Please put discussions of new art in development into this thread. Please see the second post for an up-to-date list of art requests.

If you like the game, and you can create graphics for Civ, it would really help to get some new units. Here is a "wishlist". Within each section I have tried to list the graphics by priority.

Buildings

Citadel. The Great Protector can build a special building, Rangers Guild, which greatly enhances safety. I am currently using the citadel building but it is stone, which is wrong.

Armory. An improvement built on top of munitions, it gives you the ability to build machine gun armed units. Presently I am using the industrial park graphic.

Munitions. A bonus representing a cache of machine guns and ammo. Presently I am using aluminum.

Upgraded broadcast tower. I have added a wonder, "Voice of the Badlands", which requires several broadcast towers. But I am using the same building art for both.

Lights. There could be a new wonder, City Lights. The first player to rebuild a city with lights that can shine at night will gain a big culture bonus. But I am not sure quite what building this should be, since we don't play Civ at night. All I can think of is a streetlight.

Garage building. I am using the stable graphic, which is kind of close, but having a modified version which looks more like a beat-up garage would help.

Leaderheads

Please see this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283435) for the current status of leaderheads. It has been suggested that I should use all 2-D art for the leaderheads. I may do that; but I'd prefer to have some better backgrounds and modified armor for the leaderheads I have found. I have located a few post-apocalyptic backgrounds, which I can put into an upcoming version; but I need a blender expert to make the armor fit the post-apocalyptic theme.

City Ruins

There is one main feature on the map, a city ruins feature. I would like (a) tiling, so that two adjacent plots show up as an oval instead of two circles, (b) buildings not placed on top of rivers and roads, (c) reacting properly to hills. This appears to be beyond the state of the art for terrain modding, but any help would be appreciated. Details can be found on this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=289307) and this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286844).

Units

Catapult. I have in mind a truck-towed, explosive-throwing feel. The wood and stone one doesn't fit the theme. We may replace it with a bulldozer unit and a sapper infantry unit.

Mutant animals. Even though Mad Max didn't have mutant animals, you know they would have, if they had a bigger budget or access to today's CGI! I have modified a werewolf model from FFH into a deathclaw, but I am sure it could be improved. I made a button for one other unit from the Fallout series, a radscorp (huge scorpion). It just uses the panther model, so a huge scorpion would be cool.

Recon truck unit. I have a few hero units who have unique unit art, such as Eagle, Cleaver and Tank Gal. One hero unit has poor unit art: Ghost, a utility truck which has all kinds of scouting promotions. I was thinking of a "fidget" animation where it actually goes translucent, not sure if this is possible.

For people who are new to the mod, there is some historical discussion and screenshots of the units in the dev thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274230). The dev thread "should be" obsolete now that we have a sub-forum.

For people who are coming here from the dev thread, here is the latest status. seZereth's punk with assault rifle is in 0.5, and so is the re-centered tanker which Refar sent. Although I have the horse unit, I did not want to write the code around it until after releasing 0.5. So that is on the to-do list.

The wishlist in the previous post is up to date as of version 0.5.

How's this for the Survivor Settlers? I'm thinking of replacing the pitchfork on one of the men for a torch. Any suggestions?

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/3779/settlersaw4.th.jpg (http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/3779/settlersaw4.jpg)

I also updated the Punk Axemen I made a while ago, so they now have more variation.

Here's the download! (http://dodownload.filefront.com/10864008//1e40f59b593ff58166ce70bdf1352f097b468fd2736af6a0bd 8f89623dd3c8e9b8497ac0a60d23b8)

awesome stuff Chuggi!

How's this for the Survivor Settlers?

Definitely fits the theme. Can I have a child instead of two men? For the refugee unit, I want "women and children". I kind of liked the hobo "bag on a stick" the vanilla child has.

I also updated the Punk Axemen I made a while ago, so they now have more variation.

Cool! A few of the units have variation now. For seZereth's punk rifleman and Refar's survivor warrior, I hard-coded the formation to have a certain selection of them. Is there a way that the game can generate random combinations of the variants?

In other news, I've been suggested to have a horse unit, and I have noticed that I hardly ever build the jeep units. By the time I have a refinery, I almost always have automatic weapons, and I can build the humvee instead. I will probably remove the jeep rifle, but I'd still like the jeep crossbow. And I have a new request for a horse mounted survivor, maybe with crossbow or lance. I'm not sure the punks would be organized enough to field horse mounted units.

Very cool settlers. One of your guys could do a texture paintig tutorial :mischief:

I am working on Survivor "Machinegunners", waering a flakvest and wielding two Uzi´s.
Is that ok?

or do you need big machineguns?

I´ll update this as soon as i can show you somethings.

I am working on Survivor "Machinegunners", waering a flakvest and wielding two Uzi´s.
Is that ok?

or do you need big machineguns?

I´ll update this as soon as i can show you somethings.

The existing unit has clearly a WWI style machine gun and uniform. Machine guns are usually used in emplacements, and the game clearly expects that type of usage since the unit is defensive only.

Is it possible to have a big machine gun but a more survivor type outfit? That way the defensive nature is still visible.

The existing unit has clearly a WWI style machine gun and uniform. Machine guns are usually used in emplacements, and the game clearly expects that type of usage since the unit is defensive only.

Is it possible to have a big machine gun but a more survivor type outfit? That way the defensive nature is still visible.

sure, can you make use of a unit wielding two uzi´s as well :) ?

sure, can you make use of a unit wielding two uzi´s as well :) ?

Can you make him the gunner in the jeep rifle unit?

Definitely fits the theme. Can I have a child instead of two men? For the refugee unit, I want "women and children". I kind of liked the hobo "bag on a stick" the vanilla child has.

I was planning on some children but hadn't got around to it yet. ;) For the formation, I always liked what White Rabbit originally did with Ethnically Diverse Units, where he changed the formation and the group size to include more people. As you can see with the Ancient European Settlers I made a while ago:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/9413/cowqt1.th.jpg (http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/9413/cowqt1.jpg)

So by making a couple of kids and adding in some animals I think it should look good.


Cool! A few of the units have variation now. For seZereth's punk rifleman and Refar's survivor warrior, I hard-coded the formation to have a certain selection of them. Is there a way that the game can generate random combinations of the variants?

I've thought about this as well because lately I've made variants for all of my units. But it's either impossible, or you need some serious coding skills. ;)

I have a new request for a horse mounted survivor, maybe with crossbow or lance. I'm not sure the punks would be organized enough to field horse mounted units.

A mounted survivor with a lance will be much easier to make, unless someone wants to make mounted crossbow animations? ;)

Very cool settlers. One of your guys could do a texture paintig tutorial

I use 256x256 textures now, which allows for more detail. ;)

I am working on Survivor "Machinegunners", waering a flakvest and wielding two Uzi´s.
Is that ok?

Maybe you could use that idea for a marine/infantry type unit? Or it could be a variant in the machine gunners - two with the larger machine guns, and then one with the dual uzi's could work. :)

So by making a couple of kids and adding in some animals I think it should look good. [...] A mounted survivor with a lance will be much easier to make, unless someone wants to make mounted crossbow animations? ;)

Kids yes, animals maybe :-) Maybe a wolf, somebody complained that the mad max unit GarretSidzaka made needs a wolf sidekick.

Survivor with lance sounds good. I got my first survivor kicked by Refar's horse this morning :-)

Kids yes, animals maybe :-) Maybe a wolf, somebody complained that the mad max unit GarretSidzaka made needs a wolf sidekick.

2 men, 1 woman, 2 kids and 2 wolves will look effective I think. ;)

Survivor with lance sounds good. I got my first survivor kicked by Refar's horse this morning :-)

:lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/machinegunne_D4Z.jpg

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9904

Use if you like, if not, maybe someone else finds a use for it.

Machine gunner looks great, I added it to the game. I am sure we will find something useful to do with the double uzi guy.

I love that guy's hair.

I reckon you should have the heavy machine gunner in the centre, and two uzi guys either side of him.

What anims have you used on the dual uzi guy ? Looks very cool.

What anims have you used on the dual uzi guy ? Looks very cool.

sam infantry.
he only shoots one uzi and looks a bit into sky when idle... unfortunately firaxis never added animation for dual guns ;) ... what a pity.

Looking a bit into the sky in between two blood-baths fits a dual wielding smg-psycho :lol:

Hey Refar, I updated the punks on that awesome motorcycle you made. :D

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/7635/punkbikersdt5.th.jpg (http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/7635/punkbikersdt5.jpg)

The file's attached, I haven't tested it in game yet but I think it should work. The finishing touch for that unit would be getting an awesome motorbike sound effect for it. ;)

Nice touch with the gloves and the greased (bloody ?) shirt on the driver :D

The original tank driving sounds actually are a bit biky. Not perfect but close.
I have no idea of sound work myself.
The running sound is actually not even part of the anim - it's assigned from XML - so should be not a big problame to add it.

Edit - i tried it in the game. Works fine.

It was supposed to be blood. ;)

I was a bit worried about it not working because I had to re-export one of the punks from max to change the texture (got rid of his mohawk as well) :lol: so I'm glad it works ok. The tanks sounds are ok I guess but I probably need to see the bike with the tank sounds to judge it properly.

Hey Refar, I updated the punks on that awesome motorcycle you made. :D

Cool. Can I get a non-punk (survivor) biker? And the punks (with crossbow?) onto the jeep? I know, I am an unlimited source of unit requests.

I was... :shifty: ...playtesting yesterday, so i got nothing new done.

I will be back on units and looking into producing a Survivor Biker with Crossbow (Would a small firearm be ok instead ? I was thinking making a Bike without sidecar variant here, but there is just no way the driver can stop, take the hands of the wheel and produce a crossbow from his backpack within the 15 frames i have on fortify / prepare for battle. Could work with a pistol or a smg however.).

Cool. Can I get a non-punk (survivor) biker? And the punks (with crossbow?) onto the jeep? I know, I am an unlimited source of unit requests.

I can do a survivor biker when I get time, but I can't animate very well so no crossbow jeeps until Refar or someone makes animations for them. ;)

@ Refar - Cool idea. :p

I will be back on units and looking into producing a Survivor Biker with Crossbow (Would a small firearm be ok instead ? I was thinking making a Bike without sidecar variant here, but there is just no way the driver can stop, take the hands of the wheel and produce a crossbow from his backpack within the 15 frames i have on fortify / prepare for battle. Could work with a pistol or a smg however.).

I think the sidecar biker is fine for now. Is there some obstacle to rigging the crossbow and survivor/punks onto the WillysJeep? There has been silence on this one, if it is not possible let me know and I will shut up about it.

In the next day or two I will change the tech tree a little, making humvee harder to get. This will make the jeep crossbow and jeep rifle more useful.

Making it is not a big deal, making it actually look good, is a bit of a different story. In the end the unit needs proper animations.

As preliminary solution - now after getting some different cool survivors from seZereth - i made this.
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/6672/xbowjeeptk0.jpg

The long hair guy just begged to be a driver :lol:
The guys are - as with the original MG jeep completely static. I did however switch the effect, so it schould fire bolts now. (Hence you need to use the anims in my zip on this, despite everything having the same filenames as before)

No punks variant yet.

Edit.: There is some problem with the transparency. Just noticed it. I will fix it and reupload the file tomorrow.

BTW. @seZereth - the texture path is a bit off on your Long hair guy - nif referencing Kevlar Helmet.dds, but the file is Kevlar LONG HAIR Kopie.dds.
And you forgot the stencil propertie on the longhair one (barely noticeable in game tho)
Nothing of a big deal here, but you might want to fix it in the Database release.

Looks good! Also, what does a stencil property do?

Stencil porperty will make the material two sided, so you dont see a gap, if looking at the "backside" of a polygon. Here it's because the small gap betwen the collar and the head (seZereth skipped out the neck) - it's barely noticeable in the game tho - the renreder in my picture is immensely scaled up.

I seem to be unable to fix that transparency issue (The people become invisble if look at them through the Windshield.). To make things worse it is only visible in the game - in NifScope/Viewer the unit shows properly... I really [pissed] with this Nif-Transparency mess...

For now i just upload it - maybe someone eles has more luck fixing it.

I've had some success with other transparency issues in scene viewer so I'll give it a shot. :)

Thanks, because i am really going nuts here.

I've got it to work with "complete" transparency, meaning that if I make the alpha channel over the window entirely black then it works fine. Where there are shades of grey on the alpha channel it doesn't work properly - but I still have another idea I want to try. Also, the front was a bit glitchy (two meshes overlapping) so I fixed that while I was messing around.

Yes, i have seen that kind of behaviour before.

What really annoys me, it that i seem unable to see a pattern here - like finding out how to do it the right way once and for all. Every new thig involving transparency, this Try & Error starts has to be done a new :(

It's not how I wanted it but I textured the broken glass around the edges to blend in like transparent glass. It's not perfect but it works. :(

http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/9242/civ4screenshot0668du6.th.jpg (http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/9242/civ4screenshot0668du6.jpg)

Cool, thanks.

I think some broken glass fits the setting. :goodjob:

At some point - tho not on top of my list - i plan to revisit the Jeeps animation to better suit the corssbow - maybe then we have more luck on the glass.

I liked the animations I saw, it fired crossbow bolts and everything! :p

Yes i switched the effect and sound.
But the guys are pretty static, and that "crossbow on the stick" looks a bit odd to me. I think the guy with the crossbow seating in front with the crossbow in hands would make more sense.
But for now there are many things of higher priority than that.

I will put punks in the jeep and make a foot survivor with crossbow next.

Yes i switched the effect and sound.
But the guys are pretty static, and that "crossbow on the stick" looks a bit odd to me. I think the guy with the crossbow seating in front with the crossbow in hands would make more sense.
But for now there are many things of higher priority than that.

I will put punks in the jeep and make a foot survivor with crossbow next.

you can take the football gear from the punks, as some armor for the crossbow survivor if you like.

Thanks for all the work! The new punk biker and jeep crossbow are in the game.

David, have you looked into modifying the sounds at all? I still think the bike and the jeep with tank sounds doesn't sound quite right.

David, have you looked into modifying the sounds at all? I still think the bike and the jeep with tank sounds doesn't sound quite right.

I never play with sound on, and I have not tested or tried anything related to sound. The WillysJeep comes with a sound, that I have not integrated into the game. There is also a thread I found for the flamethrower, which gives a sound.

However, for the motorcycle, it seems that a new sound would be required. Does anybody have a good sound file that I could add in?

You don't play with the sound on?!

For the motorcycle it will have to be an old, tinny sound. I'll have a look around for something suitable. They probably have to loop as well.

You don't play with the sound on?!

The rest of my family doesn't appreciate the noise, and I need to keep an ear out for sounds in the house so I can't use headphones.

Sometimes when I play games that rely on dialog, or rely on directional sound for clues, I use headphones, but rarely. For Civ, the sound is "nice", but it isn't required for anything.

Fair enough. :p I know that I would get frustrated with no sounds, or music though. The silence would drive me crazy. :crazyeye:

You can have music from somewhere else - games soundtracks - even good ones - tend to beocme repetetice and even annoying fast - i.e. with a game you play a lot - like Civ. I play without sound too.

Btw. Do you need punks as well on that jeep ? And if yes what species of them do you prefer ?

That's what I meant, real music. :p I usually play with the sounds on and use that track thing built into to civ to choose some good songs.

What species? :lol: SeZereth's would look good on there, mine are already on the bike.

EDIT: Here they are. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9893)

Is there any update on the fuel truck animation? I think refar had requested asio to send the original source files. Also refar had suggested to make the trailer shorter so we can make the unit scale bigger.

