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Well, you replied before I was done typing my book 😛 This was done literally forever ago and has been talked about numerous times. It is very common knowledge, I'm sorry that you were not informed. [Original post] Let me preface this post by saying that I will not be speaking right now on behalf of W3D Hub, but rather as just me, Einstein, a player/user, nothing more. I've been pretty inactive in recent months, not doing as much as I normally do, or being present as much as I have in the past. I hear about current events and occasionally visit the forum and read a little bit, etc. Don't really have time right now to be "involved" as I usually am, thus me speaking as myself and not as a representative of this place. I have a reputation among those who know me for being (or attempting to be) unbiased and objective, respectful, and a little bit over-analytical. Its just my nature. So briefly here, I am going to 1) state what I am seeing/have seen, and 2) analyze what I have seen. Many weeks ago, an issue was raised by the leadership of RenCorner and MPF to the general public of W3D Hub in this thread here, which at face value seems to be a sudden demand and/or call to action regarding the Interim Apex project (previously Imperial Age). After some heated discussion, the roots of the problem are exposed, etc. Some solutions are proposed, nothing really gets done, the discussion goes to PM, I lose track of it, and it eventually basically dies from what I understand, though the problem was never resolved entirely. Some aspects of the problem (ex: the mishap with the IA download accidentally containing some renegade files which were thought to have been removed in the initial release version) were promptly addressed and resolved, and as far as I know, that was one of them. Other bits, such as "the fairness of the IA project existing in the same universe as stock Renegade", have been rather put off by both sides for another day. The entity in command of the Renlist backend blocked the IA server from the list, and then *silence*. Though I do hear that as a result of these happenings, @danpaul88 has stepped up and volunteered his own time and keystrokes to develop and evolve the W3D Hub launcher into a platform which can one day support stock Renegade, as well as all the stock (and modded) servers, which are currently available via the Renlist tool, in addition to all of the in-house projects which are currently available via the launcher. Fast-forward like idk....couple months or something. Earlier today anyway. Unrelated drama about things that I admittedly do not understand (because I've been out of touch) is happening in this thread, and again seemingly very suddenly, and for some reason hi-jacking a thread of completely unrelated subject matter entirely, another post, by the same, representative of the same, expressing basically the same. In response, @OWA resumes the conversation from somewhere close to the point at which it died before, reiterating that there are some questions from the prior discussions which were posed to the individuals which have grievances, which have never been answered. A little bit more back-and-forth, and OWA's questions are now answered. OWA has presumably not seen the reply yet, and has not responded yet. Whew! Now we have arrived..... In the interest of remaining unbiased, and also putting forth that image, let me just make one general clarification point. A person's Point of view / Frame of Reference can easily be mistaken for bias, but they are two different things entirely, though related. The angle at which an event was witnessed (Frame of Reference) when described by the witness, may appear to take the form of a bias, when in reality it is simply an incomplete picture of the event which transpired. Simply put, all of the accounts logged above being from one viewpoint does not necessitate that the witness (me) is biased towards that viewpoint. And now the Analysis.... Everything I have seen so far has consisted of forces/entities outside W3D Hub suddenly coming to the W3D Hub forum to air out grievances about how things are done here. Even going so far as to demand that certain things not be done the way in which they are, followed by threats which follow the pattern of "if you don't stop doing (or start doing) ABC, then we will retaliate by doing XYZ", which was followed through, citing repeatedly "cause and effect.....cause and effect". Lets look at some cause and effect then shall we? Exactly how would these individuals feel, if the staff of W3D Hub showed up in these other communities and started making demands? "Cause and effect". What would happen? What would happen, if after the W3D Hub staff, who, assuming that they were completely in the right (because they had perceived, completely unbeknownst to the inhabitants of these other communities, that they had been wronged by them in some way) showed up in these other communities and after making their demands, made threats, and followed through with these threats, because these other communities did not conform or bend to their will? "Cause and effect". How might that play out? It is peculiar to me, the double-standard which seems to exist in some aspects of this situation. Moving forward, please examine the following quotes: It would appear that there is some sort of breakdown in communication here. Correct me if I am mistaken, but it appears that @shaitan is stating here that the ultimate solution to this problematic situation is exactly what @OWA has said that W3D Hub is already actively working on and in the process of implementing? If this is the case, then will someone PLEASE explain to me what this is actually about? Because this looks to me as if it has solved itself, but that people were too occupied with the fighting itself to actually notice! Eh?

