Officer mod

[Bubb]

OFFICA MOD V0.1 UBERBETA
ok, so in my mod you play as an officer. That's pretty much it, there's 5 levels, bad storyline, and some poor scripting.

download: http://bubbeh.com:200/officer-v0.1-uberbeta.zip

feedback plz ok.

[martin]

about to download it and try it now

and no matter how bad or amazing it is, well done on getting a mod completed

[martin]

Ok, unfortunately the server won't respond

for more reliable hosting email it to hitm4n of the modlist.

[xander]

As martin said, the server is not responding.

xander

[Bubb]

oh, sorry, I had the server down for some repairs last night. It should be up now.

[xander]

You should probably replace the Sepulveda avatar with something more appropriate.

You need "start" cams in all of your levels.

"lol cox" and "gg." are probably not the best way to end a level ;)

Personally, I think that the large flat areas of land that are rammed against procedurally generated landmasses look funky. Again, that may be the look that you are trying for, but it doesn't really appeal to me. If it were me, I would attempt to make the land look a bit more organic, or explain why it doesn't look organic, while it is attached to organic land.

Some more terrain textures, and water colors would be interesting. Right now, the mod lacks much in the way of visual interest.

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Waste:

In the first level, the officer starts with no orders. This can cause Darwinia to crash (though I think the bug finally got fixed in 1.4). Also, without orders, officers wave an unattractive white flag around. I would suggest that you give him some orders. Those might look like this:

Code: Select all

Officer          2  1538.0  1370.3      1    0      0    24.8     0.0     0.0

In other words, put some value in the state column.

The Waste level is asymetrical. This causes the water texture to be placed in the wrong place. You should make sure that the dimensions of the level are the same in both directions.

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Barricade:

Again, the officer has no orders. This is bad.

There is no start cam in the level, which means that it might take the player a fair bit of time to find the officer. This means that it is very easy for the officer to get overrun by red DGs before he can do anything.

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Uplink:

Again, no orders...

I don't think people need the hint to use the RADAR. They should be able to figure it out themselves, or fight through the virii.

The battle cannons are probably unneccessary in the level -- it is already easy enough. Though they do provide the potential for friendly fire incidents, which may be the intention.

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Repository:

Nice effect with the officer, but it is likely to cause Darwinia at some point. You are relying on the behaviour of a bug to make it work, and that bug may be fixed some day. While I like the concept, it is likely to fail.

The level is too long. It is not terribly difficult, and it is tedious to wait such a long time for the armour to spawn.

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Battle:

There is an armour with no orders. It will attempt to go to the origin of the level. That should probably be fixed.

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Overall, this is not a bad place to start, but you do have to realize that this really is just a starting place. The mod needs some serious TLC before I would release it -- it needs cameras, some scripting, and a more fleshed out story to motivate the player.

xander

[The GoldFish]

In the first level, the officer starts with no orders. This can cause Darwinia to crash (though I think the bug finally got fixed in 1.4).

No, it wasn't, this has never been fixed - state -1 officers (as created as default by instant units) result in the crash on exit bug (at least under windows).

In fact in 1.5.x it causes Darwinia to crash on level *entry*, meaning you really do need to fix the officer's state - the white flags are a no go, I'm afraid. The states are 0 - normal on creation officer, 1 is goto, you can use the waypoint values to specify where you want it to order people, and 2 is follow.

To stop instant unit armour running off the level, change it's waypoint x and waypoint z values to its current location (by hand) in the mission file. Armour, however, does NOT need a state to not crash, however it still looks odd so you might like to set it to state 0 (which is the normal state)

edit - it seems in 1.5.x -1 state armour crashes the game on level entry too, so that has to be set at least 0 as well.

You may also wish to move the squadies and armour to the 'running_programs' section of the mission file, as this stops them vanishing when the player leaves and returns to the level. Note that if you later save your level with the editor, those'll be lost as it doesn't read in that section.

RE the instate hax, I doubt that will be fixed! Hopefully it'll be modified so you can't spam grenades!

edit - ANYWAY, now that I've played it, it's fairly amusing - are you suposed to not be able to move as a squadieofficer? That's the effect I observed, anyway. And, yeah, you completely need cameras called 'start' in your levels, as those'll set the camera position automatically on level entry. Some more interesting lighting and textures wouldn't go amiss just to make each level feel different, even if they're just the ones from the original game. You could do with a 'goddish_deactivate' sometime after uplink too - that'll stop the erronious highlight effect you can see in repository and battle. You don't really need a plot, but that last level could do with being harder and have some sort of sense of accomplishment when you win. You might also like to consider putting a spawnpointmaster into your repository level with an emptied shape bar markers, on global and dynamic or whatever it is, so that all the souls rise faster, which will help slower machines with this (somewhat insane!) level

[martin]

just downloaded, I'll return with feedback!

[martin]

Well that was a blast, so I mean it had more holes in the storyline that Swiss cheese but meh - it was fun.

However, it was insanely easy! I mean the first levels you just charge your darwinians, then you get a squad and an entire 1 spider to challenge you (virii don't count; they aren't hard), after that you get the crazy nade spam - seems to be a "who can click for the longest" kinda challenge... then it's back to good old charging darwinians with no chance of losing due to four defensive turrets.

Saying all that it was fun