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That's right, it finally happened! The beta release of Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising is finally out there and is now in the hands of the players! If you haven't checked it out yet, get on over to this link, download the launcher, install it, and jump onto one of the servers. There's plenty of games going on right now! We've released two hotfixes currently with a third to land sometime soon. Stay tuned for more information on these updates moving forwards! The Long Road to Release It's been incredibly humbling to see the amount of people who have picked up the game and enjoyed it so far and it makes the past two decades of working on it in our spare time all the more worth it! When @ cfehunter and I first imagined this game in 2005, initially as a Renegade 2 revival project called C&C Untold, we never thought we would end up here with you all. This reply on Renegade Forums back in 2006 showed that our conviction really meant something. We've been through a lot in terms of development; different web hosts, different eras of the Renegade modding community, and different people have all come and gone. But the two constants throughout the main lifetime of the project have been myself and @ moonsense715 , who is now one of my dearest friends. I promised him years ago that we would finish Apocalypse Rising together, and now that we've unleashed it upon the world it feels amazing. So thank you @ moonsense715 , for sticking by me through the thick and thin and always working your hardest on everything, because in the end, we've produced a damn fine game. Our goal was always to make a game that showcased our passion for Red Alert 2 while celebrating the gameplay of C&C Renegade that brought us all together here at W3D Hub. It's really a special community with lots of wonderful people in it and over the years we've moved mountains in terms of the obstacles we've had to tackle. I want to take this opportunity to thank the wider team for always believing that this game could come out, never giving up on it and always pushing me to never give up. The Future As for what's next, we're currently focusing on stability and bug fixing. Once the game is in a more stable place, we will begin to cast our eyes upon balance and start taking into account all of the feedback you guys have been leaving in the Discord channels. We aim to be transparent and receptive with the changes we make to the game and will always be hanging around on Discord to ensure that players always have a voice reaching our ears. Once we get past the first few major balance updates, we will then turn our eyes to new content such as maps, missing units, tech buildings and quality of life features. Once we've added more content to the base game, we can then start to think about expanding the game further with new features and content (Naval gameplay, Yuri's Army etc.). We have a few initial ideas, but we would really appreciate your feedback on what you want to see added to the game in the future. As ever, thank you for supporting the game, and we hope you enjoy it as we continue to expand on it. - OWA and the Apocalypse Rising Team. P.S, if you haven't checked it out yet, here's the epic launch trailer for the game courtesy of Battle Dreadnought!

I have error when i try install game

You have to delete the game first, then download again. That helps!

I'm trying to install Apocalypse rising within the launcher but im getting the error below: Error: Failed to read manifest.xml: Error: Failed to save manifest.xml (v0.9.0.2): Failed to send request: error sending request for url (https://s3.w3d.cyberarm.dev/games/ar/0.9.0.2/manifest.xml) I also observed the icons for all games in the launcher dont load. I've tried re-installing the launcher but its still the same. I do have enough space for the game.

