Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.194

Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.194

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LordMuffe
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Joined: 13 Mar 2005, 15:39

Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.194

Post by LordMuffe »

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Hi fellow Forum-users,

after working 2 years on this game i think its far enough to present it here.

First things first: its still far from finished and like my last project ( Eternal Struggle ), i doubt it will ever be 1.0. Having said that, the 0.186 version is playable and has about 22 units in one Faction to play with.

I mainly started this game/mod because i wanted to model some tank designs i had in mind for some time, and get away from spaceships. So while this mod is playable and i like working on it, it suffers from the same problems ES had. At the beginning i wanted to actually finish ESLO before showing it, but as he time passed it got more and more unlikely to finish it in the next ... well with my workspeed: decade. And since i haven┬┤t done anything big on it since 3 months i decided to post it now ( or never ) to get some feedback and hint/tips on the bug/feature stuff.
In addition to the slow workspeed i wanted a few gameplaymechanics, which i guess are possible with the magic of LUA. And since i dont know anything about this stuff, it drags a finished 1.0 far out of sight.
A few things i wanted:
- Tactical weapons/abilities like Ground Controle II ( good old Nuke, EMP, temporarily Vision, Cloaking, etc)
- third resource which you collect by killing units, used for the tactical abilities
- neutral buildings, spawned on geospots, capture for continual third resource income ( something like fibre does )
- squads
- Dropship ( units can get ordered anywhere on the battlefield )
- a gui ( tried chilli... saw much of code... panicked...)

Thing i will do:
- second faction ( made some models already... good sign )
- unit names

Gameplay

The gameplay is very close to TA atm, only a lot simpler unit-wise. Metal-extractors generate metal from Metal-spots, power plants generate energy, labs build units etc. I┬┤m afraid it does not bring anything new in this department atm.
You start with a single construction truck, which can build a bit faster than the normal version which you can build with the Spaceport.
Reclaiming units is as effective as in other TA like mods.
Since most units cant see as far as they shoot, scouting in and before a fight is important.
There is no teching, no capturing, no resurrection.
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Units

Buildings

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Spaceport: The Spaceport serves as a guarded Landing Zone where ground vehicles get transported in from the orbiting fleet. It also houses a single Fieldreactor, which provides energy. The Transportship provides a bit defense as long as it is around the LZ.

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Air Support Platform: As the heart of any airforce you can "build" the aircrafts here. Additionally it can repair damaged aircrafts and has two anti air weapons.

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Fieldreactor: Provides energy.

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Mining Facillity: Extracts metal.

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Storage: Adds additional energy and metal storage capacity. It can also work as an metal-generator.

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Radar: Very important building. Most units have a longer weapon- than sight range. Therefore it can give you quite an advantage in combat situations.

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Defence turret: Cheap tower which uses the same weapon as the transporter. With its long range and slow aiming speed its mainly useful against slower units. It can attack airunits, but it seldomly hits its target.

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Stealth defence turret: Additional to the ability to cloak it has also a faster aiming and firing speed. The main weakness would be the short range and the fact that it does not attack airunits.

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Airdefence Bunker: Shoots long ranged, fast and versatile missiles against airunits. After eight missiles it has to reload. While it is dug in its a very sturdy turret.

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Shieldgenerator: This building takes quite a lot of energy ( circa 5 Fieldreactors ) to generate a shield, which can cover whole bases and take a lot of hits before failing. The main weakness is its inability to block attacks once enemy units have crossed the barrier.

Ground vehicles

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Construction truck: Builds all buildings, can reclaim, assist and repair.

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Scout: A fast and versatile vehicle, armed with an weak but fast firing gun. Its main purpose is to extend the vision of stronger units, harass lone construction trucks and additional airdefence.

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Raidbike: Fastest and cheapest ground unit, armed with unguided rockets. Good against buildings.

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Hovertank: Light tank with the benefits of hover technology. Its Gun has a long reach and can penetrate shields.

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Missiletank: Also a hover unit. Its guided missiles are the main anti-air weapon which can also attack ground.

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EMP-Artillerytank: Shoots rounds with a high trajectory which stun enemy units. In addition it can cloak itself.

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Assaulttank: Besides haveing the second strongest armor in the game so far, the Assaulttank is also equipped with a cloaking device. This way it can get close enough to its enemies, overcoming its rather short weaponrange.

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Heavy assault tank: There is nothing subtle about this unit. It has the biggest armor, biggest gun, biggest cost. Its main weakness is its moving and aiming speed. But once it joins the fray its hard to stop.

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MARS: A hovercraft with a long range missile launcher. After building up, it has a longer firing range than any other unit. The missiles are unguided, but have a big area damage. Being slow while moving and stationary while firing, MARS are easy targets for other artillery and airunits.

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Shield-hovercraft: The Shield-hovercraft supports moving units with an shield which prevents enemys from firing at units inside it. They are a good way to prevent heavy losses by bombers and artillery while moving a army.

