Huray!  

woah, whats goin' on with that dude's eyes?

I like the guys in the tank/bunker.   

I seriously approve.   I love the idea of terraforming technologies as a central focus in this futuristic dystopian society.  Seriously, thumbs up!  

is that a horseman dead on the floor?

It does look suspiciously like a horse head. But it's actually a gasmask.

Thank you for your interest! I'm going to be plugging away at this as much as I can, with what I can accomplish right now, which isn't all that much. As far as I'm concerned, some of the hardest things, such as terrain deformation and alteration, are already core parts of Elemental: War of Magic and should be taken advantage of.

That does sound pretty cool. Cudos on the artwork, that's not bad at all my friend. It will be a lot of work to do a total conversion on that level. Good luck brother.

Wow! Great concept, sounds like the features (terraforming, diplomacy) would fit great into what Elemental is going to have. In many ways it sounds like a more epic version of Alpha Centauri.

Couple questions:

1. Is magic out? If so, were you thinking of any particular mechanic to replace it (ie, the magic system might be tweaked into something else instead of creating something out of whole cloth)?

2. Aliens, only as 'monsters' or would some races be playable factions? To me having the game use human factions sounds like the best plan, the better to focus on making the whole system fun.

Thanks Raven! Yeah, it's going to be hard, but for me this is a long-term project. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've been working on improving my skills at making art assets.

1. No magic, but I'm going to use as much as the base game as possible before hard programming is needed. Less programming = awesome for me. I'm instead going to adapt it to represent different things, i.e. instead of mana you gather influence points which you can spend to cause an economic boycott or to sue another faction. You shouldn't be getting those from shards, either. There might be psychics but I'm not quite sure how to implement that. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons will essentially be destructive spells in Elemental. So that sort of stuff looks like it won't dramatically change the mechanics.

2. There are no alien factions, but I'll consider them once this reaches a state of completion. At first they'll be a presence in terms of random events, for example one of the more subtle alien empires drops a load of propaganda pamphlets on one of your cities. But there probably needs to be some form of native life for alien planets. And I want the players to be able to hire alien mercenaries. Aliens are important in the overall story arc of the setting and so I want them in.

I wanted to post some more background info, but I thought it would be cruel to make you read more without having some pretty [edit:ugly] pictures to post along with it. I'm really big into flavor.

[FLAVOR]

The Incursion -- as photographed on the eve of the Ertarn Invasion of Verdania. From the Republican Free Archives.

Unity

Of strength through solidarity.

The Unity Party will never be a playable faction in Dark Republic as they never colonize planets. Their presence, however, cannot be ignored. If provoked, Unity sends its many legions of Peacekeepers to enforce their law. Nothing riles Unity like not being taken seriously.

Unity is an umbrella party which encompasses any political party that believes in the continued strength of the Republic and the independence and unity of Humanity. It was forged in a trying time of alien invasions whose territorial ambitions in Republican territory caused mankind to rethink their priorities. The Incursions as they are now called reverberate in the psyche of every human being, inflicting in them a distrust not only of aliens outside the Republic but also native alien races under human subjugation.

In its time, Unity's hardline militant and isolationist policy was considered the last hope for the freedom of mankind. But it has been over 500 years since the last Incursion, and only the oldest humans can still remember the invasions. Things have been quiet, and so Unity has toned down the anti-alien rhetoric and has focused more on continued human expansion into virgin regions of space. But trouble for Unity is coming from within: Republican aliens still haven't forgiven the Republic for their mistreatment, and neither have the humans.

It is clear that Unity has only treated the symptoms of human discontent, not the cause. For instance, violence between Verdanians and Canthians has only been suppressed, so now both planets hate Unity as much as they hate each other. Now it looks like they'll get the war they'd always been hoping for. Worse, the desperate and frustrated seperatist movements dotted around the Republic have gone to increasingly extreme measures to get their point across.

Unity definitely has its job cut out for them. Luckily for Unity, it has a broad base of support, virtually unlimited resources and vast legions of spacecraft and ground forces who have pledged loyalty to Humanity. If it lets petty upstarts get the better of the Republic, what could be said about alien imperialists?

FACTION QUALITIES

-- Should any faction manage to piss off Unity, Unity is the only faction capable of calling a Surface Leveling Orbital Bombardment. Such a bombardment has been known to cause nuclear winters. If this is somehow too much it can simply  invade with vast ground forces. The crime would have to be of extreme egregiousness and close proximity to Earth to provoke this sort of dramatic action.

