Netstorm Mod

[Deten]

If anyone here remembers netstorm from 1997, it was quite a revolutionary strategy game for its time. Not in the graphics department but in the strategy department.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstorm

It definitely falls under Total Annihilations banner of a cult game, which is continually updated and balanced by the community to this day.

I have been talking with a few people about making a mod for this game, but was curious if anyone would even be interested in this sort of a game.

Would this sort of game be possible in the spring engine?

Thanks :p

[bobthedinosaur]

no idea how it works, i remember the game but never played it.

[smoth]

ha ha ha, I made a map for this engine and it was called islands at war!

[Deten]

ha ha ha, I made a map for this engine and it was called islands at war!

nice :)

[rattle]

Played the demo in 97.

[Neddie]

Could be done, I think. Look forward to seeing the efforts.

[KDR_11k]

Might be possible but you'd have to do something about the maps.

[manored]

I already played this game a lot :) Its quite cool, but I find that great part of the strategy is ruined by the simple fact that whoever is capable of building bridges (clicking) faster has a absurd advantage over everone else...

[Pressure Line]

i considered it. might be interested in doing some guest artistry.




although im fairly sure i deleted that model in a fit of raeg

[Deten]

Alright, well when I get done with finals ill get started on some administrative stuff... see you in a week :)

[Saktoth]

I already played this game a lot :) Its quite cool, but I find that great part of the strategy is ruined by the simple fact that whoever is capable of building bridges (clicking) faster has a absurd advantage over everone else...

+1, it seems mostly a bridge building game to me.

Either way, you'd need a fuckton of lua to get something even remotely resembling this. Something INSPIRED by this though, with territorial 'generators' to power static defenses and automatic factories... well... see Fibre.

[Google_Frog]

Yea seems like a mix of Fibre and Pipe Dream.

[Deten]

Ill need to check out fibre, though I am interested in making a netstorm equivalent.

While I understand the spring engine is not suited for anything you can dream up, depending on the response people have I would like to get as close to netstorm as I can.

In reality what will happen is that well get models, textures and a version of gameplay going, and hopefully release so people can play... but then fine tune it over time to get more "netstorm" like.

[Deten]

Yea seems like a mix of Fibre and Pipe Dream.

Its like tower defence to the next level :)

[Deten]

Hey guys,

I am graduating with my engineering degree in 2 weeks, I am really excited to start working on this.

Within a few weeks of graduation I will get a domain, and start on getting stuff together to prepare a netstorm mod.

Any current developers have suggestions, I havent used the spring engine before but I dont forsee terrible trouble. Though it will be interesting how to get the "bridge building" aspect correctly mimicked.

If anyone is interested in being apart of this feel free to post here or pm me.

Naturally if you want to be a tester... we wont be looking for one for a while, but if you have modeling, coding or spring engine experience that would be welcome.

deten

[Anarchid]

Though it will be interesting how to get the "bridge building" aspect correctly mimicked.

Making units walk on other units is impossible afaik, but so are the flying islands, and then you want 2d bridges, not like they'll be stacked on top of each other.

I think you could just get away with making a map with lots of relatively deep chasms, throw some cloud/fog cover into them to hide what's below, and then use terraforming and ground-decals to raise the bridges from below the cloudcover and paint them with whatever texture you want.

[Pendrokar]

Making units walk on other units is impossible afaik, but so are the flying islands

Except the fact that islands don't move in netstorm. At least not ingame.

I think you could just get away with making a map with lots of relatively deep chasms, throw some cloud/fog cover into them to hide what's below,

A map that shows how your maps will probably look like - http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1260

and then use terraforming and ground-decals to raise the bridges from below the cloudcover and paint them with whatever texture you want.

Problem is that it would just look like a steep hill not a bridge unless you can make terrain transparent and then add a Lua Object for visual representation.

[Anarchid]

A map that shows how your maps will probably look like - http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1260

Transparent terrain. I didn't know of that. If it had a slightly better skybox, the map would be transcendently cool.

Problem is that it would just look like a steep hill not a bridge unless you can make terrain transparent and then add a Lua Object for visual representation.

A steep hill with its sides angled at 80 degrees, with only the top part visible, will look like a prism floating in the cloudcover. But then, invisible terrain beats that idea by a wide margin.

Drawing all bridges with Lua might be somewhat too resource-intensive, and even unnecessary. You could just place permanent decals or non-colliding features on the raised sections of invisible land.

[KDR_11k]

Voidwater basically culls all terrain below the waterline (shows the skybox), if you use that for your islands and bridges it should work. A problem I had with the Netstorm game once was that in one level the AI built a HUGE bunch of bridges around the island with its temple, making it impossible to finish off as the bridges prevented me from building anything in range of the temple and there was no effective way to destroy bridges (you could damage them by building right next to them and destroying the building again but that was too slow, the AI rebuilt way faster than I could damage the bridges).

[zwzsg]

Though it will be interesting how to get the "bridge building" aspect correctly mimicked.

Making units walk on other units is impossible afaik, but so are the flying islands, and then you want 2d bridges, not like they'll be stacked on top of each other.

See the "bridge" unit inside that mod.

I think you could just get away with making a map with lots of relatively deep chasms, throw some voidwater cover into them to hide what's below, and then use terraforming and ground-decals to raise the bridges from below the voidwater and paint them with whatever texture you want.

That is a better idea!