First post here - just a couple of interface suggestions. -For vehicle customization, allow players to set a list of preferred engines and armor types for each vehicle preset, so that customization can focus on weapon loadouts without having to have a variation of a particular loadout for each engine/armor combo, or having to re-customize each round depending on the available technologies. For example, for a Brenodi Duel HE Cannon Heavy Tank you could set the preferred engine to 'advanced coolant' then create a ranked list of alternatives i.e If Advanced Coolant engine is available use Bio-Diesel if neither are, use 3-phase... -Key bind certain class setups - i.e be able to set repair upgrade engineer to '1' etc - or make the menu keyboard operable - not an "arrows + enter" system but key combo setup, i.e. '1/2/3/shift2/9/' for (class 1) 2(weapon slot 2) 3 (selection ) shift 2 (upgrad slot 2) 9 (option nine - class specific - dig in)) I'm not sure how simple this is, or easy to implement or fun to implement, its a sort of hybrid of the class systems I've seen in various source mods.:eek: Something simpler - every engineer with no skill selected starts with repair upgrade. (BUT ADD SOME TEXT OR GRAPHICAL CHANGES TO THE MENU SO NEW PLAYERS DO NOT THINK THAT THEY ARE STUCK WITH THAT SKILL or that skills are static) Some additional requests : bot AI - just some robo-minions that seek and destroy and seek and build so that new players can train as commander in single player. A tutorial would be fantastic. I hope my suggestions are of use, there are things in there for modders of various skills that may interest the developers a bit more than balance tweaking (the most fun part of development!)
I agree, espacialy on 2. _______ Last time I sugested something regarding AI and a campaign I was called a retarted annoying elitist troll with severe mental disorders and I was told I was not welcome in this community.
Well, you're not banned... Who said that? Also, who's gonna script the campaign? Its a lot of work. Personally, I'd make Empires of Chivalry first... (make it happen) (omfg, lord, place a stable! I want teh boomknights) I made a detailed campaign mission (hard drive failure killed the good version though) for SWBF2 and I don't know Source - but you never know, the developers might be looking for something refreshing to do on their project... Working on a mod can get repetitive after a while, probably especially so when people keep whining about balance without thinking. I wonder if there's a way to tie unit statistics to server settings... Eternally Silent Empires, Pirates, Vikings and Empires, Dystopires, Empires Forts, Team Empires 2, Inter-dimensional Empires The general concept has a lot of potential and collaboration could get more interest in the original thing... j/k?
The first idea you posted is the most epic thing to every happen to empires. Okay, maybe not, but changing the armor to be automatically away from standard would be obscenely awesome.
We were discussing just a week ago that it should be like this lol I wouldn't hope too much for bot AI, that's a bit farfetched for most of us I think
I want a German Shepard dog to follow me around so I can tell him to attack ppl and while they are shooting him im shooting them.
Sorry, I must not have used the right search terms - but Empires is a great game on so many levels. I think it has learning curve issues but most mods do for some time.
The auto-fill system sounds pretty cool. Hopefully they'll also combine the armor and engine selection screens to streamline stuff even more. And, the extra prop players can edit the file to their liking. I recommend that the install includes a default file with basic setups so that noobs don't have to take the time to create it themselves. The key bind system sounds really cool. I assume the graphics part would be that all the current slots/choices have little numbers added to them to make this system obvious and a quick way to speed things up. Making it a separate menu/making it customizable might cause more trouble than it's worth. Also, make it so that players can create scripts that auto-load skills by inserting through the console the button combos. AI.... meh. There are more important things to fix first and AI generally is either stupid and gets in the way or takes a huge chunk of time to get right. Maybe simple chase algorithms if target in < X range and line-of-sight so you don't have to worry about pathing algorithms *shutter*. Most of these seem like they're designed to make life easier for the experienced player. Just make sure that they are done in a way that new players aren't overwhelmed with all these shiny tools and options and configs that they have to learn.
The AI suggestion was for single player training - just dumb seek and destroy / engineers that build unbuilt buildings and would still run into walls...just to let new players get a grasp on the game in a less challenging environment.
I think AI would be an amazing addition to Empires (especially during times when the player count drops below one full server), though I think the devs have too much on their hands already to do it. The only viable solution I see is a third-party development similar to bots in Natural Selection (i.e. server side bot plugin). From what I can tell, there are two good bot plugin candidates for Orange Box mods: RCBot2 Omni-bot RCBot2's source code is available and in theory someone with a good grasp of C++ programming could port it to Empires. I've tried to work on it myself, but most of the code is way over my head. Also, it sounds like the Omni-bot dev is (trying to) work with Valve to make third-party bot development easier. I don't really understand the details, but it seems like a future SDK release may give bot developers better access to required extensions.
I would say that there should just be 4 presets: -Performance -Speed -Budget ------------- -Custom Then have the custom loadout manager, in say, the main menu? of course in-game settings would still be saveable
