Say hello to Eaglestone!

[Hectate]

UPDATE: Eaglestone is currently on indefinite hold until features to support the design are readily available. See later posts in this thread for details. Thank you. -Hectate

Hello everyone. You may have seen a few of my posts around the forums the last few days. As you can see I go by Hectate. I have been playing games for as long as I can remember (ever use a C64?) and modding and creating for them as far back as Doom, and even Duke Nukem (not 3D, the original). In a more recent age I've modded HL and HL2. I am 26, married, and have a beautiful little girl. Unfortunately that means I have less free time, so development will be slow, sorry. The good news is that mod zero (as I jokingly call it) is well on its way!

Eaglestone
Overview:

In an alternate history, alchemists have somehow figured out how to turn otherwise ordinary rock into floating monoliths. This floating rock is known as Eaglestone, and it is used in a great variety of applications. One particular use involves building vessels around eaglestone, or with frames intergrated with the material. As a result, naval history is written from the perspective of airships instead of boats. This mod visits various strategic battles throughout this period, which is reminiscent of the late 1700's to early 1800's. Sail power is still viable and popular, but steam engines are coming around and ironclad ships are being built as well.

Build an armada and lead them to victory!

Features:

-1. Completely new, independent tech/faction tree (60% complete)
-2. Redesigned resource system (100% complete)
-3. Eaglestone-specific tilesets and maps (25% complete)
-4. Battles and tactics on a larger, grander scale (75% complete)
-5. Unit and player variety through a specialized upgrade system (10% complete)
-6. Free! (100% always!)

Designer notes:

My primary goal when designing this mod was to give me an opportunity to practice all the necessary mod-making skills for Glest. Modelling, texturing, animating, exporting, xml coding, map-making, and balancing were all fields I wanted to touch upon. While I had a good amount of experience in several of these fields, I had not done it in while either. In the future I plan to put up a "Glest Modding 101 (or Everything I Learned About Modding Glest from Eaglestone)" series of tutorials.
My secondary goal was to produce a mod that was different from the normal, and that I would enjoy to play. I am admittedly a poor RTS player. Yes, I lose to CPU. With more practice on a specific game I get better, obviously, but I am not so great at micro-managing and heavy multi-tasking. Despite this, I still enjoy playing them (strange, yes?). With that in mind, I designed Eaglestone to be simpler than standard Glest. With the other variations I've introduced, however, I feel that it still contains a significant depth to make it enjoyable. I suppose that will be for you to decide though.

Screenshots and additional information will be coming soon. Thanks for your time and interest.

[Fluffy203]

Great to get some history on you and nice to meet you in i hope that i can see your mod grow,evolve and of course play 

[assassin]

This looks like it's going to be really good!
Could we have a few screenshots please?

[Hectate]

I wasn't going to release any just yet, but I do have one on my thumbdrive to upload (at work ATM). I figure that "Pics or it didn't happen" is a fairly solid philosophy, 

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/eaglestone1.jpg[/img]This is a screenshot of an early map and tileset test. The tileset shown is actually Dark Forest (IIRC), but I'm working on a tropical island set for this map, Archipelago.  You can see one of the new units, a Galleon in the  image.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/shipyard2.jpg[/img]This is the shipyard. It is the direct replacement for the Castle in magitech. The image is from g3dviewer, but the model/unit is completely functional ingame. It has two states, idle and building. The image shown is in it's building state.

[Fluffy203]

sweet looking can't wait to play

[assassin]

Sweet 

[Hectate]

For the curious, here is a fresh screenshot of today's work.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/eaglestone2.jpg[/img]
This was from the updated tileset. As you can see I'm experimenting with clouds, as well as various alterations to the terrain height as well. Trial and error seems to be the road to progress.

[Fluffy203]

I like the idea of the clouds , are they going to be units or just a a.i path moving ?

[MadElf]

I think those clouds are actually the Flying stones.
If they are why don't you try to make them like in WoW.
Awesome ideas! We have had loads of new awesome mods latelly!

