vp21ct

Join Date 11/2008

Spelljammer

Ok, so I doubt very many of you know what Spelljammer is, so let me explain first.

Spelljammer is, basically, DnD in space. It has sailing ships and the like all in space. What I'm wondering is if anyone would be willing to support a mod like that. (I don't know alot about modding, but I'd be willing to learn and give this one a shot if I had help.)

Wow, it seems like people are at least interested, even if heated in their debate.

Ok, so, Now taking Mod team applications!

Information about the mod:

To anyone who is familiar with spelljammer, I intend to use the 3e rules as published in Polyhedron magazine as the basis, however there will be many more ships (as they only present us with 3 ships in each category). Most ships will fire along the Port and Starboard arcs, with a few exceptions based on faction, other than that, I'm not sure what gameplay changes would be necessary, but if there are any I'll keep you posted.

The factions will be:

Human, their ships look like traditional sailing vessels. Their capitol ships have some of the weakest "spell" in the game, but they are considerably tougher than most other ships, and carry the most armament. All of their ships fire along a port/starboard arc.

Elf, their smaller ships look insectoid, while larger ships more clossely resemble actual sailing vessels, though their sails are often oriented along the sides of the ship. Their weapons tend to vary from ship to ship, and they focus a great deal on protective magics.

Drow, the evil cousins of the elves. Their ships all look like spiders, one way or another. Their weapons are almost exclusively forward facing, even on capitol ships. Their ships are also the most meneuverable, and have a variety of abilities that allow them to quickly destroy the enemy. This is good, since their ships are fragile.

Illithids, Evil squid men. Their ships resemble cephelopods or aquatic creatures from the deep. Their weapons are rather balanced in their arcs. Their magic tends to be very focused on disrupting the enemy, such as taking control of a ship for a period of time, or even unleasing tentacles to grapple and crush an enemy vessel.

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I'd be interested in this. Strictly speaking, Spelljammer was going out of vogue as I was getting interested in AD&D, but I'm familiar with the concepts. The issue I see here is that everything (quite literally) would have to be made from scratch, which means you'd really need an entire team working on this. Modeling the ships themselves should be fairly simple, much simpler than the Star Trek ships I'm working on now, but races would have to be decided on, ships to fill all the roletypes created, particle effects made to resemble weapons and spells, UI textures reworked to create a D&D feel, music picked out, etc. It's really a complete conversion of Sins.

It's certainly possible, and I'd be willing to lend a hand where needed or give guidance to anyone willing to learn the necessary skills. I suggest you gather your thoughts and create a proposal with possible races, pictures of ships, backstory, and other similar tidbits, post it all, and see if it draws interest. I see it as Sins of a Solar Empire buccaneer-style, which definitely has potential.

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Quoting Mystic Angel,

reply 1

It's really a complete conversion of Sins.

Replacement of art assets is not a "complete conversion" in any sense of the phrase and that's an insult to anybody that actually works on TCs. It's a reskin. I don't understand this obsession with replacing Sins models and textures with other models and textures just for the sake of it looking like some other IP in lieu of creating unique gameplay and features. Few get off the ground, and when they do, either they implement interesting gameplay (in which you don't really need to fill Sins "roletypes" at all, nor put backstory or pictures of ships before a design document and feature list) or they're bland, uninspired wastes of talent. If I wanted to play Sins I'd play Sins, not Sins with a bunch of unskinned models, unoptimized particle effects, and music ripped from E.S. Posthumus or whatever the creator thinks is suitably "epic".

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As, I was saying, come up with a proposal to see if you can gather interest and, perhaps, find some other people with modding skills who would be committed and are familiar with the material. In the meantime, ignore belligerent responses like Carbon's. Most people on the forums are fairly helpful and can answer nearly all your questions.

If you'd like to continue this discussion without rude interruptions feel free to PM me.

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Quoting Mystic Angel,

reply 3

As for the roles, if you really knew what you were talking about you'd know the AI requires every role stat type to be present otherwise it grinds to a halt.

That's not quite true. Certainly the AI requires some roles to be present or it fails but it's certainly possible to get by without all of them for a given race. Furthermore it is quite simply to bundle multiple roles into one ship as well, even if it does not quite fill the role as the traditional sins model ship might.