Hi everyone and thank you for bearing with us as we continue to discuss. We never thought that the Renegade source code would ever see the light of day after all of these years, but the impossible is happening right now and it's our duty as the Renegade/W3D Engine modding community to provide clarity and direction. We've noticed your discussions, saw your questions, and had our own chats about going forward. Regarding the source code release, we have answers for you. Where does W3D Hub stand?The release of the Renegade GPL-licensed source code by EA has presented us with both opportunities and challenges, but before we get into unpacking that let's start with explaining what we have been working on already. We currently have two main development branches that are closed source: the Scripts 4.x branch and the Engine 5.x branch. Both of these closed source codebases are compliant with EA's modding guidelines for the Command & Conquer franchise: https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/modding-faq Scripts 4.x Branch Purpose: The 4.x branch is primarily focused on maintaining and improving Renegade while ensuring compatibility with older content and systems. Key Features: Compatibility: Ensures that existing Renegade maps, plugins, and other content remains functional on a variety of operating systems. Bug fixing: Fixes various bugs that were present in the released game. Anti-Cheat Measures: Includes various anti-cheat mechanisms to protect the integrity of the game. Engine 5.x BranchPurpose: The 5.x branch is a completely reverse engineered version of the W3D game engine, incorporating an expanded set of features and development improvements. 5.x no longer supports Renegade, as it's primary function is to advance and support games such as Red Alert: A Path Beyond, Tiberian Sun Reborn and Battle for Dune: War of Assassins. Key Features: Advanced Features: Introduces new functionalities and improvements over the 4.x branch, such as better graphics, physics, and tools. Future-Proofing: Designed to support future development and expansions, making it a more flexible game engine than 4.x. The Issues We FaceThe Renegade source code has been released under the GPL license, which means any code using that must also be open-sourced and available to the public. We are unable to open-source our current 4.x and 5.x branches because of the following: Releasing our code requires the explicit permission of everyone who was ever involved, and after 20+ years of code contributions and some of its developers having left us or otherwise, this is not possible. Third-party libraries, such as FMOD which we use for our audio system, are not compatible with the GPL license. Releasing 4.x and 5.x code opens the door to cheaters who can exploit our games, which cannot be done for the sake of fairness and enjoyment of our games as they are. Our Decisions The Future of 4.x and 5.x With both the 4.x and 5.x Branches, we will continue as we have always done. The Tiberian Technologies scripts patch will remain with 4.x and Red Alert: A Path Beyond, Tiberian Sun: Reborn, Battle for Dune: War of Assassins and other projects will remain on 5.x for the foreseeable future. The reality is that we still need these branches to fix Renegade in it's current form and also maintain our own game projects. This ensures that no development is halted and that our games remain available to you to play. To clarify our position, we will not be using the released GPL code in these branches as that would not be GPL-compatible. In layman's terms, 4.x and 5.x will have to pretend the code is not there, and continue that work without peeking or using any of it. A New Project Emerges: OpenW3D Using the released Renegade source code and complying with the GPL license, we are starting a new open source game engine project, simply named OpenW3D. We aim to bring the source code up to modern standards, get it building and usable, and then begin implementing the features and upgrades we developed across 4.x and 5.x and the rest of Renegade's modding history. We are not tossing away our 4.x and 5.x work, but rather we are looking to get back to that point - this time from the source code. With the benefit of hindsight taking away a lot of the guesswork, and renewed interest in coding and modding bringing activity, we hope to get this ball rolling! Here's an initial plan of action: Bring the codebase up to par with modern C++ standards (ideally 20) Put it into a modern build system (CMake, Sharpmake, etc.) Remove/replace 3rd party stuff that makes it incompatible with GPL (can be done simultaneously with above steps) As a baseline, just get Renegade working in it, and maybe build a single test map, just so we know that we can go from raw dev data to an exported and functioning game Start planning upgrades and porting over one of the W3D projects We are also mulling over the possibility of cross platform support as well, which should excite all of you Mac and Linux fans! We have hands already on this plan of action, with several of our experienced programmers tackling the codebase now. We aim to expand development shortly with some dedicated collaboration areas on our new Mattermost communication platform, so stay tuned for more info! Quickfire FAQ Here's a quick FAQ of what has been explained above! What's happening? Should I be concerned? - EA has released the Renegade source code under the GPL licence. This is great news for us as it will allow us to work on a new game engine. No need for concern! A new engine you say, what's that? - Yup, we're working on a new game engine called OpenW3D. This will be an open source version of the W3D engine that aims to be an accessible platform for developing Rene-like (Renegade-like) games. We're aiming for it to be a more robust platform than what we use currently. Sounds good, how can I get involved with OpenW3D? - Our infrastructure for supporting open development isn't quite ready yet, but in the meantime we'll be opening a public channel for OpenW3D in our Discord server. Eventually we will open a dedicated space for development on our Mattermost communication platform. Stay tuned for more info! How does OpenW3D affect the Tiberian Technologies scripts patch? - The short answer is, it doesn't. The team at TT will keep developing the TT scripts patch for Renegade on the W3D 4.x codebase as normal. The team won't be using at any of the Renegade source code that EA has just released though, as that would violate the GPL licence. So what codebase or game engine do your games, like APB, AR and TSR, use? - These games use the W3D Engine 5.x codebase described earlier in this post. Some other games use 4.x though, such as Interim Apex and ECW. Is W3D Hub using the Renegade source code in existing projects like APB and TSR? - No, we won't be, as including any of the release code would require us to release our code under GPL, which we cannot do. What about using the Renegade Source code in the TT scripts patch? - This is also not possible due to GPL. Will any of your games switch engine to OpenW3D? - Not in the short term, but in the long term when the engine has developed a lot more, we can evaluate whether we want to move our projects across. It's simply not realistic to switch engine at this stage, as it is way too early in development. Thanks for Reading Whew, that was a lot, but thanks for bearing with us! This is a really exciting movement for the community and couldn't have been possible without people at EA like CCHyper, Jim Vesella, Brian Barnes, as well as talented people in our own community here at W3D Hub such as @ jonwil , @ Unstoppable and @ Jerad2142 . It's down to the hard work of these people that we can even think about doing this today. To re-iterate, we will be opening a new channel on Discord to cover OpenW3D development and Interested people from all levels of experience are encouraged to come and engage with us in there. Once we have our infrastructure in order, we'll have more information on how to sign up soon too! Thank you for reading, and please let us know if you have any further questions, concerns, or feedback. - OWA and the W3D Hub Team

