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Some Modding Questions


Phonan

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I was thinking today about a few things. First, it'd been way too long since someone posted in the mod forum. But in the way of real ideas, I did have a couple.

First, new gametypes. These might be possible to use workarounds to create without code changes, but I think it would help if, say, Clay could help with how to do this. One thing I thought would make for a very interesting scenario was Escort, in which one has to, say, get a Thor to a certain point on the map. Of course, the game couldn't be very long but I think it would force group fighting, which would be very interesting. What if, say, we could "attach" the objective to a vehicle? Or maybe make it so just one vehicle could gain points at the objective? Or maybe we could give one team a single Cutter to get to the objective with and force them to keep it alive (no Dropships of course.) On the other hand, the enemy being able to just "camp" at the base would make this a rather bad gametype, so one could eliminate all dropships and perch the "defenders" on a steep slope above the escorters so that the defenders couldn't stay at the objective.

Another thing I thought of was a new vehicle, which could require code changes as well. Could one, once again, "attach" a deployment zone to a vehicle? Then that vehicle could have allies deploy in and support it. Some problems come up: what if it moves? Perhaps we could have it stay still while acting as a deploy zone. On the topic of new vehicles, I thought along the lines of gunships and aerial attack, and that maybe it would be nice to arm say a Viper (or Dragonfly) with auto targeting weapons. Of course, now, autoguns only can target air units, but I think giving them air-to-ground abilities would make for Dropships that could easily attack and maneuver. Just an idea.

Also, I'm starting to miss CZ. Poesel said a while ago that it outlived its use but now I'm starting to disagree. I know Poesel didn't decide to cut out CZ and just spite us all, but if anyone could host a server with mods, I think it would help. There's not much incentive to mod anymore if there's nowhere your mods will show up. And thank you to Poesel for doing it so long! I finally realize what a great thing you did with CZ. Thanks very much!

And this brings me to the end of this admittedly long post. I myself think we should get some of the best CZ vehicles, and, if we have good enough ones, put them in the full game. Of course, many units lack polish, and if those are the ones we decide to put in, we can put some modding focus on prettying them up. I think a vote on putting some new vehicles in would be nice.

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IIRC there has been a survey (long ago) from Clay about what new game elements should be in DT. 'Escort' games where high on the list but unfortunatly didn't happen.

Moving deployment areas sound fun but would be hard to explain gamewise. Units just pop in those areas - somehow hard to explain without beaming. Hmmm, come to think of it: theres no scenario that I can remember where there is a deployment not on the edge of the map.

Shameless plug: I want conquerable deployment zones!

Thanks for the praise on CZ but I have to disagree on one part: I didn't say it had outlived its time - the last incanation of it had just too many new vehicles, some of them very unbalanced and/or unfinished. It would have needed quite some work to clean things up.

I think that was around January and at the same time there was a message from Clay that there would be an announcement about the future of DT. So I stopped working because I wanted to invest only in a game that had some kind of future.

Well, I'm still waiting for that announcement and thus lost much of the momentum I had for DT.

For technical reasons I can currently not restart CZ but am more than willing to help someone who wants to do it himself. For the record: feel free to use my stuff in the CZ mod for whatever purpose you want.

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i´m working on something of the category "workaround".

The scenario is called "Gauntlet".

The story: a heavy space viking raiding party (4 thors) has been stripped of its escort vehicles and dropships. They try to escape to a nearby wormhole portal. a light colonial defence force (8 paladin 76 mm and 8 shrikes) tries to kill them before they can escape.

the worm hole portal is the objective in this map. the objetive is protected by 6 ion towers (owned by the space viking side) to deter camping by the colonials.

the map itself is a modified version of the Iwo Jima map. i hope Hub and poesel are OK with that smile.gif I´´ll make my own map when I´ve figured out how to render the RAW files into a 2046x2048 bitmap for free. and after thatndeal with the even more horrifying mask.jpg business.

In a human vs. human match the colonials should concede defeat if one of the thors manges to reach the objective.

The vehicle numbers and maybe types need some tuning. tell me what you think!

check it out (just save it in your dropteam/data folder):

http://yossarian0815.yo.funpic.de/Gauntlet.scenario

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I guess the 76mm will die a certain death from afar at the hands of 120mm HEAT shells - theres not much to hide on Iwo Jima (which is Hubs alone - I only made a minor mod). And the 76mm doesn't hurt the Thor a lot anyway.

Same goes for the Thors at the hands of the ATGMs: nowhere to hide and 80 shots vs 4 towers at max range - death from above.

Uuuups, thats now very negative... although I like the idea smile.gif

Ok, how about 4 Thors vs 8 rifle inf and 8 20mm Apollos on a very hilly setting? The Thors want long distance engagements but they have to reach a certain point. The others want close range and thus surprise atacks but can not concentrate too much else they get zapped by the ions.

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Please critisize freely , I can take critcism, at least in this context ;):D

Hillier would definitely be better. I´m not so inclined towards infantry because bots are useless at infantry and AKAIK you can´t restrict infantry to the deployment zones. The reason I chose 76mm vs 20mm is that I didn´t want to encourage rushing the thors with 20mm paladins. I want to encourage sniping. both sides should be forced to think about positioning. (Using the Apollo 20mm would aleviate the rush problem ). The shrike I agree is too strong in this setting, maybe only 1 or none would be better.

I can make heightmaps with terragen (free version), but rendering at 2048x2048 can´t be done with the free version. Anybody know a free program in windows (or linux) that can do that and is reasonably easy to use?

Or even better does somebody have professional software to whom I could simply email some heightmap prototypes?

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So to add another modding question, how does one do bridges? I've been thinking about a few maps that work on 2 or more "layers."

And jby- I actually haven't done too much with heightmaps involving anything other than two programs. For the simple stuff it's easy enough to just use Paint, but I really haven't used anything other than Terragen for the really cool stuff. I hear Nexus used a program called Geomorph for Linux- I had that installed on Ubuntu before I had to do a reinstall; maybe I'll try it again. In the meantime, maybe you could give that a shot- good luck!

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  • 4 months later...
On the topic of new vehicles, I thought along the lines of gunships and aerial attack, and that maybe it would be nice to arm say a Viper (or Dragonfly) with auto targeting weapons. Of course, now, autoguns only can target air units, but I think giving them air-to-ground abilities would make for Drop ships that could easily attack and maneuver. Just an idea.

I have tried every way I could think of to put a Turret (which is the only vehicle auto-targeting weapon) on the Dragonfly and still have it fly. The code will just not allow it. It is probably the same bug that will not allow two turrets on a vehicle.

And speaking of multiple turrets, where is the BOLO (Orge) we were promised??

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;1033170']

I can make heightmaps with terragen (free version), but rendering at 2048x2048 can´t be done with the free version. Anybody know a free program in windows (or linux) that can do that and is reasonably easy to use?

Or even better does somebody have professional software to whom I could simply email some heightmap prototypes?

I'm just wondering, I realise resampling an image to a higher resolition does degrade a little but if one rendered out from Terragen at largest possible size then upsampled the image to 2048 x 2048, whilst slightly degraded it would probably be OK quality for a height map wouldn't it?

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I have tried every way I could think of to put a Turret (which is the only vehicle auto-targeting weapon) on the Dragonfly and still have it fly. The code will just not allow it. It is probably the same bug that will not allow two turrets on a vehicle.

And speaking of multiple turrets, where is the BOLO (Orge) we were promised??

Dangit, and I agree. Where is my ogre? That mode was going to be awesome....

And Marneus, If you're reading, I am about to resolve my zebra problems, and then I can check the mods you sent.

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