The Empire has fallen and a New Republic is born out of the conflict. But in the ashes of civil war, yet another life stirs...
After the fall of the Empire, Luke Skywalker began to instruct new students in the ways of the Force in the temples of Yavin 4. However, the Imperial Remnant and its various splinter factions also attempted on several occasions to instruct (or in some cases create) their own legions of Dark Jedi. Jedi Master Kyle Katarn and his apprentice were instrumental in curbing one of these attempts but when two of Luke's fallen students came together with a faction of the Imperial Remnant, they began what was known as the Shadow Academy.
It was here that force potentials were tortured and brainwashed using ancient Sith and Nightsister techniques until they were twisted to the will of their master Brakiss. These monsters of the Dark Side were called the Shadow Knights and although they were not true Sith, their strength was considered a tremendous threat...a strength possibly even equal to the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4.
In-game these units will behave just like the heroes but will do less damage. They will also only have one special ability, which will be more basic than their hero counterparts. The saber and skin variations will also have a limited randomization when they spawn.
cool exciting
Very excite, much cool. Wow!
What kind of abilities will these guys have?
For the Jedi, most likely just Force Sprint. The Dark Jedi I was thinking perhaps of using Skywalker's saber throw ability to make a "force push" that targets a specific squad of troopers, rather than spread in all directions like the game's current push ability.
That sounds pretty cool!
Keep up the good work!
I love the variation with the skins
but really, Not all red skinned aliens are evil. #sithstereotypes
Yeah, the Zeltrons are getting really tired of people assuming their force affiliation.
Looks amazing! Excited to see it ingame, what program do you use to make these?
Thanks! Photoshop (texture and finishing touches on normal map), CrazyBump (normal map generation), 3dsMax (everything related to the mesh).
Cool! I didn't know about CrazyBump, might check it out :D
Some intense collar bone action going on there.
The normal maps do exaggerate that just a bit...
Bah, give me some crushgaunts and I show these hooded freaks what their glowsticks are worth.
Jokes aside, looks great.^^
Oh don't worry, Mandalorian Protectors will show up in the screenshots soon enough ;)
Luke has been training some rather...imposing students lately.
Well shoot, pretty much half of them turned to the dark side so what can you expect?
Really, it's the hoods and the shadows they make over the faces. Still, I felt like hooded Jedi was a good way to make them feel more generic.
I think it's more the two foot wide shoulders...
Point made about the fallen side. He doesn't have a good track record.
Yeah, they are rather broad... An unavoidable side effect of rigging such low poly characters.
Will they have a decent amount of health? The Jedi in Thrawns Revenge die ridiculously easy.
I'm testing some balance ideas on them now. One train of thought is to give them less health overall, when combined with less damage and only one ability would make them feel "normal" rather than like a hero.
The other idea is to give them equal health but remove the passive "deflect projectile" ability and the passive self-heal that the Heroes have. The logic being that these units would not be Force masters so their training is more limited...and it also balances them out.
I'll see which method proves to be more enjoyable with gameplay and go from there. I'm also welcome to ideas.
Could they simply be given a lower chance to deflect projectiles? It makes more sense that they would try but fail rather than just take shots.
Yes. The ability does have a deflect chance percentage which you can adjust.
I think less health, less damage, but combined with deflection chance and slow healing might help.
This is so fancy I gonna DIE !
My thoughts and prayers go out to your family.
We know ranged infantry can now shoot while moving, but how about melee units.
The whole walk to enemy -> stop -> melee animation -> 2 steps towards next infantry -> stop -> melee animation doesn't look or feel right.
Something like how yoda moved with his special ability would be a lot better, maybe not that extreme, but atleast keep them moving and not needing to come to a full stop to attack.
Imagine just setting waypoints in a zig-zag pattern through enemy infantry for three jedi who just slice at whatever they walk past...
Basically the same effect as Tie Maulers except less cancer and more cool.
TIE Maulers are cancer incarnate... Especially since the Century Tank was kind of already a thing and looked way cooler.
I think I covered this a few Jedi-units ago but I'll recap here:
Melee units are being rebuilt in the mod to do just what you suggested: use Yoda's ability as a default, rather than special. However, it is nerfed in order to keep balance. So, they aren't going to flip from one side of the map to the other, obliterating infantry as they go... but what it does do is allow them to attack infantry without that step-stop-attack-repeat ******** of the original game.
Yea i think you have mentioned it before, my bad.
Still good to hear though, your description is exactly what i was hoping for.
Eh no worries. I accepted long ago that it's not realistic to expect people to dig back through months of posts for an answer to something like that. Lol. I don't mind replying.
They are going to be a one-man unit, I gather? Part of me wishes they were in squads of three (but each could go their own way, like Han and Chewie) so you could add a female and perhaps a differently shaped alien there. But I guess arriving in threes would require making each of them even weaker.
Although, you could give each of the three their own special ability so they would complement each other. In case of Jedi one could have a stronger attack and have sprint, offset by a lower health pool. The second one would have more health and be able to deflect projectiles (if A-wing "Lure" ability can work on the ground, they could have it, probably shouldn't have Yoda's fighting abilities to compensate) and the third one could be a healer with (weakened) Obi-Wan's ability. The Sith could have something more offensive for the third one, like perhaps using the tractor beam ability to slow enemy unit down (if that's at all possible, stun could be used, too, but might be too powerful).
Too convoluted, maybe, although I think it might give these some much required character. I usually just don't hire them at all because they're too, well, generic and it's always more interesting and useful to use named heroes which you never run out of (granted, I do always try not to ever lose them), seeing how you can only fight one battle at once and moving units around doesn't take that much time.
They will deploy in pairs. I wanted to make alien and female variants of each. The issue was ultimately voiceovers. See, I can randomize the meshes which works nicely for units like this (rather than always getting one of each type consistently) but I can't randomize the voices. So, you could potentially get a male Jedi with female VOs or vice-versa. Lol.
As to abilities, since the mesh is the only random part, having different abilities isn't possible. There is still incentive to build them though, I think. They are tough and fast anti-infantry. Their unique quality too is that they will fare better against enemy heroes than most.
Sweet