If you guys are gonna keep us blocked on renlist than MPF needs to remove any IA maps they have on their server.

Your maps is bad. ❤️

Hi Shaitan. We've been working on getting Renegade support for the launcher, but progress has been slow because danpaul88 (our launcher guy) has been very busy getting married amongst other things. Our intentions are to get Renegade (with all of the servers) up onto the launcher so that people who enjoy W3D Hub Games can also enjoy Renegade. In October I sent you guys a PM asking what you thought the solution to our problem should be. This left the ball squarely in your court for you to make some demands so that we could form a plan together and move forward. The problem is that those demands never came through, so as far as we're concerned we've had nothing but radio silence from RC and MPF on the matter since October. As for the block, part of IA's inherent design is that it can be joined from the IA client on the W3D Hub Launcher or the Renegade client, allowing for a wider potential player base. Here are my notes from the PM I sent you on the matter: So, with that in mind, we will be trying our best to add Renegade to our launcher, but you've got to understand that this does take time. As for covering our asses legally, this is incredibly hard to do when there is a third-party tool out there (mixcheck) that is able to convert heavily modded Renegade builds into full Renegade builds by re-downloading the base mix files and repairing them. Did you know that you can get a fully working copy of Renegade from the freely available Renegade multiplayer demo if you install Scripts 4.6 on top of it and run mixcheck? Food for thought. dblaney asked us how to get his game on the launcher and we helped him. That was about it. There were no talks about any other platforms (RenList) that Apex would be hosted on, because that was really dblaney and Kaskin's decision to make. As I mentioned in my earlier comment, our long-term goal is to include Renegade on the launcher in a way that is legal. I'd like to know what we can do to satisfy you and the others in the meantime whilst we work on this solution. No offence, but I see a lot of soapboxing and shouting about how we've done a bad thing, but not a lot of ideas or solutions coming from you guys to help us all fix the problem and get us past this. Tell us clearly what you want and we can discuss it. As it turns out I was wrong. EA does give a shit about old games. I sent them a tip last year about a website called Abandonia that was hosting full isos of RA2, Renegade and Generals. When I went to check back late last year, I had seen that they had been removed, which suggests to me that they got a C&D sent to them. I wouldn't underestimate EA legal, since all it takes is one tip-off for the lawyers to come running. I'm not really concerned who blocked the server really. I just want to work towards a solution to this problem instead of bickering about it. I'm not sure what you're talking about with the scripts there. Scripts 5.0 doesn't support Windows XP at all. If you meant to say 4.x the thread wasn't due to a lack of caring, but more of a curiosity surrounding what portion of the player base still made use of Windows XP. If you read the posts in that thread it's never once suggested that XP was to be dropped because of a lack of caring. You do what you like, but just know that my offer of a solution still stands. Here's another quote from that PM with my request for ideas. There's no need to threaten drastic measures if we can find something that suits all of us. I just want to also take this opportunity to ask that you please refrain from venting these issues in public. We're all reasonable people here, so there's no need to call us out when what we all want can be achieved through PM. Let's find solutions, not more problems.

Pretty much this. If you’re going to change the game in that focus, you might as well switch engines!

