Death clones

[Willhelm]

In all my time being here, i don't think ive actually heard anything about why most new units/newly designed units have no death clones or death clones of other units so that's just what im asking.

why do most new/redone units have no death clones and do you plan on doing death clones for them and if so when?

[Corey]

For 1.0, basically everything had a deathclone, but the problem is they suck and a lot was redone since then. There's way too many, and nobody on the team can animate very well, and every time a unit is edited a new one would have to be made. It's a lot of work for something that wouldn't look very good anyways.

[Willhelm]

well personally id rather have ugly death clones than have massive ships disappear out of thin air as soon as they die

[Corey]

Well, the more relevant question is would you rather have shitty deathclones, or have the shitty models redone and missing units added, which would make any deathclones we did have have to be redone again anyways? I'm only one person, after all, and if I can't animate then any time I spend learning how is time I can't spend improving the mod in other, more important ways. Either way it's going to be disappearing, there's not going to be a bunch of hulls that always stay there, it's just a question of whether they explode right away, or the ship gets cut directly in half in an unrealistically unbelievable way, spirals down a bit in a completely ugly way, and then disappears from that.

Basically, if I get good enough to do proper death clones and don't have other more important stuff that needs doing, I'll do them, but other than that I'm not going out of my way for it.

[Kalo]

For 1.0, basically everything had a deathclone,

They were all done within a months time. I had to rush like 75% of them and I only spent any real time on really large and major ships.

why do most new/redone units have no death clones and do you plan on doing death clones for them and if so when?

I had thought of going on this massive campaign and just making a bunch of new ones. The real problem here, though, is that I'm on Windows 7 and no matter what I do I can't get any version of 3ds MAX that can actually export into ALAMO Format to work on my computer. And because 3ds MAX files are not backwards compatible, my efforts would be completely worthless.

[Enceladus]

The real problem here, though, is that I'm on Windows 7 and no matter what I do I can't get any version of 3ds MAX that can actually export into ALAMO Format to work on my computer.

Code had issues installing Max 9. Installing it with certain compatibility settings on however did the trick.

[Willhelm]

So basically you guys could do it, but you'd have to redo all the units that are new/redone?
and well Corey yes the death clones in 1.0 were unrealistic but its rather unrealistic when ships instantaneously vaporize too...
Im not really asking for you guys to do them its more of a, when do you guys think your gonna be done all the important shtuff enough to bother improving the game in these minor aesthetic areas?

[Corey]

They were all done within a months time. I had to rush like 75% of them and I only spent any real time on really large and major ships.

And it shows. The Battle Dragon and Golans were the only really good ones, and the Sovereign if it hadn't caused all that lag, but that was a pretty solid month of work just to get the few good ones and a huge amount of weird or bad ones. Basically everything in 1.0 was horribly rushed, which is the reason the entire team hates it, and it's taken enough work just to redo the models and skins (here we are 2 years later still doing it), and adding on new Death Clones that have to be redone every time a model gets edited wouldn't help that process

So basically you guys could do it, but you'd have to redo all the units that are new/redone?
and well Corey yes the death clones in 1.0 were unrealistic but its rather unrealistic when ships instantaneously vaporize too...
Im not really asking for you guys to do them its more of a, when do you guys think your gonna be done all the important shtuff enough to bother improving the game in these minor aesthetic areas?

It's not that we could do it. Kalo and Dr. Nick both have some animation skills, but Kalo hasn't been involved in any EaW modding for a long time (and like he said, his version of Max doesn't work), and Dr. Nick works on other more important stuff when he does mod work, which he doesn't have much time for. Certainly not enough to do all the death clones, even if he had no other work to do. I can't animate and I have no intention of learning since I already do virtually all of the modeling and skinning, as well as coding, some mapping and other stuff, so it's probably never going to be done. I prefer the explosions to having shitty death clones. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it properly, and if we did them without knowing how to do them in a way that looks good, then we'd just be redoing them all right when we finished anyways. Doing them would basically be putting a project into Imperial Civil War that would require as much or more work as any version since 1.0 when it's for such a small aspect of the mod that we couldn't even do properly, so I'd rather focus on the other aspects.

