PSA: Want to help keep the modding scene alive? Then by all means, help out!

As you have probably noticed, the Planetary Annihilation modding scene has died down since the release of the Legion beta and the Community Update on May 31st. Modding activity has greatly slowed and there are no massive products that have had major contributions made in recent weeks. Under the current group of modders, the modding scene will probably be even deader before long.

We need fresh blood.

We are especially in a dearth of texturers, modelers, and animators.

I've been working on a mod combining Legion with my other work for a while, but work has stalled simply because other than AI, most of what's left is dependent on texturers, modelers, and animators. It's a similar situation with PA: Doomsday, a proposed expansion to Legion and MLA. We need fresh blood.

If you can help, please post below or send PMs.

What if someone wants to help, but has no experience as a texturer, modeler, or animator?

Modding is all about learning to do new things.

Fair enough. Is there a list of mods, the work they need done, who's working on what, etc?
(I'm hoping it's not buried in the mods' forum threads?)

I'll let @Nicb1 explain what he wants for PA Doomsday.

For Planetary Obliteration, the biggest things left are as follows:
1. I need someone who can model, someone who can texture, and someone who can animate. There are 16 outstanding models that need to be modeled, textured, and animated.
2. I need someone who can do AI work. While I can release with some of the placeholder models I have right now, in terms of AI stuff needs to done before I can properly release it.
3. UI work. Currently it's terrible; all of the UI needs to be reskinned to green to the same extent that Legion has done.
4. I need effects artists. There are seven open issues concerning fx and there's a bunch of others that need changing that don't have issues right now.
5. I need gameplay testers. This has been in short supply; fix fix fix.

Where's the source?

https://github.com/Planetary-Obliteration/PlanetaryObliteration

If I clean swimming pools for a living, where would I start? What's the basic path?

first thing to do is download blender. It's a free tool for game modeling. Look up a few tutorials on you tube and have a play...

Pretty much this. When I first started on modelling and all that I got into it via youtube tutorials. Just be aware that if you plan on doing work for PA you'll be likely using 3ds max instead of blender. This is due to PA not liking the way blender exports models.

This is why I don't get into helping out with mods- my living is based on selling 3D CAD services so I could only help if I could afford a copy of 3DS Max, which I can't justify given I don't need it for any of my other projects.

It's a shame really- I have Rhino for example which is a capable modeler, but without 3Ds it'd be wasted effort.

Yeah if you're currently enrolled in an educational institution then you can have a student edition of 3ds max for free.

So no programing or higher math experience/knowledge required?

Heh, well I'm sure there's an 'unofficial' version somewhere or other- but I can't risk using anything like that given my line of work. The software companies are pretty hot on ensuring businesses pay up- I think they probably tolerate the odd home using messing around with a less official copy.

Code wise we generally don't do any real coding or programming in PA modding; most of what we do with units is essentially creating and modifying files containing unit stats. Just glance over these two posts and you'll get the gist of it.

Well there is stuff like UI modding which is basically 99% coding.

You can also obtain a student copy of 3ds max. The only diff is that it constantly tells you every time you save that you're not supposed to be making money with it basically.

Surely you can only get a student copy if your actually in fact a student.

Which language?

Javascript, html, css.

UI modding is web development.