Ideas from the original thread, split, for organization Options

[Team Black]

5-21-07 - Team Black - I split these posts off of the original thread, from before the forum was made. I put them here because they're ideas.
It would seem natural to put em in the IDEAS thread, now wouldn't it?

OK here's my first idea: How about in this mod, we make a TS2CNC3 total conversion, as much as possible we can bring the CNC3 stuff into TS.
Unfortunately I don't exactly own CNC3, so I wouldn't know just how much CNC3 stuuf TS might be able to work with, and I wouldn't be able to really head up a mod like this.
Obviously, we won't have helipads holding 4 planes, and we won't be able to do the multiple build ques, but I think there's enough stuff that IS possible to be able to make a decent mod with.

What say you?

This post has been edited by Team Black: May 22 2007, 01:17 AM

[Clazzy]

Not really much point, to be honest. At least half of the Scrin's units aren't doable, there are no upgrades and most of the special features of the GDI and Nod units (i.e. APC's occupants firing out, Zone Trooper jumpjets, Riflemen digging into fortified positions) aren't possible. Then Venoms, Devatators and Planetary Carriers can't be done properly without lots of bugs. It won't convert well at all and it'll effectively turn into the lead designer's own vision for C&C3 instead. Pick something original instead. Even better, make up an idea outside the C&C universe.

[ShDwBoRn]

OK here's my first idea: How about in this mod, we make a TS2CNC3 total conversion, as much as possible we can bring the CNC3 stuff into TS.
Unfortunately I don't exactly own CNC3, so I wouldn't know just how much CNC3 stuuf TS might be able to work with, and I wouldn't be able to really head up a mod like this.
Obviously, we won't have helipads holding 4 planes, and we won't be able to do the multiple build ques, but I think there's enough stuff that IS possible to be able to make a decent mod with.

What say you?

wow, i was just about to post that very same idea!

Though i do i agree with Clazzy after reading his post

[Team Black]

I've always wanted to make a TS2StarWars mod, how would that sound?

[Bittah Commander]

Hmm... Make that mod for Empire At War

[ShDwBoRn]

That hover tank voxel that tetnis shot ninja made would be cool for the Empire. Star Wars would be awesome for a mod

[Clazzy]

Oh come on, use your imagination. Make an original idea rather than just converting the mod into another game or existing universe. You are probably fairly creative if you decided that you wanted to mod the game. If you're going to make a mod that requires a lot of work, be completely original. Novus Ordo was original, I'm considering a second mod idea that's also completely unique. Prove that the brain you have can think of things rather than just complying to a set of units and structures and storyline that's out there already. If you really want a mod concept because you can't think of one, I have lots (although most are too difficult for the TS engine to cope).

[Team Black]

I'm actually trying to find something that most everyone in the community would know about, that way people might want to contribute more ideas into it...
I'd imagine a totally unique mod would be more difficult to organize, because there's less common ground to work off of; the only reference for everyone to use is what the leader can communicate. If I say "make a TIE fighter", we'd know what a TIE fighter is, what it looks like, how big it is, etc. Something that will be generally agreed upon.
I'd think a unique mod like N.O., or IVI's post apoc mod might work best best just being a personal mod, since you won't need to communucate all of unique ideas. But as for a large community mod it might be best to work off of stuff that people already know.
I could be wrong . If you think it would be better to go oddball (I think I might like that too, personally...), then yea we can do that. Even if you want to be the one to head it up, I don't mind, and you'd really make a better leader than me on this anyways. Or both of us

The main goal is just to get everyone to agree as much as possible, to encourage participation, to keep the mod alive.

[jadems]

Ah, ppsshh... can't we just combine lotsa mods together, with permission of course?

[Team Black]

I've had that idea a few times myself, but kept it in the corner of my mind.
It could probably rock, or it could flop. Might be worth trying though anyways...

