So it's been an interesting time. my last mod, Elemental Shift, was plagued by slow development and a bad release system and didn't go all that well. And I haven't modded since I released it, pretty much.
However now I'm taking Elemental Shift, SM&M+, and the expansion work I did afterwards without releasing it...and continuing on from there to create a new extension for Transcendence 1.2A1. In theory it should also work for older versions, since the code is mostly pretty dang old now.
Elemental Shift is effectively a "Vanilla Plus" mode. It makes no major deviations from Vanilla gameplay (although it sometimes changes things quite a lot within the basic spirit of what was already there), but adds in things where I think the game could do with additions. The original version (which was split into 2 mods) included:
-Enhanced defenses for friendly stations
-Larger reactors on offer at certain stations.
-All the improved weapons from SM&M+
-Overhauls, adjustments, tweaks and rebalances of numerous NPC factions and ships, including the Centauri, Charon pirates, marauders and Outlaw Miners.
-Minor adjustments to several vanilla weapons to make them easier on the eyes and a little more interesting to use (The laser cannon array is actually useful!)
-New and improved friendly stations to give more options for non-combat ways to get rich.
-Hilarious graphical overhaul of the Ares Warhammer projectile.
And a bunch of other things I've forgotten by now. There is a lot in that XML (in fact my current build of ES2 runs to over 9,500 lines of code).
Current planned features include:
-More tweaks to the Korolov Shipping Company, to make it easier to get up to "Legendary" without being forced to fight the Kronosaurus (which in Elemental Shift is a lot more intimidating, although not really that much different in terms of difficulty). I'm also considering more ways for the player to get the pirates to send their flagship out.
-Adding more sources of fuel and repair items into the game. In vanilla, the only real source of repair items outside of a shop is the Ranx gunship. Elemental Shift introduced the Drake missileship (and its Marauder varient) in the same role, and it worked out pretty well. I'm hoping to bring more ships into this role, to encourage players to level up their repair skill.
-"Warzone" features. I'd planned to ad these into the initial ES, but it didn't work out. These background features help fill out later-game areas by showing that a once-thriving area has descended into war, taking the economy and population with it. These do pose some technical and balance issues, but I'm fairly sure I can work them out eventually.
-More changes to the Outlaw Miners. Elemental Shift introduced a bunch of reworks to make them a credible force in the lategame, but I'm still not happy with them. This will probably include a new varient of the Hammerhead that can still hurt the player if it can get close enough, even in the mid-late game.
-If I can work out the coding required (I have never been proficient in Tlisp and my XML is rusty) I'll try reworking the tinkers (more than I did last time) to actually repair the items they buy, and sell the then-repaired items back to the player. I'm also considering giving them a direct option to repair some items quickly, although combining this with a more involved, slower system for NotForSale or high-level items would be tricky.
In addition to this I'm planning to go through the old stuff in Elemental Shift 1 and either tweak or remove things that didn't quite work back then.
With the introduction of the ability to select extensions when starting a new game, I believe it's possible for me to do what I've always done: Make what I want, ignoring compatibility. However now it doesn't necessarily mean people with other mods installed can't play it. I expect this to make it slightly more appealing. The new releases will be one massive XML: I'm not splitting the extra weapons off like last time (which made things needlessly complex when downloading it). I've no idea how long development on this will take (I have to try getting old design experiments off my old laptop the next time I'm home from uni), but hopefully this won't drag out into a multi-year effort like previous stuff. I've got most of the work done already from Elemental Shift 1.
Elemental Shift 2: Electric Boogaloo
Current planned revisions:
-Delete Charon, start over (Except the tweaks to the Drake and certain parts of the Charon System setup, I'm keeping those). Either that or re-write 50% of it. At the time I thought this was my finest work...but looking at it now there's some serious balance issues I neglected in the interest of getting the mod out and keeping shiney gimmicks in (See XMH armor)
-Same with Maruaders, Penitant (See XMH armor as well, these guys use it, and it's a pain) and a few other factions I never balance-tested properly. There's some good stuff there, but I need to cut back on the rest of it. A lot
-Admit defeat on trying to make XMH armor worth using and scrap it. It's just plain weird now and annoying as hell.
