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Kotaku UK have featured W3D Hub in a fairly lengthy article that sheds a nice light on what Command & Conquer-related projects we are working on. A while back I met a freelance journalist who was really interested in covering the work that we do here. Over the course of a few months, I gave them some info about the community and the result was this article! A link to the article can be found right here: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/05/02/the-renegades-remaking-command-conquer-as-firstperson-shooters Although it's great to get acknowledged by a major gaming publication, there are unfortunately a few inaccuracies that are mentioned in the article. I've listed the facts below to set the record straight: Renegade was a 2002 game, not a 2005 game @OWA is currently moonlighting as a Seconded Game Designer at creative Assembly, so no longer a Tester (for now) Renegade X was in development as far back as 2007, so the devs didn't all leave to make Reborn in 2011 as the article suggests @OWA didn't have much of a hand in the handing over of Reborn at all. That task was masterminded by @Wallywood, who made sure that the game was in good hands before moving it back over to what was then Bluehell Productions It's Nod, not NOD (old joke is old) MCT terminals, i.e. Master Control Terminal Terminals Reborn doesn't feature Thieves The section about 2009 graphics upgrades is uninformed. Here's the scoop straight from @saberhawk: "We slowly took over the rendering engine and rebuilt most of it a few times; the original game was D3D8 (DirectX 8), all the latest things are D3D11 (DirectX 11)" Even with these inacurracies, it's really great to see this level of attention from a major game news site (even if it's only from the UK branch of Kotaku) and get our message out there that C&C isn't quite dead yet. This shows that even though we're creating games on an older engine, it still continues to spark interest, which I think is amazing. I'm really proud of what we achieve every day here and I think we should all enjoy being in the limelight as one of the few teams still standing that is continuing to carry the banner for the Command & Conquer franchise and fans everywhere! With improvements and new site features on the way, W3D Hub is going to be a community that will be around for years to come! Stay tuned for more good stuff right here! [blurb]Kotaku UK have covered W3D Hub in an exciting news article, featuring our very own OWA![/blurb] [thumb]thumb_tsr.j.png[/thumb]

Two words: fix it.

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Anything that brings in more friends to help the community grow is great!

So, I will cut the introduction short and state the stuff as it is. Most grief when it comes to map balance being scewed in Allied favor comes from a single unit being a pain in the butt. And said unit is Artillery plain and simple. So let's start with the obvious and compare Arty to V2. + Higher mobility due to tracks > wheels. + Higher versatility due to higher ROF and ability to turn. + Higher sustained DPS on enemies due to less punishing misses. + Way better at self-defence: easy to kite slow large soviet vehicles and kill infantry pestering you at close range. + Higher indirect durability. They have the same 150/150 HP but this one is kinda funny. It takes 10 serg slugs to kill a V2 and 5 shock shots to kill an arty. Both take similar time but one is 150 no barracks CQC specialist and the other is "advanced" AT infantry. Also mechanics. + Smaller general profile. + Smaller projectile. + Prop heavy recent map philosophy makes indirect fire far more efficient, esp. combined with V2 projectile size. + Harder to track back due to small trail and large arc. - Less accurate. - Lesser alpha strike. - Lesser splash AOE. That list already doesn't seem right for a cheaper unit, does it? Now let's take a look at what each of them have to deal with. V2 has to deal with faster agile and sometimes stealthy enemies which makes higher punishment on each miss even worse. If infantry got too close to you, you better just run and hope that there would be something nearby to hit to use your AOE which would still not kill the attacker but at least would make killing them on foot easier. If ranger or whatever got too close, you are toast. If Phase fired at you from the side, you are toast. Arty on the other hand has to deal with larger and slower targets most of the time. The only real threat to it are V2s on open terrain. As soon as terrain stops being open, arty gets an upper hand. If soviet vehicle got close which is far less likely due to their lower speed, you just turn around and blast it in the face. Even though you would likely lose your arty, that guy is now crippled with mammy being the only exception. But where were your eyes if you let a huge mammoth tank to flank you? Seriously. Anyway, then you get on foot (serg, cap and RS all work fine here) and finish off that person vehicle making it 1 to 1 trade. And maybe kill the driver. So in economy terms you've lost 600 and killed 700-1500 worth of units (+ maybe driver). A list of solutions (can be applied in any combination): - Make arty 100/100 again and remove tesla resistance (why is that even a thing?). It already has more versatility and mobility than the soviet counterpart to defend itself. No need for it to be tanky also. This will also allow TTs to avoid being cripped by the return fire should they engage the arty. - Reduce turn speed. - Slightly reduce range. - Make minimum gun elevaton higher so it can't fire at everything point-blank putting both it and V2 in the same boat when it comes to close range engagement. - Just make it more expensive (700-800).

