Dark Reign mod. help wanted

[Chosker]

Dark Reign Mod

General Info
I'm trying to make a mod based on Dark Reign, but I need help.
I can do the art (models, animations, interface), the unit fbi files and I'm sure maps as well.

Team
Chosker - Models, textures, animations, GUI, maps.
more people needed. see below

Help Wanted
I have very little knowledge and experience in coding. It's been some days of me trying to figure out how to start implementing the features I need in Lua but it's much too complicated for me.
so I'd like to team up with someone interested in a Dark Reign mod, and do this together

Samples, etc
a while ago I did a few of the Imperium units as hobby.

they're not specially good and I know I can do better now, but I can take them as a basis to start
here's a link to my portfolio to show more of my abilities http://www.sanzpont.com/chosker/

for now I'll start with some of the units and I'll post some updates as I go

Status, To Do list
Art
- Unit Models

• Shared: 0/6
• Imperium Side: 0/15
• Freedom Guard Side: 0/18

- Building Models

• Shared: 2/3
• Imperium Side: 1/15
• Freedom Guard Side: 0/13

Needed features:

Lua Rules
1. [Done] Change starting units (no Commander, only 3 Construction Rigs)
2. [Done] Construction Rigs go inside buildings when construction starts (disappear/kill the Rig). Happens with most buildings but not all
3. Map resources: Metal and energy used as water and taelon. Resources regenerate over time. Trees, rocks, etc, can't be harvested
4. Freighters: Harvest taelon and physically deliver it to Taelon Reactors
5. Freighters: Harvest water and physically deliver it to Water Launch Pads
6. Freighters: Amount of taelon and water to gather is limited
7. [Done] Taelon Reactors and Water Launch Pads to spawn a freighter when built
8. Energy: used by buildings but not consumed
9. Energy: buildings always use it (not only when having activity)
10. Energy: Taelon Reactors able to store taelon up to a limit
11. Energy: Taelon Reactors to produce more energy based on stored taelon
12. Energy: Buildings' capabilities reduced operating on low/critical power, which happens when more energy is being used than produced
13. Water: Water Launch Pads able to store water up to a limit
14. Water: once the water storage limit is reached, clear it and receive 3000 metal
15. Building upgrades, changing its mesh/texture as well
16. Unit/Building construction pre-reqs: Need 'X' building to build 'Y' unit, even if the builder is the same
17. Unit/Building construction pre-reqs: Having a pre-req building built allows the rest of the buildings to use it. ie, with a lvl2 Training Facility available, a lvl1 Training Facility can build units as if it was also lvl2
18. Building power on/off not instant (take 'X' seconds to complete)
19. Building repair: Buildings self-repair but need to activate it manually. If building has 100% health, repairing is auto-deactivated again (need to re-activate every time to heal)
20. Building sell: Sell a building, get resources back (half its building cost), get a builder back
21. Unit morphing: Ability to visually morph into certain enemy units (only the model mesh)
22. Unit morphing: Ability to visually morph into map objects: trees and rocks
23. Saboteur weapon: A unit weapon that damages buildings to 50% of its Total HP, no matter its current HP (if HP is at 50% or below it deals no damage)
24. Building infiltration: Ability to go inside certain enemy buildings, seeing with its LOS. The building owner doesn't get any notices. Must not work on allied buildings
25. Building infiltration: If unit is infiltrated for more than 'X' seconds, it's dropped out of the building, the building owner gets a notice and the building cannot be infiltrated for 'X' seconds
26. Building infiltration, provide: Infiltrating a Headquarters (Commander) building makes the player see all of the enemy player's LOS. Infiltrating a Water Launch Pad or Taelon Reactor building allows the player to see the enemy player's resources
27. Building infiltration, Tech stealing: Infiltrating a Training Facility or Assembly Plant building displays a list of the units it can build. Clicking an item of the list will steal the technology after 'X' seconds
28. Building infiltration, Tech stealing: Infiltrating a Headquarters building displays a list of the buildings a Rig can build. Clicking an item of the list will steal the technology after 'X' seconds
29. Building infiltration, Tech stealing: An infiltrator unit has no limit of the amount of Techs to steal
30. Building infiltration, Tech stealing: Infiltrators need to return to a Headquarters building of its own to deliver the stolen technology
31. Building infiltration, Tech stealing: Delivered stolen Tech will now be available for construction
32. Weapon recharging: Condition for certain units to have limited ammo, automatically returning to a certain building to recharge. Only used on air units
33. Weapon Fire Once: Condition for certain units to only fire once and then stop firing
34. Weapon self-destruct: Condition for certain units to be killed when they fire their weapon
35. Unit Cloaking: Make certain cloakable units decloak on fire or moving
36. Teleportation: Ability for a building to teleport up to 3 units to any point in the map that the player or allies have had LOS on. The building needs 'X' seconds to charge after using
37. Amper weapon: A weapon that when fired on own/ally/enemy infantry unit, fully heals them but also kills them after 'X' seconds unless they are healed at a Hospital building
38. Hostage taking: Ability for a unit to capture a single enemy infantry unit, turning it into an own certain unit after 'X' seconds
39. Water Contaminator: Ability for a unit to reduce the regeneration rate of a map's water resource point

