Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.
Michilus_nimbus wrote:Star Control 2 mod, with all of the fancy lua scripting abilities that are eventually meant to be implemented.
Quite impossible I'm afraid.
Oh, I have plans for that one.... plans that don't involve LUA. Essentially, doing an RTS version of SC1. Think "rushiest rush game that ever rushed" - every unit is a builder, and there are only minimal defenses, as was in SC1. The catch is that all combat actions take energy, and your energy supply is fixed income - so microing is key, and using large forces means your access to special powers (shields, cloaks, etc) is limited.
Of course, I have plans for just about everything else too, so saying that I have plans means nothing useful at all.
A semi-realistic near-future (50 to 100 years) mod of clanking replication robots in a solar system.
Would need better environment modelling and physics than currently in Spring. Gravity is there already, but air pressure and consituent gases are important too.
Solar energy would be the mainstay, and wind could be possibly useful on bodies that have atmosphere and wind. Geothermal, nice too. If on a body with life, there could be chemical resources (ie fossil fuels).
Mobile units with solar power would be slow. You could use batteries or fuels for faster vehicles instead but they'd run out. And you'd have to generate the fuel at a extraction place and refine it. If you could take one part from the atmosphere as you go, it'd be easier to move. This probably is only possible on planets with life since it can hold the chemistry "off balance" for the machines to extract energy out of. (Oxygen would slowly deplete from Earth's atmosphere if all life was destroyed.)
"Aircraft" would have to hover with rocket power on airless bodies, meaning low fuel loads, they'd run out of fuel in a few minutes, depending on gravity though. Wings and propellers would be useful in thick atmospheres, and have big endurance.
No hovercraft on airless bodies, there's no air to compress to the skirt.
Electric lasers would be useful since they only need electricity to operate. For guns and missiles you'd have to manufacture the ammunition with metal and energy expenditure. But their burst destruction power would be much higher than for lasers. Except for chemical lasers.
Lasers would be useful for anti-air since they have no lag. Even better on airless bodies. Useless on foggy bodies.
Small solar-powered cheap buggies would be useful for exploration.
On some maps you could have satellites providing snapshots of the battlefield every now and then. (resolution varies.) On some maps you start with one unit and don't have any knowledge even of the terrain.
Ships and subs would be useful too.
Not too many units or factories should be used.
If we look at some rocky bodies in the solar system and how they would be for playing:
-Mercury: Not much of atmosphere, very hot hot side 400 C, cold cold side -90 C, ice in eternal darkness at the poles. Gravity third of Earth's.
Solar power would be great, if the heat wouldn't destroy it.
-Venus: Thick and opaque atmosphere 90 times Earth's pressure (airplanes would work great!), very hot (400 C) and stable. About the size of Earth. CO2 atmosphere, can't be used as fuel or oxidizer. Wind power would be the mainstay here. You'd probably need energy for cooling.
-Earth: We all know this... fossil fuels and trees and whatnot would be useful for energy. Wind, Solar, Geothermal too all possible.
-Moon: No atmosphere, so no airplanes or wind power, but low gravity, good for hovering rockets. Solar cells not inhibited by weather like on Earth.
-Mars: Much less atmosphere than on earth so it's debatable if you're better off with rockets or airplanes. CO2 gas, no life. Minor weather. No tectonics. Solar panels primary energy.
-Europa (Jupiter's moon): Ice world, so not much metals, perhaps some that have impacted. No atmosphere, little sunlight either. You'd have to go with fusion perhaps. Cold, low gravity.
-Io (Jupiter's moon): Rocky and geologically active. Earthquakes and hot flows of 1000 degrees, yay for geothermal power, but dangerous! Otherwise low temperature. Metals. Sulfur lakes. Interesting! No atmosphere or water.
-Titan (Saturn's moon): Inert nitrogen atmosphere, very little sunlight. Possibly some wind. Lakes. Methane and hydrocarbons. Ice and lakes. No metals except in rocky core.
-Dwarf planet Ceres: very low gravity, icy surface.
-Asteroid Vesta: still lower gravity, rocky surface (metals!).
-Asteroids: Can be rocky or icy, can be tough or made of dust or rock lumps, can have different metals. Extremely low gravity. Solar is the thing here. At varying distances from the sun.
Bodies with no ice mantle and vulcanic activity are more probable at having heavy metals brought up from the core and thus more strategically valuable.
In other solar systems than our own, very different planets could exist. The mod could depict the robotic battle for such a solar system, that would be handled one planet or object at the time, using in-situ resources (since interplanetary transport is so damn expensive...)
