Alright, i've got some new ideas to post. screw secrecy, i want some feedback on some of this stuff.


That's the Doom Ferrry (or, the Styx Ferry). I don't have an official title yet, but it's the most ambitious/large-scale mod i've thought of so far. It's going to take the longest to fully design.

Here's some more weapon ideas.


SO, those interested in contributing to this project should know something:

I got a PM from someone who wanted to help and it got me to thinking that, if you want to help you have the right to know this:
this bird race is only one of three (possibly four) that i want to create, each with unique actors, craft, mythos, weapons, lore, super-weapons, strengths and weaknesses. All of them connected by a story, all of them savage and brutal, all of them fighting for dominance. Their destinies of each is intertwined with the others.

The idea is to, after i get the hang of LUA scripting and modding, make my own game out of the cortex command engine, and go in a different direction than the one data (praise him) is going.

So, as far as lore goes, this is the general idea behind how the three tribal peoples relate to one another and in what ways they're connected.

Ahem...

"A man once stood at the entrance to the cave of knowledge, his bones brittle with age.

The Bear hulked to the mouth of the cave and savaged the keeper of knowledge. Broken, he fell. And the Bear took from the cave what it willed.
The Serpent slid up the leg of the bleeding keeper and bit his heel. The venom killed the keeper. And the Serpent took from the cave what it could use.
The Crow fluttered its black wings into the cave on knowledge. It picked clean the keeper’s bones. And the Crow took from the cave what it could carry.
Something was left, however, that the Bear did not want, that the Serpent could not use, and that the Crow could not carry.
And there it would remain."

What to see in each faction:

Bear: Flesh/Strength Worship
Skins stretched across bare flesh, very little plate/bone armor. Lots of horns/antlers. Power in the weapons, overlooking accuracy and finesse. Average land speed, slow air speed, slow tunneling.. All attacks are physical, no dark/psy attacks. Least orderly, most divided at the beginning. Most speech is sort of orkish. Not intelligent, but brutal and vast in number. Make average use of mechs.

Serpent: Psychic/Mind Worship
Scales and slime. Lots of slipperyness and hard carapace showing. Armored by force fields and thin, flexible armor. LOTS more pride than any of the other races, and more unification under the religion. More orderly in general. Have the powers of speech, talk like normal humans. Small in number, high in individual value. Make great use of mechs and air-power. very weak in tunnels, average out in the open, strong in the air.

Crow: Death/Dark Worship
Bones of every kind, mainly skulls, black rawhide. Lots of rotting, lots of use of scare tactics. Very simple and improvised cheap weapons. No speech, but evidence of lots of intelligence. All communication is screeched in a shrill black tongue. Numbers beyond all reckoning. Fast in tunnels, weak out in the open, average when airborne.

tell me if you can spot a rock-paper-scissors thing going on here.

I've probably over-considered the story/aesthetic of this mod. But i'm a writer and an artist, not a code person. I could really use some ambitious people who know how to code to help.

I'll keep putting up material, and anyone who wants on board with me, you're more than welcome to be a part of the project, and you'll be credited for everything you do to help.

I can see the rock-paper-scissors thing, and it seems alot like Starcraft.

My only thing is concept art, and possibly asshattery.

Speaking of concept art...

this is one of the first renderings of the Bear tribe i've done. savor it, because most of my ideas for the Crow tribe are on paper and locked safely away. As you can see, i haven't really polished the Bear tribe's aesthetic yet, but that day will come. Pretty much all updates will concern the bear people for a while, with a few exceptions.



Additionally, some more Crow type weapons and bunker modules:

They better have their stubbyish muzzle, and the fact they're good at mauling, HELL, there are bear mauling jokes all over.

Well, I certainly can't wait till these come out, they look pretty nice.

This graphic style is gonna be very hard to sprite (and pull it off nice) within CC actor size.

Looks pretty cool. If you can pull it off it'll be amazing, but there are possibilities for tremendous failure. Good luck, Hope to see this stuff out someday.