Is there any update on the horse-mounted survivor? I have my kicking horse working when you explore the resource, but then I am using a theme-inappropriate byzantine cataphract for the actual unit. (It has the best lance animation.)

New idea: I am working on getting power generators. One of the wonders I mentioned is "City Lights" based on the speech from Beyond Thunderdome. I have made a button showing lights in skyscrapers at night. But, I am a little stuck on what the related building should look like. In the game, it is always daytime. All I can come up with is a streetlight. Just having a streetlight sitting there at least indicates something. Any better ideas?

New idea: Following jabie's suggestion, I am going to add items you discover in the ruins, which if you transport to a city give you a happiness or culture bonus. So, once you get the unit to a city, you automatically get a free building. It is like a shrine, sort of, that people would visit to see a pre-apocalypse item and become "inspired". But, what existing building(s) are appropriate? I was thinking the oracle building; that's the only one I can find which seems to relate to that. It would not be a huge building like a temple complex, just one building. So a lot of the wonder buildings on the forum download don't seem to work. I'd like at least two, one for happiness and one for culture. Also possibly one for food, representing a discovery of pre-apocalypse foods (twinkies? :-) but I am not sure how that would work yet.

New idea: In Fallout Tactics, there is a boss monster in one level which is a huge cockroach. It looks about twenty feet long in the game, and it soaks up a lot of automatic rifle fire before dying. I would like to have this guy rampaging across the countryside, pillaging and destroying units, as a random event. I have found in FFH that there is a turtle unit which comes close, I guess it was converted from the Zoo Tycoon game. The skin is pretty good, for a turtle, but it might be modifiable into a cockroach.

Is there any update on the fuel truck animation? I think refar had requested asio to send the original source files. Also refar had suggested to make the trailer shorter so we can make the unit scale bigger.

Is there any update on the horse-mounted survivor? I have my kicking horse working when you explore the resource, but then I am using a theme-inappropriate byzantine cataphract for the actual unit. (It has the best lance animation.)

New idea: I am working on getting power generators. One of the wonders I mentioned is "City Lights" based on the speech from Beyond Thunderdome. I have made a button showing lights in skyscrapers at night. But, I am a little stuck on what the related building should look like. In the game, it is always daytime. All I can come up with is a streetlight. Just having a streetlight sitting there at least indicates something. Any better ideas?

New idea: Following jabie's suggestion, I am going to add items you discover in the ruins, which if you transport to a city give you a happiness or culture bonus. So, once you get the unit to a city, you automatically get a free building. It is like a shrine, sort of, that people would visit to see a pre-apocalypse item and become "inspired". But, what existing building(s) are appropriate? I was thinking the oracle building; that's the only one I can find which seems to relate to that. It would not be a huge building like a temple complex, just one building. So a lot of the wonder buildings on the forum download don't seem to work. I'd like at least two, one for happiness and one for culture. Also possibly one for food, representing a discovery of pre-apocalypse foods (twinkies? :-) but I am not sure how that would work yet.

New idea: In Fallout Tactics, there is a boss monster in one level which is a huge cockroach. It looks about twenty feet long in the game, and it soaks up a lot of automatic rifle fire before dying. I would like to have this guy rampaging across the countryside, pillaging and destroying units, as a random event. I have found in FFH that there is a turtle unit which comes close, I guess it was converted from the Zoo Tycoon game. The skin is pretty good, for a turtle, but it might be modifiable into a cockroach.

for the things to recover, what about using actual items, either non visible or just sprites, to resemble goods or technology from pre apocalypse, might fit better than actually moving around buildings?

and the cockroach might be easier to model from scratch than to reskin a turtle :D
but i wont do it, have some other things with higher priority on my list.

for the things to recover, what about using actual items, either non visible or just sprites, to resemble goods or technology from pre apocalypse, might fit better than actually moving around buildings?

What I was thinking is there would be an event popup announcing that explorers had found some object in a ruins square you control. Then there would appear a "cargo truck" unit in that plot. There are many effects the item could have, so far I have in mind boosting happiness in a city and boosting culture in a city. Each effect would be represented by one subclass of cargo truck.

The cargo truck would be similar to the refugee unit already in the mod. The refugee is capturable. In a city, it has a special action button called "resettle". It has the unitai of "city defence", which means the AI will automatically move towards the nearest city, and I have added some code that if an AI refugee unit is in a friendly city, it automatically resettles. When the refugee resettles it increases the city population by one.

So, you would pick which city you wanted the bonus applied to, and drive the truck there. Barbs and other players may try to capture it. I often find due to razing, there are gaps between my cities, so barbarians would be a significant risk if I wanted the effect in a newly captured city on the frontier. Once you get the truck there, you would activate it and get the bonus for that city. In order to mark the fact that the item is there, you would need some building.

In other words, there is no moving building. There is a moving truck, which converts into a building.

Does that sound reasonable?

What I was thinking is there would be an event popup announcing that explorers had found some object in a ruins square you control. Then there would appear a "cargo truck" unit in that plot. There are many effects the item could have, so far I have in mind boosting happiness in a city and boosting culture in a city. Each effect would be represented by one subclass of cargo truck.

The cargo truck would be similar to the refugee unit already in the mod. The refugee is capturable. In a city, it has a special action button called "resettle". It has the unitai of "city defence", which means the AI will automatically move towards the nearest city, and I have added some code that if an AI refugee unit is in a friendly city, it automatically resettles. When the refugee resettles it increases the city population by one.

So, you would pick which city you wanted the bonus applied to, and drive the truck there. Barbs and other players may try to capture it. I often find due to razing, there are gaps between my cities, so barbarians would be a significant risk if I wanted the effect in a newly captured city on the frontier. Once you get the truck there, you would activate it and get the bonus for that city. In order to mark the fact that the item is there, you would need some building.

In other words, there is no moving building. There is a moving truck, which converts into a building.

Does that sound reasonable?

yea, i thought you meant, they actually find a "shrine" and bring it back, but thinking about it twice, i just misunderstood it and i can imagine them building a shrine for some pre apo items and symbols and trophies and whatever ;)

great models here :)

have looked at the jeep (wanted to play a little), could be that the transparency problem is fixed. It seems that the position (not the number) in the nif is important to display transparency correct, children nodes in the list below the transparent object won´t be displayed.
(even if i used refars files as base i changed the jeep to Chuggis fixed version)

@ davidlallen

considering the air power, do you believe something like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Hg-trike.jpg could work as early fighter model (i thought at something similar with two guns) and a rusty Agricultural aircraft (like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_Thrush_Commander with guns) as later version as for your mod?

I finished the Crossbow Survivors.
Made some custom animation sequences (run/idle/fortify), because it was bugging me how the guys hold the crossbows when not fortified.

Couldnt use seZereth footbal armor :( - the mesh subdivision was to different from the body model, so it just kept clipping on one end or the other.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/suvivorxbow_preview_8Rt.jpg

the are here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281308

==========

On the new art requests... I am not to excited about makig the cockroach either. Actually modeling it shouldnt be a problem... but animation... lots of feets and whiskers there...

I will be looking into putting punks on the crossbow jeep next (Thanks Chuggi & Coyote for helping out with the transparency.) Then there is the fuel truck...

@ The_Coyote - Wow, thanks! :D

@ Refar/david - Attached to this post is a texture with proper transparent glass to go with The_Coyote's transparency fixed jeep.

considering the air power, do you believe something like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Hg-trike.jpg could work as early fighter model (i thought at something similar with two guns) and a rusty Agricultural aircraft (like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_Thrush_Commander with guns) as later version as for your mod?

Of course there was the glider aircraft in Mad Max Road Warrior, so your suggestion would fit the theme well. I was thinking about a scout/explorer unit, maybe with a low strength bombing attack. But I didn't think anybody would be too interested in making a new model for that so I did not suggest it.

I'm sure I could easily add it to the mod if you are interested.

If you haven't, please look at this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6980629&postcount=2) for other unit requests. The grounded gunship seems like an easy one. If I could wish for anything, I'd pick a punk style leaderhead. I think there is good potential in the 3D leaderheads, even though others here don't agree.

OK, I've got the survivor crossbowman and the jeep crossbow integrated into the game. Maybe I have setup my XML wrong, but when the jeep crossbow attacks, there is a muzzle flash. Is that controlled by the xml or the kfm? Did I miss a kfm update?

Also, I forgot to bug you about the survivor settler, which just needs kids and maybe a dog.

I updated the unit request post near the start of this thread.

Also, I forgot to bug you about the survivor settler, which just needs kids and maybe a dog.


I'm working on it. ;) When do you need it by?

I'm working on it. ;) When do you need it by?
I'm tentatively planning the 0.6 release for Monday. Depends if I get much time to playtest the changes, even though it is a US three day weekend I will be away for most of it.

I should have it done by then if I'm not busy.

OK, I've got the survivor crossbowman and the jeep crossbow integrated into the game. Maybe I have setup my XML wrong, but when the jeep crossbow attacks, there is a muzzle flash. Is that controlled by the xml or the kfm? Did I miss a kfm update?

Also, I forgot to bug you about the survivor settler, which just needs kids and maybe a dog.

I updated the unit request post near the start of this thread.

Tha muzzle flash is controled by aimations (Kfm/Kf) files. I think those got lost somewhere along the way. I repackaged the Jeep using Coyotes Nif and Chuggies front window with the Crossbow Bolt anim.

Rigging Punk on it next... Let's hope the transparency can survive that...

Edit: Uh, question... Why do the Punks need that ? It's a "Advanced" Fuel using Unit after all, and the don't got any refineries...
Perhaps cloning every single unit for the punks is a bit too much / boring ?
They got melee and ranged footman, riflemen and bike. I do see them using Ute's making some sense (Tho even here i think it might be too much of cloning already). But those, military units that need fuel, ressources and somewhat advanced regained tech ?
How about giving them a increased strength rifle-morotcycle instead ?

Tha muzzle flash is controled by aimations (Kfm/Kf) files. I think those got lost somewhere along the way. I repackaged the Jeep using Coyotes Nif and Chuggies front window with the Crossbow Bolt anim.

Thanks, I'll take a look tomorrow.

Rigging Punk on it next... Let's hope the transparency can survive that...Edit: Uh, question... Why do the Punks need that ? [...]How about giving them a increased strength rifle-morotcycle instead ?

Hm, good point. Actually in the game I have jeep and jeep rifle disabled for barbs. But I had them in my unit request list. So perhaps rigging the survivors onto the jeep rifle is the right next move. (EDIT: seZereth made the double uzi wielding guy, which doesn't have a home yet. Want to put him into the jeep for jeep rifle?)

For the ute, there is probably another discussion we could have. When I put in the unit, I ripped out the gunner and gun first so it looks "unarmed". It can be built before any small arms are available. In version 0.5 it can take a promotion to get a rifle mount. For the ute, in 0.6 I have added a "heavy armor" promotion and also an "antitank" promotion. So the weapon which is visible, could change among four types as a result of promotions.

Maybe what we want is "ute with punks and crossbow" second, that seems definitely needed. Third, maybe over to the settler and fuel truck.

Hm, good point. Actually in the game I have jeep and jeep rifle disabled for barbs. But I had them in my unit request list.Then i skip the Punk Jeep and move to the Tanker for now (actually already started the tanker, while waiting for your answer on the Jeep :p)

So perhaps rigging the survivors onto the jeep rifle is the right next move. (EDIT: seZereth made the double uzi wielding guy, which doesn't have a home yet. Want to put him into the jeep for jeep rifle?) It's on the list, but most probably not in time for 0.6 - the current survivor rifle jeep with infantrymen is a bit off but not terrible, so i have a few things i want to do first.

New ute being one of them.It can be built before any small arms are available. In version 0.5 it can take a promotion to get a rifle mount. For the ute, in 0.6 I have added a "heavy armor" promotion and also an "antitank" promotion. So the weapon which is visible, could change among four types as a result of promotions.I remember reading somewhere, that with BTS it's possible to make additional props display on promotions. Do you know how to acomplish this ? Or can you just switch the UTE's art, when it gains a promotion ?

Wit the UTE's main boon beeing hugely customizable via promotions, it seems to me actually displaying that customization is worth some effort.

Does someone know if there are event codes for turning animations ? I did not see any unit have them, but formations infos do mention "Event_Turn_Right/Left" iirc...

Might be of use for the truck, if can be done.

First, it will not be possible to make the dual uzi guy animate firing his uzis on a jeep. except with custom animations, which could be cool ;)

I too was thinking about giving the UTE some custom designs, since bts you can switch graphics with promotions.
like with some metal plates as armor upgrade, with a rocketlauncher on back, with a machinegun or even better with a 4 barreled flak cannon :D

Furthermore, I think the Mad max for Survivor Guardsman is a bit off, from the unit design perspective and I think it would make a much better Hero unit, either by technology or event, or a special unit you get when you have your first refinery to guard the truck ;)
And replace the rifleman with a survivor looking guy with a pumpgun.

Another thing is, I somehow disliked to see a huge amount of tanks in the game report as final army. I think Tanks still should be quiet limited and should never make the other units obsolete. Further, a more rusted or improvised look could be good as well.

Do you need AT and Sam units? I could do some graphical modifications to fit the theme we already have.

First, it will not be possible to make the dual uzi guy animate firing his uzis on a jeep. except with custom animations, which could be cool ;)Yep i am painfully aware of this - this is why it's on low priority for now.

I think reducing the number of tanks was on the list already. A very needed change, as otherwise all the other units are a bit meaningless.

I would like another survivor skin (or two :D) - all we have so far are used at least once already, and we need more people (Horseman, Bike Driver, Rifle Jeep Guys (Those will probably indeed be the UZI guy - but it would make him appear 3 times - as Machinegunner and on both jeeps), A new Guardian - if Max is going to be hero...). I would say horseman is the most pressing here.

Perhaps a non-punky reskin of those Football guys ?

Just a mesh in skinning pose is enought - i will need to re-rig it anyway, so you can save yourself the rigging. But you are just a lot better (an i think faster) on making good looking textures than me.

Yep i am painfully aware of this - this is why it's on low priority for now.

I think reducing the number of tanks was on the list already. A very needed change, as otherwise all the other units are a bit meaningless.

I would like another survivor skin (or two :D) - all we have so far are used at least once already, and we need more people (Horseman, Bike Driver, Rifle Jeep Guys (Those will probably indeed be the UZI guy - but it would make him appear 3 times - as Machinegunner and on both jeeps), A new Guardian - if Max is going to be hero...). I would say horseman is the most pressing here.

Perhaps a non-punky reskin of those Football guys ?

Just a mesh in skinning pose is enought - i will need to re-rig it anyway, so you can save yourself the rigging. But you are just a lot better (an i think faster) on making good looking textures than me.

kk

I´ve got some more Ideas for Survivors ;)
will work on them as soon as i have some time (hopefully later today)

I got the Tanker animated.

The Explosion is a bit disappointing - can someone tell me what the bigges explosion effect in the game is (Apart from a Nuke) ? I tried Battleship. but it was just puny (Screenshot). Using Panzer Death now, ist a bit better bit still not 100% convincing. If there is nothing bigger, i could stack them...

http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/9083/tankerpreviewny6.jpg

It's the shorter version. fScale 0.35 or majbe 0.38 should work nice.
The anim sould work on long variant, if has to be.

Material support Teamcolor and Damage states - but teamclor would need texture adjustment and damage map is blank for now (It does not get damaged in fury road. Is the unit going to be used somewhere ourside Fury Road ?!)

@Davidlalen
Do you know how to assign a animation sequence fot those custom actions you code in python (Activate Anim on Refueling) ? I skiped it for now, but if you know how to make it show, i will add a activate anim.

Tanker is very awesome! :D

Here's the grounded gunship. Forgot to take a screnshot when trying it, but anyway - we all know how the gunship looks like. Just this one is on the ground with the a static rotor ...