I feel that W3D games (and renegade) have their own niche, and that niche should be catered to rather than making mechanics like most other games. While it's true that sticking too close to the roots can be a bad thing, not honoring them is likewise a bad move IMO. That means by default I'm skeptical of changes, but I'll also acknowledge there's probably room for improvement. On the specific items on the table: Aim down sights - fine, as long as it doesn't remove secondary fires. Right click is kind of the "king" for both those functions, but assuming one or both features were rebindable there's really no problem. Bullet damage dropoff - The current range system isn't perfect, but I think it's one of the things that make these games unique and I'd want it preserved. Recoil - It's fine as long as it's not overdone. Doing it too much would be changing things too much. Advanced reload mechanics - Hard to comment without more specific examples. Partial reload of a shotgun is probably fine. If something's creative an ADDs to a weapon/unit, then sure, but I'd take it on a case by case basis. Maybe something like the captain "double charging" the M60 by linking extra ammo with a second reload. That could be fine. It really depends on the specifics though.

That's a very vague request. What does equal footing mean to you? Like what do we have to do in order to achieve equal footing? Please be specific, at this stage I can only guess what you mean. Do you want Renegade and all of the servers on the launcher? If so, we are working on it. If not, please tell me in simple terms what you mean and what you would like us to do. Also the questions, for the third time, are: I would really appreciate it if you took the time to answer these, as it would save us all from a lot of trouble.

Understand that there is not "a mod team", W3DHub is a collection of W3D based projects (and quite possibly with more on the way), managed by their respective project leaders. For the creators, this is their hobby, they do this in their spare time for their own entertainment and at their own expenses (none of this is free). They are not here to work on projects they have no connection with, and forcing them to do so will get poor results, as there would be a lot less passion going into the work. We all would love to see projects like AR release sooner rather than later, but we're limited by what individual people can work on. Take me for example, I am currently trying to find time for an AR level and documenting the process, but I am still very much limited by factors such as time and motivation, and these have to align for a hobby project.

I actually got a UE4 project started up a few months ago, that's being worked on right now. Permission from EA and all that. Most people on that project are people who wanted to move engines a while back, mixed with people who still work on the projects here as well. The people who are still here working on these project have every right to do so. They've had the options to move for years, but feel comfortable here. I know it's frustrating, but that's just what they want to do. Didn't want to make it public like this, but just know that things are cooking on other engines.

Have a read of the other points I mentioned and try not to focus on just one. Moving to a new engine is not a good idea collectively because of all of those things. It's like telling the Mental Omega team that they should move to the C&C3 SAGE engine or the OpenRA guys that they should be using UE4. It's just not gonna happen.

