GLADE's future

[-Archmage-]

Well, Modman, you want to do Magitech expanded, and I sorta did that, maybe the GLADE team can merge my Magitech-Refit with your extended concept.
Magictech-Refit is my mod, and I would love to merge it with your Magitech extended concept, together I think we would have a promising project.

[Fluffy203]

i was thinking something different from glest in its self , basically making a new game based on what we think , but using the glest engine a TOTAL CONVERSION MOD woot  or back to the

Orc's vs Darkeleves/ Gnomes vs Humans or another faction  Thumb Up

[John.d.h]

As much as I love Greek mythology, I'm having trouble imagining how we could make a mod out of it, unless it's this:

I don't like the idea of Greek mythology, because it would end up being the same boring, tired concepts: swordsman, archer, spearman, some kind of monster.  A little lame if you ask me.

...and if that's the route we're going, then I agree completely with this:

i don't want to do something that has been done to the best of its abilites with AOM

... because it would just be a half-assed clone of Age of Mythology.  Why remake a game that did everything right the first time?

I think the other possibility would be something where the gods and titans themselves are fighting each other.  I'm just having a very hard time imagining how that would work in Glest, though.  If somebody has an idea for how that would be feasible (and awesome), then show me and we'll see.

Regarding a "Magitech extended" mod, I'm not so sure that's a good idea.  First of all, I think taking a tech and making it bigger/better is a bit harder to define than making a new one.  My second (and more important in my opinion) objection is that Magitech is a.) someone else's work, b.) pretty darn good, and c.) the original.  Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like it would be like trying to write a new chapter for your favorite book.  When you mess with it, it stops being what it was, and if your changes don't live up to the quality of the original, then you've gone and ruined what used to be a good thing.  I don't know if that explanation really made a lot of sense, but that's the best I can sum up what I think.

I think we need to put together a short list of possibilities, and then do a side-by-side comparison.  So far, I think the ideas we have so far are:

• High fantasy (orcs, dark elves, etc.)
• Retro-future (featuring rocket ships, flying saucers, robots)
• Underwater - Concept is here: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=5092.msg40210#msg40210
  
• Mecha
• Mythology - This concept needs work.
• Magitech expansion

Any more ideas before we start comparing them?

[wciow]

John I've already completed the modeling for the entire vertebrae faction that you posted in another thread.

I 've modeled everything on the list plus a few extra (a jellyfish etc) and uv mapped the lot. I've done a couple of the easier textures as well and completed the basic XML skeleton for the faction  

I've also started the basics for an underwater tileset.

So I would vote to either continue with the Underwater idea or get the GLADE team to jump on board with the Orc mod that me and Fluffy are working on.

[-Archmage-]

UNDERWATER!!! UNDERWATER!!! UNDERWATER!!!

[jda]

I don't like the idea of Greek mythology, because it would end up being the same boring, tired concepts: swordsman, archer, spearman, some kind of monster.  A little lame if you ask me.

If we're doing orcs, y'all may want to keep in mind that you could feed off some of the concepts I've already laid out long before.  I'll post that in the orcs topic.

My original idea was to use Greek mythology creatures/monster as a single faction to pit against any other (two, I think there were two you could pit them against already discussed). And Greek mythology creatures does IMHO beat the crap out of any Orcs faction (no offense, Orcs are great, many have tried/anounced an Orcs faction and none was completed yet, so it will be good someone does do the Orcs... And you could pit them agains the Greek monsters! ).

Well, Modman, you want to do Magitech expanded, and I sorta did that, maybe the GLADE team can merge my Magitech-Refit with your extended concept.
Magictech-Refit is my mod, and I would love to merge it with your Magitech extended concept, together I think we would have a promising project.

There is, at least:
- Magitech Refit by Archmage
- Tech II (which would be followed by Magic II), by Sir Modman I think (much older than Magitech Refit)
- Some other very promising Magitech mod Archmage actually brought up in his Magitech Refit thread
- NOT TO FORGET Titi's modified Magitech (this includes slight stats modification but also at least one new unit: the Evil Dragon (which is promoted from the regular one and looks a lot better too); I think there was actually something other that was new there). AND it is included in MegaGlest which may, in time become the official successor of vanilla Glest (it sure looks like many are looking at it that way).
So... these are just off the top of my head...

If you're going to mod Magitech... you pretty d*mn should make sure it is:
- AWESOME;
- Does NOT exclude GOOD contributions to the project;
- Is, as much as possible, consensual (otherwise I believe it might never actually replace the original Magitech).
I also second everything John.d.h said about this.  