These are the new nifs ony. Use the Gunship Animation/Texture and the same art define - with the exception of the scale - i think this one might need to be scaled a bit bigger.

The Damage States wen't MIA (Does the original Gunship display damage texture ?! I dont see them often in the game... I know it has one, but i dont see why it is gone on the grounded model...) And when dying it will diplay a explosion and then just disappear - no breaking apart and fade out.

Jeepers, I went to sleep for a few hours and suddenly I am a dozen posts behind!

I remember reading somewhere, that with BTS it's possible to make additional props display on promotions. Do you know how to acomplish this ? Or can you just switch the UTE's art, when it gains a promotion ?

Wit the UTE's main boon beeing hugely customizable via promotions, it seems to me actually displaying that customization is worth some effort.

I too was thinking about giving the UTE some custom designs, since bts you can switch graphics with promotions. like with some metal plates as armor upgrade, with a rocketlauncher on back, with a machinegun or even better with a 4 barreled flak cannon

I completely agree. I know there is a python callback onUnitPromoted, which is similar to ones I have used. I can use this to switch one unit to another type. So there would be a family of ute units, only one of which is buildable, but with promotions the unit changes to another type. Those add-ons sound awesome!

So far the following promotions are specific to the ute: visibility, offroad, camouflage, weapon mount (rifle or machine gun), and in 0.6, armor and antitank. It's my goal, but maybe a hard one, that a high level ute should be able to stand up to a tank. Any cool weapons that you can mount, I will make a promotion and unit-switching for it.

Furthermore, I think the Mad max for Survivor Guardsman is a bit off, from the unit design perspective and I think it would make a much better Hero unit, either by technology or event, or a special unit you get when you have your first refinery to guard the truck
And replace the rifleman with a survivor looking guy with a pumpgun.
Do you need AT and Sam units? I could do some graphical modifications to fit the theme we already have.

If we had a different survivor guardian, that would be fine. I like the idea of a hero unit. But it's not high priority for me. Similarly low priority, reskinning rebuilt tanks or infantry. I wouldn't turn down these reskins, but a heavily modified ute sounds much cooler. I had not thought of it before, but the humvee unit has a basic camouflage, maybe it could be made "cooler".

Thanks for the updated tanker and grounded gunship!

Do you know how to assign a animation sequence fot those custom actions you code in python (Activate Anim on Refueling) ? I skiped it for now, but if you know how to make it show, i will add a activate anim.

I will investigate. I would say to use the normal "death" trigger, since a tanker attacked by another player is captured instead. I am not sure what happens if a barb attacks a tanker, I was thinking they would capture it even if they don't have anything to use it for. Is there any other way a capturable unit can be *killed*?

I will investigate. I would say to use the normal "death" trigger, since a tanker attacked by another player is captured instead. I am not sure what happens if a barb attacks a tanker, I was thinking they would capture it even if they don't have anything to use it for. Is there any other way a capturable unit can be *killed*?

I am not sure - i seen settlers die animation (There is a Surrender and Die sequence for those units...) in the normal game - i think when the barb attack him, because the barbs do not have the ability to capture.

My question was aiming more at the refueling action - units that have a "non combat action" (Missionary, Great People, Spy) can have a additional "Activate" animation. I was thiking something like the Engine disconnecting form the Tanker and driving off a bit before/while disappearing.
I left that sequence out at firs, because i wasn't sure, if there is a way to display it.

EDIT:
It's not too importan tho - just a possible gimmick

@ Refar

did you have tried to scale the effect? made a test with the death effect (scaled to 10), looks impressive, see pic

@ davidlallen

i asked for the planes because i had the idea to make one (and wanted to know if you believe they could fit), but expect it not too soon (and Refar already did the gunship)

Wow. Didn't think that would work.

So you just scaled up the dummy where the effect is attached ? Or scaled the effect itslef in its XML definition ?

the first, scale the dummy (works also with weapon effects and also other effects, at least in nifviewer it´s also possible to scale only one side of the effect [did it for the engine effect for the sufa - x, no idea how to scale only one side in Nifscope when not having a mesh]

Cool, thanks for the tip.

Ok, guys, I couldnt finish it, we are celebrating here and i am already drunk, but i just wanted to give you a first glance and submit my idea before i go back to the party ;)

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/2662/demoguy1go5.th.jpg (http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?image=demoguy1go5.jpg)

my Idea is:

use this guy as a base for one of the survivor rflemen, give him a shotgun, place him in a group with the two uzi guy and another one wielding somthing else, loking different, and then, as soon as you have some missile tech or bonus, you can actually upgrade or promote him to either sam or AT infantry (AT will be easy to come up with, just rerigging). So, the riflemen unit will be upgraded with a bonus against tanks/vehicles or gunships (visually by the at or sam unit i create). -> instead of building a completely new sam/at unit....

what do you think?

He looks cool.

I think he would make a good "guardian" unit / survivor rifleman - he's somewhat older and has that "experienced" look.

Does one of them have a cigar? :lol: I like him, he has style.

Fantastic work on the re-skinning. Thank you all. I enjoy the immersion in the Fury Road mod, and all your efforts really help that. Much appreciated!

Fantastic work on the re-skinning. Thank you all. I enjoy the immersion in the Fury Road mod, and all your efforts really help that. Much appreciated!

As seZereth has pointed out, it is much more than just "reskinning". A number of new models have been developed. I also appreciate all the work!

WIP of an Ultralight aviation fighter, is the general shape ok or shall i change it?

WIP of an Ultralight aviation fighter, is the general shape ok or shall i change it?

looks cool, but may i suggest to replace the "wings" geometry with a plane (2d) geometry, i think you can save a lot of polies and I dont think the difference will be visible in game

WIP of an Ultralight aviation fighter, is the general shape ok or shall i change it?

Here are some pictures of the gyrocopter from Road Warrior, not sure if this helps.

http://www.madmaxmovies.com/cars/madmax2/Gyrocopter/index.html

http://www.madmaxmodels.com/gyrocopter.html

Some other cool stuff on that site, but don't get too excited, it is physical models not 3d CGI models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

Here a little update.

http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/7451/heavyxq8.th.jpg (http://img60.imageshack.us/my.php?image=heavyxq8.jpg)

and again a supporting argument for my idea with upgrading riflemen (or guardsmen as you call them) to AT and SAM infantry (and possibly the Machinegun also.
So, this guy starts with a shotgun, but can actually get a heavier Weapon as soon as available (the other two guys in the formation can stay the same)

I have thought about upgrading survivors to SAM/AT if you bring them to a rebuilt depot. But, the problem is how to make the AI know this? I have been able to fake a few things without actually getting into the guts of the Civ AI. Fuel trucks only have one job, find empty/low tanks and refill them, so it is easy. Deciding whether a survivor should go upgrade or do something more important is harder.

If we can find a good gameplay which the AI can understand, I can certainly make the change.

I like him as gaurdian unit.
As previously said - he looks just right for the job - a bit aged to be front line storm trooper, but still good to protect the homes relying on his life experince.

I am not convinced with upgrading him to everthing - which would lead to every late game foot unit looking the same.
Also the AI might misunderstand the concept of "upgrade as alternative" - if a unit is upgrade-able the AI will feel compelled to just upgrade it, ending up with specialized units instead of general purpose guardian.

Edit:
Perhaps a Prmotion rather than upgrade - let guardian units be a bit similar to the UTE - it can take promotions to be better defender against Tanks or Air units.
The new/alternative art could be utilized on those promotions.

I like him as gaurdian unit.
As previously said - he looks just right for the job - a bit aged to be front line storm trooper, but still good to protect the homes relying on his life experince.

I am not convinced with upgrading him to everthing - which would lead to every late game foot unit looking the same.
Also the AI might misunderstand the concept of "upgrade as alternative" - if a unit is upgrade-able the AI will feel compelled to just upgrade it, ending up with specialized units instead of general purpose guardian.

Edit:
Perhaps a Prmotion rather than upgrade - let guardian units be a bit similar to the UTE - it can take promotions to be better defender against Tanks or Air units.
The new/alternative art could be utilized on those promotions.

I was just tihnking of promotions. yea, much better, that was the actual idea, leave him with guardian stats, but give him big bonuses versus either tank or gunships. I think it is a pretty cool concept!

Here is something i had to create after I played "Army of two" yesterday at a friend´s.

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/3599/roninzq1.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=roninzq1.jpg)

I suggest you implement these as Merceneries, later in game, always with completely random promotions (each one a different one).
Available through event or at a "mercenery base" on the map or through a building (Tavern).

Cool looking guy.

They look like bounty hunters. ;)

Here is something i had to create after I played "Army of two" yesterday at a friend´s.

Cool! Plus it would look awsome as a leaderhead! (I know how much you love leaderheads.) Two of the leaders, Peter and Ironhead, look like that.

I agree these would be cool mercenaries. If I get a new guardian unit and Garret fixes the madmax unit, I can put in a method for mercenaries. I was thinking of a bidding system somehow, where all players would get a popup announcing this hero was available. Or maybe if he appeared along a certain border, the players near there would be able to bid.

I have no clue about creating Leaderheads, never had the interest in learning to do so :P

But I am almost done with the Guardian Units. perhaps tomorrow.
depends on the outcome of tonight and the wether ;)

Cool! Plus it would look awsome as a leaderhead! (I know how much you love leaderheads.) Two of the leaders, Peter and Ironhead, look like that.

I agree these would be cool mercenaries. If I get a new guardian unit and Garret fixes the madmax unit, I can put in a method for mercenaries. I was thinking of a bidding system somehow, where all players would get a popup announcing this hero was available. Or maybe if he appeared along a certain border, the players near there would be able to bid.

Those are great ideas but the most important point here is to make the AI understand the feature... So maybe in the end just a byilding (national wonder - one per civ) with a chance to pop a merc would be the best from gameplay point of view.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281830

so, have fun!

@ seZereth
played a bit with the double uzi guy (first download), wanted to give him double action. Added two effect nodes in the nif (and some minor changes: alpha channel and double sides faces, linked to correct texture name) and changed the strike animation of the SAMinfantry. It´s not perfect, but not too bad :)
if you have an idea how the aniamtion could look cooler, post, but be aware no guarantee that i will be able to change it (it´s a bit difficult here)

To use, copy all files of the SamInfantry in the folder of the double Uzi survivor, add seZereth files and finally add this two (override), link in the xml to the "saminfantry_fx.nif" and the "saminfantry.kfm" folder. (do not delete "saminfantry.nif" or override the SamInfantery files in the orginal folder). Now there should be no mistake possible :lol:

Great new art guys! If we count the variations I now definitely have more foot unit art than foot units in the game.

How do most other mods deal with the variations? I can put one of each into the formation. I kind of like having one lead guy with slightly different/better stuff, and the other two guys similar. So I would use two variations. With three different ones, it seems somehow "too random".

I'd definitely like some of the new survivors rigged into the WillysJeep with its original machine gun mount. With the changes I have made in 0.6, the jeep rifle is now definitely a useful unit. (I made humvee harder to get by putting it further up the tech tree.)

I love the heavy bounty hunters, I will have to think out a balanced way to use them.

I think formations and maybe alternative art on upgrade for some "unit families" (UTE as noted before - i am working on some there - and maybe Guardian) which then would remain somewhat usefull through the course of the game.

Many "reality" mods also go and give different civs those "flavour units" - tho personally i am not a huge fan of that.

Also i think with the very basic units - like early survivors and barbs that "too random" look is fine. Later ones should probably be a bit organized indeed :D

Also what do you think of mounted survior rifleman in addition (instead ?) to the spear wielding one. I think seZereth new rifleman would look really cool on a horse.

Also what do you think of mounted survior rifleman in addition (instead ?) to the spear wielding one. I think seZereth new rifleman would look really cool on a horse.

I definitely want the spear wielding one as an early unit. For rifle, I am not sure how much difference there is between that and a ute. I want to make sure each unit has a useful, unique tactical niche.

Ok, i will give him a spera first then, and we can think a bout a rifleman later.

Edit:
How do most other mods deal with the variations? I can put one of each into the formation. I kind of like having one lead guy with slightly different/better stuff, and the other two guys similar. So I would use two variations. With three different ones, it seems somehow "too random".Remember, that there are Bikes, Jeep, Horseman and possible UTE upgrades, which will get some of those units rigged on them even tho the units are technically not infantry.

If you count those units in, the problem of "spare" infantry meshes goes away very quickly.
And the great artwork from seZereth will not be "wasted" on those, as the men in the vehicles are clearly visible.

Remember, that there are Bikes, Jeep, Horseman and possible UTE upgrades, which will get some of those units rigged on them even tho the units are technically not infantry.

If you count those units in, the problem of "spare" infantry meshes goes away very quickly.

I agree. So, let's get the survivor biker, jeep rifle and horseman all done, then we can see where we are.

But, maybe a fort and one or two "wall" remapping with barbed wire would be a good next project rather than more varieties of foot units.

I am going to retire Garret's (slightly broken) guardian for now, in favor of seZereth's rifle guardian. Also I will use the "rifle guardian variant with SAM" as the SAM, replacing the vanilla SAM guy I have now.

The longest part of this type of unit replacement is creating the button. I can do it by pasting screenshots together, but they don't come out as nice as "real" buttons. I got a few good buttons from FK2006, but he hasn't posted in a week or two.

what about some formations?
there should be enough mods which already have some, should be easy to implement.
I think it adds a lot to have like 5 scattered survivors instead of 3 guys in a row. and battles look more interesting. have a look at the image linked under my picture, i did that like several years ago, as my start in modding civ. havent touched it since then, but others continued my work.

May I suggest using 4 rifle guys with football armor and the pumpgunner for the guardian unit. and maybe replace thge riflemen with the doubleuzi with helmet and flak vest (included in the machinegunner zip) for a (suggested in the upgrade thread) "normal assault infantry" (not at,sam or machinegun) upgrade. (maybe another variation throwing grenades ;) ).

I don't really like those big formations - the map starts too look crowded, and each figure has to be smaller to make room in the formation, so the details are harder to spot. (And it runs noticeable slower, but it might be just my old hardware)

Sticking one unit with heavy / "main" weapon (MG, AT, Sam) and some grunts with just rifles wight be still a good idea, even on small 3 man formations. But make sure that the right figure is displayed for players who disable formations (I guess it will be the first in the fromation list)

I agree. So, let's get the survivor biker, jeep rifle and horseman all done, then we can see where we are.

But, maybe a fort and one or two "wall" remapping with barbed wire would be a good next project rather than more varieties of foot units.


I dont really know the process which is applied to city walls?
which nif is used in Fury Road to create the wall?
I mean, which one do i have to replace with a barb wire?

I dont really know the process which is applied to city walls?
which nif is used in Fury Road to create the wall?
I mean, which one do i have to replace with a barb wire?


Please see Assets/Art/Structures/walls in the Fury Road distribution. I modified file wall_an.dds to have a rusty sheet metal texture. This is used by files wall01_eu_an.nif and its variants 02 and 04. If you create a city with walls using Fury Road and WB, you can see that the texture is there, but the shape is not good. The original stone wall shape has a thicker section at the top, which does not match the concept of rusty wall. Perhaps changing these three nifs is enough. I am not sure what connects together these three nifs into the actual wall segments which surrounds the town, maybe that is done by SDK rather than any "master nif".

Also, there are several scenarios including Alexander the Great in Warlords, which have two wall buildings: Walls and High Walls. I have not looked into that at all. But I was thinking there could be one "cheap walls" which adds a little defense, maybe just barbed wire and turrets. Then another "walls" which looks more solid.

