New mod

[Caydr]

GEM is blocked by the engine's archaic lack of hitbox support and a single tag nobody wants to put a switch on so it'll be usable, AWS is already being done so I've lost my motivation to finish the last few units, AA has reached its peak and will now be in maintenance mode once I get the next couple versions out.

I want to start a new mod, one featuring only tanks and aircraft, no fancyass infantry scripting, no bullshit crazy LUA stuff, just tanks and aircraft, maybe hovers, blowing the hell out of each other. I'm making it, say I'm lying, I don't care, I'm starting a new mod with obscene detail levels and shameful polygon counts that would make Crysis blush. I'm going to make original textures and models, but it's going to basically be TA in all but name and appearance, only a hella lot cooler looking since there's no way in hell I'm going to stick with the established standards like "3 guns per unit" and "everything has to look like it came from 1997" and "it must run on Pentium 2 with no graphics card" nonsense.

If anyone is interested in helping, please PM me with your skills. As usual I'll probably do most of the work on my own by preference, but scripting and texturing help might be helpful. Also testers and commentors and whatever else. Oh, yeah, if you know anything about sound effects, that would probably be good, I'll need lots of those, and if you're any good at making explosions, etc... I've fallen behind the curve on that. PM if you're interested in any way shape and form with your MSN and I'll try to keep people informed.

Why am I announcing something that I haven't made a single model or line of code for? Because I'm really going to go crazy on it. I mean, I'm going to go to work, come home, make 30 units, then go back to work. I'm going to freaking go nuts on this.

The project's goal? I want to make TA look like crap in comparison. The idea is to basically make a carbon copy of TA but without restrictions placed on me like, "no you can't remove that unit because then it wouldn't be TA" - that sort of thing. I mean, for crap sake, do we really need to have so many identical units on both sides? I've done what I can to seperate them but it's still "TA but with changes".

So, what scale are we talking about here... Generally here's what I'd like to have by the time the project's complete:
-50+ units on each side at the bare minimum, not including structures
-At least 3 sides on initial release, and possibly more just for shits and giggles later
-units ranging from 1x1 to 10x10
-Entirely new classes of units that don't fit in with TA
-Totally different tech trees and specialties
-A large map pack (btw any mappers interested, PM me too)
-More

What prompted this? I think, mainly, 8 years of pent-up modding frustration. If anyone quotes that and replaces "modding" with something else, I'll ban you. Even though I'm not a moderator. Also, I'm struggling so hard to just make TA's sides seem different, but at the same time realizing, once this new version's out, the sh!t's going to hit the fan because it's too different. EVEN THOUGH THE CHANGES AREN'T VERY BIG! It's just too different because all we've known for 11 years is TA and we like TA. We like TA because it's the best RTS that's ever been made.

Also what prompted this is that I finally have the kind of cash that I can afford all the equipment I need to set up a proper development environment.

I want to make something so good it's like a commercial game. I want to make something so good, I could sell it if I wanted to - but I won't. I think. Probably not. Especially since you're all dirty pirates. Anyways, I'd really like to eventually get into game development, and I'd like to do it without going through 10 years of bullshit education so I get a piece of paper that says I know how to model or whatever. I'm a freaking awesome modeler, I'm a competent texturer (now - don't look at my old work), and I've been working on AA for well over 8 years now and at its peak it had over 75% of Spring's players and over 20,000 downloads per release

So what's the mod going to be all about... hm... well let me put it this way, it'll be like Supreme Commander but without TA-style balance with identical units on all sides. And a lot more units, with a lot less fluff.

Here's the good part. You know how in TA, everything is so simple? Generally speaking, everything just bloody well works? There's no UFO that only fires half the time and is actually more useful as an unblockable nuke to drop on your enemies. There's no units that only work sometimes, and there's nothing impractical like nukes that will never get built. Everything will be useful. There most certainly will not be BS like units that are more effort to use than there is payoff. No, "super strong unit that needs to stand still for 3 years while it unfolds". No "commando unit that must be microed to be useful, and your base is going to get destroyed in the meantime". None of the frustrating garbage incompetent game designers throw at us because they have a moron in charge who thinks units need to be upgradable in order to give the game "depth". No, I can go further on that, NO ARTIFICIAL "DEPTH" THAT JUST PISSES YOU OFF BECAUSE IT'S USELESS.