Lua Interface
1. Weapon Ammo Bar: When selected, make certain units display a progress bar showing its weapon's ammo amount. Used for units with Weapon Recharge
2. Weapon Reload Bar: When selected, make certain units/buildings display a progress bar showing its weapon's reload time (used for units with very long reload time. since these use Fire Once, you need to know when you'll be able to fire again)
3. Functionality Reload Bar: When selected, make certain units/buildings display a progress bar showing the reload time they need before having its main special functionality available for use again
4. Water Resource Bar: Display a bar with the water level out of the highest one of all of the Water Launch Pads
5. Sell Water: A button to clear the water to get metal before the water limit on the Water Launch Pad is reached. The amount of metal to get is the percentage of water/limit minus 'X' of penalty. Also done by clicking on the Water Resource Bar
6. Scout Button: A button to send units to explore the map, moving automatically and specially to unexplored zones, and avoiding combat
7. Harass Button: A button like the Scout Button, but engaging in combat firing a few shots and retreating if taking fire, to then keep scouting or returning to heal if a healing building is available
8. Search & Destroy Button: A button like the Scout Button, but engaging in combat and fighting to the death
9. Fog of War: Unexplored map areas to be completely black. Explored areas 50% dark and areas with LOS full colors. (Needed for [Lua Rules 36. Unit Teleportation] since it should only be available on Explored and LOS areas)
10. Enemy resource bar: When infiltrating certain buildings, A UI window popping with information about the enemy's resources. Needed for [Lua Rules 26. Building infiltration, provide]
11. Resource bars, water: interface bar that displays the water level of the water launch pad with the highest level of water at any time
12. [Done] Resource bars, energy: interface bar that displays the energy level
12. [Done] Resource bars, credits (metal): number on the interface that displays the amount of credits (metal) available

Updates

Sep 20
after a little modelling I came up with the first building, the Imperium HQ.
Sep 21
did some more work on the HQ. 880 poly's with the surrounding platform (which will be mud like the original game shot)


Sep 23
textured the HQ. ended up as 904 poly's and uses a 512x512 texture. the colored version is hopefully how team colors will look.
rendered with 100% self illumination, single light and no shadows


more work today. got the HQ in-game


Sep 25
did the taelon reactor. abit heavy at 1138 poly's but the needed features asked for it. yellow parts are the only ones colored as team colors.

and now got it in-game, to show with the slightly updated (and still WIP) interface


Sep 27
Water Launch Pad model ready. quite a simpler building so I got all the needed detail on 660 poly's.

[Chosker]

I could add more detail but I'm not sure about the polycount target. I guess I could well go for a target of 800-1000 poly's for every unit but I'm still not sure about the performance. Ideally I'd want this mod to have large numbers of units like in Dark Reign (which had no unit limit, and units where quick to create).
I also heard about LOD usage but I still haven't looked for any tutorials (I doubt it's any difficult to do if it's already in the engine) and I don't know about the performance gain.
so with some input here and there I'd know how to go on.

later

[overkill]

Dont worry about poly counts as long as you use them well (effeciantly). The spherebot in ca is 1k polys, and spamed alot, yet no noticeable slowdown. Dont restrict your idea/models because they are to high poly.

[smoth]

bullshots rendered in a raytracer are frowned upon as they do not reflect the model as is. Sure it looks great but that isn't really how the model will look. We call them bullshots because that isn't how it will look in game and are deceptive. I could post rayraced shots of some of my older models with a good render they will look like sex but in reality they are not.

A screenshot from your modeling program is fine, most of them do some things to make the model look a little nice. However, every time people see raytraced shots all the non modelers ogle and those of us who do model bitch because we cannot see the model for all the makeup.

[Chosker]

well while this is a render and not a real-time shot, I can tell you that the difference between this one and the real-time one, unlike other shots you've seen, will be minimum. and here's why:
- there's a single standard light. simple shading like Spring's directional sun light. simple shading means a polygon is as dark as the difference of its angle pointing up (normal) vs the light direction. except it's per-pixel, like all games since a few years ago. the simplest of shading.
- it uses simple shadows. the shadow system in this render is a shadow map of a 512x512 resolution. just like Spring's shadow maps except this one is only a quarter of the size as Spring's *smallest* shadow map, and since it's so small it's mostly a blur.
- and nothing else. it's the simplest of renders, there is no light raytracing, ambient light, ambient occlusion or other light effects, the geometry isn't changed, etc. nothing else than computing the above two points in CPU (instead of GPU, which nowadays is faster anyway) and applying anti-alias to the edges (like Spring's FSAA)

showing a viewport capture of a model actually means the quality would be alot worse than it will be in-game, because the program's viewport doesn't have FSAA, real-time shadows and per-pixel lighting (only per-vertex); these features that are available in-game.

besides, you can see when a render is cooked, and you can clearly see this one isn't


ok so I'll make more rounded edges and add some more detail without caring that much about the polycount. I will go for a 800-1000 poly's target for every model, depending on its expected size on screen when it's in-game

[Argh]

Polycounts in the 1K range are fine for buildings. Don't sweat it, if you want to add some boxes or other fine greebles.