A mod where you build 'Town Halls' on geo vents, and then the town hall can build buildings around it to expand your city (think EE Superweapon hub style). Eventually, you reach machine shops (Tanks), Armories (Infantry), Spec Ops (Level 2 Infantry), Mechanized Assault Complex (Level 2 Tanks), Air Field (Airplanes), and Air Force Base (Level 2 Aircraft).
These cities would also increase industrially by building, not only mexes in the outlying areas, but metalworking shops (Think Metal Makers). These would convert Raw Material (Energy) into Processed Goods (Metal). But, by building these, you limit the space you can build your factories.
By growing your cities, you could eventually wage war over a planetary scale. Maps created for this type of mod would have to have multiple geo vents spread out all over the level.
To discourage extreme porcing, defenses would be built by Military Complexes, fixed buildings that would basically be the Keep of a castle. Constructing defenses around it is all well and good, but it should have a whopper of an explosion (if you neutralize the keep, you blow the fortress and make it a shell of what it was).
I would like a mod with HUGE superweapons to be built, from that type that takes lifetimes to make but blasts what the enemy took a lifetime to make with one shot.
A mod where you build 'Town Halls' on geo vents, and then the town hall can build buildings around it to expand your city (think EE Superweapon hub style). Eventually, you reach machine shops (Tanks), Armories (Infantry), Spec Ops (Level 2 Infantry), Mechanized Assault Complex (Level 2 Tanks), Air Field (Airplanes), and Air Force Base (Level 2 Aircraft).
These cities would also increase industrially by building, not only mexes in the outlying areas, but metalworking shops (Think Metal Makers). These would convert Raw Material (Energy) into Processed Goods (Metal). But, by building these, you limit the space you can build your factories.
By growing your cities, you could eventually wage war over a planetary scale. Maps created for this type of mod would have to have multiple geo vents spread out all over the level.
To discourage extreme porcing, defenses would be built by Military Complexes, fixed buildings that would basically be the Keep of a castle. Constructing defenses around it is all well and good, but it should have a whopper of an explosion (if you neutralize the keep, you blow the fortress and make it a shell of what it was).
Air transports, sea transports with the oppertuinty of getting abilities for artilery and airstrikes.
I just get tingles seeing epic transports going into battle and i love the DDAY normandy 3rd party missions for many RTS.
Also a darkage like mod. Basically the units are TINY, big enough to see em in a nice view but..smaller then a pewee. Units would be built in groups of say 5. So it would be awsome epic spammage of just literally nearly a thousand units clash in the middle of a battlefield. Archers would be realistic too. They would be at the back shooting volleys with the risk of hitting your own men. They can NOT aim at others. Walled cities being near to impossible of bringing down as footmen are easily ploughed through from volleys and hot oil. To win you have to kill the person's 2 coms. King and queen, king builds queen gives res +. Though for this to work, seige weapons such as a battering ram would only have to damage buildings. Melee would have to work. Formations is a must.
Last edited by Muzic on 16 Nov 2006, 05:29, edited 1 time in total.
j5mello wrote:i like your transport idea better. Probably one of the reason i was so excited about Supcom
I know, i just like big sword battles. But transports are sexy, its just in my opinion the most EPIC thing to watch is a massive ammount of transports filled with units all just landing into hostile enemy territory and watching they struggle with their lives as they get down.
I'd love something with fewer units, and more "personality" to the units. I think that one of the biggest things the *craft type games have over TA-style games, the atmosphere. Every unit is completely different - there wasn't a marine with a autogun, marine with a sniper rifle, marine with a flamethrower. Instead there was marine/firebat/ghost, way more personality. One mech unit, Goliath, instead of 34 fun flavors of kbots.
Really, it seems like each *craft unit tends to have 3-4 TA like units all rolled into one.
To be clear, I much prefer TA's more flexible resource structure, better command interface, more strategic pace, and less paper-rock-scissor gameplay. However, I do miss the really slick, "coolness" of the starcraft units.
Pxtl wrote:Oh, I have plans for that one.... plans that don't involve LUA. Essentially, doing an RTS version of SC1. Think "rushiest rush game that ever rushed" - every unit is a builder, and there are only minimal defenses, as was in SC1. The catch is that all combat actions take energy, and your energy supply is fixed income - so microing is key, and using large forces means your access to special powers (shields, cloaks, etc) is limited.
Of course, I have plans for just about everything else too, so saying that I have plans means nothing useful at all.