-Scout role: required

-Light role: required (at least as a basic combat ship type)

-Long-range role: I believe you can leave this out

-Siege role: required

-Colony role: required

-Carrier role: optional but most probably desired

-Heavy role: optional but recommended

-Anitmodule role: optional in Entrenchment

-Mine role: unsure, I suspect optional in Entrenchment

-Starbase role: unsure, I suspect optional in Entrenchment.

-Envoy role: required in diplomacy

-Capital colony: required

-Other Capital roles: optional

The AI just needs certain basic ship types to operate (colony, siege, scout, captital colony) in order to get rolling. After that, it simply uses what other options it has available to it.

I can see how Spelljammer would make a good candidate for a TC but I don't really see a reason why it could not be implemented as an add-on either. You're going to have to do some fudging of the mechanics either way and as for a HUD reskin... well I personally think custom icons and images would be sufficient. I suppose it's just a matter of how perfectionist you want to be about it as to whether it "requires" at TC treatment. By that same reasoning though, the same can be said of most existing sci-fi/fantasy IPs. Carbon does have a good point in that it's the way the additional race(s) play that is going to make them stand apart from the stock Sins experience.

It's been a long time since I looked at Spelljammer so I'm far from certain about the basic feasibility of this as a mod. That being said though, all power to you should you decide to procede. I also think that Spelljammer could make a fairly unique playstyle, or at least as much as that is possible within the framework of Sins moddability.

-dolynick

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These are all issues we've dealt specifically with in Sacrifice of Angels 2, so I'm not going to argue with anyone about them. I'll simply say we've tested all these options out and found that the AI does require every statcounttype to be present if it's going to function as intended. Roletypes are a totally different story and are, as you say, optional.

The final package is up to it's creator, but, if it were me, Spelljammer done correctly would be a completely new experience. Why would anyone bother going to all that trouble and not ensure that the new races behave differently and that gameplay is significantly altered so as to create a Spelljammer experience rather than a Sins of a Solar Empire experience? In this respect, I know exactly what was being said when I mentioned a total conversion in my earlier post.

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Boats in space? My cheesometer just went through the roof. lol

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Quoting Mystic Angel,

reply 3

In the meantime, ignore belligerent responses like Carbon's. Most people on the forums are fairly helpful and can answer nearly all your questions.

Yep, I've found the best way to start a successful project is to listen to one person, preferably one who compels you to ignore anything bad someone said about their advice and to contact them privately instead. For example, I'm being paid a few million dollars by the former prince of Nigeria in this great offer I got via email. My family members all tell me it's a scam, but I've only given him about $5,000, and that's only for transfer fees!

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Carbon... I can understand want of originality, but stomping on people's feet just cause they are fans of other stuff is just rude. Constructive criticism is allowed, rude putting down is what you did. Here's what I'm translating to be your meaning.

-Replacing art assets is not a complete/total conversion. It is actually called reskinning.
+Ok, thats fine to correct someones terminalogy. But treating them like they are stupid is just wrong. OP is probably new at this stuff. We all were at one point. I still am with sins even though I do well for mods on oblivion and final fantasy.

-You warn him that it takes a team and a large amount of interest in a project in order to get it going. Ok understandable.

-You want there to be new unique aspects to the gameplay

-Better graphics/particles

-not reusing music like E.S. Posthumus. Which means it would be appreciated if they made their own music or used some from the original source.

-Warning that someone should listen to a variety of people instead of just one person is good advice, especially someone looking out for you.

All these are understandable statements but you dont have to be rude about them.

I do agree with the meaning of all of these. But not the surrounding rudities.

VP21CT; to get your project going it's going to be a lot of work. I suggest you try doing small mods at first just to find out how hard it is to get the game to do what you want it to. Not only that you have to learn all the tools the community has provided. What will your role be in the project? There are quite a lot of idea wo/men but I would say that the only reason most projects actually get up and running is cause the idea person has the drive and skills to work on it.

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Wow... I'm actually taken back by your attitude, Carbon. I know you've been extremely helpful to other people in the past. Why so rude and negative now?

The OP clearly has a wish to get something different and unique going; I wanted to help him out with advice and an offer to assist. I have quite a bit of experience in modding all aspects of the game in a 99.999% complete conversion (is that more accurate?), not to mention an interest in the subject material. If you've got experience, then please lend us your supportive advice; otherwise, someone who's new to the community doesn't need to be beaten down for expressing a unique idea. Personally, I won't think twice about your comments, but the least you could do is offer a sincere apology to the OP.

