Lost Dragons - Total Modification Alpha

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Another thing I noticed is that on my setup, the models or textures appears to be lacking "depth" shadows? It may be textures that lacks shadows baked in as details. Otherwise still a great job.

All the textures are still placeholders for proper ones so this is normal. As we are small team with limited time, we have concentrated on modeling assets and getting them in game and have left texturing for later time.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

We've had some cool progress on the model front as the Blufor walker is nearing completion and we thought to make a little portrait of the two walkers together!

I also took a moment to make the Old War factions who ones battled on New Eden with the battleships and walkers and what not. As they are in no way affiliated with the salvage corporations now coming to loot the place the division between them was needed. New factions are as follows:

WesT/Blufor:

Hastur Corp : Salvage corporation (Player faction in "Treasure Hunt" gamemode)

East/Opfor:

Blackbird Salvage INC. : Salvage corporation (Player faction in "Treasure Hunt" gamemode)

Independet:

"Old War attacker name placeholder" : Old War Attacker faction

Civilian:

"Old War Defender name placeholder" : Old War Defender Faction

"New Eden Civilians": Old War Civilians

[nickobus 16]

We've had some cool progress on the model front as the Blufor walker is nearing completion and we thought to make a little portrait of the two walkers together!

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/26/25069/thumb_300x150/Walkers_WIP_Render_02.png http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/26/25069/thumb_300x150/Walkers_WIP_Render_01.png

I also took a moment to make the Old War factions who ones battled on New Eden with the battleships and walkers and what not. As they are in no way affiliated with the salvage corporations now coming to loot the place the division between them was needed. New factions are as follows:

WesT/Blufor:

Hastur Corp : Salvage corporation (Player faction in "Treasure Hunt" gamemode)

East/Opfor:

Blackbird Salvage INC. : Salvage corporation (Player faction in "Treasure Hunt" gamemode)

Independet:

"Old War attacker name placeholder" : Old War Attacker faction

Civilian:

"Old War Defender name placeholder" : Old War Defender Faction

"New Eden Civilians": Old War Civilians

Loving your work. I am impressed on your originality. The map you guys are making has an interesting ambiance that I am really digging. The fact that you are a small team and pushing into fresh designs and concepts is pretty damn impressive. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your continued releases.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Loving your work. I am impressed on your originality. The map you guys are making has an interesting ambiance that I am really digging. The fact that you are a small team and pushing into fresh designs and concepts is pretty damn impressive. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your continued releases.

Thank you very much sir! This really has been great chance to realize our own scifi vision and we are really glad to hear we have managed to pull of original designs as there are so many great futuristic/scifi games, movies and designs out there and they've all influenced our work. We've got tons of stuff still coming so keep on checking in! This is all just the tip of the iceberg. :D

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Yesterday I was talking with my brother about how cool monorail transit system would be on the map. I had a bit goofy idea that was "bulletproof" but in reality would not have been feasible.

Anyhow the discussion ended into the idea of using the new physX car simulation to create a traincart and set it on a rail. The concept was fine and I eagerly set to try it out.

Heres a short demo on how it ended up working!

Pretty neat right?

All thanks to carX simulation theres no need to steer it, full speed ahead!

It could go a bit faster maybe and the model is a quick concept and needs a lot of work still but it does work, which is really cool. Don't yet know if we can make a multi cart train, but will have to try it out too. And also rail switches and whatnot, running a train can also get a bit hazardous as you can see in the end..

"This is HorribleGoat, your guest conductor. Hold on tight. The ride might get a little... bloody." ;D

[J. Schmidt 10]

Looks epic, keep up the great work.

[Valken 622]

That railcar is awesome. Would be cool to also to see the inverted version or a a railsystem that allows transition to both types of tracks.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

That railcar is awesome. Would be cool to also to see the inverted version or a a railsystem that allows transition to both types of tracks.

Thanks Valken!

I first thought to make a top rail hanging train, but thought it might be too hard to align it to the track so made it like this. Top rail train should be possible though and I don't see why there couldn't be one that uses both. It would just need track pieces that change the rail from one to another. Might even do it myself if I can fit it to the map design.

[inofix 10]

I will give this modification a try later.

[st!gar 3]

This is fantastic.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

I will give this modification a try later.

This is fantastic.

