You are awesome and generous! I pray to the lua gods that UWE won't change more "basic" stuff. It is time that it will get easier for modders and mappers after all these builds...
Just a thought coming into my mind, couldn't mvm just use the same colour method as xenoswarm?
Well, for one...I've already done the bulk of the work on the system I've come up with. It's very close to finished. Not too mention, it's the method that I've wanted to use the entire time. The 12~ texture per model was a hacky "quick-fix" in older versions of MvM. Ulmont has done some fantastic work on the textures which I want to use in MvM. Using an approach that the XS guys do means you remove all control over colorization from the artist. I don't like that idea.
The method the Xenoswarm team is using doesn't give any granular control. You can pick a color, and that's about it. They're applying a new material that performs an additive color application to the emissive layer of a model. That will colorize it at first glance; however, you end up making that object glow because of how the emissive layer is processed. Compound lighting (environment, flashlights, etc) and Bloom / AO effects, and the glow can get even worse. I will admit it is a very quick and straight forward solution, but it's just not what I'm going for out of my skinning system. I want to give the texture artist control over how a model gets colorized. Which includes coloring the emissive and albedo (diffuse) textures.
And for the record, I'm not knocking the XS crew. They've done some brilliant work.
I'll be releasing the coloring system as an independent mod pretty soon, and making a detailed post of what it does and how to use it.
Imo, it's worth the effort. In the end, I'll have only spent a few days on it so I'm not exactly wasting time or holding up the mod from progressing.
Here are a extra examples of the system at work, which you can't do with a simple color overlay:
Face Paint and Colored Eyes (The vanilla textures have not been modified or replaced)
Why don't they make this game mode to be a official part of NS? I've always wanted to play this type of game mode during the original NS.
The mechanic of having a Commander organize and command in traditional RTS with FPS soldiers is a great enough mechanic in it's own right. By offering this as another game mode would only make NS more popular.
Sure, it's great as a mod. But if NS promoted this game mode, it would attract more people to try this mod out.
Great to see you working on this again!! I am starting work on Proving Grounds again, and I really want your skinning system!! The big problem for me has been creating the two unique teams, and while I have been able to change explosions to match team colors (in the old version anyway), I had never been able to change the marine teams colors. This would be amazing when completed to add to Proving Grounds
Keep up the good work and I'll see you on the battlefield soon.
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
@iamsoulrider Hey Man, good to hear you're working on it again. I was wondering about what happen to your mod. You're certainly free to use the skinning system, and so is everyone else. That's one of the main motivations behind it. It won't be limited to the Marines, it could work for aliens too. Or any world (no team, technically ReadyRoomTeam) entities for that matter. I've got the main Marine shader work done. I'm now working with the other commonly used shaders to support the new system. As I said before, I will release it as a stand-along mod and write up a "How-To" type Steam Workshop guide and forum post once it's all ready to go. Please be patient though, it is going to take me a bit more time.
Take your time, it's going to be a while before I use it. I am writing the mod from scratch, but also have come up with ideas to further reduce the amount of code and files used, so I am going to have to experiment a lot, but when I am ready for skins, I am sure this will have been available for some time
This is genious and looks awesome! Could that toggle entity be modified to simulate switches/buttons that change the color once activated, like in Dark Forces times?
With the last uwe news in mind, I believe that the dawn of the ns2 mods is almost here
This is genious and looks awesome! Could that toggle entity be modified to simulate switches/buttons that change the color once activated, like in Dark Forces times?
You can switch it based on any game logic or parameters in the material that you wish. Here are some examples:
Skulk Xenocide causes their veins to pulsate and glow.
Fade's Vortex/Teleport causes them to get darker as they vanish
Change emissive(glow) per powered state (in MvM)
The system is not perfect, and does have some draw back; however, it is a massive improvement over the old way models were colorized in previous versions of MvM. I'll be writing up a detailed guide on how it can be used at a later time.
Win, can't wait to play this again, is the mod officially support yet?
No it isn't, and it never will be. Well, actually that depends on how you define "supported". If by supported you mean they've released tools and source code. Then, yes. If you mean they merge it into NS2, then no and almost certainly never will be. They're most recent new post is proof it will never be "official". They need to focus on their next game, and I wish them the absolute best of luck!
My definition of supported is that they stop breaking your mod with every big feature patch (combat mod seems to survive relatively unscathed, i just assumed it was because it was officially supports and thus worked around).
But hey ho, odds are reinforcement will be the last major feature update to ns2 as it doesn't look like they are getting the half a million they wanted anyway.
Chiming in to say that I'm really looking forward to this. I followed the mod in it's early days, but never actually played it and man, am I ever regretting it.
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
Granted it was a relatively small update, MvM managed to make it through B258 without a hitch. Not even a hiccup.
Progress is continuing, I've got the game essentially finished but there are still some bugs and tweaks to be done. @Ulmont is making some progress on creating new skins via the new system. I'm not willing to give an ETA yet, but it will be sooner rather than later.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited October 2013
Great work @McGlaspie. As soon as PG is running, i'll be adding this to the mod, along with the extraentities mod by @JimWest. I previously had @sint's cout mod incorporated and running in the old version for the Kill Streaks, I hope to get that and an in-game version of @huze's badge mod, for those old quake style streak awards and stuff. I have so much to do...
