Oh you know, a little of this, a little of that.
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Dawn of Victory is a modification currently in development for the RTS/4X game; Sins of a Solar Empire. It is a “total conversion” replacing the games original models, textures, UI elements, and gameplay to create an entirely new and original experience.

It is our goal with Dawn of Victory to “maintain depth, but shift focus”, taking the things that made Sins of a Solar Empire a truly enjoyable game, and apply them to a different set of rules.

Above all, the team behind Dawn of Victory is committed to only releasing a product we can be proud of. While we pride ourselves on the quality of our art assets and aesthetics changes, we hope the true value of our mod is the unique and engaging gameplay.

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The storyline behind Dawn of Victory was originally little more than an excuse to create what we thought would be a unique and fantastic backdrop for the game. Loosely based on the “WorldWar” series of books by Harry Turtledove, we wanted to take the atmosphere that made World War II games so compelling, and transport it into a space opera setting.

Over time however, our backstory has grown into an expansive universe, spanning over 300 years of alternate history. Our community driven wiki, dedicated to the story behind the mod has grown to over 500 pages, with hundreds of individual contributors.

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  • New Ship Classes: Corvettes, interceptors, and more.
  • Redesigned Combat Model: Small caliber weapons may be effective against strike craft and frigates, but against heavy armor they won't make a dent.
  • Original Art Assets: Different factions have unique architectural styles and approaches to ship design. All assets have been created expressly for the mod.
  • Enhanced Ship Customization: Mount different equipment on your ships to achieve greater tactical flexibility.
  • New Doctrine Trees: Specialize your faction's approach to combat and more through purchasing unique abilities and bonuses.
  • Redesigned User Interface: The game's interface has been reimagined to fit both the style and gameplay changes inherent to Dawn of Victory.
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The Soviet Union relies on overwhelming firepower rather than subtlety to achieve victory. Soviet frigates and cruisers are well rounded and cost effective, but the true strength of the Red Fleet lies in its capital ships. The Soviet economy is vulnerable however, and must be protected until it is in a position to dominate.
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Kriegsmarine corvettes and frigates are the mainstay of German strategy. When properly deployed they can harass and intercept enemy units before escaping serious retribution. By denying their opponents the room to expand, the Greater German Reich can force their enemies into a vulnerable position before delivering the final blow with cruisers and capital ships.
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The Democratic Federation combines the best elements of the American, Andrean, British and French fleets. Large numbers of specialized ships are available, and when properly coordinated, become effective against nearly every threat.

 

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Applicants would ideally be familiar with UV mapping, and be proficient at recognizing existing unit styles and applying them faithfully either from a concept or working with a group to come up with a design. Models typically range from 1k to 6k polies. Each unit mesh will have only only one UV channel, as the engine limits us to one texture per mesh.
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Applicants should be familiar with normal and specular maps and have a commitment to detail. The art direction of the mod calls for mostly realistic texturing with some room for stylistic exaggerations; experience with generating "greeble" and weathering are a must. Texture resolutions range from 1024 square to 4096 square.

If interested, please send an email to staff@dawnofvictory.com. Please include either some samples of your work or a link to your portfolio.


Comments (Page 8)
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on Feb 25, 2011

Pbhead
Iva got it!  make it the sound effect that is heard when you zoom in really far onto soviet culture centers!

BRILLIANT!

on Feb 26, 2011

Greetings Comrades,

After months of work, testing, and balancing, I’m pleased to report that we can finally reveal one of the most exciting and interesting features of Dawn of Victory: Operational Doctrines.

It was important for us when designing the gameplay for DoV that each faction should have a degree of customization. It was our hope that even if two players were playing as the same side, the abilities, ships and research available to them could greatly differ based on some key choices. This, in a nutshell, is the idea behind doctrines.

