Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Here are some pics for you all to salivate over.  You may notice something unexpected about the RX79 in the pics.  The unit isn't just a unit this time around, it's actually a squad of 2.  Thats right, you buy one, and a second pops out just like an infantry squad.  It seems to work very well in playtests, and allows a player to have more units on the field while having less to focus on. 

I'm still debating on what size I really want the final size of the unit to be, but so far I'm leaning towards 2 or 3.  Any more and the squad becomes very big and powerful, which would make it very expensive and take awhile to build, but just a single unit doesn't seem right.  What do you think?





Sunday, November 15, 2009

Sunday Update

Getting into the holiday season updates will become more speratic as work takes most of my free time away.  Still, I am able to get some stuff done.  I just finished exporting the RGM79 into the game, so now we have the Prototype gundam and the mass production unit that came about thanks to the RX78.  Just thought you would all like to know.  :)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

I present the RX78

Well, its about time that we put a Gundam in the game don't you all agree?  Here it is, the one that started it all, the RX78.  It doesn't have any of it's upgrades yet, and is currently equipped with a projectile cannon type weapon.  In battle tests so far its able to stand up against quite a few preditor tanks (it destroyed 7 of them before being overwhelmed by itself) but it falls quite easily against Orcas, so there ya go.  

Also, a pic of the Sam sight, it's damage designs are done, so when it is below 75% health it's falling apart.  :p  Small edition, but I like it myself.




Sunday, November 8, 2009

No Weekend post this week

Sorry all, got the flu and havn't been able to work on the mod (or much of anything really) for the last few days.  I will get back to it once I am better.

Monday, November 2, 2009

A few new pics

Now that I finally have the White Base up and running properly (Got the landing down right, and added a few effects to the ship when moving) and that I added the Proto-Type Factory I thought I would show a few pics of these things.  I think I will make the Mass Production Factory a bit larger, but I like the size of the Proto-Type Factory as it is.  It's large, you know what it is when you see it, and some of the best units in the game for the EF come out of it.  

Post any comments that you may have.




Sunday, November 1, 2009

Saturdays update (late again)

Yea, so that whole "Every Saturday an Update" thing is going super if you havn't noticed.  On the bright side, I have some good news!  I have FINALLY managed to get the White Base to work properly in the sence that I can have one made, it can take off and move, and then reland wherever it wants to make repairs, then take back off!  In other words, it finally works and doesn't crash the game.  

I have also fixed it's landing animation problems and resized it to make it a bit smaller, more correct (the other version just seemed way too long to me).  This is good I think, as this means that with a bit more tweaking I should have all of the white base issues behind me.  I hope to by next Saturday have the Proto-Type Factory in the game, along with the RX-78 (even if I don't have the 78's animations in fully).  That's my goal anyways.  Once I get the 78 in, I can work on it's upgrades, then work on the other units that will require it's upgrades to be completed to be built.  This should take me up through Thanksgiving.  After the 28th though, work becomes a lot more like hell (retail on black friday, godda love it) so I don't know where we will be standing then.  I would love to say that the first tech tree of the EF will be done by December 1st, but don't hold me to it.  

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Not much done since last update

Sorry for the late Sunday night update.  As some of you know, I work in retail, and in retail you work when they need you to.  Tomorrow is the first day off for me in a week, so I havn't had much time to work on the mod.  I will post an update tomorrow after I get a chance to do some work.  I plan on working more on the White Base (I want to make the unit a bit smaller, and fix the landing animation a bit, along with fixing the re-land feature for repair).  I will keep you updated.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

A few more pics



I have a few more pics I'd like to show you all, these 2 pics show everything that is in the EF faction up to this moment minus the Earth Federation Assault Tank (and the generic GDI APC).

I am personally very happy with getting the White Base into the game.  Unlike all of the other units in the game, the White Base is deployed as a structure and then has to be told to "Lift Off" to get back into the air to move.  While on the ground (or landed) it has higher defenses and the ability to self repair, While in the air it obviously can move.  I am going to set it up also that the White Base can transport 3 Mobile Suits at a time, giving it a better feel for what the White Base is.  Also, while landed the White Base will produce a "Build Radius" around it letting you use it as a forward deployment zone.  Build it, move it to a good defendable position, land it, build some defenses, then take back off.  

