Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Xenoforce 0.9c released!

Yes, 3 days early in fact!  I was going to wait until Christmas Eve to release the mod but I remembered last month when I tried to do it on a specific day on MODDB and forgot that it takes anywhere from 24 to 48 hours for MODDB to actually post the mod for download from when I submit it.  That just won't do this time!  

So I present to you the link to the latest and greatest update to the Xenoforce Reborn project to date.  The 0.9C.  Have a merry christmas guys!

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jm3gc5j559mdoaw

Friday, December 17, 2010

Armored and Stark Jegan

I've managed to get the Armored Jegan and Stark Jegan into the game. The difference between these two units actually go's past the typical "weapon swap" considering they are both based on the same unit. So I felt this was a good time to talk about the Teir 5 units and why Teir 5 really is the pinical of UC tech. Some of these units are also Teir 4 units but are still avalible in Teir 5.


The RVC-1 Guntank II is more of a mobile vehicle than a mobile suit. It is equipped with an assortment of weaponds and it's primary purpose is long range artillery support. However due to it's heavy weapons and armor its a very slow unit making it more useful for base defense rolls.

The GM-III is the typical frontline unit for Teir 4 and 5. Its equipped with a standard Beam Rifle and has decent armor. It's cost is only slightly higher than the original GM's but it's speed, armor, and firepower all range between 20% to 35% higher.

The Armored Jegan is long range artillery support. It is equipped with 2 powerful beam cannons and is heavily armored so it can take quite a hit before sucumming to enemy fire. It's firepower is roughly equivilent to the GMC-83 GM Cannon II, and it's not quite as tough armor wise, but it's speed is much faster making it easier to deploy on the battlefield.

The Stark Jegan is quick response firepower able to move as fast the RGZ91 in Waverider Mode. Power wise it's able to release a massive amount of kenetic damage against an enemy target with it's hyper bazooka and missle loadout. However, it's speed and firepower are offset by it's basic armor, so it's not able to last long in a fight.

The RGZ91 is a very powerful mass production unit. It's equipped with a rapid fire beam rifle and it is a heavily armored unit. It's main advantage is that is can switch at will between mobile suit mode and waverider mode. In Waverider mode it gains more speed and missile pods but is much more fragile to incomming fire. It is however a very expensive unit.

And there you have it. Thats a rundown of Teir 5's suits. I know some of you may be going "oh gee, 5 suits? Thats it?" Well, yea pretty much. But you also get Nu Gundam along with any other suits that you've got left over from previous teirs (time to pull those old RGM79's out of retirement and put them into the field). On top of that you have the air units still avalible (which will be getting an overhaul before the release next week) and the basic vehicles that EF gets (so that's the Jeep, Colony Defense Tank, Missile Truck, and T61 Tank). Honestly, that should be enough don't you think?

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Quick update

Thought people may want to see the new EF Landing Pad that's replacing the old new one... yea.... something like that.  Anyways, here's the pics.  One is the regular version, and the other is the upgraded one for UC's timeline.


Also, I wanted to let everyone know that I've added the EVA sounds in for EF.  They're just the same sounds as GDI uses for now, but it's something and it does help.  




Tuesday, December 14, 2010

New ability discovered.

So I just figured out how to properly use different models dependant on their damage states, along with different movement animations.  While this is quite cool, what I wanted to do with this new ability isn't possible. 

See, I was trying to get the units to lose limbs as they take damage.  Spicificly, I was trying to get the Powered GM to lose an arm after it takes X ammount of damage.  I was able to pull this off, except for 1 issue.  If I did the animation of the arm blowing off then every time the unit stopped moving it would redo this animation (not what I was going for).  If I didn't do this the arm would simply disappear, which wouldn't look right to me. 

So I ask you guys, what would you suggest?  Right now all I've done is add a sort of "wobbly" effect to the unit when it starts or stops moving, but that doesn't seem to be enough to show "damaged" to me.  I really don't just want to do a "texture" swap with damage on it, that's lame considering the possibilities of being able to swap the entire model out.  I'm gonna try adding damage wires and stuff to the model and see what that looks like, but any suggestions would be welcomed.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

New ideas for EF/UC

So the votes are in and for the next month we will be working on finishing UC up.  This means code cleanup, new sounds (hopefully), damage effects for the units, weapon balancing, these kinds of things.

In the last few days I have been working on the new turret system for some of the units.  I have also been working on making each unit even more unique (lets be honest, some times units really feel like the same thing don't they?).

For example, we have how many long range/artillery units in UC?  Well, in timelines 1 and 2 we have the GM Sniper, the GM Cannon 80, the GunCannon RX77D,  and the GunTank Mass Production!  Thats over 50% of their forces consisting of artillery units, that's quite a bit.  So what did I do?  I added another one in of course.

So this is how it's going now, a breif description of how each of the artillery units will be different/used differently.

The Guntank MP is equipped with 2 120mm long range cannons.  It's long range helps keep it well out of enemy range, but it does take a bit of time to reload.  It's also equipped with a secondary weapon, machine guns on it's arms, to help protect it from enemy infantry that could try to flank the artillery.

The GM Cannon (RGC80) is equipped with a single 240mm cannon.  But, due to the cannons shorter barrel it is not as accurate and requires the unit to be closer to the target to use.  Also, because this weapon is mounted on a normal GM body, the unit is fragile.  However, it is also very cheap and easy to produce, and it can pack quite a punch.

The GM Gunsniper has been modified to a new setup, one that I think makes the unit a lot more effective and useful.  Now the unit is stealthed at all times except when firing it's weapon.  However, the unit can not fire until it is in deployed mode.  It works a lot like the GDI Rig in this fashion.  However, it has great range and with the proper deployment these guys can make great "stepping stones" for the enemy to have to go through when deployed in a forward sense.

The RX77D Guncannon is a much more heavily armored unit when compaired to the GM Cannon RGC80, and comparison is in order here.  The unit is equipped with the same weapon as the RGC80, but it has 2 of them instead of the RGC80's one.  However it's cost is greatly increased, so while have some of these guys mixed in to your forces makes good sence trying to build a huge army of just these guys will drive you bankrupt quite easily.

The other teir 2 unit is the GM Sniper 2.  Compared to the original GM Sniper, this one is equipped with a normal kenetic based rifle.  It however still has amazing range, stealth, and can pack quite a punch.  It does not however require deployment to be used, so in this sense it's a lot like a normal unit with a powerful rifle which, in the end, is exactly what it is.

In the 3rd Teir you gain access to the GM Cannon 2.  This unit is very expensive, but is very powerful.  It is a GM Custom unit with Gundam Alex's extra armor making it a tough unit and is equipped with 2 powerful beam cannons.  Now the key thing to this unit is that when the GM Cannon 2 is killed what actually happens is that the GM Cannon sheds its outer armor and cannons reverting to a GM Custom unit.

Teir 4 has the Guntank 2, a traditional artillery unit.  The Guntank 2 has 2 recoiless 120mm cannons that allow it to fire in a much quicker sucession than the original Guntank.  Also, the Guntank 2's secondary weapons are now rocket/missile tubes allowing this unit the ability to deal with enemy mecha as they get closer to it easier.

Arguably also Teir 4 has the Super Gundam which is equipped with a powerful long range beam rifle, so you could consider it artillery also.

Teir 5 is the only teir that doesn't have any artillery in it, but does it really need it?  I didn't think so either. 


Saturday, November 27, 2010

Better late than never!

The 9b alpha is now being uploaded to MOD DB.  Check it out and tell me what you think!

EDIT

The file is still awating athorization on MOD DB so for now here's a Mediafire link. http://www.mediafire.com/?8c384b5x6ycv65p


EDIT 2 

The mod is now avalible on MOD DB, so if you don't want to use the mediafire link you don't have to.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Mod delay, Of course.

So I've gotten the 9b mod done, but my net connection is causing issues uploading it to the net at large.  So, I will have to wait until tommorow (Friday) to try and upload it again.  Sorry everyone, I really tried, but sometimes there's just nothing you can do.  Hopefully tommorow night.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Less than 24 hours for the .9b alpha!

I'm now working on the final touches of the alpha 9b, mostly balance changes and the like.  This version should give Scrin the extra little boost it needs early game (wow did I not realize how bad their early game was) and NOD gets epic artillery (Give me a hell yea) along with a redesign of the Avatar making it work better and more weapon balancing for GDI.  All of this along with a new NOD AI (xenoforce) and we're finally making good progress with the Mobile Suits and their waists turning and firing correctly (Unfortunatly only the RM79, RX78, and Gundam Alex both armored and unarmored have the new changes, but it gives you a good idea on how mobile suits are supposed to work now).


