Iron Wars development thread (download not available)

[Death_Wing]

Something about this guy's attitude is making me a bit mad. IT'S HORRIBLE!(the guy above me's attitude that is).

Your mod is up for potential, something that I found was that you didn't have a lot of variety. You had very few buildings, not such a bad thing but a few more would help make the game a bit more interesting. It plays quite well, the computer AI is kinda moronic(SPAM DEM MARINES!)
but I wouldn't mind more color added(I don't like cream as much as you would think) and perhaps a different graphic to the "outpost" because unless you click on them they look too similar. At least some effort could of been put towards custom music. Even though it is a semi-demo music is something that can help make it feel more real and not just like starcraft.

A bit more effort could of been put in but overall it was okay for a demo(i guess).

Honestly I'm waiting for a veteran to answer as I am not an experienced veteran. Or better yet: WHERE ARE YOU MESKY !

[Ardis]

Thank you for replying, honestly I was either expecting someone to tell me my mod just outright sucked or to get no responses at all... But I guess I dodged that one for now.

Flat? I don't understand what you mean by that...

Yes, I know the addons are kind of weird right now, I'm trying to figure out how to fix that. And the problem I have is the main buildings are hard to click when they have addons because their selection circle goes right over the main building.

Reason the Outpost looks a lot like the main building is because they use the same addons, so I have to make sure they have the same spot available in their design. I have been considering options for music, but it's hard to find the kind of music I wanted for it partially because I don't even know what kind of music I want to play for this faction in the first place. I'm not very good at designing buildings as you guys could tell...

And yes, my mod broke the AI. I had 8 Terran players (me and seven AI's) and they all spammed marines until the game crashed. It's actually because the builder unit requires two supplies and the miner unit only requires one and the AI isn't set to use them... Or at least that was the only thing I changed before they started doing that. I wanted to wait until I had a more finalized set of units before scripting AI.

[Lavarinth]

Hey, I tried this out. It looks... bad, to be frank (why does everything seem so FLAT?) but the iscripting is pretty good. The add-ons are pretty funky as of now, hard to click on.
But on a whole, this mod looks like it has quite a bit of potential.
Notify me or something when it's finished, ja?

Constructive criticism is more appreciated over "I know what's bad and this is it, I wont explain myself though."

[New-/Hydrolisk]

All right, I'll try to elaborate. (If I came\come off as a prick, then I'm sorry, 'cause I wasn't try to agitate/insult.)

Many of the ship models look flat or flimsy. They don't appear to have much depth to them. Some of the blocks that look like they should be sticking out don't actually look like they stick out.
I'm pretty sure the problem lies in the rendering stage of the models. Specifically, I think the lighting of the models might be off, since, in-game, they don't appear to have enough shading where they look like they should be.
(Note: I noticed this because I like to draw and use shading a lot. However, I don't have enough knowledge about lighting and rendering (and modelling too, I suppose, lul to give you a definitely clear solution to the problem.)

I don't really mind the cream-coloured models. However, I that if you made them brighter or more white and increased the contrast between shadows and lighted parts, it would look very epic. If I recall correctly, when Polaris was rendering my (untextured) models, he had a really good lighting setup. Even though my models were untextured, both Polaris and I were in concurrence that they still looked epic.

That's basically it for "looking bad." Just these little issues/details piling atop of each other.

The iscripting is pretty cool because of the death explosions for the larger spaceships. Reminds me of Gundam and FreeSpace Descent. Fun stuff, very fun. I thought it was an awesome addition.
(Very tiny detail): Eh, I can't recall the ship's name, but there was a ship that shot out Valkyrie missiles followed by a "bomb." Judging by the density of the exhaust clouds and the sound of the rockets launching, I get the impression that you want the ship to fire two volleys of Halo rockets and then the bomb. I think that the two volleys of Halo rockets could use a bit more spacing between each firing (maybe a wait 12, more or less) UNLESS it was intended, in which case, I recommend removing the second firing sound (the second death sound would be harder to remove, might have to resort to using another sprite and iscript, which I don't recommend -- in fact, you really needn't both with this tiny detail if you don't want to, though it would be nice since you wouldn't be using up all of the sound channels).
I really liked the iscripting.

I think the addons should just be moved outside of the actual building graphic. It would be a lot easier to click, that way. You would also have to give the add-ons their own graphics though. If you want them to use the same space as before, I would suggest a smaller add-on graphic, and then give the graphic a higher altitude level than the main building. I'm pretty sure that the (smaller) add-on will be "above" the building and you can click on it.

The strings could probably use a bit of brushing up, i.e. punctuation (pet-peeve of mine, not a major issue). Something you could add to your mod to improve "readability:" you could highlight the important text, so it's easier to distinguish between the name and the tooltip. It might just be me, though. I'm kinda dumb when it comes to things that are under my nose.

Do you think you will ever release a GRP pack or summat? It would really help the 3D GRPs scene.

As for music, I recommend checking out (some of) the pieces that you can find on Newgrounds (i.e. their Audio portal). Some of the stuff is actually really good (IMO). First composer that comes to mind is username "DavidOrr". Really good stuff. Found one just now (RPGish though, but good example of the kinda stuff you can find on NgAP). Four Brave Champions [FULL] by DavidOrr. I don't think I've found much sci-fi/strategy kinda stuff though. Might need some digging, in that regard.