Comments are appreciated.

Saturday Update

Yes, I know that this Saturdays update is technically being done on Sunday but it's 30 minutes late, give me a break?  I've been working on the White Base, and I think I've come up with a good way of using it in the game without making it feel like just another super powerful unit flying around.

My idea is based around making it Garrisonable.  Now, in the game engine you can set the game up so that when a unit is inside of a building it uses a different weapon than when it's not.  Why this is I don't know, but hey I won't complain.  My idea is that with the White Base the unit will have 4 Garrison slots.  This will let the player add up to basically 4 different weapon systems to the unit.  You can pick all 4 of the same type if you want, or mix and match as you choose.  How it will work is I plan on having 4 different types of infantry units that you can purchase from the Space Relay Station (the building that lets you get the White Base).  Each type of infantry will do something different that will let the owner of the White Base customize it.  There will be the Riflemen that adds to the anti-infantry abilities of the White Base, the RPG Speciltists who will add to it's anti-vehical abilities, the Engineers who will allow the White Base to fire EMP-Rockets, and finally the Sniper who will give the White Base a long-range, powerful, but slow firing artillery type shot.  

Tell me what your thoughts are if you have any on this idea.  I like it, but personally I am thinking I may drop it instead and give it to the Macross Side.  I think it will fit their play style better than the EF's.  

Also I am almost finished with the base defenses of the EF.  They have 4 different types of defenses now in the game, a Radar Bunker which grants an un-gernadable (by this I mean a single gernade won't kill the people inside) defense for infantry plus gives the EF it's radar, a stealthed underground turret system that is, well, stealthed until it fires, a fast firing SAM sight for anti-air that also detects stealthed units, and finally a long-range deployable beam based cannon system.  This one isn't in any of the pics yet, but it is in the game.  It works a lot like the NOD's defense turrets, but instead of deploying 3 cannons per power relay it only deploys 1.  This may sound like a bad thing, but the range it can deploy these cannons from the power relay is 3.5X grater than what NOD does.  This gives the EF player the ability to have a sort of early warning defense system in place that rebuilds itself as the enemy moves in as they can put the power relays back near the rest of the base defenses and the cannons themselfs out quite a distance.  Now the cannons are not that powerful and have a massive power draw, but if you put enough of them up and use them with the rest of the base defenses already avalible to you the EF can mount a very formitable defense that is very tough to beat. 

And at the very least, you will always know that the enemy is comming.  :) 

Later this week I will post some pics showing all the units in the game for the EF side and give a breif discription of what they all do and how they work together.  I hope to do this after I get the GM-79, GunCannon, and Gundam RX-78 into the game along with the Gundam Upgrade System up and running.  

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

A few pics

Just wanted to post a few pics of the EF in action.  This isn't much, their side only has a few buildings and a couple of units (no Mobile Suits yet, that's the next thing I will be putting in after base defenses) but it shows how the early EF game will play.


One of the defensive structures that the EF will have right from the beginning is a long range radar system.  This building will be how the EF's radar comes on line.  It will also serve as their primary bunker (you could always just use the riflemens dig in ability but I find a structure that gernaders can't just destroy works better in the long run).  So this will become a very important building.  However, it is a little on the expensive side on top of having a decent build time and a huge power draw.  I find a mix of the 2 types of barraks works well so far vrs. the GDI on medium difficulty.

I must point out that some of the units in the game were pulled directly from the GDI that will be on the EF side.  I just don't see a point in putting another rifle infantry unit into the game when the one that's already there will do just fine.  Same with the APC unit.  I will in the end modify them to make them different than the GDI's, but in the early release the units will stay the same as the first public release will be a proof-of-concept of the Mod.







Sunday, October 4, 2009

EF and Base Design

So I was having trouble comming up with an economic design for the EF.  Both the Macross and Zeon sides economy works well in my opinion.  But the EF seemed, well, to be at a major disadvantage.  Having a limiting number of buildings that produces resources seemed to stagnent them, and seriously be a major disadvantage.

