Interested in a WH40K mod when Civ 5 is out?

[Skajaquada]

I would love to give this a try when the game is out. Those hexes really reminds me of the old sequel to the even older Chaos Gate. Also words like Civilization Network and "unprecedented modding tools" makes me interested to give it a try. I've done some work in computer graphics but even more so in normal programming, so I would really like to focus mostly on that, if more are interested in this.

How did the other WH40K-mods for Civ-games go? I followed some threads for a Civ 3-mod and some talk for Civ 4 for some time but they all stopped I think. They all seemed very ambitious though with lots of races and I wouldn't mind if we set our sights a little lower. I had this little idea that a game could start like a normal Civ-game: Maiden World discovered, Imperial settlers arrive, Warp Storm closes. All "civilizations" are the normal mirrors of each-other, the tech-tree advances Space Marine-, Imperial Guard- and maybe Titan-units. Then the Orks, and Eldar if there's time, are the barbarians or new city states.

This is just so the work could be down-sized (we could even focus entierly on SM, but I figured the IG would be like the normal military for a "civilization" and SM the elite units, just so it feels a little better with the "story"), because it really makes me sad when WH40K-mods are put on hold. I would much rather see something like this completed, then the next version could be about separating tech-trees to include the Orks, Eldar and Tau as civilizations to play. After all that is done maybe do a scenario with Necron and Tyranids, as those really wouldn't fit as "civilizations".

Btw, for the time-line I was thinking something like Dark Age Of Technology to the Horus Heresy, then the Space Marine-units could be different versions of the power armour (along with different weapons and bling), also this would make late-game veterans much cooler than say a spear-man in the year 2000. Also that time-line would make more sense, since the Imperium is still researching technology, than the year 40K and on

Anyway, I realize the game isn't out for 6 months (I really just want to see if there's any interest, otherwise I think I'll spend the next 6 months in 3DS Max getting good at making Space Marines ). This could among other things be a fun opportunity to test out the new engine with effects like plasma cannons and magic, if we make Chaos techs the Daemons always have nice shiny textures too. I also read some speculations that the combat-system could be like CivRev, where you attach units to squads. Then it'll just make a WH40K-mod even cooler if you build things like sergeants, apothecaries and normal marines to put together your tactical squads

 

[CornPlanter]

I'm a big fan of WH40k (collecting Imperial Guard in real life), but lets face it: nobody ever managed to finish 40k mod for civ4 yet. And civ4 has been released for how many years..?

If you are good with 3D Max, sure, why dont you help people with civ4 40k mod So far there are only a handful of units released. I bet they need any help they can get.

 

[Skajaquada]

I think Civ 4 have been out for too long to find any interest in making mods, actually in myself and I think others. I'm hoping because Civ 5 will be so new there will be interest, with the modding-tools and the relatively small size of the mod I'm hoping it'll be easy. Anyway, it'll be fun to see what those "unprecedented" modding tools are. I'm thinking what they can be? What's unprecedented? Those hexes seem to contain a lot of troops, I can only dream it's some help with their animations if you plug-in your own guys

 

[The_J]

I think Civ 4 have been out for too long to find any interest in making mods, actually in myself and I think others.

There are still people starting new mods for Civ4 around here .


The problem with a WH40K mod is, that it a) needs the full time for a total conversion mod and b) needs specialized graphics for nearly everything, and these graphics can hardly be used in another way.
Because of this, i guess, also Civ5 will not have a WH40K mod.

 

[Skajaquada]

It's really too bad, the units could be used in any number of scenarios and more complex mods like if someone wants to make a re-make of Chaos Gate or something. I'll see what I can do, maybe I can make something extremely small on my own and it'll spark some kind of interest starting a new golden age in the history of Civ-mods

 

[Ahriman]

General ideas for a 40k mod here if anyone is interested:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322393
Especially around post 34 onwards.

I really like the idea of a mod which is mostly a wargame on a world with pre-existing terrain features and resource improvements and such, simulating a planet invasion rather than colonization.

 

[Skajaquada]

It's a good read for mechanics but I think they're quickly getting into a problem of being over-ambitious with too many races. It's not that important for me if we make it a scenario or normal Civ-game though. As I said I'm mostly interested in getting a WH40K-mod done and out there. I actually think if we can just get something done, with units other people can use, it might pave a way for more WH40K-mods.