If you’ve played any of the recent Company of Heroes or Command and Conquer games, you should already be familiar with the general concept. Each faction has three distinct Doctrines available, divided into two further sub-doctrines. By spending research points, players can unlock powerful abilities and improvements, culminating in an extremely powerful completion bonus that can often tip the scales of the game.

You’ll have access to only a limited number of points however, so you’ll need to choose whether you want the flexibility of lower tier abilities from a couple of different doctrines, or the completion bonus from just one.

If you’re still a little confused, let’s take a look at the Soviet Doctrines. As you can see in the image below, the Soviet Union’s doctrines are divided more or less along the three main branches of its armed forces; The Red Army, Red Space Forces, and Red Air Force.



Although reliant on the Soviet Navy to conduct offensive operations, the Red Army is perhaps the most powerful element of a Sector Front. The Red Army Doctrine focuses on ground based communication centers and planetary invasions.


  Engineer Academy: Planetary based communication networks are constructed by elite Soviet Engineers to boost interconnectivity with Red Navy navigation systems, resulting in faster and more efficient interstellar travel.

  Spetsnaz Detachments: During planetary invasions Special Operations Brigades are deployed alongside Red Army units to disrupt enemy defenses and hasten Soviet control.

  Relay Interception: Communications officers are trained in breaking the encryption of neutral and enemy fleet beacons, allowing for closer interstellar jump distances, possibly past enemy defenses.


  Efficient Propagandists: Propaganda streams are enhanced and made less susceptible to enemy jamming increasing the rate at which it spreads. 

  Internal Indoctrination: Political Officers are assigned at all levels of the sector front, increasing the capabilities and moral of Soviet forces fighting in friendly territory. 

  Priority Front: Warships are pulled from less active fronts to help further reinforce local garrisons.


  Class Consciousness: KGB operatives from the First Chief Directorate are deployed to enemy controlled worlds in support of local underground, revolutionary, criminal and terrorist groups, creating planetwide insurgencies.

 



The Red Navy, also known as the Red Fleet and officially as the Red Space Forces, is one of the most powerful organizations in the Orion Arm. Unmatched in numbers or in firepower, the Red Navy Doctrine focuses on warship production and improved armaments.



  Civilian Encouragement: Through the use of three and five year plans, quotas and other incentives, civilian industries increase efficiency and lower the price of planetary enhancements.

  Orbital Regulation: Autonomy for planetary civilian authorities is rescinded; orbital construction authority is transferred to the Red Fleet Proletarian Colonization Main Directorate, allowing larger numbers of orbital facilities.

  Veteran Workforce: Red Navy specialists are brought to local shipyards and armament factories to help train workers and improve efficiency, resulting in faster ship production.

 


  Advanced Ordinance: The sector front is granted priority for the newest and most advanced munitions designs. Firing rate greatly increased for majority of deck and flak guns.

  Improved Reactor Designs: Modifications are made to fleet power systems allowing larger power reserves and regeneration.

  Experimental Spaceframes: Reports from front line engagements are sent to research bureaus to reduce mass while increasing armor and hull effectiveness.

 


  Streamlined Industry: Local armament facilities move to total war production increasing automation and production capabilities. Cost of all orbital facilities and warships drastically reduced.

 

 



The Red Air Force's strength lies not only in numerical superiority but in its tactical flexibility. Its fighters' precision missile strikes and bombers' torpedo salvoes can on their own cripple enemy fleets in sectors where fielding entire defensive battlefieets would be tactically unwise. The Red Air Force Doctrine therefore focuses on the ability to wear down an opponent through hardy defenses, allowing strike craft the time (and hangar space) they need to deter planetary invasions and lock down key territories for the Union.



  Accelerated Epitaxy: Advances in the processes used to construct and join the most basic elements of planetary structures' hulls in the field allow greater rapidity in their construction.

  Integrated Transmitters: By building structures with embedded, atomic-scale microtransmitters, data can be collected about projected orbital flight paths to a higher resolution, allowing the construction of additional Heavy structures in orbit.

