I'm pretty busy with real-life stuff today, so this'll be a really quick bulletin with lots of renders and few if any actual ingame screenshots. Lots of WIP stuff! Here goes!
Last week I posted some erroneous Cyrillic assets, and the input was useful. With the help of community member bsnighteye I put together some billboards with better Russian on them. Of course, they're pretty small ingame so I don't know how readable they are but it's the thought that counts.
Beer and energy drinks. What more could we need?
I've been working hard on the Nod campaign recently, and some of the missions need pretty specific props. For instance, the Genesis Legion is working towards a chemical missile strike on GDI when you meet them. I wanted to show that they were in the process of scavenging together these weapons by making the silos look like disused missile silos from the previous war.
It's shown in this render next to some previous chemical weapons props which I showed off a couple of months ago, and another work in progress structure - a Nod pyramid. I'm not sold on the design of it yet, but that may be because the limitations of the shape and the aesthetic prevent me from doing everything I want with one pyramid. So there may be another variant coming at some point.
Morpher wanted me to do an Air Processor prop, so I put one together. The idea is that it's part of GDI's reclamation efforts to rid areas of the blight of Tiberium. I'm not entirely OK with using the civilian blue as part of the texture because I would rather reserve that for capturable objects, that way players will know what to do with any capturable structure (capture it) whether or not they've encountered it before.
It still needs to have some environmental wear added by way of dirt and dust, which I shall do soon.
The last thing I have an image of this week is some further work on the environment. I've been working on the veinhole monster and HG_SCIPCION has contributed some wasteland plant life. The VHM needs a few more tendrils and some blending to the real terrain tiles, but for the most part it's coming together.
Once the VHM and it's spreading veins are done, a large and irritating-to-complete project will be out of the way. The VHM is the most obvious piece of orange flora/fauna, and further plant life can be added to the set to flesh out the ecosystem. It should open the doors for a few more interesting maps - I know I've already got a few ideas cooking.
Things I don't have screenshots of but are super important include:
-Nod campaign progressing well, I've almost finished the layout on the mission I showed last week, where you must prevent a technology cult from reawakening an instance of CABAL.
-I'm still working on those skirmish maps I keep on showing.
-Morpher has been working on the AI, which is now semi-competent and finally builds naval units. Yaaaay!
It's a huge step in the right direction for a functional AI, especially since TO adds a lot of things which seem simple and natural for a human but which the AI simply doesn't comprehend. Last week I was playing a game against the AI and was extremely pleased to see it sending engineers into my tech buildings, something I'd never seen it do before.
And that's what we did this week!
What's wrong with the original VHM? This one looks odd, and I assume it is not the definite model.
The old VHM looks really out of place next to TO's assets, I think perhaps because of how heavily handpainted it is compared to the more purely 3D things we've added. The vanilla VHM exists in an odd limbo between handpainted and 3D asset.
This one still needs a bunch of work, especially in bulking up the volume and texture of the veins and blending them with the VHM's lips. Once that's done I'll blend it with the terrain by hand and potentially do a bit of a paint over to get it to match the ambient shading present on the terrain.
Whend will be ready to play ? The mod looks very good.
AI, campaigns, and a few minor GDI and Nod buildings.
So you need to make AI, campaigns and some few minor buildings for GDI and NOD, that sound like a lot of work till is finish :D
Oh wait, also the snow theatre.
It's all certainly coming together though.
I think the corners of the pyramid need something to liven them up.
Make that Air Processor Prop a capturable building then maybe? Maybe like, a Power Plant? It totally looks like it would generate power.
Please! Please! Although it is a simple beta! I can not wait! And I think I speak for everyone!
More veins around the mouth of VHM would be better. I admire your work.
Wow! I didn't expect to be mentioned in dev post :) You did well with billboards!