AotR 2.6 Developer Update news

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season! You may have noticed very little news about AotR for the past year. That's because the team is hard at work (or hardly working) on releasing AotR 2.6 Final. But there is a long road ahead so let's dive in and see the future of AoTR.

Team Size

Unfortunately for us, the Steiner Mod Team has shrunk in active members. While this does delay the final release of AOTR, those of us that are present are very hard at work finishing up all the bugs and final content additions that we want for 2.6

As of right now, only myself and Zarkis remain on duty. For those that do not know, Zarkis wrote much of the 2.5 AI scripts that helped the mod work for Skirmish and wrote many other Ai and Story improvements. He had come back to help the team and is currently assisting with map making and AI improvements.

I am currently adding the rest of the planned units, story missions, text, sounds and level designs. This has me quite overwhelmed working all over the place making sure the mod keeps progressing. Which brings me to my next topic.

Help Us, You Are Our Only Hope!

If it's been your life dream to work on Awakening of the Rebellion, we are in need of experienced modders to help us along in the project. Right now we need help with:

• Modeling/Texturing
• Rigging
• Particle Effects
• Galactic Conquest Land Level Design

If you already have modding experience with the above categories and you would like to reach out and help us, we would love to hear from you! Please PM me for further info.

Forums

With the new ModDb addition of mod specific forums, I have decided to create our official forums here. Previously we had a relatively unknown website that was tough to create accounts on. Since there is no additional effort needed on your end to access the forums here, it is much easier to keep the community in one place. You can begin discussing AotR at the forums page HERE.

Just One More Level!

If you have been reading up to this point then you have already been noticing talk about level design. For 2.6 Final, we plan to give every planet in GC a unique SPACE and LAND map to keep combat fresh. Thats over 90 maps! A lot of work has already gone into revamping the core maps to be much better balanced.

One of our top priorities for land combat is to make sure all land maps can not be spawn camped. That's right! No more zerg rushing the enemy deployment zone with all of your units while three transports attempt to land. Our core philosophy here is to make sure that the attacking team has at MINIMUM 5 reinforcement points upon invading a planet. Along with this, most land maps will no longer have the power generator inside the shield generator, unless there is some form of flanking route both the AI or player can take advantage of. By revamping all the landing zones, this prevents stale turtle ground combat that the AI can not break through. You will now have to make sure planets are both safe on the ground and space.

One of the first maps being created from scratch is the Yaga Minor map. This is a very unique map that begins to experiment with alternate paths in an effort to create fresh new ground combat encounters. In the in progress image below there is an infantry path through the treeline straight into the enemy base accessible only by infantry. One of the most under-utilized mechanics in ground combat is the different traversal paths by units. We feel that by creating more unit-specific paths, ground combat becomes less of a chore and much more of a dynamic tactical experience. While the power generator remains inside the shield on this map, there is a heavily unguarded route that can be exploited by both the AI and players to destroy the shield generator.

If you are more interested into how to create a FOC map or the general design process behind making a ground map, you can watch this map be made in my Youtube series.

Thats All Folks!

...At least for now. As more and more of the 2.6 content gets tested and solidified, we will be bringing more news to you. I wanted to make sure that everyone knows we are alive and well, and the mod is still being worked on. If you would like to help the team in any way, please feel free to PM me here.

Happy New Year!

Steiner Modding Group.