Looking for people interested in assisting with mod development!

[Hammish]

Been tooling around with modding at this a bit, figured I'd toss a shout-out and see if anyone might be interesting in forming a full-on group for the development of something serious and polished.  This is such a robust yet easily-configured engine, I figure it's a shame not to do something awesome as the AT team toils away and makes regular improvements on the base game.

Few of the things I've been thinking about or experimenting with in terms of balance or more customizable gameplay:

Energy weapons that can replenish ammo as quickly as they use it, but with a much higher refill cost; forces a player to make some hard choices when it comes to power management and how much their gear is eating up (better shields and engines use a lot of global power limiting the amount available for guns, might make the armor option for shield slot very attractive);
Energy weapons that are the inverse, with a very slow replenish but very high DPS, making them great burst weapons but lousy on sustain;
More projectile/missile weapons that make use of the ability to program weapons that fire in salvos;
Exotic weapons: I've already come up with a few that I think are interesting, and have been running the numbers on for balance.  Standardized pulse lasers instead of the current front-loaded version, an MLRS system (that actually looks very cool when shot, IMO), and a gyro-stabilized smartgun (low DPS, but the shells have a very minute amount of tracking, great for larger ships).

A more clearly-defined sense of size and role for ships and weapon hardpoints.  In default the weapon size tiers general follow a 1x/2x/3x DPS theme; in my current mod version the modifier is 1x/1.5x/2.25x on overall DPS but with larger weapons generally having a stronger alpha/burst.  I've also fine-tuned firing arcs and tracking speeds slightly in a few directions: tracking speed is reduced on all vessels, tracking arc is reduced on small vessels (making facing more important), tracing arc is increased on the larger ships giving them less blind spots but forcing the player to think ahead on aim (those big guns turn slooooowly);

Icon updates: Nothing much here, I've just been snazzying up the icons a touch since I needed to make new ones for the weapons mentioned above anyway.  About the only claim to fame I can make is that I included the class of the weapon on the icon so you can tell at a glance if something is small, medium or large.

These are all just ideas, though, and recollections of things that I've done in-mod thus far.  I want more.  I want to make something epic, and it's good coding/number-crunching experience.  So if this sounds interesting or you have some input, drop a line here or we could make a Skype or Steam discussion for it.

[Lurler]

Sounds awesome. Looking forward to what you all can do

And from our side I would like to add that we will continue with making modding easier and releasing all necesary stuff. Such as for example a tool to create physics definitions so you can create your own ships, etc.

[Hammish]

Figured I'd give a show of stuff I've been working on as time allows.

Basic weapon classes have four weapons, each at light, medium and heavy varieties.  (Still working on mines.)
Beam laser: Much like default.
Pulse laser: Much like default.
Tachyon repeater: Much like the default light plasma.
Plasma cannon: Single-shot, low speed, high damage.
Rotary AC: Much like default MG.
Burst Rifle: Fires 3-9 shell bursts, decent alpha but low DPS.
Mass Driver: Single-shot, low speed, high damage.
Clustergun: Much like the default X8 shotguns.
Rockets: Much like the default SRMs.
Guided Missiles: Much like the default LRMs.
MLRS: Fires 3-9 rockets in a short sequence, decent alpha but low DPS, about half the tracking of LRMs.
Rockets (Pod): Rocket shotgun.  Fires 10-30 rockets in a short sequence, very long reload.

