Sunday, September 26, 2010

New, simpler UC Design.

So I wanted to give you guys a quick rundown on what we are exactly doing to UC for the next release this Friday. The plan is to make the UC simpler and easier to use. How are we going to do this? I'll tell you, and it's what I hope to be a good idea.  

First we're removing the flag/force upgrade from the game. Instead, there will be 3 buildings that will become avalbile to you to build. The 3 buildings are an AW DOME Relay Node (which lets you pick AW and will have DOME controls in it), a SEED-Mass Driver (which will not only allow you to build Archangel Class ships but will also allow you to build other structures as well), and finally the UC-Earth Federation High Command (which will allow you to move forward with the timelines inside UC).

The AW and SEED buildings will be in place by friday but they won't do what they are supposed to yet, they simply will be used to allow you to still use those other 2 sides of the armies. Be aware that those armies are now considered broke as they need a serious update to make them fit better and this hasn't been done yet. UC however will be fairly straight forward. You place the High command and it will have 4 upgrades in it. Each upgrade will require you to build the previous one to move forward in the UC timeline. You will also have in the spellbook 5 spells that are UC spicific. These will be Spell 1 - White Base drop, Spell 2 - Grey Phantom drop, Spell 3 - Albion drop, Spell 4 - Psyco Gundam drop, Spell 5 - Argama Drop.

How these will work is like this. While in the teir 1 timeline the Teir 1 spell power, White base drop, will be avalible for use. Every X minutes (right now we're testing 2, but there is no garuntee) you can summon in the Whitebase anywhere on the map. This will work a lot like how the Arch Angel is being done in SEED, it will fly in and land on the ground. However, here is where it's different. The White Base will land on the ground, and drop off the Prototype Guncannon, Guntank, and RX78 units for free! Then after 15 or 20 seconds the ship will take back off and be able to be used like normal. So for the first few moments the White Base will have to be defended by it's units, after that it can defend itself. If one of the units the White Base drops off are destroyed then the White Base will respawn the unit after a minute or 2. If the White Base itself is destroyed then it can be resummoned from the spell power when the power is again avalible. If the White Base is resummoned it will only drop off the units that don't exsist any more, so for example if the RX78 and Whitebase died but the Guntank and Guncannon survived then when the whitebase relands it will only drop off the RX78. Also, it will only be able to remake units and resummoned while you are in the Teir 1 timeline. If you move to Teir 2 the units will still stick around, but if they die then that's it, there gone and can not be gotten back.

Buildable units this time around will also not have such stricked requirements to be buildable. Instead of needing the guntank to exsist to build mass production guntanks, just by being in the proper timeline will give you the ability to build the units that were in use during that time period. This will allow a player to build the units that they want and not be stuck going "Damn, I wish I could build some guntank 2's, but I have to wait until I finish all this research first, and once I'm done with that research I can just go to the next timeline so what's the point?"

Now the hard part. What do you need to advance through the timelines? Just build the upgrade, it's that simple. We're playing with 5 minutes per time period for the upgrade to get done to advance through the timelines, but we're not sure what we're going to do yet. There will be a very minimal cost to advance through the time, but the point will be that the HQ building will be very important for you to protect and for your enemy to destroy. Without it you can't advance, and that will make it a very important target for your enemies.

So now for the drops.

Spell 1 Drop - RX78-2, Guncannon Proto, Guntank Proto
Spell 2 Drop - RX77-6 Mudrock, Gundam Alex, 2 GM Snipers
Spell 3 Drop - GP01, GP02
Spell 4 Drop - Psyco Gundam
Spell 5 Drop - Nu Gundam, RGZ-91, 2 Jegans


Now for the other issue. Yes, I know that the Argama wasn't used by the Nu Gundam in 93, it was the Nahel Argama that Londo Bell used. Also, I know Mudrock wasn't transported on the Grey Phantom. However these are the models I have or would like to still use in these situations, so that's what we're going with for now. If someone has a Nahel Argama model that they'd like for us to use please let us know and we would be glad to use it.

