these outlines have now been traced over a set of skeletons to make sure that they will fit and match up with the bone positions and proportions.

Some additional designs have been scoped out which will require new animations, but will allow me to stretch the skeletons usefulnes in some slightly new ways ;) More on this when I get it to work!!!

Work has now begun on the basic look of the models and some preliminary 'eye-candy' for screenshots. Additionally, I have begun the work of re-naming factions etc. to fit. Resources have been considered, and will be re-named and tweaked to fit the needs of the mod. Translation of most of the stock resources has been worked through, and new names and details roughed out. Food, for example, will become processed raw materials. Farm improvements become refinery enhancements. Since 'gold' and 'food' seem to be the things that make new units, 'gold' becomes 'solid state components'. Population level becomes 'manufacturing level'. I have carried out similar translations across the broad sweep of resources to make them work with the plan.

Next task for me will be to put teh new faction names in, and get that to work. Then I want some new banners. In between this, I will start building some actual models!!!

Phew. I thought this had dissappeared. Go to hear it didn't. :charge:

It didn't disappear.... I did!!!!

Well...for 2 weeks to sit on a beach in the Caribbean sipping rum and admiring the scenery ....

Lucky .... :sunny:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bwian

The 'Senate' is the remains of the ships AI. It will have made a crash landing, and occupy a single territory. It has a reason to give 'commands', but I am not 100% sure how I am going to make it's tasks fit the picture.

As far as 'uniforms' go, there won't be any :)

I plan to use certain design features to give a 'faction' feel to each side. The factions are corporations, and they will each have a 'style'

This will cover either basic construction shapes, design features and such like or through colour schemes and trimmings. Working on that at the moment to get some concept art together before I start modelling.
~D

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ahh, for Senate, you should do like "a big three " they start out powerful factory owners, they are like the villans in the game - unplayable, and the ultimate goal is to defeat them ? The senate could be like the undergorund people that control these big three organizations

oh yeah, need anyhelp? I can basic animation and 3d i guess

Ok...after some major 'teething problems' I have managed to get myself back on track for this. A key element of hte droid building process was the need for making custom animations....somehting which I knew how to do in theory....but couldn't make work in practice without a CTD issue...well, thanks to some better informed members of the community, I have got this sorted.

Currently I have about half a dozen completed meshes, and have a few working in game. Textures need doing ( they are just at the template stage now..so no screenshots yet!! ) which will be happening shortly.

First new animation is up and running ( a basic variant of fs_dagger with the taunt animations removed ) with the next one under way. Some of the droids will be using 'floating' drives, so the next anim will be a basic one with the run/walk animations modded so the root of the model remains at a constant level. Then....it's time for the first of the BIG machines. This will invovle quite a lot of new animations...so it will be a bit of a challenge :D

Good luck. I know im eager to see what you can come up with.

First basic models are in game and functioning.

Unit: Marshall Dynamics Maintenance Droid ( Militarised )

nickname: 'The Spanner Boys'

Lightweight structure combined with a versatile android chassis made these units ideal for human-droid interactive maintenance. Able to function in extreme conditions, they were a valuable assert to construction and maintenance of the initial terraforming construction. Since they were the initial pattern for this corporate factory, they are both numerous and cheap to maintain.

Weaponry: Basic maintenance tools ( Spanner, Monkey Wrench )

Drawback : chassis loading prevents heavy upgrade to weaponry, erratic programming under stress gives unexpected 'Return To Base' issues. Obsolete but plentiful

( pictures to follow ~;) )

That sounds totally awesome. Can't wait to see some pics. ~:cheers:

[QUOTE=Bwian]erratic programming under stress gives unexpected 'Return To Base' issues.
[\QUOTE]


hah. i like that.

http://img43.echo.cx/img43/9557/span19dm.jpg

and

http://img154.echo.cx/img154/1020/span24dp.jpg

Spanner Boys in action!

I would recommend a name change (for inside the text box that hovers above the unit): call them "Spanner boys" and put "Utility Droid" in brackets []. Just to shorten it and make it more readable.

