Kustorion Mod(Pendrokar ended developing)

[Pendrokar]

Well for a start I would like to know if people would be in this mod that is -
Kustorion Mod would be a OTA style RTS with units which could be customizable in type of Chassis, Weapons, armor and shields. You first build a factory from which you create a empty driving/walkable chassis, for which then you could add weapons at one specific factory and armor/shields at another!
In terms of balance there would be multiple factions that would be only different in visual appeal such as modern, futuristic, alien...

I have made a whole wiki page that has a lot of this mods units and features in details - http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Kustorion
From just speculating the page you will most likely see that a lot work at LUA would be required such as for the hovercrafts(gliding from a cliff) and the underground diggers(driving through underground).

For now I would like to hear comments on this idea! All I could do for this mod is to model(don't know how to map yet) and create the needed sounds!
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Moddb profiles were removed by me.
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Mod production:Stopped

model units (on hold) -
(max count may change):
Units Modeled - 8/38(Chassis)
Units Textured - 0/42
Weapons Modeled - 3/43
Weapons Textured - 0/43
Weapon Projectiles modeled/visual effect created - 0/43
Devices/Shield Generators/Armor Modeled - 0/32
Devices/Shield Generators/Armor Textured - 0/32
Buildings Modeled - 1/60...
Buildings Textured - 0/60...
Mech Parts Modeled - 0/Unknown
Mech Parts Textured - 0/Unknown
Base mod was Complete Annihilation.

[[Krogoth86]]

I haven't read your mod ideas to the end yet but you already might want to have a look at BloX by rcdraco which might provide you with some of the scripts you'll need...

[Pendrokar]

I though I couldn't have been the first one to think of this. But I searched the whole mod topic section for "custom" and guess what in BloX thread IT WAS NEVER SPELLED!
Though it seems rcdraco has stopped developing it and it still was in a Kernel Panic visuals style! Course I cannot test that mod because unknown-files.net is dead for pretty long time!

[rattle]

Draco fails at scripting... totally.

[Snipawolf]

That is nothing near what you want. Don't even worry about it.

[AF]

wasnt blox all bos/cob? Youd want to use lua though....

[Zpock]

I'm working on a similar project,

http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtop ... 23&t=12262

going pretty slow atm tough, and nothing really public yet. I wasn't happy with the options of working with customized weapons using the things available altough with the rapid development of late things might be easier now... for example say you have 16 weapons on one unit and only allow the right one to fire... how do you then get the unit to know what range it has, things like that.

I guess you could go with a huge tree of units of all possible combinations if you keep them reasonably low. slave units with the weapons might also be a good option, you get unit ai troubles again tough.

With LUA, you can do pretty much anything however. It's a question of how much you can get the engine to do by itself, sometimes you might have to do things from scratchs up in LUA, technically you could create a whole unit in LUA from scratch and program every aspect of it.. altough hopefully you won't need to. If you do, an engine patch 2 weeks later can make a ton of work superfluos.

[Pendrokar]

Well I think Ill stick to this system:

• Turrets wont shoot through chassis just like the BA Juggernaut laser turrets don't
• The customization of weapons/armor/shields will be exchanging the weapons from a starting "NONE" turret.
• Armor and shield features will take a weapon spot and I will Lua the features of them!

Though I'm just worrying about ship weapons and aircraft weapons because they should be larger and smaller depending. Then again The ship turrets won't be as large as in NOTA!

[Pxtl]

Actually, I'm curious if this is even possible - to hear the stories, it's very hard to change the primary weapon, and that weapon is the one that determines the unit's combat behavior.

[kiki]

Go play warzone 2100 now!!
http://wz2100.net

the idea of designing a unit ahead of time to be built by a factory all at once is interesting but harder to implement.

[Pendrokar]

Actually, I'm curious if this is even possible - to hear the stories, it's very hard to change the primary weapon, and that weapon is the one that determines the unit's combat behavior.