So, time to get back to the MOD.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

New discussion about new units/ideas

I have started a thread on the Moddb Xenoforce Forum about new ideas that I am now accepting about the EF army, much like we did here earlier on SEED.  Based on the feedback I will decide what army to work on next, SEED or AW for hopefully a Christmas release.  

If I don't get any feedback, well, then I guess I'll just draw a straw or something lol.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/xenoforce-reborn/forum/thread/new-ideas

Thursday, November 18, 2010

New NOD Experiences

So I have been doing a lot of work on the NOD/GDI AI latley and I have some great news.  Not only have I managed to get the AI (on medium) to almost always do it's tech research to actually get the upgrades needed (really important for GDI) but I also added in a new AI for NOD, a Xenoforce AI.  This AI is very aggresive and the other 2 AI's seem to have trouble with it most of the time.  I love it!  

A new tactic that this AI likes to use is the Purifier Team, basically 4 Purifier Warmechs are built then go to town on enemy expansion bases.  As these bases are normally not as heavily defended as the main base these guys manage to do a lot of damage before getting taken down.

Another tactic it uses is, if the enemy is well bunkered into its base, the AI will now build 4 or 5 Beam Cannons and 2 of the new Scorpion Warmechs and make a long range assault on the enemy.  It's very interesting to see the hard AI finally using new units, and I can't wait for you guys to see this new mini-release.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Another update.

So I decided that I will release something for you guys to play for thanksgiving weekend.  There still isn't (much) different with the last release.  Most of this stuff is just tweaking, but there are a few things that will definatly be different.  

For one, we've gotten the turret system down for a few units.  This will give people a glimps of how the new mobile suits will move from this point on.  

Also we have increased the sight range on the Scrin Devistator Warships and increased the scout range on the Scrin Planetary Assault Drones.  We have been talking about changing the roll of the Scrin "Eye of the storm" mothership from a planet killer to something else.  If we do somethinge else, what would you like to see?

NOD has been where a lot of our work has been recently, fixing a few bugs that crept up and gave us great concern.  You don't need to know about the bugs, but what you should know is what new toys NOD has to finally allow it to stand against it's enemies on the battlefield.

First of all, the Avatar Prime has been removed from the game.  It's just no longer needed.  What we have done is manage to get the AI to use the special power system on the regular Avatar, making it much more deadly.  We did change the weapon system on the Avatar, so instead of gaining stealth from the Stealth Tank it gains a Stealth Tanks missle system instead.  

Now, with this system, the Avatar does not kill any units to gain the upgrade, it's simply an upgrade given to the Avatar based off of what the unit represents.  Beam Tank gives the Beam Cannon upgrade, Flame tank gives Flamethrower, Stealth Tank gives a Missile Rack, and finally the Scout Bike gives speed and the ability to detect stealth.   These upgrades do have a cost.

There is now an upgraded version of the Venom ship that is equipped with a variation of the Obelisk of Lights weapon, making it basically a flying artillery platform.  However, this version of the Venom has lost it's ability to be stealthed.  

Finally we looked at what we lost when we removed the Avatar Prime.  The Avatar, for all of it's new abilites and strength, is still just not strong enough to be the "end all and be all" of units.  Especially once you add in the fact that a fully upgraded Avatar costs over 4000$.  So to help counter this we have 2 new toys.  One is an obvious choice, we put the Purifier in.  It's a Red Avatar that is equipped with 3 Flamethrowers.  It's speed is much faster than the normal Avatars allowing it to get into range quicker.  

The other choice was one we had thought about doing awhile ago but we went with the Prime instead.  Now we have decided to add it in.  It's based off of the MCV, we have basically armed this thing to the teeth.  With 2 massive gattling artillery cannons hanging over the main unit, we decided to name this thing the "DeathWalker Scorpion Mech".   It's also equipped with the targeting system of an Obelisk of Lights system and a Scattershot Missile System.  Still, it's weak against close range units, infantry, and aircraft, so it has a place.

Here are the pics.









Sunday, November 7, 2010

Where the hell have I been and what the hell have I been doing?

Well will you look at that.  It's been almost a full month since my last post.  Where have I been? Well, here and there mostly.  We found a new bit of code that is letting us redo a part of the unit AI so that the units can now use the special powers that they are equipped with.  This is huge, it's a major step forward for our Zeon and (some) SEED ideas as without this little ability we would of had to redesign these things.  

Right now we are testing out these things on NOD, spicificly the changes to the Avatar that we have made (yes, we made new changes again.  But it's always for the better, I swear).  I will have to honestly say that after watching the latest AI vrs AI vrs AI (Scrin/GDI/NOD) that NOD just got that shot in the arm they needed by being able to upgrade their Avatars on the battlefield when the AI decides it wants it.  They still lost, but they came in 2nd where normally they were the first one out, so thats definatly something in my book.  Now if I could just figure out where the code is for when the AI decides what special powers it wants to use from the spellbook then we would be all set!  

Right then, what else.  Well, we're heading into Thanksgiving and Christmas which means less time to work on the mod and more time at work (I work retail, fun fun!).  Always happens this time of year you know?  And Dougs been busy with his own family as well, so things are going to be speratic for a bit.  I'm also looking at moving by the end of this month, so that will also cut into Mod work  time.  All of this means that the schedual I had planned on in October is going to be horribly missed.  Still, I hope to have the next version of the MOD out to you guys by Xmas week, if not sooner.  (I was aiming for thanksgiving but as I am only about 15% of the way through remodeling the mobile suits so that they can turn their waists and fire on the move properly that isn't going to happen.)  I may release something for thanksgiving week without the changes to AW or SEED, just a revamp of GDI/NOD/Scrin/EF(UC).  Think of it as an alpha 0.9b of sorts.  We'll see.  


Finally, if anyone has any suggestions they would like to make on the mod, Valherran started a thread in the MODDB Xenoforce Reborn forum section with a few suggestions.  I always enjoy reading what people like and what they think needs balancing so feel free to stop in and make a comment or suggestion of your own.  I will always respond (sooner or later lol) and I will definatly let you know if what your asking is either a good idea, worth trying, not possible from a coding standpoint, or just not what we're trying to accomplish and why.  At least I always give a reason. :)  

Friday, October 8, 2010

New forums up at MODDB

Just wanted to let everyone know that we've activated the forums in MOD DB for the mod.  This will let us interact in a more streamlined fashion with you, the players.


Also, we have finally gotten the code to work right for the mobile suits to use their waists as turrets, meaning that mobile suits will become more dynamic in their movement, targeting of enemies, and become more useful than before.  Also it should help us differentiate the different units even futher through allowed movement and fire types based on the weapons the units are equipped with.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

ModDB

this is just a quick update to let everyone know that our mod is now officially on moddb. this will still be the place to come to for development news, but mod releases from this point on will be done there so no more mediafire or rapidshare links unless its an early preview of something.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Alpha 9b patch fix.

Here's the fix and a list of what we fixed.


http://www.mediafire.com/?iw9mvqh3ihdff2j


The discriptions with the Scrin are fixed for their powers.

The NOD defenses have been made stronger.

The EF defenses have been made weaker, you now get fewer of them.

The EF forward base now has the proper image.

The EF supergundam now costs to activate the upgrade.

a few other basic balancing options have been done.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Xenoforce 9a Alpha released

Ok, so it's 6+ hours late, but it's done.  I would have posted up a nice long article telling you guys everything that's changed in this release, but I'm too fucking tired right now to give a shit.  So, I guess you'll just have to download it and try it out yourself.

I'll tell you this.  EVERYTHING has changed.  This mod is nothing like the last one.  SEED and AW are NOT balanced in this mod, I would not suggest using them.  UC may or may not be overpowered now, we rebalanced them but havn't tested any of the rebalancing (that's what we've been doing for the last 6 hours) so if they are we need to know.  

http://www.mediafire.com/?82lqorj7i836ft8


EDIT POST - EDIT POST - EDIT POST - UPDATED - UPDATED - UPDATED

Yawn, wow, I was up way too late last night lol.  BUT it was worth it.  Yes, the alpha 9 is out in the wild now, and quite a few of you have already jumped on it.  I can't wait to hear about your current experiences.

Ok, first up are the known bugs in alpha 9.  

The only 4 big ones that I have noticed are this.

If you use Justice Gundam or Freedom Gundam from SEED and they die they fire the wrong weapon.  Now instead of them going nucular they end up causing a liquid tiberium bomb explosion.  Needless to say, this isn't right or good for anyone lol.

GP01 Full Vernian mode doesn't seem to fire, so I would suggest not going into Full Vernian mode with GP01. 

The White Base is able to be dropped even though the team is already on the field, allowing a player to get more than 1 RX78. 

The Scrin powers have the wrong discriptions set up for them (how did that happen?). 

