Leaderboard

Here is a a Mammoth tank that I completed, based on references of the TD & RA1 Mammoth tank. This turned out average. 5 Stage GIF

Now that my entire family knows I'll announce it here. If all goes as well, in January of 2018 an AkheroMini shall greet this world. This is my first, so naturally I'm nervous, happy, scared shitless, excited, etc. Any 'veterans' out there have any advise for a first time daddy? :)

After quite a few hours, Hostile Waters has been salvaged, and the work now resumes on bringing it back. BIG thanks to Jonwil for the help he provided in solving this, without him, I would have cancelled the project.

So, I was poking round the really old APB 9935 gmax building source files, and I noticed there was a civilian technology centre model that was half finished. So, I decided to finish it. The exterior of the center. The entrance to the facility. Simple, but it works. One of the research domes, with a couple of computer(?) stations. The largest dome, still under construction. The last dome, with just a few crates and a catwalk. The central atrium, with stacks of crates, and the roof access ladder. Going up... The roof. Be careful not to fall off! Finally, a view from the top, complete with a look into the domes! I've attached the 3ds max source files (the building itself, plus a proxy and edge for cutting into the ground), as well as the two textures that are missing from APB. (Just the metal floor on the roof and the actual dome texture.) They're all in one archive. civtechnologycentre.7z In terms of what this could be used for, I'm not sure. It's big, sure, but not too massive. (It's a little bigger than 2 x 2 war factories, but the inside is a fair bit smaller than that.) It could make the centrepiece of a TDM map (with extra ramps to the roof added, and maybe one of the domes removed and a ramp up there...) or an objective in a mission map (defend/assault the tech center? Capture the tech center and hold it for 5-10 minutes to win? The possibilities are endless...) or, it could just be a big prop. (Capture it to unlock the ability to produce a special trooper/tank?) Anyway, it's there for people to use.

I think the problem with the thief is that all he has to do is survive for three seconds near the terminal. Ideally he'd need to use a flare-like ability/item near said terminals, which would force him into place and make him vulnerable, while also providing a clear visual indication of a theft being in progress.

Just now sat down after getting home from work ~1 hour late. Resolving night actions has taken 1-2 hours depending on complexity. I'll keep you up to date on progress.

"Affirmative!" "Attack the baby shops!" "Bolster our father duties!" "Building needs cleaning!" "That's a diaper, ignore it!"

We did have unit tutorial videos back in Gamma, back when the launcher had a built-in game manual. Judging from the flood of ingame questions relating to unit functionalities at the time I don't think the manual actually saw much use though, plus some of those videos weren't very accurate even at the time they were made. Updated unit tutorial videos would be greatly appreciated, though I have no idea where we'd put them that new players would know to go. This might be fruit for a new thread as well - how to script them etc.

Another thing, this whole dynamic balancing thing seems like way too much work for ??? reward in a community with hardly any coders with hardly any time to pull it off in between the other things they're doing. And such a system is bound to be incredibly open to abuse which just means there's even more stuff to constantly fix. Like, going by the discount example, why should it be a valid tactic for a Soviet team to just sacrifice riflemen to pillboxes (or even rooftops if it goes by deaths and not points) for a few minutes so that the rank difference then widens enough for them to unlock the arbitrary discount and afford mammoth-kovs earlier than the Allies are able to deal with them and stomp? Should I disarm that signal flare the enemy put near our base defenses, or should I deliberately ignore it and go idle with the rest of my team so that when the flare goes off, our team gets the arbitrary pity buff that'll help our superior team snowball the game even harder when we decide to actually play instead of feigning being AFK? Maybe the enemy put that flare there hoping for us to disarm it so that they could get a pity buff! But I'd better not play too well, don't want to trip the points threshold and give the enemy an advantage that might let them come back, I'd better just stop playing the objective right now and type !killme and afk at home for a few minutes to let the enemy's points catch up so that we can start attacking them safely again... assuming they're not also aware of how BS this system is and also play hard to get until the last 2 minutes. It doesn't even sound like the same game genre anymore, and I can't claim to follow many competitive games but I've never heard of anything as bizarre as this.

Yeah, something I really feel this game is missing is bad/new players being considered literally worse than an empty player slot...

I think it would be cool if it was unique to a map. Like that old, old infantry map that had just a barracks and a refinery and the ore truck that spawned had to be player operated. More maps like that would be sweet.

I've been taking the advice into account, and I've done some renovation to two of the domes, one into a computer center and the other into a bit of a chemistry lab. I've changed a good amount of the textures, to make it feel more like a clean, clinical lab. Still debating what to do with the last dome. I was thinking some sort of sciency radar... gizmo, maybe iron-curtainy, or a prison block area. Could potentially do both, for different purposes. The building looks more sciency at any rate. (It's hard to fill buildings with stuff, especially if you have to make it all.)

I will say that I think the guard towers themselves are pretty useless and you will die much quicker if you go into one. What you gain in cover you more than lose by limited mobility. Ironically, I think they could actually use few more holes in the wall to shoot out of, as well as making the walls a little higher so you aren't automatically dead the second a sniper becomes aware of your presence. I don't think that would make them too strong, but hopefully they would be a little more useful.

Watching the sniper headshots is so satisfying. Maybe refine the parts where you're just sitting and waiting. Or even the mediocre parts where you're missing. Skip to the good stuff! Maybe when you speed up clips you could speed them up even further as people will get the point. These tips will make for a shorter and more concise video that focuses on the great parts. Still, good stuff and I love forg too.

I'm still new when it comes to this sort of thing so any editing or pacing or whatever feedback is welcome.

Given that the Pillbox has the same priority settings as a Flame Tower and people keep talking about how the FT suddenly switches targets away from a heavily damaged ranger to hit the higher-priority captain when it sees a captain, and the FT already has much higher priority for hitting rangers than hitting heavy vehicles, I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen unless the Soviet infantry aren't even in the pillbox's range.

Yeah, I did think some of the textures were too tiled. I'll probably end up re-texturing and using different, less obviously tiled textures, as well as bumping up the vertex count for the large, flat polygons. I've made a couple of "new" textures that match the colours of the building from the render, and I've remodelled the domes, so they're actual polygon domes. The main issue is props, as there's not that many "sciencey" props in APB. Hell, there's not that many props as is. I'll see what I can do, though. Put a quick snap of the "renovated" exterior with the new domes. (I still need to subdivide the mesh for better lighting...)

Best defense is a good offense. While defensive structures are handy for defense nothing says destroy the enemy more than using a concrete bunker near an opponent's base to attack their base. -the need for more defensive structures or stronger ones near a base or even in the field can always backfire. For example Castles were more than defensive structures.

Okay, points for the Goldeneye death. Another entertaining video!