To continue celebrating Tyraniduary I thought I'd link you lovely lads and ladies to the work of some very nice people who've collaborated with us in the past.
So if you're interested in having some expanded Tyranid fun, check these mods out:
Dawn of Immolation
Made by Count Bagatur, it includes a Chinese-themed army, new skins and models, some rebalancing, new daemons and a whole bunch of other things. Compatible with 0.5b2.
Ultimate Apocalypse
Made by the massive and awesome UA team, they've even got a tutorial on how to combine it with a bunch of other mods (including ours) to make life easy for you! Compatible with 0.5b2.
WARHAMMER 40,000: Epic Legions
Deuce_Savage's Epic Legions mod is designed for massive scale battles and has a slew of new units for every army including the massive titans! Compatible with 0.5b2, but we do apologise - this is one mod where the AI bug in 0.5b2 really shows through. I recommend playing Nids in this one rather than playing against them.
Soulstorm: Strongholds
Kasrkin84 has put together a mod that lets you play the stronghold missions from Soulstorm and Dark Crusade and also has combiner compatibility with a lot of mods - including 0.5b2.
Purgation of Kaurava
PoK is an older closer-to-codex mod which spun off from Firestorm over Koronus. They didn't collaborate with us directly, but the good Fatcat234 (sadly now retired from modding) did make a combiner for PoK and 0.45SS. So if you're keen for some retro nids and a different style of play to usual, give it a try. :)
On top of those, I highly recommend:
Sinblood's Hi-Def Tyranid Skins
Sinblood recently returned after a long period of silence to continue his work on these skins. So far he's redone the Carnifex and Zoanthrope skins, and he's currently working on Hormagaunts. We're really keen to see him finish so we can advertise his work everywhere!
If you know of any more mods that have built in Tyranid Mod compatibility, send me a PM and I'll add them to this post. The more the merrier!
0.5b2 FAQ:
So we seem to be getting the same three questions over and over from new people downloading 0.5b2. To save time, here they are in short form, with their relevant answers:
Why don't I have a builder?!
Click the button at the centre-top of the UI bar across the bottom.
Why does my build menu go away when I select a unit?! Why doesn't it come back when I de-select that unit?!
Because selecting a unit de-selects the hivefleet - exactly the same as when you click a unit that isn't your builder, you won't have your builder selected.
Why is the AI not doing anything?!
Have you installed the CPU player patch yet?
Don't forget about Corncobman's mod, Codex (indirect collaboration); I swear there is one more.
Anyways, can't wait to see more from this mod and keep up the good work!
I didn't know Codex had Tyranid Mod compatibility set up yet?
Well, the way it's set up allows for Nids 0.5b1 (The version Boothy recommends), but any of the new UI changes (Influence, the Hive Fleet Button) cannot be accessed.
Not sure if Boothy's still working on it.
Hmm... I'll send them a message.
Though I could be mistaken, Codex is designed to put ingame all races except what Dawn of Coalescence contains.
Boothy made a combiner tutorial and how to set things up as well.
I'm waiting to hear back from them anyway.
I know the DoWPro team wants to start working on adding Tyranids, we're still talking that over with them at the moment.
Codex mod just enhances vanilla SS, adds few races and units. Maintains vanilla gameplay so it can be easily used to combine it with full race mods. It does have some problems but it´s in playable state so if boothy shows up (or deathteam decides to continue working on it) and starts working on it, it would be great to see certain things improved. Afair Tyranids and Black Templars are "just" recommended.
Aside of CornCobsmans mod, SoulStorm Enhanced mod or Codex mod I would recommend DoW Revised 1.58 which is really good mod unfortunately not well known due it´s absence here and on RN (+ it´s as "problematic" as Codex mod). Theres more of them but these ones are kinda "actual".
I've had a crazy idea this morning which would potentially boost Tyranid Mod compatibility for combiner usage.
I still need to talk it over with Miros to see whether I'm right about us being able to do this, but I think we may be able to make all the Tyranid art resources - models, animations, sounds, etc - be their own mod (something like tyranid_resources.module) which the Tyranid Mod would then load using the combiner method, like we already do with the Objective Points mod.
This would give other mod teams the option of combining with the main Tyranid Mod or just the Tyranid Mod art assets, which would then give them ultimate flexibility on how to work Tyranids into their own mods.
If it's possible, we'll have it in 0.5b3.
It´s a great idea for non-vanilla SS based mods. If it helps mods like DoWpro/P/Fok to include Tyranids or/and makes it easier to combine for mods like UA than go for you but I would recommend to ask them if they can actually utilize such thing without crying about external glitches. Otherwise you might just waste your time on something useless, causing even more problems when it gets "chain" combined.
Having worked with other mod teams before on combiner projects, the majority of the glitches arise from UI differences, custom mechanics (such as Influence and the build system) and AI.
This should circumvent all those problems.
Also Miros seems to think we should be able to do it, so *fingers crossed for 0.5b3.*
Seems to be an interesting idea for those gameplay centered mods.
Since we're talking about combiners and art assets here, would the tyranid team be willing to update the art assets of the DC version sometime in the future? (not necessarily near future)
While the build system and interface works much better in SS, as a game i still prefer Dark Crusade. As a coding update would consume much time probably an art update would be "easier".
Might be possible - for the most part we've abandoned DC because coding a mod for two games at once is quite difficult. But as a quick project after 0.5b3, I don't see why not.