Project Two: Now Recruiting

Nemo · Post by **Nemo** » 18 May 2006, 19:02

Argh can handle it. He understands the challenge of putting all of this together more than most people, especially with the quality he's aiming for.

Organic units are more possible than most people think, I believe.

Argh, in the unlikely event that you have any need of text-monkey work, I'll be happy to lend a hand.

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 18 May 2006, 20:42

I think I've overdone it slightly

EDIT: It's an arm for a Maw unit

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 18 May 2006, 20:45

Optimus Prime wrote: I think the same. For a mod with living creatures, i would wait untill the devs create a new animation system where you can import animations from 3ds max or so. Just have a look at Starwars mod and see how the infantry walks. It looks like they were all dummies but no humans. For a mod with only living creatures that would loook really bad or you have to work very very much on the animations so that they look good.

For that we would need mesh deformities and a true skeletal system. Sorry man not happening anytime soon.

I think an organic can be pulled off.

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 18 May 2006, 23:15

There better not be too many units or this is going to take some time

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 03:29

I would just like to say each of those six races sound really cool.

Also I thought the Maw would be more...I don't know...bug like? Like plate mail bugs?

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 19 May 2006, 03:47

Lemme do some concept sketches and post them... been reeeeeeeally busy with IRL crap this week, so I'm going to spend this weekend de-stressing by doing a lot of drawings...

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 19 May 2006, 03:47

real life(TM) is a troll!

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 19 May 2006, 03:53

Yup, and mean, too. Keeps stealing away my time, in exchange for not nearly enough money

At any rate, I'll explain a little more about the gameplay / feasibility of the six races as I get a little more formally organized. The short answer is that people who think this won't be practical will be pleasantly surprised... but I will say that I don't intend this to have more than about 90 units, total, to complete the first release.

First though, I want to talk about the art/design aspect of things a bit more this weekend, so that anybody who wants to help can have some pretty clear goals, both artistically and technically.

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 04:37

Just make sure one of the races has a "bug" motive going on. Mabey the Saveges?

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 19 May 2006, 05:07

I really see the Savage as being sort've weird animal shapes. I'm actually going to have them play like a non-sucky Zhon (that is to say, units will be able to build each other, ala NanoBlobs, but without Zhon's incredibly weak balance). I kind've want the Savage to feel like they're constantly evolving.

The Maw, on the other hand... I'm really looking for something that is futuristic and robotic feeling. I was kind've thinking that we might have fun with glowmaps, and make them a bit Tron-like, and maybe play around with combining teamcolor and glow (I've done that before, works just fine) for a really unique concept.

I kind've like Guess's concepts here, although I think we're going to need to be a bit more ruthless on polycount, and I need to talk about the units for each race a bit, too. I probably wouldn't use that robot as a Maw unit, though- that looks (to me, at any rate) like something the Tinkers might field- they're fond of mechanical suits and other fun things :)

Hey, and it might be fun to make the Tinkers look like bugs, instead of stereotypical Dwarves or something... hmm... Cockroaches with Wrenches...

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 05:17

Robot bugs?

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 19 May 2006, 05:29

smoth wrote:
Optimus Prime wrote: I think the same. For a mod with living creatures, i would wait untill the devs create a new animation system where you can import animations from 3ds max or so. Just have a look at Starwars mod and see how the infantry walks. It looks like they were all dummies but no humans. For a mod with only living creatures that would loook really bad or you have to work very very much on the animations so that they look good.
For that we would need mesh deformities and a true skeletal system. Sorry man not happening anytime soon.

I think an organic can be pulled off.

There are standard animation formats to do stuff like that already. That's the whole point of importing animations from max, it imports them to standard formats. It's not like the spring devs would be making the new animation system from scratch, they would be working from existing libraries for standard animation systems in models. It would likely be time consuming and boring but it's definately plausable. We just need coders who are willing to do projects like that which we don't have right now with there being so much fun stuff to do elsewhere.

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 19 May 2006, 05:42

Well, just as NanoBlobs was a fairly successful effort to help the AI community improve the skirmish AIs (and if NTAI 8.x isn't a success, I dunno what is), I am intending this to be a project that hopefully helps convince the Spring developer community to focus less on fancy graphical effects like shaders, and more on the nuts-and-bolts of content development, mod features, and other things.

Spring can just keep getting more and more gorgeous, but essentially stay in stasis, gameplay-wise and content-wise, or we can begin to advance the engine towards a world that doesn't look like OTA any more. A lot've this is fairly boring work, feature by feature, so I am hoping that the dev. community will be inspired by the fact that at least one team is going to use all of the new features, much as I did, to a lesser extent, with NanoBlobs (everything from aiming arcs to the non-map-damage scripts).

Ideally, I'd love to see Spring get to the point where we're developing new creatures for a mod like this in a man-day or so, including some animations. I'll be talking about the animation side of things as I get some content built, because I've learned a lot about workflow from the development of NanoBlobs.

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 19 May 2006, 09:14

I think I'll still continue with the robot, it'll be a fun little project.

If you want something thats not too organic modelling, I'll be willing.

You'll also need to explain your planned animation system to us all to ensure that any models made will work with it

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 19 May 2006, 18:23

I think I'll give him a nice big hammer...

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 18:46

Neat!

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 19 May 2006, 20:33

STOP! Hammer time

EDIT: 2094 polies, so a bit much for Spring

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 21:09

Hammer, eh?

Lindir The Green · Post by **Lindir The Green** » 19 May 2006, 22:23

Yes, it is a hammer.

+1

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 19 May 2006, 22:31

BIG hammer? BIG EXPLODY hammer! BIG HAMMER that SHOOTS laser beams out of the HILT! Sounds good.

-2

Spring RTS Engine

Project Two: Now Recruiting