I named this thread "new mod", but what is really happening here is "new game". No copyrighted content of any kind, nothing. Nothing proprietary. Nothing at all. This will not be a mod, a total conversion, or anything else, it is an entirely new game unlike anything else. It will be RTS 2.1, a name I originally was planning on using for a Supreme Commander mod in AA's style, but I'm tired of playing with other peoples' creations and having artificial limits placed upon me. Why RTS 2.1? Because the buzz around Supreme Commander was, it was referred to as "RTS 2.0" because it was such a major step forward. Well, I can't say this will be a major step forward, but it will be superior to any other RTS. Others will have strengths such as fancy animation and explosions, but I'll have the only thing that actually matters: untouchable gameplay.

Think I'm kidding? By the end of the week, you won't. If I don't follow through with that, go ahead and call this a fake and a fraud and anything else, because I'd deserve it.

What sort of timeframe are we looking at here? Well... Hmm... figure, one unit a day on average to model, 0.5 unit a day to texture, 3 units a day to script, 10 units a day to balance, and then a month for polish. So... 6 months or so for serious results doesn't seem unreasonable. Something finished and fully enjoyable should be possible within a year. Something playable within 8 months... Web site within 2 months... model pictures starting at the end of this week... ingame screens within 3 months...

What can break this game? Everything really hangs on my job. Like, the one I get paid for. I've been trying to get a weekend shift for several months, it was promised to me, and everything was peachy until the boss decided I was needed in another department. More specifically, about 8 other departments... So I'm doing a crazy amount of work even while I'm at home lately. Just got trained on a new machine and there's supposed to be training for another new machine sometime after that... It's going to be interesting. I'm still going to try my best to get a weekend shift or at the very least, Fridays off.

What makes this effort different from, say, Star Wars Spring? Or some similar uber-awesome, large scale mod? Two things mainly.

First, there's nothing at all to live up to. I don't need to spend 6 months making Jedi possible when the engine was designed to do nothing of the kind. I don't need to figure out how to do orbital bombardment. There's no standard. In other words, I can have a gun that just blows the hell out of an entire region instead of orbital bombardment. I can have a unit that is just super-deadly instead of a jedi. There's nothing to live up to except my own hype, and since I'm the one making the hype, I can live up to it and then some.

Second, the things that take the longest to get just right, like walking animations for instance, will have NO PART in this mod. Soldiers? Play TA or Gundam if you want some sort of mecha-mod. I'm making tanks, and big ones at that. Mean ones, that eat babies and crap dynamite. Fancy scripting is only there for two reasons, one to wow the audience and two to make something look realistic. The game will wow you on its own, and realism, that's just not happening.

[Caydr]

Reserved

[kiki]

you mean untouchable gameplay AND graphics, it sounds like. Its a good combo tho. I like what you are saying.

1x1 to 10x10 units or something like that...

Yes, finally someone who wants to scale stuff down. I really like you caydr. I might help you, but I am working on formations lua widget thing atm, as well as the beginning of my own mod.

It sounds like you will take what is great from ta, and take what is great from supcom. I had tears in my eyes reading this (i pretended to anyway)

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[REVENGE]

there's no way in hell I'm going to stick with the established standards like "3 guns per unit" and "everything has to look like it came from 1997" and "it must run on Pentium 2 with no graphics card" nonsense.

[kiki]

Lots of guns per unit plx.

[SpikedHelmet]

I'd support it. The symmetrical lethargy of modern RTS games (inparticular the plethora of TA forks) is tedious; it would be nice to see an RTS based on ingenuity, where each side is quite different from the other, looks different, plays different, to the point that someone may be awesome playing as one side, but horrible playing the other (maybe not so extreme).