Then I thought, why not figure out a way to have the amount of cash comming in be based off of the size of your base?  The bigger the base, the more money.  Seemed to make since to me.  So, there you have it.

The way it will work for the EF is simple.  All base structures (other than base defense and power plants) will produce 100 resources every 10 seconds.  (Not counting the actual resource deploy point.  This one produces 1000 every 30 seconds, making it much more valuble but you can only make a few of these).  So the bigger your base, the more money incoming, the harder it is to defend.  It seems to work well for now.  Hopefully this will work thoughout the design, we will see.

Any thoughts?

Friday, October 2, 2009

Saturday Updates

Hello all.  A few things have changed in the last month or so, and I wanted to keep everyone who is interested in this mod informed.


First, we have finally started work on the public alpha of the mod.  That means that once we are done with this current version it will be released to the public to play.  No more "trying to get the game to do what we want", as this means we finally figured out how to get the game to do everything we need it to do!  

Next, I want to talk about the first Army that we will be getting into the game, the Earth Federation.  The EF was known before as the Gundam General.  Unlike the Gundam General, the EF will actually work more like the EF did in the shows.  That means that it is a military style army to play as.  Their focus will be around base defense, building prototype units, then mass production versions of the prototypes, and finally using tactical resorces to defeat their enemies.  These guys arn't about gurilla tactics or hiding their base, when an EF player is on the field you will know as their base will be very easy to find (it will be the one with all the laser cannons shooting at you).  

As of right now we have the EF's main starting base in the game, the Forward Base.  From the forward base you can build infantry squads, RPG squads, engineers, light tanks, and heavy tanks.  Now, the idea is that very early in the game the EF will have to use their conventional weapons to the best of their abilities until they get their Gundam Development Project online.  Once this is done, the Forward Bases use will shift from troop deployment to fund building.  Unlike the current armies in the game, the EF will not be gathering resources from tiberium.  They will instead get resources dropped in to them from the Forward Bases like a Tiberium Spike (or more to the point, the supply drops from Generals).  This will let the EF player focus on base defenses and not have to worry about "resource gatherers" but on the other hand will limit the ammount of income that an EF player will be able to generate.  So an EF player will also have to spend his resources wisely or face the consquenses.


So thats where we are right now.  I will be posting another update next Saturday to let everyone know where we stand, and maybe even a pic or two.  

Saturday, July 18, 2009

All Apologies

I would first like to apologize to anyone who has looked upon the earlier work of this mod and believed that it had anything to do with Homura's work.  I started work on this mod because of his mod, because I enjoyed it so much even with it's flaws, and because I knew the flaws of that mod were in no way or shape his fault but due to the game engine itself.  

Second of all, I must point out that ALL the models in this mod that are going to be IN the mod are either from Homura's original mod OR were freely donated to us.  I will not be using any model in the model from anyone else work.  I am a coder, not a modeler, and I do not possess the knowledge or skills of the source material to do recreate those models from scratch.  As Homura has freely posted the source code to his mod and offically ended work on it, I don't see any problem with me using these.  If anyone feels the need to argue the point with me they are free to do so, thats what the reply section on here is for.

Third of all, any version of the Xenoforce Reborn mod that may be out there in the wild right now should never have gotten there.  Those versions were very early alphas that were more a proof of design than an actual attempt at recreating the Xenoforce mod.  I will be the first person to say that the current wild version is complete and udder crap.  It's not worth your time, do not play with it. 

Also, I must say that I had not realized what kind of negative press/posts were posted about this project online.  I have been, for the most part, just the coder on this job.  I will say that the models that were the cause of the online issues will NOT be an issue from this point on.  Why?  I have no intention of changing GDI/NOD in the final version of the Xeno mod.  The point isn't to add stuff to the GDI/NOD forces at all, there are other mods for that kind of thing.  The point is to add Earth Fed, Zeon, and Macross to the game.  That is the point. 

Work on this mod has restarted, but I will say that if anyone has any questions about it they should forward them to azuza001@hotmail.com.