As always, let me know your thoughts.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Some teaser pics



Just wanted to show off some of the new buildings that I've thrown together today for the mod.  We have a Solar Panel based power plant, a Tiberium Refinery Rig, and the Vehicle Drop Depot.  I'm not 100% happy with the Vehicle Depot but I do like the Solar Plant and the Tiberium Refinery buildings.


EDIT - POST UPDATE - EDIT - POST UPDATE - EDIT - POST UPDATE 

I added a pic of the other power option for EF, the Nuclear Power Plant.  I shouldn't have to explain why this is so dangerous now should I?  Yes, it gives off a ton of power, you shouldn't need more than 2 of these things to run a base, but when they go critical, they GO.  Fair warning, that's all I say. :)








Wednesday, September 22, 2010

An update of sorts

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let everone know where we are at.

Well, I just finished watching Gundam SEED, and I also finished Gundam X.  Yes, I know, how can you work on a mod without watching the shows first?  So sue me lol.

Having watched the shows now though, I can see some issues with what we were planning on doing with Gundam SEED.  So this is simply to let everyone know that the last version of the SEED layout that I posted will not be the one we are going to be using.  I have also taken into account everything everyone has been asking about, and there will be a lot of changes in the comming months to the mod.

What are these changes? Some of them like the changes to GDI, NOD, and Scrin you already know about.  Some of them you will finally see next weekend when we hope to have alpha 9 out (Oct 1st if everything go's well).  Others, like the changes to SEED and AW will have to wait until the 10th alpha.  But good news, we hope to have the final layout of UC done for next weeks release.  The buildings will not be correct persay, I have been making some throw-together models to use temporarily just to get the coding aspect done, but they will accomplish 2 important tasks. 

1. Their look should give you an idea as to their purpose.  

2. They will function properly in their designed way.

This means that, for example, the UC Vehicle Depo will actually look like a landing pad and ALL of it's units will be flown in on a Madea and dropped off from off the map.  So a player that plays his base close to the edge will get his troops quicker than a player that has his base near the center.  Also, this means that a player could, if not careful, have his Madea's shot down before the troops are dropped off, so you will have to at least think about giving the Madea's flight path some thought when deploying the building (a hint, the Madea will come from behind the building and then land in front of it).

Also, the new UC design we hope to have in place by then will also be more streamlined, with a clearer understanding to what you need to do to gain more mobile suits and advance.  This is being done because our current system, while interesting, is too cluddersome and makes playing UC way to slow, especially compaired to UC's enemies.  

What else..... EF as a whole has a new resource gathering system.  The Resource Pylons will still be there, but with a different building, as a secondary source of income if the player feels they need it or they simply want more, but the main source of income will come from the Vehicle Depot.  There is now a unit you can build that is simply a resource drop.  This unit costs no cash to make (wouldn't make much since if it did) but takes some time to drop in.  This means that the player can build quite a few of these things for cash, and then switch on the fly to unit deployment when it needs to.  We still havn't worked out the exact time to cash ratio yet (right now it's sitting at 30 sec for 2000) but this should again make EF different on the field.  Also at the moment only the basic Vehicle Depot can gather resources.  If a player upgrades the Depot to a timeline spicific Depot then it loses the ability to be used for cash.  Again, I don't know if this will stay in the A9 release, but it seems to work well now and gives the player something to think about.  

And finally we come to the new design for UC.  What we're going to try to do is make the Pegasus Class ships along with the Argama do more of what they are supposed to do, which is be used to deploy and carry mobile suits instead of build them.  How are we going to do that?  It's a secret!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Open forum time.

The other day I placed out our current plans for the SEED design.  Since then we have been getting a lot of feedback (mostly in a negative way) about what we planned on doing.

So me and Doug talked about it and this is what we have decided.  Were going to put SEED off for just a bit while we here from you guys on what you want.

And so this is my challenge to you.  Tell me how you want your Earth Alliance SEED army design to look like.  What units, what build orders, what abilities/special powers.  I'm not saying that we're going to use them, but we will look at each and every one and if there is something there that we think is a good idea then we may just use it!  