In some ways you're right. RenForums is a ghost town and there are only a handful of server communities left hosting servers which have definitely seen better days. Renegade as it stands is pretty dead. That's why we got some retaliation when we launched Interim Apex; the owners of those stock servers didn't appreciate the competition that we brought into their space and our server was subsequently blacklisted by the owners of the RenList server. That being said, we aren't a traditional Renegade community. We put our focus into improving the engine rather than hosting stock Renegade content; our latest version of the scripts project (version 5.0) doesn't event support base Renegade anymore. This year though, we do plan to support Renegade a bit better, in order to try and unify the communities a bit more. As it stands, I feel we are distrusted by communities such as MPF and Rencorner, which works against us, but I hope we can change our image for the better in the coming year. As for recoil, we've actually been talking about whether we should implement it or not. We have quite an amazing level of flexibility for new features these days and it's definitely something that hasn't gone unnoticed. The community makes the game, but the game also makes the community. There's a lot of charm in Renegade, but something that it does incredibly well in particular is vehicular combat. There were still games being released 10+ years afterwards that has worse vehicle implementation than Renegade. What we should definitely look to do is expand outwards, but also try and heal these wounds as you say, so that we may move forward as a community that is a fair bit more united than it is currently. I honestly don't feel that we are a laughing stock. Who's laughing at us right now? It's certainly not the rest of the C&C community or EA. I disagree about the 2000s being less PC than today though. I'm not sure if you were around in the APB/BHP community during the 2000's, but it was a really wonderful place to be (despite Aircrafkiller banning anyone who looked at him in a funny way). We had a large community who regularly played (and modded) our games, but also respected each other thanks to a moderation team that kept shitposting to a minimum and thoroughly enforced the community guidelines. Anyone who said the N word in-game or on IRC was instantly banned. You can imagine the cry of "CENSORSHIP + MUH FREE SPEECH THO" from the Grillers if that were to happen today though. I remember that time too and you're right, it was great! Unfortunately MP-Gaming has been dead of nearly a decade now and we're the only community hosting APB. MPF did a approach us about hosting an APB server, however we refused because the population in APB was so small that it didn't warrant an extra server and we also had doubts about MPF leaving the APB gameplay experience in-tact, given their track record with previous servers and questionable mods. I'd say this, AR has always been my passion project, but it has most certainly also been a source of portfolio material for me. These projects got me into the games industry and have introduced me to so many wonderful new friends from around the world. Your comment about Game Dev College rejects is rather shortsighted seeing as a large majority of our dev team are now working professionals, with a significant amount of our new code team hires being skilled professional programmers. To your last point though, it does make me realise something; we aren't as transparent with our team structure and "who's working on what" than we used to be, which may be a contributing factor to your comments. Granted, it does take us a long time to get our arses into gear and make content, but the split across the teams is a bit more polarising than you might think. The new Ground Zero project, for example, is being entirely developed by @Killing_You and @Ice (so far), who have never really held any sole allegiance to any particular projects before. KY has previously worked on audio a lot, but this is the first project that he will be doing the unit and structure work for, making this a new learning experience for him; as well as a cool game for you guys. ICE is a military specialist with 3D skills, which he will largely be carrying over to GZ. This thread will definitely be a talking point in the upcoming meeting, so thanks for posting. We do have some fairly lofty plans brewing for wider C&C community integration, but I'm not really at liberty to talk about those yet. Rest assured though, we've heard you and we will be discussing our next moves carefully. Also, AR will never end as long as I live. Come at me! The thing is, we quite like developing for the Renegade W3D Engine. This is the main reason amongst these other ones: UDK is now essentially a dead game engine because of UE4. Renegade X is on UDK, but barely has more players than stock Renegade. The draw to change engines just isn't worth it. Moving to UE4/UDK would leave us with a very high dependency on creating current/last generation art assets that require specific pipelines; e.g. PBR (Physically Based Rendering) or Normal/Specular. We don't have a team who knows how to create such assets, as we develop solely using diffuse maps. Moving engine would require to either buy or create animations for infantry, We currently have no animators on the team. Moving engine would throw away the years of work we have put into the codebase; essentially putting our code team into a position where they have to code the most basic Renegade gameplay elements (i.e Harvesting, Buildings, Purchase System) back into the new engine, which would take a lot of time and effort. Little-to-nobody on our staff roster knows how to use engines like UDK or UE4. We would have to re-learn a lot of things to become competent again. We do this in our spare time. It's not like we're being paid to make these games. Part of the reason we make these games is because we enjoy working with the engine and improving it as a hobby. Other than better graphics (which we can't have due to lack of artists), I don't exactly know why the suggestions to switch engine game time and time again. It's just not realistic. Please take discussion surrounding the BBQ Grille to a different thread instead of derailing this one. Cheers!

Well, running you around in circles isn't our intention! We'll bring this communication error up with the devs and see what happened. Sorry you had that experience.

Question is if we want to turn the games into battlefield/COD, but personally I prefer the arcade easy feeling we have.

I preferred no-recoil in w3d as opposed to that BS recoil counter strike has 15 years ago and I still prefer no recoil now.

