Idea: Hello people of the forums! I have been speculating a total conversion mod in which units and unit statistics are changed to resonate more of a TA feel. I've been looking through the coding of the units lately and could easily see how this could be done, the code is overall pretty simplistic; units and their corresponding weapons and their corresponding munitions only have one line of code each. What I've been wanting to do is basically recreate much of TA and implement it into PA. Both models and balance wise. Overview/Goals: The goal is to try and recreate TA through PA's innovative new engine. Recreate the models for units, animations for units, and their base traits. I'd like to buff every units health 2, 3, 4, 5 fold as well as change weapons a bit. Add sway, inaccuracy; AOE damage to nearly all units. The goal is to stop the instant deaths once units get within range of each other and get that great feel of seeing you and your enemies army merge together whilst firing shots in all directions. Implement friendly fire and change much of the game. Development Cycle: The development for the mod will probably begin with simple re-balancing of all units to fit more into the essence of TA, future development will hopefully contain work on new TA inspired units as well as probable replacement/removal of the current PA unit roster. How can you help?: If you happen to have any prior knowledge in: Modeling, texturing, coding, game development, or animation, and would like to help then please respond, I'd be happy to have you on the team. Team so far (will update): Squishypon3 Zombiefan564 Stuart98 (possibly) Please note: This is a future project and as such is just in the planning phase. Development should begin once the server is released for all to use. Edit: All is subject to change; I do have faith in Uber and believe they'll make an excellent game once the whole thing's said and done, but this is just an idea to have a group of people work on changing the game to help make the TA veterans feel happy as well.
I was really excited when I heard that modding was going to be an integral part of PA for this very reason! Although I can't help since I'll most likely be busy, I'd really like to see this go through.
So is this an actual TA conversion for PA or a remake in the spirit of TA. The reason I'm confused is because the title says total conversion, but you mention balancing the units and such which you wouldn't need to bother with in a total conversion since you'd steal the HP/DMG values from the other game. I don't care which it is, just looking for clarification.
Well, TA was far from balanced. The meta was Samson and Flash spam at T1 and Maverick spam at T2. Core was nearly useless because of inferior raiding weapons and slower walking speeds for their fabbers.
Well I'd love to do a total conversion mod, but if I can't get enough people to help out I might have to limit it to just balancing, sadly. Unless I want to spend A LOT of time working.. haha.
I myself would prefer to restrict it to balancing. I certainly lack the skills to mess with models and animations. Stats are enough.
Well.. I can do some basic modeling/animation; used to mod Halo CE back in the day. Custom weapons, woot. But yeah, I could maaaybe work on the models... At least TA's units were overall very, very, simplistic looking. (This is no guarantee though! D: )
Yeah I could help with modelling but I don't think I'll have time. It really depends when this game gets released...I can probably work on it from September onwards but I'll need to brush up on my skills
Welp. I'm not sure how Raevn would feel, but I'm open to team work? I honestly hadn't seen that post before.. Multiple Devs are better than one I would say. Edit: I love how both our posts similarly use parentheses makes it feel even more ironic. Also: I'm still up for re-balancing units and would, similarly, like to re-create the unit's models.. but it seems I've been out-gunned!
Well like I said, what Raevn is doing is a total conversion, but it sounds like what you are proposing is a ... rebalancing in the spirit of TA. I don't see why the two mods couldn't co-exist.
That is true. Not to mention a re-balancing is MUCH more simple than re-creating it all. Plus Raevon does seem to have a lot already. So I guess we could simply work on changing the existing units to work more like TA, their stats.
The conversion I am working on is less aimed at making a mod, and more aimed at creating the tools needed to automatically convert TA's game data files so they work in PA. This means I don't have to worry about things like creating models for units or writing up blueprints manually, and it means it will also allow easy expansion to convert 3rd party TA units too. It also gets around potential legal issues, as it then becomes a requirement for the user of the mod to own TA in order to have access to the original files. There are some things that will need to be manually made; animations and effects being the two biggest. Animation is something I don't know much about, so I'd be happy to have a helping hand for that.
Well if we can get it to be imported into 3Ds max it'd be a breeze, I'm having to re-learn a bit of stuff to use Blender, but that should be alright; I'm sure I could get into it eventually.
This is mainly just me using the wrong terms I guess. It seems I, in fact, can make a total conversion if I have enough time/resources. Raevn has really just relieved me of a lot of work of swapping out code and hoping it works, as well as recreating models, it is now essentially just making animations? Also I am most probably going to have to re-balance/replace/remove a lot of things from the current game.. Things like orbital. Basically, I could simply leave them as is or replace them with more TA esque things or even remove them altogether.
