Star Wars: Return of the Mod

I can't really help anymore though...I am at USAFA right now and I have noneof the needed programs. Academics are tough....
 
it's quiet........






too quiet...
 
The start of the school season. For me its my last year of college (after four years already) and I have a plate full this semester. I am rebuilding my star wars map so that it will take more of the 365*365 square size and not just be mainly on one half like my previous map is.
 
I just got Poser installed on my new comp at the academy so maybe i'll find some spare time and get another unit in...
 
Since i'm putting together the interface, it would help to know how the mod is actually going to fit together. It seems pointless creating a host of popheads, if we decide that in fact wookies alone, or those bloody yuuzhan vong will feature in the mod. As it is, i am going to forewarn you what i'm working on, so you can tell me if what i'm doing is wrong.

Civs/ Cultures:
Imperial, Rebel, Republic, Confederacy, and placeholder. Other civs may arise, e.g. chiss using imperial culture, but for now i'm only working on the 4 civs.

Leaders:
Empire = Vader, Rebels = Mothma, Republic = Palpatine, Confederacy = Dooku. This ensures that we dont get crosseyed

Tech Tree:
As i described a few posts ago - first era as normal civ tech tree, following 3 eras a free market of weapons, planetary development, and super techs [e.g. stealth, superweapons, super terrain enhancements, police, etc - basically 'other' stuff]

Units:
I reallllllllly dont care any more, ive posted so many unit lists, and so many have been rubish, therefore i leave the unit list for someone more... interested.

Hyperspace:
I like the idea that we have landmark terrain, but in practice, since hyperspace is so fast, i suggest just sticking roads as hyperspace routes - this would work particularly well as fleets could always block hyperspace routes and force fleets into battle to get through. Roads not railroads, cos otherwise there'd always be a way round.

Cities:
Since the galactic map we have is so damned awesome, cities are going to be as planets, however a new twist to things - no settlers. So if your enemy decided to raze your planet, it becomes a rather unruly pile of rubble. Like Honoghr. We'll still have workers, but they won't be able to reseed a planet or whatever, as all actions will now require specific resources.

City graphics:
I have modelled a small city using bespin and coruscant style buildings, and use this as the bog standard city for now. At a later point i will create a tatooine style settlement for towns, bespin style landscape for cities and my current city for metropolises, but for now we're stuck with one: also, openfx isnt very stable and i get rather annoyed with the frequencies of its crash.

Palaceview / City view:
unfortunately for me, i have found a way to enable these for the mod. Therefore once i have a building list i will slave away to create star wars style cities... complete with air taxis. The palace i will also create, tho again it may just be one universal palace.

9 Scenarios to complete:
N.B. starts at tech era 2
1 - Republic vs Confederacy - each starts with one planet, have to conquer the others. Conquest victory.
2 - Empire vs Rebels - again, each with one planet. Conquest victory.
3 - Melee - All four races, all with one planet start.
4 - Senate race - You [and up to three other civs] race to control senate by taking key planets. Senate is controlled by capturing Coruscant, and dominating the 12 sides of the senate - space race.
5 - You are Republic, as one, but confederacy start with 5 planets.
6 - You are Confederacy, as one, but Republic start with 5 planets.
7 - You are Rebels, as two, but empire start with 5 planets
8 - take one wild guess
9 - Battle of Endor - smaller map, 20 planets or so, empire have endor, and can build death star parts there. Rebels can take Endor, and upon winning this gain considerate support from local star systems and can completely wipe out the empire. Or the empire can just crush the alliance. You'll see when i release it i guess...

Credits:
If anyone ever watched the PTW credits, pictures of the staff would come up. If you want to send me a picture or a symbol, and whatever you want to call yourselves [i'm afraid director publisher of united collaborationary efforts of combining and pooling modificatory ideas is too long to fit, but something like 'unit designer' or 'idea rejector' will be fine. sheepfrom1988@hotmail.com if you want. {its going to be a fun job finding out everyone who added something to the mod...}

Well, i think those are all the main things i wanted to check/share... any useful feedback appreciated. And if nothing else, this post will make my scrolly arrows at the side of the browser go really small and make this thread look popular...
Hey Polyphemus, you going to work your way into cadet squadron 39? i think it'd suit you :P
btw, your intro doesn't work :( it says the galaxy far far away bit then crashes my computer rather drastically... do i need a bikky update or something?
 
Sheepy, the unit list is finalized, it's in the first post as an Excel document. We'll add some more aliens and stuff, but the UUs and stuff are good to go.

As for Hyperspace, how the hell could we get roads in ocean tiles? I don't think that could work...

The civs are correct. Only four.

Cities: I really like that idea. That way all cities will be on the coast, allowing all planets to have space access.

City graphics: I've been using the Matrix Cities. That's great if you're making new ones, but I really want them to be at a comparable scale (i.e. HUGE)

And how did you get the palace to work?!!!
 
As for Hyperspace, how the hell could we get roads in ocean tiles? I don't think that could work...

Actually, it could. Just add a commerce value to ocean tiles, and you can place roads on them in the editor, however, they cannot be built in-game by the AI (for obvious reasons).
 
As for Hyperspace, how the hell could we get roads in ocean tiles? I don't think that could work...
Set the tile to generate 1 commerce when roaded. Only issue is that when the roads are shot by bombardment, the AI is too stupid to rebuild them if they are given the units that are capable of doing so.