Looking forward to seeing the new skins in MvM. Hit me up later if you're having a game!
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
edited November 2013
A bit of an update. I don't have that much more to go before the final tweaks are done. I was originally trying to get it out the door on NS2's birthday, but alas I couldn't make it (big surprise, right? Ha).
I know this will frustrate some people, but I've made a fairly significant change to the economy. The concept of Supply/Logistics is now a major factor in how much and how quickly teams can expand. Teams now have to contend with a limiting factor that does not correspond to Team Resources. Basically, I've expanded on the idea of Supply from vanilla NS2. All structures now have a Supply Cost. Additional Supply is acquired by capturing Resource Nodes and Tech Points (5 and 50 respectively). As a result, I've made adjustments to the Supply Cost of all the AI units and structures. So, if you want to have all those shiny goods, your team MUST expand. I've never been a fan of being able to fully tech-up on limited territory/resources.
I've also changed how Power Nodes are drawn for players and commanders. They now have to be scouted. Otherwise, they remain hidden. This solves the BIG issue of teams knowing where the enemy spawned. Commanders also cannot socket the power nodes unless they place a structure (spend Tres), or a friendly player is in that location. Socketing a node doesn't cost anything.
And for the people that "just want to play the damn game", calm yo-self. Check the progress tracker, the mod is very close to release.
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
@GhoulofGSG9 Thank you sir. Awesome post, and spot on.
My job has been pretty nuts the past month. I have made more progress, but RL has unfortunately really slowed down my personal projects. GhoulofGSG9 was exactly correct, this has been a total rewrite of MvM. From scratch. I did this to avoid the problems encountered in the past regarding the official updates breaking the mod. So far it has paid off. Since B250 I haven't had to make any significant changes to the mod and it's still working on B260. As the project tracker shows, the bulk of the mod is complete. There are however, still a few game breaking (imo) bugs that need to be squashed.
I haven't given up, nor do I intended to. Also, I'm going to take a queue from Swelek (Andi) and release this as two workshop items: one for code and one for art assets. This will help keep the mod size down when any new code updates go out.
I know I move at a pace that would make a disabled elderly person impatient. If I could, I'd spend all my time modding / making games, but life just doesn't let me do what I want. :-<
So i guess there's no point expecting this to be finished?
To be frank even if the creator does get around to finishing it (poor show making us wait so long...) i doubt it will get played much judging by other mods, look at how much work went into factions, a good idea with new game play and no one bothers to play, i don't know whether to blame uwe or the community at this point, lack of players or poor mod support, what ever the cause it looks like there's no point bothering with ns2 any more, you had a year to get this out and could never manage it.
Off you go again Electr0, you do know you're not the only person waiting for this mod right?
Me and my clan have been waiting since it broke in March and you don't see us moaning.
Factions wasn't much fun in my opinion, lots of work went into it but me and my clan didn't enjoy it when we tried it.
MvM was awesome from the few games i got to play back in Feb 2012, i hope when the next version is finished, it will be just as awesome, if not more, i'll definitely be running a server myself and there are lots of players around since NS2 went Humble.
Comments
Why not just have different coloured names above players heads?
Red vs Blue etc
That coupled with red attack when an aim is on the enemy should be enough to stop confusion.
Keep up the good work, looking forward to playing this again
Well, for one...I've already done the bulk of the work on the system I've come up with. It's very close to finished. Not too mention, it's the method that I've wanted to use the entire time. The 12~ texture per model was a hacky "quick-fix" in older versions of MvM. Ulmont has done some fantastic work on the textures which I want to use in MvM. Using an approach that the XS guys do means you remove all control over colorization from the artist. I don't like that idea.
The method the Xenoswarm team is using doesn't give any granular control. You can pick a color, and that's about it. They're applying a new material that performs an additive color application to the emissive layer of a model. That will colorize it at first glance; however, you end up making that object glow because of how the emissive layer is processed. Compound lighting (environment, flashlights, etc) and Bloom / AO effects, and the glow can get even worse. I will admit it is a very quick and straight forward solution, but it's just not what I'm going for out of my skinning system. I want to give the texture artist control over how a model gets colorized. Which includes coloring the emissive and albedo (diffuse) textures.
And for the record, I'm not knocking the XS crew. They've done some brilliant work.
I'll be releasing the coloring system as an independent mod pretty soon, and making a detailed post of what it does and how to use it.
Imo, it's worth the effort. In the end, I'll have only spent a few days on it so I'm not exactly wasting time or holding up the mod from progressing.
Here are a extra examples of the system at work, which you can't do with a simple color overlay:
Face Paint and Colored Eyes (The vanilla textures have not been modified or replaced)
Colorized Corpse dissolve effect
What if you changed the colour of the tracer bullets for the 2 different teams.
