I started working on a Tiberian Sun to Tiberian Dawn total conversion (using -slightly modified- original graphics from TD) quite a while ago as a personal project and especially at first it didn't seem to go anywhere.
The mod eventually just died, but about a year after it died I started over.
It turned out Morpher was thinking about doing something similar, we came to the decision for him to make a Red Alert to Tiberian Sun total conversion simultaneously and we would eventually merge the mods. So the mod would be developed in 2 halfs; an RA and a TD half.
I believe Morpher just finished converting about all structures, units, infantry and aircraft, along with all weapons and sounds (excluding things the TS engine can’t handle of course; like the Chronosphere and the Iron Curtain) when he moved to Australia and was unable to continue to work on the mod.
After that he couldn’t find the time to work on the mod at all anymore, so unfortunately the RA half couldn’t be finished, which is why now DTA will merely be a TS to TD total conversion after all.
While working on this mod I made several discoveries, among which 2 big ones; I posted those here as tutorials:
How to give tiberium proper radar colors
Giving games hosted on XWIS a unique name for your mod
So even though solving certain problems was a real pain in the ass at times, it has been educational.
The point of this mod was really to make you feel like you're actually playing TD, while having all the benefits of the TS engine (like online play, skirmish, modifiable keys, drag-scroll, etc.). Making everything look exactly like in TD was especially hard to accomplish with the terrain. The main problem is that when converting TD's terrain to TS's isometric terrain, it was impossible to make the roads, cliffs, rivers connect properly. After trying many complicated things to get this to work anyway (like giving the terrain the image of the clear ground and giving it a single frame animation which looks like the terrain), it finally turned out a simpler solution worked much better.
I now made the terrain as invisible buildings with a bibshape which has the image of the terrain (and I use an impassable version of the clear ground to make the terrain impassable).
This indeed does make mapping a real pain in the ass and it doesn’t work flawless in game either, but it’s still the best working solution I could think of. Possibly in a future release the terrain will be remade into actual (isometric) terrain.
Even though I’m mainly using slightly modified SHPs from TD in DTA, I completely had to remake the walls (for obvious reasons). I didn’t do the wooden fence and barbwire, since they’re never or rarely buildable in TD and really would’ve been a waste of effort and time. The Sandbags wall, cyclone fence and concrete were completely made in MSPaint, which was a very time consuming proces, but in the end they all turned out much better then I expected.
I posted screenshots I took while making the walls here, showing the development stages from the oldest versions to the finished versions
Check out this topic if you want to see screenshots showing the progress up 'till just before the first release.
The mod eventually just died, but about a year after it died I started over.
It turned out Morpher was thinking about doing something similar, we came to the decision for him to make a Red Alert to Tiberian Sun total conversion simultaneously and we would eventually merge the mods. So the mod would be developed in 2 halfs; an RA and a TD half.
I believe Morpher just finished converting about all structures, units, infantry and aircraft, along with all weapons and sounds (excluding things the TS engine can’t handle of course; like the Chronosphere and the Iron Curtain) when he moved to Australia and was unable to continue to work on the mod.
After that he couldn’t find the time to work on the mod at all anymore, so unfortunately the RA half couldn’t be finished, which is why now DTA will merely be a TS to TD total conversion after all.
While working on this mod I made several discoveries, among which 2 big ones; I posted those here as tutorials:
How to give tiberium proper radar colors
Giving games hosted on XWIS a unique name for your mod
So even though solving certain problems was a real pain in the ass at times, it has been educational.
The point of this mod was really to make you feel like you're actually playing TD, while having all the benefits of the TS engine (like online play, skirmish, modifiable keys, drag-scroll, etc.). Making everything look exactly like in TD was especially hard to accomplish with the terrain. The main problem is that when converting TD's terrain to TS's isometric terrain, it was impossible to make the roads, cliffs, rivers connect properly. After trying many complicated things to get this to work anyway (like giving the terrain the image of the clear ground and giving it a single frame animation which looks like the terrain), it finally turned out a simpler solution worked much better.
I now made the terrain as invisible buildings with a bibshape which has the image of the terrain (and I use an impassable version of the clear ground to make the terrain impassable).
This indeed does make mapping a real pain in the ass and it doesn’t work flawless in game either, but it’s still the best working solution I could think of. Possibly in a future release the terrain will be remade into actual (isometric) terrain.
Even though I’m mainly using slightly modified SHPs from TD in DTA, I completely had to remake the walls (for obvious reasons). I didn’t do the wooden fence and barbwire, since they’re never or rarely buildable in TD and really would’ve been a waste of effort and time. The Sandbags wall, cyclone fence and concrete were completely made in MSPaint, which was a very time consuming proces, but in the end they all turned out much better then I expected.
I posted screenshots I took while making the walls here, showing the development stages from the oldest versions to the finished versions
Check out this topic if you want to see screenshots showing the progress up 'till just before the first release.