Complete Annihilation News

[Pxtl]

Honestly, one of the things I loved about TA were the cutesy names. The peewee, the morty, the can - cute, funny names. Personally, I'd try to keep that theme. I want deathbunnies.

[smoth]

DETHBUNNIES!

[Pxtl]

DETHBUNNIES!

Needs more umlauts.

Dëthbünnïez

edit: related: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/212095

[smoth]

Dëthbünnïez
Dëthbünnïez
Dëthbünnïez
Dëthbünnïez

[manored]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2319/223 ... 7a5139.jpg

[Jasper1984]

But theres still so much that can be done with the spheres! (picture)

Much more then that can be done with the spherebot theme.. The AA spherebot unit for one looks much different. I do not get all that 'needing a consistent style messes with my freedom' crap, consistent style means: restricting, requiring more creativity and better quality. Want it or not, the quality of CA might go down if you replace/add a unit that looks perfect and is awesome, but does not fit with the rest. If you're worried when modeling, that your unit won't fit in, make a sketch and ask what people think.

The spherebot theme is not even so restricting. Its just, rounded, forward bending legs, and a head. Just for the hell of it i scratched an idea for ARMs rocket kbot. (Was it the rocko?)

[manored]

That looks like something that cannot walk winhout toppling over to either side :) Would look cool if it was 2 rocket launchers, one on each side.

[Machiosabre]

I think it having one pod would be nice, its like its balanced out by the head, instead of the normal arm-head-arm

[Warlord Zsinj]

I think CA should be careful not to get stuck into deriving too much of their art from the spherebot. It was a really great unit (even if it was taken from that one toy), but to handicap yourself like that would really limit the aesthetic depth of the mod.

[manored]

I think it having one pod would be nice, its like its balanced out by the head, instead of the normal arm-head-arm

Looks weird tough, and a cold killing machine wouldnt have such a clumsy look... well, maybe for Nova then :)

[Saktoth]

Oh man. I wish i had as much power over this game as you guys seem to think i do. Seriously.

Im writing the story because we dont have a story. Im doing up concepts because we dont have any concepts. Im making models because we need models. I wish we had someone more qualified than myself to do this, then we might get some damn models replaced. I am neither fast nor particularly good at texturing and honestly id rather work on other facets of the mod.

if this isn't ta anymore saktoth, oh voice of all ca, please rename it.

As it happens there are whole pages on the wiki about CA's name. There are page of chat logs and brainstorming. We'll probably rename it. Still, its not TA, its CA. Its actually more like TA than any other RTS on the market so i dont see why it cant share half the name. Its built from TA, its roots are in TA. CA isnt an inappropriate or misleading name (especially in its current state where 60% of the content is still OTA).

But we want to be IP free, thats a stated goal. If we want to be IP free we at least need to disassociate ourselves from the OTA storyline. A little bit of fluff about robot wars helps that. Its useless to re-do all the models if we still use the names arm and core and its still clones vs patterns. So duh, we need a story. So i wrote one.

The point is that saktoth decided all by himself that CA will have this particular look.

The point is smoth decided all by himself that i did this O_o. jK's been ranting even more strongly that 'Nova must have a curvilinear white metalic plates theme!'. Its just i talk to you guys, he doesnt.

I was the one who stuck WIE's texture on the spherebot, the chipped paint dirty grungy, mechanical texture. Im not even a huge fan of the texture- his is technically brilliant but not really suited to an RTS. Its diplomacy by me to use his work over my own to encourage more artists to work for CA. It was jK who edited it to be all white and smooth and armour plates again.

In truth i chose the flat, metalic sort of design for arm because it was easy to texture. Grunge and greebles is hard. So what Argh says about worrying less about coherent design and more about just finishing content is my real motivation (Thats why im butchering the spherebot into 3+ units too).

Que people screaming that CA's design is incoherant and we just take whatever we can get our mitts on, being content-vultures with no design plan... Hell this is like the #1 complaint about CA's content, so i think a bit more effort towards coherency to design is probably warranted. Still no matter what approach we take someone will think we're doing it wrong.

A story is completely useless. Unless you can make a standalone game with a campaign using Spring engine you have totally no need to have a story.

You predicate your whole argument on the premise that we wont or cant. Quant already has a mission editor half-done. Dont assume this isnt a part of the goals of the project. We have single-player mode in Chicken and a campaign is certainly one of the goals of the project.

(even if it was taken from that one toy)

What toy? First smoths police anime ive never seen, then the banshee = orca when ive never played C&C, now some toy ive never even heard of. Man I really wish i knew all these places i am getting my inspiration from!

[Jasper1984]

Looks weird tough, and a cold killing machine wouldnt have such a clumsy look... well, maybe for Nova then :)

It is a sketch, that is also why it does not look entirely balanced. I did not put much time in.
@Machiosabre: Indeed, two pods is boring imo, AA kbot already does that. Alternative ideas are just to let it hold a rocket gun, or have it(them if it has two) on its back and flip them into a ready state like the Zeus.(Or flip into ready state via beneath the arms, even.) Or maybe fire directly from its body, if it is feeling really funky. However i like the idea from the sketch best, by far.

