What's up guys! This week we're going to show off some work on the Nod campaign, and the ancillary work I've been putting in to really flesh out the world Nod inhabits at the beginning of our story. So here goes!
Seed Funding
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Dead Water
Lambs to the Slaughter
The Line in the Sand
Lost Children
What the Left Hand is Doing
These are the 7 most complete missions, presented here in chronological order, of what will probably be a first act composed of 14-ish. The branching structure of the story will allow us to add as many further missions as we feel like, as new and interesting ideas come up. But for now, these 14 will be the basis of player progression. Within these missions we introduce the Black Hand, the Genesis Legion, the Fist of Nod, the Hammer Scorpions, and a cult of Cabal worshipers.
Over the past week and a half I have put three of the above maps together in their entirety, and finished adding environmental detail to two of the others. They all still need their scripting, but there are detailed descriptions of progression written for all of them. We're aiming for diversity in the goals and scopes of the levels with some being large maps with a heavy base-building and vehicular combat focus, like a traditional skirmish, and others being sneaky ambushes, defensive missions, and one mission about hijacking things.
I've been making assets to give a more immersive feel to the campaign. For instance, Nod's navy is pretty high-tech in skirmish so if we want to do naval missions there need to be a few different boats to represent Nod's low-tech aesthetic at this early era. I've also made a quick edit of the Nod Raven Buggy, applying a Cabal-styled canopy to it to represent its use by the Cabalite Cult.
(Shown here are the Cabalite Buggy, Black Hand Reef Shark, Nod Convoy Truck, Nod Salvage Truck, and an in progress Hammer Scorpions Landing Craft which may or may not make an appearance.)
The boats and convoy truck were designed for Dead Water, the buggy for Lambs to the Slaughter, the salvage truck was designed for The Line in the Sand. Though I daresay that now that we have the assets we'll be able to use them as the need arises.
So the Nod campaign is trucking along. GDI's campaign has been less worked-on because Nod is traditionally the bad guys. Being the baddies, they're active rather than reactive so their missions progress more easily. With this work on the Nod missions we now have a tangible set of story beats which can be referenced in the GDI campaign in between the major points in the GDI story which we know we need to hit.
A few of both the Nod and the GDI missions are not yet sketched out beyond these story beats though, so if you have any suggestions for objectives or locations or concepts or play styles you'd like to see make an appearance in the campaign, feel free to suggest them and we will take them seriously.
And that's what we did this week!
I hope that sweet landing craft makes an appearance, I even hope it is playable once finished.
TS doesn't have the logics required to make the landing craft disembark vehicles (which is its usage in the campaign), so it won't actually *work* per se. So if ever it happens to be controllable by the player it'll need a lot of scripting behind it to fake even part of the functionality.
Or you could just have it cruise into a place, and vehicles spawn where they would disembark while it plays such an animation.
I think you could have it for campaign - I was messing around on map editor and tibsun editor and transports spawning from out of map would the carry vehicles that were meant to accompany them like a transport would carry infantry - I could disembark them with no glitches - maybe you could use that glitch in campaign
That's a very good point and I'd totally forgotten about that bug. Maybe there is something there.
awesome work guys!
I always liked the idea of mini campaign based in very cold Russia - snow storms cutting off communications and surviving against nod attacks with your limited forces - with each mission your base would be as it ended in the last mission, hidden advantages in the field and different variables from each mission to next.
Anyway I would definitely recommend a remake of or inspired from alexandria port from tiberium wars
Looks very good for a classic game, good job guys, keep up the good work.
I like those voxels. <3
i always thought a nod strike at a gdi orbital launch facility (ex: NASA)could be a great gdi defensive mission or nod tactical mission.
i've also got other ideas, but this seemed the most flushed out one i have.
That is definitely a mission we're doing! I've even nearly finished the special assets for it.