Those are the only 4 ones I've noticed so far.  The SEED one is a game buster IMHO, but again I don't suggest using seed right now unless your just wanting to look at it.  The balanced army is UC. (sorta balanced)  I will be releasing an update to the 9 alpha in a few days to fix these issues.


Now for the changes.

GDI -

*Gernaders now randomly throw EMP Gernades

*Preditor Tank and Mammoth Tank now have 2 new upgrades avalible to them, the Rail Cannon Accelerator and the Adaptive Armor making them much tougher on the battlefield

*APC is now a bit cheaper

*A new Orca is now avalible to be built, the A10-Orca or SmokeStorm Orca.  Its equipped with a powerful gatling cannon and hellfire missles.  It does not need to go back to the airfield to reload.

*Juggernaught now has access to a different fire mode, the Urban Firemode.  It switches the cannons out for direct fire rail cannons.

*The Command Post now has the basic unit upgrades on it.

*The Space Port now grants a new power, the MCV Drop.  This will drop an MCV, 2 Preditors, and 2 mammoths to the battlefield.

*The Sonic Cannon now fires a longer range EMP based Sonic Blast.  It doesn't do much damage to vehicals but it does shut them down along with killing infantry instantly.  Also when you place one you get to place a second one for free.

*The AA Cannon now gives you 3 AA guns for free when you place it.

*The Watchtower now gives you 3 watchtowers for free when you place it.

*The Cannon Defense now gives you 2 Cannons for free when you place it.  

*The Firehawk now has 3 weapon outloads.  The Missle Mode fires off missles at enemy aircraft, the Carpet Bomb mode drops 10 bombs in a row that light the ground on fire for a few moments, and MOAB is a powerful single bomb that not only does massive damage but it also keeps the ground on fire for awhile.

*GDI's Commando is no longer buildable.  Instead, when you drop the Zone Troopers from the Space Center it will also drop a single Commando.  This removes the limit of 1 Commando on the field at a time as well.


NOD -

*The NOD Avatar now has 3 upgrades that replace the original upgrades.  The Flame Thrower upgrade gives the Avatar a flamethrower, lowers the range on it's main beam weapon, but allows the Avatar to fire and move at the same time with both weapons.  The Missle Upgrade adds an anti-air rocket pod to the back of the Avatar, allowing the Avatar to target multiple targets at the same time along with attacking ground and air at the same time.  Finally, the Beam upgrade increases the range on the Beam and adds a 2nd Beam to the other arm.

*The Nod Avatar Prime keeps the all of the original upgrades that the Avatar had access too.  It also now spawns a repair drone allowing it to fix other units in the field.

*The NOD Venom has been lowered in cost.

*The NOD Vertigo Bomber is now the NOD Vertigo Fighter.  It now fires off missles at the enemies.  The Missles drop out and then gain speed as they lock in on their targets.  The Vertigo Fighter is best used in attack runs.  It does not have to go back to base to reload.

*The NOD Armageddon Bomber is now avalible to build.  The Armageddon Bomber drops 3 bombs, but the bombs are not very acurate.  Best used when you don't really care who gets hit as long as something gets hit.

*The NOD Scorpion Tank is slightly cheaper, and does not lose the main cannon when it gets the laser upgrade.

*The Shredder Turret now becomes good against both infantry and vehicles when the laser upgrade is done.  

*The Laser Turret now gains the ability to hit air and beomces stronger with the laser upgrade.

*The Nuclear Missle has been now moved to the Liquid Tiberium Research Facility.  It is deployed by a bomber and dropped onto the battlefield.  If the bomber is shot down before the nuke is dropped then the nuke does not go off.

*NOD now has a new super power dropped from the Temple of NOD.  This is the Liquid Tiberium Bomb.  What this does is drop a missle from space that no matter where on the battlefield it's dropped it will hit EVERYTHING on the battlefield, ally and enemy alike.  It does massive damage to anything tiberium based (effectivly killing all refinerys and harvesters on the field), and it also kills ALL infantry that is on the field that is not inside a building or APC.  When the bomb kills the infantry it has a good chance of turning the infantry units into Vicroids that will attack anyone that comes near them.  

*Nod Buggy now deploys 2 buggies when you buy one.

*Nod Attack Bike now deploys 2 bikes when you buy one.

*NOD's  Commando has been removed.  It has been replaced by a squad called Nod Elite Squad.  This squad consists of the Nods Commando and 2 Elite Confessors.  Each member of the squad has the ability to place the C4 charges.

*NOD's Obilisk has a stronger attack now, making it more valuable.

Scrin - 

OK, this is a bit different.  Scrin now have a different design all together.

Scrin can NOT build defenses now.  Instead, certain buildings build defenses when they are built for free.  The basic idea is that the barracks comes with Anti Infantry defense, the Warp Beacon comes with Anti-Aircraft, well, you get the idea.

The Scrin Defenses tab is now dedicated to a Generals Style Power tab.  There are 3 coloums each with 4 powers in them.  The Defense powers are L1 Personal Forcefields, L2 Infantry Mines, L3 Personal Blink Packs, and L4 Regenerative Armor.  The Offensive powers are L1 Tiberium Based weapons, L2 Mothership Research, L3 Rift Generator Research, and L4 Full Scale War equipment.  The final option changes many weapons to a different fire mode, or adds additional powers to the units.  The final powers are Tactical based.  L1 is Tiberium Vibration Scan, L2 is Phase Field (which now can be used on enemies or allies), L3 is Wormholes, and L4 is a Nightmare Pulse.  The Wormholes are now perminant, allowing the Scrin to set up tunnel networks all over the map (these can be shot and destroyed by ctrl fireing on them) and the Nightmare pulse basically forces all infantry to stop and hit the ground for a full minute.  They can still fire, and they are harder to kill in this mode.

*The Scrin Infantry now have acidic blood when they die, so running them over with a tank is a bad idea now

*The Mastermind has the ability to fire off Ion Storms now.

*The Gunwalker is now an infantry unit and not a structure.

*The Devistator Warship now fires Dark Matter bombs.  It has an extremly high reload rate, but a player can push the ship and also use a manual Dark Matter bomb power.

*The Planetary Assault Carrier now has 2 fire modes, the normal mode where it launches fighters or an assault mode where it keeps the fighters attached to it but fires powerful beam blasts at the ground from the ship itself.

*The Mothership is now called the Eye of the Storm.  An Ion Storm is constantly inside the ring of the ship, and with the proper powers being used with it it can also be equipped with extra armor and additional guns that will fire upon enemy air units.  

*The Harvester now can gain a shield.

*The Corruptor now is very useful as a healing unit.  If you tell it to force fire on another scrin unit it will actually heal them with its beam instead of doing damage.  It will also follow the unit around until you tell it to attack or move somewhere else.

*The Devourer Tank now fires a rolling partical attack.  With the proper upgrades it can also fire a concentraded tiberium beam inside the rolling partical attack.

*The Annihilator Tripod now has a pulse energy beam.  This beam is half as powerful as it's normal attack but it can hit air and ground.  Each of the 3 tenticals can be induvidually upgraded to the regular beam everyone is used to, allowing you to customize your Tripods.

*The Alien Explorer now has a completly unique roll.  Now they effect the atmosphere and cause Ion Storms to randomly appear and move around the map attacking enemy units.  These storms come and go with time.

*The Scrin now have a new AI option!  This AI is called the Xenoforce AI, and if you want them to use the power system you need to choose this AI.


Earth Federation -

*The Earth Federation now bring in all of their vehicles through ship drops.  A ship will fly in from off the map and drop the units onto the field.  

*The Default War Factory now has the ability to build a resource drop.  Every 2 minutes the ship will fly in and drop of resources to the player.

*The EF can now deploy a Nuclear Reactor for power.  These are very powerful, but if sold or destroyed they will go nuclear and explode.  BE VERY CAREFUL.  

*The EF player can build more Forward Bases now.

*To move to the UC timeline you simply have to build the UC High Command building.


- UC -

*The Gundams are now deployed as powers on the left.  These are free.

*The only requirements on units now is to be in the proper timeline.

*The Timelines are done through upgrades in the UC High Command.

*All units have been rebalanced.  I need you guys to tell me if you find anything to be overpowering.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

New, simpler UC Design.

So I wanted to give you guys a quick rundown on what we are exactly doing to UC for the next release this Friday. The plan is to make the UC simpler and easier to use. How are we going to do this? I'll tell you, and it's what I hope to be a good idea.  

First we're removing the flag/force upgrade from the game. Instead, there will be 3 buildings that will become avalbile to you to build. The 3 buildings are an AW DOME Relay Node (which lets you pick AW and will have DOME controls in it), a SEED-Mass Driver (which will not only allow you to build Archangel Class ships but will also allow you to build other structures as well), and finally the UC-Earth Federation High Command (which will allow you to move forward with the timelines inside UC).

