"War School"-A Map/Mod W.I.P.-locked sticky

[whippersnapper]

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i-NoD: I had shadows turned off but here it is with 'em on...



NPL: When I get further along with the topo, among other things. I have to do more bocage throughout, more tactical "reef" deployment points for Borgs, Still have to carve-out 3 more COOP MP back-doors, as well my 3D cliff faces throughout, and my work-arounds for VTOL altitude transition stalls are not complete . As for GPMs - I test 2 to 3 different GPM Alphas every day ! Really, I'm at that point where I can change the GPMs that quickly to test 'em in short order. Lately, I've been puzzling over "Become Prey" Scavenger Rushing ! ! and.... the A.I. for units with "Spy Turret" tech seems to be handled differently than any other weapon tech. This last is something I've never noticed before and it's splitting-up combat groups in ways I hadn't anticipated - in other words, "Spy Turret" unit A.I. wants to "go-it-alone" and that is screwing up my combined arms... so I have to figure that out. I also have not implemented my Center Citadel Cam 5th Player A.I. scripts - that's a big part of the experience too.. Anybody playing such an Alpha would only note what I'm already aware of and the point of Beta-testing is for others to come up with stuff I cannot find out on my own.. At least that is how i see it. Anyway, I'll let you know when I get to such a point.

Regards, whip
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[whippersnapper]

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A quick re-cap of my working PoV here or, for some, you may think of this as an emphatic burp & dismiss it as nothing more.

- A goodly amount of my inspiration (though not all, by any means) for modifications to WZ come from 2 Primary-Secondary sources:

1.) D.A.R.P.A. = Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency with a focus on all tech applied to military conflicts in the present and extrapolated...

2.) R.M.A. = Revolution in Military Affairs with a focus on all aspects of "Asymmetric Warfare"

Side Note: One way to get on my nerves is to start quoting Wikipedia articles at me 'cause I certainly can do the same search and, honestly, there is nothing absolutely authoritative about this resource. While it is a fair place to start any inquiry, if that is your only resource then you have to settle for a 3rd rate status as an investigator and your research the same, IMO. A first rate effort always goes to Primary-Secondary Sources & Wikipedia is at best Tertiary and only partially vetted on an anonymous, volunteer, basis which for me is not the equivalent of the rigors or gauntlet of any particular discipline's robust peer review process.

Back on topic....

- The stuff that I'm trying to do with "War School", that I only speak to briefly in the posts of this topic, I have covered in exhaustive detail in 2 other threads:

A.) The Future of RTS....

B.) Commander Command Improvements -- What ? Details ?

Not that I expect anyone to go off and read any of the above source materials with a ravenous appetite, because I don't, but I'm just saying coming at any of this willy-nilly is a style anathema to me. Though I readily acknowledge that none of this modus is any guarantee against falling short or journeying to a fitful dead-end.

That all said, I'll still endeavor to make my statements here as to my whys and wherefores as self-sufficient and transparent as i can without getting long-winded as I do side with The Bard's words ....

LORD POLONIUS:

This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad ?
But let that go.

Regards, whip
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[whippersnapper]

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In raw numbers, the Russians employed 230 tanks, 454 armored infantry vehicles, and 388 artillery guns. The
Chechens, on the other hand,had 50 tanks, 100 armored infantry vehicles, and 60 artillery guns. Despite Russia’s superior weapon systems, the Russians were unable to maneuver the Chechens into a disadvantageous position.

Let us assume, for the moment, such game play in WZ can be designed as viable.

A basic premise of any game is all players must start on a level playing field and only the depth, breathe, and efficacy of skill will be the deciding factors in the outcome. To create game world conditions that can be exploited to asymmetric advantage by any player could push game play by all players in that direction. What will be the consequence of that movement ? In other words - if there is asymmetric advantage to be gained by any and all seek to exploit it, how will that play out ? Will it precipitate a race in that direction over sheer numbers or brute force or tech advantage ? These are questions I ask myself as I make and test modifications to the games stock GPMs..

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On an other aspect of what I'm doing with this project..........

I've been roughing out the opening Trinity interior set for the "Truce" FMV with the Project characters Mallory and Bearheart (you can find the story for this opening sequence complete posted earlier in this thread which is meant for reading and thus not to be taken for my "Shooting Script" which is a different animal with camera angle instructs and such..).