  Improved Alloys: Cheaper metals used in fighter and rocket launch mechanisms unsuitable for higher-velocity launches are replaced with more costly alloys, allowing more fighters to operate per squadron and a chance for their missiles to penetrate armor completely.

 


  Directed Charge Plating: Intelligent detection of projectile trajectories before impact allow ships' electric plating to disable explosive projectiles at a slight distance from the hull, rather than during penetration of standard armor, increasing its overall effectiveness drastically.

  Modular Bunkers: Miniaturization, standardization, and lightening of the construction materials used to buttress hardened planetary bunkers allows them to be rebuilt significantly faster after damage.

  Magnetic Catapults: Torpedo and missile weaponry are launched through miniature coilgun-type catapults, rather than igniting their propellants inside the launch tube. This allows for less wear in the tube and faster cycling through available tubes, increasing the rate of fire of missile weapons significantly.

 


  Corvette Refit: Suvorov and Pavlov class corvettes deployed in the sector front going forward may be fitted to Air Force specifications, greatly improving firepower and protection.


The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that there are three doctrine subjects not described here. These have been classified by the KGB and will be revealed at a later time.
on Feb 26, 2011

Oh my GOD. this mod GETS ME PUMPED. the level of customization is mindblowing, and the whole conversion of visuals and enhancements are just so far out from other mods, that i'd wait as long as necessary to get this, but i'm always going to want it now!

 

Excellent job from what i see. Cannot wait to play.

 

Though i am disappointed to hear about no Skirmish Vs AI. That won't be a deal-breaker, but i'm not a fan of Sins Online play.

on Feb 26, 2011

NHD-151


Though i am disappointed to hear about no Skirmish Vs AI. That won't be a deal-breaker, but i'm not a fan of Sins Online play.

No skirmish v. Ai?! Really? :-/

on Feb 26, 2011

Are you finishing the Russians first? Or will we be seeing the other factions as well? I don't mean to sound impatient, I like what I've seen, but I do want to see all that the DoV universe has to offer.

 

 

Anyways, having looked more closely at the Red Army section, I notice mention of invasions, rather than the Sins method of nuking the planet into dust. Will this manifest as a game mechanic of its own, or just as a different animation? After all, one of my few complaints about Sins is the necessity to kill the civilian populace before moving in.

on Feb 26, 2011


Quoting NHD-151, reply 108

Though i am disappointed to hear about no Skirmish Vs AI. That won't be a deal-breaker, but i'm not a fan of Sins Online play.


No skirmish v. Ai?! Really? :-/

 

Yea, it seems the changes they make to the game are more geared towards multiplayer relations between players, because the AI cannot utilize alot of it and some of the changes make the AI alot less effective. It's a pretty big bummer IMO.

on Feb 27, 2011

Had we stuck to what worked with skirmish, we probably wouldn't be able to have a doctrines system at all. The AI will buy resources off the black market without regard to their price, for example, and without setting these prices astronomically high players could circumvent both the doctrines system and the overhauled resource capture system through hotkeys. If you're interested in Sins with a new paintjob there are plenty of mods like that available. 

Anyway even if we made compromises for the AI it would play like shit, so you're not really missing anything.

 

Oatesy03
Anyways, having looked more closely at the Red Army section, I notice mention of invasions, rather than the Sins method of nuking the planet into dust. Will this manifest as a game mechanic of its own, or just as a different animation? After all, one of my few complaints about Sins is the necessity to kill the civilian populace before moving in.

Our experiences with planet capture that are not right click and recapture have proven to be not very usable and also not very fun to troubleshoot. You will definitely not be nuking civilians from orbit, though. 

on Feb 27, 2011

Cource not, your nuking Military instalations and goverment centers from orbit. 

 

on Feb 27, 2011

Pbhead
Cource not, your nuking Military instalations and goverment centers from orbit. 