The AW and SEED buildings will be in place by friday but they won't do what they are supposed to yet, they simply will be used to allow you to still use those other 2 sides of the armies. Be aware that those armies are now considered broke as they need a serious update to make them fit better and this hasn't been done yet. UC however will be fairly straight forward. You place the High command and it will have 4 upgrades in it. Each upgrade will require you to build the previous one to move forward in the UC timeline. You will also have in the spellbook 5 spells that are UC spicific. These will be Spell 1 - White Base drop, Spell 2 - Grey Phantom drop, Spell 3 - Albion drop, Spell 4 - Psyco Gundam drop, Spell 5 - Argama Drop.

How these will work is like this. While in the teir 1 timeline the Teir 1 spell power, White base drop, will be avalible for use. Every X minutes (right now we're testing 2, but there is no garuntee) you can summon in the Whitebase anywhere on the map. This will work a lot like how the Arch Angel is being done in SEED, it will fly in and land on the ground. However, here is where it's different. The White Base will land on the ground, and drop off the Prototype Guncannon, Guntank, and RX78 units for free! Then after 15 or 20 seconds the ship will take back off and be able to be used like normal. So for the first few moments the White Base will have to be defended by it's units, after that it can defend itself. If one of the units the White Base drops off are destroyed then the White Base will respawn the unit after a minute or 2. If the White Base itself is destroyed then it can be resummoned from the spell power when the power is again avalible. If the White Base is resummoned it will only drop off the units that don't exsist any more, so for example if the RX78 and Whitebase died but the Guntank and Guncannon survived then when the whitebase relands it will only drop off the RX78. Also, it will only be able to remake units and resummoned while you are in the Teir 1 timeline. If you move to Teir 2 the units will still stick around, but if they die then that's it, there gone and can not be gotten back.

Buildable units this time around will also not have such stricked requirements to be buildable. Instead of needing the guntank to exsist to build mass production guntanks, just by being in the proper timeline will give you the ability to build the units that were in use during that time period. This will allow a player to build the units that they want and not be stuck going "Damn, I wish I could build some guntank 2's, but I have to wait until I finish all this research first, and once I'm done with that research I can just go to the next timeline so what's the point?"

Now the hard part. What do you need to advance through the timelines? Just build the upgrade, it's that simple. We're playing with 5 minutes per time period for the upgrade to get done to advance through the timelines, but we're not sure what we're going to do yet. There will be a very minimal cost to advance through the time, but the point will be that the HQ building will be very important for you to protect and for your enemy to destroy. Without it you can't advance, and that will make it a very important target for your enemies.

So now for the drops.

Spell 1 Drop - RX78-2, Guncannon Proto, Guntank Proto
Spell 2 Drop - RX77-6 Mudrock, Gundam Alex, 2 GM Snipers
Spell 3 Drop - GP01, GP02
Spell 4 Drop - Psyco Gundam
Spell 5 Drop - Nu Gundam, RGZ-91, 2 Jegans


Now for the other issue. Yes, I know that the Argama wasn't used by the Nu Gundam in 93, it was the Nahel Argama that Londo Bell used. Also, I know Mudrock wasn't transported on the Grey Phantom. However these are the models I have or would like to still use in these situations, so that's what we're going with for now. If someone has a Nahel Argama model that they'd like for us to use please let us know and we would be glad to use it.

As always, let me know your thoughts.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Some teaser pics



Just wanted to show off some of the new buildings that I've thrown together today for the mod.  We have a Solar Panel based power plant, a Tiberium Refinery Rig, and the Vehicle Drop Depot.  I'm not 100% happy with the Vehicle Depot but I do like the Solar Plant and the Tiberium Refinery buildings.


EDIT - POST UPDATE - EDIT - POST UPDATE - EDIT - POST UPDATE 

I added a pic of the other power option for EF, the Nuclear Power Plant.  I shouldn't have to explain why this is so dangerous now should I?  Yes, it gives off a ton of power, you shouldn't need more than 2 of these things to run a base, but when they go critical, they GO.  Fair warning, that's all I say. :)








Wednesday, September 22, 2010

An update of sorts

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let everone know where we are at.

Well, I just finished watching Gundam SEED, and I also finished Gundam X.  Yes, I know, how can you work on a mod without watching the shows first?  So sue me lol.

Having watched the shows now though, I can see some issues with what we were planning on doing with Gundam SEED.  So this is simply to let everyone know that the last version of the SEED layout that I posted will not be the one we are going to be using.  I have also taken into account everything everyone has been asking about, and there will be a lot of changes in the comming months to the mod.

What are these changes? Some of them like the changes to GDI, NOD, and Scrin you already know about.  Some of them you will finally see next weekend when we hope to have alpha 9 out (Oct 1st if everything go's well).  Others, like the changes to SEED and AW will have to wait until the 10th alpha.  But good news, we hope to have the final layout of UC done for next weeks release.  The buildings will not be correct persay, I have been making some throw-together models to use temporarily just to get the coding aspect done, but they will accomplish 2 important tasks. 

1. Their look should give you an idea as to their purpose.  

2. They will function properly in their designed way.

This means that, for example, the UC Vehicle Depo will actually look like a landing pad and ALL of it's units will be flown in on a Madea and dropped off from off the map.  So a player that plays his base close to the edge will get his troops quicker than a player that has his base near the center.  Also, this means that a player could, if not careful, have his Madea's shot down before the troops are dropped off, so you will have to at least think about giving the Madea's flight path some thought when deploying the building (a hint, the Madea will come from behind the building and then land in front of it).

Also, the new UC design we hope to have in place by then will also be more streamlined, with a clearer understanding to what you need to do to gain more mobile suits and advance.  This is being done because our current system, while interesting, is too cluddersome and makes playing UC way to slow, especially compaired to UC's enemies.  

What else..... EF as a whole has a new resource gathering system.  The Resource Pylons will still be there, but with a different building, as a secondary source of income if the player feels they need it or they simply want more, but the main source of income will come from the Vehicle Depot.  There is now a unit you can build that is simply a resource drop.  This unit costs no cash to make (wouldn't make much since if it did) but takes some time to drop in.  This means that the player can build quite a few of these things for cash, and then switch on the fly to unit deployment when it needs to.  We still havn't worked out the exact time to cash ratio yet (right now it's sitting at 30 sec for 2000) but this should again make EF different on the field.  Also at the moment only the basic Vehicle Depot can gather resources.  If a player upgrades the Depot to a timeline spicific Depot then it loses the ability to be used for cash.  Again, I don't know if this will stay in the A9 release, but it seems to work well now and gives the player something to think about.  

And finally we come to the new design for UC.  What we're going to try to do is make the Pegasus Class ships along with the Argama do more of what they are supposed to do, which is be used to deploy and carry mobile suits instead of build them.  How are we going to do that?  It's a secret!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Open forum time.

The other day I placed out our current plans for the SEED design.  Since then we have been getting a lot of feedback (mostly in a negative way) about what we planned on doing.

So me and Doug talked about it and this is what we have decided.  Were going to put SEED off for just a bit while we here from you guys on what you want.

And so this is my challenge to you.  Tell me how you want your Earth Alliance SEED army design to look like.  What units, what build orders, what abilities/special powers.  I'm not saying that we're going to use them, but we will look at each and every one and if there is something there that we think is a good idea then we may just use it!  

And besides, it's not like we're REALLY putting the Gundam SEED off for very long.  I'm currently working on redesigning the basic EF force right now (building orders and such).  Here's a pic of a building I put together for the EF replacing the original War Factory.  Our idea is to have the Madea fly in and drop the unit off on the landing pad instead of it just comming out of a giant hanger.  It's not very detailed right now, I need to go back and do some more work on it, but it works for now for me to test the drop-off code.  

Also, if you guys have any pics or ideas for buildings that you think I should use instead of the ones that are already there (yea, right now I'm looking to replace most of the buildings in the EF faction) send them my way so I can take a look.  Also, if you can't tell, I still suck at texturing models.  If anyone happens to have a good tutorial explaining how to texture a model in 3D studio max 8 I'd appreciate it.

As always, email is Azuza001@hotmail.com




Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Pics of GDI

And now we have pics of the new GDI.  GDI is different from NOD and the Scrin in that they are more about structure and control than mindless chaos or total destruction. 

In the first pic you see that we replaced the Orca Strike with a Firehawk Strike instead, no big deal I just thought it made more sense to have firehawks than orcas.  Also the bombs they drop are the same bombs as their Carpet Bomb attack (except not in a row) so you know it's gonna kill pretty much whatever it hits.

