A walking Fortress and some stuff

[foxunit]

Hi there first things first, I have been a lurker on the site for quite some time. I do appreciate the effort and passion,the people are putting in CIV. Therefore Im glad to be here ^^


And now, some images I gotta be honest Im quite new to the whole 3d model thing and Im still practicing but, I came up with some Ideas for a mod and I think I do need the help of you people ^^"

Here are some pics of the walking city










[IDEA]


The mod takes place after the almost Apocalypse wich nearly wiped out men. With nations, laws, order gone, the world hollers for a new leader. The Player is part of a specific organisation, wich was able to maintain enough people to survive and now is the time to take earth back once more. Wich wont be an easy task, considering other organisations, remnants of the old nations, hazardess enviroments, logistical problems, shortage of ressources, radiation, internal struggle, epidemics are just a few enemies the player will encounter.


[CONCEPT]

As written above the goal is to achieve absolute control over the planet, wich is not a new thing, but I wanted to focus more on the problems wich follow in the apokalypse wake. Before you can even begin to conquer the world, you first have to organize yourself, setup supply lines and that allike.
Most mods like NecroCristi do thematize that aspect but to lax in my opinion.
I want to create an atmosphere (in the early game of course) of constant struggle.


[STORY]

Im working on it ^^"







So I hope I do get some opinions on this xP

 

[The Capo]

Well, I think it needs some skinning, and is it animated and everything or is this just a model?

It looks like a cool unit. I was going to upgrade my mod with Next War and beyond Next War, so this might make a good end-game unit for that purpose. Thus, I wish you luck.

 

[foxunit]

Im working one the animation atm and on the skinning, UV mapping drives me crazy xD.

I appreciate the encouragement ^^

 

[The Capo]

I'm thinkig you could have a unit like this carry ground and air units, if possible. That'd be bad ass. Hell, if there was a way to get it to carry naval units that be an awesome feature. You could transport ships accross landmasses and stuff like that. I think that would make it a great futuristic unit.

 

[foxunit]

Yupp that is true, a walking behemoth of steel carrying all sorts of units and packing a hell of an artillery. It would be a national unit with a uselimit of course but it would be bad ass. Have to look into that scripting thing and XML stuff, maybe there is a way to do some stuff



I originally intended this to be a replacement for the old type city model, what this means I wanted this beast to settle down, so it can be used as a city, but if necessary to unsettle itself and engage in combat, leaving all improvement in the surroundings behind of course. But it was also planned as a carriertype unit with long range capabilities.

 

[The Capo]

Yupp that is true, a walking behemoth of steel carrying all sorts of units and packing a hell of an artillery. It would be a national unit with a uselimit of course but it would be bad ass. Have to look into that scripting thing and XML stuff, maybe there is a way to do some stuff



I originally intended this to be a replacement for the old type city model, what this means I wanted this beast to settle down, so it can be used as a city, but if necessary to unsettle itself and engage in combat, leaving all improvement in the surroundings behind of course. But it was also planned as a carriertype unit with long range capabilities.

Its your baby, but I think if used as a unit that can carry (and thus protect other units) it would be best to give it an option to only defend and give it the heal while moving feature. Of course its defense would have to be high as well. I'm just brainstorming because I am going to add an extended future era to my mod and this seems like a natural addition.

 

[foxunit]

I do agree with you ^^ and I think it will have its use as a guardian/repair-unit- thingy or at least one of the smaller units.

Feel free to brainstorm, if you come up with new units let me know ^^

 

[Refar]

Looks promising. Two technical notes tho... a) I think the guns should be way smaller. Making details huge, will make the model appear small, and vice versa. So with these huge guns, it looks like a big, mean tank, but nowhere like a "City"... Just imagine - if this thing is to offer space for - say 100 people - what caliber - and more important what length would that tripple gun be ... If you remove the huge barrels and add some more of these small battleship-like turrets on some of these pylons, the whole thing will instantly appear a lot bigger. And b) is - you sould do the texture before animation. Sometimes you will want to slightly change the model while texturing - maybe add some subdivision somewhere... It can be a huge pain to update the animation afterwards...

 

[foxunit]

Thanks for the advice ^^ I will consider this the next step.


Hmm yeah I know what you mean, in reality this beast would be like 500 metres high and the guns would be very high calibred ones, especially the long range artilerly ones. Those bad boys should be able to fire across whole countries ( at least in fluff) the total number of personal aboard this mean beast is 25 000 men, not including ground units and support. I will add some other weapons though, Im not quite happy with the look of the "main guns" xD

 

[Refar]

Maybe missile silos/packs would be something to consider for long range attack instead of guns.

 

[foxunit]

Im considering this, thanks for the imput. Im also caught myself in redesigning the whole thing. Different weaponsystems, more details ( noticeable ^^) and of course the size. Also working on other "culture" styles, since every faction will have a unique behemoth. Different weapons and abilities tied to them.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

You should also consider aircraft hangars or helicopter landing pads.
I see no reason why the unit could not cary a small amount of air support.
Also think of adding missile turrets. You can find some good ones in the download section and if not you can cut out the one from the mobile sam unit.

Idealy, the unit should be capable of intercepting aircraft, nombarding cities, careing all sorts of troops and aircraft and posibly doing long range attacks (probably with a damage limit).

 

[mechaerik]

This would be an awesome near-future unit, starting with medic I/II/III, carrying missiles, aircraft, ground forces, as a Team Unit, only 1 possible.

Uber.

 

[foxunit]

Hangars and helicopter pads are part of the behemoth, aswell as ground units, AA capability, long range support fire and lots of plating ^^ gonna upload the new pics 2morrow

 

[The_J]

Waiting .
Could be very interessting.

 

[Psycadelic_Magi]

Your concept for a post-apocalyptic mod sounds very interesting foxunit

A few years back I tried to help along a guy who was doing a mod based on Phillip Reeves 'Hungry City Chronicles' (which are exellent btw) you might want to check out the books for ideas cause its on very similar lines (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Engines_Quartet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_Cities etc).
Unfortunately all that seemed to come out of the mod was some models for airships and a steam-punk-esque city on tank tracks. It came to a halt because it was too difficult to get cities to move.
However the good news is that I think Johnny_Smith and people on the WoC are working on modding the mongol camp from the scenario in warlords to be a unit with some of the functionality of a city. If that ever works out it should provide some useful code for you.
Good luck

Edit: If you ever find a use for it, heres the model for a traction city chamedrys came up with- http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=2835

 

[foxunit]

A little update for a new model of the fort and a close up for a fighter thing xD











Some newer ones

 

[foxunit]

I have to admit, that I having some problems getting the animation done for the behemoth, rigging the fighter isn´t that hard, footsoldiers(Im posting some pics soon) are also not the problem, but animating something on six legs, well that kinda confuses me, does anybody have a clip with something like that?
I would appreciate it ^^

 

[Refar]

You have only 18 - 30 frames for the walk animation, not really a lot for alaborate 6-leg sequence... I would suggest making two tripplets of legs - all a's and all b's moving together...

a b a
-----
b a b

 

[Psycadelic_Magi]

I have to admit, that I having some problems getting the animation done for the behemoth, rigging the fighter isn´t that hard, footsoldiers(Im posting some pics soon) are also not the problem, but animating something on six legs, well that kinda confuses me, does anybody have a clip with something like that?
I would appreciate it ^^

I dunno, I think your best bet would be to look at how insects walk?