 

THINK OF THE FALLOUT!!! <---Civilian Populace of the Planet.

on Mar 11, 2011

Will work continue on this mod when Rebellion is released? From a modding standpoint, I know that it's too early to know how easy or difficult it will be to convert mods over to Rebellion, and I'd hate to see this mod not be completed and released.

on Mar 11, 2011

PUREVENOM
Will work continue on this mod when Rebellion is released? From a modding standpoint, I know that it's too early to know how easy or difficult it will be to convert mods over to Rebellion, and I'd hate to see this mod not be completed and released.

I'm not part of the DoV team, but they (the team) have said that the first release of the mod will be for original Sins. After they do their first release, they've stated before that they might move to Entrenchment or Diplomacy, but with Rebellion on the way, they might end up going to that once they finish their first release.

on Mar 12, 2011

Whiskey pretty much has it. Once our first release is out we'll take a look at our options and figure out what we're doing.

If Rebellion consolidates the multiplayer like I’m hoping though, it’s a safe bet our second release will be for it.

on Apr 18, 2011

Will the Soviets be able to use a 'Scorched Earth' policy when they lose a world, maybe forcing a special colonization unit to be used to clean up?

on Apr 24, 2011

Greetings Comrades,

We’ve gotten a lot of comments in the recent weeks about the single player experience in Dawn of Victory. A number of people have expressed disappointment that DoV will be primarily a multiplayer mod, so I figure a news post is in order to explain why that is, and how the multiplayer experience will work.

In 1996 I was betrayed by a fellow opium dealer in Southeast Asia, a man by the name of Dirk Stryker. I spent 10 years inside a Burmese prison and was tortured almost daily. Upon release, I remembered how Stryker was constantly expressing his desire for a single player mod where the Soviet Union fought aliens. Developing such a mod only to deprive it of single player was my ultimate revenge scheme.

http://www.dawnofvictory.com/News/Features/Campaign/camp2t.jpg



That is not the sole reason however. To put it simply, the gameplay changes we have made in Dawn of Victory; the doctrines systems, capital ship and cruiser changes, research trees, unit abilities, and pretty much everything else, are not compatible with the AI used in SoSE. This is a hard coded issue. In a perfect world we would absolutely want to have a single player experience that was just as rich and developed as our multiplayer, but in the end we had to choose between that and gameplay, and gameplay always wins out.

If you’re still disappointed, just play Vanilla Sins, that’s pretty much what Dawn of Victory would be if we scrapped all our gameplay changes to accommodate the AI.

Alright, so now that that’s dealt with, let me briefly go in to what you can expect in DoV Multiplayer, and what we’re doing to consolidate our community. Please note that the following is still undergoing testing and may change by the time of release.

In addition to the standard multiplayer games, Dawn of Victory multiplayer is going to be organized around a type of online campaign run from our website and forums. Players will align themselves with the faction of their choice, and fight over a dynamic battleground with the front lines changing depending on the performance of each side. Once one side gains enough of an advantage the front line will shift and new zones and maps will be available to fight over.

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For example, if the Tanarsus system on the campaign map was currently an active sector, any games played on the corresponding in-game maps would directly affect the outcome of the battle.

Once the campaign starts, news reports from the frontline, as well as from across the Orion Arm, along with the campaign map will be available courtesy of the Independent News Network. The outcome of battles and the performance of each side will be written into the DoVoVerse. If you end up being one of the top Soviet commanders you can expect to see yourself added into DoV “canon”.

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DoV Campaign Website



I would really love to go into more detail about how it’s all going to work, but we’re still figuring that out ourselves. Until then, be sure to check up on INN every now and then as we prepare for our first release.

on Apr 24, 2011

The INN seems like a really great idea, but they keep changing numbers - the first article varies as to who was commended - the 407th, 4007th or the 4077th, while the last one changes between 2000 dead, and 20,000 dead (although, that could be purposeful, saying that 20,000 died overall, but only 2000 found buried in the grave).

Nit-pick over.

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