Forged Alliance Forever

Re: FA general modding questions

2020-05-17T21:23:54+02:00

MattyWS wrote:
What you describe is actually the opposing opinions of TA Players. They call it "icon wars". They like the be zoomed into the battles. TA has a megamap with minimal overview information which is what I did to the icons in my mod. The idea is to not play the game of icon wars and bring it back to the way TA played. supcome battles close up were kinda lame compared to TA, units didn't feel grounded, they felt holographic and floaty. with my changes I ground the units, making them feel a little more.... grizzly... I guess. No one wants to see the clash of hundreds of tiny floaty hologram tanks, so I make them not look floaty, holographic and increase the sizes, they suddenly feel tough. I wanna see *that* clash, hundreds of *those* tanks fighting is interesting.

One of the other complaints was the sounds in supcom seem more like lots of lasers, while TA sounded more explosive. I'm no sound designer though so I wouldn't be able to fix this fast.

Anyway, the fact that you find "winning" to be the only fun thing about the game surely suggests the game isn't fun.

Hi MattyWS, I have seen your screenshots here and on TAUniverse and I am really impressed!

Do you have any plans to share this mod? I would really love to play this with my friend and we both think the units are too small..

Thanks!

Statistics: Posted by neagix — 17 May 2020, 21:23

Re: FA general modding questions

2018-10-18T17:22:01+02:00

What you describe is actually the opposing opinions of TA Players. They call it "icon wars". They like the be zoomed into the battles. TA has a megamap with minimal overview information which is what I did to the icons in my mod. The idea is to not play the game of icon wars and bring it back to the way TA played. supcome battles close up were kinda lame compared to TA, units didn't feel grounded, they felt holographic and floaty. with my changes I ground the units, making them feel a little more.... grizzly... I guess. No one wants to see the clash of hundreds of tiny floaty hologram tanks, so I make them not look floaty, holographic and increase the sizes, they suddenly feel tough. I wanna see *that* clash, hundreds of *those* tanks fighting is interesting.

One of the other complaints was the sounds in supcom seem more like lots of lasers, while TA sounded more explosive. I'm no sound designer though so I wouldn't be able to fix this fast.

Anyway, the fact that you find "winning" to be the only fun thing about the game surely suggests the game isn't fun.

Statistics: Posted by MattyWS — 18 Oct 2018, 17:22

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-26T14:29:38+02:00

The fun is in winning the game
After watching units shoot each other 100s of times its not that novel anymore.
People can imagine the scene happening based on the icon movement.

The main thing the icons are for is simple information transfer.
We need to get as much information about the battlefield with a single glance as possible.
With your simple icons nobody knows what they're up against unless they zoom in.
Just imagine having to constantly zoom in on each new unit to make sure you know what you're up against. shiver..

This could be nice for casual gameplay where you can be zoomed in to witness the glory of battle.
But in competitive gameplay it would be awfull.

The strategic zoom is one of, if not the biggest, strength of SupCom. Removing it or reducing it to what you made, would make the game half as good as it is now. In my opinion.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 26 May 2017, 14:29

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-26T14:05:18+02:00

Aha yea my mod seems to have gone in the opposite direction to Advanced Strategic Icons. The way I see it, zoom should be used to see an overall view of the battlefield but it shouldn't so so detailed that you could play the whole game zoomed out. Where's the fun in that?

Statistics: Posted by MattyWS — 26 May 2017, 14:05

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-25T21:57:00+02:00

Making the strategic icons easier to understand is actually something that a lot of people would appreciate.
The advanced strategic icons mod already does a lot in that regard but opinions differ on the design choices of the mod author.

Statistics: Posted by PhilipJFry — 25 May 2017, 21:57

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-25T21:41:15+02:00

Ok ! Good job and as we can say for many in this forum, thanks for sharing your passion and your skills for the FA community !

Statistics: Posted by Franck83 — 25 May 2017, 21:41

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-25T13:57:16+02:00

Franck83 wrote:
My ultimate goal here is to Bring FA to a standard people can call TA2!

What kind of features do you wanna bring to FA ?

Hopefully not many new features actually, I'll mostly be editing textures and scaling units/buildings/features up. I've also edited the strategic icons, which may not be something FA fans would like, but I've reduced the amount of icons to about 6 types; building, factory, air unit, land/sea unit, commander and experimental. The major complaint from TA fans was that SUPCOM was reduced to 'icon wars'. Now that I've scaled up units and simplified icons that's no longer the case, as you can zoom in and actually clearly see units (and what team they're on with team colours).

I will indeed be doing cybran next, I like their style but I need to up the unit and building sizes and maybe make the team colour a little more visible. Same goes for the other two factions. It's a huge task but it's easy and mindless so I don't mind doing it in my spare time.

I'd like eventually for this to be the foundation of TA-ish mods, as I'm sure many TA modders would love to do.

EDIT: Example of the simplified icons;

Statistics: Posted by MattyWS — 25 May 2017, 13:57

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T23:59:11+02:00

That screenshot looks amazing. Do Cybran next!

Statistics: Posted by Zeldafanboy — 24 May 2017, 23:59

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T23:20:02+02:00

Talking about this, TA was exactly the model of a well done modding stuff and tutorials, that complete 20 years now !!

Statistics: Posted by vongratz — 24 May 2017, 23:20

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T22:01:02+02:00

My ultimate goal here is to Bring FA to a standard people can call TA2!

What kind of features do you wanna bring to FA ?

Statistics: Posted by Franck83 — 24 May 2017, 22:01

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T21:03:19+02:00

Very Nice matty. I Love it ! You can make your light dynamic too since shaders are realtime rendered.

Statistics: Posted by Franck83 — 24 May 2017, 21:03

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T20:25:51+02:00

models have a proprietary scm format. enjoy.
there is a plugin for 3ds max which converts lets you model in it. its buggy. i dont know where to get one. ask biass he should have one.
there is a plugin for blender which lets you model in it. its also buggy, i feel this one is less buggy. its on github. somewhere. i also have it.

Obviously something , despite of the bugs , works, so, can someone provide exactly the combinations of programs versions and plugins that worked, and a dumb tutorial to do new units? Can someone tried other progs thamn Blender / Studio?

Statistics: Posted by vongratz — 24 May 2017, 20:25

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T19:58:00+02:00

Thanks. ^^ SUPCOM2 actually was very visually pleasing but gameplay wise I think most people considered FA to be more like TA in gameplay. I did consider doing the opposite to supcom2 (making it play like TA or FA) but it seems less moddable. and maps aren't as big. My ultimate goal here is to Bring FA to a standard people can call TA2!

Statistics: Posted by MattyWS — 24 May 2017, 19:58

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T14:52:47+02:00

It reminds me of supcom2

Statistics: Posted by Farmsletje — 24 May 2017, 14:52

Re: FA general modding questions

2017-05-24T14:15:29+02:00

Wow that is quite the graphical change, cool work man!

Statistics: Posted by EcoNoob — 24 May 2017, 14:15