Air vehicles

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Transporter: The main task of this unit is to transport groundunits. Additionally the tough armor allows it to be used as an meatshield for smaller aircrafts.

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Bomber: Good against groups of groundunits and buildings.

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Flare: Only fights airunits with a fast firing mainweapon and a light missilelauncher. Cheap and fast, its hard to hit with ground based antiair. (Still a placeholder model from ES)

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Gunship: This unit is both usefull against groups of enemy units with its unguided rockets and fast small units. like the raidbike, with its turret-mounted weapon.

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Heavy Gunship: The nature of the two beam-type weapons make it a strong unit against larger targets or still-standing units. In addition to that it can also repair and reclaim.

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Balancing suggestions and criticism are welcome.

All models and textures in there get released under the CC BY-NC 2.0. So if anyone wants to use the stuff for his one purposes, go for it. Th only thing i would ask of you: if you mod the game please, change the name in a way so that it is clear its not the original version. The rest ( LUA ) is under the license the creators put on it.
If there are any license specific problems( f.e. Dont GPL compatible... ), please tell me.

I used some effects and LUA from CA/ZK, hope there is no problem with that. Special thanks to the guys who made them.

Namely: KDR_11k ( endGame.locals.lua, trails.locals.lua, afewmore)
JK ( chilli, Iconmakerthingi)
FLOZi (resource.lua)

..and a few more i forgot...

Please excuse my bad English.
Hope that covers everything so far.

Downloadlink:
http://springfiles.com/spring/games/ete ... operations

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Last edited by LordMuffe on 22 Feb 2013, 21:58, edited 3 times in total.
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

Looks really cool! :-)
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smoth
Posts: 22309
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by smoth »

I have a dinner I am getting ready for but this looks really neat! I look forward to trying it!
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KaiserJ
Community Representative
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Joined: 08 Sep 2008, 22:59

Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by KaiserJ »

+1, this looks wonderful, i'm certainly looking forward to giving this a try

was scifi working on this with you? or am i confusing with something else
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Oh fucking sweet jesus on a stick! I was afraid that this game had died an obscure death. Downloading. Awesomesauce to follow! :-)
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Karl
Panzerstahl Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Karl »

KaiserJ wrote: was scifi working on this with you? or am i confusing with something else
Scifi does something similar something with Final Frontier :)
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smoth
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by smoth »

it was pretty neat, I liked a lot of the explosions and the models are really good. I felt the low contrast textures with no preshading/color hurt my ability to tell units apart easily on units that are similar, like the construction/mars/shield.

I really liked the raid bike but thought it's missiles could be smaller(just an aesthetic qualm)

The structures were really kick ass, I loved the mining facility and air defense bunker(probably should make it so I cannot manually target ground btw) in particular.


overall, it has a lot of promise and I really like the models and animations.

keep up the good work!
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

I share smoth's sentiments.

It really needs more sounds imo. It felt as though it was totally silent until the first of the battle. Speaking of battles, they were a little frustrating because the battles lasted so long. I know that sounds retarded, but when you only have like 4 units vs 3 or 4 other units and the battle lasts for a minute, it's kinda O_o.

Needs more flashy ceg stuff going on imo (feel free to steal stuff from evo and mangle to your wishes :-)).

On the plus side of things, I really really really like the models and I like the textures for the most part, but the logo is all jagged and stuff on the textures and that looks crappy.

In the end, it shows a ton of promise and just needs some more tlc. Keep up the awesome work!
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SanadaUjiosan
Conflict Terra Developer
Posts: 907
Joined: 21 Jan 2010, 06:21

Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by SanadaUjiosan »

My immediate complaint is that I have a hard time figuring out what does what in-game. Abbreviations are unclear at first. My advice is to at least fill out what the abbreviations are.

The models are super cool. I especially love the plane whose wings open up as it flies. I wish your script was in lua so I could steal how you did that :twisted:

Good work overall.
LordMuffe
Posts: 286
Joined: 13 Mar 2005, 15:39

Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

... has it already been more than a month since my last post? shame on me.

@kaiserJ: scifi is not partaking in this project.

@smoth: the good explosions are all from ZK, i never figured out how to use the ceg-stuff properly. Only the building explosions are my own work and i hope to replace them some day with some fabulous effects from ZK.

on the matter of preshading: don't know how -> fear it will lengthen the work time enormously.

On the matter of low contrast, i cant get myself to paint a texture with very different colors. I always think it will be high contrast while painting, yet in the game its hard to notice a all. I┬┤m surprised by your example though. I have no problems telling if the unit is the shield hovercraft or the mars. But than again, i spent quite some time playing/watching the game and mainly rely on the shapes.

The raid bike was my fastest modeled unit yet. Took me about 10 min for the model, another 3-5 min for the uvmap. Especially its missile was a rush job, i plan to remodel it. But its size was chosen for a reason, its damage is much bigger than the missile from the missilehovercraft.

@ Forboding Angel: You are absolutely right about the sounds, but the game is still in an early stage and polishing isn't one of my strengths. I┬┤m also not sure if i should use noise or voice for unit sounds. Voice would be cool, but its hard to fit in an RTS imo.