Other than that, it looks pretty good; I can't wait to see some of the tougher units. ~:cheers:

How are you going to deal with tiring? Will you leave it? Or can units be made non tiring? Or will you just change the names of the tiring effects to be more mechanical?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Prince Laridus Konivaich

How are you going to deal with tiring? Will you leave it? Or can units be made non tiring? Or will you just change the names of the tiring effects to be more mechanical?

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Batteries running low?

Awesome work by the way.

Yup....tiring will be 'battery' related.

There are a few things I want to change around the text areas, but some of it I can't find right now... I also need to find out where the 'advisor' picture is held. THAT needs swapping for something more appropriate!

As for the tougher units.... I am currently working on the 'combat enhanced' version and a suitable commander unit.

Then I start work on the HEAVIES

hey bwian,

love the idea mate, really do! If u need help doing descriptions (i'm thinking you'll have to redo ALL of them), I'm willing to help.

cheers, dark_shadow89

Thanks for the offer Darkshadow...I'll give you the nod when I am readyto tidy up all the descriptions etc. I want to get a hard-core of units for the first faction before I move on to the next one. Once I have, then the descriptions will be needed. Watch this space ~:D

I hope you don't mind if I post some ideas I have. I would also be mildly interested in helping out, but I really don't have any modding skills.

V&Vs
-----
These would need to be changed a lot. Some could be "converted" to match the background story. But others will need to be removed. If I can learn how to do that, I'd be willing to help with that.

Agents
-------
Diplomats can be something like "diplobots" - they don't need to be changed. Assasins could be viruses and spys could be spyware - though on the map you see a "host" robot - since software would need something to transport it.

"Defense Tech"
--------------
You could have a resource on the map like elephants that grant the training of certain units. The resource would be stockpiled weapons - a few caches here and there left for the future human colonists so they could defend themselves. However, the robots take these over. The "Defense Tech" units would be very strong - since they are from actual weapons instead of adapted materials.

Scrapyard
----------
The robots would have had to have a junkyard for broken machines and things - maybe even a single repository for the entire planet. Units recruitable there would be scrounged together and look really poor - rusted, mismatched, etc. But they would also be very cheap. You could even base a faction off of the company bots responsible for disposal.


I can't wait to see what you come up with, Bwian.

Some good ideas in there :)

I like the junkyard idea. Might work better as mercenaries rather than a seperate faction due to the uniform nature of the units.

The diplomat and spy things would work well also. They could quite simply be represented either by 'icons' or by dodgy looking robots.

As far as resources go, I plan to stick pretty much to a standard mineral wealth kind of thing. The technology will come through building research units and factory additions. I may need to give this a bit more thought to blend research and tactical advantages gained from holding certain key resources. PArt of the balancing !!!

Vices and virtues I hadn't really thought about much! Some of the things can be woekd out as 'algorhythms' and program enhancements. Retainers should be replaced by system upgrades and enhancements.

Thanks for the input as well.... other peoples ideas always help to stir the melting pot and get the creative juices flowing!

I guess youd have to redo all of the buildings to make them cities look like huge factories. Is it possible to modify walls?

Have you thought about missile units?

Oh yes.... I've thought about missile units ;)

On patrol.... a unit of the Ship Central AI Red Legion. The Sphere Scout is the standard light scouting droid. The unit is able to 'fold up' into a sphere for storage and dispersal, unfolding limbs and uncovering the sensitive imaging equipment. Equipped with gravometric floaters, the unit is fast overough terrain.

http://img185.echo.cx/my.php?image=span33zu.jpg

Encountering 'Spanners', battle is joined!

http://img123.echo.cx/my.php?image=span45om.jpg

Side plates attached to the arms make good shields, and the powerful hardened manipulators are lethally sharp....

http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=span55ft.jpg

The spanners get scrapped!

Maybe use some programming languages as retainers, in the format of, "Programmed with ~LANGUAGE~". This could make for some good jokes...

NO! Rework temples into programming languages, so instead of a priest of X, you get a Programmer of X! Each language would have different benefits AND drawbacks.

And plagues have to be modded into viruses, that will be fun too...

but what about the three agents?

Diplomat - Maybe an email program? OR an instant message...
Spy - Spyware, anyone?
Assassin - maybe make these "Trojans" since the general virus makes more sense for plagues, imo

How will the strategic map be done? Are you using computer type stuff? You could possibly use operating systems as regions, but there might not be enough of them to go around.