The mechanic of having a Commander organize and command in traditional RTS with FPS soldiers is a great enough mechanic in it's own right. By offering this as another game mode would only make NS more popular.
Sure, it's great as a mod. But if NS promoted this game mode, it would attract more people to try this mod out.
Aliens are cool and all that but most their units are annoying, the onus is over powered now and aliens in general are an FPS drain.
Rookies take ages to learn and enjoy playing as aliens as well.
I just hope the mod isn't broken again when the next patch comes out in 6 months time.
Great to see you working on this again!! I am starting work on Proving Grounds again, and I really want your skinning system!! The big problem for me has been creating the two unique teams, and while I have been able to change explosions to match team colors (in the old version anyway), I had never been able to change the marine teams colors. This would be amazing when completed to add to Proving Grounds
Keep up the good work and I'll see you on the battlefield soon.
Soul_Rider
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=177027441
I've also been making some good progress towards releasing MvM, but there are still quite a few bugs to sort out.
With the last uwe news in mind, I believe that the dawn of the ns2 mods is almost here
Skulk Xenocide causes their veins to pulsate and glow.
Fade's Vortex/Teleport causes them to get darker as they vanish
Change emissive(glow) per powered state (in MvM)
The system is not perfect, and does have some draw back; however, it is a massive improvement over the old way models were colorized in previous versions of MvM. I'll be writing up a detailed guide on how it can be used at a later time.
No it isn't, and it never will be. Well, actually that depends on how you define "supported". If by supported you mean they've released tools and source code. Then, yes. If you mean they merge it into NS2, then no and almost certainly never will be. They're most recent new post is proof it will never be "official". They need to focus on their next game, and I wish them the absolute best of luck!
But hey ho, odds are reinforcement will be the last major feature update to ns2 as it doesn't look like they are getting the half a million they wanted anyway.
I've only every played a few rounds, but MvM was some really good times
Progress is continuing, I've got the game essentially finished but there are still some bugs and tweaks to be done. @Ulmont is making some progress on creating new skins via the new system. I'm not willing to give an ETA yet, but it will be sooner rather than later.
Looking forward to seeing the new skins in MvM. Hit me up later if you're having a game!
I know this will frustrate some people, but I've made a fairly significant change to the economy. The concept of Supply/Logistics is now a major factor in how much and how quickly teams can expand. Teams now have to contend with a limiting factor that does not correspond to Team Resources. Basically, I've expanded on the idea of Supply from vanilla NS2. All structures now have a Supply Cost. Additional Supply is acquired by capturing Resource Nodes and Tech Points (5 and 50 respectively). As a result, I've made adjustments to the Supply Cost of all the AI units and structures. So, if you want to have all those shiny goods, your team MUST expand. I've never been a fan of being able to fully tech-up on limited territory/resources.
I've also changed how Power Nodes are drawn for players and commanders. They now have to be scouted. Otherwise, they remain hidden. This solves the BIG issue of teams knowing where the enemy spawned. Commanders also cannot socket the power nodes unless they place a structure (spend Tres), or a friendly player is in that location. Socketing a node doesn't cost anything.
And for the people that "just want to play the damn game", calm yo-self. Check the progress tracker, the mod is very close to release.
I thought this was going to be out by now, it's nearly December...
This is quiet a big mod and more a rewrite of the old one than just a update. You can follow progress here:
http://www.team156.com/mcglaspie/mvm/index.php
It will take some more time to finish but as you see McGlaspie is getting closer to release every week. So be patient
My job has been pretty nuts the past month. I have made more progress, but RL has unfortunately really slowed down my personal projects. GhoulofGSG9 was exactly correct, this has been a total rewrite of MvM. From scratch. I did this to avoid the problems encountered in the past regarding the official updates breaking the mod. So far it has paid off. Since B250 I haven't had to make any significant changes to the mod and it's still working on B260. As the project tracker shows, the bulk of the mod is complete. There are however, still a few game breaking (imo) bugs that need to be squashed.
I haven't given up, nor do I intended to. Also, I'm going to take a queue from Swelek (Andi) and release this as two workshop items: one for code and one for art assets. This will help keep the mod size down when any new code updates go out.
I know I move at a pace that would make a disabled elderly person impatient. If I could, I'd spend all my time modding / making games, but life just doesn't let me do what I want. :-<
To be frank even if the creator does get around to finishing it (poor show making us wait so long...) i doubt it will get played much judging by other mods, look at how much work went into factions, a good idea with new game play and no one bothers to play, i don't know whether to blame uwe or the community at this point, lack of players or poor mod support, what ever the cause it looks like there's no point bothering with ns2 any more, you had a year to get this out and could never manage it.
Me and my clan have been waiting since it broke in March and you don't see us moaning.
Factions wasn't much fun in my opinion, lots of work went into it but me and my clan didn't enjoy it when we tried it.
MvM was awesome from the few games i got to play back in Feb 2012, i hope when the next version is finished, it will be just as awesome, if not more, i'll definitely be running a server myself and there are lots of players around since NS2 went Humble.