Armor

Anybody ever read John Steakley's sci-fi novel, Armor? It was a story about a guy who found himself in the middle of an interstellar ground war against a race of bug-like creatures with the only thing between him and them being his suit of powered armor.

I don't know which came first, Armor or Starship Troopers, but they both share a lot of characteristics. I personally prefer the gritty infantry-centric tale that Steakley weaves as opposed to the grand epic combat arena that Heinlen works in. Both are good though. They are almost identical in a lot of ways, makes me wonder if one was inspired by the other.

But I'm not writing a book report. I'm trying my hand at a "Starship Troopers" mod. It's actually called "Armor", but the former lets you know exactly what I'm talking about because you've all probably played it on bnet at least once.

In the vein of SST it's a smallish mod, very simple, quick and fun. You and up to 10 other players take the role of a single suited soldier on a mission to destroy the bugs, or defend against them as the case may be. You usually start in your dropship in "orbit" around the target planet, and can choose your suit type before "dropping" (actually a teleporter type system). Scout suits move the fastest but do the least damage. Warrior suits are the slowest but can really lay down some fire. For now that's gonna' be it to keep things simple. You will also be able to buy upgrades to your suit in the dropship, like extra mana to energize your suit's special abilities or extra hps to increase your suit's armor. Etc., etc. Once you choose your suit you can drop to the war zone and begin the mission. Some missions will allow you to return to your dropship via a pickup point. I'm pretty sure it was another teleporter type system, so the mechanics will be simple.

The first mission has you and your 'mates dropping into a canyon type map where the goal is to find and destroy all bug egg sacks and the queen. Every so often the egg sacks create new bugs, and every so often the queen will produce more egg sacks. Also, I'm toying with the idea of there being a chance each new bug could be a queen, compounding the difficulty of eradicating the bugs. There will be a global cap on bugs to keep lag down, since in the first few tests there was no limit and the bugs just kept comin' and comin'...heh.

Speaking of the first few missions it was pretty fun. We had four guys at start. We all dropped and killed the bugs that were surrounding our drop zone and then proceeded towards the opposite corner of the map where the queen was, killing a few sacks along the way. The sacks worked fine, producing a new bug every 15 or so seconds. Triggers to get the bugs smarter are in order, but this is early beta so...

We got to the Queen all in one piece at which point a horde of bugs awaited us. I dropped first since I was leading the pack, then the others, one by one. Heh. We did some damage though.

All in all it was fun, and that's what it's all about right?

And I imagine it getting more so as I add some improvements.

Let me know what you think!

Care.

Had a good 6-7 player game last night. Finally settled on the "attack mechanic" for choosing which suit to use. You start in the ship area with a villager dude, and must attack either the big warrior suit or the smaller scout suit to select it. When you do your villager disappears and the suit becomes yours (originally neutral player 11). Worked great. I played with the rescuable trigger but the area of effect was WAY too big. You ended up getting control of like 3 suits at a time. Heh. Also tried the unit in range trigger but ended up having crash probs with that, as well as it not providing as much detail. It only gave one of the two things I needed so I had to make a trigger for each suit. Bleh. With the attacking the suit trigger I only have one trigger that works for all players.

Anyway, we all assembled in front of the teleporter line and went forward together...into a mass of bugs! The fighting was fierce for a few seconds but we rapidly destroyed the initial opposing force and proceeded to head towards the opposite end of the map where the queen was. To make a long story short we made it ok, killed the queen, and didn't lose a man.

I learned a few things about balance (there'll be tons more bugs next time!) and found a few real bugs (trigger) as well. The egg sacks, even after destroyed, continue to spawn new bugs. Duh. Apparently I need to have a trigger which removes them from the game when they die because the pick every doodad thing must still think they're active.

Right now the mod is in good shape and is pretty fun. You start the map and can get into the thick of it pretty quickly. Selecting your suit is a breeze, and dropping to the battle is as simple as moving into a wall.

Things to add include in-ship shop that sells upgrades. A way to get back to your ship. The book had some kind of beacon which indicated a place you could get teleported back I think. Until the bugs came up with some kind of bomb that homed in on the beacon. I need to dig out the book and reread it. Heh. Plus better bug AI.

I'm wondering if I can add some kind of jumping ability. A unit that you train that I remove when created and turn the jumper into a flying unit for a few seconds. Then I make them back into their ground based self. That would be cool. It would use mana so you couldn't just jump over and over. Probably be too bug-ridden though.

That's all for now.

Care.

I read the book again. Glad I did. It was still good, even this my second or third time reading it.