Sorry if any of that was off topic! :embarassed:

EDIT: awesome unit!

Cool unit there Bwian. The name is short and sweet, too.

Some questions/suggestions...

Sieges: just what are you going to do for this? Abandon walls entirely or have kinds of makeshift armor-plated walls? An important thing to decide...

"Red Legion"? Sounds like the UI will have three different legions to work with - correct?

Do you have a faction (company) list yet?

Rebels: Will they be implemented? Related idea: rebels are bots with errors or something in their software. But that doesn't seem very satisfying - maybe just have rebels be smaller companies without much power that have escaped the attention of the major power holders?

The name of this mod - you said it was "Terra War", correct? Should it be "Terra: Total War" or will you totally avoid the "Total War" bit? Just curious.

Idea for Temples: all company-factions make temples to the founder of the company. This would be an area to add ironic humor to the game. ~;)

I think languages should be upgrades, not religions. Like those spanners might only have a "Procedural" language but a command unit would have at least an "object oriented" program. You could have a lot of fun thinking those up as well. ~:)

So cool... ~:cool:

EDIT: I decided to try making one of those pics (the first one) into a background. It's pretty bad, since I'm new at this kind of thing. But here goes.

http://img164.echo.cx/my.php?image=s...ckround7ai.jpg
http://img164.echo.cx/img164/4293/sp...ckround7ai.jpg

That is actually a cool picture... just make the text in the upper right hand corner easier to read, since right now it is just too small. Also, make the title text more 'pixeled', maybe in all caps, I'm not quite sure. A bonus would be adding a sighting cross on the targeted robot.

instead of farmhouses, etc, on the battle map, you could have warehouses, depot, refineries, etc. Also, how will you hadle sieges and castles?

As for the scrapyard idea, i think it's good, although i'd make them have some VERY powerful later units, as they could piece together the scraps from all teh best robots into one. Also, any cavalry?

I redid it entirely.

http://img151.echo.cx/img151/5872/sp...ckround2cv.jpg
http://img151.echo.cx/img151/5872/sp...ckround2cv.jpg

I think that your only remaining problem is that "Red Legion" goes over the targeted robot, Im not sure which picture is better, the first or the second.

I kind of did that on purpose. Oh well. Maybe Bwian will make more screenies to play around with!

Here is an idea, run text all the way down the right hand side of the image, in the same size/font as the bottom text on your first image. I would suggest this text:

Receiving Orders...

Decoding Orders...

1001001010110010
1001101001011101
1111001010010001
0101000100011101
0101000100010101
1010100101110010
0100111010100100
1010000100010011

Orders Validated...

....
....
....
....

Target Identified:
Sphere Scout - Red Legion
Status: Patrol
Relate: Hostile

....
....
....
....

Confirmed

Orders Executed...

Mission Complete

or something similar - the spacing/lines might need to be changed around to make it fit from the top of the page to the bottom

I've adapted your advice into this version - hopefully the last revision.

http://img220.echo.cx/img220/3640/sp...kround28if.jpg
http://img220.echo.cx/img220/3640/sp...kround28if.jpg

EDIT: Fixed. Thanks, Prince Laridus Konivaich.

I like that version the best... only one (1) issue: Recieve is spelled Receive, os you may want to fix those two letters that are reversed...

Looking good Bwian, the Sphere scout's model is great. Spanners maybee could use a cooler looking face but other than that excellent work!

Just an idea on walls, keep them as walls (we can presume that in the future factories still have walls ~:) ) but change the texture to sheet metal plating, quite haphazardly placed with rivets connecting different sized pieces together.

You mean something along the lines of the 'Atoll' in Waterworld? I will have to look at the wall textures and suchlike to see what can be done.

Great stuff Alexander too ( or should I just say 'good ;) ) It's nice to see support like this for what I am trying to build! I will definitely make use of this one...and I hope you can do some more when I get the other factions underway too.

Sundjata.... the basic spanner unit deliberately has a VERY simple face. This will be dressed up on the more war-orientated models that come after. The 'Enhanced' droid has a revised head and beefed up torso. This has also formed the basis for the officer unit underway too. This has some aspects of the enhanced war-bot, but also has a radio backpack and a larger head...