 

[CornPlanter]

Setting the primary goal to "getting it done, dammit" might truly increase chances of actually getting it done

Still it doesn't remove the main obstacle (in my opinion): a need for lots and lots of graphics. You might need not as many different stuff if you have a realistic goal, like, only few different races with, i.e., The Empire covering Space Marines, IG, etc. And you can probably reuse some buildings from other mods, and yet - quite a lot of graphics to do.

Really, I'd love to see 40k mod, I could talk about it all day long, as could many other players. But when it comes to actually doing something...

@Ahriman: considering your doubts in a thread you linked, I'd say the most realistic way is not to care much about 40k tabletop mechanics. Use civ mechanics for tanks, infantry, terrain and movement and whatnot. I know it will be "40k" just in a sense of "CivIV V with 40k flavor" but oh well... it's civIV V mod after all, not 40k game with civIV V engine.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

There are still people starting new mods for Civ4 around here .

There are still people making Civ3 mods around here!

 

[Ahriman]

but I think they're quickly getting into a problem of being over-ambitious with too many races

How many races do you really need?

SM, IG, Chaos, Ork, Eldar, Tyranid, Necron, Tau. Not that hard.

The Warhammer Fantasy mod we are working on has 28 factions.

I think its better to create an overall design that can work in general.

But you could certainly start with a scenario for ~3-4 races. SM, ork, chaos with a handful of IG barbarians.

Still it doesn't remove the main obstacle (in my opinion): a need for lots and lots of graphics

Eh, there are a ton of artists out there. You could also adapt a fair amount of the Warhammer fantasy art, or pull it from the Dawn of War games.
Coders are probably the main barrier, not artists.
And there are a number of design challenges, like getting a coherent tech structure that makes sense accross such wildly different races.

I'd say the most realistic way is not to care much about 40k tabletop mechanics

I agree completely. The biggest mistake that Warhammer fans make when trying to create PC versions is to try sticking too much to tabletop rules, stats and mechanics. Hence, the only decent Warhammer PC games ever are the Dawn of War games, which keep the flavor of the world while droppnig the specifics of the mechanics.

I do not have any significant time to devote to such a mod. I could create a skeleton design and provide general design thoughts, but otherwise my modding time is taken up by Warhammer Fantasy and Dune Wars.

 

[CornPlanter]

There are still people making Civ3 mods around here!

...and I can understand that. Personally I appreciate civ3 mods much more. It's an art. Having limited possibilities to come up with so many innovative re-uses. Creatively changing the name of mechanics to have them representing something entirely different. Using mechanics in a creative ways to achieve your goal because it was not possible to just edit xml or c++ and add what you need. I believe, in general, civ3 mods were way better than civ4 mods. All those additional possibilities did little good to modding. Please don't make a flame over this, it's just my personal opinion.

 

[CornPlanter]

Eh, there are a ton of artists out there. You could also adapt a fair amount of the Warhammer fantasy art, or pull it from the Dawn of War games.

I'm no expert on graphics. But a few years ago I was talking to Rabbit, White (the guy who made Landspeeder and several other 40k models) about a possibility to import models from Dawn of War. He said DoW graphics are too advanced for Civ and require way too much work to downgrade them of sorts, it's better to create from scratch. Well if you know a way to do it, that'd be wonderful

 

[Ahriman]

Well if you know a way to do it, that'd be wonderful

Not me! I have no artistic or graphical skills whatsoever. Well, I guess I could draw some stick figures in Paint, but thats about it.

The landspeeder is pretty nice, but its a shame that its too complex.

 

[Ahriman]

Also:
What did people think about the general Broken Star meets Fury Road idea, trying to simulate an invasion of a human planet that has rebelled?

Have a pre-existing world with pre-existing improvements, map features, cities and roads, with nearly all cities controlled by weak barbarian human IG, and then human and AI player factions starting with a single city and reconquering the barbs and then fighting each other.

So, no new cities built (or just super-expensive settlers), and minimal improvement construction; expansion through warfare and conquest rather than colonization.

Large palace bonuses for the no-barbarian players, representing things coming from offworld. This would be a nice anti-slippery slope factor, meaning that even factions with relatively little territory could still keep up in tech and field a nasty army. (One of the weaknesses of Civ, its too much slippery slope, once you are even a little ahead of your rivals its easy to snowball that into victory.)

