New Mod concept (WIP)

[kiki]

Hey all, this is my first contribution to this forum. I would just like to say that Spring is the best OS game that I have ever played, and probably ever will play. I still like Warzone 2100, tho. Anyway, I have only been playing for a week, but one of the first things that came to mind when I started playing was "Wow, I have to mod this." So here I am presenting my ideas for my mod that I will begin to work on. Please leave your comments, opinions, ideas, suggestions, and lulz, but PLEASE do not take my ideas for your own use without my permission. I will freely give my permission, but I still want you to have it.

Basically, I would like to make a mod that has factions that are so different from each other that each faction will develop play styles that are unique from others. These factions will be able to equally defeat all other factions, and a players playing style will be reflected or enhanced by the faction he chooses. Also, some factions may be better suited to some maps than others.

I have some general ideas for what I want the factions to be like. One faction I want to be fairly robust in its chassis, with mostly hover units. In addition, I have an idea that each unit can have a good degree of modularity to it. For example, there would be a chassis unit upon which a choice of turrets and other structures could be placed. A transport design that can load units into different slots would probably be the most instinctive or easiest way to do this. However, I have an idea that I am not sure is possible (please tell me what you think of this). Could a unit have a surface upon which a conbot or nanoturret unit could build, just like on the map. For example, you could build an llt on a unit instead of on the ground? Basically, the unit would have a simulated piece of map on it, where units could be built. This idea is far more versatile than the transport concept. For this modularity system, interesting combinations on units could be achieved, like a factory unit that produces its own energy and metal. A base could be built as a completely mobile entity, allowing for some adaptation of a defense to attacks, and more flexibility. This faction would have strong armor, but pretty weak weapons.

Another faction would be one that is based upon a legged, all-terrain base (not sure how many legs yet, probably 4) that is fast, but fairly weak armor-wise. In addition, weapons would be powerful. I have some pretty nifty ideas for this faction, such as a very large and spindly spider-like unit that would be able to walk over enemy units, and shoot them with turrets mounted underneath its belly. For this faction, i hope to use terrain-adapting gaits in scripts (not as complicated as it sounds), and thus less legs (like 4) is probably better.

I have a few other obscure ideas for factions, like an underwater one (this sounds coolish, but kind of sucky) and one that focuses on powerful hovering airships shooting down on ground units, but I haven't given much though to these ideas yet.

Besides these factions, various other goals of mine are:
*No ota content (from scratch)
*incorporation of intelligent scripts to reduce micro and improve econ management
*Good strategy!!!! and then good gfx!!!!!
*Fun, action-packed games that are longer (like NOTA? never played), and discourage rushing. Also, the games should be long enough to access the awesome tech levels.
*Formations!!! I want to be able to create custom formations in my games, like a nice set of delta formations for bombers. In most cases, square formations tend to suck.
*Cool weapons and effects, use of impulse, and impulse weapons
*Absorption defenses, like a single unit that can destroy a unit and then reclaim its wreckage, or a unit that can stun and then capture a unit
*Lots (like 5 or so) of tech levels that have awesomer and awesomer units

Things I need to do (don't flame me) are learn to use gimp (photoshop does't support rgba tgas anymore, and I dont feel like downgrading), learn to use blender (I know wings is simpler but blender is cooler, and has more applications in other areas), and maybe convince myself how it is impossible for me to do this alone and to recruit other people onto a team.

Well, please reply, and tell me what you think

Thanks

[Guessmyname]

I have some general ideas for what I want the factions to be like. One faction I want to be fairly robust in its chassis, with mostly hover units. In addition, I have an idea that each unit can have a good degree of modularity to it. For example, there would be a chassis unit upon which a choice of turrets and other structures could be placed. A transport design that can load units into different slots would probably be the most instinctive or easiest way to do this. However, I have an idea that I am not sure is possible (please tell me what you think of this). Could a unit have a surface upon which a conbot or nanoturret unit could build, just like on the map. For example, you could build an llt on a unit instead of on the ground? Basically, the unit would have a simulated piece of map on it, where units could be built. This idea is far more versatile than the transport concept. For this modularity system, interesting combinations on units could be achieved, like a factory unit that produces its own energy and metal. A base could be built as a completely mobile entity, allowing for some adaptation of a defense to attacks, and more flexibility. This faction would have strong armor, but pretty weak weapons.