These arts can probably be re-used for the fort you mentioned a while back.

Beautiful work :)

Please see Assets/Art/Structures/walls in the Fury Road distribution. I modified file wall_an.dds to have a rusty sheet metal texture. This is used by files wall01_eu_an.nif and its variants 02 and 04. If you create a city with walls using Fury Road and WB, you can see that the texture is there, but the shape is not good. The original stone wall shape has a thicker section at the top, which does not match the concept of rusty wall. Perhaps changing these three nifs is enough. I am not sure what connects together these three nifs into the actual wall segments which surrounds the town, maybe that is done by SDK rather than any "master nif".

Also, there are several scenarios including Alexander the Great in Warlords, which have two wall buildings: Walls and High Walls. I have not looked into that at all. But I was thinking there could be one "cheap walls" which adds a little defense, maybe just barbed wire and turrets. Then another "walls" which looks more solid.

These arts can probably be re-used for the fort you mentioned a while back.

I´ll have a look and see what i can do ;)

Miscellanous

Garage building. I am using the stable graphic, which is kind of close, but having a modified version which looks more like a beat-up garage would help.



You know, it is possible to link cityset buildings to an improvement. For this garage you could for instance use the garage graphic in the ind_eu.nif file...

I cooked up a somewhat different UTE. That white pickup looked a bit out of place for my taste - more like a urban car than a off-road combat vehicle.

So tried to make something more rugged and off-road capable. A Land Rover came to mind. Also somewhat inspired by the old C&C generals - used some screenshots from a pickup there for reference.

It's not completely done yet - the figures are not yet animated, just posed. And there is a tiny bit of space left in the texture (that needs some work as well) to add maybe one or two props. I am not sure on the color as well. Maybe rather brownish ? Or full body teamcolor ? :lol:
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6237/uteom1.jpg

You know, it is possible to link cityset buildings to an improvement. For this garage you could for instance use the garage graphic in the ind_eu.nif file...

I did not follow that. Can you give more details or an example?

I cooked up a somewhat different UTE. That white pickup looked a bit out of place for my taste - more like a urban car than a off-road combat vehicle.

So tried to make something more rugged and off-road capable. A Land Rover came to mind. Also somewhat inspired by the old C&C generals - used some screenshots from a pickup there for reference.

The figures are not yet animated, just posed. And there is a tiny bit of space left in the texture (that needs some work as well) to add maybe one or two props. I am not sure on the color as well. Maybe rather brownish ? Or full body teamcolor ? :lol:


Cool. What happens when it drives in forest? The existing ute has trees sticking up through the flatbed, I am not sure if that is possible to fix or not. It'd be great to stick some of the variant survivors in there. The original ute has a machine gun mount; we've discussed about a variety of mounts like crossbow, machine gun, antitank, flamer (well, we hadn't discussed about that one). So there are lots of possibilities.

I am afraid the trees are going to stick through it too... I think they do on original unist as well - i onve had a screenshot of a modern armor having a windmill sticking from the turret. Looked increadible silly... I dont really know how to prevent it.

EDIT.: As i think of it... Waht happens if a chariot enters forest, those are pretty flat too... I will check in the game, and if the chariot does not have trees sticking form it, maybe i can find out how it is done.

This one should be a good bit higher than the original UTE however, so maybe it's enought...

On different mounts - i definitely plan to make some sub-versions of it - it was the whole point of the unit after all. I was thinking to rather put people in it different ways - a bit like in the renders above. Probably will make a "generic" mount as well - for MG and maybe Flamer.

I was rather not planing to put a crossbow on it. I kind of feel there are too many of those in the game already (And as of 0.5 i did not see any reason to actually use them). But if might of course change with the reorganized tech-tree of the new version.

I cooked up a somewhat different UTE. That white pickup looked a bit out of place for my taste - more like a urban car than a off-road combat vehicle.

So tried to make something more rugged and off-road capable. A Land Rover came to mind. Also somewhat inspired by the old C&C generals - used some screenshots from a pickup there for reference.

It's not completely done yet - the figures are not yet animated, just posed. And there is a tiny bit of space left in the texture (that needs some work as well) to add maybe one or two props. I am not sure on the color as well. Maybe rather brownish ? Or full body teamcolor ? :lol:
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6237/uteom1.jpg

Awesome Stuff!!!!
especially those 2 Uzi guys and the rusted ramshield (could texture style for metal plates armor) :)

But true, i would go with something rather dark, perhaps black or brown with rust and dirt.

Flamethrower and MG would be awesome (another rather silly mechanic would be to actually have a "combine" button when having infantry and UTE on one place and then create that version on the fly ;) but I think AI cant handle that)
For the Uzi guys, I´d suggest using the ones with the helmet, as they look rather generic (the hair is just to much characteristic) and i really love the look of the helmet guy ;)

i was not lazy too :)

check it out here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282021)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/barbed_wire_Y9N.jpg

And there is a tiny bit of space left in the texture (that needs some work as well) to add maybe one or two props. I am not sure on the color as well. Maybe rather brownish ? Or full body teamcolor ? :lol:

Looks fantastic! Since this is the post-apocalypse, the obvious answer seems to be lots and lots of rust and dirt! (with a bit of paint showing through) Maybe a few bulletholes as well to give them that "lived-in" look :D

There is some dirt on it already - i think the dark green base color kind of eats it up. I have it in layers yet, so i will try with different colors. Rust would be cool, if i manage to produce some.

The barbed wire city wall is cool. Not as high as original city walls, looks much better.

@seZereth -- "low" barbed wire walls look great. I will have to investigate more to see how to differentiate between two different kinds of walls. Sadly, I already established that there is no way to have two walls with different resistance to gunpowder units.

On different mounts - i definitely plan to make some sub-versions of it - it was the whole point of the unit after all. I was thinking to rather put people in it different ways - a bit like in the renders above. Probably will make a "generic" mount as well - for MG and maybe Flamer.

I was rather not planing to put a crossbow on it. I kind of feel there are too many of those in the game already (And as of 0.5 i did not see any reason to actually use them). But if might of course change with the reorganized tech-tree of the new version.

The tech tree isn't totally reorganized, just one or two things added and moved. So you can still get combustion independently of small arms. If you have combustion and you don't have small arms, I am not sure what to put on the ute besides a crossbow. A guy with a crowbar? What is the attack animation? It is pretty common (at least in my own playtest games) to have combustion soon and small arms later. So if the first ute the player builds, has a rifle but the player does not have small arms yet, something seems wrong. So if we are designing a ute from scratch, some kind of pre-small-arms animation seems needed.

(And I hate to bring it up again but how about my survivor lancer?)

I had started the work on the landrover while SeZereth was working on more survivors. Now when the survivors arrived i can look into putting one of them on the horse. But not everything can happen at the same time :lol:

Ok, here's (Just in time after the release :mischief:, Sorry) a preliminary Survivor Rider. Preliminary because i would like to give him another (and maybe a alternative as well) spear. I would also like to remove the hat, to make him a bit more different from the riffleman. It is the FX version only for now.

SeZereth's Football-Survivor on a cavalry horse. Use Immortal animation.
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2592/35974539vp4.jpg

@SeZereth - if possible to create from your source files without too much hassle, can i have the texture for this guy without the baked shadows ?

Ok, here's (Just in time after the release :mischief:, Sorry) a preliminary Survivor Rider. Preliminary because i would like to give him another (and maybe a alternative as well) spear. I would also like to remove the hat, to make him a bit more different from the riffleman. It is the FX version only for now.

SeZereth's Football-Survivor on a cavalry horse. Use Immortal animation.
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2592/35974539vp4.jpg

@SeZereth - if possible to create from your source files without too much hassle, can i have the texture for this guy without the baked shadows ?

great stuff!
here is the texture without shadows

EDIT: David, I hope you recognized, that you are one of the luckiest guys on the forum regarding art :P i think this didnt happen before (except perhaps WH and FfH) that a mod got so much completely new custom art in such a really short time ;) and with Chuggi, Refar and asio, you have in my opinion the best custom model artists available on the board ;)

Cool, thanks.

EDIT: David, I hope you recognized, that you are one of the luckiest guys on the forum regarding art :P i think this didnt happen before (except perhaps WH and FfH) that a mod got so much completely new custom art in such a really short time ;) and with Chuggi, Refar and asio, you have in my opinion the best custom model artists available on the board ;)

I am honored. You guys do great work!

SeZereth: I think us fans are the luckiest to have all this great custom art flying at us and a promising mod to use it in! Thanks for everything!

Refar: I love that new UTE! I don't know that I have much pull here, and I'm sure you've already made a good choice on the skin, but I think one of two routes would be perfect for your Landrover paint job
1. A neutral gray or silver with lots rust/mud on it (already mentioned)
2. or it would be neat to have the vehicle in full team color (lots of variety)

Maybe I misunderstood what "full team color" meant. I don't think it would be very good for the player with the pink flag to have a vehicle which was a solid pink color all over. I like the way the gunship and warrior, for example, have small solid sections of the team color.

Well it it in theory possible to apply the temcolor to the full body, but not make it 100% solid, keeping some structure / dirt visible.
But i think in the end that is not a good way - as David points out - some civs just do have ugly colors :lol:

Sorry the settlers didn't make the update, david. I'm working on the kids atm.

@ Refar - Those utes are hardcore! :D Any plans on making the Interceptor?

Sorry the settlers didn't make the update, david. I'm working on the kids atm.

No problem, there are always more updates.

Well it it in theory possible to apply the temcolor to the full body, but not make it 100% solid, keeping some structure / dirt visible.
But i think in the end that is not a good way - as David points out - some civs just do have ugly colors :lol:

If it's of any interest, I did a teamcoloured version of the old ute model a while back (also with a bit more rust and dirt) and I thought it came out okay (down the bottom of this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=250135)). The secret, as I remember, was a grey base colour and only going for very diffuse use of the teamcolour channel (based on a greyscale map of the texture, rather than solid colour) so the teamcolour was very desaturated and buried in the dark grey(and of course no teamcolour on the dirty/rusted sections). I made it for African countries, who had suitable teamcolours anyway, but I was surprised how well it worked for a bunch of less likely teamcolours.
Anyway, my point is I reckon it's possible to get good-looking teamcolour on a vehicle like this, so it could be worth a try.

second wip, this time textured. Shall i change something (but be aware i´m not a good painter)?
Next do do is to link it to an animation an get a pilot (which model i shall use?). Model has around 500 triangles so far
[@seZereth: i didn´t forget your advice, there will be later a changed model with only a plain a wing]

No comments to the double uzi attack sequence (too bad)?

second wip, this time textured. Shall i change something (but be aware i´m not a good painter)?
Next do do is to link it to an animation an get a pilot (which model i shall use?). Model has around 500 triangles so far


Loosk good! I will have to figure out a set of stats for it. Do you plan to make it animate like a gunship (ground unit) or like a fighter (with bombing and ground attack missions)?

No comments to the double uzi attack sequence (too bad)?

It's a great unit. I am struggling to find a place for it. There are several units, such as Garret's madmax and seZereth's heavy bounty hunters, which would be good "single hero" units. But I have not had time to design a useful set of heros yet. If you have some suggestions, please let me know.

I've finished the settlers (will upload later today) david are there any more foot units, or horse units needed? Or bikes or jeeps? Because I have a new survivor model I can rig to something.

second wip, this time textured. Shall i change something (but be aware i´m not a good painter)?
Next do do is to link it to an animation an get a pilot (which model i shall use?).

I can make a pilot. :) Also, even if you're not good at painting (although the texture looks ok) you can enhance it a lot just by using premade textures (like rusty metal (http://www.sharecg.com/images/large/1211.jpg) for example) and modify it to suit your motorised hang glider.

I've finished the settlers (will upload later today) david are there any more foot units, or horse units needed? Or bikes or jeeps? Because I have a new survivor model I can rig to something.

Please see post 2 in the thread, it is up to date.

Please see post 2 in the thread, it is up to date.

They're all for units already half completed by refar though. :crazyeye:

They're all for units already half completed by refar though. :crazyeye:

Cargo truck, maybe? I used a Zis-5B (see the cargo truck thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281410)) which is a WWII version. I'd like to have several different loads on it, basically food or a happiness bonus object or a culture bonus object.

Jeep rifle might be the best bet among the units refar has started. I think he's been working actively on the pickup truck more than anything else.

EDIT: actually I think I may have overlooked the "survivor biker". That would be a good one. Rig any of the "left over" survivors onto the jeep crossbow.

EDIT2 (sorry!): GeoModder has written something about a garage building in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7008702&postcount=110). I am not sure what it means but replacing the "stable" with a post-apo garage would be cool.

Context-sensitive advertising at CFC! I never really look at all the ads which CFC places around the forum. But I noticed one at the bottom of one of my pages for a "Mad Max Interceptor Die Cast Car". What the heck. Actually they have some great photos, no blueprints though. I don't know if the long link will be stable over time but today it is:

http://www.legacydiecast.com/xq/asp/id.AA72745/qx/review.htm?gclid=CJeCx6LksZQCFSQdagodqxm5uA

I get bleach ads all the time on myspace. :lol:

I can do the survivor biker, that should be enough for now (as long as refar hasn't already rigged other survivors onto his bike).

Finished the survivor - kept the hat, he sooled somehow not right without (Even after i closed the gap in hus skull :)).

Also just one spear :( Tried to make it look mean and rusted. The only other idea i had was a pitchfork, but that might be a bit silly.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/mounted_preview_U5X.jpg

I will be animating the Landrover, so the survivor bikers are free yet. Had no real idea on them either, so will be cool if you take them.

Edit.
Forgot the Link...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9959

I did not follow that. Can you give more details or an example?

What I meant was that it is possible to let a specific building from whatever cityset to show up as an improvement in the game.

I'm talking about the garage building in the screenshot from the Ind_eu cityset.
For an example, look at the fort improvement in the second screenshot I put in my mod. This building is part of the eu_ren cityset in the main game.

The garage is city improvement, not terrain improvement, but i guess it will work just the same.
Can you give a example how to reference a single building from a set in the XML ?

Oh, must have mixed Fury improvements up with city improvements.

In any case, here's the xml I used for the fort in my mod:

<ArtRef Name="goal:IMPROVEMENT_FORT">
<Attribute Class="Improvement">IMPROVEMENT_FORT</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Era">ERA_RENAISSANCE</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="ArtStyle">ARTSTYLE_EUROPEAN,ARTSTYLE_RUSSIA,ARTSTYLE_VIKING, ARTSTYLE_BARBARIAN</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">bIsPartOfImprovement:1</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">bApplyRotation:1</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">NIF:Art/Structures/Cities/ren_eu.nif::2x2_01</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">bCutTrees:1</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">fCenterCut:70</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">fTwist:-0.7853981633</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">bZMode_Ground:1</Attribute>
<Attribute Class="Scalar">szForceContourGeometry:shadow</Attribute>
<Scale>0.75</Scale>
</ArtRef>


The red code is the important part. You link to the nif as normal, and then behind the "::" marks to the specific subsection of the nif file. Now that I think of it, with this way it should be possible to link to parts of single building graphics IF there are subsections with a nametag. Cityset buildings are essentially subparts of a single nif file.

As far as my research went in the past, this wouldn't work for city facilities, unless the GameEmbryo engine has been opened up some more since the last time I tested this (first patch from BtS). So if this garage graphic would need to be used as a city facility, someone should go in the ind_eu cityset, copy the specific building node, and paste in a new file.

Another question.... Do you know how the game knows where to cut trees for buildings (Like if your city has forest arjacent to it, and some of the city buildings reach into the forest plot, or when a forest is roaded - it takes away some trees to make space...)

What i actually need is to make it work on a unit (probably impossible) but for the start i need to know how it is done on building in the first place.