-Probably the same on my revised stealth armor. Seriously. Why does that stuff even exist given how useless it is? I gave it a significant HP buff (well....sort of) and it still sucks. Might make an NPC with it later though. Marauder stealth fighter, anyone?
-Fix the Cloud9 brewery buy/sell wierdness.
-Find out why fuel stations aren't selling things properly + buff the availability of map ROMs.
-Tweak Tinker placement to be more than the current vanilla game (currently it's actually less, but more than it used to be)
-Make Urak mines have a bit more loot for the player (as mines, they really don't have much in terms of minerals).
-Work out why the lategame hammerhead varient isn't working/appearing.
-Start brainstorming on what I need to learn in order to start looking at Militia stuff again.
-Start looking at how I'd go about rebuilding the human space map to make more systems exist before Charon to increase the chance the player will encounter a Korolov station.
-Oh, and make military maps turn up in fortresses more often. And work out a mid-game source of fuel for the player to loot that isn't the heliotropes. Because those guys are jerks.
Things I'm happy with:
-Drakes. They're still probably my finest bit of balancing on an enemy and combines actual toughness, weak-spots *and* a good economic and practical reason to kill them (IE: Repairs).
-General tweaks to stations. I need to change a few things here and there, but overall my old friendly stations still look OK.
-The weapons setups on the Tenhove Sentinels. Their armor is too strong however, so I need to tweak them a bit more...this wouldn't be a problem if they were friendly-station-only, but since the player does actually fight them, I can't have them be too strong...
-Weapons cache encounters. These are a great source of munitions and while the battle isn't hard, a medium IAV and a pack of Ronin/C's does pack a punch if the player approaches it wrong. Especially if a missile sets off a crate.
-Weapons. The old Azriel system isn't as nice as I remember it and may need an overhaul, but it's viable still. I need to look over everything at some stage more carefully, but overall things have worked pretty well. The laser cannon array is actually terrifying when a wolfen turns up with one in the arena. I'm also seeing a nice variety of stuff in shops, which is excellent. The XM300 Demon missile I added to the game in SM&M+ remains one of my favourite weapons, even managing to beat the KM550 and XM900 for versatility.
-Centauri. While these are deliberately unbalanced (just as they are in vanilla), they're nowhere near as pathetic as in the vanilla game, and you can sorta see how civilians would find them to be a problem. The raiders can actually kill things (against a random encounter of centauri raiders and a random encounter of a few hornets, the raiders will usually win, but they'll take casualties), and the heavy raiders are a significant threat at times. Both are vulnerable to the player though. I'm still very happy with what I did to these guys.
-The tweaks I made to the players Wolfen. I honestly don't see why vanilla doesn't start the Wolfen off with a Class II deflector. It trades off survivability against everything that uses kinetics (which the wolfen was overpowered against anyway) in exchange for not being able to overload its starting reactor with the default loadout, and a noticeable gain in fuel economy in the very early game (where fuel is a serious concern at times).
'Course, planned tweaks will not progress much until after my exams.
-Delete Charon, start over (Except the tweaks to the Drake and certain parts of the Charon System setup, I'm keeping those). Either that or re-write 50% of it. At the time I thought this was my finest work...but looking at it now there's some serious balance issues I neglected in the interest of getting the mod out and keeping shiney gimmicks in (See XMH armor)
-Same with Maruaders, Penitant (See XMH armor as well, these guys use it, and it's a pain) and a few other factions I never balance-tested properly. There's some good stuff there, but I need to cut back on the rest of it. A lot
-Admit defeat on trying to make XMH armor worth using and scrap it. It's just plain weird now and annoying as hell.
-Probably the same on my revised stealth armor. Seriously. Why does that stuff even exist given how useless it is? I gave it a significant HP buff (well....sort of) and it still sucks. Might make an NPC with it later though. Marauder stealth fighter, anyone?
-Fix the Cloud9 brewery buy/sell wierdness.
