LEGION 1.0 for Gusanos 0.9C



Like iron hulks they strode the lands,
Cut from steel to serve their homeworld.

The finest steel is laid in their hands,
Stopping the assailants of their homeworld.

Their armour is from the fines steel wrought,
Blocking all who turn their rage on their homeworld.

Steel minds thinking only steel thought,
The subject always is their homeworld.

And they were many.



[1] Installing/running
[2] Config notes
[3] Gameplay notes
[4] weapon list
[5] Miscellaneous
[6] Stolen




[1] Installing/running


1 Unzip the contents of this zip file into your Gusanos directory.
2 Launch Gusanos
3 Type 'game legion' in the console
4 Start your favourite map



[2] Config notes


Unlike most other mods, Legion doesn't use the ninjarope. So no 
need to bind special keys to it, as some are used to do.



[3] Gameplay notes


As there's no ninja rope in Legion, it would make sense you can't get to
high places, right? Well, that's not true! Every Legion suit is built with
a gyro-stabilized jumpjet unit, allowing it to fly through the air with
relative ease. This causes a whole different gameplay, since flying is so
important to your own health, and can help in your ability to slag others.

To engage the jumpjets, simply press and hold jump. That will make you fly.

Beware, however, of flying too often: in the air you'll more or less fly in
predictable curves, making you easier to hit.

When your suit takes too much damage, it'll sound the alarm. Others, however,
will also hear it. Also, the sparks and smoke coming from your suit are
telltale signs you're an easy kill. There's not much you can do about it, but
players often walk happily into the heaviest fusilade to take you down. Try
to at least take them with you!

Targeting an enemy shows their health (red bar) and ammo (blue bar). You can
target an enemy simply by roughly aiming at him. Use this as a guide to see
who's recharging and low on health, then attack tactically. Trying to
powermaul someone with only 20 % left is useless, it's often wiser to use
fast firing weapons in that case.




[4] Weapon List


Autoturret - Fully traversable automatic machinegun firing large
calibre shells. Automatically targets the closest enemy, otherwise
moves into 'forward' position. Not too much damage, but a steady 
torrent of bullets will rip your opponent appart

Cyclone - Run of the mill 3 barreled plasma accelerator. Fires fast and
a lot, but isn't too accurate. Powerfull at close range

Disperser - Timed fuse plasma grenade launcher. These grenades will
always explode after a short time, so know the range of your gun!
Tricky bank shots work with this thing, sometimes

Eraser - triple ion snare launcher. This thing has the capacity to fire
straight through walls, so it's very sneaky! Also does quite some damage,
but takes ages to charge up.

Howitzer - Large barrel, large shell, large explosion. Recoil dampening 
saves you lot's of trouble, but stay out of the blast radius!

LRM - Long Range Missile launcher. Fires 15 self targetting missiles,
which do almost no damage at short range. Only at long range will the 
missiles arm, so watch it!

Power Maul - Crossover between a baton and a tesla coil, this thing sends
arcs flying whenever it hits. Also bashes your opponent good distances away.

Ruby Blitz - Laser. At first. Then a strong laser. Then judgement day has
come: a deadly torrent of fire blitzes everything in range into it's 
constituent atoms. But then the power runs out...

Sparkthrower - Two charged plates and some magnetic fields, and wham, it's
lightning time! Strike from affar, or up close, it doesn't matter since this
weapon sports quite some power.

Stormer - The unique flight trajectory of these antimatter missiles makes
them very hard to dodge properly, but they might also miss. Keep in mind
that they will go the right way in the end.



[5] Miscellaneous


This mod was created using only lines, pixels, wu_lines and wu_pixels.
Not a single sprite was used. To make sure, see the sprites folder: only
2 files there, which are absolutely needed to make sure Gusanos doesn't show
the default worm sprites. The HUD, weapon menu, players, weapons, explosions,
effects, objects etc. were all created by just showing lots of lines and dots.
This was done this way to prove two things:

1 - it's possible to create a mod without sprites
2 - show I'm too lazy to draw

What can we conclude from this?

1 - You don't need to be able to draw to make things. My drawing can often
do the trick, but they always feel out of place somehow. Now it's possible to
make things without drawing, nobody without artistic skills need to be scared
away anymore. Everyone can do it, as long as you've got the ideas and time!

2 - well, not much. Thinking up and writing the articulation of the mechs
movement has probably been more work than spriting them, but the fluid moves
they make now make up for that. Also, the weapons might've been a little more
polished and less blurry, but they now have more than 16 directions to point
in.

The effects, such as explosions, were the hardest: I just couldn't find out
how to make a nice and solid explosion. I tried lots of things, ranging from
actual explosion dynamics using repel functions (10 fps, but so... real)
to writing functions to actually resemble explosions. In the end, this simple
but crude approach seems to work best. The Howitzer explosion does look quite
convincing, but uses ~2000 objects for just one explosion.

Also, the completion of the mod shows the flexibility of the Gusanos engine:
if you want to make it, you can.



[6] Stolen


Some call it 'stealing', some 'being inspired by', but the difference is nil;
Quite some weapons are not my own idea:

Cyclone - based heavily on the Firestorm Cannon from Turok II, still one
of the best multibarreled blasters ever designed.

Disperser - comes from the game 'Stargunner', where a fragmentation bomb
launcher did the same (minus the bouncyness)

Eraser - straight from Roborumble, a funky strategy game. Fires the same,
just didn't keep the 'can't target still targets' rule

LRM - Don't know this one? Shame on you! Play MechWarrior, and you'll find out
soon enough!

Power Maul - Warhammer 40k close combat weapon for Terminators. Very powerfull
in their servo assisted hands. It just fit in with the steel warrior thing

Stormer - The Bullgut from Shogo: MAD. This version fires one missile less,
but I always loved the spirally madness coming out of that thing.