The next pic is of the new Orca Stormsmoke unit.  GDI really needed an aircraft that didn't always have to go back to base to reload, so we outfitted this Orca with dual 45mm cannons and let her loose.  It does pack a nice punch against vehicals and strucures, and it can defend itself against air units for a short time, but it isn't very accurate when firing at infantry.  

In the final pic you see one of the Preditors new upgrades, the Missle Pod.  This is a simple add-on that lets the Preditor hit air units and pack a bit more punch against vehicals and structures.

A few changes you don't see here in the pics is an MCV drop, that lets the player call in for 2 mammoth and 2 preditor tanks along with a MCV for free, along with the MOAB attack that the Firehawks can get and the new Carpet Bomb attack they get.  So don't let these pics fool you, GDI got just as many new toys to play with as NOD and the Scrin got.




Some pics from the new NOD

And now for some pics from NOD.  First we have the new Avatar designs.  Instead of ripping the weapons off of perfectly good units to make themselves arguably better we have the upgrades as just that, upgrades on each individual unit.  You can upgrade to the Flamethrower Avatar, which gives it a nifty new red paint job along with the ability to fire both the flamer and the beam cannon on the move, the dual beam cannon upgrade that gives him 2 powerful inter-firing weapons for tougher targets, or finally the missle upgrade that adds a missle pod to it's sholder and lets the Avatar deal more damage to it's foes in the great blue skies.

Then we have a pic of the Armageddon Bomber.  We changed things up a bit here, turning the Vertigo Bomber into a fighter jet and moving the Armageddon Bomber from support unit to buildable unit.  It's bombs are also slightly different.  The Armageddon Bomber is anything but accurate, so it drops many slow moving bombs out the back that kind of scatter as they hit the ground.  Kind of a shotgun bomber if you will.

Then we have the new Elite Infantry squad.  I say new, because technically it is new, but really it's just the NOD Commando with 2 Confessors.  However the unit still works like the old commando did in that they can plant bombs and blow up buildings, but they are more effective now against infantry and vehicals. 

On this final pic you may be wondering what your looking at.  Well, we gave NOD back it's Liquid Tiberium Doomsday Bomb, and when NOD drops it EVERYTHING on the map gets hit.  The only way to hide from this thing is to be in a building or bunker, it's that effective.  It doesn't do any real damage to vehicals or buildings, but it does massive damage to Tiberium based units and structures, pretty much destroying all Refinerys on the map.  Also, it has the side effect of killing all infantry units off and causing Vicroids to spawn.  We wanted it to be Muntant squads, but I just couldn't get it to work, so in the end I just went back to the Vicroids.  Honestly, it's pretty cool to see happen, but it REALLY SUCKS when it happens to you.  What this means is if your playing a map with a NOD player be prepaired to try and kill that Temple of NOD as soon as you see it, otherwise things could get all sorts of messy.








Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Some pics of the new Scrin Design.

So again, I had promised a few pics of some of the changes to the armies.  I decided to do a post for each of the 3 armies, here are some pics of the new Scrin changes.

The biggest thing to note here is all the icons under the Defense Tab.  The Scrin no longer have defenses that are buildable on their own.  Instead, they have a Generals Style powers tab that you can pick 7 of the 12 powers to apply to their army instantly.  The 3 rows are Defenses/Offenses/Tactics respectivly.  

Defensive powers are System Shields (turns on the shields), Infantry Mines (allows certain infantry units to turn themselves into landmines.  When the mines go off the infantry reapear), Blink Packs (allows some units to teleport around the map) and Living Armor (many high end Scrin units will now heal automatically when not fighting).

Offensive powers are Tiberium Laced Weapons (some units can use tiberium as ammo to make their weapons deal more damage), Mothership Deployment (allows you to deploy the Mothership), Rift Generator Deployment (allows you to build the Rift Generator), and Prototype Technology (many units gain power powerful weapons to use instead of their normal ones when this is used).

Finally we have Tactics.  These are basically different special powers that you can use.  They are Tiberium Scan, which now is able to be used the moment the scan wears off, Phase Shift which can now work on both your units and your enemies units as a way to sort of "put them off" for a moment until you can deal with them, Wormholes which now last forever (you can destroy a wormhole by simply shooting at it instead of moving to it, but wormholes are really only affected by BEAM weapons), and a new power called Nightmare Pulse.  The Nightmare Pulse forces all enemy infantry units to become surpressed for a full minute, helping you if your enemy is moving in with a large force of infantry by effectivly stopping them in their tracks.

But that's not all, many units themselves are different.  Again for example, what you see in one of the pics is me having 10 explorers built in my base.  The explorer now generates a randomly moving Ion Storm that comes and go's as it pleases.  This just adds a little random chaos and fun to things, don't you think?  Take a look at the pics and tell us what you think!







Sunday, August 29, 2010

I promised more information.

So here it is.  I've got 3 pics to show you guys today.  These are the latest designs we have come up with for the SEED unit layout.  Unlike UC where as you go through the game you unlock more units and lock out older ones SEED will have no lock out units.  This will make SEED more of a snapshot in time type of setup vrs UC's a history lesson of the gundams.

Keep in mind that every unit you see on these charts will not nessisarily be in the game.  For instance, I really think I may skip the Abyss gundam simply because the current maps that have water on them are waterlocked (IE even if you have a unit that can swim you can't swim on them thanks to the maps design) and that makes the unit pretty much useless.  

So here are the pics.  Feel free to comment.  And maybe you'll realize as you do look at what we plan on adding to the setup and what's changed to SEED just why it's taking so long to do lol. :)








Friday, August 27, 2010

It's been awhile

Just wanted to let everyone know that we're not dead, we're still here working on the mod lol.

It's been a busy last few days, but we've pretty much got everything for the original 3 armies set.  There have been a lot of changes done to these armies and I'm very interested to see how things work out in the end.

Within the next few days I'll post some new pics to give everyone an idea.  We've stuck to our original guns, there are NO new units in the game for the original armies.  Well, not really.  Ok, so technically there are a few new units, but they are more like different versions of the exsisting units with different weapon payloads.

My favorite unit so far is definatly been the Stormsmoke Orca.  It's more expensive than the normal orca, but unlike the normal Orca who's main weapon are the Shriker Missles and has an anti-infantry 50 cal machine gun for secondary uses this thing has 2 45MM cannons on it which unload a ton of weak, but effective, shots upon ground targets and has hellfury missles for it's secondary weapon, which are used against air untis.  Now the major difference here is the Stormsmoke Orca doesn't have to go back to base to reload, giving GDI a unit that can effectivly stay out in the field during fights and give the GDI forces some much needed ground support. 

When we finally do come out with the next version of the alpha, and it should be soon, there will be a very long list of changes that I'll have to go over.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, have a good one guys and I'll go work on getting some pics taken for the next update.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

So here is an interesting problem.....

I just finished my work on the Scrin Army, it's pretty much where I want it to be (minus the required weapon balancing and the like) so I decided to turn the game on and see how the AI fairs with my changes.  

This was my major worrying point while I was doing all this work, that the AI wasn't going to be able to do anything with what I was giving it and just run around in circles chasing it's own tail.

The result?  Oh dear......  So in my new design I gave the Assimilator a new ability.  The Assimilator is the Scrin's Engineer unit, but I wanted it to stand out a bit more, give it some new functionality as it were.  So I gave it the ability to turn itself into a biological powerplant for a short ammount of time.  The result?  It works great as a player.  Unfortunatly the AI can't seem to understand the point, and all it does is make a ton of these guys and turn them into powerplants while trying to get them to go capture a Tiberium Spike or something.  

Yea, that's not very good.  So I took the ability out, and the AI is working great.  I'm not sure if it's using my upgrades or not, it appears to use at least 1 of them, so that's pretty cool. 

But that leads to an interesting point/problem.  Whats better, making the game simply from the point of view of the real people who are going to play it, or designing the game around the idea that the AI does have to actually work?  What's more important?  Tell me your thoughts.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Heh, I learned a new trick.....

Look ma, I figured out a way to add stuff to an exsisting model in the game without having to export it or edit it.  :)  

Is this very useful?  Well, yes and no, but it's kinda cool.  It does open up a different level of coolness of things I can do to the models that I can edit already, letting me have things appear on models when upgrades are done, so in that since it's very cool.

Well, what your looking at in the picture is a concept design to what one of the new scrin options will be, which is an upgrade to the mothership.  It's been upgraded with greater armor, along with new weapons for firing at air units and finally a perpetual Ion Storm that is always with it.  All of this adds up to a mothership capable of doing some SERIOUS damage to an enemy as now the thing can protect itself on top of everything else.  Now, you may be saying to yourself, WTF, why would I ever want to fight against something like that with a Gundam? All I can say is that you need to either have another high-class unit to fight them (GP03, Pegasus Class Ship, a few Gundam X's with the Sat Cannons, those kind of things) or a lot of units as you can see in one of the pictures, the ship still needs to get in range and that's where it's vulnerable.  