My offer still stands, VP21CT. If you'd like to go over some details about what you have in mind and what it will involve, it can be done here or privately. I've always found that a private or smaller meeting allows more to be accomplished in less time. It's up to you, though.

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I'm personally not a fan of pure "reskins" as I guess they're called but I didnt get any indication from the OP that that was his intention. So getting hung up on this nonsense is rather lame.

That said, good luck on the project, I would only say that if your serious about wanting to make a mod for Sins as big as the one your proposing you better be in for the long haul. Even with a group of people these things can take years to finish, and you better be prepared to post a lot of recruitment threads to get staff.

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Quoting Mystic Angel,

reply 9

someone who's new to the community doesn't need to be beaten down for expressing a unique idea. Personally, I won't think twice about your comments, but the least you could do is offer an apology to the OP.

I wasn't talking to the OP, I was talking to you. Perhaps if you weren't so caught up in taking offense for somebody else, you could realize that what Furzball summarized is accurate and what I was trying to convey. Beginning a project with such sparsity on anything related to gameplay isn't a good idea and leads to a project being stretched out for a ridiculously long time with no direction, which wastes a lot of people's time and effort. However, doing so in advance allows for those involved to clearly define exactly what needs to be done in terms of both art assets and logic work, instead of being caught up in emulating Sins (which is boring and bland), prolonging downtime, or having to innovate after the fact and redo work. Any possible plan that doesn't include making a solid design document as the first priority may be good natured, but bad advice.

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It's clear to me that you and I have very similar views concerning originality and modding. Sadly, you never took the time to find out exactly what my views were, or, unfortunately, to clarify what I meant in my original post. I know exactly to what you are referring in a design plan; I have one myself for my new project. My original goal, however, was to not layer the OP under oppressive amounts of gritty planning that a newcomer to modding couldn't yet understand, but to encourage forethought and goal-setting. Both of these must come before any type of detailed planning stage.

As it stands, this discussion has gone far into left field, so I'm bringing it to a halt in an effort to return this thread to it's owner and the topic at hand: the Spelljammer setting in SoaSE. No doubt you will have some type of hurtful rebuttal, but I ask that you continue your slights against what you perceive to be my modding ability and viewpoints in private rather than in this particular thread.

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Actually a reskin is when you take original models and just change textures. As soon as you replace the 3D assets it can no longer be called "just a reskin".

Along similar lines, a total conversion does not necessarily require new gameplay mechanics. For example, a Star Trek or Star Wars mod will keep the original gameplay pretty much as it is, while completely replacing the ingame visual, sound and other assets, thus qualifying for a "total conversion" as in turning the game into something based on the same principles as the original, but with a completely different spin.

Most total conversions out there do not significantly change the way the game is played.

So a Spelljammer mod would, in fact, qualify as a total conversion.

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whoa, I didn't think I was gone for THAT long.

Well, as I said, I'm not that experienced with mods, just a few code changes on very easy codes. But again I'm willing to learn.

Just a few things I would like to ask of those who are familiar with this, concerning modding, and if/when I do gather a mod team? How should I go about team communication and keeping track of mod versions?

And aside from that, The first thing that would have to be changed, before anything like model changes (some of the ships would even have to be custom designed, though not actually that hard for humans, and maybe slightly more challenging for, say elves, drow, and Illithids) will be figuring out how to change the weapon arks and their effects. That is the real flavor changer for this mod, as the weapon arcs for all human, and most elven ships, are on the port and starboard instead of front aft, and all ships above frigate level would have something on every arc.

So, taking mod team applications now, and I hope you can put up with my inexperience

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Hm, I'll take each aspect alone:

1) Team communication/mod version - the mods I help with use Microsoft Sync, which is an extension of Messenger. It essentially connects a single folder and it's subfolders between a group of computers. Depending on a team member's permissions, files can be viewed, changed, or deleted, and that action is taken on every computer. Generally, we've set it up so that team members can contribute material to a Ready for Import folder where the work can be checked/retested by someone with permission to paste the file into actual game folders. As people have shown they can be trusted not to make huge mistakes they gain access to the game folders themselves. I've also heard of a similar program that has a back-up or Undo type function that makes any errors less of an issue. I can try to get some more information on that one, if you like.

