MOD question

[Rebel Yell]

Played this game from the time it came out, and still love it, but haven't had time for it, or reading this forum much for a while. I'm wondering if anything has changed with regard to being able to mod the appearance of the Titans themselves. Its the only thing I ever really disliked.

I'm guessing no, but it never hurts to ask.

[Ares]

The titans look like they use a 12 step animation using the .tga format. Targa does support an alpha channel for transparancy. Looks like it would be simple to create a few new titans presuming you have artistic talent and a paint program that supports tga. Photoshop for example. It might be good to also have access to a 3D modeling program to create the animations unless you plan to hand drawn the little guys. That would probably work too.

[Rebel Yell]

Make no mistake, I am NOT the one to do it, but I play several games that are heavily modded (Combat Mission and IL-2 primarily) and I was hoping that one of the talented folks here had done it, or just needed a nudge to do it. [8D]

[Ares]

Just out of curiousity, what is it you don't like about the Titans? Once you know what they look like you can easily determine some of your strategy. Besides the chassis is not that important. Its whats under the hood that counts. I enjoy the fact that I have to scan or wait to be shot at to know what I'm facing. There is something to be said about the thrill of fear when you know they have a big energy weapon but not what kind. Then the hairs on the back of your neck rise when you hear that Tesla sound and your worst fear is realized with regards to Black Ray and Cold Light both of which also top the list of my worst feared Energy weapons. Or am I alone in this attitude?

[aquietfrog]

My only complaint about the titan graphics is that all of the chassis have arms yet not all of the graphics show titans having arms. I've been trying to draw in some arms on the titans that don't but it's quite difficult to draw convincing arms in that small scale.

[Coyote27]

I don't like the medium chassis 1 design much. The others I'm fine with.

[Coyote27]

ORIGINAL: Ares

. . . and your worst fear is realized with regards to Black Ray and Cold Light both of which also top the list of my worst feared Energy weapons. Or am I alone in this attitude?

I take it you've fallen to Frostbites a few times. :p

It's more about the weapons combination imho. Some weapons work very well together.

[Rebel Yell]

ORIGINAL: Ares

Just out of curiousity, what is it you don't like about the Titans? Once you know what they look like you can easily determine some of your strategy. Besides the chassis is not that important. Its whats under the hood that counts.

They look like most of them don't belong together. I agree that having the chassis types makes it hard to tell what you are facing until you successfully scan, and this is definitely a good thing, but it can still be just like that and have chassis that all look like they are from the same universe.

It could always work like unidentified vehicles in Combat Mission, and show only a generic chassis until a successful scan, or something along those lines.

But, the bottom line is, most all of these are truly ugly and I wish they looked all looked alike within a theme, ie Heavy Gear, CAV, etc.

[Ares]

Well, until you can define the things you don't like about the titans there is no point in modding them. I think they are too small to make it any fun to mod. First you have to make a great looking titan image or model then you have to reduce it in size until almost all detail is lost and everything starts to blur together. For the size, they are pretty well done.

[Rebel Yell]

To be more specific, they almost all look like toys. Compare them to the similarly sized Mechcommander Mechs, which I understand is completely different, ie sprites, 2D v 3D, etc, but they are scaled a little better and are much cleaner.

For another thing, they should have similar color schemes. Currently, the "skins" are such a hodge-podge, that it contributes to the irritation factor.

Again, I will say, this game is about mechanics, not eye candy, and it excels in that. I would be happy if there were just 4 models, 2 humanoid and 2 bird-like, scaled appropriately for the 5 sizes, and colored in variations of similar cammo. I would be "back-flips down the hall" happy if some talented person *hint hint* would mod lots of BT and/or CAV mecha images to pick and choose. [&o]

[Phoenix-D]

The Mechcommander (1) mechs are sprites as well, abet with much much much more animation than ToS. No reason you can't render a 3d unit as a sprite, though.