Oh yes, did I say them? Yep, you can get as many as you can afford.  Enjoy the pics.  :)






Dougbendos Battle Reports / A quick update on current progress

So doug has done a few more battle reports for everyone to watch, he shows off the new GDI quite extensivly in these so if your interested in how things are changing I'd say give it a look.


Scrin are about 60% done now, I hope to be done with them by next Monday.  We're pretty much set on how we want to change EF and SEED now, so hopefully once that part of the project gets underway we won't be having any more "Well, our design worked fine until such and such happened, then it kind of went out the window" instances and we can get on with the real work at hand.



Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - Why the Freedom Gundam is no more prt 1




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDq8E2stFIU


Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - Why the Freedom Gundam is no more prt 2


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoRXeC41aT8


Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - Why the Freedom Gundam is no more prt 3


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jol160JgGs8


Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - why grass hopper got a buttwoopen prt 1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOIuiHYM0Fs


Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - why grass hopper got a buttwoopen prt 2


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UehlfeSQY_o


Command & Conquer 3: Xenoforce Renorn - why grass hopper got a buttwoopen prt 3


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o0FK1f0hqo

Thursday, August 5, 2010

I would love to show you all new pics of the mod!

I would love to, but I'm not going to. Why? Because honestly the next release won't have any graphical improvements. No new units, no new special effects, none of that stuff. Ok, maybe a little, but not anything that pics could possibly express.

Instead I would suggest that everyone take a look at Doug's youtube videos from last week if you havn't already.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RobotechPodcaster#p/u

He has a few vids up showing a couple of games that were played using the new GDI. In it you'll see some sweet stuff like the GDI Firehawk dropping carpet bombs, the Sonic Cannon shutting down vehicles, and some other sweet suprizes. I'm not sure, but one of the vids may also include NOD with their Catalyst Doomsday Bomb. I'm starting to wonder weather it's a good idea to have such a massive power in the game, I mean, we're talking about a power that you can not avoid no matter what! So if you see a NOD player get his final power (it'll have a countdown up in the corner, I think the pic is still a nuke explosion but it's not a nuke, it's the catalyst missle) you will want to step up your game and deal with that PRONTO.

Now, the reason it's taking some time to do is 2 fold. One, again I'm restructuring Scrin in such a way that they will not play like the GDI or NOD, so don't expect the same "class" unit to be effective against what it was before. A prime example is the Mastermind. I've given it one more ability right now, and we're toying with a second one but I'm not sure what the 2nd one could be (maybe the ability to morph into a tripod? Maybe not lol, still, the ability to turn into something bigger and much nastier without the powers has promise) but the 1st new power is the ability to summon an Ion storm onto the field where it is. This storm can not be stopped and will stick around for 60 seconds doing some pretty serious damage. This alone makes the mastermind a very dangerous new foe!

The 2nd reason is even more simple. With the changes we have made to NOD so far, along with what we are doing to Scrin, some things have to change. First, I have to look and see if I can make Scrin still work as an AI that is able to fight vrs labotamizing it with my changes (In other words, if I break the Scrin AI I will have to fix it and that will be a pain as I hate AI coding more than making a model from scratch) and the EF. The EF in particular is screwed fighting NOD right now. Why? All a NOD player has to do is get the upper hand for a moment and destroy the starting EF base in battle. Once that's done, the player can sit back, get the Tiberium Bomb, and then blow it up taking all the EF Resource Silos with it. This would be very bad as it would end up causing the EF player to have (gasp) NO structures to build more structures! So we have to redo some things. Yea.

So anyhow, take a look at his videos and tell us what you think! And if you have any suggestions/ideas, I'm always open. However, we're still sticking with the "no new units, lets try and make the ones that are already there work right", so if your suggestion would be to add a new tank in then it will probably not happen. :(

EDIT : AUGUST 6, 2010

Here are a few pics of me FINALLY getting a special power working for a Scrin infantry unit. This power turns the infantry unit INTO a land mine, and when the mine go's off the infantry unit comes back (on top of the damage done from the mine exploding). I'll leave it up to you guys to figure out ways to use this in an evil sort of way.






Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What we have been up to latley.

So there hasn't been much blog activity latly. Well, that's because we've been working on the mod! lol.

Now before I start hearing all sorts of crap from people, I want to let you all know just what I have been up to when it comes to the .9 alpha. Both Doug and I agree that GDI, NOD, and Scrin are important races to the Xenoforce Mod for a few reasons. 1, they have working AI's and are already there. 2, some players will still want to use these armies against new and different foes. 3, there is no reason why these armies couldn't stand against the new things we are putting in simply because we are balancing our new armies against them.

Now point 3 is important here. On the old version of the mod (0.82a) I felt that EF, and UC in general, were very balanced and heading in a good direction. But after rebalancing GDI and NOD I can see some cracks appearing in the Earth Federation setup.

When I say rebalancing, I don't mean we're just making this stronger or that stronger, what I mean is that we have gone back and took a good, hard look at how we want this mod to be played and just what it is attempting to do. In the end it comes down two 2 very important things. 1. We want each army to give off a different play stile that speaks to the induviduality and design of the units in said army. 2. We want each army to be true to their history.

When talking about GDI, NOD, and Scrin point 1 is obviously messed up. Your basically playing 3 different versions of the same army, there's no other way to put it. However, when you look at point 2 you begin to see why that is. EA, in their attempt to make CNC3, did not follow the design and history of the armys they were making well. So your end result was that, according to EA, the reason a lot of units and things changed from CNC2 to CNC3 was that technology progressed and this is where the 2 powers ended up. I can go along with that to a point, but what is horribly obvious is that something went wrong at some point. If GDI is supposed to be the dominant power now with military bases all over the world, then how come when you build a base in the game that's not portrayed. Also, GDI has chosen to follow a Clean Tech policy, staying away from Tiberium in all ways possible (other than clearing it out of course in refinerys). NOD on the other hand took the other route. They were defeated, so they went back and hid, licked their wounds, and came back stronger than ever. A lot of their stuff is what I consider "Dirty" Tech. They use whatever they can to get the job done, if that means using a 40 year old nuclear bomb then so be it. If that means infusing their troops with tiberium to make them stronger, then thats what they will do to further their goals.

But when you play GDI and NOD in the game, these feelings are not portrayed. You don't get the feeling as a GDI player that your part of a massive military force that has far-reaching resources and abilities that can be called in if need be to help fortify your position. You don't feel as NOD that your part of an orginization that places finatical obediance and is willing to go to any extreme to win their war against their foes.

Well, thanks to our current modifications, these are the feelings that you get now. We have stuck to our policy of "No New Units" for GDI/NOD/Scrin (are there any out there for Scrin anyways?) but instead worked with what units were in the game. We tried to make these units work how they should realistically work in this situation, and this is what we got.

GDI -

GDI now plays as a full military force. Their spell powers are based around the idea of reinforcements or off-screen strikes. You can build walls as GDI now, giving you the ability to make a real base wherever you want. You can call in a full base expansion team with a MCV and some heavy tanks for protection if you can't afford to expand. All of their powers are free, meaning that they can build a force quite quickly if left alone. GDI's Airforce has also been heavily revamped. The Orca is now equipped with a minigun to help in it's roll as a support aircraft, where the Firehawk is now the definitive air superiority unit it was always supposed to be. It has it's anti-air missle loadout, but it also has a carpet bomb loadout instead of its original pathetic bomb and it has the ability to be equipped with the Mother of All Bombs. Yes, this means that if you build 12 Firehawks you can drop 12 MOAB's across the map, but the MOAB does also hit air when it explodes so you must be very careful with this. You don't want the firehawk in front dropping it's bomb and blowing the other ones up do you? Also almost GDI's guardian cannons get the railcannon upgrade when they upgrade, and the sonic emmiter kills all infantry it hits with a single shot, and while the emmitters no longer do any real damage to vehicals they do have an EMP effect causing them to become very effective for base defence.

