Modders Logbook - October 2015 news - Lost Dragons mod for ARMA 3

Modders Logbook - October 2015

(TLDR - Progress continues!)

Greetings!

It has been four months since I last wrote here and it is long overdue that I pick this up again.

Since last entry we've passed summer season and are already long in the fall though first snow has not yet fallen. Days are shorter and so on and so on. Summer was really busy time, but unfortunately not that much with the mod. Reallife work kept us pretty busy and I myself burned a lot of midnight hours with two large simultaneous projects but as you may have noticed we've tried to keep up at least a semi-steady stream of WIP pictures and videos of new assets in the pipeline.

Now what exactly have we been up to?

First of all there was a new entry to our arsenal: The HCR-A2 heavy combat rifle

As you can see the drum mag is filled with small grenades so the weapon will be quite powerful. Question is, if it is too powerful? In Arma grenade launcher do massive amount of damage and so will this rifle and so will our other upcoming weapons, but this is due to the leaping advances in personal protection in the Lost Dragons universe and the use of weaponized combat drones. Thus the need for more powerful weapons.

HCR-A2 is a military class weapon used by the defenders of the New Eden during the Old War and can be obtained from the field by scavenging old weapons caches and such. Normal corporate Hazard suit will have hard time against one, but better armors will also be available for those who know where to look.

The weapon is ingame ready but its config is still very raw so there is still a lot of work to do with it.

Heres how it looks ingame:

The Blackbirds Salvage INC standard issue hazard suit has also gone through an update pass:

and we also got a new standard issue undersuit to go with it!

As you may notice, pieces of the undersuit can be seen under the armor! The idea is that the undersuit acts as the basic environmental protection and the armor pieces on top of it add more physical protection and also contain power and electronics for basic lifesupport and communications systems as well as a platform for for extra equipment and support devices.

So the Corporate issue armor offers basic protection against natural elements and physical harm that a Salvage operator may encounter and can even take a few bullets in a hostile encounter, but in the situation the explorers face in Lost Dragons there may be need for some extra protection.

As I mentioned earlier the military forces in the Old War used advanced combat armors and such may be scavenged from the battlefield:

Armors like this will offer far greater protection and may even have advanced targeting systems and other tactical decives incorporated into them, so finding one in one piece is a great prize! Looting corpses may not yield a working armor, but even pieces of them will help the HQ engineers to fabricate a Corporate copy. Retrieving technology like this will be a big part of the scavenging gameplay.

There will be multitude of different armors/suits/uniforms some with more advaced features like the Ground Offensive Assault Technology utilizing special forces helmet :

Which is the latest of my personal sidetrack projects which all keep me well amused but also keep me from working the list of things for the next release.. :D Shame on me..

I may have said it before but the mod will also have full (and sometimes even interactable) interiors in all vehicles and there has been some progress in that front too:

The Blackbird HQ vehicles interior has been blocked out and is waiting to be decorated with suitable details. The rear section is dedicated for engineering team and the middle will contain communications and command systems along with small medical facility and some space for the occasional passenger.

Also the HQ vehicle got a little upgrade with new scifi suspension and some updates to the outer hull geometry.

It looks pretty much the same with a quick glance but there are quite a lot of improvements to the mesh.

Also as a little fancy feature, there will be shoot from vehicle points in the side door airlocks. So you can defend the HQ without jumping out!

Also The WK-209 Combat Walker got interior upgrade and some adjustment to he exterior to better enclose the three man cockpit. The blue viewports will have full-awareness visibility outside and we have more cool features planned for it.

Also the arm gun got updated as I got a better idea for them and they kinda happened while working on the cockpit. :D

The missile also batteries got fitted into the outermost pods as they would have otherwise clipped through the cockpit. The inner pods are now shorter and I dont know yet what I want to put into them, but there is now some extra upgrade space for new equipment.

Also on a side note the walkers are unfortunately broken in the released version as Bohemia has updated some things in their configs that broke our walker leg-torso combining system. It has been fixed for the next release though so no worries!

The map asset building has also taken leaps of progress. The first design blockout iteration of the ARK bunker is in good order and the overall form and size is pretty much set.

The bunker is massive building as it has to fit in the huge Dragon and it took me a while to figure out how I wanted the bunker top hatch to open up. I think I've come up with pretty decent and solid looking concept that looks like it can protect the Dragon while its being built.

The model is still very raw and will need a lot more detailing, but at this stage we can start working on with its ingame implementation.

Also the Dragon Complex city walls have already gone through unification phase as the overall layout needed some adjustment and it offered a great chance to redo the pieces with some features we had come up with.

Main feature of the unification is the standardized size of the structure slots. The default size is 42x25x25 meters and there are also some larger slots with double the height 42x25x50 meters. Due to the nature of the curved walls there are a few more unique slot types, but overall this change will be major relief in the future urban development!

Last but not least the Blackbird dropship is undergoing an upgrade process and we have built proper cargo script function that allows us to easily lock in any cargo that it has in its cargo hold.

The new ship is a bit larger to better accommodate not only the cargo, but also enough space for the crew.

Now even with the resize the ship may not be big enough to actually support large crew for prolonged space flight so I think for the Lore we may have to come up with some sort of spaceborne freighter that functions as the main support craft which with the crew has traveled in their journey.

I think thats it for now! For those who have read this far, thank you for your interest and support! We work on the mod as much as we can and hope to get the next release out before the end of the year!

-Goat

ALSO! New OST piece from the ever talented Theretor