|
« NEWS ARCHIVES »
February 2004 |
| This Could Be Bad... | | - MooMan65 | February 24, 2004 | Starting yesterday (Monday) I began my three year course of Information Technology at University, and for the first time in five years my school-life has dramatically changed. This poses a huge problem as the requirement of work for this course is huge, and I barely have any free time during the days I go to school now to work on my projects. That goes from Monday-Thursday, but recently I've just started proper part-time work also which is on Friday and Saturday!
So translated into something relevant to MooCorner, work on YR˛ (and everything else online for that matter) has slowed down dramatically. There is no way I'm quitting the mod entirely, just that I have a lot less time on my hands to allocate to work on it, which really screws up my Beta-Testing plans as it's hard to go through that when I'm barely around to keep up to date with the latest beta happenings. I've yet to think up how I will be working on the mod in the months to come and it's not looking good. My best bet is to hope that the team of testers I eventually end up with are independant enough to test without me being around often to check up...
So I've posted this early enough to inform everyone here on what's going on, and I hope to have more updates coming when I settle into Uni more and so I may find out I have more free time than I originally thought. This is no way an indication that you should stop visiting and contributing to discussions, rather I will simply have to cut back on the time I spend working on the mod. I am not stopping work entirely on it, as from Friday-Sunday, regardless of my job, I have time available for me to do leisure things. Let's just hope that is enough for me to continue working on the mod effectively! | |
| New Poll! | | - MooMan65 | February 14, 2004 | I think it was about time I changed the poll. The Chrono Miner one has gone on long enough which was good to make sure the results were a true reflection of what people though. I'm surprised that there was such overwhelming support for the Phase Miner and I've decided to give it a go for the first beta. If it doesn't work out then the beta-testers will be the one to discover it. I do like he idea of the Phase Miner very much, it opens up something that not many mods have done and it'll be interesting to see how it works.
So what's the new poll about? Well recently I've started up a BIG conversion in the C-GEN Forums about changes to Yuri's Army. So far there has been a flood of ideas in which I think will actually be somewhat useful in making Yuri a side that's not filled to the brim with contradictions and weirdness. The primary goal of my Yuri changes is to turn him into a more terroristic side, but that's all discussed in the thread and I don't want to have to repeat myself here. Please take the time to go visit the thread just to read it even so it'll help you to understand the upcoming polls one by one. This first poll is rather simple:
"Should Yuri gain the use of a Service Depot?"
You have a choice between giving him one alongside the Grinder, giving him one and moving the Grinder to the high-tech section of the tree, give him one to REPLACE the Grinder, or don't give him one at all. This has been discussed periodically on the forums but I feel it needs more attention for me to make a decision.
For the record, here are the results of the last poll:
"What should the Chrono Miner be replaced with?" [165 votes total]
-Amphibious Tank (31)
-Stealth/Phase Miner (90)
-Other (comment please) (11)
-None (keep as it is) (33)
Again like the last poll, I want to take the time to reply to some specific comments from fans:
Some Fan Responses:
-Clazzy: Indeed there is the issue of who to let detect Miners. All infantry will be able to so scatter a few around fields to help yourself out. This requires Soviet and Yuri players to take new strategies into account. The other issue is of course the storage amount. As it no longer Chronos around it takes just as long as the War Miner to gather ore, but overall it's a lot safer to attack, so I will have to research to find the right balance in the Storage. Probably more than what it can normally hold, but still less than the War Miner.
-assassyn68: I think you mean the Subterranean Miner for the Soviets. The Allies get the Amphibious Miner is MooRules. Yes it does have a bit of a buggy AI for when scanning for available ore, and that is why I did not include it in the choice list. The Sub Miner had the benefit of being out of harms way too and from the field, as well as being able to cross all barriers so it was an even more effective Amphibious Miner. However until I get those pathfinding issues sorted (if possible) I'll leave it out for now sorry.