Two words: fall damage.

I'd love to see these come back!

I love this map because it can be very unpredictable. like a stupid Chinook engineer rush that C4ed all the AA guns in the back (Seriously I can't disable all four explosives in 30 seconds while getting shot at.) Or who could forget the chinook medic rush Or using a demo to clear out Ore Truck tunnel Or the Epic Artillery rush in the main court yard (cleared out all the infantry) There are still many more strategies yet to discover...

I would say that it has too much health. Reducing its health and/or armour while increasing its speed seems like the appropriate solution. *cough* Battle Fortress *cough*

After the few large recent games I've been in, yeah, feels I went a bit overboard on its hitpoints. If I drop the hitpoints, I might as well give it a speed boost to make it better at its intended roles of Hind-hunting and deploying/extracting infantry, as opposed to being an anti-personnel/anti-air MBT. It was the fastest ground vehicle in RA after all. But drop its turn rate/acceleration so it can't be a dodge-beast like the Ranger. (It was actually faster than the Ranger in RA, except on road terrain which rarely made up more than 1% of any given map - which just begs the question of why Rangers were even in the game to begin with.)

Maybe he's asking for a cup cake, lol. I think he wants to see a playable demo like an infantry only bot map. (Of course that wouldn't happen till all of the infantry are in game. And who has time to script bots?) Anyways I waited for Reborn and so I am not too worried about AR.

I had a project i needed to work on for tomorrow but bump that! imma find that secret However my 2 cents on this map is that I quite like it, earlier today I saw that chinook tactic get used, along with volk + tunnel tactics so I do feel these facets are used just not very widely yet

This is awesome news! Hopefully this brings in more players.

"I'm hungry" ~ Voe

The cake is a Soviet lie.

I wish! Being able to press 'Q' to come to a full stop would make my V2 life such easier. Even having the same option for the Artillery would be sweet.

Can we really not give breaks to wheeled vehicles? If the V2 can get to a full-stop its secondary might be much easier to use to arch-over obstacles.

Weren't you complaining before about how artillery units aren't combat-viable enough? Why not boost the V2 in some way? The tiny profile might be a little less of an issue when the new model finally gets textured - obviously it won't be V2-size but it'll help, compared to the current arty it's a good couple of metres longer thanks to the stabilisers on the back, slightly taller, and the base of its barrel is a bigger target. The "tesla resistance" is a thing across all light vehicles that don't have some kind of stealth capability - which for the Allies is just the Ranger, ST, MRJ and Arty. It was really intended for the Ranger to give it more of a chance against shocks in close quarters. Since the Tesla Tank's unique actually-tesla-resistant armour doesn't really have much reason to exist (it only really matters if a spy steals a TT which, let's be fair, doesn't happen much because its frailness makes it nigh impossible to get out of the Soviet base anyway) I could replace that with a special armour for Rangers and return actual light vehicles like the Arty to being treated normally. Surely reduced range would hurt it more in the open than it would in the enclosed spaces it dominates in, in which it can't even make use of its current maximum range? More sluggish rotation will, again, significantly hurt it in the open as turning and moving is pretty much your only way to not get your shit pushed in by V2s that have line of sight to you. So I will probably just go with no tesla resistance, maybe stricter elevation, and a 750-900 price tag. Allies need to use more money anyway, right? (Which is part of why MGGs got their price doubled, the other part being that having a see-thru sphere and enough health to survive a stiff breeze makes them so much more viable than earlier versions.)

