Space Armarda; Testing and Modmaking #1

[Smoking mirror]

Argghhh! Just cant get animated textures working in Open FX, I wanted it for some special effects such as deaths and shields (wont be needed till later ages at least).

Unfortunately it wont be able to do random maps, but i will prolly release a bunch of custom maps with the first release.

 

[Smoking mirror]

The last unit for the graphics test, a sea based unit, the solar sail scout. I may make a large sea transport too, as the solar sailer is mainly just suposed to be a unit like the curragh but with the ability to carry a very small scout unit (to be made later). For now this will do as a general early sea transport;

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Flower power baby!

Actually Smoking Mirror, I saw a next-generation Shuttle Design which is supposed to be launched within 10 years. Its able to take off like an airplane and go into space without a rocket.

Perhaps, this unit could be a first gen spaceship, basically a Canoe(which comes even before Curraghs) equalevlent.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Hehe, yeah its one of my stranger designs so far.

Yep, I've checked out lots of the next gen shuttle designs, such as "Spaceship one", which are designed to take three or four people in to space. the jet technology is not available yet to make the ultimate jet/shuttle hybrid, as it would need engines that turn from jets (air-breathers) to rockets (fuel burners), in mid flight. One idea has been to dump the air breather part and focus on making the rockets more economical.
The next gen jet/shuttle will prolly feature as a early unit such as the warrior, though its small size means it'll be used like a fighter plane (check the last few pages of the previous thread for fighterplane/private shuttle ideas).

I may actualy make the small solar sail unit a scout or guerilla unit in the final version, and make a bigger version with bigger, more complicated folding wings as an inter system ship, though I'm thinking of not having solarsail ships as intersystem ships because of the way people will use them is not realistic to how they work (and the fact that a solar sail ship is very slow, and would take the entire game to reach the nearest system. A slow moving no resource unit would fit the bill better, and would require no upkeep, as its sails could also be fitted with solar panels, which could power the ship. Early on your number of cities is going to be limited, so having a unit that doesnt require upkeep can allow you to build up a large military, without lagging in science and trade. (it'd have to be quite weak in combat though, to make up for the advantage).

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Yes...trust me, having lots of cheap powerful units availible is a recipe for disaster. In the early days of the NA mod, I forgot to give the Mayan Atl-Atl a shield cost( ) So, as a result, the AI built hundreds of Atl-Atls.....it wasn't pretty...

 

[Smoking mirror]

Getting nearer to a working mod, added planets yesterday, and did the most difficult bit. Now all planets are either rocky planets (Earth, mars), gas giants (several different types all with similar traits), or small moons (like the moon or mercury).

Rocky planets are just plain, but can be overlayed with a resource that exactly covvers the planet image. This way you can have lots of different types of rocky planets but only use up one terrain type (in this case marsh).

Gas giants can provide all sorts of good stuff such as hydrogen, rare gasses and a strong electro-magnetic field for generating power. They are using the jungle graphics so each new one placed uses a random graphic from the jungle file.

I'm having trouble with colours, so I'll have to do the gas giants over again (with only 256 colours available the blended bands of jupiter look prety patchy unless all the other planets have a similar colour scheme). I think I'll have to shade the gas giants to just a few main colours (red, orange and yellow with blue/green maybe) to cut down on the amount of unique colours each uses up. I may divide the giants in to two categories using landmark terrain but I'm not sure yet.


Sword_Of_Geddon mentioned fighters earlier so here are the next gen shuttles, based loosly on the "spaceship one" design;

 

[Smoking mirror]

hopefully, I'm gonna clear up the trails a bit before I render, not sure whats causing that, could be the glow effect i'm using.

Cant paste any screen shots of the planets yet as when I reinstalled photopaint I forgot to add my screen capture software.

 

[WildWeazel]

Unfortunately it wont be able to do random maps, but i will prolly release a bunch of custom maps with the first release.

If you need a mapmaker I'd be gald to help. Just give me a list of terrain types and reference pictures, if they're going to be "real" maps.

 

[Smoking mirror]

I'm putting the flics together now, I only need two more models (for artillery and missiles). Today I finished the shuttle, and sattelite and am half way through the worker.

Other units will be;
Heavy sattelite
Corvette (shuttle upgrade)
basic starting turret ship (one I started in Corel 3d)
Settler
Armed freighter
Solar sail
One man shuttles (fighters, with trail now fixed)
A deep space transport
and a cruiser.

All the models are finished and 90% of the animations are arranged. Gonna render them over the next week or so. Its quite quick work at this satge.

For Viking yeti and vbraun, could you post your finished flicks here for the units you started, please. I need all the help I can get (and the mod is going to exelent once its finished).

 

[vbraun]

I havent yet finished rendering all of it quite yet. Ill try and get it done soon.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Thats fine Vbraun, I'm trying to work out what era all the ships should be, I think your stealth gunboat should be about half way through the second era along with the cruiser. They'll both use early nanotech derived technologies such as cryoarythmatic engines for true stealth and minor shielding. There will probably also be another couple of second era ships with bizzare capabilites.