Is it a XML thingie ? Or something with the Model ? I think i seen something like a "cut tree" Dummy in some nifs, but i did not need it back then, and i cant find it right now...

There's an xml tag which determines wether or not a forest will be removed from a forested plot if an improvement is build on it, that's all I've ever seen. But this tag is used in the PlotLSystem file, so don't know if it would work in the CityLSystem file. But I don't think this tag is what you need.

<Attribute Class="Scalar">bCutTrees:0</Attribute>


Perhaps if you put it in cityset references, it would allow trees in a cityplot if the city was founded on forest. Perhaps it would preclude removing trees from adjacent plots from a cityplot.
Actually, I think I'm going to test that... interesting idea.

just import the nif into blender/max and extract the building mesh you need and make it seperate nif being used as improvement?

and about treecutting:
if someone finds that out how to get it to work properly (in a controlled way), i would happily donate some money to him ;) i could definitely need that one a lot for FfH!!!!!!

What I meant was that it is possible to let a specific building from whatever cityset to show up as an improvement in the game.

I'm talking about the garage building in the screenshot from the Ind_eu cityset.
For an example, look at the fort improvement in the second screenshot I put in my mod. This building is part of the eu_ren cityset in the main game.

It is interesting to know how to peel out buildings from the cityset. However, the garage building you showed looks to need a lot of modification to look post-apocalyptic. It seems to have a chimney, and skylights, and brick. I think the chimney would need to come off, so it may be easier to start from scratch or from one of asioasioasio's industry buildings.

Finished the survivor - kept the hat, he sooled somehow not right without (Even after i closed the gap in hus skull :)).

Also just one spear :( Tried to make it look mean and rusted. The only other idea i had was a pitchfork, but that might be a bit silly.

Added to the game. Looks great! I agree with the poster on your download thread who said the spear looks just like the fallout spears.

I have fiddled on a few things...

First i wanted to try out that "full teamcolor" idea on the UTE. I am actually quite pleased with the results. Only those Pink and Violett ones are a bit odd - but even those do not look really wrong - some people have cars in ugly colors after all :D.
Still not sure if i really want to use it, so what are you think ?
If going this way i can agjust the texture a bit more, so yet more structure/dirt/decor will be visible.
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/2425/fullteamcolorte9.jpg

Also, after trying one game with sound, had noticed that the flamer guy firing sounds like a sub-machine gun or assault rifle. Same with the Pump-gunner guardian. So fitted those anims with new sounds.

On the Guardian you need to use the animation from my archive, instead of the original BTS Cyborg anims. The NextWar_Cyborg.nif must be in the same folder as the KFM, but you do not need to do nothing to it.

On the Flamer actually only the one .KF file (StrikeA) is new. I still put the complte unit into the zip, so everything is in one place.

I think with some more rust and dirt on the UTE we could actually go with full teamcolor. perhaps desaturate it a little bit more, so the pink and violet is not too vibrant.
good stuff with the sounds!!!

Thanks for the sound stuff, there are some spoken quotes for the technologies I should really remove too.

I will be happy to go with your recommendation on teamcolor; my main concern is that some of the flag colors like powder blue, or pink, may not look very military. It is hard to ambush anybody with a bright pink truck.

I can make a pilot. :) Also, even if you're not good at painting (although the texture looks ok) you can enhance it a lot just by using premade textures (like rusty metal (http://www.sharecg.com/images/large/1211.jpg) for example) and modify it to suit your motorised hang glider.

thanks for tip, and would be glad if you could make the pilot, to have "somebody" i made a minor reskin of Refar survivor, so here is my final beta (linked to the fighter animation, but link to the included, made minor changes by the attack animation) - only waiting for a real survivor pilot.

had planed this as early fighter (should fit the tier of the first motorcycle - the technik of the motor should be the same and the some hobby pilots should have also survived, as late fighter i had something like a "agriculture plane converted to a warbird" in my mind, modern fighters should be to high tech for the game (or perhaps only the work of a great enginer :confused:) - the early gunship (something like the one from the film) i think will also fit perfect. But unfortunally i at least have no idea when i have the freetime to start with this units.

@seZereth: I put in the barbed wire today. I see that in the civilopedia, the original wall art is still displayed. Do you see this too? I think this is because only the civilopedia displays "walls.nif", and "walls.nif" does not reference the wall01,02,04,post.nif files. I am not sure how that works. Any thoughts?

I looked a little bit into the files that handle two different wall styles, but I could not quite figure this out either. It is in Warlords, the Peloponnesian War scenario. The related files are in directory Warlords/Assets/Art/Structures/Buildings/Tall Wall, Warlords/Assets/XML/Art/CIV4ArtDefines_Buildings.xml.

The art you have done so far is awesome, and I appreciate it. If you have a chance to work on the fort or rusty metal walls, it would be super.

The civilopedia art is kind of "pre-prepared" like for the great wall it has a long curvy wall structure, whereas the art you see in game is made up of lots of straight and corner pieces.

Also, david or Coyote, would it be fitting for the pilot to have a motorbike helmet? because then it would serve for the motorbike rider as well, and it would probably be hard to find a special flying helmet + goggles in a post apocalyptic world. :p

I can see, you here doing very good work :thumbsup:

@seZereth: I put in the barbed wire today. I see that in the civilopedia, the original wall art is still displayed. Do you see this too? I think this is because only the civilopedia displays "walls.nif", and "walls.nif" does not reference the wall01,02,04,post.nif files. I am not sure how that works. Any thoughts?

I looked a little bit into the files that handle two different wall styles, but I could not quite figure this out either. It is in Warlords, the Peloponnesian War scenario. The related files are in directory Warlords/Assets/Art/Structures/Buildings/Tall Wall, Warlords/Assets/XML/Art/CIV4ArtDefines_Buildings.xml.

The art you have done so far is awesome, and I appreciate it. If you have a chance to work on the fort or rusty metal walls, it would be super.


i dont know how to set up two walls, but shouldnt it be possible to simply copy the wall entry and add that as another building?

and yes, chuggi is right, the thing in the pedia is pre-set. so i will not create a preset wall thing like that. but you can simply rename one of the wall01.nif i gave you and make it show up like that. i think it is enough to demonstrate that we have barb wire ;)

here is my final beta (linked to the fighter animation, but link to the included, made minor changes by the attack animation) - only waiting for a real survivor pilot. [...] had planed this as early fighter

I added it to the game. I have made it a light scout type unit, relatively low strength, high speed, high withdraw chance. In the current version I have a system for rare units showing up in the ruins; so I thought I would make it a rare unit instead of buildable.

You have made the animation based on a fighter, using DOMAIN_AIR. This means it has to be based in a city and use air missions. This does not work for a scout unit that could move deep into enemy territory. I have based the XML on a copy of the gunship; gunships are DOMAIN_GROUND so they can operate without air missions. With DOMAIN_LAND, the ULF unit shows up mostly underground.

Is it possible to animate this like a gunship so it does not require air missions?

i dont know how to set up two walls, but shouldnt it be possible to simply copy the wall entry and add that as another building?

I am not sure. There is something, somewhere, which collects the wall01,02,04 nifs and actually constructs the wall around the city. I am not sure how to duplicate that part of it. But, if you make another set of wall01,02,04 I am sure I can figure out the XML part.

and yes, chuggi is right, the thing in the pedia is pre-set. so i will not create a preset wall thing like that. but you can simply rename one of the wall01.nif i gave you and make it show up like that. i think it is enough to demonstrate that we have barb wire ;)

Thanks for the suggestion. I copied wall02.nif to walls.nif and now a single straight segment of barbed wire shows in the civilopedia. I agree this is close enough.

@ Chuggi

at first i thought at something like this http://fp.kevinphipps.plus.com/Photographs/WW1%20PILOT%20MARKED%201982.jpg, perhaps a bit more dirty (should look like a pilot and mechanican in one person), but than after your suggestion with the pilot with helmet, ... in short, i will like them both, so make the one you like more (in other words: the one your are more motivated to make ;) ).

@ davidlallen

like i said, i want also to make a light chopper (more like the one in the film - but because the chopper model is "easy" the more important job is the pilot) so you would have two models for the same. Thought this would fit good as airforce, but i you don´t like the idea, it´s your mod. Simply say if you want both or only the chopper, if you prefer the last i will try to relink it to the gunship.
Unfortunally considering the other models, i have no idea when i will have time to make them (reduced time because of exams and bachelor thesis), but i hope to finish the chopper before my holiday break from modeling starts

Thought this would fit good as airforce, but i you don´t like the idea, it´s your mod. Simply say if you want both or only the chopper, if you prefer the last i will try to relink it to the gunship.

If you have time, I would prefer to have it linked to the gunship. Air power is not part of the mod yet, and the cities are far enough apart that a normal base range makes the units almost useless except in defense.

@ seZereth: I have figured out the required XML for multiple walls. It is actually in the city L-system. So I can easily cut in multiple arts for the walls.

@ Refar: regarding ute variants, you mentioned in another thread you were working on the crossbow one first. I agree, that is the base unit. Here are some variants based on the tech tree.

Weapons: crossbow, rifle, weapon mount (maybe like the humvee weapon, with a gunner shield), antitank (big f**ing gun :-). So four choices.

Armor: presently just "with" and "without" heavy armor. It is possible for any of the weapons to be combined with armor, which unfortunately could lead to a large number of variants. It's just disk space and a little xml right? :-)

Custom: I have mentioned about the "wanderer" and "tankbuster" custom units. Lower priority, but an even *bigger* f**ing gun and a cool paintjob would be neat for "tankbuster". I had a random idea which may not even be possible for "wanderer". He is supposed to be an elusive scout. Is it possible that his "idle" animation could make the vehicle a little translucent? Not invisible, and not full time, but just to fade out a little and fade back in. It would be unexpected and add some "eye candy".

I have this for a motorbike rider. Will it do for the pilot, or should I make a different helmet?

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/3339/89047110ru4.jpg

I have this for a motorbike rider. Will it do for the pilot, or should I make a different helmet?

Looks great. I think it is fine for the pilot also, it is easy enough for me to paint the helmet a different color.

Here's the first working UTE. It's the basic crossbow variant.

Just the FX variant for now. I made it only partial team color after all. Considering removing the strip as well, and only keep the plate and mirrors in TC.
Made it a bit darker, dirtier and rustier otherwise.
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/1443/lrcmp2.jpg

Excellent. My first impression is, I like the strip in TC, but not so much the plate and mirrors.

EDIT: I can't quite get the unit to work in the game. All the filenames are right, and I can instantiate it in WB. But, when I display it in civilopedia or when I click on it in game, I get an "unidentifiable C++ exception" error. This is similar to what happened with the first madmax unit by GarretSidzaka. In his case it was missing kf/kfm files in the directory. I have unpacked all your files into the directory, which is one kfm, one nif, and 13 kf files. In my artdef, I have used the standard UnitShadow attached to BIP pelvis, not sure if that matters.

try to remove the _fx from the name of the nif,
btw the pilot looks really good :) but atm i still trying to get the model to work with the gunship animation properly (the model almost works, but the is an issue with the rotor i have to solve)

try to remove the _fx from the name of the nif

Doesn't the kfm refer to the nif by name? I have unit_fx.nif and unit.kfm. I renamed unit_fx.nif to unit.nif and changed the artdef, but it still won't display in the pedia; same "exception" message.

Odd, copied it directly from my art folder, where the screenshots came from.

It's some mees about kfm referencing the wrong nif - like Coyote suggested, but dont waste effort to fix it - i will reexport with proper shader/nonshader versions, which should solve it.

Refar, the landrover looks awesome! I agree with David on the team colour though.

Here are the settlers, finished and uploaded (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9981).

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/4091/settlersbd8.jpg

Hell that could work for the Opening menu background...

Hell that could work for the Opening menu background...

:eek: - yes could be

and here finally the nifs for the ULF linked to the gunship, uses the standard gunship animation (but no bomb drop now :( when attacking). Textures are the same from the previous dl (not included)

Here are the settlers, finished and uploaded (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9981)

Awesome! (No, wait, that is what I said about seZereth's barbed wire.) Cool! Neat! (Used those) (Flips through thesaurus) Legendary!

I must have missed something in setting up the XML, however, as you can see from my screenshot.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=182760&d=1215906953

I have used civchecker to make sure all the file paths are right, there were a lot of directories and I rearranged them to make it a little simpler. I have studied it, and I have probably made some obvious mistake which I just can't see at the moment. Here is a (non-playable) zip of my changed files; can you see what I may be overlooking?

http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/settler-assets.zip

I know just enough about some file formats to be "dangerous", but I'm no artist. I have been putting a few more backgrounds behind some leaderheads. One of my leaderheads is way too "glossy". It is joanofarc created a long time ago by bmarnz, in my leaderhead zipfile (http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/fury-road-lh-v05.zip) (70MB). As she turns her head, it is highly glossy, as shown by the arrow.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=182776&d=1215916042

Which file or property can I adjust to fix this? There are a number of dds files with names like xxx_spec, xxx_diff, xxx_env, xxx_nrml. I thought "spec" was specularity, so I replaced this dds file with one that was entirely black. This made no difference. I guess the author was intending to make the armor shiny, but maybe made the whole surface shiny.

Strange, especially about the vanilla settlers in the group. I'll check it out.

About the leaderhead, do you have nifskope? If you open it up in nifskope you should be able to reduce the gloss on it. But leaderheads can be really painful (from experience, lots of wasted time :p) to get set up right.

I know what the problem is. It's using the CIV4UnitArtStyleTypeInfos.xml. Check what you have for America, and clear the settler part (or all of it to avoid further confusion). That file overrides the default groups so you can have flavour graphics for different civs.

@chuggi, I have nifskope. When I look at the joanofarc files in nifskope, there is no gloss at all. I can't find any setting that would turn it on. Is it helpful if I put up a zip of just the joanofarc directory? Or can you tell me offhand what setting I would use in nifskope?

@The_Coyote: thanks for relinking the animations on the ULF. I have it linked to the gunship kfm and I deleted all the fighter*.kf files from the directory, and I can see the right effect when it attacks a ground unit.

I was going to report a bug on the model, but I figured it out. I guess on your machine, you have file gunship_prop_64.dds in the same directory with the ULF, but it was not in either zipfile you sent. Without this file, there is a magenta blob on the back of the unit. I copied this file from the gunship art directory and it works fine. So if you upload the unit publicly, you should be sure to include that file.

If you click on the model, and then under shape there should be some material settings I think. If there's anything like gloss or specular property then just try removing that branch and saving it. But still, afterwards it won't look great because it's an unshaded leaderhead to start off with (doesn't use normal or spec maps) .. to fix the shaders up properly might be worth it, but it's too time consuming.

If you click on the model, and then under shape there should be some material settings I think. If there's anything like gloss or specular property then just try removing that branch and saving it

Excellent. (I think I already used that word too :-) I wasn't able to figure out whether certain elements had high or low specularity, but I followed your suggestion and just deleted the specularity off the hair and face. Looks *much* better now.

I know what the problem is. It's using the CIV4UnitArtStyleTypeInfos.xml. Check what you have for America, and clear the settler part (or all of it to avoid further confusion). That file overrides the default groups so you can have flavour graphics for different civs.

That was it, thanks. I had previously cleared everything out of there *except* for the settler.

Gret work guys.
the UTE looks absolutely great, though i agree on using only the strip as tc, not the plate and mirror.

Further, I´d suggest creating a four barreled flak cannon, like the terrorists in c&c generals had. that would be soo awesome :)

Yes i was looking at those Generals units for reference. Not sure on the flak cannon - it was on a bigger vehicle there - might be too big for the ute.