[Nod Strike]

How about a WWII conversion? GDI are USA / Great Britain. Nod are Germans.

[jadems]

Personally, I don't think that'd work coz, seeing as TS is in the future, it would kinda be a backstep, and if we want a futuristic WW2, we could just go with Red Alert/2, which already has a RA2>TS mod...

[Lightstorm]

we could make a mod that added the scrin to TS, call it Scrinvasion or something, its fairly simple, you could easily develop a campaign for it, lots of possibilities. (of course we'd add more nod/GDI units as well)

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

I really like the "Scrinvasion" Idea from Lightstorm. The question for me would be, if you stick with the unit ideas from C&C3 Tiberian Wars, or make new concepts and ideas.
If you make the Scrin completely new, then i would do 1 or 2 things too. Like units or buildings. But nothing too time consuming.

My Idea of the Scrin (i dont know how they are in TW) would be, to make them some energy based, bug like species. Imagine a big Bug on 4 legs, with some parts of the body are energy, like white glowing wings. Or white/blue glowing Blades on the arms. (Ok a bit like the Protoss from Starcraft, but mean and dangerous)
Economy/Base ideas
Warp gates bring/beam in bigger ships and units. (could be done in the door animation of a war factory)
Cloning and Mutation Hives for Infantry. (barracks with some nice animations)
Tiberium Accelerator Power Plants.
Every building should have a quite high amount of glowing parts representing the energy based style.

ok just an idea.
anyway good luck with the mod.

[jadems]

LKO FTW!

Ohhh, TS > TW plus extra things, seeing as though TW uses a new game engine (that's not necessarily better) we could bring TW into the TS engine

And if we need to make a petition to make a forum, I'm in! I'd love to see the finish product of this mod.

[Lightstorm]

I would picture the scrin as being buglike, but not part energy, what i could see is them having lots slits on their bodies where light comes out, I'm just thinking of the way the ship in TS looks. even if nod did build it its a scrin design.

[jadems]

Oooh, and something else to add in. GDI buildings, seeing as theres one shp for Temperate maps and one for Arctic maps, they could have camouflaged painted buildings! I did that onto my walls, component tower and gate in my personal mod. Took a lot of work to get it right as auto-recolouring or replaceing colour doesn't look right.

And if your wondering why I'm here, its coz i don't want to study TT

[Lightstorm]

that sounds good, I would also make less generic looking buildings, i rather like the way the GDI/Nod buildings look in TW
also what needs to happen is either a more powerful Ion Cannon or a less powerful multi missile because Missile>Ion Cannon

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

I would picture the scrin as being buglike, but not part energy, what i could see is them having lots slits on their bodies where light comes out, I'm just thinking of the way the ship in TS looks. even if nod did build it its a scrin design.

that sounds good too. Now the question is, if the Bugs themselves attack. Do they use some kind of genetic mutation to create bug monsters in different sizes and shapes,
or do they use high technology to create vehicles and consist only of one species (like a Trooper Bug)?

The reason why i ask is, that the detail on a small trooper bug is very low and this way the slits with light coming out of the body can be too small.
Maybe a mixture would be good. Standard ground Infantry and Tanks are Genetic Mutations (living beings) and the advanced units use technology. The technology part also would explain quite well, how they're able to build spaceships.

Another Question: Do the Bugs only look like Bugs or do we use other kinds of insect (or other animals) shapes too. Like a big worm that can burrow and move subterrainean. Or a mantis that looks like a Tiberium-tree if it stands, and has very fast/strong close combat attacks. Or a giant spider that catches infantry like the Cyborg Reaper.

that sounds good, I would also make less generic looking buildings, i rather like the way the GDI/Nod buildings look in TW
also what needs to happen is either a more powerful Ion Cannon or a less powerful multi missile because Missile>Ion Cannon

i thought the original buildings remain, due to the high amount of work it would make,to create them all again.