It might be neat to do this for Civ5 rather than 4, I'd definitely be up for doing designwork.

It wouldnt' be *too* hard to design a warfare oriented tech tree that could work for SMarines, IG, Eldar, Chaos, Ork, Tau. Vehicle tech line, aircraft line, infantry line, weaponry line, industry line, energy/economy line, religion/psykic line, logistics line, happiness/repression/food line.
A few techs an each, a relatively small ~60 tech tree. A couple of unique techs for each faction.

Much harder to get something that could also work for necrons/Tyranids.

 

[Skajaquada]

How many races do you really need?

SM, IG, Chaos, Ork, Eldar, Tyranid, Necron, Tau. Not that hard.

The Warhammer Fantasy mod we are working on has 28 factions.

I think its better to create an overall design that can work in general.

But you could certainly start with a scenario for ~3-4 races. SM, ork, chaos with a handful of IG barbarians.

At the same time there seem to be two WH40K units for Civ 4: A Space Marine Landspeeder and an Imperial Guard Hellhound. In the Warhammer Fantasy mod are you re-using a lot of other fantasy units? There just doesn't seem to be any interest from anyone in making WH40K units, probably because as the_J said that they can't really be re-used. Do you know how long time it takes to make a unit, humanoid-looking with animations from scratch? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm really asking, because that's probably what we'll have to do with every unit. I'm at-least pretty sure after you've made a unit, like a Space Marine, that making variations with weapons and bling goes faster, so the biggest steps would be different races.

An alternative is of-course using the vast amount of WH40K-units you an find on the Internet, with permission, and changing their polygon-count and so on. I could probably do that myself, which is a tip btw if anyone is interested in a WH40K mod for Civ 5 to get into 3DS Max or Blender, and help me with this. Creating this thread I was hoping some really good modellers like whoever did the WH40K-mods for other games would help, and let me do most of the programming. However it just takes some tutorials and a couple of weeks to get good enough in 3DS Max to do this last thing. Then we got 6 months to get good

Anyway, as I said, I don't really care what kind of game we make the mod into. The main goal is to actually get it done and inspire other people to make WH40K-mods hopefully

 

[Ahriman]

At the same time there seem to be two WH40K units for Civ 4: A Space Marine Landspeeder and an Imperial Guard Hellhound

If someone really was doing a Civ4 version, I could see a fair amount of adaptation.

There are lots of soldier units that could be adapted into IG units.
There are lots of vehicles that could be adapted into tanks, artillery, etc.

You really only need two power armored infantry models, to tweak into various marine/chaos marine/terminator versions with different weapons, and more banners for more advanced versions.

There are some fantasy orc models that could be tweaked into orks without too much work; take guys with axes and add a shoota to their other hand.

Eldar would take a lot of work, as would Tau.

the Warhammer Fantasy mod are you re-using a lot of other fantasy units?

Yes, lots. And various historic units too, of various cultures.
And again, we still have a ton of new art that we will need. We have a design, and we're getting units implemented and squashing bugs, but the artwork is only *some* done.
If you're interested in Warhammer, we'd love to have some good artists, there are *lots* of non-standard units that will take a lot of work. Take a look for example here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8908051&postcount=79

Do you know how long time it takes to make a unit

Nope, no idea. I imagine that doing it from scratch takes ages, but I don't have the foggiest idea about the details. I'm not very technically oriented, but I'm a pretty decent designer.

Then we got 6 months to get good

A bit confused now; are you meaning for a civ4 version or a civ5 version? Can you really create models for a game that doesn't exist? Again, I don't mean that rhetorically.

But art isn't the only hurdle, there are also a lot of coding requirements to do a conversion as well.

If you and others get to a point where you could create significant amounts of art, and had some programmers able to quickly figure out how to get a Civ5 mod working, then I'll design a mod for you, based around whatever new mechanics we end up with.

But I imagine figuring out the modding possibilities of a new game will be quite challenging.

 

[Skajaquada]

I simply meant that since the game isn't out for 6 months, if someone really want to see a WH40K-mod, they could start working with 3DS Max now and be pros by the time Civ 5 is out. In fact I might really do that, I've been looking for an excuse to work with 3DS Max and producing nice Space Marines for Civ 5 is the perfect motivation. If I get around to it to begin I'll aim for the Civ 4 poly-count and drop them in CivFanatics' unit-forum.