Cities: I really like that idea. That way all cities will be on the coast, allowing all planets to have space access.
I've got a coolish idea: Have the small cities be invisible, or maybe a few grey pixels as an actual city. Medium cities can be a few more grey pixels to large patches. Large cities are like Couroscant, massive spherical city. Make the size correlate so they can match up with the planet resource that it is sitting on for graphics. Walls will be like a planetary shield or something.

And the razed picture will be a horrifically cratered planet for the small cities, completly covered in lava for medium cities, and asteroid cluster for large cities. Naturally these cover up the original resource that's there.

Only problem is that if you improve the terrain in anyway after the city has been razed, then the destruction is cleaned, and the planet restored to the blank state.

This is assuming cities are 1 tiled things.
 
I'm not sure if my palace and city view technique are entirely legal... it involves creating a copy of all the files in the conquests directory [not the folders], the redist folder, and 'file.pcx' and animations from the art folder. Since all the rest of the art is being replaced, that doesn't need to be copied over - i'll create a batch file to do this when we release an installer. Oh, and the conquests file is patched so no cd is required. Adds about 85MB to total installation. Although i haven't tested it extensively yet, and i can't remember if the palace was enabled in vanilla conquests...

Ack! i forgot about bombarding the roads... maybe we'll stick with landmark terrain [unless we remove bombardments completely].

My small cities are one building, the larger cities are 5 buildings, and the big cities are big... but it needs a lot more work cos i had to rescale...

I don't feel cities should be one square, it removes land battles... maybe we can use bonus grasslands for land which is alone settleable, and make all else unable to be built on by settlers... then the ai won't put 2 cities on some planets... and i think it's coded to only create settlers when it sees space...

and can i just check that my tech tree idea from a few posts back is what we're going to use - i'm finishing the advisors and i would like to put arrows in - which means i'll probably design a tech tree to fit.

Also [will i never end?], does anyone have a good picture they think would look good as the background to the espionage screen? i have the sith interceptor approaching tatooine atm, but it doesn't look brilliant...

So we have a unit list.... somewhere (still looking, there seems to be a list of required units but nowt else that i can find)... do we have a building list yet? Or shall we wait for the tech tree before developing this?
 
Actually, it could. Just add a commerce value to ocean tiles, and you can place roads on them in the editor, however, they cannot be built in-game by the AI (for obvious reasons).


Thats a pretty good idea, becuase then there will be fixed hyperspave routes which can only be accesed by ships...
 
OK, to prove my incessant posts are actually representing my incessant work, i give you my interface - practically complete.
Star Wars Interface 0.99

Contains:
Spoiler :
- F1-F12 Advisors*
- Interface City Icons (e.g. barracks)
- City Screen
- Credits Background
- Diplomacy Interface
- New Erasplash (for my tech tree)
- Espionage Interface**
- General Interface Buttons and Menus
- Player Setup Window
- Scenario Management Interface
- 6 new Droid Advisors
- World Setup Interface***
- Title Screen


* - Spaceship, Palaceview and victory screen not included
** - Interface background image not finalised - if you find a better one, send it to me please, i'm not imaginative enough to find one
*** - I haven't changed the earth setup images because i plan to have the mod as a complete conversion, writing over the conquests directory... this is the only way to have a complete interface change.


Not yet Containing [next release perhaps]:
Spoiler :
- Techboxes [these little buggers look rather intimidating, i'll work on them soon]
- New animations, e.g. fireworks and SDI[don't get too hopeful about these]
- New city graphics [it's just going to be coruscant/bespin, i won't make too many little cities]
- City View [need a building list first]
- Civilopedia Interface [again, rather intimidating]
- Multiplayer interface [this will be the last thing i do, due to no real demand at this time]
- Palaceview [i can see the palace, but in testing i havent yet been good enough to be allowed to build anything... i don't know how much conquests disabled it]
- Rank View
- Replay interface [i havent yet finished a game, so i havent needed to see this... soon tho]
- Popheads [i'm developing ideas on this...]
- Spaceship [senate or death star? YOU decide]
- Tech Chooser [no techs...]
- Terrain [well, i have lukree's terrain... so this isn't going to be changed by me]
- Victory Screen [a lot more difficult to edit than it might look. Any good pictures people find for this, please post]
- Histograph [it's in an easily missable location, i keep forgetting to do it]
- Resources [again waiting for official list... {HINT HINT}


I found a way to make my posts look smaller... clever eh...

I haven't included Polyphemus' intro movie, because it just didn't work in civ 3 for me... it worked in radtools, but crashed civ 3...
 
Did you replace it as Conquests.bik?


My computer just doesn't want to open rar files...
 
I copied all the files from the main conquests folder, as well as the sounds folder, the redist folder, and the text folder. Also, animations from the conquests/art folder. Then i opened the conquests.bik file and imported the rules from ptw - tho we won't need to do this for the star wars mod.
n.b. the conquests.exe is cracked, so i dont need to use my cd. This configuration won't work tho without the registry inputs, or without the original directory, so i'm pretty sure it's legal.
 
I'm not talking about legality, just wondering if you placed the vid as Conquests.bik into the movies folder?
 
yeh - and it didnt work, it just showed me the first still and then gave me the "this program has performed an illegal operation" screen and then wouldnt close and had to require a full reboot. And i tried this three times... so i dunno. And i've tried this on three seperate computers...
 
And you said earlier that you were working with a cracked editor...that might be the problem, does the original movie work?
 
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