I'm for a more powerful Ion Cannon with a wider Area Effect. This could be done with an animation attached to the [IonCannonWH], but i haven't tested this yet.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 14 2007, 01:37 PM

[Team Black]

so we're thinking a good mod idea is a TS version of what CNC3 [/i]should've[i] been

That might be cool. We could probably incorporate some of the actual WW ideas, discussed on the Petroglyph Forums.

Just like SMIFF's classic TS:Retro on "what TS should've been", we'll do a mod on "What CNC3 should've been" XD

This post has been edited by Team Black: May 21 2007, 09:53 PM

[Lightstorm]

that sounds good too. Now the question is, if the Bugs themselves attack. Do they use some kind of genetic mutation to create bug monsters in different sizes and shapes,
or do they use high technology to create vehicles and consist only of one species (like a Trooper Bug)?

The reason why i ask is, that the detail on a small trooper bug is very low and this way the slits with light coming out of the body can be too small.
Maybe a mixture would be good. Standard ground Infantry and Tanks are Genetic Mutations (living beings) and the advanced units use technology. The technology part also would explain quite well, how they're able to build spaceships.

Another Question: Do the Bugs only look like Bugs or do we use other kinds of insect (or other animals) shapes too. Like a big worm that can burrow and move subterrainean. Or a mantis that looks like a Tiberium-tree if it stands, and has very fast/strong close combat attacks. Or a giant spider that catches infantry like the Cyborg Reaper.

i thought the original buildings remain, due to the high amount of work it would make,to create them all again.

I'm for a more powerful Ion Cannon with a wider Area Effect. This could be done with an animation attached to the [IonCannonWH], but i haven't tested this yet.

Things to do for scrin:
I think that the scrin would be bugs, not earth bugs though, kinda like bugs and lots of other animals mashed together, the tripod is a bad example but its the closest thing i can think of, the basic scrin trooper wouldn't have the slits with light, and would look kinda like the assimilator does although less weird. the sits of light could only be for the bigger things. The vehicles would be mechanical but would be designed to mimic an organic shape, a decent example of this is the Corrupter in TW its not a bug but it looks like one. also the one other TW unit i like is the devastator warship, it is metal but has an organic feel to it. the other thing to stay away from with the scrin is making everything symmetrical like EA did. the ship in TS isn't symmetrical i don't think all the scrin should be, the design would be balanced but not symmetrical. also another thing to consider: air units: is TS capable of supporting something like the Kirov that we could use to make scrin aircraft? we obviously can't have an air carrier but still... scrin needs air units, lots of them. another thing we could do with scrin units is to put tiberium on them, like make a "U" shaped turret on a scrin vehicle with tiberium crystals in the middle. one scrin unit to use is the one show in that picture titled "Scrin Primal" it looks kinda like a floater but not really. the other unit in TW i really liked was the harvester, I'd use that.

Things to do for GDI:
One of the few things i liked about GDI in TW was the sonic emitters, we should make a sonic emitter upgrade for the component towers. i would also lose the RPG upgrade, or make it incapable of damaging friendly units, since it does that a bunch. add snipers, not the cheap ones like in TW give them the range of at least equal to the RA2 snipers. Make the carryall capable of holding infantry along with tanks. zone troopers, they were cool put them in. decrease the power of the MK-2 ad make them buildable. (its reasonable to assume that they would leave the prototype stage) give the firestorm defensive structure an overcharge (the longer you let it charge the longer you can keep it on.) that and the ability to use it when its not fully charged. (in other words you have a certain charge time say 10 seconds charge time for every 1 sec of power. then you can turn it on and off on demand. add something like the surveyor. faster harvester

Things to do for Nod:
i actually like most of the TW nod stuff, i would change to TW: the Obelisk, the harvester, stealth tanks, and the distrupton tower(not make it visible i just like the design of it.), the temple (not the function but the TW temple looks cool) also: underground tank thats actually good: those devils tongues really suck in terms of power.

