Greetings, dead forums!
Making new units in this game isn't as hard as it sounds. I would say, if you already have the idea, it takes around 50-60 minutes including testing the unit a few times for balancing and such.
The only problem file was dbtechtree since it appears to be linked to another unknown file, making it impossible to create new entries in it. I had to use some useless ones which nobody will really notice.
The other files are editable to your hearth's desire: dbobjects, dbbuttons, dbgraphics, dbcalamities, dbgfxeffects, dbupgrade.
I made some placeholder textures for the buttons and models in less than a minute. I'm not a decent artist and if anyone is willing to help me with textures would be a godsend.
The only thing I couldn't create was new models, but the current ones aren't half bad.
At the moment I made 7 new buildings each housing 3 units.
The buildings are the following:
Pantheon - Dark to Middle Age
Castle - Middle to Renaissance
Lighthouse - Renaissance to Imperial
Palace - Imperial to Industrial
Tank Laboratory - Modern to Digital
Advanced Cyber Factory - Nano to Space
Advanced Cyber Laboratory - Nano to Space
I briefly made a few screenshots here:
https://imgur.com/a/ELpdI#vzshpSB
I recommend you try them yourselves since screenshots barely tell anything.
Pantheon
Greek Warrior - infantry, high hp, slow movement, regeneration
Fire Scorpion - field unit, AoE, bonus vs infantry
Boulder Elephant - cavalry, AoE, bonus vs cavalry
Castle
Repeating Crossbow - archer, very fast rate of fire
Assassin - infantry, minimum hp, high speed, 1-shots most other units, stealh
Lava trebuchet - siege unit, very high range, large AoE
Lighthouse
Caravel - frigate, close-combat cannonball spammer
Brig - battleship, can shoot at air
Golden Hind - support ship, high range and damage but low hp and rate of fire
Palace
Mounted Cannoneer - cavalry, AoE
Burning Basilisk - field/siege unit, AoE, good vs infantry and buildings
Camoflauged Gun - siege unit, stealth
Tank Laboratory
Merkava - small tank with stealth
T-34 - missile tank that can travel through water
Tiger - grenade tank with AoE
Advanced Cyber Factory
Hermes - long range cyber with AoE
Ra - small and fast cyber with deadly AoE
Artemis - an Ares with dual miniguns
Advanced Cyber Laboratory
Anubis - an extremely quick melee cyber with the best stealth in the game
Osiris - a support cyber that disables enemy armies
Seth - a barely mobile cyber that can self-destruct with the force of 20 nukes.
I tried to make the Units feel different than the originals and gave them more different projectiles and attacks.
I went a little heavy on the fire-based attacks and stealth units since the game seemed to be lacking.
Note that I used mainly the game provided projectiles. I only gave Ra an inferno attack and Seth the gigantic mushroom cloud.
I made these units and buildings as an exercise and mainly to show people that it can be done. I haven't given them much thought and pretty much made them on the fly. My main goal with this is to show a new way of modding and maybe find people who can provide quality textures. I would also appreciate if someone could come up with better names since I am the most unoriginal person alive when it comes to naming. If you have an original idea I would be more than willing to create it. I didn't look much into balance since that would require too much time.
Total time from start to finish: 7 hours 46 minutes
The hard part was connecting all the db files in order for everything to work. Now that I've set up the system editing anything regarding the new units should be easy to lesser experienced modders.
Everything works fully in the scenario editor and the random map games. I gave them resource requirments and build times similar to the orginals. The AI doesn't build them since it doesn't build the new buildings but if people request I could think of something.
I could show if anyone is interested how to create new objects, new projectiles, new effects, new textures and so on if they are willing to try.
I discovered quite a lot of helpful new things like hero values, construction scaffolding sizes, effect trees, beta effects and projectiles, dragon and elf units, 15+ calamities like Ice Age and Flood that were left out, projectile leave points on models, dbtechtree shenanagins, the colorize button in GIMP and much more...
Here is my set up:
https://mega.co.nz/#!NMYz3CJS!eIrSXKPwR5R7LL9_wTWWfCU1CWkSHX5EyhdN21p6msY
(AoC required, seriously, get the expansion, it provides a hell of a lot more resources)
Note that this contains a lot of old stuff from my Grand Renovation mod like the overhauled Calamities, Airplanes, Upgrades, Costs and many other features. I seriously just reccomend you to start a Prehistoric-Space game to see everything. I can promise you won't be disappointed. (The planes are really lulzy)
I guess this does open up new doors, eh?