NOD on the other hand plays a lot more like a ghost. All of their buildings are now able to be stealthed with distruptors making them harder to find. Their Radar Jamming missle also jams the radar for 45 seconds, making NOD even harder to find on the map. They can drop mines all over the place, making early exploration a dangerous option for some, and they can duplicate their forces so you don't even know if what your fighting is a real army or if your just getting distracted. Most of their vehicals are now able to become invisible, and their basic cheap vehicals acutally spawn 2 units instead of 1 when you build to show that they grab whatever they can to fight. Now you may be looking at this and going "Dude, GDI has all these upgrades, all we get are some stuipd radar jamming missles and a few extra buggies?" No, you also get the Avatar Prime, which on top of having all the upgrades that an Avatar can get it also has a repair drone attached to it allowing it to fuction as a mobile repair station. But that's not the best part. Nods super-weapons have gotten an overhall. Now you have the Vapor Bomb which works just like it did before. You also get the Nuke, but unlike before the enemy doesn't know when you get the nuke because it's called from the Tiberium Research Facility. Also, when you fire off the nuke, instead of a bomb just falling from the sky the Missle is launched from an Armageddon Bomber like the Vapor Bomb is so your opponent doesn't even know it's on it's way there until it's too late! But that's not even the nastiest of NODS tricks. No, NODs most devistating weapon is the Tiberium Catylist Bomb. It doesn't matter where you drop this on a map, as EVERYTHING is hit. We got the idea for this from NOD's ending video from CNC2. All the tiberium is hit, causing it to regrow very fast. All the infantry on the board is hit, killed by the toxic effects of the Tiberium being lit up, and all units in a tiberium field when it go's off will die from the chain reaction in the tiberium. But it gets better, not only all of that happens, but any building or vehical that is Tiberium Based will also die in the horrific explosion. This includes NOD's own units. This truly is the DOOMSDAY bomb that NOD needs if it finds that it just can't get their opponent off base enough to beat them.


Having made all of these changes, the gameplay for GDI and NOD have actually changed. The armies FEEL different in the way they play, but in a good way. Using all of GDI's reinforment powers for example, you can call 2 riflemen, 2 RPG squads, 3 snipers, 2 apcs, 2 pitbulls, 3 zone troopers, 1 commando, 2 preditors, 2 mammoth tanks, and a MCV to anywhere on the field. Thats an entire army for FREE! If that doesn't say "I have help off site that I can call in if I need to" I don't know what does. And by doing all of this, it just shows how poor of a job we have done with the Earth Federations Base Deployment system. So now we're looking at redesigning Earth Federations base and defense systems. Just to be clear, we are not changing how they make units, or the build order on the units, we're looking at the buildings themselfs and how things cordinate with each other. Also we're looking at changing how EF gathers resources.



But what about Scrin? What have I done for them? Nothing yet. That's my next task. Where GDI, NOD, and EF all are human based armies I think it makes since that to a point they play the same. Scrin however are an alien race and we think that when you pick the Scrin army you should have a different design all together looking at you. So that's my next task.


I'm sure this news will be a disapointment to some of you. To others, you may be going "This sounds interesting, when can I try this out?". Well, that depends one 1 important thing. How long it takes me to get Scrin to work how we want.

Also, try to remember that a lot of what we want to do coding wise in the game for the other armies that we are making we are testing in the exsisiting 3 armies now. If we find out now that we can't do something it's best that it happens now before we actually get to the point where we have to re-design everything again because something new came up that makes all the other stuff just not work right.

Friday, July 9, 2010

A lack of progress and a few other thoughts

Well, in case some of you didn't know, we here in the northern section of the US have been having a massive heat wave recently. It's been pretty bad and I honestly have not been able to do any coding/modeling-work on the mod so far this week thanks to it. But now it seems that's over and we can get back to work.

Now, over the last week I've been getting a few emails (and you can see on the blog even a few comments) about Zeon. Doug and I have a clear plan in place for the Zeonic force in the game, but I must warn people that it is not a copy of the Earth Federation. What this means is that your not going to choose to play as one of the 3 sides from the different timelines when you pick Zeon, your going to be playing as Zeon from the UC. If we just set it up so that it's like EF, then where would the fun in that be?

Also, as far as I know, Zeon was only in the UC timeline, they were not in AW or SEED. If you wanted to be fair and set it up like the EF is, they wouldn't be Zeon anyways, it would be the "Colonies" force, wouldn't it? And to me that seems wrong.

Trust me, Zeon will have it's own reason to play that will make it just as interesting and give you just as many different play options/styles as the EF force does, if not more. Where the Earth Federation always seems to focus on making a single mobile suit that can do it all, the Zeon side seems to always base the mobile suit around the Pilots having very customized suits, and thats what we're going to try to do, bring that feel to the game.

Now, back to working on the units models. Its a neverending battle isn't it?

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Alpha 82B

Ok, just a quick update. After Alpha 82A came out I started getting a lot of weird things popping up in my games. Namely, units would take enough damage to die but wouldn't die! What the hell?

So this here is mostly a patch to that, to fix the invulnerable unit issue. I think it should take care of the problem, if not let me know and I will try to duplicate the issue again.

Also, 1 other change has happened from alpha 82a that's in here. We have removed the cost from almost ALL spellbook powers for the GDI, NOD, and Scrinn. In fact, the only power we did keep a cost on was the Scrinn Mothership. Why? Well, to be honest, it didn't make much since to me. Why would I have to pay to get the, say, orca to fire it's sensor pod when I've already payed to have it built and paid to have it upgraded to use the power.

What ends up happening is that the game becomes MUCH more interesting. You can hold off and fire the powers whenever you want, or you can use them to your advantage. Fire the Radar Jamming Missle, followed by the decoy army power, drop some mines while your opponent can't see what's going on, and then stealth your real army all for free! What it ends up doing is opening up the powers for players to use them tactically instead of "Oh, I don't have cash cause I'm buying units, I'd like to use that power but I really never get to" type things.

Enjoy the fix, I know it made my game much more interesting and enjoyable. (nothing is a bummer like seeing 3 scrinn tanks become invinvible and walk into the GDI base, getting pounded, but nothing stops them)


Oh, and barring any more game breaking bugs, this should be the last actual downloadable update for awhile.

Mediafire Link - Alpha 82B

http://www.mediafire.com/?jmyyytmdmvm

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Alpha 82a, a few changes, and a new naming scheme

Ok, so I've listened to everyone on the Mod mini-updates vrs. major updates and almost everyone I've talked to said they want fewer, larger updates. So that's what we will do. Who says we don't listen?

Now, however, as I already have this done, I want to put out a mini-update to the alpha 8. This doesn't add or change anything really to EF, but it does re-work the original armies some to make them work better.

Changes to EF -

Artimis Shield has new special effect (Used one of the Scrinn Shields) and is much stronger now.


Changes to GDI-

Cranes can now build defenses.
GDI BattleBases now get an upgrade to their weapons when the Rail Cannon upgrade is done, their 2 main cannons become Rail Cannons.
GDI Sonic Emmiters now get an upgrade to the damage they put out when the Rail Cannon upgrade is done.

Changes to NOD-

Cranes can now build defenses.
NOD Scorpion Tank now gets stealth, it also keeps it's original cannon when it gets the laser upgrade.
NOD Venom Tank now gets stealth.
NOD Raider Buggies now get stealth.
NOD gets a semi-new unit, the Avatar Prime. It's basically the Avatar with all of the upgrades already on it for a high cost.
NOD defenses are upgraded now when the laser upgrade is done. The Shredder turrets deal a great deal more damage, and the laser turrets deal more damage and can hit air.


Chagnes to Scrinn-

Foundry can now build defenses.
Storm Rider now does not require a landing pad while in the air, allowing you to build as many as you want from a single airpad.
Storm Riders are now cheaper.
Planetary Assault Carrier now has a weapon on it for defense.
Motherships limit of 1 has now been removed, allowing you to build as many as you want. The rebuild timer has been reduced to 50 seconds.
The Armor on all Scrinn units have been increased, apparently EA had them set to paper thin armor levels. WTF?



Here's the mod.


http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nreom3zho0g


Also, after this next alpha (Alpha 9) we will be switching over to a new naming scheme. From that point on the alpha after 9 will be named Alpha 0.010A and go from there.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Redesigning SEED, more Xenoforce Reborn Video-casts, and an important question.

First, real quick, Doug has posted a few more video responses to what everyone has been saying about the mod. Very good stuff, I love these types of questions guys.

UC units with a second chance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTQ6ZJmCgUE

Better understanding why UC is UC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBtszUbtrHk




Now, right now we are in the middle of discussing Gundam SEED and redesigning the layout so that SEED will feel "better" than it currently does. Honestly, while SEED isn't bad, it just doesn't have the polish that UC and AW have in terms of development. So, since we're working on fixing a lot of the models right now for UC (trying to get the game to let their torso's twist so they can fire and move at the same time) we've decided to go back and give SEED the proper ammount of attention it deserves. With that said, that puts a lot on the table for Alpha 9 to get done before Alpha 9 is released.