Below, a couple of screen caps from this opening sequence and me playing around with set design and lighting. Obviously it's not done and it is also pre-rendered so there are no shaders or anti-aliasing enabled. This last allows me to do stuff quickly, make the journey from crappy to ok faster, and then when it's all ready to go to FMV rendering those will be part of the final GFX out-put processing - which is a lot of overhead... and while I can do this initial phase on my LT I must render the final on my DT Quad with SLI configuration, etc... and lord knows, that alone could tie-up my comp to rendering for weeks 24/7..





Regards, whip
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[new paradigm leader]

may i ask what involvment my represented faction has within this frankly awesome mod? just to ask you see

[whippersnapper]

may i ask what involvment my represented faction has within this frankly awesome mod? just to ask you see

Briefly - A cluster of tribal Scavs collectively known as the "Seven nations" are full Project allies against a common foe that has been culling Scav offspring for eugenic experiments. In this extrapolated future the Scav genome is as valuable as are the genomes of the flora inhabiting the Amazon rain forest in our present day. All factions but Scavs survived the nuke holocaust below ground in specially built enclaves - Scavs survived ABOVE ground thus precipitating an instance of "Punctuated Equilibria" in human evolution that could also be seen as "adaptive radiation". Ergo, the value of their genome. At least that is part of my re-visioning of Scavs.

Another facet of my re-visioning i just posted in i-NoD's new Scav Art thread:

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I can see it now - "Scav Wars !". A pure test of command skills from a level playing field - frack the tech race click-fest twitching.. At least that is what I imagine because I'm one of the few, it would seem, who believe Scavs do NOT equal stupid but rather savvy and canny and resourceful - in EVERYTHING, much yet to be realized in game play mechanics.... Building flimsy walls would be done as a ruse, a gambit, a ploy and NOT because Scavs just build fortifications out of flimsy materials because they're dumb-ass "primitives"... That is part of my "take" and, frankly, it totally shapes what I'm doing with Scavs. ..

Playing around with designing a Transport Cockpit for an interior set piece:





Regards, whip

[new paradigm leader]

but i find this illogical considering the projects encounters with the scavengers and the projects frankly genocidal approach with them. and people seem to forget the project gets all of its prerequisite techs from the scavs

[whippersnapper]

but i find this illogical considering the projects encounters with the scavengers and the projects frankly genocidal approach with them. and people seem to forget the project gets all of its prerequisite techs from the scavs

Story logic is not monolithic gospel truth. It is story-telling art-crafting that by nature is compelled to morph.

For me Pumpkin's story logic is tissue-thin, inconsistent and piecemeal derivative of the artistic visions of others in movies mainly but also some "Pulp" era SciFi stereotypical tropes (this was noted by 90% of reviewers of WZ in all the major game portals upon its release in April 1999 and subsequent months - it's not just my off-the-cuff assessment) and thus, for me, quite ripe for re-imagining much like the 1978's BSG by Glen Larsen was re-created in the post millennium version (2003-2009) using the same title by the Ronald D. Moore and David Eick team of writers. I have created my own original vision with its own internally consistent story logic which is solid and satisfies my crafting aesthetic. I'm not after the blessings or approval of the current rank and file who are satisfied with the original. And this disposition was thoroughly accepted and fostered by WZ Creators themselves - Pumpkin Studios - as I brought it up with them in direct discussion back in the day.

Which raises an other fact. I am sure that I am the only person here who had long and detailed conversations with members of the Pumpkin team - WZ Creators as they dubbed themselves back in the day - on everything Warzone 2100 including story crafting from April 1999 and for years after their demise as Pumpkin and resurrection as Pivotal.. Those conversations were enjoyable, enlightening, open-minded and totally NON-dogmatic. This last point is very interesting to me historically as the subsequent "canon" that has evolved from within the community as an entrenched mind-set post source release from 2005 onward is unrecognizable to me in its "tunnel vision" compared to the original Pumpkin community values and evolving WZ game aesthetic which thrived between 1999-2005.