There's a lua thingie in progress for modular stuff, as I recall. Ask the guy who makes Blox about it.

Another faction would be one that is based upon a legged, all-terrain base (not sure how many legs yet, probably 4) that is fast, but fairly weak armor-wise. In addition, weapons would be powerful. I have some pretty nifty ideas for this faction, such as a very large and spindly spider-like unit that would be able to walk over enemy units, and shoot them with turrets mounted underneath its belly. For this faction, i hope to use terrain-adapting gaits in scripts (not as complicated as it sounds), and thus less legs (like 4) is probably better.

You'll want the Real Walk Script thing that Zwzsg and Zodius made

*No ota content (from scratch)

Yay!

*incorporation of intelligent scripts to reduce micro and improve econ management

You'll want to use LUA for this

*Formations!!! I want to be able to create custom formations in my games, like a nice set of delta formations for bombers. In most cases, square formations tend to suck.

Again LUA. I think there's already a LUA gadget for custom formations (in CA? Not sure)

*Cool weapons and effects, use of impulse, and impulse weapons

Careful here. Impulse is a bitch to use.

*Absorption defenses, like a single unit that can destroy a unit and then reclaim its wreckage, or a unit that can stun and then capture a unit

Possible. With LUA you could probably automate it (auto-capture on stun, auto-reclaim on target death etc)

*Lots (like 5 or so) of tech levels that have awesomer and awesomer units

Eeee... bad idea. Look what happened to supcom. Then again, EE has managed to pull off 3 tech levels without lower level units becoming obsolete

Also: Use wings. Have you seen Blender's UI? It's SATANIC. If you ever want to expand into other areas, like high-poly stuff for wings and so on, you'd probably have to go for a proffesional (ie not-free) program

[rcdraco]

You stole MY idea, I made a little mod called BloX. You can build your units using multiple different chassis, and tons of different weapons. I'm even adding an upgrading turret system so that the more the guns fight, the better they get.

And as far as tech levels, I'm only looking at 2 tech levels.

[j5mello]

lulz... cause clearly you are the first person to come up with modular units...

the only reason the ideas are so similar is because we can't (yet) have modular units like commercial RTS games...

[Felix the Cat]

You stole MY idea, I made a little mod called BloX. You can build your units using multiple different chassis, and tons of different weapons. I'm even adding an upgrading turret system so that the more the guns fight, the better they get.

And as far as tech levels, I'm only looking at 2 tech levels.

Yes draco, he CLEARLY stole your idea, I mean look at his post, I can practically see the Blox now.

[rcdraco]

Take this early version, it has everything you need to get started.

http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/229 ... _War_v101/

Includes 2 1 slot chassis, 2 guns, and a builder. I don't want people meddling around in my newer versions because they apparently are sloppy.

All of the models are 3do, pretty sure the scripts are all free, the chassis are free for sure. I do not recommend using the models, and if you are using s3o, make sure to remove the 3do bmp's in unittextures.

[Peet]

You stole MY idea, I made a little mod called BloX. You can build your units using multiple different chassis, and tons of different weapons. I'm even adding an upgrading turret system so that the more the guns fight, the better they get.

And as far as tech levels, I'm only looking at 2 tech levels.

Except it was Maelstrom's idea lulz.

[kiki]

Wow... um sorry for "stealing" ideas. I have had the modular units idea even before I started playing Warzone 2100. Thanks for pointing me towards blox! I kind of like it, but there are things I dont like and I am not sure what they are.

