Spring RTS Engine

I was looking at the name P.U.R.E. and pondering... pondering...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU

GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix.

P.U.R.E. is a quasi-recursive acronym!

A hidden GPL-PURE link perhaps? The world may never know.

*prod*

Hey Argh, any stuff you want me doing?

Um, I'm actually working on some concept drawings this weekend, trying to get the final set of things roughed out, clean up the concepts. Lemme scan them (I'm at a place with a scanner, for once), let's see what's possible- just use them as very rough guides, of course, feel free to ignore / improvise.

Vague concept stuff (by all means, improve / improvise, etc., these are just quickies):


Heavy Infantry concept. In combat, they raise their shields, slowing themselves down considerably but raising their armor value quite a lot. I still haven't done the rocket-pack version, dunno whether it's even necessary, the way other stuff has been working out. Feel free to try and come up with a good set of knee / elbow joins, but these can be treated pretty much like humanoid robots, I'm not nearly as concerned as I was with the infantry. Might want to make the size relationship between the head and the body a little different, I don't think a real person could fit in that suit at the moment, and they should be about 10 feet tall.


A vague concept for the Resistance's version of the Interceptor. Note the sharply-angled tail fins, reminiscent of the F-22, etc., but with a single engine. Will use long-range missiles as the primary weapon- they're quite expensive, but can defend against Overmind aircraft with more reliability than the Overmind's Interceptor swarms.


Scoops metal, dumps it into the little cart, the cart goes into a "smelter", smoke comes out and a sound effect plays. I hate the turret, and I actually have a pretty good turret for the Resistance's Advance Bases, so I'll probably use that...


A counter to the Sniper (which the Resistance actually kind've needs, at the moment), this is like a walking LaserCannon, direct-fire, and has to halt to fire. It's too wide in the front view, needs to lose a bit to feel right, and I'm thinking it might be really kewl to have hydraulic spikes along the sides of the legs that slap into the ground when it deploys.


The Overmind gets a drone carrier, launching swarms of drones, Invid-style. I already have the LUA to do a Protoss-style carrier, it's just a matter of having the model.

The main need, design-wise, for the carrier is that all of the holes are exactly the same size. I'm not at all in love with the basic design, although I liked the triangular rear "command deck" concept, it feels right for the Overmind. They don't even have to face upwards, although if they're going to be angled, they should be modeled so that I can turn them, just to keep the hatch-opening sequences from being a nightmare.


Vague idea for a Resistance transformer unit. I think it might be fun to have an air / land mecha like this. Would use LUA to change forms, I have a plan for how to do a transformation that does not use the Morph Gadget, which I don't like a lot.

More coming...

......

Argh wrote:
A counter to the Sniper (which the Resistance actually kind've needs, at the moment), this is like a walking LaserCannon, direct-fire, and has to halt to fire. It's too wide in the front view, needs to lose a bit to feel right, and I'm thinking it might be really kewl to have hydraulic spikes along the sides of the legs that slap into the ground when it deploys.

You realise the side view is just a big bertha?

Yeah, it's like a BB with legs. This is a bad thing?

I remember when I drew art like this, I was in the 5th grade. At least draw something nice if you are doing a derivative design.

Nope, that's a complete waste of time. Considering that my concept sketches I do for myself are even "worse", in that they're just vague concepts of shape and form... I could care less about people's opinions of their "quality", which is entirely irrelevant to the final product, in my experience.

I'm not putting an hour into a single drawing, when I could just *model* them that fast, and I expect GMN to do like I do, and just use the drawing as a rough guide anyhow.

Doing a polished drawing puts me in the position of "art dictator", not "game designer", by implying I want something exactly like whatever, which is not how I operate. I'm not surprised that you find this weird, tbh, but it's not my problem

I expect artists to be creative people who have minds of their own, not extensions of myself. P.U.R.E.'s artwork is the sum of three artists' conceptual understanding of what the game is about, and I think it's a much richer experience that way, frankly.

ok dude, whatever you want to tell yourself.