-Find out why fuel stations aren't selling things properly + buff the availability of map ROMs.
-Tweak Tinker placement to be more than the current vanilla game (currently it's actually less, but more than it used to be)
-Make Urak mines have a bit more loot for the player (as mines, they really don't have much in terms of minerals).
-Work out why the lategame hammerhead varient isn't working/appearing.
-Start brainstorming on what I need to learn in order to start looking at Militia stuff again.
-Start looking at how I'd go about rebuilding the human space map to make more systems exist before Charon to increase the chance the player will encounter a Korolov station.
-Oh, and make military maps turn up in fortresses more often. And work out a mid-game source of fuel for the player to loot that isn't the heliotropes. Because those guys are jerks.
Things I'm happy with:
-Drakes. They're still probably my finest bit of balancing on an enemy and combines actual toughness, weak-spots *and* a good economic and practical reason to kill them (IE: Repairs).
-General tweaks to stations. I need to change a few things here and there, but overall my old friendly stations still look OK.
-The weapons setups on the Tenhove Sentinels. Their armor is too strong however, so I need to tweak them a bit more...this wouldn't be a problem if they were friendly-station-only, but since the player does actually fight them, I can't have them be too strong...
-Weapons cache encounters. These are a great source of munitions and while the battle isn't hard, a medium IAV and a pack of Ronin/C's does pack a punch if the player approaches it wrong. Especially if a missile sets off a crate.
-Weapons. The old Azriel system isn't as nice as I remember it and may need an overhaul, but it's viable still. I need to look over everything at some stage more carefully, but overall things have worked pretty well. The laser cannon array is actually terrifying when a wolfen turns up with one in the arena. I'm also seeing a nice variety of stuff in shops, which is excellent. The XM300 Demon missile I added to the game in SM&M+ remains one of my favourite weapons, even managing to beat the KM550 and XM900 for versatility.
-Centauri. While these are deliberately unbalanced (just as they are in vanilla), they're nowhere near as pathetic as in the vanilla game, and you can sorta see how civilians would find them to be a problem. The raiders can actually kill things (against a random encounter of centauri raiders and a random encounter of a few hornets, the raiders will usually win, but they'll take casualties), and the heavy raiders are a significant threat at times. Both are vulnerable to the player though. I'm still very happy with what I did to these guys.
-The tweaks I made to the players Wolfen. I honestly don't see why vanilla doesn't start the Wolfen off with a Class II deflector. It trades off survivability against everything that uses kinetics (which the wolfen was overpowered against anyway) in exchange for not being able to overload its starting reactor with the default loadout, and a noticeable gain in fuel economy in the very early game (where fuel is a serious concern at times).
'Course, planned tweaks will not progress much until after my exams.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Nice plans! I am making a large mod too (TCE) that will change the Centauri around to be a much bigger driving force than before. I would love for them both to be compatible! Maybe even combine them? (More hands make lighter work)
Exams? I've been through with exams since May 26th!
Exams? I've been through with exams since May 26th!
My tweaks to the Centauri *should* be compatible with other modding. It's basically changing values on the ships (and the 3 centauri weapons. And swapping the CLAW and Heavy CLAWs names) to improve their handling a little. I'll grab the code some time so you can look at it.Jay2Jay wrote:Nice plans! I am making a large mod too (TCE) that will change the Centauri around to be a much bigger driving force than before. I would love for them both to be compatible! Maybe even combine them? (More hands make lighter work)
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Cool! I simply caused the entire system of Eridani to be controled by the centauri and modified their weapons with moltenbolt and gave some of the heavies to use a dual howitzer. The whole idea was to make them a better enemy with a deeper backstory culminating in the battle with Arco Vaughn.
Oh and my mod happens 33 years from Vanilla T (assuming the player in Vanilla never existed) Other than that lore, I think our mods should fit together like two puzzle pieces!
Oh and my mod happens 33 years from Vanilla T (assuming the player in Vanilla never existed) Other than that lore, I think our mods should fit together like two puzzle pieces!