Modder with an idea looking for answers.

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Modding
1

Greetings and salutations.

So, I’ve recently discovered this here game, and soon afterwards I thought of another game in the distant past, that could conceivably be made into a mod for this one. A good mod. A large mod. The game’s name is kinda ironic, in that nobody currently remembers it. It was “Remember Tomorrow”, a 4X game from 1997.

And after I’ve had that idea, I realised there’re probably a few thousand different things that aren’t currently (or at all, anytime in the future) possible within GSB’s engine. So I’ve started this thread in an attempt to understand how much of that game could be converted into GSB without severe alterations.

Here are the points of interest:

RT featured about a dozen different hull sizes (each its own design) per race, with the stats for the individual components changing with the size of the ship they’re installed in. Is it possible to make ship hulls restricted to very specific modules in GSB, so that appropriate diversity can be achieved?

Beam weapons were used differently, and each doubled as a missile interception device. Is it in any way possible to make a point defence system that’ll also fire at enemies?

Even though they weren’t outright visible in RT, I’d like all of the several dozen different weapons have different-looking turrets on the ships. Is the turret sprite variety limited in any way in GSB?

I think I saw that there’s a problem with turret placement vs. module placement and shot origin. Since the larger ships in RT had anywhere up to twenty turrets, getting them properly placed could be a problem if their shots don’t originate where needed. Will this be fixed eventually, if it still isn’t?

Later, advanced weapons in RT were MIRVs, that differed from each other by the number of warheads they released. Is there any way to alter the number of “decoys” released by multimissiles in GSB?

Some ships in RT had turrets with limited firing arcs - I understand that’s currently impossible in GSB?

Two more things I currently know to be impossible - adding alternate turrets to existing weapons (say, a large turret that adds power, or a faster turret, without the hassle of making the number of various modules even larger), and adding separate “engine” spaces that existed in RT. If any of that were made possible, it would likely be good for the vanilla GSB as well.

In a vein similar to the above, limiting certain weapons to certain turret sizes/designs could also be an interesting feature that existed in RT.

Finally, it’d be nice if the game allowed customizing more of its workings, overall. Consider LUA for sequel?

Okay, that last one was a little too much. Anyway, if at least half of the above is possible, the mod itself would also be possible. I’d expect it’d be nice, with 6 races and quite a lot of ships designs for each. And hardly a need to sprite - the game’s ship designer includes shots of the hull for most ships.

edit: Screenshots of the game in case anyone’s interested:


edit2: Hm, no spoiler tags on this forum?

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I haven’t played “Remember Tomorrow” but I will answer what i can . .

When you ask if modules can be restricted to ship types,
do you mean “In GSB can you have one hull that only takes missiles and another that can only take beams ?”
If so then no, you can only restrict modules via race and the three hull types

As far as i am aware, there is no current way to change a laser to hit both missiles and ships

The turret sprites are only limited by your imagination and time.
My BigGunz mod which I am currently working on will add a few more turrets to choose from

I think most of the shot origins have been fixed.
Plasma Weapons is about the last one that I can think of (its only a problem if the turret has more than one location)

No, you currently can not change the number of warheads for missiles. (my guess its probably somewhere on Cliffskis to-do list along with a thousand other things)

Correct, you can not limit the firing arcs of turrets (again, might be on the extensive to-do list, who knows ?)

I hope this helps

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…and no quick-reply on these forums either. Oh well.

I kinda figured many of these were “unpossible”. I got confused by the Nuclear Missile Launcher, since nothing in its descriptions says anything about being Order-only.

Oh well. I suppose I can just make the various turret grades (still a hefty amount), and let the player sift through the whole list for the four/five hull sizes per class. Nothing says “Die alien scum” like a light cruiser toting a Dreadnought-sized graviton cannon turret. :slight_smile: It’ll need a helluva powerplant to run it though.

Mmkay… I’ll just try to make a few ships and see how it turns out…

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When you start looking at the text files for the turrets - you will see how it all peices together.
It is in the text files you can add the race and size limitations

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Text-file editing is a pain in the ass when you have a lot to do, but it is easy. The game allows you to simply add in stuff, so DDS files are basically just drag and drop, same with text files and folders.