Sweet as, I'll look into that as well then

Of course - I sent you a friend request. I think the Steam workshop has a follow feature where you can get notified if I specifically release a new mod, too.

Damn, this has been one hell of a development story, I'm looking forward to playing with the Atlas corporation. I'll let ya know what I think of it when I play. Also, cool to see that you did the infantry pack, I was quite surprised to see you do it, but it'll make things much more immersive. And an overhaul of previous mods sounds cool, can't wait for the Atlas rework in 2035. Also, is it all good if I add you, I wanna stay up-to-date on your mods

And with the release of the Atlas Infantry Pack that I just published a minute ago, at last the saga of the Atlas Corporation is over. I'm off to go work on something I've been looking forward to getting around to for months, something much bigger and more interesting than anything I've don before...

Oh also I almost forgot, I changed my mind again on the Atlas Infantry Pack - I'm going to do it. Felt a boost of creative energy from finally finishing something, and it feels refreshing to be working on something at least somewhat new. I'll use that energy to throw together the pack, shouldn't take more than a week anyway, and then I'm finally free to work on something fresh that I've been eager to get around to doing.

I am happy and pleased to say that frickin finally at long last the Atlas Corporation is now live and released. After six months of waiting tacked on to the three years it's been since your first request for Atlas and the seven years before that since the release of Advanced Warfare, finally the Atlas Corporation is now playable in Civ V.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3481700789

Sorry about that wait, but I got it done in the end. I think you'll be pleased with how overboard I went with the quality, though. Made sure the wait was worth it.

Also by the way, we're already in the touch-up phase. Remember the dialogue rework I was working on? Every prior mod I've ever made that adds a new Civilization has a broken mess of a custom dialogue file. So I've been preparing to go back and overhaul some old mods and bring them up to newer standards of quality. Maybe not every single one, but some of my favorites are going to get overhauled to the point where it might actually be worth re-releasing them as a remaster.

Ironically, the Federation is one of them. With all this "Atlas development diaries" talk, it's easy to forget this is supposed to be the comments section for my Federation of the Americas from Call of Duty: Ghosts. Once Atlas is done, one of the new projects in my backlog is to completely redo the Federation. Considering they're one of my favorite fictional factions and they're also probably the glitchiest of all my mods, they need that overhaul the most.

Ironically now I'm leaning a bit further towards the other side of the coin in terms of the infantry pack. The AST is really cool, it'd be really fun for Atlas to have them...

Bah. Reasons to do it, reasons not to. I'm torn. Probably the best course of action is to honestly just focus on finishing up Atlas and try not to think about it. I'm not that good at setting things aside and coming back to them later, but I think that's the best option right now. But whatever happens, no custom unit graphics for the addon. Too much work and effort that I'm not willing to put into a simple addon for a mod that I've gotten so bogged down on.

Good news though, Atlas itself is pretty much finished. Just running through the checklist of end-of-development finishing touches, like adding the music (which is the absolute last thing I do in every mod.) It'll be ready as early as tomorrow, that's how close it is. Can't possibly be any later than Saturday.

It could be a thing to come to in the future, say like in 5 years or so time, you go back and touch up a bunch of your old mods as a sort of extra content thing. Otherwise, don't push yourself into doing it. As for the unique trait, it doesn't bother me what it is, cause at the end of the day, you'd have to increase everything due to how Atlas is presented in COD:AW. They got advanced tech, manufacturing, military, shit tons of moolah. So science and military sounds good to me

Thinking unfortunately I'm going to have to call it on the Atlas Infantry Pack. I'm just too burnt out on Atlas for now, and so the mod will probably suffer. Plus, I added custom Unit graphics and sounds to the regular Atlas unique units and I do not feel willing to take up the work necessary to do the same thing three more times for infantry units - which would be harder to retexture due to their complex shape.

So if the choice is between a substandard addon that isn't up to the same standard of quality as Atlas itself, or none at all, I'm going to have to go with the latter. Job isn't worth doing if I'm not prepared to give it my best. Unless of course everyone would be perfectly comfortable having an addon whose units just use the base unaltered models of the Marine, (Exo Infantry,) Paratrooper, (Elite Exo Infantry,) and XCOM Squad (AST.) If so, then sure. I'll do it. Otherwise, nah. I still have my backlog of new Civs, after all.

