Sci-fi Pack - Industarons BETA

[Mr War]

been doing some invading!

(click to show/hide)

Martians advance through debris of tripods

[Zoythrus]

wait, since when are flying saucers made of kevlar?

[Mr War]

wait, since when are flying saucers made of kevlar?

oh, for a couple of weeks now man. Kevlar is the new thing

(I'm building in compatibility to other Sci-fi factions I may add so need common armor and resource structures. I don't want too many armor types)

[Mr War]

Beta uploaded to Github. Click Download button:

DOWNLOAD HERE
WEBSITE HERE

[ultifd]

Can I re-upload it somewhere else? Github is awesome! (although 7z would be much better)But, once a commit or change is made it'll be kinda bad...
EDIT: Sorry I couldn't wait...  Did a lot of "research" on file hosting sites, found lots of good alternatives. I'll make a guide later. This one is called kiwi6, has a 100MB limit per file but it has unlimited storage and supports real hotlinking/direct linking.
DOWNLOAD 7z HERE stats
Hope you don't mind...

[will]

Can I re-upload it somewhere else? Github is awesome! (although 7z would be much better)But, once a commit or change is made it'll be kinda bad...
Hope you don't mind...

Well for penance you can make a fancy video of Martians and of Imperial for you excellent video channel

Really, the commit or change thing will be handled quite well.  I'll put all the experimental stuff that Mr War sends me into a development branch out of the way until its ready for release.

So everyone taking their copy from github master is absolutely the right thing to be doing.  It will go pear-shaped when you don't update your snapshot when Mr War moves from beta to version 1.0.

http://williame.github.com/glest-sci-fi-pack/martians/status.html is an interesting page, complete with wish-list for the engine....

[ultifd]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Well, 7z is still better in terms of size.
Hmm the link should actually be https://github.com/williame/glest-sci-fi-pack/zipball/master though, right? This is the correct directory, or should it be "sci-fi pack"? Perhaps you guys should move the license file inside that folder...
Hopefully one day git will support 7z.

[will]

7z is still better in terms of size.

The mod is tiny as it is.  Mr War is allegedly kind of low-poly in person too

[ultifd]

It is tiny, but 5.XX MB < 10.XX MB, which actually makes it > . Even if it just saves some seconds...~10 secs in my case. Others will be even faster, or slower.
How about my question?
Awesome models/mod and particles. I don't have the time to actually try it out today, but everything looks good, mostly. (There's some black outlines on the Mothership? that doesn't look too good.) Also the laser turret's armor is really...strong. Is there a reason for this? I feel like it'll take tons of units just to destroy it.  
I'm trying to match a tileset to this faction. Currently the other Mars faction has a "redrock" tileset, but it doesn't match. I think the moon tileset does, a bit more than the winter tilesets/christmas. Green Dawn Martian Invasion is invading...the moon? Hmm...This faction vs the Moon faction?
edit: and for some reason the chemical trooper can't harm workers that are right in front of them...

[Ishmaru]

I didn't see the alien tanks in your unit list. Did you remove them?

[Mr War]

The tank evolved into the assault tripod, but space tanks will be part of the next faction I'm adding.

Ultifd, never had that prob but sometimes the assault tripod 'misses' the target. Try re-selecting or moving and reselecting

[ultifd]

Assault tripod? I was just mainly talking about two things so far:
1.) Try having a worker standing right next to a chemical trooper when it attacks, no damage. Once the worker moves, then it does damage. If by assault tripod you mean the chemcial trooper, then yeah it does miss sometimes. But only in this case, usually...I think. I guess I need to test more. I think the only other time it would miss would be if you had any fast units.
2.) I feel the laser turret's armor might be too strong. Imagine if someone turtled with them...  

[Mr War]

The missing thing seems to be due to the 'bullets' going under the target, am looking into it.

The laser turret it strong but has never made my bases invincible against an ultra or mega. Flying saucers work well against them as does swarm attacks.

[John.d.h]

The missing thing seems to be due to the 'bullets' going under the target, am looking into it.

Just a guess, but this might have something to do with the height specified in the target unit's xml.  Maybe they're shooting for a height where there is nothing but air.

[wciow]

Another nice faction Mr War. 

I like the binary particle effects when calling in an assualt tripod and the particle effects look good on all the models. The whole faction hangs together well with a coherent style. 

