The Alpha Commander

Pwease. He was da best.

Seriously, that rough model is what we want.

So we may take this as a confirmation, that you guys have planed a day zero DLC shop for user made content?
But you are actually running out of time? Modding API not even close to being complete?

The signs are pretty obvious:

• You have collected applications where you specifically looked for experienced modders, less experienced ones didn't even got to see the full application form.
  
• You are "not allowed to provide more details", so it must be something business related.
• Some of you already hinted that there will be a way to monetize user generated content.

And I doubt you are just going for a donation based system as you wouldn't be able to attract professional studios this way. You are probably trying to provide a platform for complex scenarios and full conversion mods. But it's also very likely that you are having a few issues, while e.g. the unit system is very generic, there are also very specific features like the interplanetary stuff which are not that easy to remove.
I'm sure the engine would already support classic flat maps too, but it's currently on low priority since the schedule is already rather tight.


That doesn't address KNights's critic though, and I share his opinion. Using and shipping fully baked animations rather than hierarchical rigs + relative transformations for the individual joints means a huge restriction for individual modders.

Sure, if you have the budget, animating a unit from scratch isn't that much of an issue.
But whats the point in doing all the work all over again? You guys are already creating animations for various types of rigs. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to reuse the existing animations by simply adjusting the rig to fit the proportions of my own model as long as the rigs have the same joints and biomechanics.

You even ran into this problem yourself. You are providing 4 different commanders rigs, but there is very little flexibility in proportions.
And in the case of the Alpha, it's just not looking right. The proportions are just off, this way it looks just like a Delta in a poor disguise.

And when you say that you don't expect the Alpha to change any time soon, I doubt that too. Since it's not only about changing the model. It's about the lack of flexibility in the animation system which forced you to reuse the rig in the first place.

What's this now?

Mike

If you had fooled around with the application form, you would have noticed that you had to select a certain combination of values to even get the full form (you probably got the full form). The goal was not to get feedback on the modding capabilities, but to get in touch with developers who could provide high quality initial content for the DLC store at release.

Well I HOPE I got the full form, but it's not like I'll ever know now. I didn't even think to check, Guess I'll have to pay more attention next time.

But the Problem is as I already said, How are we supposed to provide content at release if we can't actually do the critical implementations until AFTER release? Yeah sure I got a bunch of Models, but the game is too rough for me to even start planning out things like where units go, what kind of supporting changes need to be made to existing units and more. Time is running out, We can't create mods within a day, we need time too.

Mike

If you said "No, you've never modded before", it kicked you out of the system immediately.

If you said "No, you've never modded before", it kicked you out of the system immediately.[/quote]
Hmm, was that the only switch out I wonder?

Mike

That's what I wonder as well...

Anyone notice that the uber-cannon and fabrication arms design has changed on the Delta and the Alpha Commander?

It now looks like the Raptor and Spider Commanders' arms.

Yeah I noticed when I was working on my SOON 2.0 pic but haven't had a chance to update my model files yet to really take a good look at them.

Mike