The way Alpha 9 is comming, these are the changes that I would do before releaseing it. We would redesign and implement the new design for SEED, we would adjust every model already in the game for fixing the ability to move/fire at the same time as well as fixing the units reaction time/animations when firing. We would implement the Unit Experience System (so units will gain experience for killing stuff). Artimis's building would be resized, and the special effect for the Artimis Shield around the buildings would be changed to make it much better. The Defensive Turret system would get a total-rehaul, giving a few more options to players on what to build and when they are buildable and who can build them.

And thats just off the top of my head. Obviously if I do wait to release Alpha 9 once all that is done we're looking at months of work here and it will be awhile.

So my question is this. Would you guys rather have less, bigger updates or more, smaller updates? Please leave a responce to the question, and after I hear from you guys on the issue we will look at a release timeline for stuff. Keep in mind, if you are actually logged in when you "vote" then your vote will count for more in my mind then an annonymous vote. A name does make a difference.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

More episodes of Xenoforce Reborn Video Casts

Hey guys, Doug has done some more videos for everyone, I highly recommend you watch them.



Now for the videos.

What really is impacting the UC units.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjAhhM2Tuy4


The Gundam UC list

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBbcN1bdx4w


What Gdi, Nod and Scrin are good for???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5oU3TkjDNU


Will Nod, Gdi and Scrin be axe in the end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bs4tQPZoDw


Nod, Gdi, Scrin and what we have done for you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwODVZ4RVcY

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Round 2 of the Alpha 8.

Ok guys, here we go again. Sorry for the one upload connection, my internet is acting badly today so this is all I was able to upload. Here is the Alpha 8 mod.


Mediafire : http://www.mediafire.com/?gmmkmj1mcki


Doug has done a few more videos for everyone to enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg92_jPz0ZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONosUbDKnak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jck9d3rqosA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hP6bFx9QnU




And here is the list of changes to the game between the old and the new Alpha 8.

Fixed discriptions on almost everything.
Fixed requirements on everything, now it's clear what is needed to get different units.

Fixed RGZ91's Command Set.

Fixed GP03's rocket pod attack from 4 seconds to 40 seconds.

Fixed button icons for a few untis.

Fixed Artimis! Now the Artimis system for SEED does 3 important things.
1. Artimis is used to research the launcher packs for the Phantom Team units.
2. Artimis is used to call in the Arc Angel, which is used to build Gundams.
3. Artimis is used to call up the Shield Generator System. This grants a shield to every non-defensive building on your side, giving them much more life.

Fixed the Arc Angel. Now when you deploy it it lands from space and takes a full 30 seconds from when it starts its landing until it actually is useable. The reason for the delay is because of the Arc Angel Bomb that people were doing, using it to just wipe out the enemy. This gives the enemy a chance to at least respond to it before it becomes a true threat to them.

A few other balancing issues were done also.

Enjoy the mod guys. I'm gonna take a break (lol) from coding for the next few days before jumping into some other stuff. Alpha 9 will bring a few more interesting twists to the game, and then if nothing pops up we will be off to a new faction!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

a problem with alpha 8

So it didn't take long for the issues to arrise from alphtha 8. The biggest being the war factory upgrade messup (oops) for aw and seed. I will take a good hard look at the code today and re-release an alpha 8b on Sunday to a few different locations for people.

Friday, June 18, 2010

The time has come

Well, 2 hours late, but it's still Friday so I'm technically still on time!

Enough of the wait, we now have for you all Alpha 8.  

I'll just go ahead and post the links up here.  Then, while you download, if you want to read after you'll see how many things have been changed since Alpha 7.

Please keep in mind that this alpha is not perfect, there are still some bugs and things that need to be worked out (the most glaring to me off the top of my head is Artimis still doesn't do anything and the RGZ91 is using the Gundam Airmasters command set)

Mediafire :

http://www.mediafire.com/?zjqjrdg5jy2



One big note on a change.  In the game you can build the War Factory at the beginning.  But as units were added in and time went on we realized quite quickly that the War Factory's build list was becoming huge but most of it was grayed out during actual gameplay.

So our fix to this has been the following.  Once you pick a timeline from the main command center (or a resource pylon) the corisponding flag will become lit up in the War Factory.  By clicking the flag the buildings command set will change to one that has the units that that Timeline has avalible to it.  

Ok, now that that's out of the way, what was changed that took so long you may ask?

First of all we have the AW timeline in the game.  That's an entirely new army for everyone to play with!  The way they work is based around land bases that come out of the War Factory.  These land bases have the ability to deploy units out of them from the upgrade pannel on the land base, allowing you to move and fight while building units!  Also because it's not a building you can take a landbase out to the middle of nowhere and just start pumping out units.  This gives AW a huge mobile base advantage. 

Now you may also notice that AW doesn't have many units.  Well, your right, they don't, but what they do have are gundams.  Each Land Base can produce a single gundam of it's type at a time (so the Airmaster Landbase makes Airmasters).  But then the Gundams themselves have the ability to make and deploy Bits.  These units are a more generic level unit that use the same weapons and have some of the same abilities as their Gundam masters.  So the Gundam X Bit can also fire it's Sat Cannon along side with the Gundam X.  That's a LOT of Sat Power.  


But that's not the major change.  The true major change to the game has been work on the UC timeline.  Now it spans from 0079 through 0093 (instead of 0079 to 0083) giving you a TON of units to play with.  Now, not everything that is in the Gundam Cannon is in the game (it would take too long and would start getting redundent if we tried to do that) so if your favorite unit didn't make the cut for the Alpha 8, I'm sorry but this list is what it is.  But don't fret, we still have to go back and redo the Spellbook powers (one noteable thing that needs to change is that we still have the spellbook power for Gundam Murdock.  As Gundam Murdock is now IN the game as a buildable unit this needs to be removed.  I plan on replacing the Murdock power with a GP00 power later, but I just ran out of time so didn't get to it.)

What units does UC now have avalible? Here are the Teir breakdowns.

Teir 1 - 0079

Uniques : RX78 Gundam - Guncannon Prototype - Guntank Prototype

Mass Production : RGM79 - RGC80 - Guntank


Teir 2 - 0080

Uniques : RX-77-3 Guncannon - Gundam Alex - Gundam Murdock

Mass Production : RX-77-D Guncannon - GM Sniper


Teir 3 - 0083

Uniques : GP01 - GP02 - GP03

Mass Production : GM Custom - GunCannon Mk II


Teir 4 - 0087

Uniques : Psyco Gundam

Mass Production Uniques : RX178

Mass Production : GM III - Guntank II


Teir 5 - 0093

Uniques : Nu Gundam

Mass Production Uniques : RGZ-91

Mass Production : Jegan


Now after looking at this list you may be saying to yourself "Holy crap that's a lot of UC power".  Well, it is, but keep this in mind.  When you upgrade to a new teir some of the old stuff from the previous teirs becomes locked out.  For example, when you go to Teir 4 and gain the ability to build GM-III's you lose the ability to build GM-Customs and RGM79's.  You may be saying to yourself "big deal, why would I want those older units?  Isn't the GMIII much better?"

Well, it is and it could potentially not be.  The RGM 79 has the advantage that when you start out with it its using a balistic weapon (a machine gun).  You have the OPTION to upgrade it to a beam rifle if you want.  However doing this affects all RGM 79's, not just the one you upgraded, and while beam weapondry is stronger than balistic weapons for the most part, sometimes it's not the case.  An example would be Nu-Gundam.  He gets to use some of his funnels as a shield that protects him from enemy beam weapondry.  But the shield isn't as effective against balistic weapons, so the unupgraded RGM 79 would do more damage to it than the GMIII.  However, for the most part, the GMIII is a stronger unit.


So now, what I need from all of you is playtesting.  I need feedback on what things need changing (and I'm sure there will be a nice long list) and what things work well.  Please email these findings to azuza001@hotmail.com

And finally, I want to say thank you to all the people who have been donating models to me in the last few months.  Smoth and Keyboard have been particularly helpful, and with out everyones help this project wouldn't be where it is now.  Thanks guys.


Alpha 8 Teaser


Just a teaser pic for the 8th alpha.  Nu-Gundam is comming for you.  We're still on track for tommorow.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Alpha 8 will be out soon!

Well, not a lot of work has been done on the game this past week, but that was to be expected.  Starting this thursday night I will be on vacation and will be able to devote most of my time this week and next week to getting the 8th alpha out for everyone to enjoy.  

We're putting a lot of work into this, adding and updating new models, getting special powers and abilitys in play, in all getting the mod into a good state.  I would dare say we're almost done with the Earth Federation by the end of this next week (as far as units and gameplay go's, not as far as balancing, animations, upgrades, and abilities).  I know it may seem to early to talk about the 9th alpha when the 8th isn't really out yet, but the 9th won't be as big of a jump in features as the 8th has been, so hopefully after this it won't take as long to get to the next set. 

I'll keep everyone posted!  Keep your eyes open.