Star Wars Modback ready for testers!

[Jasonian]

*sigh* How cool that would be to have Star Destroyers. But you get AT-AT's, Death Stars, and snowspeeders, so that should be good enough... I hope.

Any ideas are warmly welcomed.

[korn469]

Jasonian check the custom factions thread and tell me what you think

[Alinestra Covelia]

An idea for the scenario: I'm working on a StarWars scen for Civ2, which has the entire map more or less covered by ocean squares (space). In this big ocean are various single-square islands of land (planets) and a few barbarian immobile impassble and near-invincible units (stars).

Starships are like ships, and they can launch attacks on bases on different planets, but they can't take them over. Instead, they must carry ground troops (which are as ground troops in Civ2) which disembark to conquer a city. Artoo Units are spies, and starfighters are plane units (usually treated as fighter units, so they have to return each turn).

I know that at least one feature of the above can't be replicated in SMAC, namely that the ships cannot conquer sea cities (in SMAC, they can), but perhaps I've given you an idea that you can use in SMAC?

------------------
"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

[Jasonian]

Something similar like that came up a while back. Using some of AlexanderIII's "space mod" graphics, I was planning to create a world of SMACX---set in space.

This idea is tough and requires a lot of extra graphical construction. For the moment, it's not going to happen. But, if things go well... who know.

[Alinestra Covelia]

How are you going about altering the graphics? I tried to save graphics in the .pcx files for my custom factions, and was unable to do so satisfactorily. All my faction leaders came out greyscale.

I'm using PSPro - how have you tackled the problem?

[Jasonian]

... because I'm not using PSPro. I'm using MGI PhotoSuite, and everything works great.

[DinoDoc]

Bumping to find out the current status.

[Jasonian]

Pretty much abandoned. I got to the point where I couldn't draw any more cities, and I didn't have any more symbols. So I put the whole thing in a folder and forgot about it.

If you want to download the 'low-tech' version, then I think the link in this tread still works...

[Jasonian]

The project was halted for a number of reasons:

1) The only feedback I ever got was "Good job" or "You're doing it all wrong. This is how I would have made it." Short of scraping the whole thing and starting over, neither of them are useful.

2) It takes me a LONG time to draw something and then place it into all the places it needs to go-- and make it look good. I average 1 picture a night if I work hard, and each faction has about 5 I need to do.

3) I don't have the time to do #2 above and still write a story, manage my micronation, finish my schoolwork, and still have somewhat of a social life.


I have the demo of Yoda Stories. It's all ice. I don't know how useful that would be...

[Helium Pond]

Please finish! It sounds like you were more than halfway done, it's a shame to think all that work was for nothing! Here's a tip: if you can find a copy of Yoda Stories, it may have a lot of useful graphics for you, especially units. It was small, simple desktop game made by LucasArts, and it came with icon packs for you to customize your desktop with. I don't recall there being any cities or anything, and some of the character art may be too "cutesy" for your taste, but there's probably a lot of stuff you'd find useful. Don't give up, Luke...

[Helium Pond]

The Demo wouldn't include the icon packs. The release version has icon packs for a lot of the units in the game; troopers and sandpeople and probe droids and even Luke and Yoda. The game itself has, I think, three environments; snow, desert, and forest. I don't remember a lot of buildings, but for units it would be good. The icon packs in the release version come as separate .ico files, I think, making them very easy to grab and manipulate. Also, I'd imagine that the LucasArts strategy game that came out a while back--I forget the name, something like Rebel Command?--would have some art for base icons in it. I haven't played it, though, so I can't be sure. But as it was a galaxy-conquering game, with planets and stuff, i'd imagine that it would have art for establishing bases on other planets, and the like.

I can understand your being discouraged by the amount of work. I wouldn't draw anything, myself, for this kind of thing. But I'm positive that, with all the Star Wars product available recently, and all the fan resources on the net, there's got to be a way to "steal" all the art you need. If you post a specific list of every piece of art you need, I'll try to find some of it for you.

[Jasonian]

Cities needed (just some concept art would be good enough)
FREELANCE (hives of scum and vilany), REPUBLIC (nice looking and tall), and FEDERATION (mechanized and efficient).

Symbols needed: FREELANCE and FEDERATION

Basic units needed: A nice small full picture of a Death Star (I or II)

That's pretty much all that is still needed.

[Helium Pond]

Is that it? You don't need any other units? I'm assuming that you've already used that red-stylized-bird-looking thingy for the rebellion...

I'll try to see what I can dig up for you; it make take a week or so. I'll let you know...

[Jasonian]

Hey! Give me a break! I'm stuck, not lazy. Made four city sets and created three origonal symbols (along with the Empire and the Rebel ones) by myself. I just don't have the inspiration to finish it.

Any help would be appreciated and credited in the readme.

[Helium Pond]

I wasn't meaning to give you a hard time; I can see how it sounded that way. I know very well how hard it is to maintain enthusiasm all the way through a project. You've done a lot so far. I'll try and help.