I attached those mirrors with the sole purpose of putting team color on them... Oh well since the majority does not like it, i will remove team color there. (And maybe the mirrors as well ?) :lol:

I attached those mirrors with the sole purpose of putting team color on them... Oh well since the majority does not like it, i will remove team color there. (And maybe the mirrors as well ?) :lol:

Mirrors are the first thing to fall off when you drive through trees :-) But it's no big deal.

Ok, i removed the plates, removed TC from mirrors (kept the mirros tho - we don't want to promote rowdier driving here :mischief:) Added damage maps and nonshader version. (however, with all that dirt and rust, they are a bit hard to notice.)
The Anim-missreference causing the pedia to glitch should be gone now.
If no problems pop up this shouldb e the final version of the Crossbow one.

Ha! Love the attack anim. Works great.

I noticed a slight problem with my units (Both UTE and Truck) if they go up the hill they look a bit odd - staying horizontal. While other units do alighn to the terrain a bit.

Someone know how to fix that ? My file structure/hierarchy seem to be the same the same as the Firaxis nifs...

I could debate whether that is a bug or a feature. Try putting a stack of four tanks on a hill. Each one leans a different way, making a "teepee" almost.

Hmmm there is something to it... I.e. the Gas Truck might look odd because it is so long.
I would still like to know how it got brocken - we can decide later if we really want to fix it :D

I am going to remove the jeep crossbow based on playtest feedback. But, The_Coyote and refar have done some work to fix its windshield transparency and rig survivors onto it.

Is it possible for somebody to transfer the transparency fix to the "jeep rife" unit (which is the vanilla WillysTruck) and put survivors onto that? The jeep rifle definitely has a useful role in the mod.

So you want the guys from the crossbow jeep on the MG one ?
I can just switch the Crossbow with the MG there, without touching the Poeple and more important those transparent parts again.

So you want the guys from the crossbow jeep on the MG one ?
I can just switch the Crossbow with the MG there, without touching the Poeple and more important those transparent parts again.

Yes please. MG, transparency, and survivor all in one place. (Also bullets not crossbow bolts :-)

looked at the Guardian (the one with the pumpgun - the problem GeoModder reported) and had also no weapon fire effect when attacking (there was also no node refering to the effect in the attack animation), so changed the nif, and because two shot effects looked weird, removed one from the attack sequence

Edit: made as quick fix for myself, here a rifle jeep alpha version

@refar and The_Coyote: there seem to be three versions of the guardian ranged kf around -- the original one (version 0.6), the one refar fixed the sound on (version 0.7) and the one The_Coyote posted today. I had not noticed earlier, but for me also the 0.6 and 0.7 version do not show the muzzle flash. The_Coyote's does show the muzzle flash.

My question is, is refar's sound fix in The_Coyote's fix also, or do we need a merged one?

i used the 0.7 version as base, so it should be included

Thinkered a bit with the Jepp The_Coyote uploaded. Made the texture a wee-bit lighter, added shaders and some swashes of teamcolor. Also tweaked the Attack anim to look more like a MG (Original Willys anim was one big blast...).

I would also suggest increasing the fScale to 0.45 so it looks a bit bigger in the game.

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/700/jeepjh3.jpg

As an ex-military intel guy, I must say the "jeeps w/guns" concept is a bit dated considering Jeeps of the WW II era are mostly long gone.

What you really want is what are referred to as "technicals" which is basically the same thing, but using a standard Toyota type small truck or LTV. They are used by cheap militias and insurgents everywhere and the Afghan Army uses them as well while I was over there helping to train them.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42825000/jpg/_42825117_ap_pickup416.jpg

Plus, I'm not sure how affective this would be, but 'motorized' infantry using these same trucks is pretty much how a good chunk of the world's poorer nations use to get their infantry around.

http://traversa.typepad.com/afghanistan_without_a_clu/images/2007/04/12/100_1955.jpg

Plus, I'm not sure if it will help, but you might want to look at S.M. Stirling's "Ocean of Eternity" novels as well as the David Weber/Eric Flint et all series "1633" as both deal with high tech people sent back in time and how they had to downgrade. I particularly like the bronze age bazooka concept.

That's the UTE. Its a cheap and flexible alternative to a jeep.

Regular armies outside of 3rd world do still use dedicated Vehicle Tupes for transport - Humvee, LandRover Variants. You are right the Willys jeep looking a bit dated, but it's the only one we have.

The Bronze Age bazooka is a cool concept. I was thinking about "Improvised Firearms" already. The trouble however is the game scale. At the scale the gun will have in the game you will be barely able to tell a improvised rifle and a regular gun apart.

We closest we have to a technical is this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=250135).

Thanks for the points about technicals. Actually we have a new, improved alternative to the "blockheads in pickups" -- refar's landrover based unit (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7026313&postcount=163).

In Fury Road, the "ute" (utility pickup truck) is one of the main units. The other one is a humvee, based on an existing unit by SnafuSmith. In the middle, today the only model we have is the WWII looking existing unit WillysJeep. Maybe someday we will replace that too. But the ute and humvee seem right already.

UPDATE: Sorry, I just realize I probably put this post in the wrong folder! Sorry!

I like the Mod but it sort of has the feel of Final Frontier in that I feel like there should be a bit more there. So here are some impressions

1. The tech tree seems a little small. Is this going to expand over time?

2. Another option might be to make Bio-Diesel available for research. It would be an alternative to oil and maybe make late game mech warfare a bit more sustainable.

3. No ships? As I mentioned earlier above about S.M. Stirlings books, they show how a lot of contemporary sailing and even power boats can be quickly made/adapted. Plus 1634: The Baltic War shows how using railroad tiles and steam, you can rapidly create timerclads & ironclads.

4. In fact, no coal? I'm a bit of a steam punk mavin and it would seem to me that if you can't always get oil, there isn't any reason you can't use steam. A lot can be done if you get electricity going again and coal is a 19th century tech that isn't THAT hard to reconstitute. That being said, I think mines should take a long time to build. Plus, you could maybe make colliers to transport coal for steamships in the way tankers are used for oil.

5. Maybe have, like Rise of Mankind, have sulfer as a resource. Can't do to well with bullets without gunpowder and I think building gunpowder plants would be key. Plus having them blow up as a event is historical and realistic. Besides, it seems funny to go from catapults to artillery. Besides, a high school metal shop can crank them out...they did her in Vancouver!

6. I think airships should be added. Plus, if you have gas for jeeps, you should at least have recon planes. Weaponizing planes would be harder, but you could at least have planes that could bomb (poorly) and act as scouts. Ultralights are cheap and their engines small.

7. It might be 'old tech' but I think you should allow some of the older buildings. Sure a 'forge' seems quaint, but at first, retraining people to create older pieces of equipment is important and that usually means older types of things like forges and water wheels. Plus I like being able to custom build my cities more, like Civ IV is built for.

8. I think that you should have to build facilities to be able to produce Jeeps and the like. I don't think that they should 'magically' be available simply because you have oil. Like I said, using steam you can adapt traditional cars if you have the workshop.

9. Major grip I have with lots of mods, but I miss not having entertainers to boost culture and traders/caravans to help with money.

10. I do like Final Frontier having a way of showing how your culture leans. If you are in an oil poor area but with lots of food and horses, you go for "infantry based" similar to light versus heavy versus carrier.

11. I think the Vision victory is too easy to achieve.

Beyond that, a very nice mod. I think this mod screams to have events. I can see plagues, storms and even odd things like satellites coming out of orbit and crashing to earth. That would be another Wonder, I think, re-establishing contact with satellites that are in geo-synchronous orbit just waiting to be used.

UPDATE: Sorry, I just realize I probably put this post in the wrong folder! Sorry!

No problem! Please see my reply coming soon in the playtest thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=280852).

I'm making a ship for mesoamerican civs which could maybe be used in fury road (with a retextured sail though).

I still have to rig that biker and upload the pilot btw. :mischief:

KrugerPritz produced a nice reskin of the HumVee. It is supposed to be a somewhat different vahicle (A italine humVee Remake so it seems :lol:) but it is close enought and i.e. the Darker texture i like better than the original Hummer, which is a bit plain.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283429
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=183181&d=1216308622

@Chuggie - perhaps you can just upload the mesh, i can rig it on the bike in my source-files quite easily.

If you want to use it, i will pin shaders and teamcolor on it (And probably remove the italina flag :p).

Yeah, that's probably a better idea because it takes me longer to re-rig stuff.

The bikers are attached to this post. :p Thanks!

Here's the ship I was talking about:

http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=balsaraft2zb2.jpghttp://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3023/balsaraft2zb2.jpghttp://img112.imageshack.us/img112/8722/balsaraftul0.jpg

David, do you think it would suit the theme as an early raft unit?

Very cool ship. My feel however is, it does look a bit ancient for this context. Maybe with some kind of reskin (Empry barrel ponton instead of those tree logs ?)

I really have to force myself to watch "Waterworld" one of these days. I am currently using the modern workboat, and I see the AI using these once in a while to scout. So it would have to fit with that. I definitely do not want any ocean-going units, but maybe some kind of motorboat would fit the theme. I would probably add one or two maritime techs, making coastal starts less sucky and enabling river based trade routes. It would be worthwhile, but it's not a high priority right now.

I have updated the unit request post, #2 in this thread. But, I wanted to draw special attention to defensive buildings, now that we have "safety".

I love seZereth's barricade, barbed wire. It shows up on the depot also. I made an attempt to make "rusty walls" but I only reskinned the ancient wall and it doesn't look right.

In 0.8, I have added a Great Protector building, and I have re-used the Citadel building for now but the rock walls look wrong. I added a low level safety building, Watchtower, with a decent button (images.google.com "watchtower" for concepts), but the graphic I used is a rescaled version of the "post" in the barricade. And the AI sometimes builds forts, which also don't look right.

So, any takers for a post-apocalyptic citadel, better walls, watchtower building, fort?

I believe i have fixed the xity set issue (those disappearing textures).

The cause was, the structure in the used Nif not matching the one defines in CityLSystem (LSystem refering to an_eu.nif - the original habing 18 buildings, while the ruined one only brought 15 - so 3 buildings were missed (and 5 or so others had different names)). Referring to those buildings apparently caused the whole thing to mess up.

I reorganized the nif, so it has the same building-node names like the original an_eu.nif, so the XML should match now. Had to add 3 buildings (duplicated those i liked the most, with some texture variation).

In my test-saves the no texture and mixed up shadows issues are now gone on Cities and Cottages. But i only had 2 saves showing the issue, so i might have missed one.

Below the modified nif. Textures not included, as i dis not change those.

Excellent! I will try it out. It is possible the original author intended the nif to be paired with a different vanilla nif, and it is only by coincidence that my pairing worked at all. It "would have been nice" if the game engine had displayed some kind of message about that.

I think it was probably based of another era - not all vanilla nifs hava the same layout. Or maybe the mod where it originally was made for used custom LSystem definitions.
But, yea a message about something beeing missed would have been good :-S

had a bit time to start with a new unit (with tankbuster in my head :lol: ), What do you think, atm it´s more a 3D design study, shall i complete it.

in short, the idea behind this: an retired technic tank sergeant rebuild his muscle car after the apocalypse with some parts of a tank from his old barracks.

Edit: pic removed

That looks cool! One of the most common unit requests for post-apocalypse, even before I started the Fury Road mod, is the actual Interceptor from the movies. There is a bunch of concept art already linked around here, or I can point you at it.

Refar had started working on a set of linked utility trucks, really one truck with a bunch of different weapon mounts. I have code all working to swap unit art based on promotions.

So, a car without any weapon would be cool as a fast scout. A smaller gun would work, and a Big F*cking Gun would be great for tankbuster.

I can definitely use it!

ok finished the unwrap, now the question what should be the basic colour, imo black should be reserved to the true interceptor, started here with blue, for the tankbuster itself i didn´t planed windows, more something like metal plates with observation slits

any ideas what should be changed on the model? shall have the general version a transparent windows (so that i must model the inside) or not?

i´m confident that i can add an easy animation, but if you want a really cool one, i think you must ask refar

Edit: pic removed

refar's ute has a pretty good color scheme, with teamcolor as a stripe along the sides. Rusty and dirty is the post-apocalyptic ideal. Most of the bad guys in "Mad Max" had simple motorcycle helmets, so not much internal detail is needed.

I would make it have less glass - i.e. the glass on the roof. While looking cool, glassy parts are harder to texture and also make less sense on a para-military unit. Cover it with plates, as you said, might be a possibility as well.

tried to model close to the original and on the reference pics it had this glas parts on the roof, as i started i only had tankbuster in my head and already a skin concept (metal plates instead of glas), i didn´t expected the model has also a more general use. The tankbuster skin a step closer to finish, not completely satisfied, still want a firebird on the car (the rust will not get better, as long i don´t get an advice how to do). Any advices what can i do to optimize the texture?

For the more general model i have an idea for the skin (instead of glas a net like racing cars have, i think that i could paint, i don´t think that i will be able to paint a good glas texture), but will have to wait, i hope i can finish this model before my holiday break.

And btw found a nice 3 side view form the interceptor, so expect a model after my break

It does not look bad. But i would sugest changin the shade of blue (a bit lighter) - this pure, higly saturated blue has the tendency to "chew up" texture detail.

On rust - what i usually do is put a layer of rust (from photo reference) over the texture and then delete from that layer areas i do not want rusty with a soft eraser brush.

Here's the rust raw material i used on the UTE:

For the more general model i have an idea for the skin (instead of glas a net like racing cars have, i think that i could paint, i don´t think that i will be able to paint a good glas texture), but will have to wait, i hope i can finish this model before my holiday break.

And btw found a nice 3 side view form the interceptor, so expect a model after my break

Looking good! The interceptor is definitely the most-requested, but having good unique units like the ULF you did before, and this tank car definitely adds a lot.

Maybe have its color match its civ color?

It does not look bad. But i would sugest changin the shade of blue (a bit lighter) - this pure, higly saturated blue has the tendency to "chew up" texture detail.

On rust - what i usually do is put a layer of rust (from photo reference) over the texture and then delete from that layer areas i do not want rusty with a soft eraser brush.

Here's the rust raw material i used on the UTE:

I looked the thread through and I do not see any words about asioasioasio's modern buildings and others.
I'm pretty sure you've already found them because they are on the second page, but if you didn't for some reason:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269849

Awesome "slimy" oceans by Sarke. They really look like evil/polluted ones.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=198140
He made it for his post-apocalyptic mod which was unable to go anywhere far (sadly).

Vehem's industrial revolution.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=268489
(it has much more than 3 buildings, those are just for example)

Modern granary by Chamaedrys.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184926
Refinery by Chamaedrys.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=227616

C.Roland's solar plant.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=164688

Coca plants (as a resource suggestion).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=196254

Asioasioasio's nuclear silo (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=192076) and Grave's Area 51 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=207923) would be nice "lost" unique terrain landmarks in you need them.

Woodelf's apartment buildings (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=226855).


Fusion plant.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181918

Modern harbor.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184760

Pows camp.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=183041

Sevo's gas pipeline.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=172478

Jojoweb's silo.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=170049

Artificial lake
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169179
(may be a Wonder in the post-apocalyptic wastelands)

Combat vehicle by Rabbit, White.
http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/2554/acvshot15ej.jpg
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165591

Sorry for cluttering the thread if it's something you've already found, I just did it to make sure that you have everything you need and more.
I'm very glad that this mod is going so well (it's a pity to watch other fantasy/sci-fi projects to go slow/stay idle) and I'm very glad that you have Refar, seZereth and other best of the best animators/modellers/modders here to help.

I'll try to dig more content on external sites and to ask if I could use them if I find something interesting for you.

