Spring RTS Engine

I plan (With unknown Worlds permission of course) to make a mod based on the popoular Half life one mod "Natual Selection". Natural selection is an Aliens Versus Marines FPRTS (First Person RTS). The Aliens are all powerful melee classes with Special abilities, While the marines are long range experts, specialising in guns to win.

Anyway. I need people to hepl me make this. I can just about model the structures for it, But i can't texture, Script or Animate things. If theres enough people willing to help, I'll write an email to Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Who made this mod, To ask if I can. (http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/ The site has been broken for about half a year now after a hacking attempt. You are better off going to http://www.nsarmslab.com/ for screenies and suchglike. Or qa google search).

Anyway, I've already thoguht of a tech tree and Classes the top thing being what you start with :

Marine side:
Marine (builder and fighter class. Armed with an LMG)
Builds: Comand Console (Constructs buildings) Resource Tower
(Gathers metal)

Comand console builds:
Builds: Infantry portal (Factory) Armory (Constructs Advanced
buildings) Observatory (Radar) Turret Factory (builds
Turrets) And Arms Lab (Provides Energy)

Infantry Portal builds:
Marine.

Armory builds:
Advanced Turret Factory (Constructs Siege towers (Long range Base
destroyers) and Turrets) Adv. Infantry Portal (Advanced Factory),
Advanced Armory (Constructs Adv buildings)

Advanced Infantry Portal Builds:
Marine with HMG (Beefed up LMG), Welder and Grenade launcher
(Explosive Rocket type thing).

Marine With Welder Builds everything that the Command Console can Plus Adv Resource Tower

Advanced Armory Builds:
Prototype lab (Tech 3 factory) and Advanced Observatory (adv
Radar/Jammer)

ProtoLab Builds:
Heavy Armour (Marine With HMg with 3 times the HP) and Marine With
Jetpack (Flying marine with HMG)

Most of the models in that could be the same give or take a few bits. Mainly guns. Marines have Ammunition in the HL1 mod, So therefore, Energy is ammo. All weapons take 1 energy to fire, And armslabs generate some.

Alien Tech tree:

Gorge (support unit with ranged attack and nanolathe) builds:

Hive (Factory) Sensory chamber (Cloaked Radar) Resource tower
(Differant model but same as marine job) and Offence Chamber.

Hive Builds

Skulk (Basic melee attack lifeform) and Gorge 2 (Exactly the same,
But builds differant stuff)

Gorge 2 Builds:

Hive 2 (Exactly the same, But builds differant stuff) Movement
chamber (provides energy) and Offence Chamber and Sensory
chamber

Hive 2 builds:

Lerk (Flying lifeform with Spike-shooters, uses energy) Skulk 2, Fade
(Fast Melee lifeform with slashing claws, Uses energy) and Gorge 3
(Exactly the same, Butbuilds differant stuff)

Gorge 3 Builds:

Hive 3 (Exactly the same, But builds differant stuff), Defence Chamber
(A long range Anti-Buidling and Healing Structure) Movement chamber
Offence Chamber, Adv Resource tower and Adv Sensory chamber
(Radar/Jammer)

Hive 3 Builds:

Onos(A large melee lifeform with a Paralyser weapon and a Heavy
Melee attack. Uses energy). Fade 2, Lerk 2, Gorge and Skulk 3

Alien LKifeforms use energy to run, Which is provided by MCs. All hive and Gorge models are identical.

Alien Techs Add abilities:
Anything built from a hive one and upwards Gets a free clokaing abiliy with a large Decloak radius. This is becuase in the HL mod, Having a Sensory chamber allowed aliens to cloak.
Anything built from Hive 2 And upwards allowed Aliens To Move Quicker, Because having a movement chamber allowed Aliens to move quicker using an upgrade called Celerity.
And finally, Anything built form Hive 3 has all the abilites of hives 1 and 2 except that they auto heal as well, Because having a defence chamber meant aliens Autohealed.

Both teams use Metal to build things, But in differant ammounts.

So theres the basic layout of the mod if UW says yes. Which hopefully they will.

edit:

I forgot to mention, I need a skinner, modeller and Scripter if anyone can help. I can model, but i'm not too good at it, And I can get Screenies to show what everything looks like.
Also, Theres some stuff missing from the tech tree because it doesn't fit in with the Spring engine.