To the point of slow battles: the game is supposed to have slower combat. I┬┤m very fond of the combat pacing in games like Homeworld, C&C1 and Warzone 2100. It gives you time to maneuver your units while fighting. This applies especially when the units are the same "weight-class": jeep vs jeep, tank vs tank, etc. While 2 buggies can exchange fire for quite some time, the heavy assault-tank only needs 3 shots or 5 sec to kill a buggy. So... its slow... because i like it that way ( one reason im a huge SupCom fan... building and batteling for hours in a single game, while i have minutes to react on actions of the enemy in macro- and micro-gameplay ), but i understand if you see it as a negative point of the game design.

Thanks for the offer of evo cegsiness, i will have a look at it :). It has been a while since i checked out EVO.

I┬┤m happy you like the models, they are the main reason I made ESLO. :)
The logo thing is annoying me too. I wish i could make the edges softer, but every time i try to blur them it looks worse.

One question, what does tlc stand for?

@SanadaUjiosan:I admit I thought the abbreviations were self explanatory, will change that in the next release :)

About the script: im sure its not that hard to transfer to lua, its just a hack from the start/landing animation of the OTA lvl1 bomber. Sadly it just hangs sometimes when a AI controls the unit: looks really weird when the bomber glides through the air with the wings folded...


Thanks for the replies and the criticism, now how about some hints from you guys :)


A few questions from my side:

Are the units too small? There are quite some projects were players complain about the size of the units and I┬┤m quite sure ESLO has a smaller scale than ZK for example.

Does anyone know a project were a similar animation is used for a shuttle "delivering" units? I originally wanted to let the shuttle land when the unit is nearly finished instead of the way it is used now. I know IW had/has for the imperial barracks, but its scripts are closed source afaik.

Can anybody tell me why chili-resource lua has a problem displaying the energy-bar in the mod while the metal bar works flawless? i really would like to use chili.


Also, more screens:

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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by PicassoCT »

there is this military mod were a plane flys by everytime a unit arrives. It was Project Polaris if im not wrong. Zwzsg should know moar about it.
LordMuffe
Posts: 286
Joined: 13 Mar 2005, 15:39

Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

thanks PicassoCT, oksnoop2. I will look into it :)
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

Does anyone know a project were a similar animation is used for a shuttle "delivering" units? I originally wanted to let the shuttle land when the unit is nearly finished instead of the way it is used now. I know IW had/has for the imperial barracks, but its scripts are closed source afaik.
The script in question is public domain and kdr_11k wrote it:

Gadget: http://pastebin.com/aHzhWCeh

Example Defs: http://pastebin.com/1Ak5TB6h
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SanadaUjiosan
Conflict Terra Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by SanadaUjiosan »

LordMuffe wrote:@SanadaUjiosan:I admit I thought the abbreviations were self explanatory, will change that in the next release :)

About the script: im sure its not that hard to transfer to lua, its just a hack from the start/landing animation of the OTA lvl1 bomber. Sadly it just hangs sometimes when a AI controls the unit: looks really weird when the bomber glides through the air with the wings folded...
Sadly something I had to figure out was that you can almost never rely on things being self-explanatory. The best route is to just explain exactly what something does in as few words as possible. Sometimes that's pretty tough. CT still has a lot of vague-ness in this manner, I too need to work on it soon.

As for the script, I imagine it isn't hard at all, its purely the fact that I never figured it out on my own.

Those screenshots look pretty cool.
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Wombat
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Wombat »

hmmm... i got some strange deja-vu, im sure i already posted comments here :|

anyway, the biggest issue, something i completely dislike in this game are dropships landing and taking off after finishing each unit... ITS SO SLOW. i would suggest dropship taking off after finishing whole queue, not each unit.

i hope ES will get attention it deserves!

EDIT - btw, did u consider using Cremuss models ? i think geometry is very similar, u could spare some time using ready models.
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Nah, his models and textures are cash. They just need normal mapping love (Contact me or give me svn read access and I'll add normal mapping support for you).

TLC means "Tender Loving Care"

With the logo... Do you have an original image or vector art of it? If so, post it here. There are plenty of people here that would be happy to sex it up for you.
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smoth
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by smoth »

I don't think so. I think he needs more colors and contrast but that is my opinion ONLY
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Wombat
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Wombat »

Nah, his models and textures are cash.
got nothing to do with what i said. he wont have to create something himself if someone else already made top quality stuff. and i hope its obvious i meant 3dmeshes only.
I think he needs more colors and contrast but that is my opinion ONLY
not only yours, but since current stuff looks decent and anything 'better' could slow down progress, i think he should stick to the current style (for now i hope !)
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FLOZi
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

Forboding Angel wrote:Nah, his models and textures are cash. They just need normal mapping love (Contact me or give me svn read access and I'll add normal mapping support for you).
Are you still using Argh's or did you switch to jK's?
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