Thank you for pointing me to Lua. <sarcasm>I was planning on making an entire mod without any scripting of any sort</sarcasm>

Blender's ui is imo heavenly(well, thats not the right word but its the opposite of satanic), unless things have changed within the last 10 months. Ill mess with wings though, if you really suggest it.

Um, thanks for the tips, lulz, and flame, guys. I apologize to those of you who have been violated by finding another person who realizes the potential of rts gaming.

What is so "bitch" about impulse?
Is the unit I described upon which you can build units feasible?
What do you think of factions concentrated on underwater or airships?

[KDR_11k]

Building on units could possibly be hacked together using Lua.

Impulse is simply unpredictable and you can't easily modify the damage an impulse collision gives.

[Guessmyname]

underwater will be tricky simply because not all maps will support underwater units to a large degree

Airships, by contast, will always work on any map

As KDR said, impulse is very unpredictable and pretty much uncontrollable.

[rcdraco]

As far as impulse is concerned, the turrets all have mass 1, so they will fly if hit with a powerful gun. I turned down impulse, and area of effect to counter it, there is probably a way via LUA to check if it's loaded, then just make it's mass heavy.

[kiki]

Okay, so how would these "LUA hax" work in order to make it possible to build structs on a unit? Also, could I make one faction really heavy, and use impulse to blow away units from other factions?

I have been thinking about that tall spider mech I talked about, and I was wondering how I could make it able to walk over units. From there, how would it avoid stepping on other units?

I have another idea, and I was wondering if it has been done before, or "stolen". A unit could have turrets on 4 sides, making it effective when surrounded by enemies.

[kiki]

I realized that this mod is missing a primary theme. The theme is futuristic warfare, and pure awesomeness. In addition, the theme is strategy and amazing gameplay. I want to take full advantage of the Spring engine, as well as scripting and such. As usual, here are a few more ideas and questions:

Can transports drop all their units at once? Can they drop them off in the air, and let them fall to the ground? Can transports carry aircraft, which fly right out of the transport?

Could a unit be a mobile factory, which is a transport that builds units to occupy its slots for units?

How do transports work exactly? Is there a weight on each unit, and is there a certain number of transport slots?

Units can still shoot when on a transport, right?

Is there ability to use a moving shield thing that moves to deflect incoming shots using a script or something? THink of something like a metal plate that is rapidly moved into the paths of oncoming shots to deflect them, held by an arm on a mech or something.

Can a unit have modes for air/water/land? For example, a unit gets in teh water and uses torpedos instead of laser, and becomes a submarine. Or a plane lands in water and becomes a sub or something like that.

Can custom buttons be added to units? Like a transform button?

Whats so bad about SUpCom besides need for a supercomputer to run? All i have seen and heard have been amazing.

Ideas:

Okay, this time I am truly "stealing" an idea, but the CA terrain deformation is really amazing. I love to use that feature. I think that a good application is making tunnels and brigdes. Tunnels would just be forming a valley or slot through a mountain. Bridges would be raising underwater terrain above water (you could even make some sort of island)

A ship that comes to shore, sprouts legs, and walks around (I have though about 2 legged and 4 legged designs).

Shot absorber, which is a high armor block that just sits there attracting enemy fire (is there a value system that attracts enemy fire to a certain unit rather than another?). THis is basically for the tactic called "decoying", and I guess maybe it would be a bad idea.

sattelite, which is a high flying, low speed air unit for recon.

I need names for my factions. They need to have good acronyms too :). I would like to come up with these myself, but please give suggestions. So far, the factions are:

*Super heavy hover units that can have stuf built on them (basically modular), and have good armor, med speed, notsogood weapons, great mobility/flexibility (mobile bases). Bad in hills/mountains
*Super fast stealthy legged mechs, or spider mechs. Weak armor, but fast and surprisingly powerful weapons. All terrain goodness
*Space-based air units, basically all air units. Big airships, good weapons, floating bases, and pretty much stacked. Hard to get resources, and expensive units.