I just did the IP, Armorey and Adv Armory model, As closely as possible ot the NS one. Adv had to be changed to make it stand out though.

*sighs*... yeah... an rts mod of a fps mod... which will likely play like starcraft. good luck.

Thanks, And actually, Its an FPRTS. A first person RTS game. Infact, if your marine, You can play ythe whole thing without having to go into FPS mode.

Hehe, i just downloaded this again earlier today after a long absence of playing - Heavy Armour for the win!

Natural Selection is great, I used to like and play it alot, but I really don't see it ported to a large scale RTS like Spring. I mean:
- NS is supposed to be played in tight, stuff-filled corridors. Like, Skulk are made to hide on the ceiling, not run in open field.
- NS is made only of organic units. It's extremely difficult to have good looking animation of organic units in the Spring engine. It is much easier to have robotic unit with solid block rotating on each other.
- You know Spring doesn't have support any upgrade system? Ah ok I see the "chambers" will just be energy producers, radar, and turret, and that you'll simply have different version of units instead of upgraded units.
- I wouldn't like a mod with similar looking units labelled Skulk 1 / Skulk 2 / Skulk 3. And for the human side, it's even worth, they would only have two models, marines and heavy marines! The rest will only be weapons/jumpack/ugprades variants.
- All those melee units while Spring doesn't even support melee units well!
- Units can consume energy when running, but running out of energy never prevented anything to move!

I need a skinner, modeller and Scripter if anyone can help. I can model, but i'm not too good at it.

IMO, anyone making a mod should be able and prepared to do everything by himself. Once you've shown some actual progress, maybe some kind soul will lend a hand here and here, but expecting others to do your own mod is ludicrous. Saying "I want to make a mod but lack the skill to do so" never resulted in anything done. And no, providing pictures of the game you're copying or writing wishlists doesn't count as being a modder.

PS: And NS is actually a FPRTSS (First Person Real Time Social Strategy)

IMO, anyone making a mod should be able and prepared to do everything by himself.

On the one hand, I couldn't agree with you more- I have built, at this point, about a dozen mods for various game engines, and 90% of them are my work alone.

However, my best mods were made when I actually had some help. Even a small amount does wonders, I've found. Good help is hard to find, though- most of the people who have the skillsets I actually need are busy on their own personal Adventures in Game Design

Z and Argh are both correct...

you need to have your own skills. guys with"Ideas" for the next "great mod" are dime a dozen why should anyone help with your mod? At the moment it looks like more uninspired fanboy rubbish. Take that how you like it.

However, I have waisted enough time on talentless hacks and frankly you have got to show something if you want anyone to help. sure we may help with Q&A but the kind of help argh is speaking about is help.... not generating the content so you can stand aloft and brag about YOUR mod.

zwzsg wrote:"I want to make a mod but lack the skill to do so"

ACtually, A i Said, I can Model. However,I don;t have the faintest Idea how to script. I could probebly texture them If UPSing wasn't so confusing, But then again, I'm probebly doing it wrong.

Meh. IU thought you could do melee using fdiring animations and short ranged invisible projectiles, But in that case I'l just make the marine team but add some stuff (Tanks, Perhaps a plane or 2)

Drone_Fragger wrote:Meh. IU thought you could do melee using fdiring animations and short ranged invisible projectiles, But in that case I'l just make the marine team but add some stuff (Tanks, Perhaps a plane or 2)

your joking right?

No.

no, what he says is quite possible. there were several 3rd party units in OTA that were melee units.

What you said is the only way I know of - an invisible (or very very very small model) weapon firing at a very short range linked to an animation.

It would be hell it get it looking good though.

As for skillsets...if you can only do one aspect of modding, I'd suggest offering your skills to a mod in progress, and working with them.

My only ability is monkey text editing. Really. I edit .fbi and .tdf files, and try to make balance work. Since that's all I can really do, I found a mod that seemed like it could benefit from active people who could edit text files. Namely, A&A:S <_<. I do things that really don't require 'skill' as much as patience and a sense of how gameplay should go.

Maybe one day I'll sort out more complex scripting and modeling and texturing, but for right now...my only utility is notepad.

Tahts more or less What I mean. FBI looks easy, but I'mmlikely to mess it up.

And on a side note, I'm goving up on this mod, And starting work on another one, Based on the marine tech tree. Completly unconnected to NS of course. Possible based on a game i masde in game maker, Called Virii: the Spam Wars.