Author Topic: [WIP] Warmachine  (Read 5126 times)

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Offline EatThePath

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Warmachine is a mod inspired by and building upon Blue Planet. It's not a new project, having jumped from hard drive to hard drive since the days of Inferno builds. Some people around here have seen bits of it now and again since that time, but it's never really been ready for a public release in that time. I'm making a push to get a working portion of it out soon.

The ideal version of Warmachine is a project with much broader ambition, but what's coming soon is primarily confined to a rework of the Age of Aquarius missions with all new weapons, with a handful of exceptions on capital ship loadouts. Shivan fighters and bombers have been made much more dangerous, the player has been given very fun tools to deal with that danger, and battles in general fill space with colorful, visible fire. While the project is inspired by BP, the story of the technology and world, though only visible in small part in what's being worked on presently, can diverge dramatically from that canon.

A common question that comes up about the mod is if the War in Heaven missions are included. That's not within the immediate scope, redesigning those missions to be playable with the new GTVA arsenal would itself be a huge task, and currently having the UEF tables loaded at the same time as the new Warmachine weapons is technically infeasible due to FSO weapon type limits.

I cut together the above trailer and have been doing a lot of work updating and polishing the mod for modern FSO, but the vision and core work of the mod belongs to my close friend Talhydras. He's not currently active in this community and most likely I'll continue to take point on the public side of things, but he's been in the loop for every step of my effort to polish and publish.


Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline General Battuta

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P E W

 

Offline NeonShivan

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  • By the Omnisiah's grace.
Looks excessive, therefore I love it.
In German even the most beautiful love letter sounds like an execution order -Mito

(•_•)
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( •_•)
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Author of Dusk Wars - A modification for Freespace 2.

 
this sparks my curiosity :)

 

Offline EatThePath

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A little update on progress: Talhydras has ended up working on the project some more and is polishing up some stuff that was out of what I was willing to touch or I had forgotten was even planned. We're still progressing towards getting a tester version ready. If you want to test once it's ready, post or PM me.

One thing I'd like feedback on is weapon information. I've always found it frustrating to come to grips with the arsenal in freespace and dramatic mods doubly so. With multi-lock missiles there's even more info to convey, and there's just not enough room in the loadout screen text box. To that end I'm working on ways to present more information. Eventually, the plan is to do a visual design pass and put this information into the game in loadout screens, but until I've got format locked down and the testing is done I'm not going to go through that. Until then I've got preliminary layouts for them, and I'd love any feedback on if the information in these is useful and/or well presented, and if there's anything missing.

Two primaries:


Two missiles:
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline General Battuta

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I got rid of all the detailed stats in BP in favor of two or three lines of text about the weapon's role. Just tell us what it's for and why it's special. All those numbers are incomprehensible to me.

 

Offline EatThePath

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That's a valid design philosophy, and a perspective I appreciate. For myself however, as a player I don't tend to find that kind of description allows me to be confident in my weapon selection. I'm trying to provide the information that I wish I had when playing a mod, or even FS2 vanilla.

Even so, it's a good reminder to be sure to have good descriptive summaries now that I've given up on trying to cram this information into that loadout textbox.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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Although such things makes balancing much easier, believe me - people just want to know against what this weapon is effective and if it's centered around hull, shields or subsystems damage. And if it has any special features.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2019, 09:02:58 pm by Nyctaeus »
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All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline EatThePath

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I think my response to Battuta applies equally to your comments, Nyctaeus. I'd rather discuss how to do the thing well than if the thing should be done at all.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline EatThePath

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If you haven't been hanging out on the discord you'd be forgiven for thinking this project was out cold, but that is not the case!

Work on Warmachine has seen renewed vigour in the last few months, and the checklist for a release milestone is getting very short. It's not quite ready to go out to testers yet, but it's close. So if you want to test, even if you've said so before, please let me know. Post, reply, get ahold of me on discord, whatever.

The test will include the full campaign of Blue Planet - Age of Aquarius, which is around twenty missions. I imagine anyone voulenteering here will probably have played the original already, but if you haven't that's fine. There's also two stand-alone instant action missions. Ideally you'd be able to play all of this at least once.

An additional item is that ideally you'd be willing to play with a custom FSO build provided by me. Windows only I'm afraid. This is for the multilock missiles features, merged into a nightly from a few months ago. This is not strictly required as the multi-lock features are seperated out into their own optional package, but it is the intended way to play.

Hopefully there'll be a more convient way to get these features before the mod is ready to release, but that's a bridge to be evaluated later.