Then I wouldn't have to. Ill make 3 weapons for original 2 weapon vehicle and the primary would be invisible and do nothing!

For now I'm just learning how to script from the forum and wiki links. Too bad there isn't a mod template. I wanted to use PURE as a base but there are so many stuff I don't know and how to change!

[Pxtl]

Actually, I'm curious if this is even possible - to hear the stories, it's very hard to change the primary weapon, and that weapon is the one that determines the unit's combat behavior.

Then I wouldn't have to. Ill make 3 weapons for original 2 weapon vehicle and the primary would be invisible and do nothing!

For now I'm just learning how to script from the forum and wiki links. Too bad there isn't a mod template. I wanted to use PURE as a base but there are so many stuff I don't know and how to change!

AFAIK the primary weapon is the one that is tied to the movement range when the unit attacks. Secondary weapons just fire at whatever's available.

That is, when a unit actively attacks another unit (like returning fire, or on patrol, or following an "attack" order) the range that they move into is the range of the weapon defined as "primary".

A more experienced modder can correct me if I'm wrong.

[KDR_11k]

You're right, the primary weapon is the range you can give attack orders at.

[Pendrokar]

AFAIK the primary weapon is the one that is tied to the movement range when the unit attacks. Secondary weapons just fire at whatever's available.

That is, when a unit actively attacks another unit (like returning fire, or on patrol, or following an "attack" order) the range that they move into is the range of the weapon defined as "primary".

A more experienced modder can correct me if I'm wrong.

Couldn't I change that with lua help? Just change the primary weapons range to the weapon with the longest range!
BTW I don't think there will be a turret on which two or more turrets would be attached. So weapons will be just small turrets!

Edit: Oh wait how would the legged bot be like then? Seems there will be one exception! Guess the legged chassis can't be anything more than a mech with an rotating torso!

[Zpock]

The problem is that spring is built around having set hardcoded weapons so I don't think you can change the range of a weapon at all. Weapons are like a big dark spot in LUA land that you can't do anything with yet.

[Argh]

I haven't messed with this, but... can't you just get the target from a generic weapon, then use that unitID to generate an entirely Lua-based solution, for combat? I mean, that's what you're pretty much trying to do now, right? And don't we have an easy way to pass the target's UnitID from COB? Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC, I thought all of that was fairly practical at this stage.

[Zpock]

Yeah that's how I do, weapons completly in LUA with graphics and everything. But I wanted to do a bit more then just be able to swap the weapons around so it was pretty justified. I think you could try to graft in the necessary unit behaviour using LUA. So check for attacking commands and then move the unit to the proper range with LUA. But really this should be added to the engine that you can just tell the unit what range it has...

[rcdraco]

You could in theory make the base unit build the turret then load it on, it would effectively be the same idea, and with some lua magic you could have it autoload it or something. I've always found it to be a pain to manage though, more then likely you best wait for Zpock's mod as a base, since he seems to be doing more or an lua drawn menu system which is all around more streamlined then any coding I could ever do.

[Pxtl]

Well, the simplest (engine-wise) way to do it would be pretty nasty, but effective: make every combination of base and primary-weapon as a unit. When a player selects the base/primary pair, you simply spawn that one unit. Stupid, but effective.

The catch would be that it would involve a nasty amount of developer-side scripting to auto-build those units, since doing it manually would be unthinkable. Perhaps implement one model per base which includes all weapons that fit on that chassis, and the script selects which weapon is visible? Inefficient, but would mean you could use native Spring unitAI.

Alternately, we need a friggin patch for altering weapons from LUA.

[Pendrokar]

Ok I have started of making models for this mod.
Just need to try make stuff that wouldn't resemble BloX.

Tech 1 Wheeled Chassis -


The orange boxes are places where the weapons will be. I am not that creative on how the weapons should look like since im trying to make realistic stuff so I'm sticking to chassis for now!
Edit: Triangle count - 358(130+76*3)