Everything are possible,
the cave-in thing and door charge will work if you exclude the string thing and add damage activated[/u],
the grenade spear is easy, an Impact grenade, with inherited velocity ('inheritvel = #' I think) and on impact is gibs into another spear which is pinned and shortly explodes,
the Dropship, turrets = emitters that spawns pinned attacker, that last a short time, claws = attachable glare, door = a simple lowering platform[/u],
Styx, turrets = same as dropship, the door = is a giant retracting blade, with eight exit point,
stabbing weapoms, are a muzzle flash which depicts a stabbing motion, and launches multiple particles in a straight line,
slashing weapons, are a spread of many bullets, the muzzle flash is a swing motion.
and for no magazines use null.bmp, and make it out of air

NOW SHUT UP ABOUT HIS CHANCES!!! LEARN TO MOD, DUMBSHIT!!!

Hmm some of the part of this mod are possible already, but some do require later builds and/or Lua scripting. I love the concept and the idea behind this (although I'm a hi-tech beamrifle freak) and this could really work well. You will have to sacrifice some of those ideas like the dropship dropping that elevator thing or stuff being stuck like thrown spears or harpoons to similar, yet slightly differing funcionality.

Also I see there are lots of things that involve a rope or similar line that could hang freely. These are not currently possible, BUT the artist behind the art for CC said he wanted a grapling hook so there might a chance that ropes would become available later.

You have a good vision of these guys and it would really make an interesting total conversion(?).



Heres a small summary on some of the stuff you designed in code/funcion wise ingame:

Javelin Nade - You would have to make it a single use timed grenade based weapon. It would require sticking capabilities that are not possible yet so your best bet is to wait until sticking objects to other object will be possible.


Bolt-Action rifle,shotgun and SMG - Pretty simple and fully possible except for the rope decoration would have to be static decorations(attachables).


All melee weapons - Remember, no true swing motion/slashing/hacking is possible in CC. All melee weapons up to the current ones available are particle spewing shotguns with very low range and an animation that makes an illusion as if it was a real melee weapon. Another type would the huge sword for the mech I made that has a constant line of particles in a staight line when fired and you with aiming the weapon up and down you kind of "slash" stuff with it.


Door charge - No remote detonation is yet possible in any other way rather than placing the explosive and then shooting at it with another weapon exists right now. Lua might help here. Anyways the idea of having a detonation line requires a rope/line which isnt possible, yet. Right now, it could be made a pinned(PinStrength var can be used to make things pinned in the game) explosive with a timer and a very low explosion damage radius.


BoomStick - using modified weapon holding offsets, you can make the soldier hold it up like in the picture and fire it. This weapon is fully possible to do and if you really want to make it single use, then make the weapon fire 2 shots simultaniously by using the normal round as the explosive charge and the second one that would destroy the gun. However, I recommend setting the reload value to something very high like 99999999 since the process of having the gun selfdestruct can harm the soldier himself.


Cave-in charge - A pinned explosive that would remove any terrain around it and replace with heavy boulders and terrain blobs that would turn into actual terrain after coming to rest.


Dropship - Ok well. I can say the coding for this one would probably be quite complicate. Before I go into the details of that I want to say that armed crafts are not possible yet. And I fear they will have to be automated (there would be 2 more gunners on the ship) when that becomes possible.

As for the elevator, it wouldnt be an elevator, it would be merely a flat brick that harms only terrain by the means on an emitter or a series of them. The bunker inside the bunker is even more tough to achieve, maybe with lua you could make it so that when the "elevator brick" reaches the inside of a bunker, it would spawn the actual protective walls there. Getting rid of these walls would be a job for the digger tool.

On a note for attachables too: You should remember that the more attachables the unit has, the more memory it will eat. Also placing and making each seperate attachable is a load of (boring) work.
Try round the attachable shards into bigger ones and make them gib into these shards instead when that armor attachable is destroyed.

Also ropes with corpses would have to be static for now. I suggest wait and request for ropes from Data himself via PMs. He reads those.


Styx ferry - Same as dropship, no turrets yet. As for engines turning off... erm... the original dropship crafts were designed to be in a constant flight to just to drop the cargo and gtfo. So I suppose either Data implement another type of a craft or Lua will save you here.