[Lavarinth]

Now that's commenting.

[IskatuMesk]

Not bad music at all actually...

[Ardis]

Yeah... I noticed that, too now that you mention it. I render my stuff in Orthographic mode in Blender and the lighting is very evenly set up (dupli-vert sphere of dim lamps around it) so I see why they come out like that.

I have been thinking of recoloring most of them. I wanted to have a consistent primary hull color for each faction's capital ships, though. The Federation would be getting light-blue or white ships maybe even teal-ish, the Empire would probably get dark grey ships or whatever I can find that will convert over to the SC Palette properly and still look decent. And the Syndicate would get dark-yellow/brown-ish ships, almost a rust color.

And yeah, the Carver's script has been in need of revising for a while, just forgot to add the modified script into the mod before putting it up for download. Also was planning to add a proc of a second bomb. And I was going to clean up the tooltips for a lot of things once I have a better idea of what I was going to have them say.

I don't plan to release the .grp's I made for this mod publicly. However, when I am done with this mod, I'll probably start making sprites out of random stuff I never intend to use for my own projects and let other people use them so they do something other than sit around on my hard drive for years. I think I have five or six (at least) models I don't see myself using in any projects so I'll probably work on fixing them up and uploading them when I'm done with this.

I guess I didn't really think about it, but maybe I'll find some decent music on Newgrounds. It will probably take a long time to find songs that I could use in my mod, though. I wanted the music for each faction to have a distinctive theme to it. I kind of wanted to go for something a lot like the music used in MechWarrior 4: Vengeance for the Empire faction, maybe even borrow a song or two from it for my mod.

EDIT: By the way, the cream color was unintentional... They're supposed to be grey, but the shade my models use translates to the color you see in the SC palette.

[Ardis]

Okay, spent a few days messing around with the colors and here's what I got. Rather than uploading a new copy of the mod with one changed sprite, I'm just gonna upload the sprite.

EDIT: And I've been going through Newgrounds and a few other sites looking for music for my mod.

[New-/Hydrolisk]

That GRP looks really nice. Can't wait to see newer versions of this mod!

[Ardis]

Okay, aside from lighting issues, color problems, or lack of music, any other issues someone would like to report?
-Consistent crashing?
-Under/over powered units?
-Units that lock up or behave oddly when doing a specific action?
-Tech tree problems. Kind of would like to hear what you guys have to say about the tech tree in its current state.

*One of the things that killed me last mod...

[Ardis]

Okay, since I haven't heard any complaints, I'm going to assume there aren't any major problems yet, which is a good sign (unless you're keeping something from me, then this mod is thoroughly screwed)

Attached is a screenshot of the updated lighting and color scheme of the Empire. The Selveris has some issues with lighting because that was the one I was testing the lighting rig on and it was a little too bright that time, I'll tone it down a bit next time I modify it.

Lastly, I'm at a point where my mind is developing new ideas for the other two factions and I want to know which you guys would prefer: One complete faction or three semi-completed factions in the next revision of the mod?

And yes, I have noticed the Spire Cruiser likes to freeze up right after it fires it's Victory Array, just order it to do something else and it works again, something in the iscript that I'll look into.

[Ardis]

Okay, so I was checking out some of the stuff IskatuMesk had done on his TOA mod for Sins of a Solar Empire and it got me interested in checking out the game. One of the things that I liked about it was that the hotkeys were based on the positioning of the button on the UI rather than the text in the button so it was easier to remember. I am thinking of setting up something like that in my mod and wanted to know what you thought of it first. It would probably be mapped out as seen in the attached image (assuming it lets you modify the hotkeys for stuff like Move, Attack, Stop, etc.)

And right now I'm going through and cleaning up the tooltips as well as getting rid of old entries that were going to be something but I had to take out because of any problems (which I guess would fall under "cleaning up.") This is why I want to hear a few answers about the hotkeys so I can do two tasks at once, clean the tooltips up and get the new hotkey binds ready.

I haven't gotten any answers on the new sprites yet, and to me that's the worst answer of all because it tells me they're either so bad that people are afraid to tell me or that I have been working so slow that everyone has lost interest. Soon as I have some answers on this stuff, I'll get to work again and get an updated copy of the mod up.

EDIT: And regarding audio, I think I found some songs I like, just have to find the tracks I like most so I know which ones to throw into the mod.

[IskatuMesk]

The hotkey idea is an interesting one.

Sprites look decent, need some plating textures to really bring them out though.

[Ardis]

Yeah, I've known for a while that my models need textures and have been avoiding it like the plague. I've been doing research on what the textures on those armor plates would look like, unfortunately I can't really find ships that are similar to my ships because I don't think anyone would design ships like mine, since most of them have forward locked weapons which isn't very effective in space and no room for retro-thrusters either on most of them.

I started working with Garry's Mod again and was looking at the parts in the Spacebuild model packs and I think I'll base the textures off some of those. The tough ones are going to be the outer plates on the Selveris and the "shell" on the Spire (which I'm going to rename soon) since those were supposed to be mostly solid plates.

[Lavarinth]

I highly recommend simply typing in google what you're looking for if you have photoshop. Example: photoshop tutorial rusty metal

Try the tutorial then apply it to your own UI. Presto.