Spring RTS Engine

Is it just me?

Yes. I used a Poser model of a "heroic" human male to get the proportions correct when modeling that figure.

Heroic proportions are stylized BTW, something like 8 heads tall (IIRC 6.5-7 is normal)

Yeah, I know that, and the proportions of the shoulders are different as well- practically nobody has shoulders that wide, IRL. I'm saying that I used a specific model to establish proportions, not that it's human-normal. If it makes you happier, they were fed steroids and human growth hormones, or something.

They were subjected to site-specific gene therapy to reinstate the human myosin A2 gene (our necessary muscular curse) to its pre-human function without compromising the integrity of the cranium.

Yay for science.

just easier to say that the Resistance ships are run at 0.5G. hence they tend to be taller than the *average* human ^_^

Er, that wouldn't really work if they tried to land on a planet with more gravity then. Easiest would be just to say "it's a mech, the pilot sits in the torso".

I was referring to the other infantry in the pic, not the recent heavy trooper model.

The Heavy Troopers can now fly and stuff. That turned out to be quite hard to manage- I thought it'd be pretty simple, but I'd forgotten about the problems with aircraft, and meh, doing group code with transformers is a royal pain!

At least now I understand how MoveCtrl works fairly well. Maybe the next unit will use a pure MoveCtrl implementation, I like how it works. I don't suppose anybody's out there with any experience with that, and has any useful advice about how to go about that, especially from a UI perspective...? I'd love to do a unit that does something crazy, like a genuine hopper, but I'm not really sure at all how to go about that yet. Maybe COB-Lua stuff in the walk-cycle loop?

Only thing left is finishing the !*@#*! cursor animations and some very minor tweaks, and I think this beta's done. Sorry this is dragging out so much, it's been hard to free up enough time.

After this beta, I think it's time to find a way to do actual MP playtesting and get balance unbroken enough for a credible release.

Argh wrote:I'd love to do a unit that does something crazy, like a genuine hopper

I would love to model this!

Great!

Well... um... lemme think up a game-design purpose for it (er, besides being cool as hell). I'm thinking it should be Overmind, I haven't exactly given them much that's new. Maybe it hops, has some light gun, but is mainly a suicide bomb unit? That might be kewl.

I also want an ubermech (2K tricount, even 3K, would be fine, as this is an endgame, Kroggie-type thing, but please don't kill me with complexity of parts / unwrapping, since space will be at a premium, due to size) for Overmind. Like the others, it needs to be a mockery of a human form... and feel Overmind, i.e., harsh lines, little curvature... I'm thinking with a tall, almost pyramidal head design... oh yeah, and it needs to be armed with a giant HTH weapon of some kind. Was thinking that a ball-and-chain might be fun to animate... but a giant axe, club, whatever, just not a lightsaber ripoff, please... and the head should be designed with a ray weapon for a "mouth" below the single eye, for the true anime mech-monster experience, I'll do a "charging sequence" and stuff.

Would make a fun challenge, and give me something to do whilst the MP beta proceeds, etc. and we wait for Spring 0.77.

It's that, or start working on a navy, which is the one major area of conflict that's ignored. Or SP campaigns. Aiieee. So much to do, so little time...

Okay, here's the hopper mine.



Technical notes: the 'head' is based off a combination of Tyranid spore mines (but with a big leg instead of trailing tentacles) and old underwater mines that resemble spiked ball-and-chains with gravity inverted. It is intended to spin slowly, and the 'bumps' are pressure sensors to tell the mine when to go boom. As such, it would be quite awesome if the mine would 'dive' or 'headbut' what it's attacking just before exploding (to time the explosion and jumping animations, give it a dummy weapon that, when it starts aiming, will make the mine jump - presumably using MoveCtrl - at the target to get into kamikaze distance quickly. That's how I'd do it, anyway).

The twin rods that join the lower leg to the foot are hydraulic shock absorbers, designed to take the impact with each hop. The idea is that the foot can rotate around where they connect while the shock absorbers will slide back and forth into the leg joint with each landing, absorbing some of the shock.

FYI: The 'head' area is rotated -15 degrees from the horizontal, the upperleg +30

I've shown in it in it's 'default' position, ie unmoving and not going anywhere

EDIT: By the way, could you at least comment on the concept pictures I posted earlier? I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing with them :/

As I've already discussed this but here's a concept image which you may find intriguing:

Click to see more[/url]

Fancy!

Feels a bit like a scout / fast attack unit, ie it 'folds up' into a ball to roll around really quickly then 'unfolds' with legs and rockets to pump firepower into soft targets.

Unfortunately, we already have one of those... (the wheely flamethrower thing)

hmmm, interesting spin on it (no pun intended), but I think the focus is more on the big evil eye in the middle.

Perhaps when damaged it could uncouple and the ball could roll around crushing things before attempting to rebuild its appendages when all is quiet, unless the spherical form gets blown up finally destroying the unit.

Sounds like a boss from an FPS game

By the way, could you at least comment on the concept pictures I posted earlier? I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing with them :/

Sorry, I've been a bit distracted, never got around to commenting on those. I guess the first one's supposed to be a mobile energy weapon on legs? Could be interesting, the Resistance really needs something with enough punch to deal with UltraAssault rushes. I'd like to see that developed a bit more. Dunno about the whole logistical-support aspect- building some Lua to fly it in and "recharge" it will probably not be too hard, though.

The bomber's not the right direction to go, I think, although I like the design ideas there. However, it's basically just a bigger, fancier, and even more scorpion-esque chopper, and we already have two of them. If you're itching to do a scorpion-chopper, I'd say that redoing the scout is probably the way to go- I have a couple of interesting things I'd like to try, actually, where it might work well. But I'd rather that the bomber felt more like a conventional aircraft, tbh.

If it helps, I've already modelled the massive Positron Cannon. Check the Random WIP thread.

I took a quick peek, and that is a beast of a cannon.

I had something more like this in my mind's eye when i saw your drawing GMN...

[XIII]Roxas wrote:I took a quick peek, and that is a beast of a cannon.

Indeed it is: