Messages

31

Design / Re: Alien Tank designs ideas and proposals

« on: May 14, 2012, 03:39:54 pm »

Modeling is a different skills area than creating designs.

Perhaps but you are just as likely to find this creative design skill in a modeler as a painter, so why have the middleman then? Where 2D art is truly needed is in texture maps and gui graphics IMHO.

For concepts, what is mainly useful is a list from the primary developers (those with commit access and who are still active on the forum) of general requirements/preferences as to how the end result needs to look in order to qualify for inclusion in the game. The list can be very short and vague or long and detailed depending on the preferences of the primary developers.

32

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 14, 2012, 02:05:26 am »

I don't think we're in disagreement there. All I meant is regardless of how resources are split between phalanx and local militaries, there must be tremendous military expansion in general. Because you are going from this utopian world with stable nations and no conflicts to a terrifying years-long interplanetary war.

Early in the game, when you show up at a sighting you should see light alien recon groups doing strange shit to defenseless civilians. But as months and years go by, you should see more and more of heavy local military forces already engaging the aliens by the time your dropship gets there. And your funding should be increasing at the same time. And of course the aliens should be getting more numerous and better equipped at an even faster pace.

33

Artwork / Re: license discussion

« on: May 14, 2012, 01:47:02 am »

They don't benefit from it. But now ask yourself the opposite--

How are open source projects harmed by their content being used for profit by someone else? They aren't harmed either.


Should we stop breathing because the carbon dioxide we exhale will most likely end up profiting some plant-life far away which we don't own? What if that plant-life happens to be someone else's wheat field and he makes a profit from it?

34

Coding / Re: Skeletal Animation - Info

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:39:26 am »

Monthly update for March, 2012

    converted the UFO:AI project to C++

With this and the recent release of the doom 3 source code in mind, maybe the skeletal animation implementation of iodoom3 would be a better example/candidate?

35

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:33:06 am »

That's what I mean; during the course of the game you should see some serious funding increases and huge force deployments to combat the aliens, even if it isn't there at game start. You shouldn't be the only one fighting this war in the sky or on the ground.

36

Artwork / Re: license discussion

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:24:40 am »

I do not understand what it is (forgive me my English is to google)

Basically what I meant was-- if you don't intend to make money off of a work of art you have done, then don't concern yourself with whether or not someone else might make money from it. Instead just think about what your goal is in creating and offering it the open source community and make sure that personal goal is met.

37

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:01:13 am »

But the game plays out over a number of years, which especially during wartime allows dramatic changes in economics. Both time and motivation are on the side of tremendous and rapid military expansion.

Just look at the rapid militarization of nations leading up to and during the second world war and multiply that times the terror of a sudden, vicious, technologically superior extraterrestrial invasion.

38

Artwork / Re: license discussion

« on: May 13, 2012, 09:39:36 pm »

I never understood why so many of my fellow artists are sent into a mental tailspin by the idea that someone, somewhere out there could use your GPL content to scam a handful of really dumb people out of probably insignificant money. You did the work for free and thousands of people have enjoyed it for free, perhaps thereby becoming inspired to make free contributions that you in turn will enjoy. Who cares what happens beyond this?

Either make a piece of artwork to make money to help support yourself or make it to share; don't worry about the irrelevant in-between.

39

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 13, 2012, 09:18:49 pm »

Phalanx does not have the resources to afford a spam attack which is why every shot must count

Spamming two missiles at $75,000 each, with 78% effectiveness each, is way, way, way cheaper than using one $1,000,000 missile that is only 2% more effective.

That phalanx has such limited resources only furthers the need for cost effectiveness.

40

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 13, 2012, 08:04:22 pm »

missile 1 has an accuracy of 80% and a range of 100 miles at £1,000,000 per unit
missile 2 has an accuracy of 78% and a range of 95 miles at 75,000 per unit

Phalanx has to go for number 1 because the superior performance is vital
National Military would be more likely to go for missile 2 because although its performance is slightly inferior its cost per unit is vastly better and they have better infrastructure to mass launch

This makes no sense, if in game I was allowed to buy and deploy option 2, I would totally spam that SAM all over the globe and the UFOs would be failing from the sky like rain.