-- Unity's agents will occasionally drop onto the planet and check things out. The closer the planet to Earth, the more frequently these agents appear.

-- Unity controls the vast and chaotic spy/secret police network known as Spider. Managing to get into Spider allows you to get all sorts of illicit secrets... but also exposes your own and increases your visibility to Unity.

Your mod looks really neat. Looks ambitious but doable with a lot of work. Good luck!

[FACTION PROFILE]

Mountaineers surveying the outlying areas of a newly created Foundation colony. From the Republican Free Archives.

The Foundation

Of Humanity... creative, diverse, and entrepreneurial.

It's an interesting piece of trivia that the most established, respected, and politically powerful institutions in the Republic is based above a bakery in Oslo. While the foundation boasts thousands of skyscrapers on hundreds of Republican worlds, its head office on Earth boasts only ten frighteningly powerful employees with a handful of local interns. Some say this is an illustration of how much the Foundation has done for those outside of Earth.

The Foundation is the largest non-profit organization in the Republic, and its sole goal is to give grants to worthy colonists. These colonists swear loyalty to the Republic and to Humanity and establish new lives on new worlds. Inspired by the puritans who colonized America, they often give grants to religious or cultural groups who wish to create a new state based on their own religious principles, from traditional Earth based Buddhists, Christians and Muslims to the weird and cultic. The Foundation has even given grants to a group of colonists intent on recreating feudal Japan. The only requirement for the Foundation is loyalty to the Republic.

In the first few centuries of human expansion, the Foundation was responsible for much of the exponential growth of humanity. Before the Foundation colonial efforts were exclusively corporate affairs. The Foundation opened the avenues of space travel to the common man, fueled by donations from the Republican government and from trillions of dollars of donations from every segment of society.

The Foundation, however, is not caught up with current events, and is barely aware of the secret wars occuring on the frontier. Stories of colonies being wiped out in nuclear and chemical attacks are too frequent to be ignored, and the Foundation has suddenly needed to provide military advice and weapons to its beleaguered colonies. The Foundation has always had a small military wing for fighting aliens and pirates, but it has never needed to give military support on any kind of real scale.

It had been the Foundation's firm belief that these attacks are alien raids on weak colonies, but recent reports connect the attacks not to the Ertarn but to colonial factions sharing the planet with them. The Foundation does not know what to make of these reports and assume they are just from well-equipped pirates, but just in case, they've sent their best agents to investigate...

FACTION QUALITIES

--Each Foundation colony can choose a different "Principle": Religious, Cultural, or Political. Depending on your choice, they have access to different units and economic buildings as well as some different technologies. The Foundation supports a myriad of different interests, and so every Foundation colony is a little different.

--The Foundation has the most standard military (i.e. the weakest) but can train special elite units depending on its Principle.

--The Foundation is the most politically favored by the Republic and can most easily summon Unity to intervene on its behalf.

{NOTE: The Foundation will be sort of the "default" faction like the humans in Gal Civ II, something which other players can easily customize their own faction out of. Therefore it'll be the first one that will be finalized to any sort of real extent.}

[ORGANIZATION]

I've got plenty of time to learn but a ways to go... it's a start...

THE PLAN

Because I've got quite a bit to do and I've got too much free time, I've begun work on this mod early. I'm also posting a plan for everyone to see so I can stick by it.

This plan is working under a number of assumptions:

#1: No one is going to help me with this mod. This isn't that I would refuse help. I'm just going under the assumption that no one will offer it. But if someone did want to throw some stuff my way, I'd be extremely thankful.

#2: I'm smart enough to learn. As you can see, I'm taking my free time to learn how to model. I've got some ways to go. But while I'm learning, my output will be relatively slow.

THE STAGES

This is LONG TERM planning here. I wouldn't expect anyting resembling what I want to do for quite a while, at least if I'm working on this by myself.

Prep Stage

The stage I'm doing right now. Essentially preparing myself for hard modding.
--Learn to model. Texture those models for use as placeholders

--Increase proficiency with GIMP

--Work on flavor. Pick an artistic style.

--Build some interest. Make a forum or website or something.

Stage #1: Using Base Game Assets

This stage involves using as much of the base game as possible to produce the closest I can get to my objectives. This might mean I use catapaults as tanks and eagles as planes. You might be able to cast the "nuclear bomb" spell. Essentially, to get something playable out of the door so I can start making gameplay decisions. Take this time to become more familiar with the game's python language.

Stage #2: Replacing Art Assets

Begin replacing art assets with my own. At first, there'll be only a single kind of tank and a single kind of plane, maybe with different skins, but as I get faster and better I'll be able to produce better things.

