Modding ?

[Matzerath]

@Matzerath - can you give an example of what you mean by mixing weapons? (I'm imagining an artillery cannon that launches infantry soldiers)

Yes, I'm feeling my idea would lean towards the limited and ludicrous, ha ha.
Other than that, what I had in mind were settings so you could, say, design weapons with different parameters -- like changing the zombie attractor so that it repels humans and zombies alike, or a 'bomb' that changes zombies to humans. Or as another example, making the infantry into a sort of medical team that 'shoot' cure. A level utilizing all these could involve reverting and airlifting as many humans as possible before the time-limit is up.
Though this all might still be ludicrous!

[flap]

There is one issues with that fun idea : it would require much more than changing some parameters to do so. It would require probably some kind of scripting (even if it is basic). And I suppose that it would be quiet a bit of work to incorporate.

[Matzerath]

@flap:
In my heart I realize this, but my brain-farts demanded a voice. Now I am at peace.

[AngryChef]

I don't disagree with this assertion. I would like to be able to "hybridize" the individual units to create new ones (not necessarily entirely new features). For example, I was thinking it would be cool to have a tank, which would (effectively) be a cross between the artillery and infantry (unsurprisingly).

To clarify the specifics of a (potential) implementation:

Big green cube (not four tiny ones)
Slower than infantry (would need to be fine tuned)
Shoots slower (tunable)
More "accurate" (tunable)
Splash damage (like artillery, but not as devastating)
Low building damage (takes, for example, four hits from a "tank" to collapse a large building)

There are few balance issues, but I think that it would be pretty cool to combine basic mercenary types. Some other ideas:

Infantry or Snipers + Bait (Trappers?)
Infantry + Artillery (Mortars? Two Man Team, Less Destruction, Less (Area) Damage, Higher Fire Rate, More Mobility, Balanced with "Setup Time" of Mortar)
Infantry + Evac Chopper (Less Capacity and/or Less Speed, Defend the LZ)
Infantry + Barricades (Entrenched Troops, Non-Mobile, Limited Field of Fire (Sniper Style?), High Fire Rate)
Snipers + Artillery (Precision Ordnance? Against Big Zeds, for example. Like spotters in the military)

I understanding the implementation/balancing would be a potential issue, but it would still be very cool.

[Rulude]

I'm personally thinking of making a mod where you control the zombies.

[Kamikaze]

The control of the zombies sounds interesting. It reminds me of a reverse tower defence game.
OUTWIT the AI, EAT ALL THE HUMANS !

The FFC ( friendly fire counter) should be implemented in the main feature not just a mod ( strictly my opinion ) for I have seen myself doing complicated math after each map to see how many people I have killed with ff.( I usually kill more than the zombies do ) .

My logical brain claims that the infantry unit should be magnetized. ( meaning that if a yellow dot is NOT heading to the LZ, and is within the green range of the infantry, it will gather in the center of the infantry. That makes sense, to stay near the people with guns. What does not make sense is a yellow dot running past my infantry and into the mouth of a hungry zombie).
If the above is inserted, then a little mod that replaces a chopper with a subway entrance and you have to guide the people with the infantry to the exit ?
And a little addition to the infantry, that once it`s overrun by zed, it goes into frenzy shooting friend and foe alike. Thus you can`t take a frenzy infantry back to protect the lz and thus new strategy emerges.

And on the map, the black city`s are vacant city`s, void of any humans or zed`s correct? Then a mod in witch zed and humans claim surrounding black cities. Or only zeds then. One should be given a second, third and fourth chance of owning the entire map, not 2-7 yellow spots with black in between.

But a bait turned in a purifing agent that transformes purple to yellow only to be eaten again once they`re out of the purifing range or it runs out sounds fun... .
Or turn the bait into a wepons shack that atracts yellow dots and transforms them into blue dots, that will shoot zombies at a SLOW rate and will act like the rest of the yellow dots. ( Thus making it more realistical, for in a real case scenario, some people do get ahold of wepons and shoot their way out ).
( a maddness bait that would turn zed against zed would be nice too. )

Enough of my rants. The game is great, nice job on making simple yellow specs into humans beeings and making me hesitate on obliderating purple specs because of hitting yellow ones too!

My 2 cents.
Have a nice day!

[Kamikaze]

Really sorry for the double post but it just popped into my mind.
A mod in witch you can control the number of scientists. I want to make a torchwood city, in witch everyone is a scientist.

( and a small correction to the apove, the militia units should either be pure white or green. Or you pick :) Your work your choise. ) .

Have a nice day!! This time I mean it !

[RadioactiveMan]

As long as we are discussing crazy things we want:

How about an alternate game mode with no helicopter. Instead you have a truck depot. Trucks leave the depot every twenty seconds and need to reach the edge of the map by a route you designate. Once the truck has left the depot, its route cannot be modified. Infantry, or alternatively some other new unit, would have the ability to broadcast a foghorn and tell nearby citizens to head for the depot.

How about police stations spawning randomly (in the same fashion as exploding buildings). Police stations would spawn a squad of police at some rate. Police are controlled by the AI, and wander around like civilians. When they see zombies they move towards them and engage in a similar fashion to infantry. Unlike infantry, police that come in contact with zombies are zombified and turn purple. Maybe also add some negative consequence if the police station is overwhelmed.

[flap]

[quote="RadioactiveMan"]As long as we are discussing crazy things we want:
Maybe also add some negative consequence if the police station is overwhelmed.[/quote]

A super zombie ?

[Guest]

When clicking on Make New Mod I get a messagebox that says AZS failed to create the mod, and that there was a problem creating the mod data. On the AppData I can see a directory with the mod name I chose, but without the manifest file.
I'm using Win7.
I thought it might be a permissions thing, Win7 doesn't like it when programs create files in the system partition unless they're specifically been allowed to. On the other hand it easily downloads mods into that dir, and I figured the appdata should be cleared with permissions because it's supposed to collect appdata.

I assume I could work around it by simply adding the manifest file.
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I like the mixing attributes idea, it reminds me of the Command & Conquer series modding. Because the options were so vast, there were third-party programs that give you a GUI for modding the different attributes. You could make a soldier that shoots nukes instead of bullets, and change every round of their rifle to 50 shots, but even when given concrete armor he wouldn't be able to survive his own attacks unless you give him a range at least in par with the long-range cruiser ships.
In the first expansion pack for Red Alert 1 there were hidden missions where you battled giant ants. There were different kinds of giant ants, the fire ants could fire fireballs, while another kind could fire tesla bolts.
This was actually within the capabilities of any modder, who is also capable of drawing simple sprites.
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I wish it was possible to modify the amount of evac choppers available, like any other merc.

[flap]

A suggestion which is getting more and more urgent with the number of mods increasing :
- Allow players to rate them
- or count the number of time they have been played (which is different than downloaded...)

That's probably a bot of work on server side. But we would need a way no know which one is good or not. Or we can simply discuss of them on the forum...

[Brendon]

@Guest - can you try making a new mod again? I fixed a problem on the mod server that should address the issue.

@flap - I agree, the list of mods needs some sort of rating system. I'll look into it.