Modders UNITE!

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by mushroomars, April 10, 2013.

  1. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

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    So, I'm just curious, how many people here are truly intent on modding the hell out of this game once it comes out? I know Mike is here, and the core members of the Nomads team are on-board (4 experienced dudes), but those are all the people I recognize.
  2. apocatequil

    apocatequil Member

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    I may get on modding this game just for the sake of modding it to keep my programming sharper than it has been, but I'd be more interested in looking at the source code to see how they've dealt with all these problems that they've mentioned dealing with, than in actually adding anything onto the game.

    Of course, it all depends on if anything is lacking enough in my eyes to spark some inspiration, and if I actually follow through with that inspiration.
  3. Pawz

    Pawz Active Member

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    I'm hoping to tackle a number of different projects floating around in my head, although it all depends very heavily on what's going to be released in the engine. (what is possible, etc)
  4. BulletMagnet

    BulletMagnet Post Master General

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    This.
  5. chirmaya

    chirmaya Member

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    Totally going to try out a ton of stuff! Modding SupCom was a blast for me, so I'll be trying to stretch the boundaries! First up will be battleship action/arcade & evolution gameplay types =3
  6. paulzeke

    paulzeke Member

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    noobie modder here who will be tinkering with the engine as much as I can figure out :mrgreen:
  7. brandonpotter

    brandonpotter Well-Known Member

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    You can bet your butt Ill be modding it :)

    The Wyvern Battle Pack shall live on!
  8. torrasque

    torrasque Active Member

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    I liked making maps for Spring:
    Making the layout with the heightmap, generating nice texture, blending other texture to add variety.
    But as I'm really bad at 3d modelling, and as a good part of the planet is generated proceduraly, I don't think I'll be able to do anything good :(
  9. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    I might whore myself out as an artist to worthy mods. But mainly I'm going to be building handcrafted Planets and Systems and putting them up for download...

    If that's a thing :p
  10. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

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    Well, I was thinking that there are so many experienced dudes from modding SupCom, we could all try to make a collaborative project for PA. Something awesome and cool, like space battles.
  11. kvalheim

    kvalheim Post Master General

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    I hope there are some genuinely interesting full conversion mods. I'm bored with every RTS being full of slight rebalance mods.
  12. antillie

    antillie Member

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    I think a total conversion to classic TA or FA without using any art assets from those games would be pretty cool to see. Imagine playing TA or FA on a modern engine without any of the performance or graphical limitations of either one. (And without having to spend 5 hours trying to make Spring work.)
  13. exavier724

    exavier724 Member

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    Guess I should chime in here. Exavier Macbeth from the SupCom FA Blackops Team :)
    Technically I think all of us from Blackops are here, not sure bout Kirves though, but only Knight is active with posting. Don't really see much in participating in rampant speculation myself, though reading it does keep adding to my idea lists lol
  14. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    The problem most conversion mods have is that this is a huge amount of work. Even when using existing assets it's a massive task, but making all new models and textures takes an extremely long time.

    This same debate came up at the start of SC:TA - there was a parallel TC mod going on that tried to make new models, and it didn't get further than a few un-textured models.

    I'll definitely be adding few TA units into PA; whether I aim for a TC mod or not depends on how interested people are and how much time I have.
  15. antillie

    antillie Member

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    I agree it would be a massive undertaking. But I would be willing to spend a bit of time each week coding for it. Maybe I can ask my wife if she wants to keep her 3DS Max skills sharp by making replicas of TA unit models at a rate of one or two a week.
  16. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    we only need one unit from TA raevn, we only need one.
  17. Polynomial

    Polynomial Moderator Alumni

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    I'm going to play the base game.

    [​IMG]
  18. Pawz

    Pawz Active Member

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    You'd be better off making Supcom replicas though - TA's models are simply too low poly to look decent in a modern game. In order to port them over you'd have to basically redesign the units. *shrug* there was that TA mod for Supcom iirc that did almost all the TA units though, they might still have the models available... At the end of the day, lots of unit models & texturing is a ton of work, and blackops especially gets my kudos for sticking with it for so long.

    I personally would like to see some creative mods & maps that push the game engine in new and unexpected ways. I really enjoyed playing on the MicroMachines map with TA (dunno if anyone remembers that one - the map was a game board on a table, made you really feel like you were controlling tiny machines in a tabletop game).

    Another great mod/map was Zone Control. It really took you out of the whole 'oh man I gotta learn a whole new balance and unit set to play this mod' and into a quick and easy to pick up gameplay.

    One idea I've had floating around is to try remake Harvest: Massive Encounter with Planetary annihilation. The laser linking dynamic in Harvest is just so much fun to play with :)


    Polynomial.. play Supcom with Gaz's UI mod? Hmmmmmmm.... maybe you might play with some mods enabled after all?
  19. Polynomial

    Polynomial Moderator Alumni

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    Okay, okay. Point taken =P

    I was just getting used to it too...

    I share kvalheim's opinion. I'd hate to see the game get fragmented by balance mods of people who think they know best.
  20. exavier724

    exavier724 Member

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    To be honest this is one of the things I am worried about. I've seen other modding communities (most recently for sword of the stars 2) that actually managed to piss off the game devs enough to get the modding side of things shelved for a while. Mostly because people kept making "fix" mods before the game was up to what the developers wanted it to be. Granted SOTS2 had a very bad release but I think a long duration alpha/beta could pose the same temptation if ground rules arn't laid out by someone before we get our hands on some of the game files.

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