Autogun Turrets (Gun Turret graphics/sound/weapon mod)

[Fey]

5 hours ago, firefly101 said:

Hello Fey.

I will try to see if I can fix the discord issue later. But right now I made some great progress, I am almost done with the new animations! I have about 70 or so to go. Many were easy as they used the same model but some small difference like firing etc. What I am doing is giving a big Machinegun to the Troopers that looks similar to the Sardaukar troops. It does have different animations but if beefed up compared to the Infantry. I would like you to check it out when I am done if you want? I suppose these new animations can be used for another unit to make a new unit available. I always felt Harkonnens should have and heavier infantry.

I would LOVE to check those out! That sounds really interesting.

By the way, I also did a little work on something you might want to use for your infantry-based mod:
https://i.imgur.com/N7tWkE5.mp4
https://i.imgur.com/yMbzj6C.mp4

This still needs color correction, but the basic frames and alignment are done. Each Engineer has a pistol now. Here's the sound effect:
engi boi.wav

Not particularly useful compared to standard infantry, but not totally useless either. An Engineer can 1v1 a Trooper, two can possibly take down a Shotgunner or Grenadier... this mechanism mostly just enables them to defend themselves against injured infantry, such as those that pop out of structures, and contribute to the infantry force while being escorted.

When you compare the Shotgunner and Engineer in my own mod, the former under normalized conditions costs 50 credits, is immediately available, takes 5 seconds to train, has superior armor, HP, and movement speed, deals 16.67% greater area damage, does 125 DPS, and stacks up burst a whopping ~45% better. The latter deals ~92 DPS, takes 30 seconds to train, costs 400 credits, and requires the Barracks upgrade and an Outpost.

There is no contest; Engineers can't be massed and used like normal infantry while you go storming the enemy base and capturing everything. They still rely quite heavily on the protection of other units. However, they're slightly more capable units and the pistol is a bit of flavor if nothing else.

That's for my mod though. If you have another idea of how to balance them, you're free to use the sprites however you'd like just as soon as they're finished, if you'd like to use them.

[firefly101]

I am deleting my old posts to clean up your thread for your mod.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by firefly101

[Fey]

9 hours ago, firefly101 said:

Hello Here is the file it has your turret mod in it already.

Basically I am using them for the Harkonnen, so they have a beefed up infantry compared to the others.

I got a chance to have a look at the new spriteset.

Wow! What a beautiful edit! The firing animation is so smooth. Great job. For anyone else who just wants to see a little bit of the new sprites, I'll post an image here:


These guys fire from the hip now and everything. They deserve a new sidebar icon for sure. I know a guy, but I'm not sure how he'd do with an infantry icon. Been doing buildings and vehicles so far, and those work well in the style he's shown me so far. I trust he'd come up with something cool. He's on vacation at the moment, but he's coming back in a couple of weeks. If you want, I can point him in the direction of these new Troopers, but I have made some requests of him too!

Then again, if this is what you've come up with for the in-game sprites, perhaps you are suited to modifying the sidebar icon as well. It's well beyond me, I feel.

9 hours ago, firefly101 said:

Clever use could add to another unit like Grenadiers to make a new unit for ingame.

Ah, you mean overwrite the Grenadier spriteset to add these new boys? Suppose that could work, but if it's an infantry-focused mod, perhaps keeping Grenadiers around would be a good idea. There are only so many slots for different kinds of infantry, after all.

[firefly101]

I am deleting my old posts to clean up your thread for your mod.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by firefly101

[Fey]

41 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

Hello Fey,

Thanks for posting the picture. I had to work on the firing animations as the original had offset issues of there own. I noticed the Infantry jerk a little in certain firing animations, so they were a little lazy or too pressed with deadlines. lol

Oh yeah, that's for sure.

42 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

Well the Thumper unit could be replaced, after all killing the worm if kind of a cheap tactic imo. The grenadier is kind of overpowered in the game again infantry, I watched him cut down whole groups of infantry, infantry only game isn't so much about different Infantry units as it is removing the vehicles so its like the movie in 1984, My understanding was using heavy vehicles wasn't really good because every vibration brought worms.

Fair enough. Hey, if there's one thing Grenadiers are useful for, it's setting their weapon damage to 1 in TibEd and using them to check the suppressed animations on new infantry.