All the scripts files created by Zunnie were removed by me on 24/05/2013 in a commit titled "Remove all the useless scripts from zunnie". All of the ones that were being used were actually replaced by better scripts written by other scripts developers (including myself). The scripts codebase (including 4.x and IA) is not using any code written by Zunnie anymore (in any form)

As far as I am aware all the scripts made by Zunnie are gone from our codebase.

Which devs did you speak to? And which changes in particular are you not satisfied with?

I wasn't aware of this, to be honest. It's definitely something we could look into. We'd be insane not to!

Actions do speak louder than words. However, I for one don't judge a mod by graphics alone. For example, these guys got a functional chronotank complete with a teleport-targeting map into W3D. A selling point for UDK wouldn't just be that it looks better, but you'd be wise to make an argument for the greater possibilities and ease-of-functionality. Consider what features APB/TSR/AR could have but are limited by W3D, and consider if UDK could support such pipedreams. Take it as a challenge if you like. Either way, seeing C&C FPS progress on more engine platforms will most likely be a spark to the greater modding community even if it doesn't affect the dev team here. I think proving that it's possible and showcasing the possibilities will bond the community together in a way it desperately needs.

You can guarantee a functioning port? Do you know how to create models? Export them from w3d and import them into UE4? Do you know if it's possible to convert diffuse maps to specular or PBR? If it isn't, do you know how to create those kinds of maps that are demanded by UE4? Do you know how to animate models with more advanced technique than w3d currently needs? If you can do all that, then why not do it yourself--and by that I mean showcase things like APB logic in UE4, apply to staff team, offer to teach fellow developers, etc. Instead of being hostile towards dev-fans who work on these mods in their spare time and are curious about how far they can take the w3d engine, why not dig deeper and find out about personal goals and ambitions? Communication and transparency is a two-way street. We've stated already that we'd like to do a better job of it on our end, but hostility from the other end isn't productive towards the common goal.

It's better to at least have an open discussion about, instead of sitting in a TS channel complaining about the issues you have with the game. Where the devs working on it see it, and other people can throw in their two cents.

Interim-Apex is hosted by W3DHub, but the dev team is different. You want to talk to @Kaskins.

So, I am trying to say, that W3D Hub as a community should also work more to expand their auditory, to show good games. Just like in that song from Tiberium Dawn OST, remember? "Reaching out to the other worlds!" Why not to bring back the golden age of Westwood Studios? 😃

Give me a break. Nobody is going to your house to arrest you for what you posted into that channel. Nor did the shitposting and any humanitarian actions depend on each other. This kind of rhetoric makes the concept of "free speech" a joke. While there are people out there fighting actual legal battles for real violations of free expression, here we are, arguing over the fact that a Discord channel got axed for being full of content people don't want to associate themselves with. If you want, I can offer my own experiences: not long ago, a Discord server I'm a member of was nearly axed by Discord staff itself over someone reporting it for inappropriate content. Whoever did it was probably a troll, but it was a difficult case to convince the admins, mainly due to a lot of people (un)ironically posting alt-right memes and whatnot in that server. So it's not even just a thing our staff might take issues with, Discord itself does not like this kind of stuff. You don't like it, take it up with them. Personally, I'd rather not see the W3D server get dropped over something like this. And as others have pointed it out, we are going off topic, so that's my last bit of input on that subject.

FREE SPEECH. S H U T - I T - D O W N This is the type of thinking that turned it from ironic to unironic. It's not exactly officially approved, it's just put into its own containment board. Everyone who goes BUT MUH RACZISM missed stuff like us trying to save bakfiets from homelessness or the daily conversation we had about anything and everything. It was a place to freely express opinions and debate ANYTHING. Shutting that type of thing down just gives credence to the points made by all the people whom these certain people have an issue with. All they had to do was join, and put them in their place if they felt so strongly, anyone was free to do so. Yah-Nosh, the majority of the Renegade community are huge advocates of freedom of expression. I was blamed as a ring leader for saying things I've said for years (and everyone else has) that are suddenly unfashionable or unacceptable because a few sensitive sallys who can't be bothered to take it up with me directly have to go tell the playground monitors on me. That's a separate issue though. If you didn't like the Grille, then you didn't need to even look at it. It's like being mad people are saying things you don't like somewhere you don't even have to frequent and imposing your will on that. That's what I will never get, this autistic obsession of controlling how other people conduct themselves. Like I said before, it's something no other Renegade communities have, and it was a community favourite among many regulars. If you didn't like it, you should have muted it immediately and forgot about it. Existence doesn't = approval of the boards content. Containment boards are a strategy utilized by online communities since I first started posting online back in 2005.