[jadems]

AHA! More ideas. We need to exploit upgrading

For the Scrin there could be like a tree/crown-like structure that acts like a tech center and upon building you get the advance buildings, and for the tree there could be like branches or objects you can upgrade it with, like 1 upgrade branch for adv. infantry, another upgrade branch for adv. vehicles and one mroe upgrade branch for adv. aircraft (each branch purchased separately, of course). That way the Scrin could become more balance as they probably would be over-powered.

And for the GDI, give most structures, at least the important structures, an armour upgrade! Eg. a barracks and you can then buy an armour overlay which makes the barracks seem a little bigger/bulkier and raises it's armour/health.

That'd be awesome!

[Team Black]

that would be cool - instead of one expensive power-draining tech center, they could upgrade only a fraction of it, as a way to conserve money and power when tiberium is scarce ~

This post has been edited by Team Black: May 21 2007, 09:53 PM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

@ Lightstorm
Asymmetrical shapes rock. thats a good idea. i miss this in nearly all SciFi-Games.

Kirov's are not possible in TS. except you take all hover units away, and use this logic with a raised floating height.
Maybe GDI and Nod would anyway use no hover units anymore. Instead of that more Mech like units. (yes i like mechs )
Oh and a Scrin Mothership using the hover logic would also be able to land using the deploy logic too. And this way we can also have landing Motherships that release Drones after deploying or work as a front warfactory/Weapons platform etc.

Things to do for GDI:
One of the few things i liked about GDI in TW was the sonic emitters, we should make a sonic emitter upgrade for the component towers. i would also lose the RPG upgrade, or make it incapable of damaging friendly units, since it does that a bunch.

CTWRs are weak and tiny! Take my Fortress Tower instead? Maybe I would improve it, so it works with one upgrade. Oh btw, for that it has to overwrite the existing Component tower and it is hardcoded that this can handle only 3 different turret images. (You can make 4 different weapon turrets, but 2 would then have the same image.)

sorry but some things you've described don't work with the TS engine.

Make the carryall capable of holding infantry along with tanks.

This don't work, infantry would then be carried outside of and under the carryall. And the maximum is one single tank.

give the firestorm defensive structure an overcharge (the longer you let it charge the longer you can keep it on.) that and the ability to use it when its not fully charged. (in other words you have a certain charge time say 10 seconds charge time for every 1 sec of power. then you can turn it on and off on demand.

thats not possible. you can only change the speed for charging and draining. And the max time it needs to charge fully up before it is available for the first time.
If Charge and Drain speed are equal you can use it for an infinite time. Only if Drain is higher than Charge it is limited.
So overcharge isn't possible.

And for the GDI, give most structures, at least the important structures, an armour upgrade! Eg. a barracks and you can then buy an armour overlay which makes the barracks seem a little bigger/bulkier and raises it's armour/health.

does not work. upgrades can not effect armor type or hitpoints of the corresponding building. But the techtree you've described before could work.


ok i've read a lot of cool ideas. where are the concept artists and create some previews. And of course, where's the forum

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 15 2007, 12:07 AM

[jadems]

Wow, another project for you to work on, Team Black.

And are you sure upgrades cannot be prerequisites? I'll check.

Update: I checked, I made the GDI wall prerequisite the HunterSeeker node, and it worked!