If you have been hanging out in the discord you may have seen some things exhibited that will not be in this release. Inspiration runs wild at times, but I decided to impose a relative freeze on a branch destined for release. This means that the target for "Ready for launch" moves less, and as a bonus people get to play with certain weapons and effects that they've been asking for since the first early videos of Warmachine. Some prominent parts of the visual landscape will change in later releases, but these classic versions will be out in the wild too! Win-win.

I feel I'd be remiss in not giving any eye-candy with this post, so have some.



Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline EatThePath

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An update to the above: it won't be needed to download a build from me anymore, there's a newer test build to be used. So far it's still not on knossos so it'll need to be manually installed, but it's from a more official source and more up to date with recent bugfixes.

Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline Su-tehp

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Damn, that trailer was awesome so I can't wait to see the final product. :nod: :cool:

(Did I really see a swarm missile weapon target several enemy fighters at once???)
REPUBLICANO FACTIO DELENDA EST

Creator of the Devil and the Deep Blue campaign - Current Story Editor of the Exile campaign

"Let my people handle this, we're trained professionals. Well, we're semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate." --Roy Greenhilt,
The Order of the Stick

"Let´s face it, we Freespace players may not be the most sophisticated of gaming freaks, but we do know enough to recognize a heap of steaming crap when it´s right in front of us."
--Su-tehp, while posting on the DatDB internal forum

"The meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed."
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Damn, that trailer was awesome so I can't wait to see the final product. :nod: :cool:

same

 

Offline EatThePath

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(Did I really see a swarm missile weapon target several enemy fighters at once???)

Oh my yes. If I'm not blanking on something every GTVA missile in the mod uses the new multi-lock features, and it's a blast.

Since those features are still only available on testing builds the mod is designed so you can disable those features if you want to use a regular build, but not much focus has gone into their design in that case.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline Su-tehp

  • Devil in the Deep Blue
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(Did I really see a swarm missile weapon target several enemy fighters at once???)

Oh my yes. If I'm not blanking on something every GTVA missile in the mod uses the new multi-lock features, and it's a blast.

Since those features are still only available on testing builds the mod is designed so you can disable those features if you want to use a regular build, but not much focus has gone into their design in that case.

OMFG, an Infyrno that actually works! Who woulda thunk it?

It's just amazing what people have been able to come up with by modding the Freespace engine.  :eek: ;7 :drevil:
REPUBLICANO FACTIO DELENDA EST

Creator of the Devil and the Deep Blue campaign - Current Story Editor of the Exile campaign

"Let my people handle this, we're trained professionals. Well, we're semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate." --Roy Greenhilt,
The Order of the Stick

"Let´s face it, we Freespace players may not be the most sophisticated of gaming freaks, but we do know enough to recognize a heap of steaming crap when it´s right in front of us."
--Su-tehp, while posting on the DatDB internal forum

"The meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed."
--The Catch 42 Expression, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

 
This looks like some first class anime weaboo and I am happy for it.

 

Offline Su-tehp

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This looks like some first class anime weaboo and I am happy for it.

I have no idea what "weaboo" means, let alone "anime weaboo," but I'm assuming it's a good thing. :p
REPUBLICANO FACTIO DELENDA EST

Creator of the Devil and the Deep Blue campaign - Current Story Editor of the Exile campaign

"Let my people handle this, we're trained professionals. Well, we're semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate." --Roy Greenhilt,
The Order of the Stick

"Let´s face it, we Freespace players may not be the most sophisticated of gaming freaks, but we do know enough to recognize a heap of steaming crap when it´s right in front of us."
--Su-tehp, while posting on the DatDB internal forum

"The meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed."
--The Catch 42 Expression, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

 
Ha ha, that depends on how much you like the circus. :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzXfVgYCxWI

 

Offline EatThePath

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Bringing up Itano is quite appropriate
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

  

Offline Su-tehp

  • Devil in the Deep Blue
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A missile nicknamed the Massacre that can target multiple fighters at once is just too awesome for words.
REPUBLICANO FACTIO DELENDA EST

Creator of the Devil and the Deep Blue campaign - Current Story Editor of the Exile campaign

"Let my people handle this, we're trained professionals. Well, we're semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate." --Roy Greenhilt,
The Order of the Stick

"Let´s face it, we Freespace players may not be the most sophisticated of gaming freaks, but we do know enough to recognize a heap of steaming crap when it´s right in front of us."
--Su-tehp, while posting on the DatDB internal forum

"The meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed."
--The Catch 42 Expression, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast