7 Year Anniversary Modcast

[Corey]

Would you listen to a 7 year anniversary podcast by the team? Think something in the style of the videos we've been doing, but longer, with more of us and more based on general modding opinions/experiences and what we want to do going forward.

We'd get into some general conversations about how we got into modding, any other projects we worked on, game design/modding basics, that kind of thing. Maybe even trash talk other mods!

If you have anything you'd want to hear us discuss, then feel free to post it as well.

Cast:
-Corey
-Enceladus
-Kalo
-Codeuser
-Smallpox

[Lord Xizer]

Yep

[Eclipse]

Sure. Maybe this time Corey can survive a few more waves in survival mode hahahah XP

[Corey]

No distractions. Also, the whole question/suggestion thing would definitely be appreciated, we've had problems with this kind of thing in the past since we didn't really know what aspects to focus on.

[Eclipse]

Well maybe you can give some kind of brief introduction of what actually modding means, show some programs wich you can use to create your own ship, some coding tutorials and stuff like that. I've always wanted to make my own oversized personal flagship XP

[Revanchist]

Maybe also you could go into what it takes to create a new EotH unit, from the initial idea to the balancing aspect and so on. That way people could really feel what a monumental task it is to create new ships for the EotH.

Your feelings (and thus gameplay videos of) on the strategies for each faction would be cool, too.

[Corey]

I should probably clear some stuff up about this, may have given the wrong idea with the comparison to the video stuff.

The goal of this isn't really to get into the mehcanics of how to mod EaW; several of us have written tutorials on individual aspects, and I think that kind of self-contained instructional writeup or video for its own purpose is a lot more useful for anyone learning any individual aspect of modding. It also isn't very interesting to listen to.

The goal of this would be more for the discussion of the 'philosophy' of modding, though we would still inevitably mention some technical stuff; the stuff that, while it won't necessarily tell you how to change the firing rate of of the Lancer frigate from 4 to 6 shots per second on the back left laser cannon, it would be more widely applicable for people who want to start their own mod for any game or who just want more information on what this kind of project takes in general. The dynamics of the team, the role of community suggestions and interactions. Maybe some arguments between us on those kind of topics if we disagree. Definitely some disparaging comments about the way certain other mods handle thins, likely without actually mentioning any names since that's something I've tried to avoid.

The other aspect is more directly related to the mod, but it ties into the first, and there's some obvious areas of overlap. We've been asked about the mod's history a lot, and this is an area where we can discuss that in relation to the kind of things I mentioned above. We've been in existance for 7 years, gone through a lot of phases that we never really communicated some of the reasons for (partially out of laziness, partially for other reasons), such as the original 4 release structure being chiseled down to just Imperial Civil War.

It's kind of a different take on a popular thing a lot of mods do after failure or release on ModDB, Post Mortem writeups, which I used to read a lot when starting out TR. Where usually it's a text thing by one person, the leader or founder more often than not, I wanted to get more of the team into it, and this is something a lot of us (especially Enceladus and I think Kalo) have been interested in doing for a while.

For example:
http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/post-mortem
http://www.moddb.com/features/eternal-silence-post-mortem
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-nameless-mod/features/the-nameless-mod-postmortem-part-1

Only we intend to be a bit more lighthearted/informative/entertaining with it and less emo.

So basically, anything's fair game (such as the how we approach the development of a ship in general, as Revanchist asked), but we'd rather stay away from the basic nuts and bolts of how to accomplish menial task x.

Usually people save that for the autopsy, and while we aren't going anywhere yet, the 7th anniversary seems like a good time for it, especially as it's near the wrapping up of ICW and ramping up of Ascendancy.

[yutpaeksi]

Well I certainly would enjoy hearing about how and why you got into modding, how long you've been at it, that sort of thing.

In addition I'd like to hear about who is the best EaW/ICW player amongst you, who is kicking whose butt in the Ascendancy alpha builds, that sort of thing. Yes we know all about Corey's umm..prowess...at the ICW survival mode. But how good is Encaledus? Does Kalo kick everyone else's ass?

Another bit I'd like to hear about is the EotH development. Whose idea was the Nuruodo broadside frigate? Who came up with the idea for the megamaser tank? Who mistakenly made the hero blob unstoppable with stacking bonuses? Haha, seriously though it'd just be cool to learn who is good at what and how you came up with some of the development ideas.

[Corey]

After seeing a lot of the stuff that other moddrs have done and said this month, I think I'm going to add the whole "why don't all the modders get together and make one big supermod omg111one!!!" topic to this.

[Revanchist]

You mean like YVaW?? :p

[Corey]

All I'll say on that particular mod is I completely disagree with a really large percentage of their decisions and opinions, especially how model "detail" is handled.

[Delta104x]

I kinda wanna see a Praetor Waste an entire NR fleet, please. Other than that Anything would be fantastic!

[Corey]

I'm not sure how well that would translate into an audio conversation.

[mynameisyou]

I would love to see that I love the community!

[Corey]

So, we've recorded it, it'll be about an hour long once editing is done. Editing is taking a while longer than I'd hoped since we didn't have individual audio tracks for everyone and I'm trying to make it all level out a bit better.

[Lord Xizer]

Ah the joy of community