I'll keep this short and sweet.

I discovered CC about two weeks ago, just figured out how to install mods this weekend, and am now interested in making my own. I'm just starting to read up on the various tutorials thoughtfully provided by this forum's community, but I have a basic feasability question for the mod I have in mind.

how flexible is the engine regarding actor scale? I've seen several mods with extra-large actors (AAL, obviously, and others), so it seems there is some variance. What about making them smaller, though? say, 1/4 or 1/8 scale? Would this be fairly simple, or would it involve massive alteration of the basic code?

What I would like to do is to create an "epic" version of CC; using smaller, simpler actors to fit more action on the same screen space. As-is, the basic scale of CC works well for short-range firefights, and not so well for nukes, long-range weapons and so on. I would like to fix that, and so offer a wider, more elaborate experience. Are there any hard limits within the game itself that would make this impractical?

Well a lot of the interactions involve the actual pixels... which don't work so well with less pixels. The plus side is that, with build 23, you can alter the code all you want, and make small things with simpler interactions (I'm thinking, like, single-wheel robots).

...as in, the physics engine treats the actors as though they're rolling along, rather than walking step by step on individual legs? That would be pretty ideal, I'd imagine.

Check out the Marshian mod, they have a tiny scout actor. It is indeed possible to use smaller actors, though I imagine they'd have to rely on their jetpacks more to get around.

It is possible to create actors as small as 5 pixels, one for each limb, the head and torso. The largest possible size hasn't been explored yet.

Perfect answer, and thank you very much. Incidentally, if you're the one that made the tacNuke, my hat's off to you. Last night was a delicious buffet of nuclear bombardment.

as for movement requiring a jetpack, I personally have to do that anyway, most of the time. Movement in CC seems like one of the weaker points of the game. If I disabled the smaller actors' ability to "crater" into the ground when falling or walking, would that help fix the problem? or is it related to the "roughness" of the ground pixels?

And thanks for the note on the Marshian mod. Will check it out.

You could also just make everything else huge.

You could make a one pixel actor mod. Doesn't have to have visible sprites.

You also cannot feasibly make something with sprites more than a thousand pixels long/wide. The game really does not like that many MO calculations.

Atomgroups, offsets, and limbpaths also break down on super large scales.

The point is to fit as much action on the screen as possible. right now, if I'm carpet-bombing with a dropship, I have to fly very close to the ground to see where my bombs are actually landing. shrink the scale, and you can fit more relative space into the same map; 1/8th scale means 8 times as much actual space can be seen without panning the camera. You could actually do high-altitude bombing from a dropship and still see where the bombs are falling, use more arcing artillery, things like that. It's a way of making the sandbox bigger and (hopefully) easier to use at the same time.

By shifting the scale downward, you also allow yourself more room for meaningful devastation. The tacNuke is awesome, but it's not really a practical weapon because it more or less wipes the whole map. Making it smaller isn't a solution, because then it would just be puny. Make EVERYTHING smaller, though, and carpet-bombing with nukes actually becomes a viable strategy. Same for physics artillery; there simply isn't enough space on a map to do big guns justice. Bump it down to a smaller scale, and the big cannon come into their own.

Another neat thing to try would be "combo" actors; complete squads of infantry that move as a unit, perhaps with individual members treated as attachables, but I'll need to try the basics first. The ultimate goal would be to work in some fo the flavour of Scorched Earth and King Arthur's World into the deliciousness of CC.

I would not recommend going much further down than 10 pixel height for an actor. I would be interested in seeing if it worked that small, but I fear collision problems.

Idea: 6 pixel high micro digger actor.

I think it's time for CC to have a zooming function or something like that...

I really like the sound of this mod, looking forward to seeing what you make.

If you get somewhere with this I might join in and help out.

capn bubs - Thanks. Got a lot to learn, and lots of schoolwork to get out of the way, but I hope to start working through my first mod this week. We'll see how it goes.

I've already accidentally made an actor with one pixel for each limb and there were no problems at all. (He wasn't minaturized, he just had floating pixels where a coatilation's hands and feet would be.)