I took one look at the Long Gun Mech and thought "there's no way that thing can walk with two legs". Thus...



And here's an alternative version whose legs are based off Combine Hunters (which, by the way, are awesome) from HL2.



Both must deploy to fire, as requested

Hmm. Innovative, and certainly not same ol' same ol', but it's going to need editing to work well. Feels more like something the Overmind would use, at the moment, and it needs more boxy greebling, imo, to suggest a Resistance design. That said, the main issues are technical.

With three legs, it's gonna be a tough one to animate, especially if the third leg's up in the front- usually, three-leg designs are just tail-draggers, but this will have to move like a gorilla, with a rocking motion and alternation between the front and the rear pair, maybe with the good ol' desynchronized walk-cycle concept to keep it feeling natural. Been awhile since I've had to do that, should be fun to revisit that code, with what I know now

To get it to work, the rear legs must have joints that allow for rotation on the Y axis > 60 degrees (must be able to reach a 90-degree angle, without clipping), otherwise they won't work in a believable way, given their travel.

Needs an obvious place for a pilot, too, probably in a cab beside the gun, because that front leg will get in the line of sight during forward motion. I like the double-joint version better, because it'll be easier to set up the travel on the walk-cycle, plus I can use the "knees" to convey certain things.

ok dude, whatever you want to tell yourself.

LOL... I don't have to tell myself anything, thanks. I just thought that explaining my process of thoughts behind how I do stuff would be fun I think that the hostility it evokes, when people see how I do stuff, is actually really amusing, tbh.

there is hostility? I was openly laughing at you. There are others but they seem to not bother laughing in the open.

Argh wrote:Needs an obvious place for a pilot, too, probably in a cab beside the gun, because that front leg will get in the line of sight during forward motion. I like the double-joint version better, because it'll be easier to set up the travel on the walk-cycle, plus I can use the "knees" to convey certain things.

Argh, look closer. There is a cab on the side of the gun.

As for this looking Overmindey, I personally think the Current Artillery Mech looks Resistancey (sans texture, obviously) so maybe we should just swap them 'round or something.

As for the concepts, yeah, they're a bit a crap, but they give me enough of an idea of what Argh's after (in terms of weapons, size and general purpose) for me to pick up the idea and run with it.

gmn, I could give you a picture of an orange and you would make a neat sci-fi model.

smoth wrote:gmn, I could give you a picture of an orange and you would make a neat sci-fi model.

I lol'd

There is a cab on the side of the gun.

Oh, lol, I thought that was an ammo-box At scale, that is one really tall mofo, then...

I personally think the Current Artillery Mech looks Resistancey (sans texture, obviously) so maybe we should just swap them 'round or something.

Hmm. I'll think about that one, and try a basic reskin, just to see how it feels, when I get home Sunday. You might be right, we'll just have to see how it feels.

As for the concepts, yeah, they're a bit a crap, but they give me enough of an idea of what Argh's after (in terms of weapons, size and general purpose) for me to pick up the idea and run with it.

Exactly. You should see the ones that I do when I don't even worry about anybody else seeing it! They're napkin-drawings

I was openly laughing at you.

Well, have a good laugh, then, I'm sure that's a healthy response to something you don't understand

If I wasn't so lazy I'd have photoshopped some pew-pews and this is a lazor descriptions in your scribblings.

Argh wrote:

I was openly laughing at you.

Well, have a good laugh, then, I'm sure that's a healthy response to something you don't understand

Understand what? That you cannot draw? That gmn could make a dead rat look fuck-win if given creative license?

Your attempts to posture yourself as any sort of authority on anything reminds me of high school drop outs who consider themselves educated.

smoth wrote:That gmn could make a dead rat look fuck-win if given creative license?

I love smoth's method of complimenting. It's both offensive and satisfying at the same time...

As for the cab, I can make it bigger. And it's not like you can't rotate the torso+legs so that it is a back-leg-dragger rather than a gorilla style walker (though the gorilla style is awesome. Again, see HL2 Hunters)