Empires: Perfect union project (playable demo)

Static squads as they are implemented in Empires is stupid, yes. That is why they have to be changed, integrated, and redesigned. I see squads as central to effectively commanding. Rather than herding a bunch of players to general areas by screaming into a mic, goals are handed down to squad leaders who are responsible*for just herding their*4 people. As long as the squad stays together it is an effective solution. Squad leaders will gain more tools for commanding and directing their small team. Players have more benefits to sticking with their leader and not running off. Team work is rewarded and lone wolfing is discouraged.*
*
Players like rewards and goals. Missions direct players within the game world, appealing to their sense of continuity. A player is more likely to bomb a target if they chose it from a list of options, each with its own reward,*than if a*12 year old is barking it over the mic. Rather than being focused on the overall goal of wining, which is too vague to encourage team work, the player now has several smaller goals, like kill that, take this, move there.
*
Its true that vehicles present a potential problem, one that I am still working on. This system does help. Missions from squad leaders are mostly directed towards players in vehicles. This further emphasizes squads as the nucleolus of the team with commander orders flowing to squads who then request support from vehicles.
*
We can keep groups of infantry together, and groups of vehicles, but a mixture is difficult. Perhaps allow squad members to spawn at a squad owned vehicle. Allow squad memebrs to ride on, or in, a squad owned vehicle. Automatically removing a player from a squad if they take a fighter or gunship?
*
One way to prevent the dissolution of squads would be AI squad members and vehicles that follow commander orders, but that is something me and Liberal are still looking into.

 

NS2 has area squads. Whenever people are within N units of each other a blob is made. This blob is in the shape of spheres N with N units radius away from each player. They don't have notion of squad leader. If squads were to be automatic they'd need to have (half-)automatic hierarchy.

 

Does it work or does it feel awkward

 

so.... 2 voicecoms?

1 for squad
1 for entire team

thus less clutter when it comes to voicecommunication?

 

It makes disco blobs on the comm screen and otherwise doesn't do much of anything.

It's basically the most useless feature.

 

I have no idea if it has any relation to anything other than giving orders to whole squad.

 

It doesn't, it also doesn't work for that because the squads change, it's basically a replacment for click and drag and that's about it.

 

What "doesn't"?

 

Working on a few different models at a time.

Here is a work in progress of the new NF Jeep

 

looks good... wtf is hanging from the front... um loopy bumper thing? ohh is that a tow line from when we had the idea for that?

 

That's not the Sidewinder.

 

That is a babydoll head.

I am low-polying the sidewinder

 

I have been w working on a universal VTOL script and I think I have it pretty much worked out, I took the idea from Crysis, after messing around wiht the USAF VTOL, and also watching videos from other VTOL examples in other games like Unreal 3.

Will have a video to show what the UI will look like, and the how it will control, It took me so long because I was trying to use a already made helicopter script from another programmer, and it just did not work the way I liked so after two months of messing around with it, and working on other things I decide to just start over and create a new script.

Mouse: Lets you look right, left, up, and down pointing the aircraft where the mouse is looking, needs some tweaking but allows precise aiming while in the air.

W Raise the aircraft and also the depending on where the aircraft is pointing you will move forward, and also lower the the aircraft.

S: lands the aircraft, also lowers the altitude of the aircraft needs tweaking because when adjusted the aircraft should lower straight down, at the moment it tends to slide away from the Y axis.

A: aircraft strafes to the left

D: aircraft strafes to the right.

Left mouse button and right mouse button both fire weapons one and two.

 

sounds awesome, keep up the good work ... or we can have helicopters i guess.

 

Wanted to post the layout of a building I'm working on.

 

cool what is it? It looks like a large bunker.

 

A little lowpoly NF Vehicle Factory action



We'll be testing out the vehicle scripts soon.

Also, a short video of a one man project done in the Unity engine. Just to show what it can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECAirSLrJk&feature=fvwrel

 

something tells me changing maps after a round will take 3x longer on unity due to more detail.

 

Something tells me you are an idiot. Clearly you have absolutely no idea how these things work.