And besides, it's not like we're REALLY putting the Gundam SEED off for very long.  I'm currently working on redesigning the basic EF force right now (building orders and such).  Here's a pic of a building I put together for the EF replacing the original War Factory.  Our idea is to have the Madea fly in and drop the unit off on the landing pad instead of it just comming out of a giant hanger.  It's not very detailed right now, I need to go back and do some more work on it, but it works for now for me to test the drop-off code.  

Also, if you guys have any pics or ideas for buildings that you think I should use instead of the ones that are already there (yea, right now I'm looking to replace most of the buildings in the EF faction) send them my way so I can take a look.  Also, if you can't tell, I still suck at texturing models.  If anyone happens to have a good tutorial explaining how to texture a model in 3D studio max 8 I'd appreciate it.

As always, email is Azuza001@hotmail.com




Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Pics of GDI

And now we have pics of the new GDI.  GDI is different from NOD and the Scrin in that they are more about structure and control than mindless chaos or total destruction. 

In the first pic you see that we replaced the Orca Strike with a Firehawk Strike instead, no big deal I just thought it made more sense to have firehawks than orcas.  Also the bombs they drop are the same bombs as their Carpet Bomb attack (except not in a row) so you know it's gonna kill pretty much whatever it hits.

The next pic is of the new Orca Stormsmoke unit.  GDI really needed an aircraft that didn't always have to go back to base to reload, so we outfitted this Orca with dual 45mm cannons and let her loose.  It does pack a nice punch against vehicals and strucures, and it can defend itself against air units for a short time, but it isn't very accurate when firing at infantry.  

In the final pic you see one of the Preditors new upgrades, the Missle Pod.  This is a simple add-on that lets the Preditor hit air units and pack a bit more punch against vehicals and structures.

A few changes you don't see here in the pics is an MCV drop, that lets the player call in for 2 mammoth and 2 preditor tanks along with a MCV for free, along with the MOAB attack that the Firehawks can get and the new Carpet Bomb attack they get.  So don't let these pics fool you, GDI got just as many new toys to play with as NOD and the Scrin got.




Some pics from the new NOD

And now for some pics from NOD.  First we have the new Avatar designs.  Instead of ripping the weapons off of perfectly good units to make themselves arguably better we have the upgrades as just that, upgrades on each individual unit.  You can upgrade to the Flamethrower Avatar, which gives it a nifty new red paint job along with the ability to fire both the flamer and the beam cannon on the move, the dual beam cannon upgrade that gives him 2 powerful inter-firing weapons for tougher targets, or finally the missle upgrade that adds a missle pod to it's sholder and lets the Avatar deal more damage to it's foes in the great blue skies.

Then we have a pic of the Armageddon Bomber.  We changed things up a bit here, turning the Vertigo Bomber into a fighter jet and moving the Armageddon Bomber from support unit to buildable unit.  It's bombs are also slightly different.  The Armageddon Bomber is anything but accurate, so it drops many slow moving bombs out the back that kind of scatter as they hit the ground.  Kind of a shotgun bomber if you will.

Then we have the new Elite Infantry squad.  I say new, because technically it is new, but really it's just the NOD Commando with 2 Confessors.  However the unit still works like the old commando did in that they can plant bombs and blow up buildings, but they are more effective now against infantry and vehicals. 

On this final pic you may be wondering what your looking at.  Well, we gave NOD back it's Liquid Tiberium Doomsday Bomb, and when NOD drops it EVERYTHING on the map gets hit.  The only way to hide from this thing is to be in a building or bunker, it's that effective.  It doesn't do any real damage to vehicals or buildings, but it does massive damage to Tiberium based units and structures, pretty much destroying all Refinerys on the map.  Also, it has the side effect of killing all infantry units off and causing Vicroids to spawn.  We wanted it to be Muntant squads, but I just couldn't get it to work, so in the end I just went back to the Vicroids.  Honestly, it's pretty cool to see happen, but it REALLY SUCKS when it happens to you.  What this means is if your playing a map with a NOD player be prepaired to try and kill that Temple of NOD as soon as you see it, otherwise things could get all sorts of messy.