Spring's rounding shader is quite good- if you've welded things intelligently, then what you'll see in Spring will be superior to what you see in a raytrace, generally speaking. The rounding shader requires reflectivity to be on, but you can use a very, very low amount that won't feel plastic or shiny.

[smoth]

Hi Chosker, I am smoth I maek models sometimes.

[smoth]

Spring's rounding shader is quite good- if you've welded things intelligently, then what you'll see in Spring will be superior to what you see in a raytrace, generally speaking.

No, argh, just no.

[Snipawolf]

Did somebody say raytrace?



Spring can't do anything near that.

[REVENGE]

Yeah yeah yeah, insane feature request, otmtr and all that.

[Forboding Angel]

bullshots rendered in a raytracer are frowned upon as they do not reflect the model as is. Sure it looks great but that isn't really how the model will look. We call them bullshots because that isn't how it will look in game and are deceptive. I could post rayraced shots of some of my older models with a good render they will look like sex but in reality they are not.

A screenshot from your modeling program is fine, most of them do some things to make the model look a little nice. However, every time people see raytraced shots all the non modelers ogle and those of us who do model bitch because we cannot see the model for all the makeup.

Maybe he doesn't care, and isn't looking for critiques.

[smokingwreckage]

Welcome to the forum!

[smoth]

/me yawns, anyway, it is good to see someone take some initiative. I could make this a long post but I'll be short. Most of the people here who can help are already working so unless you can draw in some new talent most people are already allocated to projects. Not that they won't help you, most people here are helpful. My best possible advice would be to go ahead and do what you can with the models. getting it in spring is easy and from there you could probably get someone to help you with lua here or there.


Forb, don't paraphrase me out of context.

[clericvash]

Wooo the mod i've been wanting to see for fricken ages. i loved DR, nice one dude keep it up!! :D

[KDR_11k]

Maybe he doesn't care, and isn't looking for critiques.

What is he posting the shots for then? Renders are not representative of what the models will look like in practice anyway, if it's for advertising it's false advertising, if it's for critique it's bad for critique.

[Chosker]

I updated the first post with an update of the HQ.

I don't care about comparisons between a render and its real-time counterpart, and I find the discussion about it completely pointless.
The renders I show are mainly to show progress
The critiques I'm looking for are about style and comparisons with the original Dark Reign, scale, and details where it's fit.
If I wanted critiques about polygon flow and such I'd be posting models with edged faces (normal + wireframe on top); if I wanted beauty shots for advertising I'd be using more advanced renders with multiple lights+shadows, radiosity, specularity, etc. Neither of the two is the case. I just want to show progress with simple, neutral renders.

that rounding shader sounds to me like a simple reflection cubemap, but I might be wrong. could be worth to test and see how it looks, but without a proper shader to control reflectivity with a specularity map, I would most likely stay away from it.
This really makes me wish that Spring used DX9 and had the now-usual shader fragments, as I could kick in a more advanced shader that way. but anyway it's not DX9 so I'll just use what there is to use.


Snipawolf: you can clearly see the difference between that render and mine. that one has multiple lights+shadows and raytrace reflection+refraction. mine is simple.
I'd be grateful if this thread is kept out of non-Dark-Reign images of models and renders, to avoid misleading stuff

[rattle]

Looks pretty good considering that I remember Dark Reign well enough, was the first RTS I played online.

Most of Dark Reigns features can be implemented easily like upgrades and the techtree, even the Unit AIs, the Chicken AI works similar to the Search & Destroy one I think.

Would be nice to know if DR is abandonware so you could take the sounds and perhaps the cursors. I'd be willing to grab the WAVs from the original game and addon if so. I used to have all the modding tools so porting the cursors to spring shouldn't be much of an issue either (screenshots as last resort).

Speaking of screenshots, I prefer fullbright screenshots :P but there's nothing to complain about. Oh yeah, human models need their limbs to be split up because spring still lacks proper animation support.

[smoth]

yeah, I avoided comparison shots to no derail your thread. I very much hope you get help. My post was just trying to help you draw the right attention around here. In the end no render will reflect what spring will do and just getting the units in game and animated is important. If you can do this then I highly suspect you will find yourself some help. Please believe me, the advice I am giving is to help you. I hope your project does well.

[Tribulexrenamed]

If you need lua/programming etc. PM me.

[Forboding Angel]

Forb, don't paraphrase me out of context.

I didn't paraphrase you. What are you talking about.

BTW turns out I was right anyway.