I feel that this and the phalanx being super secret thing, and how its squad of eight soldiers that take so many hours to deploy are the ONLY counter to the alien attacks... all of these unbelievable elements are part of the same problem. That problem is the plot seems to favor hyping up Phalanx to be hollywood-style-cool so that the player feels important in his power fantasy, instead of giving it a realistic and believable role that does no harm to the game-play and potentially improves it.

Realistically speaking it only makes sense for Phalanx to be completely research-driven. There is nothing much destruction-wise that 8 soldiers flown in via scram-jet can do that 800 local soldiers couldn't. Especially since the latter has the advantage of heavy equipment like a couple dozen AFVs and attack aircraft. But the advantage to the lighter touch could be in capturing biological and technological specimens and bringing them back to isolated facilities for investigation. As well as conducting small scale field testing of new weapon systems on the threat, so that national militaries can adopt the winning systems on a large scale in preparation for a feared invasion.

41

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: May 04, 2012, 07:34:57 am »

I strongly agree with TrashMan.

In fact I'd also like to point out an important gameplay incentive to having AI controlled, non-phalanx, human soldiers. It's the fact that it takes a while to move 8 units around tactically, 12 or 16 much more so. Bulking out the player's side with AI driven, fellow earth-defending soldiers means larger battles can be fought against more aliens without taking so very long or leaving the player hopelessly outnumbered.

42

Artwork / Re: I come bearing gifts...

« on: May 04, 2012, 07:28:46 am »

But UGVs are still unimplemented so don't know when it would get used.

I'd hope for 2.5 finally after 4+ years, UGVs will be a development priority, at least in one form or another (single tile sized UGVs). Hovering/Flying units as well. Perhaps nearly invisible "active camouflage" units too. The game presently leaves you wanting more kinds of units to field, more combined arms type strategy. And opponents that don't all look and fight so much alike.

I realize this is a labor of love and the project coders have their own features of interest to pursue, but I do very much hope they'll turn their attention in this direction before the 2.5 feature freeze. Because the content for this is obviously already there but it can only collect dust as long as the engine side support is still missing.

43

Design / Re: storyline question: Why is phalanx a secret organization?

« on: April 12, 2012, 11:46:38 pm »

president: a secret army is protecting earth from aliens.
people: secret army? how many soldiers?
president: 8 million. we might have to raise taxes.

 

44

Coding / Re: What features are still missing for UGVs?

« on: February 07, 2012, 06:17:36 am »

I'd only release content under a permissive license if I felt it was 'original' in the legal sense. And by other projects I meant open projects, including at least one of my own but also any other games that felt like using the content that I created and released (probably using CC0).

It's like if Vega Strike or Pioneer started using your open licensed interceptor and UFO models as content for its own spacecraft or vice versa. There could be no legal issues with that but you might still choose to try to avoid using content used by other open games purely on artistic grounds or simply not care. Which is why I mentioned this; if you don't mind sharing content I might be able to supply you with original alien artwork that I will probably need for my own open game projects.

Tangentially, you'd then also want to keep an eye on what content licensing TremZ (a fork of Tremulous) ends up using, as they might be a gold mine for alien artwork.

45

Coding / Re: What features are still missing for UGVs?

« on: February 06, 2012, 06:16:38 am »

If UFOAI doesn't mind using open content also used in one or more other projects, then I might be able to supply you with more alien models/textures/animations in the future.

No progress on hovering units, either. I think it is a really difficult problem to solve, and our battlescape doesn't get a lot of attention.

That's too bad. The battlescape is where you spend most of your time and apply most of your attention and skill.

AFAIR, the last time I tested, UGVs were already working on the battlefield.
They were spawned on the battlescape, you could even move them, but not fire with them.

I guess technically there is not much missing except for spawnpoints on the various maps and some code to make the guns (which are seperate models mounted on top of UGVs) work.

Hmm, if they can move I wonder if that means the pathfinding problem has been solved. Unless 'pathfinding' refers to an AI issue with planning rather than executing 2x2 unit moves.

Fully functioning gun turrets aren't immediately essential IMO, many tanks and tankettes from the world wars had swivel guns that could only be trained in a narrow forward facing arc. It seems like the 2x2 spawn points wouldn't take long to place either.