All right, so here's what we're going to be working with as far as A-Life goes.
Blind Dogs-Cut do to lack of ferocity
Boars-Cut unless size can be drastically increased (%200ish), would fill the role of herbivorous prey for pseudo dogs
Psuedo Dogs-Will be kept and renamed, I currently think they would easily fill the role of natural predators on beubonis and would take the place of blind dogs, making the pseudo dog more common, more dangerous, and would travel in large packs of say 7-10ish
Flesh-Will be kept and renamed, I think they coul easily fill the role of minor Chaos Spawn, more dangerous than the pseudo dog, but less dangerous than everything else, and would be solitary critters
Snorks-Will be kept and renamed, easily fills the role of Nurgle Cultists gone mad. Very weak physically but can do alot of damage.
Tushkano-Will be kept, renamed, and resized to aboot 1 meter at the shoulder. Will be NPCs. *cough cough*
Dwarfs-Cut unless one of you guys can think of something for him
Controllers-Will be kept and renamed, fills the role of Rogue Psykers
Poltregeists-Will be kept and renamed, fills the role of the Psychic remnants of dead psykers
Zombies-Cut
Bloodsuckers-Will be kept and renamed, fills the role of minor Daemon, VERY dangerous
Pseudo Giant-Kept and renamed, fills the role of Major Chaos Spawn
Chimera-Kept and Renamed, I think they'd make cool Chaos Hounds
Cats-Um, I really don't know what to think of these guys. I see them so rarely in mods, I haven't gotten the feel for them... Any suggestions?
Chernobyl Dog (like the one in the centre of red forest)-Kept and renamed, fills the role of mutated psuedo dog.
ORKs- I really don't know if there is anything in the game that could be manipulated into orks or not, so I think we'll have to build them from the ground up without using anything as a starting point, other than Warhammer art.
Now onto NPCs...
Now most npcs could be kept as is, just renamed and slightly changed skin and faction wise. They would serve as the Chaos Cultists and the Imperial PDF. For example we could make all the guys wearing gasmasks Nurgle cultists, and guys who don't either Slaanesh Cultists or the Imperials.
The hardest I think would be the Astartes, because to remodel npcs into space marines and chaos space marines would be difficult, so again, for them we have to start from scratch.
...So as far as NPCs and Alife seems, the only two real difficult things would be the Orks and Space Marines (Chaos and Imperial)
And yes, I know this is getting to be a long post. So bear with me here...
My goal for April-May:
Proof of Concept!
So my current goal is to stick with the suggestion of building a proof of concept. I want to do this through simple breakdown of mod building into simple steps, making a whole hell of alot easier on my limited attention span, and freetime due to my fucking (sorry about the language) job.
As a side note: NEVER WORK IN AN F-ING RESTERAUNT!
Here's how I am going to attack this beast, starting with the simple crap, and working my way up to hard stuff:
STEPS:
1. Remove any extraneous crap from the game such as dialague and story arc, and leave the core gameplay mechanics of the X-ray Engine
2. Rewrite Encyclopedia and all corresponding files to match above listed Monsters and NPCs.
3. Reskin above listed Monsters and NPCs to fit Warhammer 40k setting.
4. Redesign inventory to match features of the mod.
5. Replace old vanilla inventory graphics and texts for weapons and armour with new W40k stuff
6. Change Dynamics of old guns to fit the behaviours and dyanamics of W40k weapons
7. Replace old vanilla First Person HUD weapons models with new W40k weapons.
8. Change Particle Efftects of anomalies (including blowouts) to new W40k setting. I will explain more on this in a separate posting...
That would essentially the Beta-Beta. Just the most basic of changes starting from the ground up. The Full Beta will be the Hard but not REAL hard stuff, like remodeling the Space Marines and Orks, Animating them, Remodeling the Guns (3rd person view), Animating them, setting the start point to inside Chernobyl NPP, and Renaming the map areas.
The Uber-Beta will be the rough version of the mod, where work like Story Arc, Dialogue, Sound, Post Process Effects, and Map Editing will be done.
I hope to release the mod in each stage to get feedback and bugtesting done. Essientally, if you download this in any of the stages, you've just been shang-haied into being a beta tester. If I see you downloaded it but give no feedback whatsoever, I will go to your house and eat all your food.
Allright, now that I've been typing for the past hour and a half, I think I should post this. Tell me what you think and if you've got any advice or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear it!
Oh, and I have opened up a thread in the Modding & Techniques section where I'll post on issues that developed during development of the STALKER TAINT mod. The thread is "Modding Questions to help me with my mod..."
Thank you all in advance for your support.