Again, with bad death clones, especially ones where it doesn't break up properly (2 parts splitting clean in half trailing two trails of fire, which is ugly as it is), it's still just disappearing. It's just instead of one piece disappearing, it's 2 pieces disappearing. Basically what I'm saying is why put in all of that work to go from unrealistic and weird to just as unrealistic and ugly? Maybe I'll change my mind at some point, but it'd be at the expense of other aspects of the mod, basically.

[Lord Xizer]

I agree with Corey. the Death clones always seemed a bit pointless to me really.

[Willhelm]

So your not planning on doing them ever?

[Corey]

Not unless I ever get enough free time to learn animation properly and animate around 75 different things. Modding isn't all one skill, animation requires a completely different skillset. Doing good animations for every ship in the mod is probably around half of the work as modeling every ship in the mod again, and it's something I don't know how to do at all so it's half the work after learning how to do it. It would take a hell of a long time even if it's all I focused on. Any time I devote to that is time I can't put into anything else, and there's other stuff that's way more important and would take either equal or less time, we aren't a huge AAA dev team, we have limited resources and limited time, we have to prioritize, and I don't plan on working on this game forever.

It may seem like a small thing, but it's a huge undertaking for something you get very little out of. Once again, it took Kalo, who already had some animation background, a month/month and a half to do the death clones for 1.0, and that was them being rushed, and it was all he was working on for that. Doing them all properly from a position of not being able to animate at all beyond a deploy animation for the Defender starfighter, while being responsible for virtually all of the modeling, skinning, half the coding, some of the mapping, etc would take more time than I actually have.

It might be done eventually, but don't hold your breath. For example, if Kalo were to rejoin the EaW-branch of TR and wanted to do them, then they might be done, but as long as it would fall to me to do them, it's not happening. On top of that, it's pointless to do any of them unless we're absolutely sure that unit is not getting edited at all, or else it would require redoing the whole animation. And since the Mon Cals are all getting remodeled or skin, giving them DCs wouldn't help, same goes for the ISD/Tector/VSD.

[Kalo]

So your not planning on doing them ever?

If I ever did any more DCs, only Super Capitals and Capitals would be getting them.

[Corey]

So apparently we're doing this now.

[Kalo]

Because fuck the Police.

[tlmiller]

So apparently we're doing this now.

As in, going to make death clones?

Eh, I agree with you.  If there's noone in the modding team to do them right, just don't do them at all.

[Corey]

Kalo volunteered. The problem was with having me do it, not if Kalo wanted to do it. He technically hasn't been on the team (EaW branch of it at least) basically since 1.1, which is why I wasn't counting him.

[Kalo]

Kalo volunteered. The problem was with having me do it, not if Kalo wanted to do it. He technically hasn't been on the team (EaW branch of it at least) basically since 1.1, which is why I wasn't counting him.

Because I like to have fun and I spend a lot of time playing video games.

[Lord Xizer]

As any one would given the choice.^^

[Darth Stalin]

In fact for me the only ships to ever get the death clones should be the largest ones - from Destroyer up (f.e. Victory, ISD, Tector, SSD, MonCals MC 80 and bigger, Ascendancy, Phalanx and Chaf) - IMHO the death clone" simulates the ship being fragmented into pieces large enough (due to overall size of the ship) to keep (roughly) intact but separated from the whole construction, to be finally destroyed in the planetary atmosphere.

Any smaller ship just disappears into a cloud of small fragments and debris due to huge explosions of missiles and energy beams that rip it apart.

[Kalo]

Any smaller ship just disappears into a cloud of small fragments and debris due to huge explosions of missiles and energy beams that rip it apart.

This is actually my plan. I intend to make a generic debris deathclone that can be used for smaller ships.