[VAPORWARE]

Okay. Here's the scoop.

If you've been keeping up with Spacelane; Mercenaries, you'll see that it is now basically cancelled, pending the assembly of a public release version. This is slightly disappointing for me, but I know my reasons and I think that they're good.

A: There's a lot of work from when I had just started floating around, and it would take too much work to replace all of it.

B: I didn't really know what was going to happen with the TC, I hadn't planned it out as well as I should have beforehand.

I'm not really happy with how my main storyline progressed. It was badly assembled.

Now, I've always wanted to make a Halo TC. Because Halo is FANTASTIC. Since I've decided to start a new project from scratch that's what I'm looking into now. I'm not committing myself until I've made a good looking Covenant Seraph, though (I think that's what the Covenant answer to the Longsword is called).

Now, my current resources are as follows.

Halopedia

The Heretic

The Codex

Link to the Longword I made.

And yes, The Heretic and The Codex aren't strictly canon, but neither would my project.

Okay. Now, my thoughts were that the story would start a bit before Halo, and progress to somewhat after the events of Halo 3 (Note that I've only ever played the first game. Keep game spoilers to a minimum, please! Use spoiler tags!)
You would be able to start as a UNSC fighter squadron commander or a cruiser captain, or an Covenant Elite fighter squadron commander or cruiser captain. Doing the Elites would be great; I always thought that they were cool. Especially since they join the humans, it would be REALLY cool to play that out.

I would like some advice as to how to do the ranks for the UNSC and Covenant forces, if anyone has some ideas.

{edit} I just found the Elite ranks listing on Halopedia.

{edit} A while ago I found the rank listings of the UNSC.

I also thought I'd have a Heavy Missile variant and a Heavy Gun variant for the Longsword. The Heavy Missile variant might carry a load of nukes and capital ship killing missiles, but be sluggish with less guns. The Heavy Gun variant would be faster and carry a scaled down MAC cannon, but with much less missiles.

Also, the UNSC ships would not carry shields until they are reverse engineered later on. They would not have shield points or shield glows. Later you can upgrade to a new, shield carrying version of whatever ship you are flying which has shield points and a shield glow.

So, what are your thoughts and opinions on these ideas, people? And please remember that I haven't actually started working on it yet, aside from the Longsword (which looks pretty good).

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 16 December 2010 - 07:24 PM

Sounds like a great idea! If you want to put your skills that you recently gained programming Spacelane to another good use, I can always use assistance with Nebula, no matter how temporary! Very interesting, though. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

This post has been edited by Cosmic_Nusiance : 22 October 2007 - 04:05 PM

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Sounds like a great idea! Can't wait to see what you come up with. If you want to put your skills that you recently gained programming Spacelane to another good use, I can always use assistance with Nebula, no matter how temporary! Very interesting, though. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

I'm glad that you're interested. I think that this will be a very interesting project, especially doing the Elites. By the way, Here's a link to the Elite's page on Halopedia. On the very end of the page there's links to the other Covenant races.

And thanks for the offer! I probably shouldn't offer my help with anything right now, but I'll keep your proposal in mind for the future.

Also is there a way to set it up so that you can have weapon glows for specific weapons? I never made any weapon glows.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 22 October 2007 - 04:09 PM

Well, it sure has potential to be exploited. But while I haven't read the novels and really gone through all the information, my only warning would be that you will not likely have huge amounts of material to create ships and a galaxy. Of course, this isn't much of a problem if you want to create additionnal material and/or if you make it more mission oriented rather than giving the players a sand box...
But then again, I haven't read through everything, so there could be a lot more material than I think.

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Because Halo is FANTASTIC.

Quoted for truth.

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If you want to put your skills that you recently gained programming Spacelane to another good use, I can always use assistance with Nebula, no matter how temporary!

It's not exactly the right place to talk about this, but since the beta testing of anathema is almost done, I have some spare time and willingness to help to throw around, should you want it... And actually, this also applies to you shlimazel if you choose to go on with this project, if you want some help I've got some Time™.

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Also is there a way to set it up so that you can have weapon glows for specific weapons? I never made any weapon glows.

Sadly, no. Every weapon with the "use ship's weapon sprite" flag checked will trigger the weapon glow and there can be only one per shan and one shan per ship. You can try keeping the weapons with glows exclusive to particular ships, though.

Good luck and Godspeed.