2) Ship models - personally, I would imagine that every ship model would need to be custom. It's certainly possible that someone has already created 3d meshes of some spelljammer ships, but most would need to be made from scratch. Your comment gives the impression you were intending to use some stock models from Sins. Is that correct?

3) Weapon arcs - these are fairly simple. It'll just require hardpoints at the location you want weapons to be fired from, and then have them oriented in the direction they fire. The Advent capital carrier currently has only port and starboard weapon arcs, so what you see in that targeting behavior is what you'll get with your own frigates unless the orientation is adjusted up, down, or slightly forward or backward from the basic 90 degree angle. Additional weapon arcs to the fore and aft, as well as top, bottom, and anywhere in between is also no problem.

4) Inexperience - everyone has to start somewhere. The more you work on it, the more you learn, and the easier everything will be (until you start getting creative in how you try to approach some coding).

5) Next step - Exactly which races do you want to be represented? What will be the core strategy of each race? Do you have ship designs that you'd like to use? How would you like to incorporate the magic system (just as abilities? use research to simulate gaining new spell knowledge? Leveling up abilities to simulate gaining levels?)? As Carbon said, you'll want to get everything written out for yourself and team members to see--goals, design ideas, things of that sort. It really helps the work flow, not to mention the simple act of actually putting your thoughts into written words.

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Ok. I'm currently lacking Diplomacy (though I do intend to get it, once I have the money) so this mod will likely be for entrenchment, for now at least.

I already have an overview of the intended races up in the OP, but here's a much more detailed breakdown of the races, and their ships (and abilities if I have thought of them yet).

HUMAN:

-Scout role: Dartfish- a small, fast, and remarkably tough vessel. However, it posseses only the most curory armament, and is barely a match for even the weakest pirates. (tougher than other scouts, but pathetically weak attack. standard tech scout abilities)

-Light role: Light Sloop- A picket ship that is agile and quick. (I would give it a rush ability, to emphasize it's role as an interceptor)

-Long-range role: Schooner- while not as fast as the Light Sloop, it posses far greater firepower, but a weaker hull. (Fireball Spellshot. An area of affect attack)

-Siege role: Wargalley- Slow, cumbersome, and lacking in firepower compared to the schooner, it's only really good for bombardment. (no clue what special ability it would have)

-Colony role: Galley

-Carrier role: (not sure if the humans will get one, they tend to focus on bigger ships)

-Repair role: Artificer

-Heavy role: Hammership- Devastating warship, capable of the most powerful broadside of any ship, save capitol class vessels. (Somekindof ram ability would work best, I think.)

-Anitmodule role: Warbardge-like the wargalley, but bigger, and actually designed to carry heavier cannons for use against structures, has comparable planet bombing ability otherwise. (Orb of Acid- a short dot that does a fair amount of dammage)

-Mine role: Standard proximity mines.

-Starbase role: Starport- The purest demonstration of humanities will to carry their trade into the galaxy. Initially weaker than other Starbases, but can be upgraded for greater streangth. Trade and other income upgrades should be cheaper.

-Envoy role: (if I ever continue it for Diplomacy) Packet Brig- fast, and well able to defend itself (either tough or well armed)

-Capital colony: Wargalleon- Made more for carrying troops and goods than for war, it is still a capable warship. (not sure on abilities)

-Capital warship: Ship-of-the-Line - a first rate war ship capable of simply devestating broadsides. (Offensive spells, such as Lighting Bolt)

-Capital bombard/longrange: Ironclad- a veritable fortress, but ponderously slow. As a result, it's weapons are on turrets to offset it's inability to bring broadsides to bear, but this means fewer weapons. (Close all Ports- impervious or hard to damage, but weapons are inopperable, Rock Drop- drops a small asteroid onto the planet, Full Steam Ahead- a quick burst of speed, likely to get it into or out of combat quickly, but afterwards dead in the water)

-Capital support: Spellbardge- Little more than a mobile wizards labratory, it is fragile and easily destroyed, but it's spells can be devastating. (Needs An Offensive ability, a Defensive ability, and a Buff ability, with the big one granting it huge boosts to its 'mana')

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