I think by the way I'm starting to change my mind on the Atlas Infantry Pack. As cool as it would be, I really just want to be done with Advanced Warfare modding. Plus, I can tell that due to burnout I wouldn't make it up to the same standard as the rest of the mod, so if the choice is between no addon or a substandard addon, I don't think it's worth making. Unless people REALLY want it. (And if they don't mind default models for it, because that's a big factor - Atlas proper has some new unit graphics, but I am way too burned out to do that again just for an addon)

As for the unique trait, what would you have in mind for something that allows for mercenary/PMC stuff, or money making stuff? Because currently for their unique trait I gave them something that enhances military and science, so not exactly what you're looking for. But I can throw in something extra and Gold-related if you want.

I was thinking for Exo Infantry they'd be stronger than regular infantry and have a promotion for increased melee damage and/or anti-City strength, because the exosuits enhance mobility and strength, not necessarily how far a soldier can run. Elite Exo Infantry would just have the strength increased. They'd be a unique unique unit that does not replace any existing unit, (I can do that!) that is unlocked when researching Mobile Tactics.

don't make it if you don't want to (jk jk)

I think exo-infantry could be cool, I'm not sure what you'd do for it, but my best guess would be like more movement, since the exosuit is meant to like assist you in movement and stuff. But yea, it's dope to see that the mod is coming along well, I'm looking fowards to playing Atlas. I hope there's some cool money making shit, or, if possible, like mercenary/pmc stuff

You ever just type up a whole thing and then hit the very small 1000 character limit in Steam comments and then DO THAT TWICE AAAAAA

tl;dr: Mod's going to have two unique units. The Warbird and the T-740 Hovertank from that one mission. That leaves the notable exception of the iconic Exo Infantry, so should I make those (and some other Atlas infantry types,) as an addon, as part of an Atlas Infantry Pack? As much as I should and I have no real reason not to make new content, I've been working on this damn thing for months and I kind of just want to be done now. But I absolutely still will if you want it. And don't give me that "don't make it if you don't want to" nonsense. I will make it if people want it.

I have some spectacular news. At last, at long last, the dialogue is completed. After going absolutely bonkers writing dialogue, unnecessarily I might add, there are now a whopping 356 lines of dialogue for Jonathan Irons, covering 185 possible diplomatic situations. (I know in the last comment I said 184, but I found an extra I missed and quickly added that one too)

Now that the biggest hurdle of work is done, it should be smooth sailing from here. With that in mind, now I can confidently say - and mean it this time - that the wait is almost over. The mod will be released this month. May 31st at the absolute latest. Three weeks should be enough to finish the mod considering it's gotten to be about 70% finished. Most of the hardest work is already done.

Oh definitely. As I said a while back, I do have a backlog of maybe 12+ new Civs I want to add after Atlas.

Gotta love the rant about details, shows a lot of love and attention is going into this. I can't wait to take over the world with Atlas. But yea, take ya time mate, your health and well-being is more important. Also, a discord could be a really cool idea if you plan on continuing to make more mods in the future

Why do that? Immersion, that's why. I do this for every mod and always have in the hopes that it allows players to become so immersed in the character they're interacting with that they forget they're playing with a modded version of them and instead feel like that character has actually entered their game straight from their source material. I've felt that way myself before, so I know how important it is.

So that's what's taking so long. I'll probably give it a rest after Atlas, though. Maybe work on modded Civs based on source material that doesn't actually have any characters, so I have creative freedom and it'll go faster. Like the Battlefield 2142 mods I made, where I created generic leaders since Battlefield 2142 doesn't actually have any established characters save for a couple of names mentioned in loading screens.

Also, while most mods change only important dialogue like greetings or declarations of war, I've opted to go further by rewriting LITERALLY ALMOST EVERY SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE IN THE ENTIRE GAME. Of which, there are around TWO HUNDRED. As if that wasn't bad enough, that's actually the number of different situations there are - like when you first meet a Civ or when they denounce you. Those situations can themselves have more than one actual dialogue line assigned to them and the game will randomly pick between them. In fact most Civs have at least two different dialogue lines they'll use when they first meet the player, and Atlas is no exception - they currently have three. That's three different lines of dialogue for only one unique situation, of which there are about 200 different situations. The exact number of situations in the mod currently is 184, which covers almost every possible situation that can occur in a game of Civilization V (with BNW.)

Also, some insight as to what I'm actually doing: I'm a bit stuck on writing the diplomatic responses due to writer's block. Plain and simple. Don't get me wrong, it's still progressing, just very slowly. I'm not just writing lines and moving on, I essentially do character studies on the leaders I make in order to write their dialogue as believably as possible. Would they really say this? Does this sound like them? What are their motivations? Strengths? Weaknesses? Mannerisms and personality? How would they react to this? It can take a few minutes to write one line of dialogue, or it can take hours to write one REALLY GOOD line of dialogue.

I should really have some kind of a blog or Discord server or something for these updates.

