I think that's probably because of the lag generated by over-the-top effects. But let's leave it to Prom to answer.

Would be cool to have semi-transparent clouds of dust and smoke occluding the battlefeild. Raising dust when destroying terrain would also be cool. Shame it'd probably lag too much, but by the time the game is released I dont think lag will be too much of an issue, my 2 years old mediocre-at-the-time-of-purchase computer does very well with large battles in CC, aslong as the map isnt a million pixels long.

Mleh, more backgrounds and lingering effects would be nice, I'm just wondering whether we'll get some decently optimised explosive wounds (the trick is to use lots of different particles, especially animated ones, to give the illusion of a lot of matter appearing, but keeping the total particle count below 70ish on a big burst burst, and probably 150 all up) and thrust trails in vanilla CC. The current wounds bug me to no end (though the robot wounds are pretty cool, they could use some smoke, most of the vanilla flesh wounds seem weak and wasteful with MOPixels), and also whether Arne even feels CC should go in that direction. Personally, I think the gore is part of the charm of CC, and that it should be taken further (not made more gory, just more dramatic)).

If anything I find shooting up the meat puppets to be the best part. The gore feels just right, while the metal wounds are too repetative and to me they feel incomplete. There needs to be more varied sounds and wound colours/sizes for all the different materials. Shooting the solid upper half of a deadnaught should give a 'twang', spew some sparks and leave a scratch, while shooting at its smaller more articulate legs should make a snapping and breaking sound with no resonance, and leave a more opened and 'gibby' wound.

Over time I've come to hate the default metal dent wound. That's why rather than lazily reusing it in my drones mod I made my own set of metal wounds.

I'm still working on the fluff but since I'm nudging it around a lot I'll refrain from posting it. It's like one of those
puzzles where changing one thing forces you to adapt the surrounding parts too.

So I'm just gonna show some more pictures.

The tutorial scenario needs to be clear who is who, hence these green variant. They would be controlled
by the player, facing off against the CPU controlled orange dummies. These guys are really vanilla since
they are just used once and the player shouldn't be overwhelmed. Both the green and orange variant use
the same cheap and common androgynous-scale body. It's a body used for light physical labor (e.g. by a
mechanic, cleaner, errand runner). They're not made for combat situations, but older units tend to be used
for target practice. The design is so old it has passed into public domain, and it's currently produced by
hundreds of different corporations.


Bad guys in the story. Oh yeah, the light/f CMF there was an experiment and doesn't belong.


---

What I think about the effects? My explosion balls were like... a 5 minute job. Very sloppy. I've seen much
better stuff made by this community. The idea with my explosions balls was that they should be sorted and
stacked in a certain way, but it didn't happen. I'd love to see some more permanent smoke emitters for
wrecks / craters, because it puts a reminder of the past in the present and makes the game more atmospheric.
I think I wrote about this somewhere else, but it hasn't been posted yet.

I don't really like the wound system at all because it's too boolean for my taste.

Were the Mu-Illaak the original rulers of Planet?

Also, I've been waiting for that brown conic-magazine gun to be in CC since I saw it some years ago on Deviant Art.

Now that's what the CMF Light should be!

Oh dear god yes, I agree with this forever.

Overwhelmed by awesomeness.

Can't speak right now.

Going to dream about B24.

Dunno about the green dummies. They seem a bit too un-dummy-ish to me. Great idea of using the colors as a visual cue of who's who, though. The CMF stealth looks good, but somehow doesn't seem to fit much with the coalition style. Awesome weapons are awesome, specially the bottom one. Pile-driver much?

Mu-Ilaak are awesomesauce. Like red hot steamin' awesomesauce with a pinch of salt and mustard. Hell yeah.


Also, the what exactly do you suggest as a replacement for the wound stuff? I agree it's not the best system, but I can't think of any alternatives either.

Maybe wounds should do more damage based on the mass of the bullet?
I agree that the wound system is annoying. It is impossible to give weapons any stopping power that knocks down or stuns opponents. A desert eagle does almost the same damage as a 9mm, where normally the desert eagle should knock the enemy down or at least stun them so they can't keep shooting you.

EDIT: And there should be different kinds of wounds too. Such as burn wounds, impact wounds, and dents when a bullet ricochets.

...Ohmygod

Finally we will be getting neutral Tradestar forces!

I REALLY like those concepts, however, will you be making any ceiling-mounted turrets, to prevent the turret from being stepped on and crushed?

Also, will the huge bunker module artillery be a common thing for all factions or will it be a Coalition Superweapon?

Well, at the moment we effectively have three separate systems. Actual health, and GibImpulseLimit/GibWoundLimit. The main problem with this is that the limits are entirely arbitrary, as is the actual number of bullets in one round, and suchlike.

Rounds desperately need the ability to influence wounds; if a make a round with a mass 100 and a round with mass 0.1, the mass 100 round should do more damage without needing to have multiple MOPixels in it. Furthermore, damage needs to be more tied in the materials giving and receiving the damage. This would also allow different weapons to do different kinds of damage, burns, acidic, whatever.

I don't like a simple "more mass = more damage" system. If you think about it, if you have an indestructable bullet with a mass of 10 pounds that flies right through your body from the immense amount of energy, and have a 1 pound bullet with a higher velocity that does the same thing, the "damage" will be the same (a straight hole through you). That's pretty much what we have now. The main problem is that objects don't take damage from how much the bullet penetrates, and most actors' "ImpulseDamageThreshold" variable is way too high, which lowers health-loss from impulse-based damage. With just those two change, I think the damage system would be much better.

On the wounds aesthetics, it would be nice if you could have visually different wound emitters defined on one object (like how an HDFirearm can have multiple firing sounds) and one of the defined wounds will appear when a penetration is detected in the object.

I'm thinking MOPixels and MOSParticles should have a variable that allows them to control whether or not to allow the object that they're hitting to use the predefined wound, and a variable that allows the MOPixel or MOSparticle to create it's own wound. The combination of those two variables will enable modders choose a simple "burn" wound effect, or a penetration and a burn, like if the bullet was an incendiary round. They would also be able to disable the "burn" wound and just have the standard penetration wound for a normal bullet.

In retrospect, that was a poor example. But you know what I mean; material, mass or sharpness or whatever need to have more of an effect, it shouldn't just be based on the energy imparted. At the moment bullets can't do anything inside MOs, like ricocheting off the inside of a helmet, so we need some way to emulate the effects of things like that.

Are there any established plans for how you unlock new units and weapons for metagame?
Looking forwards to the metagame and the other units.
For wounds, an extra factor maybe? Material inside it?