The plan is to have each faction having a few basic chassis designs with a similar 'feel' to them. Each design then gets adapted into more and more combat orientated units with increased specialisation.

The current 'object under construction' is the Marshall Dynamics Crawler-bot. An all-terrain recovery and supply unit.......

Crawler Bot ...Mk1

The model is still very basic, since I just wanted to see that it worked! The more detailed version can now follow ~:cool:

http://img41.echo.cx/img41/2087/span64qs.jpg

http://img144.echo.cx/img144/2366/span77zz.jpg

I have used a modified horse animation, with the 'rear' and 'jump' anims replaced with something far more suitable. This cuts out the rather un-natural actions I was seeing with stock horse anims..... The only remaining 'fly in the ointment' is the sounds... does anybody know how to mod the sounds to stop the 'tanks' sounding like horses? I have some suitable engine and clanking track noises I can use...but I don't know how to do sounds...

I plan to use this in the 'small' size as a lower section for 'mounted' units, with a robot top. I also plan some larger versions with bulldozer blades and such like. I also plan to use the same thing for 'horse archers' with the top half as a turret. The gun will have to be offset to match the arm animations, but I think I can fiddle this to make it work. Though, for me, traditional tanks are not a really high priority ~:cheers:

huge walker robots in place of elephants?

Naturally ;)

Maybe add a couple of levers to the crawler, so that it looks like the robot on top can control the speed, et cetera

wooden palisade - electric chain fence with barbed wire on top.

wooden wall - as above but with sentry guns.

these two walls were built to keep the natural wildlife out of the factories and not for actual defense.

i have to get going but ill continue the thought when i get back.

Heavy units enter the fray....Yamashita Neobots, these being the heavy 'logging units' are fast and hard hitting. Armed with electro-saws and heavy lifting claw, they were intended to harvest the early plantations of tree-ferns and oxygen producers. They also make excellent combat units...

http://img118.echo.cx/img118/241/span87hh.jpg

Now...thats enough for one day!

More questions:

What are you going to do for faction icons, since shields don't neccesarily make sense, also what sort of emblems. Will you just use plain colored shields? Or is there some master plan...?

Can anyone think of a way to incorporate high tech/different weapons, such as land mines?

Can you release any of your preliminary faction lists/design info?

Are you going to have any real 'flying' units? This would be cool, but only if you can make them go over buildings and walls, otherwise they are just like every other unit in the battle, except really tall.

I do plan on faction 'banners' though I do not intend to have the units carry banners much. The 'Corporate Logo' is an necessary factor. A master plan is in place !

Now...high tech weapons... This is something I have tried VERY hard to avoid having to include. the game engine just doesn't do a lot of the things it needs to do. Landmines would be cool, but there does not seem to be a way to make a unit 'explode' and do damage. I might have to try and make a unit which cannot walk, but has a very strong 'charge' attack. I will think about this..... I will also need to think of a way of preventing the AI from just attacking such units.

Aircraft are another issue. I plan on having the Ship AI faction have access to limited AG units, though they are limited in height and cannot fly over water... Proper aircraft just won;t work well with RTW. It isn't geared to this.

The general rationale behind the storyline is that war has occurred due to poorly thought out programming, not htrough design. None of that factions start out militarised, and are forced toi utilise makeshift weaponry and to innovate and adapt. None of the core programming or databanks include firearms data or the concept of aggressive military equipment. The ship AI has osme limited defence capabilites ot start with, but these are necessarily limited by available resources. They will fight in the old faqshoined way :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bwian

Landmines would be cool, but there does not seem to be a way to make a unit 'explode' and do damage. I might have to try and make a unit which cannot walk, but has a very strong 'charge' attack. I will think about this..... I will also need to think of a way of preventing the AI from just attacking such units.

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Can you make them so that they can hide anywhere? Is it even possible to have them die after attacking?

Well, couldn't you to figure out a way to make Minefields like immovable Siege Engines... that use the Catapult Flame Animation... so when an enemy comes into contact with it, both the siege engine and the units within the vicinity die as well... too bad you couldn't make them like spider mines off of StarCraft.

Is this mod still going? Or did you cease development (which would be sad)?

There jsut hasn't been any new info about it for a month, so I am starting to wonder...

