Iron Wars development thread (download not available)

[Ardis]

If I do textures on my models, I'm going all the way with them, going to make a unique texture for each ship and UV map it on. I know how to UV map in Blender, but I don't have any ideas on what the units would look like when textured quite yet.

So, now onto the tedious task of changing all of the Stat_txt.tbl entries to go with the new hotkey system, assuming that the basic commands (attack, move, etc.) are editable through it.

[Lavarinth]

If I do textures on my models, I'm going all the way with them, going to make a unique texture for each ship and UV map it on. I know how to UV map in Blender, but I don't have any ideas on what the units would look like when textured quite yet.

So, now onto the tedious task of changing all of the Stat_txt.tbl entries to go with the new hotkey system, assuming that the basic commands (attack, move, etc.) are editable through it.

Gotta remember fine detail on texture in SC units will make the unit appear like a blur. It's fine for renders, but for GRP units you have to really lower the quality of it to make it look good.

[Ardis]

Yeah, I found that out again. Made a texture in Blender with too much detail and it ended up looking like a big blob that resembled a spaceship with the textures on it. I don't think I'll be able to do a UV map texture with such a low detail level so I'll just stick to Blender's textures for now.

Still cleaning up the tooltips for the updated hotkeys, but it might be a while before I find every last one. The big problems are with the defensive structures, one of them seems to behave oddly. It will acquire a target and attack, but it won't change targets when I tell it to. The defensive addons still need sprites and scripting, but I don't know how I'm going to do those quite yet.

[bajadulce]

Glad to see you're still having fun working on your SC1 mod and still plodding along.  Good job for staying committed.

As for your designated 9 hotkeys, I like this concept alot.  I'm sure you've played Hercanic's STF as his mod employs such a design as well.  The pluses are numerous as a newbie can "read" a hotkey by simply glancing over at that area of the console rather than hovering a cursor over a tooltip.  Hotkey conflicts are also not an issue as you are bounding to a map of keys rather than a letter.  A foreigner using a different language won't be as easily lost in the translation should you elect to supply additional stat_txt.tbls.  So those are really nice perks in favor of such a system.

Maybe the only negative would be that certain core hotkeys such as "stop, build, attack" will now either need  to be rearranged in the grid so that they land on "a" and "s" or a few exceptions such as "b" be allowed. Using "w" for stop, "e" for attack, and "z" for build would definitely take some getting used to. 

Regardless, I am a firm believer that all hotkeys should be centralized around the ASDF keys and have made it a point to always use this in mods like ORAI, ARAI, AAAI, PEAI etc.  For myself (creative writing is a huge challenge for me),  coming up with creative strings that revolve around 15 keys can be very challenging, but worth the extra effort.  A 9 key direct setup such as STF's is hard to beat for ease of building tho and is very innovative!

We should put aside some time and help play test each other's mod.  I would really like to wrap things up on my own project as well.

take care.

[Ardis]

So, when I finally get the defensive structures working I'll upload a new version of the mod and start working on one of the other two factions, most likely the Syndicate since their Leviathan is going to be fun (and by fun I mean torturous) to get working. I think I played STF once or twice, but didn't really have time to get into it that much.

The plan right now for the Leviathan was I was going to take the Siege Tank (both modes and the turrets) and use the Siege Mode as its Wormhole Generator state and Tank mode as the Mobile state and just use the Arbiter's Recall spell, I might even see if there is a way to make it persist. Lastly, I need to find a way to make sure you can only own one of these units, which I think I can do from the Requirements tab in Firegraft. If you guys have any better ideas, I'd be glad to listen.

Also, is anything you can put into a unit's iscript to tell it to change targets? I wanted to make some of the defensive structures look like they're attacking multiple units at the same time by making them change targets several times during each volley to create that illusion.

EDIT: On the bright side, it seems that the color scheme for the Syndicate's drone fighters works on really well in the SC color palette. Attached is the first attempt at the Vortex, didn't need to adjust colors at all.

[New-/Hydrolisk]

Vortex.grp is badass.

Nothing in iscript can tell a unit to change targets. To achieve the effect you're looking for, go with Attack 3x3 and multiple attacks in an attack sequence. You can also try using plug-ins, though that will require some learning.

You could use a *.GOT and a trigger to destroy a Leviathan whenever there are more than 1 Leviathan at a time. Or, use a plug-in. The former would be easier. Or not. IMO, the latter is easier (primarily because I'm not really sure how to work with *.GOT).

QWEASDZXC hotkey system isn't exactly "new," but nontheless, it's a cool innovation (I guess you could call it that).

