Forged Alliance Forever

The community-driven lobby for Supreme Commander : Forged Alliance.

Nomads Dev Diaries #17

Hello everyone,

Last week we talked about the world borders, and today we are looking at a concept for the mass extractors. Additionally, you can see more on our development streams.

If you can make drawings, or make models, we need your help. Click the link below. Also click it for any other reason:

Nomads discord server: https://discord.gg/eV3wmAX

Mass Extractors

During todays stream we explored on what mass extractors might look like. They are a rather complicated unit, which give us both plenty of constraints and just as many opportunities. The unit comes in three tech levels, and needs both upgrade animations, as well as a mining animation.

The idea we are looking at here is a fairly minimal structure, with a bare bones set up. It has three mining drills which move up and down when the mex is active, which is pretty simple so far. To let it support upgrades, there is a hangar on one side, with the mining rigs attached to a rail. The upgrade animation will involve the hangar building a mining drill, which will then slide out along the rail and unpack into position.

This led to quite some limitations, and was a little bit of a challenge to make sure all the parts can actually fit inside the hangar on the side, and that they will slide along properly. You can see a few attempts at side sketches trying to work out how the drills will attach to the rail, and also some stuff to counterbalance the drills on the other side. Taking a purely functional approach here was difficult, but also pretty fun and hopefully will result in an interesting unit.

Surprise scribble

This wasnt really anything, just a quick drawing for fun. I started out by drawing some sort of building shape, but then after adding an eye to it, it became more of a robot head. After that I messed around with its methods of locomotion, thinking that maybe it could hover around or be on wheels.

Things like this dont serve a direct purpose, but they do get ideas going, and could lead somewhere interesting. Where might this one lead us? We dont know. Can you think of something?

And thats it for now! If you want to see top secret stuff, join the discord server where you can chat to the devs, ask questions, spy on the process and get all the exclusive goodies and more! Also feel free to leave feedback either on the forum thread or in the discord. Remember, feedback is very important!

Lastly, we are always looking for more contributors, so if you are interested in creating things, whether thats code, 2d art, models, music or anything else, do get in touch! We also provide all the resources and guidance needed, so don’t worry if you think you are missing any skills, we will be glad to see you!