Do Thumpers have a firing animation? I know Engineers and Saboteurs have mostly Light Infantry animations, except for the sprite facing to the right which is a bizarre long-legged infantry sprite. Thumpers, I vaguely recall crashing the game by giving them a weapon because they don't have a proper firing animation assigned to them. Maybe I'm imagining things.

44 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

I think there is room for both ways of playing, one based off the original game, and one that focuses on infantry. Using infantry slows the game down a bit, it really makes your turrets even more useful and there are some Massive Charges of Sardaukar Units etc.

Definitely, I imagine it makes the game simpler in general, but that ain't a bad thing for a mod.

Are you going to give the player several different kinds of Barracks so he can train several kinds of infantry all at once? I can help with that part, I know the unknown bytes you'd need to change in TibEd. I've put Fremen Warriors and standard infantry on different build queues.

I balanced my own mod around the different unit categories. Infantry are a critical type of unit! They bring essential firepower, cheap early game defense, and other stuff like that. Ask any of the multiplayer nuts, massed Troopers can be scary as hell. That's the reason they bring Siege Tanks with their Combat Tanks, 'cause trying to run over all those Troopers will get a ton of their tanks one-shot, especially if the enemy has a good concave. It's like feeding the vehicles to a big, hungry worm.

47 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

My big gripe was the Harkonnen, even in the movie and book they were a Hard people that you got the idea where really physical in their thoughts. Heavier infantry would fit with there style. I think these new units could replace the Thumper or the Grenadier and be given to the Harkonnen so they have a better infantry. I wished the original game designers did that in the beginning as I seen a couple reviews were the reviewer wished for unique infantry for each house.

I wanted to make a special unit for Ordos, but the Gas only effects Vehicles and infantry.

Yeah, I feel ya. The Flame Tank was one of the first major spritesets I touched up, and its addition proved to have a really positive impact on my own mod.

My Harkonnen AIs tend to put a focus on Troopers over Shotgunners and Quads over Trikes. Raw firepower. If you want your AIs to be very specific in what they build and how much, that's on the mapping end of things, but I can point ya in the direction of the right values to change.

How about the Saboteurs? If you're keeping those, I figured out a way to make them do this:
https://i.imgur.com/9cPlz2U.mp4

So, that makes them about as scary as the Ornithopters' bombing run or a well-placed Death Hand.

57 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

Thanks for the kind words on the sprites. I can also upload the actual sprites so someone could add them to whatever unit they wished if they wanted to keep the troopers and have these units.

My pleasure, my dude. It's always lovely to see some quality work from a passionate modder. That would be a great idea. Give 'em their own thread when you feel they're good enough - maybe after a new sidebar icon is done?

58 minutes ago, firefly101 said:

On the Picture, I thought about trying something. If you can mention to him about it that would be great. The picture would be more artwork than the sprites, but maybe I can make something to match. 

I touched up the Shotgunner sidebar icon myself. Sometimes I find that if it's your mod, you're the only one who can really do the new thing justice, since you know it in and out. This is mostly true for the in-game spriteset; if you do half and someone else does the other half, it's gonna look off. For the sidebar icon, I've found that others are more than capable of doing way better work than I could! But that's because it's a different type of art, so someone else coming in just for that is perfectly fine.

Here are a few icons I did up, kinda sorta:

Spoiler

If you count mashing together some of the original game's icons or using other folks' drawings on other backgrounds I also found on the net. That last one is the original Storm Lasher megaturret icon next to one of the first draft new ones by AZ-Stalker. Waaay better than the simple lightning icon I did up.

1 hour ago, firefly101 said:

I am still thankful for your turret, it was a wonderful new addition that really is just perfect!

I'm truly glad! It's my hope that the spritework I do isn't useful only to me, isn't fun only to those checking out my mod, but goes on to be used in other mods too. The more assets there are floating around, the greater the potential variation in new mods.

Hey, suppose you'd put the Autogun Tank or something to use on a Heighliner map? Have you checked out the Heighliner tileset yet? Here's a screenshot of a large base governed by two AIs, with a pathing map:

Spoiler

No worms in space!