I like the underwater idea a lot. My only fear is it might be too ambitious?
I mean, to be honest, I believe it would work better if it was made by a smaller group of people. Then again... it will be a lot of work.
I just dunno.  
But it would be awesome if it was pulled out!  

[John.d.h]

John I've already completed the modeling for the entire vertebrae faction that you posted in another thread.

I 've modeled everything on the list plus a few extra (a jellyfish etc) and uv mapped the lot. I've done a couple of the easier textures as well and completed the basic XML skeleton for the faction 

I've also started the basics for an underwater tileset.

So I would vote to either continue with the Underwater idea or get the GLADE team to jump on board with the Orc mod that me and Fluffy are working on.

Holy smokes, dude!  All I have is a lousy sea slug (and I'm sure yours probably looks a lot better).


Have you done any work on the Seafolk yet?  I think we need to nail down a good concept for what they should look like before we do too much.  Also, the invertebrate faction needs a few more units to really be complete.  Maybe the jellyfish would make a good light scout unit or something.  Anyway, I'm copying the lists over to Google Docs so I can finish them, and hopefully have them done this afternoon.

I was favoring the high fantasy mod, but with this revelation I'm definitely leaning toward underwater since it's halfway done already and it's something entirely different and (AFAIK) original.  I'll just save the high fantasy ideas for later, since it would make a good "default" tech for GAE (since we need one that takes advantage of the advanced features).

[Fluffy203]

I don't like the underwater idea like jda said way to ambitious and doesn't seem that interesting to me . The one that i'm mostly leaning towards is the retro idea i've been doing something thinking on it , its not to ambitious and weird , but yet it can be an awesome type of game like battlefield heros style or team fortress 2 style it would be the perfect mod that would be a TC mod 

[John.d.h]

Too ambitious?  Why do you say that?  If you're talking about doing a total conversion, anything is going to be ambitious.  Besides, Wciow's already done a lot of the work that it needs.  I'm still open to the retro-future idea, but my main problem is that I don't know if a lot of people would want to play it.  I'm not ruling anything out, but retro-future by definition has to be as campy as possible, and I'm not sure a lot of people would go for that.

Anyway, here are some WIP unit lists for the two underwater factions:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhhbjfnq_33cd7x3gcj
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhhbjfnq_34c3c7xt54

[Fluffy203]

I don't wanna play with a sea slug no offense that just doesn't come to me as awesome , but retro future has so much potential , i wonder how you got the tile-set to work cause i made a space tile-set and it was gimped , but back to the piont i would love to work on a retro future game way more than underwater just seems more awesome   

[ElimiNator]

I wonder how you got the tile-set to work cause i made a space tile-set and it was gimped.

What do you mean Gimped? and youve seen my space tileset, right?

[Fluffy203]

well i kept having all transparent outsides of the tile it was weird 

[John.d.h]

I don't wanna play with a sea slug no offense that just doesn't come to me as awesome

Any ideas for how to make it more awesome?

i would love to work on a retro future game way more than underwater just seems more awesome   

I think they both have a lot of potential to be really cool.

[Fluffy203]

Btw not hating on your sea slug it does look really good =) , but i mean there are many way's , but now i'm dead set on the retro-futre cause that just seems like it would be awesome i mean with the like that one mod humans vs aliens something like that would be awesome set back in the 1940's with aliens attacking just seems like it would be fun , but what are you trying to go for on the underwater thing?

[jda]

Too ambitious?  Why do you say that?

The question was directed at Fluffy but he did paraphrase me so...

In an underwater mod:
1. Most units will be air units and to actually make it look any good, they'll be flying/swimming at different levels/heights. Now make them interact! Man, I'd be dying of an headache if I was to solve that!
2. The tilesets must be completely different too. Wciow started doing one but I guess at least two or three should be made to make the mod more appealing.
3. Obviously rain and snow make no sense - they must be turned off at all times (not just in scenarios). Bubbles on the other hand are basically a must (and very different from rain and snow).
4. Particle effects like those of Megaglest would probably be useful to have the units make "waves" and bubbles in the water. Furthermore, projectiles' particles and splashes might include "fire" (such as underwater explosions) but should extend to making waves (completely different particle system) underwater.
5. Different kinds of water (clarity, color) would be nice.