For those willing to help make tech icons and improvements, Some of the techs I'm thinking of are;

( %%% Denotes a tech which I have an icon for)

Starting row;
#1 Optical computer nets%%%
#2 Super conductors%%%
#3 Asteroid mining%%%
#4 Naval tactics

Dead end gov techs;
#5 Super capitalism%%% (leads to #7 credit networks%%% & #8 entertainment programs)
#6 Social engineering %%%(leads to #9 colonization #10 Religious proliferation)

Main development thread 1 (requres #1 & #2 techs);
#11 Quantum computers%%%(prototype quantum computers)
leads to;
#12 Micro engineering (or micro factory programming)

Allows dead end wonder techs;
#13 AI subminds (leads to #14 AI Governor)
#15 Bioengineering%%% %%%(leads to #16 biotech development (longevity treatment)%%%)

Main development thread 2 (requires tech #3 & #4);
#17 Materials development(or Zero Gravity engineering)
leads to;
#18 military development
leads to;
#19 heavy weapons

They should be on a green background.

EDIT; I'm going to add some notes, they'll be in green text, post a message if this conflicts with your browser colour, and I may change it.

 

[vbraun]

I think I could do the Asteriod mining tech as soon as i get to my Asteriod miner. But it would be of a later era Miner.

I think I will do #1 and #12 I have no promise of when they should be done bu im hoping by the end of this week.

 

[Smoking mirror]

The background wouldn't have to be totaly green, perhaps it could just be an overall green colour scheme. Just to remind the player of where the tech is in the development chain.

You may notice that this is not a very typical early era tech tree, there are lots of dead end, or optional techs, while the main tech progression is actualy quite short. This is so later many of the optional techs can be made in to flavour techs, to allow different races. There are two main progressions, peacefull, and military. both need to be learned but the order is up to the player. Having certain civ traits will make progression easier in certain areas, because you will have starting techs on different sides of the two main threads. Some civ traits will be species specific, so will allow staring techs that are flavour techs (don't know if this is possible yet).

The second era starts with the invention of nano technology, which will introduce many new threads. Nano tech will have a few different abilites too, such as the philosophy effect of giving the first civ to research it a free tech, as well as improving the efficiency of the capitalization improvement.

So a scientific civ can rush through the first age, getting nanotechnology as a free tech (it'll be the only first line tech) and another free tech from nanotechnology, or they can go slow, getting the full benefit of all the flavour techs, such as government improvements and extra wonders.

 

[vbraun]

Would this work for #1? I searched Google but coundn't find any thing.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Yeah, that'd be good for at least one of 'em. You wouldn't want to use it too much though. I'll post a few examples after the weekend.

Think I've got the nuke missile effect set up right, May use bits of the effect for other units too as I quite like it.

Just the giant rail gun to make now...

 

[Nwoll]

Everything looks great, i wish i could help but i have no skills at all.

 

[Smoking mirror]

All the animations are now lined up, and the models are all finished. Just need to get around to rendering them.

Heres a list;

Colony ship (Settler) 0/0/1
Scarab (Worker) 0/0/1
Freighter 0/0/1 (treasure)

Nuclear missile 0(6)/0/1 range 2 ROF 2 (zero upkeep)
Antimatter missile 0(7)/0/1 range 2 ROF 4
Kinetic launcher 0(5)/0/1 Range 1 ROF 1

Defence Satelite 1(3)/3/1
Heavy Satelite 1(4)/4/1 (minus 1 HP, produced by gov specific small wonder for militarisic government 1 every 10 turns)

Shuttle 3/1/2
Stealth corvette 4/2/2 (sneak attack)

Gunboat 2/2/1
Fighter shuttles 3/1/1 (+1 HP)
Solar sailor 3/2/1 (zero upkeep, all terrain as roads)
Cruiser 5/3/1

Havn't tested it yet thougfh so it may change once its playtested. The idea behind giving solar sailors and nuclear missiles zero maintenance is to allow a peacefull gov with little resources to still stand a chance, as long as they have time to prepare for a war (stockpile nukes and other low maintence weapons).

The militaristic government is going to be fairly weak (despotism, high corruption and no trade bonus) but will have some real bonuses, for instance a small wonder that spawns heavy deffence sattelites, to represent thier total commitment to military power, and also military govs will be the only ones capable of building barracks to start with so a peacefull civ fighting against a well established militant gov will face a real challenge. However, the peacfull govs (Commercial/autocratic, democratic/nationalist, socialist/collective) will have much better production, trade and lower corruption so should be able to build better ships to make up for the militants strengths. As time goes on extra Gov specific buildings should even the playing field between governments with the real difference being how much you have invested in each one.

 

[WildWeazel]

SM, I'll see if I can make a good science advisor background. Any suggestions?

 

[Smoking mirror]

SM, I'll see if I can make a good science advisor background. Any suggestions?

For a science advisor, or the background?
I'm not sure about that yet, depends on how the techs are set out for the background, and for advisors and leaderheads I'm prolly going to use modern era standard civ ones for the start. (less work and less download space for the test mod).

I think we need the techs first, before we can work on what they will sit on...

 

[WildWeazel]

I meant the background screen. Just something to replace the stone look. I was asking for ideas for background patterns, arrows, etc. I'll see if I can come up with something interesting.