In short, the only blessings and approval that matters I got years ago from WZ Creators themselves (in writing too - first in 1999 and then reiterated within the source release itself) and that's more than enough for me to carry on as I do with my take on it all... These are facts I merely state because they are the fundamental basis of my PoV on all aspects of WZ and perhaps, as such, indicate I'm not coming from "left-field" as some, I think, wish were the case so they could be free to dismiss those historic facts and miss-represent the history of the game so as to be consistent with their very own manufactured bias aka "canon", post source release.

Regards, whip

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[new paradigm leader]

fairr enough i analyse too deeply and maybe we are looking at it wrong as there are always going to be degrees of scaveners the project fought weaker scavs than the main lot which is why new paradigm armed them the collective eradicated most scavs from its vicinity and nexus just killed anything non elecronically hackable that came near

[whippersnapper]

fairr enough i analyse too deeply and maybe we are looking at it wrong as there are always going to be degrees of scaveners the project fought weaker scavs than the main lot which is why new paradigm armed them the collective eradicated most scavs from its vicinity and nexus just killed anything non elecronically hackable that came near

I'm all for a fair amount of analysis, and do believe far too many are content with a quick perusal of a Wikipedia article (which I take as lazy-minded and far from adequate). However, I do understand that analysis does have clear limits as in what is known specifically as reductionism which is totally unable to contend with any complex system, be it a literary work, the weather, the human brain, an ecological niche or an RTS game (I use the term as it is defined in the Science of Complexity).

Understand this too - even if you take Pumpkin's back story and campaign narrative at full face value and do not question its internal logic you must realize it is strictly confined to a very tiny geographic region - basically, Colorado and Arizona. Pumpkin did not elaborate on any other part of the planet - so as far as I'm concerned you all should feel free to imagine ANYTHING that can be be rationalized via artful craft such that a willing suspension of disbelief is achieved..

As one of my favorite authors put it:

...Snatch prudence from me, God, burst my brows wide, fling far
the trapdoors of my mind, let the world breathe awhile..

... from "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" by Nikos Kazantzakis

Regards, whip O_O

[new paradigm leader]

i completely agree with the view in regards to lack of scope within the game and think britain and many other countries should be included as we all here know that many of the staple items in warzone were british inventions i.e. Vtol, hover and tracked propulsions along with the machine gun, And HESH weapons.

[Avestron]

Actually I would think that such things as nationality would be weakened in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

It'll be more like "meet Hank, the only Brit in the Village" xD

Actually WZ seems to be set exclusively in the Americas - plenty of scope for a sequel on a global theatre.

[new paradigm leader]

that depends on the nature of the state in mind for instance in some cases people wouuld no longer care in others factions would care more leading to hypernationalist organisations and/or imperialist factions with varying degrees of intensity (from accepting of all colours and creeds under the union to the British Nexus Party) and lets face it the Current BNP is bad enough without nexus

[new paradigm leader]

sorry about that digression there whipper was irresistable

[whippersnapper]

sorry about that digression there whipper was irresistable

Totally cool, bud. This stuff does come into play but is rarely spoken to openly and I believe it's a good thing to put it out there plainly for all to see the "substrate" out of which we build our credible notions on.

Actually I would think that such things as nationality would be weakened in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

It'll be more like "meet Hank, the only Brit in the Village" xD

That's a good point.

There would still be social organizing group dynamics in play that would revolve around charismatic leaders utilizing universal human psychological types.

The following short list of works are instructive in this area (not exhaustive but at least seminal I think) and inform my approach to this post nuke holocaust world-building from the other side of ecological considerations or actual story crafting techniques - that is, falling squarely in the realm of group formations unified to common ends - aka, Factions:

1.) "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond

2.) "True Believer" by Eric Hoffer

3.) "Escape From Freedom" by Eric Fromm

4.) "Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell

5.) "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti

6.) "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker

7.) "The Social Construction of Reality" by Peter L. Berger

8.) "Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts On Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means" by William T. Vollmann

9.) "The Culture of Make Believe" by Derrek Jensen

10.) "The Wisdom of the Sands" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

11.) "Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War" by Barbara Ehrenreich

12.) "A Terrible Love of War" by James Hillman.

13.) "Spiral Dynamics" a take on Memetics by Beck and Cowan

14.) "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore

Regards, whip
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[whippersnapper]

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BTW - The events in "War School" take place around 2120 and in a specific geographic region - the Southern Gulf of Mexico and Central America.

Regards, whip
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