Something I've had to parrot here quite a few times is the sentiment that, for APB, "major development is over". This does not mean all development is over, but it also means we're not completely overhauling the game anymore like the full Beta, Gamma and Delta releases did. Here's a more thorough explanation: I'm satisfied with Delta as it stands, minor bugs/balance issues notwithstanding. The majority of the playerbase seems to be satisfied with it too. Many of the things left to implement from Red Alert are either MASSIVE timesinks, impossible to balance, or impossible to implement period due to engine limitations. I have already spent a ridiculous amount of my free time just fixing Delta up to its current state by myself, because throughout 2015 more and more members of the team either wound up with too many real life issues to contribute much, or they just vanished entirely. The dev team is pretty much down to me and ChopBam at this point and nearly everyone else here is busy with their own projects. I really shouldn't be pouring so much time into this since I'm not getting paid for it. I've enjoyed developing it, sure, but I can't really make it my life. I'm not about to start charging people for this game that has always been free. Especially since the only work I've actually done on it was optimising the balance and tweaking other peoples' maps, and oh yeah, there's copyright issues too. Therefore I am pretty much just here to maintain the current game by fixing bugs and balance problems, and maybe fixing up a few more maps and features that we actually have most of the framework for, because anything bigger is not a good use of my free time. So before pitching your ideas, ask yourself how long you think it would take for one person to do, if you would like to spend that much time doing it, and if it would be worth it. If not, you should probably think smaller. However, even the simplest-sounding undertakings might be stopped by the engine's limitations, and if that's how it is, then that's how it is. I have an idea that will make this gameplay feature more true to Renegade/Reborn/Red Alert! This game is not Renegade or Reborn and is not trying to be. As for Red Alert it was a very flawed game mechanically, tank spam ahoy. Many of its nuances don't translate well to FPS either. APB is more about borrowing RA's setting than its gameplay, though we do try to emulate it in the few places where it's both reasonable to do so and the engine allows us to do so. I have an idea on how to implement a Red Alert unit/power that isn't currently in the game! There's all sorts of reasons why these things aren't currently in the game: You'd better have a model and texture for it already, or know someone who can do them, cause if it's not on this list then that's most likely the primary concern, and for many of the things on this list it's just one of many concerns. Helicarrier: This would be really boring to play as. At least in the similarly unarmed MGG you're right in the action and get to crush people... Plus we don't have a model. Parabombs: Basically a nuke that wouldn't even one-shot buildings, and we lack a complete Tu-16 Badger model. Attack Dog: Spies are definitely not powerful enough to demand a hard counter - plus limitations in how we can mask their identity make them easy enough for players to detect without dogs anyway. If people come up with ideas that'd make the spy more useful, and the scripts team are able to implement them? Then I'll consider it. MCV: APB isn't SimCity. I'd rather not double the length of matches just to make people grind up their bases. The unit itself is ingame already (though it is one of the oldest and ugliest assets that we still have...) but it's only there as an objective unit for custom maps, it can't deploy. Tech Centres: Bases are big enough as they are without more massive structures of dubious purpose. Also, currently lacking the team tech centre models. We may be able to use the NBNW neutral tech centre CMDBob made as an objective somewhere though. Chronosphere/Iron Curtain: While we do have a Chronosphere model, and we may have some feasible scripting logic lying around for it, we don't have a model for the Iron Curtain (only a "destroyed" prop) - and for balance reasons we'd have to introduce both superweapons into the game at the same time. I have an idea for a new map/new take on an existing map! Go ahead and get a discussion started! Just be aware that the further your map idea deviates from standard AOW gameplay, the more likely you are to run into things that either can't be done without jumping a ridiculous amount of hurdles, or just flat out can't be done... or for the map to just not be well-received as has been the case with so many other maps that have deviated greatly from standard AOW gameplay. Also, developing each map is a pretty big time sink. I have an idea to fix this overpowered/underpowered unit or Allied/Soviet biased map! Go ahead and get a discussion started! There's probably a bunch of ways of solving it with a bunch of them being quick and easy to do. Or maybe there's something about the units/maps involved that isn't immediately obvious that I or another regular will be happy to explain. I have a bug to report! File it in the bug tracker. Thank you for your understanding