[John.d.h]

You could probably make the clouds a lot more complex-looking if you used planes and transparency, so that way you would have very few polygons but could make them look like just about anything.  The only problem would be compensating for the camera angles.

[Fluffy203]

thats exactly what i was going to say ,but i think they are going to be units and not an actually ambient being

[Omega]

(ever use a C64?)

A commodore 64? Are you kidding me man, that's not old, that's ancient.

The mod itself looks interesting, though with how much you've done, I would like to see a unit tree... I can only see 2 different units in the pics. The tileset thing looks good though (or is it all in the map? You spoke about using Dark Forest...).

Anyway, keep up the good work!

[Hectate]

Concerning clouds, it's even simpler than anybody's attempted to figure. It's just a different model on the tileset for object 1 (normally trees). The image above was a test for using a mesh-based cloud. Today I experimented with a simpler, sprite-style cloud (two poly model, flat).

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/cloud1.jpg[/img][img]http://www.netlate.com/img/cloud2.jpg[/img]These two images show this new cloud style test during day and night. Notice how certain clouds are dark during the day and light during the night? I puzzled over that for a little while, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which ones were dark vs. light. I finally discovered that somehow (during export, blender, or just glest? dunno) the faces' normals got turned funny. Below is a g3dviewer image showing that the normals are parallel to the ground.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/cloud3.jpg[/img]Since Glest randomly rotates objects when placing them, some normals were facing the sun during the day and others during the night, I'll fix this and see what happens.

I'm not positive I like this style either. I'll try giving them more defined edges on the texture so Glest doesn't just turn them into blobs as you can see above. I was also considering a more defined mesh style as John recommended, it'll just depend.

Actual gameplay elements (more units, etc) will be forthcoming. As noted before, the mod is a bit different from normal Glest, so don't expect the usual. 

[MadElf]

Do they move?

[-Archmage-]

Wow sound great

i'm looking forward to playing this mod

[Hectate]

Do they move?

Negative. Since they're just replacing regular "objects" in the map, they're completely static once generated and placed by Glest in the map.

[MadElf]

Do they move?

Negative. Since they're just replacing regular "objects" in the map, they're completely static once generated and placed by Glest in the map.

Oh, well, if you find a way of making moving things on tilesets, I'll be really interestec, since I got some a idea of making wild animals for tilesets like birds, deers and others.

[Hectate]

The only thing that comes to my mind is creating a special faction and scenario. Use animal models to create units that have only move and stop skills (and die, I suppose). Then create a scenario file that places them throughout the map when the player loads that level. Unfortunately that would require the winning player to find and slay all the animals to "beat" the faction - although I suppose a scenario file could create an alternative winning condition? (I haven't used them yet).

That makes me think of a completely new mod idea! Perhaps someone else wants to pick it up. We could call it Predator or Extreme! Hunting! Glest! Give each player 1-2 units only that cannot attack each other (via teams, perhaps) and the goal is to earn the most points by killing the animal faction units - with more points for big game vs. small game (elephants and lions vs. squirrels and rabbits).

I think it deserves it's own thread for brainstorming. lol

[MadElf]

Lol, I already thought about everthing, even making something MMORPG like where a "hero" on the faction has to kill the animals or trolls, demons, dragons and other things like that.
But I'm trying to make the Tileset objects move, so they are part of the Tileset, not a scenario, still, is being complicated.