The very first time I poked my head in there, I was immediately greeted by /pol/-tier shitposting. I fail to see how such content is so desperately needed to keep the Renegade community together. And yes, one can just mute it, except its existence essentially means it has the W3D seal of approval. And since we're talking "community" and how to retain it, maybe there are members of the community who aren't pleased by it being approved. And maybe it just happens to be something that the people who make the mods don't want to be associated with. If the overwhelming majority of the Renegade community demands that such channels be left alone, then it can be a discussion. Until then, there's tons of other places where you can share this kind of content all you want.

>Yikes Uh, if you didn't like it. Don't look at it? It had an NSFW sticker and prompt on it for a reason. You waived liability by clicking on it and the channel followed the rules laid out by the discord TOS. On BBQ GRILLE 2.0 I don't like some channels that were added and I do something incredible. I MUTE IT AND HIDE IT. I don't virtue signal and tell people they can't do their own thing and have fun while showing contempt and lording over them with a holier than thou attitude. Jesus, self awareness goes a long way. FRAYDO's in here right now tho? I answer to FRAYDO Like I've said before, grille removal is a symptom of a deeper problem.This is gas lighting and ignoring the root issue which is the splintering of the community.

Well, one of the reasons I joined was to implement that into the game, along with better gunplay in general. So I hope this part of your concerns will be addressed soon.

I love Hostile Waters and Siege, especially now. Hostile Waters is a showcase map for Navy and Air, and it's awesome. I recommend Chinooks be added (to both teams) if they aren't already. Allies have the cruiser, the mammoth tank of the sea. Allies get in formation with a massive fleet to curbstomp the Soviets who are busy practicing flying MiGs, lol. Soviets need to use more attack/missile submarines to keep the superior allied navy fleet at bay, while chipping away at the Allied base's AA guns, so they can send in MiG strikes/Chinook raids. Siege is epic with 20+ players, Chrono Tanks teleporting around flanking soviet armor, rocket infantry occupying the castle walls forcing rifle soldiers to get in the castle and kill them, spies stealing people's airplanes, lol, WE NEED A GUARD DOG OR TWO TO PATROL THE AIRFIELD AND WAR FACTORY! My only gripe is the castle wall cannon's destruction animation is silly, lol, with the cannon flying straight up in the air like that. Raap, I like your maps, they seem to play very nicely now, Siege being the perfect Big Team Battle map, Hostile Waters being the perfect Big Team Battle Navy/Air map.

UM EXCUSE MY LANGUAGE BUT WHAT THE ACTUEL FUCK ,JUST WHY ITS NOT EVEN RELATED TO THIS TOPIC ,WHY ARE YOU STARTING THIS FUCKIGN DRAMA, NO I DINT START THIS YOU DID YOU FIRED A GUN INTO A GLASS HOUSE AND THE HOUSE HAS DONE NOTHING TO YOU SO WHAT THE FUCKING HELL MAN I ,HAVE DONE NOTHING AT ALL OUT ALL OF THIS SHIT ,AND YOU DECIDE TO DO THIS FUCKED UP SHITE. UM YEAH AND ALSO YOU CAN GO FUCK OFF BECAUSE THIS IS BULL SHIT AND I HAVE DONE NOTHING AT ALL. so what the fuck do you want , seeing this is offtopic or is it