Hey there! Sorry about the lack of posts recently.  Data has been trying to get me up to speed on all the changes since the last release, and it’s taking longer than expected. Until then, we will have to settle for mailbag questions!

I have a double-shot for you this week; half the questions are on the Campaign and half on Modding:

Are we going to be able to make custom parameters for third party factions in the campaign? Such as, using Darkstorm or UniTec as your set faction. Will the support even go as far as making custom campaigns for them? – Sean
A: Yes, that’s the plan! You’ll get to choose your ‘native’ faction at the start of each campaign game, which can be any of the data modules loaded (ie possibly your own). All the stuff of that faction will then available to you at the regular prices, but you might still be able to buy things from other factions, but at very high ‘black market’ prices. – Data

Most of us know about the Whitebots (yay!), the Coalition and the Dummies, but are those going to be the three main factions or are there going to be more major races than just those? – Mapleleaf
A: Yup, right now we’re looking at least two more.. the dark bots and the red guys. Prom might be able to chime in with more details here. – Data

Can you tell us what the heck data & company are doing about the campaign? I mean is it going to be hardcoded or what? I’m dying for an answer and I know I’m not alone. – Not Alone
A: As usual, everything will be as data- and script-driven as we reasonably can make it. The campaign metagame is going to be separate from the story episode scenarios we’ll be putting out later. The metagame will be a super-replayable thing that should be different every time. Think along the lines of the board game Risk, and you get the gist of it. The story episodes are standalone, content-rich packages that tell a small part of the CC story with one or more solid scenarios sandwiched between an intro and outro. The campaign metagame is the highest priority for us now. – Data

Is Tradestar a faction within the Coalition? – NMP
A: The TradeStar is a type of huge mothership used by trade and exploration conglomerates to reach out into the galaxy and tap its resources. Think of the East India Co. as a loose analogy for the type of entity, and the TradeStar as a Galleon of that era. They hire on all these different competing ‘factions’ or smaller corporations who get to duke it out and see who can most efficiently harvest the resources of the planets they find. It’s brutal competition and market selection being put to use. Whomever wins the settlement battles, gets the contract for the entire planet. – Data

Will Lua be able to be directly attached/run on attachables? – CaveCricket48
A: I haven’t tried this yet, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work right now? Give it a shot and PM the results in the forums. – Data

Will the lua scripting be able to use external modules? – John
A: I’m not sure what you mean by ‘use’, but you can safely reference anything that has been loaded in the same module as your script sits in, even if it is external. Just don’t reference stuff in OTHER external modules.. then you’re asking for trouble if someone has your module but not that other one. As always, it’s safe to reference stuff in the official module (until we remove or rename that thing in a new build.. 😉 – Data

Is it possible that the 8-bit color palette used for scenes (as opposed to menus) to be a mod-configurable file? The current palette is pretty limiting and has several near-identical shades of white. – Rawtoast
A: I could possibly add some controls for loading a different palette, if not to the INI files, then to the Lua interface.. it’s not a high priority though, as it would really mess up all the other stuff you’d load. This would only be useful in a total conversion type mod. – Data

When will we have a variable for emission velocities (like gibs)? – Duh102
A: I’ll have to look into this.. there’s always more controls to be expose.. at some point we have to triage which things to work on though. – Data

As usual, submit your queries to andy@datarealms.com – I have around 80 questions on backlog, but the more interesting ones get bumped to the front! Submit your query today!

Just to let everyone know, we fixed the silly problem of avatar images not working in the forums. You shuold be able to change them fine now!

http://www.datarealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2991#2991

While working on the joystick code, I hit a snag:
http://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/588230

Not 10 hours later, I had a patch for the problem! Amazing! Thank you gnolam for the awesome effort!

In other news, we’ve implemented GIBBING! Yes, now any MOSprite can have a limit of wounds at which point it will gib into completely custom number and types of chunks of whatever else!

So, for example, each part of the body of any actor can become gibbed if it receieves enough wounds. It’s pretty sweet to watch. The green soldier’s head will, after receiving 4 wounds, break into about a hundred blood MOPixels, a few larger chunks of meat (MOSParticles), and one single helmet MOSRotating:

Just wait till we get the rocket gibbing properly! The wound limit is just one of the criteria for gibbage to happen: a hard enough impact with terrain or other MOSprites will also cause it to trigger. So prepare to see some real carnage if you slam your dude into a concrete wall, or crash the rocket recklessly…

Another thing on the effects front is a more impressive explosion for the rocket and other heavy machinery. It’ll basically be a particle type which leaves stationary fire balls after itself. The fire balls will then turn into large black smoke balls and finally dissipate. Hopefully it’ll add some burning-fuel-looking substance to large explosions.