Thanks guys! Much appreciated.

Please keep in mind though that 0.1.99 is still very early alpha version and theres still tons to do before it is actually properly playable. The hacking contest MP mission is good fun though! :D

[HorribleGoat 1473]

While working on the map we've tried out some concepts how to improve the night time jungle ambiance experiment. Since New Eden is a alien planet somewhere out there we have a chance to experiment with the plantlife.

Heres little something to show what were up to. It's not that new idea, but looks pretty cool.

[haleks 8212]

Oh my God, that's going to be one cool alien planet to explore!

I can't wait to make missions for this!

[CyclonicTuna 87]

That looks really cool :D

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Glad you guys like it! The glowing plants will definitely add a bit depth in the night life.

We've been discussing if we should make the plants have day and night cycle and open up at night, or should they react to units close to them or maybe both in some combination, like open during day, closed at night, but open if something is close, or close by day open by night and close when someone is near. Or something else?

We would like to hear what you think?

There will be a few different plants with glowing parts mix it up a bit and we will not cover the whole forest with them so there will be plenty of dark jungle as well.

[drakedaeron 13]

While working on the map we've tried out some concepts how to improve the night time jungle ambiance experiment. Since New Eden is a alien planet somewhere out there we have a chance to experiment with the plantlife.

Heres little something to show what were up to. It's not that new idea, but looks pretty cool.

That really beautiful...

[orcinus 121]

Opening and closing plants... hmm, triffids anyone?

Great stuff, Lost Dragons team. Ran the alpha a couple of times, got a few entries in the RPT. I'll dig it out and post them.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

We got some new WIP shots from upcoming Old War assets:

A Battledroid to roam the forgotten battlefield:

And a second gunship to rain fire upon your enemies:

These units will be part of the Old War attacker arsenal and something you might encounter on the map.

Also I figured out a great way to plan out the urban areas - By making a scale model of the city. This way I can fiddle around with different ideas much easier.

This really got me out of a design deadlock as it is really hard to try to plan fictional but functional feeling city and drawing it out on paper just did not cut it anymore.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Here is a quick sneakpeek on the redesigned Dragon Warship!

The Dragon got a almost complete redesign as I got this new vision on how it should look like. Overall features are the same - There is still the massive main cannon that takes half the ships size and there are the side hangars, missile tubes and huge number of different size weapon platforms. The ship grew in length from 1000 meters to about 1400 and got a bit wider to better house all the guns and internal systems.

Im glad I decided to do this now before all the internal geometry and such were made for the old one. Would have been a bit silly then to do so complete redesign. Anyway Im really happy how the V2 came out, it seems to become a trend now that our assets get a facelift after a while. :D

[icmspectre 32]

This mod makes me horny

[dr death jm 117]

wow ... this stuff is awesome... any chance youll be adding some typ of gun ship DM like ofp days... I remember playing that a few time's and some one added starwars along with it... was incredibly fun ...

[Valken 622]

Can't wait for next release!

[nightovizard 20]

Hope we can see an update soon :)

[HorribleGoat 1473]

:D We've had a bit slow month but there has been progress too! Im going to write up our monthly summary tomorrow and show whats been going on in more detail.

We are considering using Trello as more open issue tracker with upcoming and wip features & whatnot listed up and where people can see more easily what is going on and what we are doing for next versions and what kind of things we have planned.

For now cant say any dates, but in the near future is our goal. (vague enough right? ;D)

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Hellohellohello!

Although our progress last month was a bit slow we did manage to crunch a bug in our structure part placement function and the problem with attach to losing physX component is no more.

Also on my part I was able to put in some hours to continue the map and it is actually starting to look like something!

First wall structure WIPs replace the grey wall blocks:







And with a bit of work the city base structures are starting to form up:



A while back we had some trouble running buldozer in TerrainBuilder (might be the high custom object count?)and map tweaking seemed quite impossible without ability to preview height and object placement adjustments, but it seems that it works now (Dozer takes about 40minutes to start though :D) and I was able to properly continue mapping which in turn was really big inspiration boost! It always feels great to be able to progress forward with a huge project like this.

Also a little closer look at the wall structures:

I must admit I don't recognize my voice at all on the video.. Might be my crappy microphone + recording at 6am after a silent night of mapping, but I hope you get some idea of what we are doing out of it.