The most farthest protective wall/legs are possible though. They would be the actual doors of the craft that would rotate 90' degrees from within the craft and would retract like that. As for the huge razor blade below the ferry that makes the large trench... *shrug*, Lua I think.

The levels of hardness can be achieved via armor attachables.


Priest powder grenade - Possible, but needs a hacky method that involves emitters and a few complications in keeping the emission go off in the right way, Shook has good experience with this.


Spike trap - Yeah, possible in the similar way as Djinn's trickster security stuff that reacts on enemies only. A simple fast rotating door that has a powerful invisible particle spewing emitter at the are where the spikes are.


Brain bunker - The door is possible, but as for the upside down priest, no. In CC its hardcoded for the actors to keep them upright no matter what (unless they lose balance). If you really do want to make him hang upside down and then suffer the fall on his face if he's reached by enemies, you can make the priest be a static object (and not a real controllable actor) that just hangs in the module with a really weak attachable link. If you shoot the priest while he's up there, he will fall down, on his goddamn face, and gib into the priest actor after what the brain status is transferred to it and you are now able to control the priest.




Ok, thats what I can suggest you for those. Good luck!

Numgun, doors can crush enemies, so test out if a rapidly rotating door can smash bodies.

Well, thanks everybody for your support and suggestions and... anger at my current lack of code prowess. Honestly though, that last one is driving and appreciated.

If this were the only thing in my life i think i'd have the pity of nearly everyone here, so be glad of that it's not. I've got a rather large graphic novel project i'm waist deep in and a few other small projects for friends.
Understanding that i have limits to how much i can physically do, i've had to prioritize and this project is secondary to the comics one (which is my vocation). So, even though i've got lots more ideas (and could brainstorm a lot more in an hour-long session with "House MD" style big writing surface) i'm not going to be able to concentrate much energy on this until at least the end of the olympics.
I absolutely love this project though and really want to work on it, but it's tough to dedicate time to right now. Any faction-related ideas i've just had to write down are being thrown about via PM form right now, but i'll put a few more here as they come, i don't want to be all selfish.

This is directed at numgun specifically, but if anyone wants to problem-solve as to how this stuff is gonna work, you are more than welcome and encouraged. I consider that kind of help to be valuable enough to credit you as a contributor in the finished mod. While these problems are outside my sphere of knowledge, i love to see them get closer to solution.

I'm sorry i've been gone from this thread, but duty has been a-calling. Some "Bear" concepts are in the works for next time, and i will have them up here by thursday if all goes to plan.

No worries, youre not the only one busy on other stuff around here.
I just gave some ideas for people that know some/little coding and are willing to do/start this mod.
Kind of like giving a direction that people wouldnt turn this into another generic pile of crap which happens too often these days.

Hey, kickass. Problem solving is my favourite. Know what's also my favourite? Helping people with code, hurray! If you have any questions about how to do stuff, just ask, and I'll see what I can do. I've just skimmed through this cause I'm at work, but odds are I'll be able to help you somehow with part of this. The spike trap I saw mentioned I could certainly show you how to do, but I'll read more through this later.

Alright, here's some bear sketches

If all the weapons are beginning to look similar, there is a reason for that: each of these races pillaged the same planet and are all using the same basic tech. It's as if there were a FOURTH faction that they murdered and stole from, and each weapon stolen was modded out to better suit the needs/fighting styles of the tribe. It is intentional. The most breaking away from the basics will be seen in the serpent tribe, but i haven't even sketched anything for them.

I also have a workflow-style thing for the bear soldiers in the works, like i did with the crow actors. I think next will be bunker modules and dropships. The bear will have variety in actors where the crow had a variety in weapons. The serpent will have both.

I'm in the process of moving this to "Mod Making", as per a suggestion. I think that will boost involvement in the project. Hope to see you all there.

I love this.
Like, it's actually interesting to read. Seriously, this is a better story than the Crobos', no offense to Bubs.
Regarding that graphic novel project, I'd love to see a story involving these guys. You seem to have a lot of talent. It's a shame that a lot of the mod is undoable with current CC tech, but I think that with Lua will come solutions, even if it means the Styx will just be a cutscene that ends in 8 troops deploying.