Something New is in the works

[Bwian]

and



Spanner Boys in action!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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.

[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?

[shifty157]

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?

Batteries running low?

Awesome work by the way.

[Bwian]

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

[dark_shadow89]

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

[Bwian]

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

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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.

[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!

[shifty157]

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?

[Bwian]

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

[Bwian]

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.



Encountering 'Spanners', battle is joined!



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



The spanners get scrapped!

[Laridus Konivaich]

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!

EDIT: awesome unit!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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...

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

[Laridus Konivaich]

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.

[dark_shadow89]

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?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I redid it entirely.

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

[Laridus Konivaich]

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.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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

[Laridus Konivaich]

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

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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

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


EDIT: Fixed. Thanks, Prince Laridus Konivaich.

[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...

[Sundjata Keita]

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.

[Bwian]

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.......

[Bwian]

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





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

[dark_shadow89]

huge walker robots in place of elephants?

[Bwian]

Naturally ;)

[Laridus Konivaich]

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

[shifty157]

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.

[Bwian]

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...



Now...thats enough for one day!