I looked the thread through and I do not see any words about asioasioasio's modern buildings and others. [...]
Awesome "slimy" oceans by Sarke. They really look like evil/polluted ones.
Woodelf's apartment buildings
I'll try to dig more content on external sites and to ask if I could use them if I find something interesting for you.

Thanks for doing the research. I had looked through the download forum a while ago and I had found most of these. Some of them are already in the game, such as the modern granary and refinery by chamaedrys; I hope the list in the "credits" section of my documentation is complete.

I saw the slimy oceans. I didn't want to make the entire ocean like this. One of the ideas I had was to make the rivers downstream of ruins polluted and then have a "bloom" into the ocean which is also polluted, and make sure that the polluted water does not count as fresh or yield any food. Then some players could clean the rivers and oceans to make them productive again. I couldn't figure out how to do two kinds of river graphics, however, so I put that idea on the back burner.

I'm not sure I had seen the apartment buildings, or I didn't notice at the time. Geomodder is working on some new xml/nif for city ruins, and these buildings might go into them fairly nicely. These buildings are related to the ruined city set, also by woodelf, which is the basic city graphic I'm using.

Any off-site stuff you find references to (which can be used in civ) would be very helpful.

The Combat Vehicle apparently has some issues with its team color not working correctly (see thread), if someone could fix those it would be great :)

I'm not sure I had seen the apartment buildings, or I didn't notice at the time. Geomodder is working on some new xml/nif for city ruins, and these buildings might go into them fairly nicely. These buildings are related to the ruined city set, also by woodelf, which is the basic city graphic I'm using.

You haven't found the attachment (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7125434&postcount=65) yet with flatland city ruins? ;)

You haven't found the attachment (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7125434&postcount=65) yet with flatland city ruins? ;)

Sadly I was out of touch for a few days (Thu-Sun) and I read this thread before the other thread. I am now all caught up. Thanks for your work!

I saw the slimy oceans. I didn't want to make the entire ocean like this. One of the ideas I had was to make the rivers downstream of ruins polluted and then have a "bloom" into the ocean which is also polluted, and make sure that the polluted water does not count as fresh or yield any food. Then some players could clean the rivers and oceans to make them productive again. I couldn't figure out how to do two kinds of river graphics, however, so I put that idea on the back burner.

Not to bring up FfF/FF again, but they do have a mechanic that might work here. Depending on the time frame of the turns, you could have certain bad terrain such as polluted lands (similar to tundra or desert) and ocean bloom zones that start the game that way and then 'upgrade' over time. FfF/FF have a flag you can set in custom games where the game starts with the world cold and gradually warms up so that code might be useful here.

Plus, as the tech gets higher, you might be able to clear these zones more. For example, polluted land might 'upgrade' to habitable (maybe a weak plains?) and later eco-tech your workers could upgrade it to grasslands.

For that matter, FF has these lizard races that have marsh & swamps. If there is global warming going on, you would have lots of this. Plus, I'm a big fan of different roads to victory. Throughout history there have been peoples who have lived in areas other people couldn't conceive of. Prior to Saddam Hussein killing most of them off, there were these swamp people that lived most of their lives on boats. It's sort of evolution in action: I'm in danger, do I take to the oceans (become a whale) take to the trees (become a primate) or take to the savannah (become human). In Fury Road you'd have people who might take to the swamps because while it might not have a lot of resources (in a mining sort of way) it does keep you protected from the crazy bad-guys on wheels. These civs might be resource poor (except for food) so they might work towards a cultural or vision victory.

Of course this brings up the point that if you have shallow seas in places, you might be able to dive into cities that are 'intact' if only underwater for stuff. Probably more work than needed, but it might work with swamps & marshes that cover cities farther up the Mississippi for example.

I haven't tried the SMAC mod yet but I'm pretty sire that they should have a working code for growing fungi.

Not to bring up FfF/FF again, but they do have a mechanic that might work here. Depending on the time frame of the turns, you could have certain bad terrain such as polluted lands (similar to tundra or desert) and ocean bloom zones that start the game that way and then 'upgrade' over time.

These are all good ideas. The obstacle is that there does not appear to be any way to have different river graphics in different places.

These are all good ideas. The obstacle is that there does not appear to be any way to have different river graphics in different places.

Yes, I could see how that would be an issue. I've noticed that your mod is very "anti-navy" in that the scale doesn't work to well with deep water ships. So rivers become very important (hence my thinking that the RoM building "river port" would be nice). It's too bad that Civ IV can't seem do do what Civ III could (or was it Civ II?) where they had a way to make these large rivers so that units could navigate them. Thus you could have riverboats and gunboats as well.

I firmly believe that the size of the map should be equivalent to only 4-5 states (such as my neck of the woods of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and a bit of Canada). In most cases that would preclude lots of ocean. Thus rivers would become (as they should) really important for trade and the like.

It's too bad that Civ IV can't seem do do what Civ III could (or was it Civ II?) where they had a way to make these large rivers so that units could navigate them. Thus you could have riverboats and gunboats as well.

I should probably add a motorboat tech+unit, for better food production on the coast and enabling river based trade. In a few mods, I have seen them build the map with rivers that are one plot wide. This enables units to travel on them.

I should probably add a motorboat tech+unit, for better food production on the coast and enabling river based trade. In a few mods, I have seen them build the map with rivers that are one plot wide. This enables units to travel on them.

Did I miss your reply regarding the use of the FfF code where units upgrade from bronze weapons to iron to mithril? I ask since I think this would be a good way to have units automatically get better with time as resources permit. As many people have mentioned in the crossbow vs guns thread, while (cross)bows are easy early on, firearm technology is 600 years old so as long as you can make gunpowder, you can start cranking out guns. Sure they might be flintlocks at first, but they are guns.

So it seems to me that instead of having lots of units represent the same thing with different weapons, you can have a Guardian that starts out with bows, upgrades to early firearms, then later types of firearms. That way you can have more units available for different things like oil vs steam units and airships vs airplanes and the like.

I would think that this mod would also do well to have more units that mostly carry other units. Infantry is cheap and he who shows up with the most troops at the crisis point usually wins so while it might be nice to have your 'technicals' it might be better tactically to use them as APC's where their main role is to carry infantry quicker than they can march. In RoM, I've found when I have superior infantry, having a BTR-80 with two infantry which can dismount and attack on the same turn can be really devastating when I can use the BTR's mobility to penetrate quicker into my enemies lands than if they marched square by square.

Weapon types as promotions has been discussed a few times recently, such as in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7117748&postcount=226). I think it works well for the ute. Given a progression of units such as survivor, guardian, machine gunner, AT infantry and SAM infantry, is there an advantage to treating the weapons as promotions instead of different unit types?

Regarding troop transport, how well does the AI use it in ROM or other mods? From what I have read around the forum, the AI does not use land transport effectively. Of course it is always possible to study the AI well enough and then improve it; but it sounds like that part would be hard.

Weapon types as promotions has been discussed a few times recently, such as in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7117748&postcount=226). I think it works well for the ute. Given a progression of units such as survivor, guardian, machine gunner, AT infantry and SAM infantry, is there an advantage to treating the weapons as promotions instead of different unit types?

First off, I think you should have a AAA unit, preferably an artillery unit. The German 88mm was originally designed as a AAA weapon. As an ex-military intel type of many a year, I can tell you that there is a lot more to SAM technology than the missiles. You need the training, the radar and the like. Remember the first computers were designed to help AAA artillery calculate shooting at planes more quickly. Plus, with the dearth of planes as yet in your mod, I find it weird to have SAM units prior to any planes. From a infantry standpoint, the MG unit is plenty fine as a defender as is the AT unit against vehicles.

In regard to promotion versus a different unit, I don't know if there is a cap on units. It seems some mods have lots of units while some have few, but the ones that have lots of units (like FfH/FF) also seem to lose units. So if there is a cap on the number of units you could have, I figure this would at least free up some slots. This also because I think it came up before that you might want to take up the idea of 'magical items' that FF uses that are one shot things but are actually units with those special properties. So that one-shot medical supplies that a unit can carry around and heal themselves with is still a 'unit' filling a slot.

Regarding troop transport, how well does the AI use it in ROM or other mods? From what I have read around the forum, the AI does not use land transport effectively. Of course it is always possible to study the AI well enough and then improve it; but it sounds like that part would be hard.

This is a very good question. Since my system likes to crash in late games, it's hard for me to tell. That and in many of my RoM games, I'm way ahead of the AI in tech. My first comment would be "no, it's not" but I don't see why since the code would (I would think) be similar to ships.

But then again, I feel the AI in Civ IV got very stupid in regard to navies compared to Civ III. The Civ III AI was evil, it'd build fleets and use them as such, put ships along likely shipping routes and could build large fleets of transports and do some nasty marine invasions. So far, I've noticed that the Civ IV AI is retarded when it comes to ships. First off, the AI seems to like to build navy ships even when they shouldn't, like when I'm attacking them overland. While they pump out naval vessels (like that damned Xebec!) in massive numbers (and I think the AI must build all the naval buildings since their ships ALWAYS have the maximum combat power possible) the AI never
often will not do more than pair up 2 ships and go attacking. I've attacked many a city to find 4-6 naval ships still in port and even if I don't take the city the first turn, the AI won't move them! Plus the AI doesn't really seem to know what to do with transports. Rarely do I ever see more than one transport with troops at a time. I've commented on this in other forums but no one really has commented on it.

First off, I think you should have a AAA unit, preferably an artillery unit. The German 88mm was originally designed as a AAA weapon. As an ex-military intel type of many a year, I can tell you that there is a lot more to SAM technology than the missiles. You need the training, the radar and the like. Remember the first computers were designed to help AAA artillery calculate shooting at planes more quickly. Plus, with the dearth of planes as yet in your mod, I find it weird to have SAM units prior to any planes.

I guess there is no way to know this from the outside, but the main role for the SAM infantry is to act as a gunship counter. I figured it was armed with stingers, or other man-portable anti-helicopter missiles. That is the sort of thing you might find in a munitions dump, and it does not need much training or other equipment besides breaking any launch encryption it may have. Without this unit, gunships could dominate the game.

One possible future extension is to add both fighter/bomber planes and AAA.

In regard to promotion versus a different unit, I don't know if there is a cap on units. It seems some mods have lots of units while some have few, but the ones that have lots of units (like FfH/FF) also seem to lose units. So if there is a cap on the number of units you could have, I figure this would at least free up some slots.

There isn't any cap on the number of unit types, as far as I know. It feels like some of the WWII mods have hundreds of unit types.

But then again, I feel the AI in Civ IV got very stupid in regard to navies compared to Civ III. [...] Plus the AI doesn't really seem to know what to do with transports. Rarely do I ever see more than one transport with troops at a time. I've commented on this in other forums but no one really has commented on it.

I guess the AI would use land transport as stupidly as it uses naval transport, then. When you've pointed this out on other forums and there was no response, I guess the only possible response is, "You're right, it's stupid". Rewriting the AI on that fundamental a level seems impossible unless the Firaxis devs do it.

That is the sort of thing you might find in a munitions dump, and it does not need much training or other equipment besides breaking any launch encryption it may have. Without this unit, gunships could dominate the game.

Sorry, but that isn't true. SAMs take a lot of training. However, like you say, if you are using them to merely shoot at helicopters, then it would be easier. The problem is with SAMs is that it's very hard to train for them since you pretty much have to use the weapon in training which sort of defeats the purpose. Plus, if most of the helicopters are more of the "Road Warrior" gyrocopters, many SAMs would have trouble locking on due to the close range and lack of large, jet-induced heat signature. Plus, SAMs aren't very common these days. The Army is sort of moving away from those units since the threat really isn't there and we need the troops for other missions and we haven't had US troops attacked by enemy air since Korea.

What I think you are thinking of is throw-away anti-tank weapons such as the AT-4 which have instructions right on the weapon.

However, my view is that if you have enough helicopters in the game to be a problem, it implies a level of technology that would make relying on found weapons moot.

That being said, let me just point out something that often times civilians miss: developing a technology is very different from 'weaponizing' it. For example, building the little helicopter you see in "The Road Warrior" probably isn't hard at all. However, besides manually dropping bombs, turning it into something resembling a gunship is another matter entirely. So yes, you could have lots of ultra-lights and small gyro-copters, but they really wouldn't be affective combat units. I mean a competent shop mechanic can make a AK-47 by hand (and they do in Pakistan, I got to see one while I was deployed to Afghanistan) but it's another thing entirely to develop a gun system like for a WW II fighter. Hell, I'm betting that unless you happened to find a very technical book, it might take some time to develop the arresting gear they used on WW I fighters.

I guess the AI would use land transport as stupidly as it uses naval transport, then. When you've pointed this out on other forums and there was no response, I guess the only possible response is, "You're right, it's stupid". Rewriting the AI on that fundamental a level seems impossible unless the Firaxis devs do it.

The whole AI thing was one of the only disappointments I had with Civ IV. It reminds me of the issue with word processor spell/grammer checkers which actually seem to be getting worse with every new iteration.

BTW, in any of your research for this game come up with anything on the chemical side of things? I ask this since I wonder how easy/hard it would be if things suddenly fell about to make gunpowder. I mean, how hard would it get be to get sulpher? Or is there a 'easy' chemical trick that most people who took a college chemistry class would know that could make it? I ask because if it would be hard to synthesize, then perhaps you need to have sulphur as resource which I think would be really important. Sure at first you can cannibalize stuff, but after a decade, you'd think you'd have stripped everything pretty clean and any civ would be desperate for gunpowder.

Plus, if most of the helicopters are more of the "Road Warrior" gyrocopters, many SAMs would have trouble locking on due to the close range and lack of large, jet-induced heat signature. Plus, SAMs aren't very common these days. [...] What I think you are thinking of is throw-away anti-tank weapons such as the AT-4 which have instructions right on the weapon.

The gunships in Fury Road are repaired pre-apocalypse ones, so they have a heat signature. Clearly you know more about these weapons than I do, but aren't simple RPGs a big threat to helicopters (see "Black Hawk Down")? I would think the rest of the world would want this type of weapon to defend against US helicopters.

BTW, in any of your research for this game come up with anything on the chemical side of things? I ask this since I wonder how easy/hard it would be if things suddenly fell about to make gunpowder. I mean, how hard would it get be to get sulpher?

Research? I don't need no steenkin' research :-) I haven't investigated the reality of post-apocalyptic life, I am just trying to make a fun game. Sorry, I can't help on that question.

It kind of ruins the atmosphere when you start asking questions like "but where did they get their gunpowder from?" :)

It kind of ruins the atmosphere when you start asking questions like "but where did they get their gunpowder from?" :)

Not at all. Obviously the point of a game is for it to be enjoyable and fun to play. But what makes it fun for you may not make it fun for me. I enjoy Civ for a lot of it's aspects of "what if?" and I like it better when it's more realistic. I don't like it when I jump from Frigates right to Battleships.

Besides, by taking a look at how you make gunpowder might give you more avenues of game play.

For example, I did some Open Source research on this matter (it's one of the things I did in the military) and I found that sulfur, the main ingredient that is hardest to come by can be gotten a few ways. There are places where it is mined (like in Alberta in Canada for example) so that matches having sulfur as a resource like copper or iron. However, you can leeched out of natural or refined gas.

So at some point where your new post-apocalyptic is up to using natural or refined gas, all it might take is 1 tech and then a building and then you're back in the gunpowder business. In some respect, I believe this is why sulfur as a need for gunpowder units just goes away in games like RoM: at a certain tech level, there is plenty of sulfur available chemically that you don't have to rely on mined sulfur.