@Saktoth I do not think at all that CA currently is incoherent, just that coherency is important, and that it does leave space for many different units. The only units i think messes with consistency is the can, it fires those red lasers and only has _that_ range? The flamethrower on the Goliath
I also agree that CA is a good name for now, does CA have milestones? Maybe it can be decided after what milestone(s) an other name is in order.

Quant already has a mission editor half-done.

Cool! I should look that up. Also, i am curious about that story. Will the campaign follow them, for instance. Maybe a storyboard would be nice to have too.

[smoth]

First smoths police anime ive never seen

AWESOME I MADE PATLABOR! GET THE FUCK OUTA OF MY IP IZUBUCHI!

[jK]

The point is that saktoth decided all by himself that CA will have this particular look.

The point is smoth decided all by himself that i did this O_o. jK's been ranting even more strongly that 'Nova must have a curvilinear white metalic plates theme!'. Its just i talk to you guys, he doesnt.

I was the one who stuck WIE's texture on the spherebot, the chipped paint dirty grungy, mechanical texture. Im not even a huge fan of the texture- his is technically brilliant but not really suited to an RTS. Its diplomacy by me to use his work over my own to encourage more artists to work for CA. It was jK who edited it to be all white and smooth and armour plates again.

In truth i chose the flat, metalic sort of design for arm because it was easy to texture. Grunge and greebles is hard. So what Argh says about worrying less about coherent design and more about just finishing content is my real motivation (Thats why im butchering the spherebot into 3+ units too).

Que people screaming that CA's design is incoherant and we just take whatever we can get our mitts on, being content-vultures with no design plan... Hell this is like the #1 complaint about CA's content, so i think a bit more effort towards coherency to design is probably warranted. Still no matter what approach we take someone will think we're doing it wrong.

yup, it is me behind that design ideas

design coherency
First the have to be said that we can't give the moddelers any design idea cuz they don't work for us ...
So we can just check what models are available and put them in if we like them. Sometimes I also adjust the textures like I did with smoth's morty, aza's fury or wolf's spherebot texture, but I am no moddeler I can't even edit an uvmap, so my `work` is very limited.

'arm' design
First there won't be any 'arm' in future CA, also nearly all CA devs agreed that this faction should be very 'hitec' (while the core-like faction is more rusty with plasma weapons, dark textures etc.).
So in theory the moddelers have much more freedom to model for this faction. But like said before we can't give moddelers any orders, so the current arm model remakes are very close to the OTA ones, which look very similar to core models (so we were able to use cremuss's arm windgen model for core!).
Also Sak and me agreed in most stuff, Sak is less strict in the design of the arm-like faction. Sak liked (?) the scratched spherebot design, he meant it was only missing distance-recognition. Me instead really likes the design itself, but I think it doesn't fit to our idea of a 'hitec' arm-like faction. It has to be much cleaner, brighter more large scale noise instead instead of a high-frequency one. See, I very like the design of the crabe in CA and would like to build the whole faction around such a design, "Universe in War" is a very good example of my ideas.
But like said that are just ideas and I am no moddeler so I can't do it myself, I can only adjust the given textures to fit such goals.

[Neddie]

It's sad to admit, but jK and Sak are being fairly honest in these recent posts.

Nearly everything that Sak is doing falls under what I was doing, but I do not have the time or motivating sense of superiority necessary to compete with him. Thus I'm waiting to jump in and patch things as they're "finished" since I am confident in my ability to do so with a minimum of further time invested. That said, he is actually doing most of these things and attempting to assert some sort of coherent vision.

The toy Zsinj was referring to is a toy from the anime. Spherebot in certain incarnations is uncannily similar to the designs of Patlabor, down to basic greebles. Coincidence happens and all art is derivative, so I assume the similarity is incidental.

[Saktoth]

Ironically the spherebot is kinda derivative, but not of anything anyone says it is. Ive never even heard of patlabor in my life.

I was mostly inspired by this when making it.

[smoth]

guess what that rips off.

[KingRaptor]

The resemblance is there, but they're hardly identical.

[Pxtl]

Actually, to me it looks like it mostly references the art of Kevin Long in Rifts, which is about the same age as Patlabor.

Really, it's a pretty generic anime-robot style, and hardly specific to any series or artist.

[Saktoth]

guess what that rips off.

Any kind of generic animu mech?

Obvious features like the rounded shoulders and exposed joints arent present on the patlabor, and the collar around the head or the back pylons arent present on the PSG mech but are the most striking similarities between the Patlabor and Spherebot.

The most obvious commonality beyond generic animuness is the posture, the thrust-forward chest, which the spherebot doesnt even have- he is kinda hunched, even.