The things that most needs changing is the walking animation for the assualt tripod. It kinda looks like its swimming thru air rather than lumbering like a heavy walker.

Hopefully the next release will be even more awesome!

[will]

I too found the turret too strong.

But it should start out without the shield and the shield is an upgrade.

If anyone looked at the status page, I've asked for help making a nice particle for the halo.  Any kind people out there?  And recommendations for simple free graphics editors that can do nice gradiant fill and opacity rings and things?

Has anyone done turrets before in glest?

[ElimiNator]

I use the GIMP for everything, also what do you mean by turret?

Wikipedia says this is a turret:

[John.d.h]

Turret in this case would mean a stationary, rotating structure.  For xml reference, Tech's Air Ballista should show you how it's done.

[ultifd]

Feedback

• First of all the flying saucer sound is really annoying. Please find an alternative for it. Now I hate "weeweweeeweee..." sound
  
• Black lines on mothership looks bad
• Production speed on a lot of units needs to be quicker. Especially the workers. Other units include the chemical trooper and the martian trooper
• Mod needs lots of balancing...hard to get into sepcifics but basically it's the assault tripod and the flying saucer that needs to be balanced or weakened
• Laser turret definitely needs to be weakened. AT LEAST half of the armor it currently has, or maybe 25%. But like will said, first of it should have two attack modes. One without the shield and with the shield. So maybe first mode is 25% of what it's armor has now, and 2nd mode is 50 percent. Not sure if you should scrap the turret base though. And we'll still have to see... Currently if you play multiplayer games against other humans, and if they turtle it's going to be real bad. Even the cpus have maybe 7 turrets and it takes a lot of time to kill them.

Can't think of anything more...or I forgot.

[Mr War]

Thanks for sharing the videos, that's really cool man.

So, list of things to do:

• Refine some textures with black lines
• Redo assault tripod legs and make it taller
• Fix missing bullets issue
• Reduce strength of turret
• Change sounds on saucer
• Speed up done build times

Turret base and shield on/off is more complex, will think on it.

bullets-Ultifd

[ultifd]

Always a pleasure, mostly. 

Reduce strength of turret

And its armor.

Turret base and shield on/off is more complex, will think on it.

Well, I think that would help balance it a bit. For now you could just have an animation for turning on the shield, right? The animation would occur when people upgrade their turrets. So like a upgraded defense tower, like in Japanese.

[will]

Love the vids ultifd! I haven't had such big battles, and focused on assault tripods, so hadn't noticed that a screenful of saucers can make you feel ill!

Thanks all for the kind words on the particles, but really its Mr War's models and the way build animations come in from outer space that is so super cool, right?

I like to take the workers close to the enemy base and have them start building beacons there.  Its not perhaps a good strategy, but it pleases me.

The air-ballista is a technician that morphs, right?  And the laser turret is a building that morphs.  Slightly different; how does this affect strategy?

[Mr War]

Re turret building. If it's a unit the AI player morphs the units as soon as it's built them so it clutters up the meeting point of the unit producing building. If it's a building as we did, the the AI builds them in it's base.

[ultifd]

Re turret building. If it's a unit the AI player morphs the units as soon as it's built them so it clutters up the meeting point of the unit producing building. If it's a building as we did, the the AI builds them in it's base.

Oh.  

Thanks all for the kind words on the particles, but really its Mr War's models and the way build animations come in from outer space that is so super cool, right?

Actually it's both! At least that's what I, titi, and tomreyn felt.

I like to take the workers close to the enemy base and have them start building beacons there.  Its not perhaps a good strategy, but it pleases me.

That's a good strategy actually, although I feel that the assault tripods' armor and attack might need to be lowered a bit, once the turret is weakened.

The air-ballista is a technician that morphs, right?  And the laser turret is a building that morphs.  Slightly different; how does this affect strategy?

I don't know, I just know that Japanese has their two defense towers, and that it seemed OK with the AI. I guess that would need some testing.

Are you going to create a ModDB page for this? I'm planning to submit the megaglest engine to it.

[Omega]

Are you going to create a ModDB page for this? I'm planning to submit the megaglest engine to it.

Wiki first, ModDB later. After all, the wiki is the first result when googling "glest mods" (in fact, it's the first three links).