The Song of the Moon

[keldath]

hi,

heres a photo of the latest work on the units ive done,
i chose the best sci fi units i found, and also i re did some skins and models.
check out those new roller units ive made:

 

[lemonjelly]

you like woc huh... see my answer above, once revdcm 2.8 will be out...ill update in it.
as i wrote above if we want the mod not to have bugs, its need to be done in steps, i had to much bad exp with this, updating a mod, and creating one from scratch in a low amount of time can be a nightmare.

as for civ 5....oh man do i got plans or what:
1. my overlord 2 mod for civ4 will be overlord 3 civ5
2. dune wars for civ 5 i hope.
3. will do song of the moon, since i love it too, ive look into making it for bts many times but was always too busy with my other projects.

Yeah, I like it for the Modular XML Loading stuff
don't worry, I know about the modding pressure, I'm a modder as well

here are the unit set for song of the modd that i came up with:

1. astro infantry + armored infantry - city defense units (infantry models) - all era's
2. rollers - field support - early era - till late - not sure if to the end.
3. shock - siege/ranged units. - all era's

city attacking units:
4. tracked - all terrain city attackers (larger roller models) - mod game era till future i think.
5. battle drone - all terrain city attackers (mech models) - ancient to modern era.

6. floaters - hover units that support the battle field - all terrain - modern to future era.
7. spaceships - limited national units - heavy support units - modern to future era.


if you have any thoughts...now is the time.

I like that, but remember the theme that made this mod so great, the grunginess of it, they're still dependent on the Earth, and stuff isn't perfect


Oh, the models, they're really cool, but can you grunge up the textures a little?
A bit of rust here and there or something?

 

[keldath]

hi,

Oh, the models, they're really cool, but can you grunge up the textures a little?
A bit of rust here and there or something?

i didnt understand what you meant here - grunge up?

these are not the final look of those units, im gonna reskin most of them to be grey-ish, sized up right, shadows to be at the current size.
got 22 models so far.

i formed up 5 tiers of units , that each tier will include 1 of each type of combat.

so far ive made:
5 shock troopers *siege)
5 battle drones (all terrain)
5 astro infantry ( city defense)
5 rollers (untill tire 3 - they wont be able to cross the "sea", agter - they will be another city attacker with different attributes then b-drones)

in addition to this gonna add:
5 spaceship units - powerfull units (maybe 10 per civ?)
5 floater units (models of some nicely shaped space ships from dune wars) - gonna be support in battle field - theyle have some bonus against the rest of the units but bad at city attacks.

and that will sum up 30 unit classes for the first version. after i do that ill add a unique unit to each civ.
also for another class - ill add maybe anti vehicle unit, and another class of ranged unit attack.

As for earth dependency, well, for now theres most of the mods resources - 23 - imported from earth.
any more stuff you think of?

 

[Tssha]

Woohoo! Song of the Moon is coming back!

It's just as beautiful as I remember it...better, even. The new units look nice. The improvements too, and they look like they truly fit in with the terrain.

I'm looking forward to getting to play this again. All land gameplay is something I haven't seen in awhile, it'll be good to try it out again.

Bigger, better, more stable (I hope ).

 

[keldath]

hi Tssha,

stable is my middle name, dont worry about that part.

the units...well im doing what i can, im no art maker, but i can merge stuff together.

improvement - yeah it took me many hours to find some suitable, i colored and added stuff like the pipes there

right now im putting over 7 hours every day into it - thats cause im unemployed ., even so , theres much much to do.

cheers


oh - i wanted to ask - barbarians - i thought of making them like an alien nations that keeps attacking you...what do you think?

second - got any theme music you can think of?

 

[lemonjelly]

Yeah, that'll make them look better, they're too colourful at the moment, but, if your reskinning them, then its okay

Oh, no aliens at the beginning. The original plan was for Meteor damage and stuff instead of barbs, not sure how that'd work though...

 

[keldath]

oh yeah sure - my plan is to make all the units in the grey scale.

no aliens...well i gotta have something for barbarians....so ill call them rouges or something.

meteors - well i guess through events possibly.

 

[lemonjelly]

oh yeah sure - my plan is to make all the units in the grey scale.

no aliens...well i gotta have something for barbarians....so ill call them rouges or something.

meteors - well i guess through events possibly.

you could do some sort of radiation damage on a py onGameTurn check?

yeah, that'll have to be the case, and, they should be greys and blues IMHO, but not many flashing lights and stuff

 

[keldath]

i dont know python....

i can do a feature that comes and go - like radiation thats cause damage to area - it may apear on city tiles and take out food unless its chopped of.

no flashi stuff, maybe some units from after world.


****
im making progress with new units! im exited.

ive made one more new roller, and the settler is the colony ship from final frontier - with tracks

 

[lemonjelly]

i dont know python....

i can do a feature that comes and go - like radiation thats cause damage to area - it may apear on city tiles and take out food unless its chopped of.

no flashi stuff, maybe some units from after world.


****
im making progress with new units! im exited.

ive made one more new roller, and the settler is the colony ship from final frontier - with tracks

I do though
After you release some sort of version, I'll add any python code in that I think would be useful

The feature would be a good way of doing radiation, use the Fallout graphics, but recolour it?