The work Nemo has done with Spring: 1944's balance might be able to inspire you. He managed to create four different factions, each with a very unique style, unique balancing, that all fight differently from one another, yet manage to maintain a fairly even balance between all four. For instance, the Light Vehicle Yards of each faction vary differently, some units with automatic cannons, others with anti-tank guns, others with general-purpose guns, one has a heavily-armoured APC (though they all share some commonality; each has a transport truck, a halftrack, and a construction vehicle), and the differences grow from there (ie Germany has very poor "T1" but the best "T2"; US has very good "T1" but rather poor "T2"; Britain has very good T1 and a mixture of good and bad T2; Soviet Union has average T1 and T2).

So frankly, I don't know what all the hub-bub is about, with everyone terrified of making factions that are quite unique from one another. Of course, when the majority of a "mod" is little more than some LUA gimmicks and text changes, its probably silly to expect the makers to put the extra effort into having to balance multiple unique sides; its much easier to balance a single side to itself, and then duplicate it).

So I support the effort and hope to see some ingenious features placed in, and I of course don't mean some cool LUA gimmicks; I want to see gameplay ingenuity.

[HeavyLancer]

Please make. Please.

[Fanger]

1x1 to 10x10 units or something like that...

Yes, finally someone who wants to scale stuff down. I really like you caydr.

cause no other mod has 1x1 units up to you know 6x6 units lolz..

Caydr are you actually going to be able to work on this??

[Caydr]

I can work more easily on this than I can AA. If anyone ever thought AA was good during its glory days while I still had time to work on it, back around 1.4 or 2.1, you'll be floored by what I'm capable of when there's no artificial limits on what I can and can't do.

[SwiftSpear]

Your mod threads need less text and more links to mods caydr

Unless you're recruiting, then you need less text and more screenshots, and preferably big large text that says RECRUITING

[KDR_11k]

Think I'm kidding? By the end of the week, you won't.

sry, RL interfered, delayed till June.

[tombom]

if so much time is taken up by your job surely it would be better to work on your mod not post long walls of text?????

[DZHIBRISH]

Caydr.
You post reminded me of those medieval themed war movies where the general rides his horse in front of thisarmy giving them a pep talk :)

GL

[udm]

You've got my attention. Now get my (and others') respect!

[Pxtl]

Actually, it sounds a lot like Argh's hype before he released Pure:

"I'm making a mod from scratch that is basically what I thought TA should have been".

Caydr, have you tried Pure yet?

Caydr.
You post reminded me of those medieval themed war movies where the general rides his horse in front of thisarmy giving them a pep talk :)

GL

I AM CAYDR WALLACE! When you put your hand into the pile of goo that used to be your best Peewee's face, you'll know what to do!

[KDR_11k]

Also, if your mod is a TA recreation but you use no walk scripts, what will tell the vehs cand kbots apart?

[child]

Also, if your mod is a TA recreation but you use no walk scripts, what will tell the vehs cand kbots apart?

Simple, there are no kbots.

Right in the second paragraph:

I want to start a new mod, one featuring only tanks and aircraft, no fancyass infantry scripting, no bullshit crazy LUA stuff, just tanks and aircraft, maybe hovers, blowing the hell out of each other.

[rattle]

Sounds like a pretty dull idea. Why? Bricks and flying bricks. That's it.
Seriously, take a programming course or something and get familiar with scripting, even draco manages to.

[KDR_11k]

But if there's only one ground unit factory it's not exactly TA, is it? More like SimBase or Evolution.

[Scikar]

I would say that the Kbot / Vehicle differentiation is a defining aspect of TA, but it's not an essential one. Look at how many flat maps there are where you'd be daft to go Kbots, and vice versa.

As far as bricks go, wouldn't you then say that TA is bricks, flying bricks and walking bricks? Most units even look like bricks to boot.