Ok, so you don't have to implement all of that but still... The physics of that mod are not the same as those implemented in Glest! And I think at the very least, of the above, it will look really crappy if units all swim at the same level (plus a few more crawling on the bottom) and to make them interact at different levels (which you can easily model but AFAIK will have a very tough time making them interact (and make those interactions look good) apropriately) will almost make it impossible IMHO, at least without major code changes.

[Fluffy203]

I agree it does seem to be trivial , but i really want this to go retro for sure lol 

[John.d.h]

@jda: Hmm... interesting perspective.  I'm not sure what to make of it just yet.

@Fluffy: Well, what I meant by retro-future wasn't so much like Tucho's aborted Alien Invasion mod (although making something like that would still be pretty cool), but more like the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers sci-fi shows from back in the day, where guys with jet packs fought aliens that looked like guys in rubber bug suits.  For reference: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RaygunGothic.

what are you trying to go for on the underwater thing?

Basically, there are two factions.  The first is the underwater empire of the Seafolk (working title), which are something like the Locathah or Sahuagin (but I'm picturing a more humanoid face).  Their enemies are a race of mentally-superior beings called overlords.  Their numbers are few, but they use mind-control to enslave other Invertebrate creatures to fight for them.

[Fluffy203]

I think we should do something like tucho's alien invasion , something similar i was thinking a cartoonish but yet serious style , but we could do it more of a realistic graphic if you would want to. 

[madmanntis]

  Wow... this thread has really gone running from when I last read it a few days ago....

I enjoy almost every option put forward, and would enjoy seeing GLADE go forward with any one of them. I hope that this time around, I will be able to throw in some random help... be it texturing, animating, modelling or even the dreaded uv-mapping.

I was reading and I wondered... what if GLADE sort of mashed several concepts together? You could really have several aquatic kingdoms/races and create a sort of original, high-fantasy, underwater universe. You could have a couple races of sea-dwellers (perhaps two rival, underwater kingdoms/races) and if you really wanted you could have a race of some kind of mech intruders (John.d.h, was there not a third mech/human tech in the original underwater mod discussion? I seem to remember there being one, but I can't find the thread to check whether I am merely restating old ideas or coming up with new ones ).

For a bonus of compromising-ness... you could make the mech/intruder tech somewhat retro sci-fi.

[Fluffy203]

lol i'll take this as a compliment

Shocked Wow... this thread has really gone running from when I last read it a few days ago....

, i just don't like the whole idea of underwater with this mod , thats it , but i think if we went retro scifi then we could implement or comprimise with this humans vs outerspace aliens vs underwater aliens. basically Humans vs USO's (which are supposedly real) vs UFO's , but we would give them cool names and make them all look freaking sweet to play and have their own unique features can we compromise like that ?

[Hectate]

Madmanntis: The idea your thinking of that had technology and fantasy combined with underwater was my 3-faction mod concept. The one being discussed here was entirely John's independent idea that, as you've noticed, didn't have those tech elements.

Since I'm not able to actively participate I've minimized my participation in the discussion, which is why I didn't bring my underwater mod up and "to the surface", so to speak. I did mention the mechwarrior mod (which some took as japanese anime mecha/gundam but I meant more as the American videogame series), merely because I wanted to gauge the potential interest in the idea.

Edit: Also, given the diversity of ideas presented here - a compromise mod incorporating all/most of them would be very awkward in many ways.

[modman]

Regarding a "Magitech extended" mod, I'm not so sure that's a good idea.  First of all, I think taking a tech and making it bigger/better is a bit harder to define than making a new one.  My second (and more important in my opinion) objection is that Magitech is a.) someone else's work, b.) pretty darn good, and c.) the original.  Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like it would be like trying to write a new chapter for your favorite book.  When you mess with it, it stops being what it was, and if your changes don't live up to the quality of the original, then you've gone and ruined what used to be a good thing.  I don't know if that explanation really made a lot of sense, but that's the best I can sum up what I think.

I completely understand, but I personally don't care as long as I like the book and the quality is not that inferior.  I'll just enjoy reading it!

I could see how others would feel differently, but my only concern would be the quality.

I also would like to point out that we could include underwater units in Magitech extended.  That was actually part of the plan, but the topic I showed preceded the engine's underwater field.

[Fluffy203]

No offense , but i wanna get away from the roots of glest and do something different not a magitech extended . Don't we already have a four path magitech???

[-Archmage-]

What's it?

[John.d.h]

I'm currently working on a concept that merges Underwater and High Fantasy.  I'll post it soon.