[Ardis]

Okay, so I decided to look into how well upgrades scaled with each unit. Armor upgrades don't seem to do much, but I don't know if there is much I can do about that. However, one thing stood out, the Spire Cruiser's* attacks seem to be quite deadly when fully upgraded because it fires a volley and each missile is affected by the upgrades to the point where a single volley kills any fighter and they burn down larger ships rather well. Could you guys check this out and tell me if you think it's overpowered or fine? I kind of like the idea of the Spire's weapons scaling very strongly with upgrades, possibly drop the base damage significantly and increase the upgrade bonus slightly, I'm even thinking of making the Empire units all have strong, but expensive, upgrade scaling.

*Unit will be renamed soon as I have a better name.

[New-/Hydrolisk]

Take note that although units with sequenced attacks have superior scaling in terms of attack, they are also weak against different armour sizes and high armour ratings.
But since weapons in general scale better than armour, take extra care when balancing units with sequenced attacks. ;o

[Ardis]

Problem with using a trigger to remove extra Leviathans is it has no control over which one is destroyed, the new or current. I'm going to try using Firegraft unit requirements to see if it can do anything along the lines of "Unit not owned" or something.

Attached are previews of two more of the Syndicate's drone fighters, they're kind of rushed in comparison, might angle the rfighter's rear wings out a bit so they're more visible when it's pointing North.

[Ardis]

Okay, because I rethought the idea behind their technology, the Syndicate tech tree is going through a major overhaul/re-planning from the ground up, so I won't have any usable units for them for a while, but I thought I'd give you two more previews of the Regine Syndicate units; the Sincla and it's larger cousin, the Sigvaldt. The Sigvaldt is basically a unique/hero unit that will be in the campaign (should I ever decide to make one) that serves as the flagship of the Syndicate. The original Sincla was basically something the Syndicate threw together in a hurry in a captured Empire shipyard using parts from a pair of unfinished Selveris Battleships, later ones were built from scratch based on that design, and the Sigvaldt is an improvement on that design. The Sincla lacks defense against fighters due to power management issues while the Sigvaldt carries minimal anti-fighter defenses.

And the rfighter.grp and dbomber.grp now have actual names: The Razor Fighter and the D-Tybe Bomber. Razor Fighter is a high speed fighter that has a slow weapon with decent burst damage against other fighters and some larger craft. The D-Tybe is a bomber, meaning its weapons are meant for taking out larger targets, high damage and whatnot, but it also has a rapid fire, low power weapon to deal with light fighter attacks. The Vortex is classed as a Heavy Fighter, meaning it's big for a fighter, not as fast as the Razor Fighter, but has very fast weapons with low damage that will shred lightly armored units in seconds.

[Ardis]

So, here's an interesting idea that just popped in my mind. Odds are it's not an original thought, but I had it independently of the others who may have thought of it, so I'm unsure if it's been done yet or if it's even possible. Do you think it would be possible for interceptors or scarabs to mine minerals and use the carrier or reaver as their return point?

I wanted one of the factions to have an advanced harvester unit deeper in the tech tree, but the only things I could really do was make a secondary miner that cost less supply and moved faster before I had this thought. The idea I have now is to make a unit (or possibly just a building to prevent players from moving it close to the minerals when they can't place buildings there) that sends out small mining drones to gather minerals and return them to the ship/building.

With all the limits in SC, the disappointment in SC2 from a modding standpoint, and the shortcomings of every space RTS I've looked at as a potential modding candidate, I don't think I'll be making any more mods after this... Not for a while at least, just one and done. I'm going to take programming classes over the next few semesters of college and I may start working with an open source RTS engine to see if I can get the features I need into it and continue my game ideas on those.

[IskatuMesk]

I tried having a mobile resource delivery unit in ITAS and it failed miserably. Interceptor AI and such is also completely hardcoded.

[Ardis]

Figured. Reaver/Scarabs are the same I assume? So much for the late game heavy mining barge idea... Can't even change how much they can carry without changing it for every last mining unit so that idea's a dud.

[IskatuMesk]

You assume correctly.

[Ardis]

There are two things in gameplay I want to have make a major role in it; unit variety and expansions. I don't want something like "Selveris rushes" or "fighter rushes" to be favorable strategies because then it just boils down to who can mass units faster (like in the SC2 beta, everyone seems to like massing just ONE unit, I think Terran seem to be the only exception).

I doubt these are the right methods to encourage such, but these are the best I could come up with since this is technically my first mod (been tinkering with the SC mod tools for years but never had anything decent to show until three years ago when I first tried making this mod).

-Expensive medium and large ships to encourage expansions for extra resource income.
-Giving every faction a secondary base structure or some other kind of building that serves as a resource depot at a reduced price to make expanding faster and easier.
-I'm considering stripping the anti-fighter cannon arrays off of the Selveris and giving it a proc attack of its main gun and turning the Yamato gun into a manually fired shot for double damage with splash so you can take out waves of fighters.
-Making certain ships (like the Selveris as mentioned above) unable to target fighters and make them rely on other units or special abilities to defend themselves from fighters.
-Giving almost every fighter some kind of attack that does decent damage against larger ships so they don't become entirely useless late-game.