Saturday, November 27, 2010

Better late than never!

The 9b alpha is now being uploaded to MOD DB.  Check it out and tell me what you think!

EDIT

The file is still awating athorization on MOD DB so for now here's a Mediafire link. http://www.mediafire.com/?8c384b5x6ycv65p


EDIT 2 

The mod is now avalible on MOD DB, so if you don't want to use the mediafire link you don't have to.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Mod delay, Of course.

So I've gotten the 9b mod done, but my net connection is causing issues uploading it to the net at large.  So, I will have to wait until tommorow (Friday) to try and upload it again.  Sorry everyone, I really tried, but sometimes there's just nothing you can do.  Hopefully tommorow night.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Less than 24 hours for the .9b alpha!

I'm now working on the final touches of the alpha 9b, mostly balance changes and the like.  This version should give Scrin the extra little boost it needs early game (wow did I not realize how bad their early game was) and NOD gets epic artillery (Give me a hell yea) along with a redesign of the Avatar making it work better and more weapon balancing for GDI.  All of this along with a new NOD AI (xenoforce) and we're finally making good progress with the Mobile Suits and their waists turning and firing correctly (Unfortunatly only the RM79, RX78, and Gundam Alex both armored and unarmored have the new changes, but it gives you a good idea on how mobile suits are supposed to work now).


So, time to get back to the MOD.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

New discussion about new units/ideas

I have started a thread on the Moddb Xenoforce Forum about new ideas that I am now accepting about the EF army, much like we did here earlier on SEED.  Based on the feedback I will decide what army to work on next, SEED or AW for hopefully a Christmas release.  

If I don't get any feedback, well, then I guess I'll just draw a straw or something lol.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/xenoforce-reborn/forum/thread/new-ideas

Thursday, November 18, 2010

New NOD Experiences

So I have been doing a lot of work on the NOD/GDI AI latley and I have some great news.  Not only have I managed to get the AI (on medium) to almost always do it's tech research to actually get the upgrades needed (really important for GDI) but I also added in a new AI for NOD, a Xenoforce AI.  This AI is very aggresive and the other 2 AI's seem to have trouble with it most of the time.  I love it!  

A new tactic that this AI likes to use is the Purifier Team, basically 4 Purifier Warmechs are built then go to town on enemy expansion bases.  As these bases are normally not as heavily defended as the main base these guys manage to do a lot of damage before getting taken down.

Another tactic it uses is, if the enemy is well bunkered into its base, the AI will now build 4 or 5 Beam Cannons and 2 of the new Scorpion Warmechs and make a long range assault on the enemy.  It's very interesting to see the hard AI finally using new units, and I can't wait for you guys to see this new mini-release.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Another update.

So I decided that I will release something for you guys to play for thanksgiving weekend.  There still isn't (much) different with the last release.  Most of this stuff is just tweaking, but there are a few things that will definatly be different.  

For one, we've gotten the turret system down for a few units.  This will give people a glimps of how the new mobile suits will move from this point on.  

Also we have increased the sight range on the Scrin Devistator Warships and increased the scout range on the Scrin Planetary Assault Drones.  We have been talking about changing the roll of the Scrin "Eye of the storm" mothership from a planet killer to something else.  If we do somethinge else, what would you like to see?

NOD has been where a lot of our work has been recently, fixing a few bugs that crept up and gave us great concern.  You don't need to know about the bugs, but what you should know is what new toys NOD has to finally allow it to stand against it's enemies on the battlefield.

First of all, the Avatar Prime has been removed from the game.  It's just no longer needed.  What we have done is manage to get the AI to use the special power system on the regular Avatar, making it much more deadly.  We did change the weapon system on the Avatar, so instead of gaining stealth from the Stealth Tank it gains a Stealth Tanks missle system instead.  

Now, with this system, the Avatar does not kill any units to gain the upgrade, it's simply an upgrade given to the Avatar based off of what the unit represents.  Beam Tank gives the Beam Cannon upgrade, Flame tank gives Flamethrower, Stealth Tank gives a Missile Rack, and finally the Scout Bike gives speed and the ability to detect stealth.   These upgrades do have a cost.

There is now an upgraded version of the Venom ship that is equipped with a variation of the Obelisk of Lights weapon, making it basically a flying artillery platform.  However, this version of the Venom has lost it's ability to be stealthed.  

Finally we looked at what we lost when we removed the Avatar Prime.  The Avatar, for all of it's new abilites and strength, is still just not strong enough to be the "end all and be all" of units.  Especially once you add in the fact that a fully upgraded Avatar costs over 4000$.  So to help counter this we have 2 new toys.  One is an obvious choice, we put the Purifier in.  It's a Red Avatar that is equipped with 3 Flamethrowers.  It's speed is much faster than the normal Avatars allowing it to get into range quicker.  

The other choice was one we had thought about doing awhile ago but we went with the Prime instead.  Now we have decided to add it in.  It's based off of the MCV, we have basically armed this thing to the teeth.  With 2 massive gattling artillery cannons hanging over the main unit, we decided to name this thing the "DeathWalker Scorpion Mech".   It's also equipped with the targeting system of an Obelisk of Lights system and a Scattershot Missile System.  Still, it's weak against close range units, infantry, and aircraft, so it has a place.

Here are the pics.









Sunday, November 7, 2010

Where the hell have I been and what the hell have I been doing?

Well will you look at that.  It's been almost a full month since my last post.  Where have I been? Well, here and there mostly.  We found a new bit of code that is letting us redo a part of the unit AI so that the units can now use the special powers that they are equipped with.  This is huge, it's a major step forward for our Zeon and (some) SEED ideas as without this little ability we would of had to redesign these things.  

Right now we are testing out these things on NOD, spicificly the changes to the Avatar that we have made (yes, we made new changes again.  But it's always for the better, I swear).  I will have to honestly say that after watching the latest AI vrs AI vrs AI (Scrin/GDI/NOD) that NOD just got that shot in the arm they needed by being able to upgrade their Avatars on the battlefield when the AI decides it wants it.  They still lost, but they came in 2nd where normally they were the first one out, so thats definatly something in my book.  Now if I could just figure out where the code is for when the AI decides what special powers it wants to use from the spellbook then we would be all set!  

Right then, what else.  Well, we're heading into Thanksgiving and Christmas which means less time to work on the mod and more time at work (I work retail, fun fun!).  Always happens this time of year you know?  And Dougs been busy with his own family as well, so things are going to be speratic for a bit.  I'm also looking at moving by the end of this month, so that will also cut into Mod work  time.  All of this means that the schedual I had planned on in October is going to be horribly missed.  Still, I hope to have the next version of the MOD out to you guys by Xmas week, if not sooner.  (I was aiming for thanksgiving but as I am only about 15% of the way through remodeling the mobile suits so that they can turn their waists and fire on the move properly that isn't going to happen.)  I may release something for thanksgiving week without the changes to AW or SEED, just a revamp of GDI/NOD/Scrin/EF(UC).  Think of it as an alpha 0.9b of sorts.  We'll see.  


Finally, if anyone has any suggestions they would like to make on the mod, Valherran started a thread in the MODDB Xenoforce Reborn forum section with a few suggestions.  I always enjoy reading what people like and what they think needs balancing so feel free to stop in and make a comment or suggestion of your own.  I will always respond (sooner or later lol) and I will definatly let you know if what your asking is either a good idea, worth trying, not possible from a coding standpoint, or just not what we're trying to accomplish and why.  At least I always give a reason. :)