Looking For Help (Unannounced Faction)

Thanks for the offer Alpha. You should be able to use blender(This is the free option, I've used 3ds max to do this in the past.) to uv unwrap and export the uv's (which you then need to texture in photoshop). I can't help you with blender at all though since I mainly use maya/3ds max. If you do decide to take a look at texturing I'll try to find and pm you one of my psd files so you can see what it is supposed to look like in the end.

3d's max 12 is the one the uber uses too right?

Yeah 3d's max is the best program to use since it has the least issues when exporting stuff to pa.

Lol, not only that but i change things in-between the concepts themselves. The 2D silhouette isn't the same as the Sketchup model which isnt the same as the Maya model xD

@nicb1 could you sahre what is exactly needed for the mod? The units and buildings needed to model and everything. That way anyone who eants to help can focus on a certain thing). I would help If I know what to spend the tiem into.

Hey sure here's a list of what's needed. (bold being most needed atm)
-3D models (I've mostly got this covered).
-Model rigs (preferably done in max)
-Model textures
-Code (implementation of units into the game and balance at a later date)
-FX (Although I think we've mostly got this covered)

If you are talking about what units and buildings still have to be done, the list is quite extensive (I'll have to spend some time putting together a list) But I can tell you some of the stuff that has been finished model wise)
-T1 Tanks: Done
-T2 Tanks: Done (Excluding the fabber and factory)
-T1 Bots: (Only purger boombot and Peacekeeper done, will replace the vanilla aa bot model in the future)
-T2 Bots: (Very much WIP, lots of stuff is still in the early dev stages)
-T1 Air: (Factory, fighter done with wip bomber)
-T1 Naval: (WIP atm, factory is wip and narwhal type unit is mostly done)
-General structures:
Done: (T1/T2 pgen done, Combo storage, T1/T2 radar, deep space radar, T1/T2 artillery emplacements)
WIP: (Turrets being reworked)

This list is by no means complete as it is just from memory, but this is some of the stuff that is done or being worked on.

MODEL TEXTURES*

I

I can perfectly help with code implementation and balance. Even Ai if you want, for textures I don´t have photoshop so right now impossible. Can try helping with modelling but being a absolute noob at that doesn´t help.

You can also use GIMP for everything but the final finishing touches (the edge glow effect)

I am going to be helping out with the textures, however there are a lot of units so more help is welcome.

In the future AI is something that we are definitely going to have to look into, so help with that would be great. I will let you know when we get to that stage though as we are still currently focusing on trying to implement and texture units.

For an open source option for Photoshop style blend and glow effects check out inkscape and specifically its 'svg filters' (you'll need to covert the texture to vectors to apply the filters but that shouldn't take long). Superb bit of software.

@nicb1 @KillerKiwiJuice guys can I give a recomendation? As I want to help with this getting to a good position. What do you think of altering the build bar images of the final product so they don't have the dame blue colour as the uber faction. That way it would feel genuily different. Even changing the ui to a different one deppending of the faction you use. Wouldn't it be cool? What do you think?

Haha if you can figure out how to do this, that'd be awesome. This requires some javascript wizardry.

And currently the only thing we're focused on is models, textures and animations because that's the foundation. If you start placing furniture in a home before the walls are even finished, that causes problems

Jajaja yeah that's true. But let a man dream he can fly and he will jump high enough to rise into the stars

I'll suppose it won't be much difficult. Maybe a simple if sentence can make this work. At least making the build bar imagges different would be a good start.

This definitely requires more than a single if statement.

I've already made a button to enable the faction in lobby but right now it does not have a function.

Oh cool. That was something I was wondering how would you make it choosable. So how do ypu want it to work? You want to make it based in what cpmmander you use. Or based in something that alters the build bar for the units?

The button is supposed to restrict UNITTYPES to Custom1 when enabled, and when disabled it's supposed to add a -Custom1 UNITTYPE to the buildable types of vanilla fabricators so they can't build the faction.

BUt that's not the end, the build bar is restricted to 15 units per tab and this is an issue, so there needs to be a separate build bar for the new faction so it doesn't interfere with vanilla. Not easy.

Not really. Do you remember how realm worked? You just have to create a new build type, it just needs to be defined and that's all. For example OW works like this. Just for example name those tabs with a new prefix and associate the new units to it. Look into the files of OW, and Realm and that's all. I realy like your idea of the button.

RCBM and OWO Mod don't add more than 80 units. It's not as simple as adding a new unit type, like custom1.

The build bar is universal and only allows 15 units per tab. Look in build.js, the index ranges from 0-14 for each unit group (Vehicle, Bot, Utility, etc.). If we want to add more units to the game we can only increase the variables found in live_game_build_bar.js (ITEMS_PER_ROW) but this creates the problem of a huge build bar. Just try adding a unit in build.js with the index number of 15. It wont show up in the game unless you increase said variables.

Unless there's a way to add new unit groups like "Legion Bot" for example, this is a problem.

EDIT: I just looked at OWO, I guess you're right about the new tabs. They named groups "Orbital Structures" which is not part of vanilla. So yeah that might work, but there's still the issue about limiting UNITTYPES for the faction in lobby with the button.

If you had looked into their build.js files you woukd have undesrtood me. What thise mods do, is create a new tab with a different name associated to it. Rather than trying ti call the tanks, tanks and getting into the index problems, you would call it for example vehicles. That way there is no space problem. As this faction won't use the units included in the iber one, just having different tab names would do the job. I imagine it is case sensitive so we coukd try calling them Tanks, Bots, etc... So there is no real problem.
Do you underatand what I'm telling you?

Look into the build.js of both and you will know what I'm refering to.

Example:

/pa/units/faland/bla bla .../ bla bla...json : [ "vehicles", 0],