-ComradeJ: Terror Drones can't attack what they can't detect, and so the favorite AI task of sending Terror Drones to your Miners won't even work any more unless you have Infantry around to reveal them to you. I agree with the Amphibious Miner not really adding much, as for the most part there aren't many instances of ore being available somewhere where an Ampibious Miner would be more suitable to grab it. And I said the Phase Miner is a handy idea for the RESOURCE gathering industry. Plus if you count the Mirage Tank being a modified Phase Tank then the Allies already have installed the technology onto a proper tank. This will work more effectivly if I do decide to adjust the Mirage Tank to the Phase Tank in the future.
-J Dep: Since it's not possible to adjust it's Chrono method (unless you want it to do it like the Legionnaire which I definatly don't) you can't do anything in that area. And adjusting anything else relating to it (strength, storage, speed) can all be done with the Phase Miner as only the method of transport is adjusted, it's stats at the beginning will be the same as the Chrono Miner and adjusted over time should they need be. The Chrono Miner cannot really be improved much, and this is only a possible change. Just because I've changed it now it doesn't mean it will be like that in the first public version. We'll see what happens.
-Robster: You should take note that the first half of your comment doesn't achieve anything. I realise all three mining technologies are unique in their own ways, and that is why I've not simply replaced all of them with the standard Ore Miner you see in RA1. I like the way uniqueness plays in the game, but changing the miner to a Phase Miner has nothing to do with uniqueness as it's still got a very unique ability, just a different one. And see my responce to J Dep's comment above for the last half.
-Dark Scorpion: That's pretty much exactly what I intend to do right now. Plus the Chrono Tank in RA1 and the Chrono Miner work completely differently. They both use Chrono technology indeed but the way they use it is so different I can't see them related.
-Gario: For example if I keep the Storage limit as it is with the Chrono Miner to the Phase Miner the Allies will now have a Miner that takes just as long as a War Miner to gather ore yet they receive less. The goal is to find the right balance between Storage and it's abilities to make sure the Allied economy doesn't get overpowered.
Thank you everyone who posted comments! Now vote away! | |
| Reformat and Contact Update | | - MooMan65 | February 1, 2004 | *sigh*. Yet another reformat on my part. I tell ya I'd be lucky if this computer lasts another year... It's only been two months since I last reformatted this hunk of junk which is the only available machine I have in order to create me mods. Considering I start University in a month all my money is going towards paying for that, so when this computer goes I'll be totally out of contact with the community for god knows how long. I don't want to think about it, and I do some things sort themselves out.
So yes, another reformat and thankfully this time it wasn't because the computer crashed completly to DOS. Instead I just was having a hunch it was about to happen (three years working with this thing gives me pretty good instincts for this sort of thing) and so I didn't want to take many chances considering I almost lost YR˛ last time. Again because my computer is three years old it doesn't have any easy means of backuping anything but thankfully my mother was able to procure a CD Writer for this purpose, so I have not lost anything! Progress of the mod hasn't slowed down!
On the contact basis, I've undergone a couple of e-mail changes. I will no longer be using my mooman65@deezire.net email due to the fact that 50% of the time I was never able to get onto it and every time DeeZire Online changes servers it takes forever for the e-mail account to ever be set up again. Instead if you need to contact me you can use one of my other e-mail addys (I will update the Contacts page once I reinstall my FTP Client) or my newly resurfaced old Hotmail account which will become listed in the Contact section shortly. I have decided to reactivate my old e-mail (and the MSN Account with it) for general use as for some fortunate reason it is no longer being spammed up ever 5 minutes. I check all three e-mails equally so there's no preferance as to what one you can choose to use. Will Hotmail you can be thankful that it will pretty much always get through considering their server's are barely ever down, however the storage space is rather limiting so you should send larger e-mails (primarily with attachments) to my non-Hotmail. Thanks. | |
|
|
|
|