Tons of changes have been made and I'm up to v0.95 now. Up to 10 players (Fleet) fight against the ants, and a human can control the ants although they are initially controlled with triggers directing their attack.

The Fleet players start in the "ship", and attack the suit of their choice to gain control of it. There are only a finite number of suits, and once they're all gone the ants win. Suits can buy upgrades in the ship: like enhanced armor, increased life, enhanced speed, enhanced sight range, blaze bombs and stimules (think healing potion with 4 charges).

Getting from the ship to the combat area is way different now. It now more closely models the mechanics as described in the book. The "transit" area is a big checkerboard tiled room which everyone assembles in when it's time to transit. Players are given a warning when it's time to assemble, as well as a 30 second warning before the 10 second countdown begins. When the counter reaches 0 everyone in the room is instantly transported to the combat area. The same principle works in reverse at the Transit Beacons. Enter the location of a beacon and you are transported instantly back to the ship. Transit occurs like every 90-120 seconds. Beacons appear only every 180-240 seconds.

The objective for this first map is the destruction of three cave mouths spread around the map. If destroyed they stop spewing bugs. Bugs come out like 1 a second, and the global bug pop is capped at 150 to prevent lag. It's worked ok so far.

Bugs come in four flavors: regular ants, ants with blasters (short ranged slightly damaging attack), ants with mortars (long range highly damaging attack), and queens. There were no queens in the book, but I took the liberty of having them anyway. I may remove them later. Mortars have immense range (5400, min 1800) but take 10 seconds to refire and do splash damage. If they hit near ants, it wipes them out so it's a double-edged sword. Smart soldiers will take advantage of this fact....

When killed, human players respawn as soldiers back in the ship area and can then select another suit to resume the fight. Again, once the suits run out it's over for the Fleet team.

Just a few more things to polish before 1.0, and then I'll make like one or two more maps before calling it quits. It's been lots of fun so far and seems to be turning out nicely. Really a great alternative to the Starship Troopers mods. Just this morning in my last test we had a great game. Started with 8 Fleet players, bugs computer controlled. Game lasted probably 30 minutes with the players dwindling down to me and two others. We destroyed all three caves and had only a handful of bugs to go when we discovered one of the last bugs was a full health queen. Bleh. We used our last suit and lost.

Fun fun! Keep a look out here and I'll let you know when I post a map for download on my website.

Take care.

what units are you using for the powered armor guys and bugs?

I'd be very glad to make skins for yah, too bad i can't model.

The space marine for the powered armor guys. I think it's locaten in:
units\critters\spacemarine\

Maybe. :)

The ants are just the Nerubians with different colorations. I don't have lots of time (or skill for that matter) to model either, so I'm just using color to differentiate the types of ants.

I wouldn't mind at all if you worked on a skin. The ants don't really concern me that much, since the default nerubian spiderling does the job well enough. But the powered armor guys...yeah, I could use a few new skins for them.

Like a solid gold suit, and a solid red suit (for the Masao and his elite guards). The standard warrior suit is s'posed to be solid blue, with just little patches on the shoulders denoting group. I need a solid orange suit for the engineers and non-combatants. The scout suit (solid black) works fine by just changing the color of the unit in game to black. Hey I may be able to do the same for the orange suits...have to try it. But the warrior suits definitely need some work. Solid blue with just a tiny area on the shoulder pads for team color instead of the whole shoulder being team color.

It would be great if you could help. I appreciate the offer.

Have you read the book?

Thanks again, and take care.

I read starship troopers, and I think it would be really REALLY cool if you included some other types of technological attacks aside from shooting, like have one type of suit equipped with flamethrower, using whatever damage type and animation is used by the chaos space orcs. Also, it would be really cool to modify a spell to be an airstrike.

Even a suit that launches rockets would be awsome. It could use the cannon tower shot.

Fighting drones? Creates a little robot with a small gun that you can't (or can. whetever.) control.

I can do work on the bugs too, cause in my opinion the nerubians are a bit to pretty. these should be ugly. The forest spider model could be used to represent a different caste, like worker or warrior or something.

Finally, I think a camo or dark green suit would look really really cool. I know that it would hurt the visuals of the game, but still. I dunno, maybe a bright green with black tiger stripes.

I'll make a bunch for you, but this sounds so cool, I'm really glad to help.

Here's an assault suit and a bug skin. Enjoy!

If you want more, email me at [email protected]

both sweet! love the detail on the marine and the bug looks like one

Can you post a link to download for skin?

Here's the blue marine. Enjoy. I'm gonna go submit it to the downloads section now.

What do we do with a blp file?

I dunno, dont you just implant it with cookie's tutorial?
Sorry if I'm an idiot. tell me what to do.