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But then again, I haven't read through everything, so there could be a lot more material than I think.

You need to do searches to get the most out of Halopedia, but there's a TON of stuff there, easily enough info. I haven't read the books eitherm but I intend to get them someday.

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Of course, this isn't much of a problem if you want to create additionnal material and/or if you make it more mission oriented rather than giving the players a sand box...

This would be a military, combat based TC. Not a free roamer. You'd be doing specific missions.

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And actually, this also applies to you shlimazel if you choose to go on with this project, if you want some help I've got some Time™.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind!

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Sadly, no. Every weapon with the "use ship's weapon sprite" flag checked will trigger the weapon glow and there can be only one per shan and one shan per ship. You can try keeping the weapons with glows exclusive to particular ships, though.

Aww, shame. I was thinking of having a cool weapon glow for the MAC gun. Oh, well.

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Good luck and Godspeed.

Thanks!

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 22 October 2007 - 04:20 PM

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Aww, shame. I was thinking of having a cool weapon glow for the MAC gun. Oh, well.

What keeps you from doing it? All you need to make sure is that there is not another weapon equipped that has the "use ship weapon sprite" flag checked. Think of Raven, Arachnids, Manticores who all light up when firing their main beams, but only the beams. Of course, if you stuck IPCs on the Raven, then it would light up when firing them, too and that's why you should make sure there is only one weapon that triggers the glow per ship. You can have as many weapons as you want. Just avoid having multiple weapons that use glows.

You could also make several versions of the same weapons. Then have a bit set when you have a glow weapon to hide all other glowy weapons and show their non-glow versions in outfitters or something like that.

Ahhh, good point. That didn't occur to me. So the MAC gun would trigger the weapon glow, but the missiles and chainguns and such wouldn't. Good call!

I think a straight yellow beam would represent the MAC gun best, does anyone else have a better idea?

{edit}

Oh, and here's something. AI's would be available to the UNSC pilots, most likely only the cruiser captains though. In Halopedia it says that the Covenant do have AI technology, but they can't built it themselves. Since that's true, I'd make AI's a UNSC only thing to give the humans some kind of edge. Also I think it would be cool to use my level up scheme for the cruiser characters, but make it so that it happens less often and it is basically a crew upgrade which occurs at certain levels. For example, at Fair Ability your crew might be upgraded to Skilled, making your ship somewhat tougher.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 22 October 2007 - 05:13 PM

You may want to use the story pages from http://halo.bungie.org/

You might want to read the part in Missile Ammo Troubles about carried ships. From what I heard, that's sort of what it will be like. Too bad that you can't follow the actual story.

Been there, done that, turned it into the foundations of AG. Making the huge railguns into beam weapons is something I hadn't thought of, though. It would have to be a pretty long beam to accurately represent the M.A.C. guns in the Halo novels.

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You may want to use the story pages from http://halo.bungie.org/

Yeah, I found that site. I hadn't found the story page, though, looks interesting. I'll take a look at that later.

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You might want to read the part in Missile Ammo Troubles about carried ships. From what I heard, that's sort of what it will be like. Too bad that you can't follow the actual story.

Sorry? That's what what will be like? And what's the point of making a Halo TC if you don't follow the storyline? :blink:

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Been there, done that, turned it into the foundations of AG.

Ah, but you didn't actually make a HALO TC. There's a world of difference.

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Making the huge railguns into beam weapons is something I hadn't thought of, though. It would have to be a pretty long beam to accurately represent the M.A.C. guns in the Halo novels.

There was a picture of the MAC gun of a frigate firing on Halopedia's MAC page that made me think of doing it that way. And remember that I haven't read the novels. The beam would be very long, but I think that this would be a pretty reasonable way to make the MAC guns.

I meant the ground. You can't really follow Master Chief around. Ground has been tried, and it doesn't work. And I meant the campaign based story. You do a battle, and get warped to another system. The other parts, like flying a carried ship, or the supply ship, sound like they might fit into this.

Hmm. Sounds interesting, I'll need to check out your thread later.

Also, I got an idea. You really won't be buying stuff (since you are a soldier in the millitary) so you will be able to get ahold of most stuff without paying credits for it. It never made any sense that you need to buy ships from your chosen goverment, you won't have to here.

You should put something in so that you can't just get the best weaponry/ship/engines etcetera at any point in the game, though. Tech levels, availbits, etcetera should work fine, but just don't leave something like that out.