Update on the Atlas Corporation: Still grinding. More unexpected delays, such as getting a Coronavirus infection for two entire months and putting the project down to focus on relaxing and recovering from that. But everything's all clear, and I'll be resuming work to its fullest extent here in April.

Oh well, at least it's progressing. Besides, learning new skills will just make it, and future content better

Update on the work on the Atlas Corporation:

It's slow going and nowhere near finished. I'm learning a lot of new skills, adding a lot of new features, and that takes time. Wish I could've gotten it done by Christmas, but unfortunately that is not the case. But work is still progressing, if nothing else.

So...suffice to say, Atlas is going to take a bit longer than expected as I sort this issue out and fix the dialogue template file. Then, once Atlas is done and the template itself is fixed, I'll need to apply it to every one of my previous mods that add new Civilizations.

Well frick. It'll be a busy few months.

Update on Atlas: When I make a new mod, I have a template of the custom dialogue that I can paste freely into new mods to avoid writing it form scratch, then I just write new dialogue for the leader I'm working on. In the first comment when I mentioned improving the quality, and one of the things I was referring to was upgrading that template as it doesn't have as much dialogue as it could - there's a few notable absences such as greetings while the player is at war. ("Best of luck in your current conflict," or "How's your little war going?")

Problem is it's hard to test dialogue like this when they often have such specific conditions to trigger, so I've just been playing entire games of Civ V to try and meet these conditions. In one of these games I discovered that as it turns out some of the dialogue already in my template wasn't tagged right and doesn't work, and since it's my template, it means that every single mod I've ever made since I started modding has this issue.

Les go, you love to see it. I hope all goes well and that this mod takes off on the workshop

As a bonus and a bit of a sneak peek, I am considering making two iterations of the Atlas Corporation, because I've been somewhat concerned about the possibility that Steam yells at me for having Jonathan Irons as the leader due to unfortunate obvious reasons. I've also had two different unique trait ideas for Atlas, and if I make two different versions of the faction, it's a great excuse to be able to use both ideas without awkwardly mixing them.

With that in mind, work is slow going, but I'm excited to finally bring the Atlas Corporation to Civ V and I hope to go above and beyond my usual standards of quality to deliver something much greater than anything I've ever made before. ETA on release is unknown, but I have a whole two months or so, so it'll definitely be done by or on Christmas.

I have good news, bad news, and GREAT news. The good news, is that I am here to proudly announce that I have decided to forego my backlog of mods for a while and shift gears to skip right to the Atlas Corporation, which I have been working on for about a month now. The bad news, is I was initially hoping to release it today (November 4th, 2024) to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the release of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but there were a lot of unforeseen delays and difficulties.

The GREAT news, is that the "unforeseen delays and difficulties" actually mean that I decided to upgrade my modding skills across the board, and as a result the Atlas Corporation will be of MUCH higher quality than any of my previous mods.

Sweet as, don't overwork yourself

Rest assured that this is the first place I'll go once it's finished, to leave a comment as a notification that it's out.

Nah that's fine man, take as long as you need, no rush

8th or 9th it is. Been working hard on the other mods in the list, so Atlas is definitely coming. Sorry for the long wait though...it hasn't been easy to find time to sit down and work on my Civ V mods, is all. But it's coming.

I mean, 8th or 9th would be goated, who wouldn't want to role play as a private megacorp taking over the world

If I stay on the current course and make everything in my backlog in order, that puts Atlas in the 24th or 25th spot. Which is pretty far away.

Maybe I could bump it up further though, maybe to the 8th or 9th spot.

Damn, let's go, another mod closer to Atlas lol

Just finished another mod for this game about a week ago, actually - you're damn right I still mod this game.

I've got a backlog of 20 mods or so I want to make and the Atlas Corporation is one of them, so I'll definitely make them. Can't say when though, there's a LOT of mods I want to make.

was just going to say something about the atlas corp, see someone else already commented. Don't know if you still mod for this game but if you do would love to play it

Yea fair enough

Nope I actually quite enjoy getting comments on my Civ V mods regardless of how long it's been.

Must've been weird to get a comment like 4yrs later from the last guy lol

Oh nice, good to hear that you haven't given up

Not any time soon unfortunately, but definitely on the way. I've had it in the backlog of Civs to make for a while now.

You've done SDF and the Fed, what about the Atlas corp?

Unfortunately I don't know how to retexture existing models, and I hear that it's quite the pain to do.

Sorry.

Please do custom textures for the tank and rocket arty?

Not always. And you still need an army to capture cities you've nuked, right?

it seems sort of useless considering the game at their UU point is usually a slugging match between powers with nuclear missiles.

Yes. I've got a few more planned.

Will there be more CoD civs?