There may be more to come, but this is more than enough of a start. I hope you get an idea of the intended balance from these descriptions. I am excited because all of these factions sound really fun to play. It is time to get some units planned.

I think swarm tactics are great, especially with air units. Maybe encourage this somehow so that even with higher tech units being more appealing, t1 is still viable for swarms in later game.

[Mooseral]

This sounds like a good idea... Non-TA mods are welcome, so far as I'm concerned.

Just make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. This mod sounds really ambitious; for a first mod, unless you have experience elsewhere, I don't know how you plan to finish this unless you have a team to work with you.

The most complex mods, which contain LUA (most don't, or to a very limited extent, as most of Spring modding is done using variable editing) have so far been made by very experienced people, or groups of fairly experienced people.

Also, I reccomend playing Spring for a while before you start modding, as well as browsing the forums more. Doing these things will give you some ideas of the limitations of the engine, so that you may make your own mod more effectively. Many of your questions can be answered by the engine and community directly.

[Argh]

Um, hey... lbc, er, what is your skillset?

If you know how to program, great, put together a gameplay demo, find artists. If you know how to make art, great, let's start seeing screens. If you know how to animate... er, time to learn BOS, which is... different...

In short, don't talk so much, do stuff.

If you have a proper game design document made, great, share it, then start working. If you don't have one, you should probably write one, just so that you have some goals- your design's likely to change along the way, due to engine limitations or practical considerations, but it's better to start off very well organized.

As one of those "experienced people" out there, that's all I've gotta say- you have a rather long and fairly steep learning-curve ahead, and dreaming out loud about possible gameplay isn't going to get you very far, especially as it doesn't sound like you have a really solid plan yet. "Futuristic warfare, and pure awesomeness" is not a game design- it's just a statement of intent

If you'd arrived with a complete game design doc., showing that you'd already done your homework, that'd be one thing- but you don't even have a backstory, an art plan, or a solid concept of game design yet. You need those things- just kind've dabbling about with tools and code will take forever, and you'll just end up with a quarter-finished game, like most "noodlers" do.

For example, here's a sketch of the game I'm working on (I'll not mention the name or go into a lot of detail, this isn't a plug):

Statement of Intent:

Argh's Game will be a tight, fast game of futuristic warfare, designed for competitive play.

Game Design:

Both sides will control the map by either building or capturing certain devices, buildings, or other features. Players will win by annihilating the enemy's forces.

Argh's Game features two sides (we'll call 'em A and B here).

Side A is designed for rush play, and will feature a fluid, dynamic economy, and a variety of specialized units that are designed to be used together in combined-arms tactics. They will have inferior static defenses and aircraft, but will have superior land forces, for their costs. Side A will reward hardcore micromanagers with superior tools for defeating any possible combination of defenses.

Side B will feature delivery of masses of units, using LUA. Side B will have superior static defenses and aircraft, and will have an economy designed and ramped to produce "waves" of attack, followed by attempts to hold ground that has been taken by the wave. Their ground forces are weaker, but are generally less specialized than Side A, so they will be at a disadvantage when Side A is using the proper counters and tactical techniques, but at an advantage if Side A is simply sending units in without considering tactical utility. Side B is designed for macromanagement players, who wish to play at the strategic level and mainly manage an economy and a series of battles, as opposed to small groups of individual units.

Art and Design:

Side A consists entirely of evil, vaguely-anime robots. All of Side A's artwork should have sharp lines and lack curves, except where realism demands otherwise (gun barrels, wheels, etc.). Side A is dichromatic, with a strong base color to emphasize to players that they are watching an army of soulless machines.

Side B consists of the humans fighting the evil robots. Side B's units should resemble modern military hardware, with some futuristic touches, but without a high concept, so that they are believable and not merely iconic. Side B's color scheme should be kept deliberately multi-colored, using earth tones, grays and greens for ground forces, two-tone color schemes for aircraft, and buildings should include elements like sandbags and other visual elements to add deliberate color. Side B's land forces should be trichromatic, using similar patterns of the same base colors, to give them the uniform feel of a real-world military, with care taken to pick neutral tones that will look good on a variety of Spring maps.

