Forged Alliance Forever

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

Nomads Dev Diaries #22

Hello everyone,

Last post we talked about project organisation, and today we will talk about the T1 artillery boat. 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

Artists (still) wanted

Last week we mentioned that we are looking for artists and modellers, and this week we are letting you know again. We already got a couple of prospective contributors from the previous post, but as always more are needed. If you can draw or know things about 3d modelling, then this may be for you. We have quite a number of concepts that need drawing, developing, with fan art also welcome. If that sounds like something you are interested in, give us a ping on the discord.

Today is Monday

There has been a bit of a queue this weekend in posting news, and so we decided to wait until Monday to post, to avoid upsetting people too much. There is rather little organisation going on on that front so we can either post in each others faces or check before we post. Next week hopefully things will clear up and the post can be on time again.

Artillery boat

This is the mostly finished model of the artillery boat, which is planned to be added to deal with anti air and ground targets for the Nomads. The T1 frigate will also get a few changes to make them work together, such as having its anti air removed. The model itself is now almost ready for being finalized, it just needs a couple of tweaks, and then it will be optimised for the game, unwrapped, and textured. Check it out:

Currently the model doesnt have any team colours, which are going to be added at the texture stage, so everything looks rather grey. At this point we dont add any of those designs, aside from really basic indications of what is going to be what, such as the glowing faces, and which faces will be dark and which will be light.

The overall idea for T1 nomads units is that they are pretty bare bones. As such we looked at having a sort of sled-like quality to the boat, where its bridge is minimised to the point of being non existent. You can check how low its profile is above the rest of the boat. We made it progressively lower every iteration, and it now has an interesting quality to it as a result.

The boat also features space-craft style engines on the rear and sides, to help give it that spacefaring look. One of the ideas behond nomads navy is that the ship designs were very hastily converted to work in the water from existing spacefaring blueprints, so things like engines and such are modified to work in the water instead of designing a new navy from scratch.

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!