Stage #3: Tweaks of game mechanics

Beginning the laborious task of changing the game mechanics, include repurposing the magic system to represent non-magical things, removing the sovereign as a central game mechanic. Tweaks and nothing terribly dramatic.

Stage #4: Gut and Overhaul

At this stage it's time to do dramatic changes. Restructure the tactical and strategic combat system to better simulate modern-style warfare. I've been considering removing tactical battles in favor of larger scale strategic warfare, similar to the system used in Advanced Wars but... you know... deeper. This will be as hard as hell, but I think it'll be worth it. Overhauling AI is the truly scary thing for me.

Stage #5: Finalization

Tie up loose ends. I'd like to have a single player story campaign if possible.

And Beyond...

If I'm not dead by the time I get to this point, I'll consider implementing alien factions.

I have to say that your thread is 'inspirational' and makes me start my own thread with my mod. I envy you that you can draw such paintings/sketches - I could never make anything more than transformed bitmap (masks, filters, etc.). Probably I will try modify the game mechanics and maybe AI, but I will post a thread, only when I am sure I want to implement some feature.

It's good that you assume you will have to work alone - this is the life of almost all modders. Occasionally, you will get a new pair of hands, or a few pieces of art/code from another project, but in the end you are alone. Granted, you may gather a group of people around you, but it will take some time. Come to think of it, when you start now, maybe before the release date you will found a few team members?

One last thing I would like to add is that you always should find some other things to do, when you are working on a project. Don't burn yourself out! Alcohol, parties, sex, game replays, good football (i.e. soccer) match in TV, an hou... a few hours of Dragon Age, playing around with SDL, going for LAN parties, watching movies on YT/RT (whichever you like), mind-crushing rock concert, growing a bonsai, watching some animes... man, there are so many things to do .

Wow, I'm genuinely touched. I didn't mean to inspire anyone... although I guess that's a happy accident.

The sketches are as much to show myself that I'm serious as to other people. Doing things hands on sort of lends a little more credence to what I'm doing, makes me think I'm not just some crazy person writing bad ideas down and expecting everyone else to do the hard work.

The big thing is I'm going to be learning everything while I work. That means that the first stuff I produce will be crap and broken, but as I refine and ask people for advice I'll get better.

BTW, in doing sketches in an art program, CTRL - Z is your best friend.

This is advice I can appreciate. Overworking myself doesn't seem to be an issue right now, especially since I'll be taking an internship to become a reporter starting next Friday. Mostly I'm just combating an overwhelming inertia that compells me to whittle down my time into nothing.

But, I'll be honest, an ambitious project and steady employment seems to be the only cure for the slump I've gotten myself into. Unfortunately, I've found myself a victim of too many one-sided romances. Those things will f**k you over.

On the other hand, if I don't do something at least each week, then I'll just forget about the project and abandon it, which is why I'm trying to get into the habit.

Two words: Black Lagoon

Ah, well, that's what CTRL - Z is for.

Seriously, though, just take a few tutorials and you'll have a vague grasp in no time.

I totally agree with this. Trying to spend a whole Saturday or something modding is just mind-numbing. I find it helps to watch TV or a movie while modding. If you're not careful, it might lead to a couple typos or something, but it helps keep you from getting overwelmed. That might be just me, though.

I almost find it better to work alone, or mostly alone. You can work at your own pace, no need to get something to someone else asap. No conflicts over where you want the mod to go, no people that mysteriously disappear.

If you do put together a team, in my experience the best people are the ones who offer to join you. People who respond to "I need help with my mod, please come" usually burnout fast, or are unreliable. Not only that, but when they offer to help, it's best if they did something themselves, and want to show it to you. If they're just offering ideas, it probably won't turn out for the best.

More modding advice: Keep doing what you're doing with the artwork. Doing regular updates, even if it just one screenshot or one piece of artwork helps keep interest in the mod. They don't have to be anything major, but it helps a lot. Basically, keep your mod on the first page of the modding forum (when that gets set up ) Of course, I'm bad at keeping to my own advice. I tried to do this with my LotR mod, but I kind of stopped. The artwork just takes too long

So anyway, your mod looks pretty interesting. I'm definetly going to keep an eye on this. And the artwork is awesome Maybe something in my long wall of text will help you

PS: What modeling program is that? I couldn't read it in the screenshot. I think it says Blender. No real reason why I'm asking that, just curious. I use XSI Mod Tool myself.