Hey, thanks for stopping by Sonic. Hope you are doing well. Please give yourself some time to process the news properly and all, as it's not an easy thing to hear about of course. Regardless of any past disagreements or people coming and going from the community, it's always nice to see how we all care in our own ways when something like this happens. I guess the only thing we can do is appreciate and learn from all of the good Zee did, and continue on.

Hi all, Sonic the CNCNZ.com founder here. So I'm very late to this topic. Been away from the community for many years now. But extremely saddened by this news of Zee's passing. Gone way to young.

Doing what I can, but yeah, some stuff has no doubt been lost in the process. Hopefully we find some of it again or people with backups for private use come forward eventually, if any.

Very sad news, sorry to hear we've lost another very creative person in the community. I hope you guys have luck finding more of his works, I know one of my biggest fears would be the loss of what I've worked on over the years.

I debated a lot where to post this, but since it technically applies to all(?) W3D engine games, figured here was best? I doubt there's any issue with this, but just to be safe ill not post the exact method, so if i get in any trouble ill be the only one to blame as the title implies, i got IA (and other games) running on Vulkan, and then via Vulkan applied frame generation. being as its a hack on a hack its not flawless, but works pretty well, also since game is locked to maximum FPS most of the time anyway, fairly pointless. but under load from 160 bots and with vis disabled, was able to get -about- 60 real fps, and 120 with generated frames i made a video: (i am apparently far to stupid to properly embed video? so heres the link instead) Link to IA Vulkan Frame Generation MP4 (compressed + downscaled to 1080p) (Akaris is me, "Dayofnuke" is actually very old name) you can spot some of the generated frames as bots load in causing a fps dip, but otherwise fairly smooth after that, so this method maybe helpful for PvE sometimes using a very similar method, DX12 should probably be possible? and between Vulkan/DX12 applying Ray Tracing is also theoretically possible, but that would be ~much~ more work than FG

DXVK, DirectX (to) Vulkan https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk , specific version used: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/download/v2.3/dxvk-2.3.tar.gz (but any version should work) easy way is to drop all those files into IAs game.exe directory (or only the DX9 files if you want to be more specific) ...and thats it game will run in Vulkan via a translation layer. as for Frame Generation, i just turned on AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames) which works semi-unofficially with Vulkan (but not DX9) Vulkan does most of the heavy lifting, and the frame generation smooths over any fps dips or stutters. As i mentioned technically adds frame lag, but average of 9ms total, so not really a factor in real useage i was able to maintain ~60 real fps and ~120 fps with frame generation up to about 190 bots with vis disabled above 190 bots the W3D engine itself seems to start to give up

How did you get I A to run on Vulkan? I mean vulkans pretty good to use, probably even better than Unreal in some cases, but Still... how?

being as i was unsure of opinions on such a thing my post was intentionally vague/obtuse, but the reality is its hardly difficult or a technical triumph of any sort. its a simple combination of dxvk + AFMF (which some have argued isn't real frame generation, but if its visually adding more frames its close enough for me) i suspect at -least- 50% of the heavy load (160 bots + vis disabled) fps uplift is Vulkan alone, thus frame generation is bit more of a meme idea lol since this is a hack-on-a-hack type of thing it isnt perfect, for example sharpening/AA/AF dont seem to work. as for frame times, for me real frame time is 4.0ms, FG adds about 5.0ms, thus approximate 9.0ms total frame time. as for my comment about RT, one could -in theory- translate dx9 into dx12 (have had some success with this part), and then once dx12 is ...technically... exposed, hack something such as RTX Remix on it. as i said it would be MUCH more work, and probably utterly destroy frame rates(?), if for no other reason than all the hacking and translating happening. i haven't really explored this idea much, but some very quick overview-ing made me think it was possible since game lives locked at max fps outside of unusual load situations this was all mostly for the memes whats W3D's max texture size? just had a thought about using my AI to upscale ..would that work? hmm

Mind writing a tutorial of what you used to do this?