Needs:

Spring Engine
Art Assets (here I list all of the ground vehicles, buildings, etc.- it's a lengthy list)
Sound Assets
Programming Assets
Specific Features (i.e., anything that will require LUA to actually do, which right now, since I'm working on Side A is "nothing", other than experimental stuff that may or may not ever see the light of day).




That's just a sketch, of course, but I think you'll get the point, you seem like a smart guy. Building a game for Spring that looks good and plays well is a journey of many months or even years, even if you have help along the way. Starting off with solid design is more likely to get you help, so long as you show that you have the skills (and sheer work ethic) required to actually do stuff. If you're brand-new to the engine, I strongly recommend taking BA, removing all of the units except for the Commanders, and then slowly building a simple game, from the ground up, to teach yourself the basics of how stuff all fits together (starting with the root of all Spring games, good ol' SIDEDATA.TDF). Once you understand the basics, and know what you want to do... make a plan, and show people what you've built thus far. If it doesn't suck, then you'll probably find some help here and there.

[clumsy_culhane]

i have to say Argh, thats a very nice post even though im not thinking of making a mod.. its nice that you did that for him

[Pressure Line]

bloody awesome wall of text.

perhaps ought to be wiki'd, as an example of what a) you're gonna need to come up with to attract even reasonable talent to the dev team and b) what you're gonna need to show us (the spring forum community) that you are serous and not just gonna make YATAM (Yet Another Total Annihilation Mod) or just something that plays terribly, looks awful and has no real 'feel' to it

[kiki]

Wow, thank you so much, I am really... touched by the effort the community has put into me already. Yes, I agree, I need to play a large amount of Spring before I get truely into this project. However, I am already working on a document similar to what Argh has so thoughtfully presented here. It is nowhere near finished, and when it is, I will post it here. Anyway, about my skills... I am a programmer, with most of my experience in Java, js/ajax, C++, and some scripting for various things. I consider myself an artist, with pretty good photoshop skills. However, I need to learn Gimp, because Photoshop is just loosing some of its previous goodness for some reason. I will spare you all the details... I have modeled and animated a good bit before for Warzone 2100. That was a bit different because I did my modeling and anims with Notepad.exe and a calculator. I look forward to learning an actual modeling program like wings or blender (probably wings). I am not a sound artist, but I am a musician, but I am not sure how this would help me....

One more thing: This mod is going to be lua intensive, in order to achieve my goals for the project. However, everything can only be built one step at a time...


I will be away for quite a while (in Europe actually), a few weeks. I will brainstorm during that time, but I will not be at a computer. While I am gone, I would really appreciate if anyone could answer some of the questions I posed in my previous post. Thank you all!

[smoth]

bloody awesome wall of text.

perhaps ought to be wiki'd, as an example of what a) you're gonna need to come up with to attract even reasonable talent to the dev team and b) what

or you people could read that massive sticky in this forum that I spent a long amount of time on.








Hi new guy, nothing wrong with working through concepts and definitely good to see if the engine can support what you are looking for. Ignore RC, he has never played metal fatigue or earth 2150. His project is based on someone elses idea.

If you look in the lua forum zpock has some interesting work with customizable weapons in lua. Past that you need to start somewhere to get a feel for some things. A project this size could take years to complete and may be beyond your available time span. By all means go for it but know that useable art talent is taken up so you will need someone to produce your art assets. Sounds have already been given to the forum 3 specific times.

Lua may or may not be beyond your abilities and I don't want to sort through all the drama RC is starting over omg you stole my idea, and idea which wasn't his to begin with. The point is that it is good that you are trying to find out the limitations of the engine. It is good and bad that you created a design without knowing many of them. Good because you can probably move beyond the normal limitations of spring in your design. Bad because you will have to put in some serious work to accomplish your goals.

[DZHIBRISH]

Metal Fatigue was cool.