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.






9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about Seed faction? is it in progress?

azuza001 said...

Yes it is, the problem with SEED is an interesting one in that there are a lot of units we would like to put in, but currently we are looking at how to do the army in a way that won't overwhelm the player with a lot of unit choices that all pretty much do the same thing.

In other words, as far as seed is concerned, we're just trying to figure out what units to put in and what to leave out.

Anonymous said...

How about make some advantage each faction for example:
- U.C unit cheaper to build and less powerful than U.C.
-Seed unit more powerful but more expensive to build.
Also according to Gundam Wikia: GM Ground is produced before V project but it only few produced.

azuza001 said...

Are you suggesting that I make the cheaper units do less damage than the stronger more expensive units?

Anonymous said...

sorry... it seem's I had typed it wrong, I mean U.C unit have cheaper and weaker unit than SEED.

smoth said...

:(

by keeping the old cnc stuff you guys have hamstrung your development of the new content.

azuza001 said...

And how is that Smoth? I don't see it as wasted time (believe me, if I did I would have told Doug awhile ago and wouldn't have worked on it). By doing this I have learned how to do even more things with the engine as a whole and am able to offer a truer experience to the players of the new factions while giving players of the old factions a fresh outlook on the armies that they already love.

To me that seems like time well spent.

smoth said...

I didn't say wasted time. I said it has hamstrung you.

I say that because it is a sidetrack from getting the new content in. You are learning things but you could be learning things and adding new content

azuza001 said...

Ah, well, I misunderstood what you were saying sorry. Still, I agree with you in some aspects and disagree with you in others.

I gave Doug 4 weeks of time dedicated to fixing the exsisting 3 armies, that's really not a lot of time in the big scheme of things on the the mod in my opinion. Also, every single unit in the game is different. In this instance, I've learned how to do a LOT of new stuff that I wouldn't have even known were possible simply because I've never looked at the code of Scrin or much of the NOD code to begin with. This has opened my eyes to new possibilities that will make the game better than ever!

Again, take a look at the new Scrin Mothership. Due to us changing NOD with the Catalyst Bomb and Scrin with the new changes to the Mothership (I love that thing, it just feels epic now) we figured out our resource design for EF just won't work in the long term, it's just not a good design. The flaws show through drastically instead of barely. Also, with the new mothership I feel we have a design type that I can apply to the other Capitol Ships in the game, so now there is a real reason to build Pegasus class ships, If someone is moving in with 3 Motherships I want my Pegasus class to be something that feels just as epic and is just as powerful. In other words, there is a reason to MAKE the pegaus class be more than just a mobile troop maker like it was before.

So while I understand what your saying, and after this week I will not be granting the original armys any more of my modding time, I think it was needed for a few reasons and have come out a better modder because of it.