There are some other custom graphics missing from this screenshot, like the new Golden Lion Barracks sprite, not that these guys are Imperials in-game, but anyway you can see two Storm Lasher megaturrets in the center of the base. This is a highly defensible layout; the map's gimmick is to capture some autofactories around the map that constantly pump out AI-controlled Combat Tanks, three autofactories total, and then flood this base with light CTs in addition to your own forces.

[firefly101]

I am deleting my old posts to clean up your thread for your mod.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by firefly101

[Fey]

3 hours ago, firefly101 said:

Those icons are nice, The resolution is so small on these images that one can get away with things you normally couldn't.

I found a wonderful Dune 2000 image that was a unit they never really added to the game, So this artwork should be perfect for the infantry mod? What do you think?

Yeah lol at full size those would look silly as hell.

Ah, that's perfect! You might want to go with the other infantry in the same screenshot though - that's from one of Dune 2000's cutscenes, I think the intro. The other one looks like... uhh... he's standing up more straight. Something like this:


This is a bit discolored from palette conversion, so you might want to pick it up yourself by screen-shotting the original scene when you find it, then shrink that image down accordingly.

[firefly101]

I am deleting my old posts to clean up your thread for your mod.

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by firefly101

[Fey]

6 hours ago, firefly101 said:

How about this version using a different source.

That is pretty! But, I still think the guy standing up straight would be better, and then the new background in that one could be behind it.

I found a link to the intro cutscene, so if ya take a screenshot here and then shrink that down and crop out the guy a bit... there ya go! I linked this at 1:14, just as the Troopers boys show up and go haha machine gun go BRRRT.
https://youtu.be/0_N1zkgwLTY?t=74

Or, stick with what ya got. I'm only givin' ya my two cents.

[firefly101]

I get the quality of image out of the video. See the original ones are very contrasted so they look sharp in game, but the video ones are blurred which gives that different look compared to the others. I took this one from the Playstation cover image which was way more sharper and better contrast and in game it goes well with the original ones.

Funny because the video shows Harkonnen as using heavy infantry yet in the game they had the same model. Makes you think they originally planned to have another model for the Harkonnen and then decided not to for some reason. I know Emperor has a lot more units than Dune 2000 for each house.

I also made a Sardauker version since I never liked the one in the original game. And here are a couple new models using the background either could be used if one liked.

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by firefly101

[Fey]

Ah, I getcha.

Goddamn, dude, those are gorgeous! The first one is really good, I just find it strange how the infantry is leaning awkwardly to the side like that. The other two look amazing. Thanks for linking those! And you did those yourself? Perhaps you'd be willing to give the Autogun Tank icon a shot?

And hey, no problem about your old posts mate. I'm glad my own modding efforts have sparked some conversation about yet more modding. I think that's a good thing!!

Edited August 2, 2020 by Fey

[firefly101]

Hello Fey,

Here are a couple UI cards I whipped up. One for the autogun, maybe a patch till you can get something better?  And a new Infantry UI card for those that want it.

[Fey]

1 hour ago, firefly101 said:

sidebar icons

Oh yeah, those are really good. You've definitely got the ability to create some kickass sidebar icons, my dude.

The Autogun Tank has a particular shape that isn't quite that, so I'll see what else pops up, but yeah, that's a swell placeholder. Thank you!

[firefly101]

Its a hard one to make without a model that is similar. Someone will need to 3D draw one then match its color. Its the best I could do without looking cheesy. The tank Icons use a different angle than the Quad, so I could mesh the two together for you.

 

Here is another style if you think its ok for a placeholder.

[Amander]

On 8/2/2020 at 9:46 AM, firefly101 said:

I also made a Sardauker version since I never liked the one in the original game. And here are a couple new models using the background either could be used if one liked.

This son of a Gun is mines now, I'll take it.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Amander

[Amander]

And here's this one I made.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/722853223622246460/733480603399487608/Sardaukar-I.W.S.D_v1.1.zip

Reshade it if you want to.

[firefly101]

That is really nice one! I also made this small Guild Mercenary one.

 

 

[Amander]

10 hours ago, firefly101 said:

That is really nice one! I also made this small Guild Mercenary one.

 

 

Art really isn't my Strong Suit.

[Fey]

Lots of neat new icons.

My power's kinda screwed at the moment, so I'll probably be quite inactive for a week, but I look forward to seeing more.