Unit Making Guide

Very draft, for now mostly a list of facets, many of these need to be expanded into specific subpages.

Ideally this should end up as more 'how to do it right' rather than 'this is how to find if you did it wrong'. Modelling in particular needs a huge writeup on considerations and practicalites.

To add later:

• Design guidelines, both role and visual.
• Initial balance considerations.
• Modelling specifics
• Loads of other things
• List of where X file actually is/what it does and why it matters
• List of outdated unitdef entries that should be linted out of new units

Hornet's Patent Unit Finalising Checklist

Modelling:

• All faces checked for front/back orientation?
• Does it have a dead model with correct textures?
• Unit model lighting added?

Unit defs:

• Does it have/need tracks?
• weapon names unique and sensible? correct target categories set?
• Is unit in all the correct categories?
• Movedef correct and added to the list in the movedef file
• Armour defined correctly?

Animation:

• Are the death explosion animations correct?
• Does it have/need a death specific animation to transition to the wreck pose?
• Is firing animation & recoil correct? Does unit move/rock when firing?

BOS/COB:

• Is there a correct 'restore after delay' setup?
• Does the unit have/need damaged smoke states added?
• Does the unit have any idle animations, are they fully paused when it's trying to shoot? Eg, 'turret twitch' on AA
• Any shot/barrel glow lighting correctly hooked in?

Misc:

• Is unit size correctly defined in Upspring?
• Correct collision volumes, and aimpoints? (this absolutely needs a page to itself later)
• If a building, is there an AO plane made?
• If a constructor/factory, are all build options correct? Contrast with any opposing comparable units to try to be sure.

Integration:

• Sound effects correct, both in unitdef and the sound file?
• Legacy build menu order placement added and correct?
• Grid keys added?
• Unit build picture created, converted & added?
• Unit name and description defined in language definition file?
• Icon selected/created if applicable, and at correct scale?
• Does any behaviour or detailing require gadget work / any existing gadgets need to be updated with the new unit name?