Plus, it's all about playing style. As a military analyst and a combat vet, I can tell you ammo evaporates. You use it up way faster than most people think. So in all reality "Road Warriors" just wouldn't be feasible since they'd just blow through their ammo to quickly. But for the sake of the game, you can use the that fact as a route to victory. Do you research mobility techs, have lots of scouts and really push to go for an early "Blitz" victory by betting that you'll be able to find, scavenge enough old tech and ammo and be able to over-run my Civ who has been trying to rebuild sort of from scratch? Sure the old tech is great, but if it's all you have, if my Civ can hold out long enough, then your Civ is screwed. You empty .50cal's won't do you much good in the face of my companies of well drilled flintlock using infantry being driven into your territory by old cars now being run on steam.

Again, just saying, "It's only a game!" closes off avenues where a little research might find ways to tweak things that make the came more balanced and definitely more appealing to more styles of play. I don't want to be the "Road Warriors"; I want to be the guys you see running of with the 'precious juice' to start fresh. With a little work, both styles of play can be accommodated and the mod is better for it.

but aren't simple RPGs a big threat to helicopters (see "Black Hawk Down")? I would think the rest of the world would want this type of weapon to defend against US helicopters.

Yes, properly used, they can be very effective. However, unless you are playing in a old Soviet bloc country or some place like the Balkans, Iraq or Afghanistan, they aren't very common. However, for the sake of the game, I realize that the world has to have been pumped up by the NRA so there is ammo and weapons everywhere.

Although as I said before, in many respects, it's not the weapons. Many places have National Guard armories that have plenty of weapons, but in the US, about the only places you going to find much ammo for these weapons is at major military bases or at very select ammo dumps. Even today, ammo isn't something that is safe just to keep lying around.

That's why I've always thought the way to go, in a post-apocalyptic environment is to do an end-around and do things like they did in the Road Warrior where a lot of their weapons were dart throwers using compressed air. Hell of a lot easier to created compressed air (just need an air compressor found at any hardware store) and a little work and you have a repeating weapon that you can easily fabricate ammo for.

Plus, I've always felt that the map should have little Warlord 'kingdom's' that are just one city, but a tough one because they have hoarded old tech. They are a menace close to their city, but since the Warlord isn't into much more than living well, they never grow and eventually any major Civ will take them out later in the game.

But this is a post apocalyptic mod?! It's already beyond reason. ;)

I love all the realistic stuff in the proper game, but here, it doesn't worry me.

But this is a post apocalyptic mod?! It's already beyond reason. ;)

I love all the realistic stuff in the proper game, but here, it doesn't worry me.

Well the 'problem' is it seems some people just want to play "The Road Warrior" and run around being post-apocalyptic Mongols...and that is perfectly fine.

However, for those of us who really like alternate history fiction, or like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for that matter, this mod can be a way of having mostly a 'start from scratch' game but instead of 4000 BC, we have a different set of start up rules. One of the whole points of Civ that a lot of people go for is the chance to change how things go. After the End of Things, this is another chance 'to do it right'...or wrong if that's what you're into. There are plenty of books and films of this motif and many of us want to simulate that.

If that's not really the point of this mod, I'll cheerfully (well maybe not 'cheerfully') shut up and quit trying to muck up the mod. But not trying to be rude or put words into anyone's mouth, but if the purpose is just to run around blowing . .. .. .. . up, why play Civ? There are plenty of games out of the Command & Conquer genre where you build things only as a means to create and army to destroy your enemy. Personally, I'd rather build to create and then to defend. But I'm just an old guy who went to a hippy school at a young age so I'm probably not in anyway the usual player of this mod.

But hey, you did the Cultural Diversity mod, I would think you'd be more tolerant of people wanting a different path to victory. >=]~

I'm tolerant. ;) It's just nice to take a break from all that and go post-apocalyptic. I think the art in this mod represents the nature fairly well. I mean if it was aiming for realism, there wouldn't be giant spiders for a start.

Although you sound like you could write a good civlopedia for this mod, and I admit it would be more interesting if it could be detailed on how it's supposed to make sense. Interested? :p

Plus, I've always felt that the map should have little Warlord 'kingdom's' that are just one city, but a tough one because they have hoarded old tech. They are a menace close to their city, but since the Warlord isn't into much more than living well, they never grow and eventually any major Civ will take them out later in the game.

That is an interesting idea. In another thread we were discussing about intelligent mutant races (ghouls and deathclaws, from the Fallout series). These "could" be added as full civs with a set of unique units, but it would be a lot of work to make sure that they were fully balanced as playable civs. It would be less work to add them as lower powered civs and make them only playable by the AI. What you are suggesting sounds similar -- a lower powered civ that is only playable by the AI. I am not sure why a warlord who did have a few tanks would not strike out on his own to take over the world; but I guess you had in mind some limitation where they just didn't feel like it.

I'm tolerant. ;) It's just nice to take a break from all that and go post-apocalyptic. I think the art in this mod represents the nature fairly well. I mean if it was aiming for realism, there wouldn't be giant spiders for a start.

Although you sound like you could write a good civlopedia for this mod, and I admit it would be more interesting if it could be detailed on how it's supposed to make sense. Interested? :p

Well as I've said before, I think Fury Road is a mod that is just screaming for scenarios. I mean how the we got to the post-apocalypse is going to seriously impact how the game runs. I mean general war might not leave much as opposed to a more Necro Christi variant where Mankind is over-run with zombies. Obviously in a post-War of the Worlds, it depends on how much damage the aliens did in wiping us out before the start of the game. General environmental collapse and/or plague would leave a lot more stuff but everyone would be really, really hurting for people

So doing an anything for the game really depends on the disaster. That being said, that's what I like about this mod; with just a tad bit of tweaking you can have zombies, remains of aliens, more traditional 'Road' Warriors or if someone wanted to invert the current game, you could even do a scaled back Waterworld. Lots of potential.

I think the most important thing for this mod is to carry over the "Post Apocalyptic Feeling".

Right now "Ammunitions Depots" represent the ressource needed for firearms. This does have the right "feeling".
I do not think it is entirely unrelaistic - ammunition does exist in huge stashes now, and if some human made things are to survive the apocalypse, those weapon/ammo caches would probalby be among them.

Manufacturing new ammunition on the other hand... Sure, it's easy to make a round at home. Or 10. Some people do it as hobby. But manufacturing enought ammunitions to fight a war ? This is quite a task without any industry. Modern firearms amunitions is a lot more than "Sulfur+Coal=Black Powder" - there are complex chemical components to increase the efficiency while reducing the weapons wear. Huge and complex chemical installations are needed to produce those.
Huge and Complex chemical installations are needed to make sulphur from gas. These chemical installations are just not there.

By taking a look at how you make gunpowder might give you more avenues of game play. [...] I don't want to be the "Road Warriors"; I want to be the guys you see running off with the 'precious juice' to start fresh. With a little work, both styles of play can be accommodated and the mod is better for it.

I think the ammunition factory I have added in version 9 sort of accomplishes this. We could view the "small arms" tech as rediscovery of how to extract sulphur and also whatever types of small scale metalwork are needed to make simple rifles and ammunition. The rifle armed units like guardian and jeep can now only be constructed in cities which have this building.

Regarding steam-powered units, I think there is an excellent opportunity to add something like a "junkyard tank", perhaps as a UU for a junkyard-focused leader. It may have the same combat strength as a humvee or even tank, but only a movement of one. I would like to do something with "reliability" so that this type of unit might break down more, and then a "mechanic" promotion which improves the reliability and allows reactivating totally broken down units.

Regarding building tech up totally from scratch without using artifacts from the ruins, I agree that would be an interesting theme to investigate on its own. I have tried a strategy of cavalry plus utes, which works OK in case a civ has a starting position with no access to oil. Maybe adding some steam units would strengthen that type of strategy.

However, there is certainly room for another whole mod in the steampunk theme. A couple of people have said, "You know what this mod needs? Zombies!" and I have pointed them to NecroCristi. For "You know what this mod needs? Flintlocks!" it may be worthwhile to consider another whole mod for that.

I am not sure why a warlord who did have a few tanks would not strike out on his own to take over the world; but I guess you had in mind some limitation where they just didn't feel like it.

Well not every Warlord is a megalomaniac. As you have said, the Fury Road world is a frickin' dangerous place! Much better to stick to what you have; it's safe, the people 'love' you because you protect them and well, those people that don't love you make great sport in The Games! >=)

Plus, I think that is one of the reasons I sort of like the "After Alpha Centauri" model for this mood. Many people after The End are going to be mostly content just to be safe and content and think about the future later on. It's the real leaders, those with vision and purpose who are going to inspire their people to want to do more than just be 'safe'. So the factions that appear on the UNS Unity would have followers that couldn't fit on the ship and thus would be the nucleus of different factions and visions back on Earth.

In fact, in the seminal, post-apocalyptic book "Lucifer's Hammer" the characters are faced with just this sort of choice. Do they play it safe or do they stick their necks out to fight the Cannibal Army to save a nuclear plant that might bring them back out of darkness? It is the hero that inspires them to look past basic safety that will keep them basically peasants for years to come and gets them to want to 'reclaim the lightning'.

Manufacturing new ammunition on the other hand... Sure, it's easy to make a round at home. Or 10. Some people do it as hobby. But manufacturing enought ammunitions to fight a war ? This is quite a task without any industry. Modern firearms amunitions is a lot more than "Sulfur+Coal=Black Powder" - there are complex chemical components to increase the efficiency while reducing the weapons wear. Huge and complex chemical installations are needed to produce those. Huge and Complex chemical installations are needed to make sulphur from gas. These chemical installations are just not there.

I don't know about that. As I've mentioned before, S. M. Stirling shows in his "Island in the Sea of Time" trilogy that with the know how left in books that probably not that uncommon, coupled with tools that you'd find in your average metal shop, you can do a lot. Plus, remember that blackpower in the use of hand-held firearms goes back to 1437. They didn't have massive factories and they didn't know about chemical short-cuts that we know now and they were able to field pretty large armies. Plus, from what I understand, the scale of Fury Road is that every unit is very small personnel wise so you don't have to be trying to outfit the Grande Armee.

Again, I feel that the issue with ammo is that there are a few roads a Civ can take early in the game. Do you commit to gathering up old tech early and try to blitz the other players? Do you commit to older techs that you hope to overwhelm your opponent. (I mean if you focus on agriculture with things like the McCormick reaper, you can feed LOTS of people who in turn can be given lots of low tech weapons - Sure you have a M-16; how many can you kill in the face of 50+ with crossbows) Or do you commit to making things new weapons that require gunpowder or steam or the like.

Personally, as a steam-punk mavin, if it were up to me, I'd go the steam route. You can adapt cars & trucks to steam without much more than 19th century know-how and a high-school auto shop so you're not dependent on oil. Compressed air for dart throwers and the like so you're not overly dependent on gunpowder initially. I mean you could convert something as simple as a M113 APC (which the US has around 50,000 in Guard armories across the nation) to steam with Road Warrior dart throwers and you'd be hard pressed to stop it without something like a RPG, which are a lot harder to find.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "After Alpha Centauri". Do you mean, what happens in a Civ game after the space race victory? In Fury Road, there was definitely a nuclear war due to all the ruins and fallout. I suppose one of the civs may have won a space victory also, but that would be kind of outside the scope.

I have imagined the leaders in Fury Road as exactly the same as the leaders in Lucifer's Hammer, or the Jeremiah TV show, or Jericho, or any of the other similar ones. They are the ones who are trying to lead us back to civilization. The mod might be playable as a single civ game, say with "raging barbs" turned on, where the goal is just to survive at all. But I think it is more interesting if you have multiple leaders who each start out rebuilding on their own. Then the game focuses on what happens when their new centers of civilization start to contact each other.

With the vision victory, maybe you can get them to agree that you will be the leader relatively peacefully. More likely, you need to burn down a few of their cities, with regrets of course, so that the others will agree that you can be the leader. I have tried to accomplish this a little by increasing the "weight" for AI's to capitulate, although I still usually have to stomp them pretty badly before they agree.

Regarding steam-powered units, I think there is an excellent opportunity to add something like a "junkyard tank", perhaps as a UU for a junkyard-focused leader. It may have the same combat strength as a humvee or even tank, but only a movement of one. I would like to do something with "reliability" so that this type of unit might break down more, and then a "mechanic" promotion which improves the reliability and allows reactivating totally broken down units.

I think that the mechanic unit (represented by a tow-truck?) is needed regardless of steam or not. I would think that even the oil vehicles are going to be jury-rigged. I was around Army mechanics for many a year so I know how much someone with good auto knowledge can fabricate. That being said, I also know had badly running around off road affects vehicles. A Warlord's Junkyard Dreadnought isn't going to do him much good if the vehicles tracks come off to the inside (which I have personally seen and it's a mechanics nightmare, especially at 2am in February in the snow). People tend to forget that while tanks can go anywhere, they tend to be trucked around on flat-beds since the longer you run the tank, the better chance your going to screw up it's treads. Those DO wear out andquicker than people realize.

However, there is certainly room for another whole mod in the steampunk theme. A couple of people have said, "You know what this mod needs? Zombies!" and I have pointed them to NecroCristi. For "You know what this mod needs? Flintlocks!" it may be worthwhile to consider another whole mod for that.

As I've pointed out, while Necro Christi is a good mod, the fact that you start out in an empty world isn't realistic. I still think a Zombie scenario for Fury Road is defiantly the way to go.

Erm, this whole post was written before the last 5-6 posts or so, so half of it probably no longer applies. Spoiler'd for convenience to readers.
Although, consider that modern gunpowder is radically different from the first black powder. Black powder is basically Sulfur, Charcoal, and Potassium Nitrate (Saltpeter), ground up and mixed together. Modern smokeless powder is nitrocellulose stabilized by various amine compounds, which would likely be beyond the abilities of your basic survivor groups. Black powder would quickly foul and jam any modern guns, especially repeating firearms.
However, ammunition for many guns would be available almost anywhere in the US, especially common calibers like 9mm Parabellum and .22 LR. Furthermore, .223 Remington can be used in 5.56 NATO-chambered guns, like for example the M-16. Oh and don't forget police armories and gun shops as a potential source of small arms ammo.
Antiair and anti-tank rockets would be difficult to obtain though, as mentioned. One thing that's always bugged me is that the tanks are basically WWII-era, while the Gunships are 30-40 years more advanced. Maybe we can find a Cold-War era Soviet tank or something?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "After Alpha Centauri". Do you mean, what happens in a Civ game after the space race victory? In Fury Road, there was definitely a nuclear war due to all the ruins and fallout. I suppose one of the civs may have won a space victory also, but that would be kind of outside the scope.

I take it you've never played "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" or the follow-up game "Alien Crossfire"? It wouldn't surprise me since they came out back in like 1994.

Briefly, the UNS Unity leaves earth, like someone just finsihed the Space Race Victory in Civ. However, factions on the ship cause problems and right before landing on Planet, the ship is sabotaged and the factions all land on Planet in life boats with very, very little in the way of tech. The original factons can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri#Factions
More factions were added later in "Alien Crossfire" but most of them really wouldn't work, I think, in Fury Road as well.

The point I was trying to make is that these factions come from people who were working to get their people off planet before The End(tm). They were organized, they had a mission and they each had their own vision of what they wanted. So when the fit hit the shan, they probably were a bit more ready for it. Plus, when working to get your people into space, you know not everyone is going to get to go so the people left behind aren't just going to say, "Well there goes the ship, I guess were Jolly well screwed here" No they probably had their back-up bunkers ready. These factions could be, in a scenario, a basis for groups that might be a bit more a head of the game. Sure they still have to deal with the 'barbarians' the mutants and the Warlords, but they at least have something they all lack: a unifying purpose which I think dove-tails very nicely with your Vision victory.