[Hectate]

A little bit of data on the current state of Eaglestone's units. In-game stats are not included since they will still change greatly as I tweak balance and other features.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/galleon1.jpg[/img]Galleon
190 Verticies
194 Faces
Teamcolor
Non-animated
My first model for Glest. I could probably re-model and re-skin it to look better than it's current state, but it looks acceptable ingame, so I consider it complete for the time being. The Galleon is the fastest ship, but not particularly strong. It is well suited for scouting, early perimeter establishment, and hit and run attacks.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/ironside1.jpg[/img]Ironside
144 Verticies
86 Faces
Teamcolor
Non-animated
My second model for Glest. This one, as well as the Galleon, was designed for broadside attacks before I realized that, in Glest, all units turn to face the direction of attack. Since redesigning the attack code is currently not an option, I will need to re-skin this one. The Ironside is very strong, but obviously it is also slow. It can take quite a beating, and dish one out in return. It is best used as the core of a combined, orchestrated attack force. It serves well in a defensive role also.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/shipyard2.jpg[/img]Shipyard
282 Verticies
154 Faces
Alpha
Non-animated
This model is not animated, but it switches between a construction or idle state (which are just 2 versions of the same model anyway). During the construction state it has a metal scaffolding/frame inside. During the idle state it is empty. Due to the use of alpha, it does not have teamcolor. I didn't feel it was important since it's fairly easy to tell if it's not your shipyard. The shipyard is the construction point for all units and upgrades, as well as being the only resource storage available. At this point, each player gets one (I'll be testing to see if 2 is better for the game) and it is the only stationary structure in the game.

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[img]http://www.netlate.com/img/barge1.jpg[/img]Barge
712 Verticies
320 Faces
Teamcolor
Will be animated
A model that is currently a work in progress. It will be animated when I'm satisfied with the condition of the skin - which is to say not yet. It's average speed and low armor make it ill-suited for battle, but a smart player will keep a few around to repair any ships that manage a retreat or raid. Since production resources are heavily limited, every ship is an investment to protect through the use of a repair unit. It is the only unit that does not have a ranged attack, but it can defend itself at point-blank if the need arises.

I intend to have another unit to announce soon as well. Thanks!

[assassin]

Those all look very good  .

[ElimiNator]

Looks good but on screen shot the Galleon looks a bit small? (the size of a man?)

[@kukac@]

I'm not sure about, if a galleon is a "fast" ship for hit and run (as I remember, they were the largest military ships around XVI-XVII, with around 80 cannons).

[Hectate]

Looks good but on screen shot the Galleon looks a bit small? (the size of a man?)

Yes, but the scale is different in Eaglestone. There's no reason to have a standard sized unit (in eaglestone) take up more space than necessary. By having smaller units of the same relative scale, it's possible to fit more on-screen at a time without having to use GAE or altered view/zoom code. Since I'm creating new models, tilesets, etc I only have to make sure that everything is to the new scale.

Additionally, I'm not adverse to somebody else using or learning from my work. If somebody wants the .blend file for something for their own use, just ask. I can easily re-scale the model as well, if somebody wants to use it in regular Glest or something.

I'm not sure about, if a galleon is a "fast" ship for hit and run (as I remember, they were the largest military ships around XVI-XVII, with around 80 cannons).

Yes, galleons were the heavy guns in a naval war - usually known as a "Ship of the Line" (the line of battle). I chose that name because, when initially modeling it, it was the first type of a sailing warship that came to mind. I have looked over a number of resources - wikipedia articles on naval, maritime, and sailing history, books from the library (as a note, child picture books are a great resource for detailed images of things like this) - and I haven't hit a name yet that I'm satisfied with so Galleon has stuck so far.
Ironically (no pun intended), the Ironside is another that I haven't changed - they were actually called "Ironclad" instead. The USS Ironsides was an actual boat that, like the Merrimac and the Monitor, was "ironclad". That reminds me that my wish-list of features includes turrets and broadsides, by the way.

I am inclined to think however, that since the friction of water on the hull of a ship is the major limiting factor of speed (hence the invention of hydrofoil hulls), a "sailboat" that has no contact with the denser (than air) water would move faster than otherwise. Unfortunately the physics of sailing involve water and wind, or else you could only move with the wind. For the mod, I'll just ascribe additional properties to the mythical substance known as eaglestone. 

[@kukac@]

Will the mod support land units, or it will be only for naval war (which sound quite refreshing )?