Hi Modders! Just introducing myself before I break all your stuff. ;)

(Note: I'm mostly joking about breaking your stuff... mostly...)

New Uber guy here; just wanted to introduce myself to our fine community!

This is my first week here at Uber, coming in as a Senior Engineer. Right now I'm still settling in and getting the lay of the land, our codebase, plans, all of that. But I'd like to think I'm ramping up pretty quick!

I'm new to the company but not to the industry; this is actually my 18th year in the game business. I've also worked with a bunch of these fine folks at previous companies (particularly Gas Powered), so it's really nice being back in the saddle with so many familiar faces.

I'm posting this introduction here on the mod forum because my first area of focus is going to be our spec / modding / scenario / dynamic content change ecosystem. There's a big bunch of work there, like prepping for server mods, dynamic unit type creation and management, integrating safely with ChronoCam, all that kind of stuff.

I'm still feeling my way around, and I know what I'm doing will be directly relevant to the mod community... but the reverse is true too! So I'll be spending some time looking into what mods you all are currently making and desire to make, and seeing how I can best enable you all to do cool new stuff while breaking existing things as little as possible (and if I can't avoid making breaking changes, I can at least try to help document things to help you migrate over to the new systems as they come online). I'll also try to talk about file formats, tools and other mysteries as we get further along, so that you're all reasonably well-equipped for some great modding fun.

That's all for now, just saying Hi. More soon!

- Chris

The last few patches all were pretty nice to my mods at least. I am interested to see what you'll do

On the note of stuff I want:
give me a way to register a listener in the live_game.js that is notified when a unit/building:
a) is starting to be constructed
b) construction is finished
c) is destroyed

My aim here is to capture build orders for PA Stats.
I'd be really grateful.

Hi,
Nice to have someone devoted to the modder community while development progresses

Like colin i would love some extra features if possible
I would really love it if we could have a way to attach an emitter to the planets surface!

Thas about it

OMG my names Chris too
how many chris's are out there .. lmfao

Red 3, standing by.

Hi Chris!
Thanks for dropping in with the intro.
A huge welcome to the community


My concerns with this game are primarily UI related.

Considering the lineage of TA, SupCom, Forged Alliance, many are expecting the UI to become smarter and more powerful.
However, budget-wise, we have no clue what Uber is planning in the short term, future or what is even feasible given your current path of engineering.
To this date, all that has been announced is that the UI is getting a "refinement".


I have spent the last 2 weeks compiling pretty much every UI request on the forums.
I have tried to organize it into a coherent list.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ef3DmBUsW3faaoqqmhZFgZsyO5JUXSETY5JmXLFIPlQ/edit?usp=sharing
This is pretty much the community's UI Wish List.


If you could take a moment to flip through the list, it should give you a good overview of what people are hoping to see.
And like always, if the Out-of-Box can't deliver, then these would probably be the UI mods the community will pursue.


Thank you for your time

Thanks for the comments everyone! I'm not really in a position to be fulfilling requests just yet (I don't yet know what will or won't be feasible), but feel free to keep posting them and I'll revisit as things get further along.

I will admit though that UI is not going to be my initial focus; the world of "modding" is very large and I'm only one part of that. Our UI is actually pretty far out of my main skill base; it's heavily web-based JS stuff while I'm mostly a C++ person. But thankfully I'm not the only person thinking about modding, and I know UI modding is definitely on several peoples' minds here.

Right now I'm thinking more about how modders could generate new unit types on the fly, how mods can dynamically affect build restrictions, things like that. But hey, it's only my first week, and I'll be learning a lot more about these systems soon enough; maybe soon I'll be educated enough to answer some of your questions.

I have a feeling @KNight is going to become your best friend very quickly

You are quickly going to become my favourite developer.

Whatever the scent of this is, it smells divine!

In the off chance some of this might get done (as I'm itching for it), I'd like to mention it would be nice to fix the current problems with resizing strategic icons, as well as giving access to various states in the strategic icons shader code, such as: "unit selected" "mouse hovering over unit" "unit in fog of war".

I think it would be very useful it we could see grayed versions of strategic icons in the fog of war, it's more more visible than simply having the building remains, especially when zoomed out.

Hello Chris!
Nice to get in touch with Uber ppls

Q: To "model/create" new units, do you plan to give us a more easy 3D modeller or do we need to use the other programs?

Thanks for being here!

When I talk about dynamically creating units, I don't mean the models themselves; that's kinda outside the scope of what we can reasonably do here (making a modeling program is a lot of work and takes a long time!).

I'm more talking about the configuration spec .json files we have for units/projectiles/etc. That's where more of our dynamic update & script-based mod potential lies. If you want custom models though you'll need to keep going through the papa conversion process; I don't foresee us fundamentally changing that anytime soon.

I'm assuming that you've read the results of garat's sticky in this forum. Can I ask what the general trends were with what people wanted to do?

Psssh, I don't handle code! ;p Plus if he was talking about the 3D models I'd be out of a job almost! ;p Lose-Lose for me! xD

Anyways, Glad to have you on board Chris, hopefully we'll see something that our non-UI modders can start to sink our teeth into soon, I've been waiting for this for quite some time! Did you ever take part in the Forums during the SupCom days?

Mike

Hi chris.
I noticed in the ammo .jsons there is the ability to map mesh deformations to the explosion (like how asteriod leaves dents in planets "crater_radius":260)
I want to make a Boomtopia Mod where almost all heavy ammo leaves dents by adding the crater variable to most ammo types "crater_radius":xxx <-- this number would be different for different types of ammo (nukes, artillery, bombs, and the commander when he goes BOOM!!)

will the server be able to read and use those changes in the ammo .json if i make a mod ??
Not sure if thats what you mean by making the unit thingy dynamic, but that's some thing i'd like to have dynamically changeable both client and server side

Hey Chris!

Would this include support for modding in things like:
Tech trees
Unit upgrades (both; Commander upgrades /or/ +500 hp to all owned Levelers)
Mutually exclusive units (choose bot specialization, can no longer build tanks)
Unlockable technology (like reclaiming a wreck, gaining the tech)
Adaptive/Reactive unit stats (units adapt to the damage they receive)
Veterancy

Any more info would be great. I can think of some insanely cool things that could be done, given the tools.

Also, is mod-content going to be streamable? Player joins modded server and automatically downloads assets/etc required?

I think, out of everything I've seen yet, that I have two top desires.

One is a dynamic unit scale - I want the ability to mod in units that are literally the size of planets. And related to that, I want to be able to maneuver and fight on the surface of a unit (assuming it's large enough).

I have some hopes in regards to making a strange planetary shape, and then adding controlling nodes to it like they do with engines & asteroids at the moment, but I guess we'll see. I would really like to see iceberg battleships (battlebergs?) as well though

Hey Chris ... The two comments above mine are awesome and would be insane if they were implimented.... The one thing I want to strongly request is that you work with the AI guy to allow us to modify the AI code and, more importantly, allow us to selectively apply AI to specific units that the player controls... There are so many ideas I have for mods where the player is more of a commander and less of a click unit, unit goes here and without any ability I enable AI selectively on a player's units I will never be able to develop anything like that...

Do you see what I mean?

@swizzlewizzle , the AI guy is @sorian .

I think you need to be a bit more specific with what you are hoping to see in terms of mod support.

Hmm just... being able to have an AI "shadow" the player, giving/removing that AI's access to player's units dynamically. Not sure how to be more specific.