So, as you're probably all too aware, SR2's first expansion, Wake of the Heralds, released just a couple of weeks ago.
This, as forecasted, meant a quick and painful death for most content mods as the game pre-emptively deactivated them to prevent exactly the kind of catastrophic event you'd have witnessed if you tried to enable ABEM.
Add to this the growing difficulty of keeping ABEM's balancing up to date with new additions to the game (hello, WotH!), and you would be right in assuming the mod was doomed. (I certainly did at first - before the expansion released, the best reassurances I could provide on the Steam forums were that it'd be back 'eventually'.)
In a way, the mod did die - Alar and I agreed to scrap the whole thing and try to rebuild it from scratch, using the pre-WotH version as a template to adapt and adjust to the new balance scheme, and by now the first version's more or less playable.
So, without further ado, I am happy to announce that barring unforeseen circumstances, the mod will go live (on Steam, but probably also on ModDB) on the 16th of May! *cue cheers*
- That tiny little explosion icon (and now the sensor range indicator too) is a constantly nagging reminder that we are in fact playing a mod... as if the Rahta name wasn't enough.
The first version's going to feel pretty crippled compared to 0.4.2. There's still a lot that needs to be added back in, and Alar's adopted an understandable 'quality before quantity' attitude so it's physically impossible to cram all that content back in within a week.
- When we tried to put all of 0.4.2 back into the game, those evil Rahta blew the modding facility up! And killed the Nylli ambassador, too! ;(
Still, here's a few things that are already in, or likely to be added by the time the mod's released:
- Rahta and Fasshi are back with a vengeance (Notable changes are that the Rahta now get Research from killing stuff instead of fighting stuff, the Rahta start with Troop Pods, the Fasshi start with Broadcast Antennae... and they're both only playable with the expansion.)
- A new race. Perhaps. Possibly Vanguard-related, though I'm not sure I'll get the chance to slip that tidbit in.
- Derelicts! (I can't be the only one who missed them?)
- Composite Armor, Covariant Shields, Shielded Antimatter Generators, Singularity Cores, Quantum Armor, Security Stations, Boarding Parties
- Sensors, I hope
- The many new (well, now they're old) and crazy ways in which one can tweak his game experience...
- Possibly a new name and/or logo. (We. Are. Not. In. Version. 0.120. Anymore.)
- Advanced Options are back, Crazy Options are back, ABEM version indicator is back and complaining (complaints sold separately)... oh, and Alar's back! :D
One thing worth noting is that we haven't really done a lot of work on the vanilla version (as noted above, the new races won't work, and the tech grid probably doesn't contain any ABEM content), so you shouldn't try playing it without the expansion (yet?). Which is another reason you should pick up WotH, as if it didn't already stand on its own two feet. (As I summarized in my Steam review - if you don't have SR2, figure out if you want to have it, and if you have or want SR2, you want to get WotH too. :P)
Ahoy, just googled for SR2 mods and stumbled over this. Is there any chance you'll be uploading this again over here? I just updated to WotH/v2.0 a couple days ago but am using the GOG version so steam isn't an option for me. :(
regards
DukeGarland
We've had several delays, so even the Steam version is MIA - but I'm hoping to put it up here around the same time we release on Steam.
Those are great news! Delays don't bother me all that much, I'm a patient guy. After all I can imagine (and quite likely still underestimate) the amount of work needed on redoing a mod with that scale of effect (looking at the patch notes on the steam site).
I'll be rooting for ye. :)
regards
DukeGarland
Oh, we're not restoring everything in one go, and we have most of the scripts already - it's mostly just balancing that's tripping us up, partly because Alar has decided to react to balance (and AI, so nebulae and sensors are straight out) issues that he previously ignored, and partly because of the expansion.
Anyway, if you're interested you can take a look at Github.com to keep an eye on things.