Making new units in this game isn't as hard as it sounds. I would say, if you already have the idea, it takes around 50-60 minutes including testing the unit a few times for balancing and such.
The only problem file was dbtechtree since it appears to be linked to another unknown file, making it impossible to create new entries in it. I had to use some useless ones which nobody will really notice.
The other files are editable to your hearth's desire: dbobjects, dbbuttons, dbgraphics, dbcalamities, dbgfxeffects, dbupgrade.
I made some placeholder textures for the buttons and models in less than a minute. I'm not a decent artist and if anyone is willing to help me with textures would be a godsend.
The only thing I couldn't create was new models, but the current ones aren't half bad.
At the moment I made 7 new buildings each housing 3 units.
The buildings are the following:
Pantheon - Dark to Middle Age
Castle - Middle to Renaissance
Lighthouse - Renaissance to Imperial
Palace - Imperial to Industrial
Tank Laboratory - Modern to Digital
Advanced Cyber Factory - Nano to Space
Advanced Cyber Laboratory - Nano to Space
I briefly made a few screenshots here:
I recommend you try them yourselves since screenshots barely tell anything.
Pantheon
Greek Warrior - infantry, high hp, slow movement, regeneration
Fire Scorpion - field unit, AoE, bonus vs infantry
Boulder Elephant - cavalry, AoE, bonus vs cavalry
Castle
Repeating Crossbow - archer, very fast rate of fire
Assassin - infantry, minimum hp, high speed, 1-shots most other units, stealh
Lava trebuchet - siege unit, very high range, large AoE
Lighthouse
Caravel - frigate, close-combat cannonball spammer
Brig - battleship, can shoot at air
Golden Hind - support ship, high range and damage but low hp and rate of fire
Palace
Mounted Cannoneer - cavalry, AoE
Burning Basilisk - field/siege unit, AoE, good vs infantry and buildings
Camoflauged Gun - siege unit, stealth
Tank Laboratory
Merkava - small tank with stealth
T-34 - missile tank that can travel through water
Tiger - grenade tank with AoE
Advanced Cyber Factory
Hermes - long range cyber with AoE
Ra - small and fast cyber with deadly AoE
Artemis - an Ares with dual miniguns
Advanced Cyber Laboratory
Anubis - an extremely quick melee cyber with the best stealth in the game
Osiris - a support cyber that disables enemy armies
Seth - a barely mobile cyber that can self-destruct with the force of 20 nukes.
I tried to make the Units feel different than the originals and gave them more different projectiles and attacks.
I went a little heavy on the fire-based attacks and stealth units since the game seemed to be lacking.
Note that I used mainly the game provided projectiles. I only gave Ra an inferno attack and Seth the gigantic mushroom cloud.
I made these units and buildings as an exercise and mainly to show people that it can be done. I haven't given them much thought and pretty much made them on the fly. My main goal with this is to show a new way of modding and maybe find people who can provide quality textures. I would also appreciate if someone could come up with better names since I am the most unoriginal person alive when it comes to naming. If you have an original idea I would be more than willing to create it. I didn't look much into balance since that would require too much time.
Total time from start to finish: 7 hours 46 minutes
The hard part was connecting all the db files in order for everything to work. Now that I've set up the system editing anything regarding the new units should be easy to lesser experienced modders.
Everything works fully in the scenario editor and the random map games. I gave them resource requirments and build times similar to the orginals. The AI doesn't build them since it doesn't build the new buildings but if people request I could think of something.
I could show if anyone is interested how to create new objects, new projectiles, new effects, new textures and so on if they are willing to try.
I discovered quite a lot of helpful new things like hero values, construction scaffolding sizes, effect trees, beta effects and projectiles, dragon and elf units, 15+ calamities like Ice Age and Flood that were left out, projectile leave points on models, dbtechtree shenanagins, the colorize button in GIMP and much more...
Here is my set up:
(AoC required, seriously, get the expansion, it provides a hell of a lot more resources)
Note that this contains a lot of old stuff from my Grand Renovation mod like the overhauled Calamities, Airplanes, Upgrades, Costs and many other features. I seriously just reccomend you to start a Prehistoric-Space game to see everything. I can promise you won't be disappointed. (The planes are really lulzy)
I guess this does open up new doors, eh?