This post has been edited by jadems: May 16 2007, 05:33 AM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

some more ideas for the Scrin

Units:
Their units are very strong and powerful, but to their disadvantage the most of them have to deploy before using their full strength.
Due to their energy based weapons, deployed units are supported with energy from the Base. (Powered=yes) So if the base is low on power all deployed units shut down and become an easy target. The power consumption of the units shouldn't be very high, so even a big army can deploy and still work. (e.g. Power=-5 to -25 while an energy upgrade [see base] gives about 200 energy)

Base:
the base is almost mobile. Every building is something like a big ship that lands and deploys (using hover logic with a raised floating height).
They only use 4 or 5 different shiptypes to fulfill all needs for a base. To reach that, the deployed Ships can be upgraded. They also can undeploy and move to a different location, but then all upgrades are lost. (someone should test this: Are upgrades sold for undeploy or do they only disappear? Do upgrades even stop undeploying?)
What we would need are then a (in brackets some nameideas for the ships)
Warfactory ship: produces heavy ground units
Barrack ship: trains basic infantry
Carrier ship: landing pad for air units
Conyard ship (Mothership) with 3 main technology research pods. possible upgrades: adv. infantry tech, adv. tank tech, mech tech, air tech, base tech, superweapon
medium sized multipurpose ship (Pontoon) with 3 upgrade pods. upgrades are: energy (replaces the power plant), silo, radar.
Refinery ship (Exploiter,Extractor,Ripper) with 2 upgrade pods for siloupgrades; it also has the carryall ability to carry the corresponding Harvester. (to test if carryall logic and deploy logic works together)

the main problem i see, is the ai, that could get some serious problems with the upgrade based architecture,
and of course the quality of the ships. If they are voxel, the corresponding shp's have to fit.
Another problem is the hover logic in combination with the deploy logic. A hover unit that should deploy, doesn't land before. So the landing animation has to be in the deploying anim. But after undeploying, a hover unit allways starts from the ground, and due to the fact that deploy and undeploy use the same anim, the unit would start fly with deployanim, and then jump to the ground, because now the hover logic begins to ascend the unit. (maybe there is a way to raise the ascending speed of hover units, so it isn't visible anymore, that hover units always start from the ground)

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 16 2007, 02:42 PM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

Holy goodness LKO those are frikkin awesome ideas!

Heh, so the scrin could have starcraft-esque mobile buildings, that's totally amazing!

thank you.
I have this vision in my mind: You start as GDI on a big map with a big Base you call your own. A lot of your units spread all over the map.

Then an incoming message: "Radar centre here, we've recently detected a large fleet of unkown ships already entering the atmosphere. They are approaching this sector and seem to land here"

Then you see how Huge Scrin ships enter the map like Drop Pods do. First 2 or 3 medium sized ships, already as big as the Kodiak-shp. Then the huge Mothership and 3 big support ships land. The medium-sized warships start attacking the player units and the Base ships deploy in a fantastic detailed animation.

While the Player tries to rescue as much units as he can, more and more ships appear and really flood the area. In nothing more than a few minutes the whole sector is controlled by Scrin ships, Mechs, Tanks and Troops.

The first mission is over and the player has nothing left than a heavy damaged Kodiak (my one ) that flees from the sector.

The campaign starts.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 16 2007, 03:06 PM

[Lightstorm]

I like it, Will we be adding scrin as a playable side with its own campaign as well or will it just be GDI and Nod for the campaign?

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

Because third sides always make problems, i would suggest making a GDI-campaign first and replace Nod with Scrin. The explanation could be that Nod is defeated and have better things to do than being slaughtered by aliens. But Nod could help GDI in some missions or you find old bases you can take over.
But do already some mappers said they would make such a campaign. The minimum amount of maps should be 5 imo.
1 invasion
2 retreat (rescue troops, civilians and credits)
3 staying alive (hold and protect a big research facility)
4 research (find out how the scrin work, weak points analysis; missiongoal could be capturing a scrin battlecruiser)
5 counterstrike (strike back and attack the Scrin)

btw due to their superior technology i would suggest making all big Scrin ships not capturable. A dumb engineer wouldn't even know where the door opener is.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 16 2007, 05:22 PM

[Team Black]

one thing I was thinking would be to use the 3rd damage frame for leftover buildings from the last war - like the TD buildings in TS - since none of the TS buildings will really be used in his mod anyways~

This post has been edited by Team Black: May 21 2007, 09:54 PM