Then the hybrid weapons (these require two branches of tech knowledge, i.e. Large Ballistics and Large Missiles):

Energy Torpedo (Energy/Missile): Fires a high-damage, semi-guided torpedo.  High burst, low DPS.
Fusion Beam (Energy/Ballistics): Fires a beam that does low initial damage but builds up over the span of 1.5 seconds.  (Accomplished by using multiple beams that stack with longer durations than the refire rate.  Each subsequent beam has a larger width so the fusion beam appears to 'grow' as it gains intensity.)  High energy cost, spool-up time.
Gauss Cannon (Ballistics/Energy): Long range shell, not quite hitscan but close, decent damage but low DPS.
Gyro-Stabilized Cannon (Ballistics/Missile): Rapid-fire MG with shells that have nominal guidance on them that will curve slightly toward locked targets.  (Good for larger, slower ships in trying to handle fast-moving targets.)
Fission Missile (Missile/Energy): Highest per-shot damage in the game, semi-tracking, low speed, very limited ammo, very taxing on energy systems.  (Not happy with this weapon currently, if it's possible to do it using events I'd like to make this something special like a damage-over-time from fallout or AOE.)
Kinetic Missile (Missile/Ballistics): Moderate damage, very fast speed, good tracking, massive impulse on impact.  (Designed for less combat-style characters, this weapon is designed to keep pirates off you by knocking them away.  It's actually pretty funny to use or watch.)

The general focus I've been working on is that the hybrid/high end weapons are slightly better than the base weapons, but not by much.  More importantly to me is that they all come across as unique in the end and bring something special to the table like the fusion beam, gyrostab cannon or kinetic missile.

And here's a small preview of some of the icons I've been working on.  Have had some issues with antialiasing and would welcome help with fixing this (part of it, I know, was that the actual icon files are larger than what the in-game engine uses, so it auto-scales them):

[Lurler]

Figured I'd give a show of stuff I've been working on as time allows.

Looks cool, I would love to try it
Some of that stuff might even be useful for vanilla game.

[Hammish]

Anything you want to use, go ahead and grab it for the regular, natch.  I'm just using -your- LEGOs to build something, after all.

I'm looking to put a little polish on it this week as work projects allow and then toss it up early next weekend, like Friday night CST or something.  Give people a chance to play and leave comments on balance, ect.  Then I can move on to some of the other modules that are mostly just number-crunching.

[Hammish]

I'd like to make a post and narrow down what I'm looking for in terms of people.

Most sought-after would be a modeller at this point; I'm absolutely horrible at it (drafting in high school was a long, long time ago for me, and while I used to be a whiz with CAD if it tells you anything Autodesk had JUST released the first iteration of 3DS when I was graduating).  Skinning would be a close second, but most modding I've seen done pairs it with the base modelling anyway.

I'm personally pretty good at being creative and crunching numbers, and I can do basic graphical design (web designer here), but I'd welcome more people into the fold here as well to help check game balance and systems with numbers; once everything is in that I want to do, like the power systems adaptations, it'll probably be far too much for just one person to handle quickly.

[Lurler]

I wish I can support that.
But even if you won't find people who are willing to help now I just want to say - don't dispair - we are going to release game on steam greenlight and couple of other platforms in about a month along with an insanely huge update So I can guarantee that once it's all out there will be much more people on the forums and playing the game in general

[Tyren]

i'm interested for modding, i can do graphics and codes, but i 'm searching for the file where the effects types are defined

[Lurler]

i'm interested for modding, i can do graphics and codes, but i 'm searching for the file where the effects types are defined

In the new update there is a definition file for all effects present in the game, so you will be able to use it.

[Tyren]

it sounds great !!!

i made 3d model of a destroyer (using, void expanse models) if someone is interested


https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzJuizhSBRG7d3BkcXJXX0d6MGc&usp=sharing

[Lurler]

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzJuizhSBRG7d3BkcXJXX0d6MGc&usp=sharing

The file is set as private

[Tyren]

sorry i'm a noob 
its public now

added some music free for space rpg (i'm the compositer)

and 1 hull model 3d

one gauss canon test

and two skills not functionnal (team combat repair hull, and advanced team combat  repair hull)

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzJuizhSBRG7d3BkcXJXX0d6MGc&usp=sharing

[Hammish]

Really liking the new build so far, guys.  I notice some of the new weapons seem... familiar, too.

+1 from me thus far, looking forward to looking through the data files at all the new stuff!  Like the new handling characteristics, models and sounds/music as well.