Ah, cool

 

[keldath]

oh great,

id love for some help later on.

yeah, ill re color it to something nice

 

[lemonjelly]

oh great,

id love for some help later on.

yeah, ill re color it to something nice

I don't know a lot of the complex things, but I think I know enough for this

It should be quite simple really, but some stuff may have to be exposed to python in the DLL, I'm not sure I can do that

In fact, I have a rather good idea for the radiation idea, but it'd need a way to have a Radiation counter on tiles, and a Radiation Defense counter on units. That would be a DLL change, and, well, I have no idea how to do that
Anyway, the Radiation 'clouds' would move around the map, and any tile they're on, would be set to a RC of 10, then when they move off, it would slowly decrease to 0 I guess
Or it could go down to 2 or something?
All that can be done in Python!

Then, units would have a RD, if their RD is equal to or higher than the RC of the tile, they wouldn't get any damage, if it was lower, they would, using some sort of formula, like

Damage = RC-RD*10

So, a rather fragile vs a tough unit, on a tile with a RC of 10:

Tough- 
Damage = 10-7
Damage = 3*10
Damage = 30

Fragile-
Damage = 10-3
Damage = 7*10
Damage = 70

But, systems like that may be better in Civ5, because its coming out soon, depends on how long it'd take you to release the Alpha version, and add them two integers to terrain and units.
It may make sense to add it to features and improvements, not sure.

Anyway, all the damage and the moving Radiation Clouds can be done in python

Oh, and if you do make SotM for Civ5, I'd love to help you out
I'd need to learn Lua anyway, for another mod I'm planning, but, I love SotM too much to pass up the opportunity
Oh, and if we do, can I suggest a name change to Lunar Melody?

 

[keldath]

Lunar Melody

nice!

we might do that, could be nice.

lua - ive been working with a bit bit of lua in company of heroes, not sure its better then xml.

oh well, we'll see.

all the time im working on this som2, i keep telling my self - why do i push my self, in 3 weeks its gonna be obsolete .... bummer huh?


you got some nice ideas there, ill try to finish the work as soon as i can!

 

[lemonjelly]

nice!

we might do that, could be nice.

lua - ive been working with a bit bit of lua in company of heroes, not sure its better then xml.

oh well, we'll see.

all the time im working on this som2, i keep telling my self - why do i push my self, in 3 weeks its gonna be obsolete .... bummer huh?


you got some nice ideas there, ill try to finish the work as soon as i can!

SotM was the only Sci-Fi mod that I could get into, because it isn't too in the future, if you get what I mean? It'd be nice to have it for Civ5, and the name Lunar Melody is close to SotM, while being different enough, I like it

Oh, Lua's replacing Python in Civ5

Yeah, it's a shame, but it's all practice at coding efficiently and quickly for Civ5

Thanks
I don't know how complex the plot stuff will be in the DLL, but that's the hardest part, I can do the rest easily
I can even make more radiation clouds appear at different eras, from different improvements, everything really, once the DLL code is in and exposed to python!

 

[keldath]

hi me again,

yeah i forgot the lua is instead of python, i think thats actually better.

lunar melody sounds perfect.


the dll... well i can only do a bit of merging

****
ok this week end has been productive, i finished 5 sets of unit classes,
heres a screeni of it:

i think ill add later on more units class :
1. ranged - units with ranged attack - not siege .
2. anti vehicle units

as for spaceships:
Aerial units - im thinking of making the spaceship units as air, but for now they will remain power land units (8 per civ).


unique units - 1 per civ for now after this next phase :

the next phase is to set all unit powers, attributes and bonus requirements, and simultaneously - setting the appearance of every bonus on the map.

i welcome any thoughts and opinions.

 

[Lord Tirian]

ok this week end has been productive, i finished 5 sets of unit classes,
heres a screeni of it:

Hey, just a suggestion: I find the name "roller" a bit odd. It's sounding a bit "wrong" - which is perfect for Dune (as it's sort of a strange gonzo sci-fi fantasy mix), but Song of the Moon is a bit closer to "realism" - so what do you think about renaming them "crawlers"?

Lunar roller or lunar crawler... I find the latter just a bit more fitting.

Cheers, LT.

 

[keldath]

yes i agree a 100%,

its just that my mind is dune-ish, since i built that mod first versions also from scratch, nothing new came to my mind that fits.

i thought of using what the original song used - tracked, but crawlers are better.

also, most of the unit names...im using animal ones - wolf, mantis, hound, black widdow, and some more.

you guys would probably bring better stuff as i release this.


***
ive been experimenting with unit creation more, its great fun i creating mostly crawlers for now, i can only adjust existing models and add stuff to them.

heres something that i made up as i went on it....its kinda like a snow cat or something...what do you think? ignore the skin for now.

you guys probably think its ugly...

tomorrow im starting the unit attributes.

 

[Dumanios]

Will DL this mod when I get home.

 

[keldath]

Dumanios hi...

its not ready, theres only a bea for civ4 vanilla 1.61.

the mod for 3.19 bts..well that one will be available - i really hope , by the end of next week.

 

[Lord Tirian]

ignore the skin for now.

I've seen the tracks there used quite a lot of times... they were on one of Planetfall's older models - I've used them once or twice, but wasn't happy with the texture. Try out the attached skin for the tracks, you might like it better (post if you've downloaded it, I need the attachment space).

Cheers, LT.