:bow:

sadly it seems to be dead :(

i´d love to see this1 thou ... prolly some1 will continue, when the works of BWAIN will be available to them ....

Greetz

HahnHolio

Dead.... oh dear me no :D

I have been trying to get to grips with map making, and it is taking a lot longer than I had expected. Also, I have been messing about with another Mod for a change of pace.

Fear not :D

There is also the looming possibility of Vercingetorix making new skeletons possible....that would REALLY open up some doors.

Just coz I ain't posting, don;t think I am not working! It's just that what I am doing doesn't make for pretty screenshots ~D

if you need any help with the map let me know. id be willing to help.

Sure thing! Help on the map would be fantastic.

There is a pretty 'open' brief for the map. I need a full set of factions allowed. I can work up the faction names and some thgouhts on city naming conventions ( they are factories...)

Also, I need to avoid trees. As far as I am aware, the tree models and textures are not moddable. I will try and confirm this, but assuming they are, we need a map containing desert, rocks, mountains..... but nothing we can't edit to make it look alien!

If you are willing to give it a go, just drop me a PM outlining what you need, and I will supply the data!

You can edit/add new vegetation. See the .db file thread in the General modding forum.

Been doing a bit of messing about with some new vegetation....nothing presentable yet, but I think I can make this work!

I have some concepts for the foliage, which will be a combination of prehistoric earth types such as tree-ferns, with some more native 'crystalline' structures which will replace the forests with some interesting terrain to battle with.

Also working up some designs for the town buildings ~D

here's a first look at the map i've started. hope you like.
http://img174.echo.cx/img174/9090/robot0jw.jpg

Yay! Bwian's back! Even though he never left...

Robots! Robots! Robots!

:charge:

As you can see, I have managed to secure some professional help to get a Brave New World for the robots to mash themselves to pieces on ~D

My skills are minimal when it comes to making maps, so when I got the offer of help from someone who was good at it, I jumped at the chance! Looks good....looks DIFFERENT... and thats exactly what I needed.

Naval combat will be minimal ( it didn't really fit with the mod, and it was never a strong point with the stock game ) so the map is mostly land

There are some additional units under construction, largely 'cavalry' based, plus a better set of ship-run AI drones..... Screenshots will have to wait a few days though... I am holding back until I make some new plants for the battle map!!!

I had some very large ground units....but I can't use them just yet. I need to make new attack anims for them. They need to be able to look as though they are attacking ground units down low....and STILL look good when they attack similar sized units. This might lead to a re-think on the size front....I think I will have to limit the overall size of the bipedal units unless Vercingetorix makes completely new skeletons possible.....PLEASE!!!!

here's the regions as they are now. enjoy
http://img91.echo.cx/img91/8534/00093qv.jpg

Hmmm....interesting ~D

I can see some interesting tactical posibilities developing here. The large landmass area means that provinces have lots of borders...and borders means battles!

This is EXACTLY what I was hoping for!

Good stuff Blindfaithnogod!

thank you. ive been alittle busy with real life lately so sorry for the lack of progress. but more should come before to long.......

Its good to see this hasn't flopped, I checked a few weeks ago and thought it had. This is a great mod idea, a really creative way to solve the modern tactics problem in a futuristic game. Any progress toward units screenshots? I'd help if you needed it but I'm kinda tied up at the moment. P'm me if you need a skinner.

OK..now we are motoring!

Work has begun on new skeletons and animations for the mod. I have come to the conclusion that the mod needs some fairly 'radical' units to really shine, and now I know how to do it ~D

A bit of struggling and some trial and error, and I can get working animations in play with XIDX.

I also discovered that you are NOT limited in any way HOW YOU ROTATE THE JOINS! For the imaginative...this opens up a LOT of possibilities when you are not restricted to human possible movements ~:cool:

Oh yes....

Some new units are planned with unique attack methods.

Whirlygig-slammers ..... windmill choppers.... rotary steam hammers....wheeled vehicles....

The 8 wheeled octo-buggy bulldozer is quite a promising unit ....

Hey guys!
just read through the thread and it seems very promising for such an "unknown" mod, maybe you should try for hosting space here at the .org.
A tny question about the robots, are you going to dull the colours down or are they meant to be bright?
Good work Fellas!