You could also use credits as resources, like Starcraft and whatnot, that allow you to build a certain outfit/ship when you get enough. You could probably even do some mission trick to make large ships take weeks/months to build and small ships take less time, or something like that.

I would, unfortunately, recommend checking if you're actually allowed to do this - from what I hear Microsoft recently put very large restrictions on the Halo game franchise concerning non-microsoft development. It's probably partially to keep Bungie from being allowed to use Halo now that they've split off from MS, but I don't really know. In all likelyhood, I imagine that a Halo TC would not go against any rules, but it is a good idea to check.

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You should put something in so that you can't just get the best weaponry/ship/engines etcetera at any point in the game, though. Tech levels, availbits, etcetera should work fine, but just don't leave something like that out.

You could also use credits as resources, like Starcraft and whatnot, that allow you to build a certain outfit/ship when you get enough. You could probably even do some mission trick to make large ships take weeks/months to build and small ships take less time, or something like that.

Well, yeah, I would obviously need to plan that out first. You couldn't just start as a UNSC cruiser captain and upgrade to the UNSC Battlecruiser. And misns would be a cool way to do that kind of thing.

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I would, unfortunately, recommend checking if you're actually allowed to do this - from what I hear Microsoft recently put very large restrictions on the Halo game franchise concerning non-microsoft development. It's probably partially to keep Bungie from being allowed to use Halo now that they've split off from MS, but I don't really know. In all likelyhood, I imagine that a Halo TC would not go against any rules, but it is a good idea to check.

Hmm. Good point, I should check in to that. Have you heard about the restrictions on machinima that microsoft has put in place? They're ridiculous.

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There you go. That's what it says. It's total crap, but there it is anyway.

Oh, well, it could be worse. It isn't as bad as it could be. But I'd still go ahead with this thing. The worst they can do is tell me to stop, right? After all, I'm not gonna make any money on something like this anyway.

@crusader-alpha, on Oct 24 2007, 09:58 AM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

You should put something in so that you can't just get the best weaponry/ship/engines etcetera at any point in the game, though. Tech levels, availbits, etcetera should work fine, but just don't leave something like that out.

You could also use credits as resources, like Starcraft and whatnot, that allow you to build a certain outfit/ship when you get enough. You could probably even do some mission trick to make large ships take weeks/months to build and small ships take less time, or something like that.

I would, unfortunately, recommend checking if you're actually allowed to do this - from what I hear Microsoft recently put very large restrictions on the Halo game franchise concerning non-microsoft development. It's probably partially to keep Bungie from being allowed to use Halo now that they've split off from MS, but I don't really know. In all likelyhood, I imagine that a Halo TC would not go against any rules, but it is a good idea to check.

I'm going to note that they can't really stop you. And it's not illegal to do this, from what I understand. If you were selling this, yes, plagerism. But it's non-profit, so as long as you give credit, then you'll be just fine.

For the time building, then you would use crons to make the ships take time to build. When you buy an outfit, it starts the cron for say 30 days. When the thirty days are up, a battlecruiser appears in the shipyard, and then vanishes if you buy it. But the resources don't work. It's been thought of, and you can have the game check to see if you have one of an outfit, but you can't have it count the number. Nice idea, though. I mighht try to get something along that line to work.

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It's been thought of, and you can have the game check to see if you have one of an outfit, but you can't have it count the number.

No, you can have the game count it. Crons, iterative entries\exits, some creativeness and some strange, yet smart system. Yeah.

@0101181920, on Oct 24 2007, 09:42 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

I'm going to note that they can't really stop you. And it's not illegal to do this, from what I understand. If you were selling this, yes, plagerism. But it's non-profit, so as long as you give credit, then you'll be just fine.

Actually, if they have an "All Rights Reserved" copyright license, they can prosecute for even fan fiction. However, even with said license, many do not pursue writers of fanfiction and what not, as it isn't worth the time, effort, and money to sue some 12 year old who wrote a paragraph long story about <insert universe of choice here>, and in fact often helps generate income. In this case Micrsoft isn't using an "All Rights Reserved" license, as they are extending some rights, as indicated above. So Shli's TC appears to be legal as indicated by what's written above.

Though not everyone is like that. I hear the writer of the Pern universe and her publishers aggressively pursue anyone who uses her material without permission, even for non-commercial purposes.