Raap

Hit a slight delay due to the insane tropical weather in my country, it is record-breaking heat and it hasn't rained a drop in three weeks, all of which is not normal for my otherwise rainy country! I can likely deliver tomorrow, so this should be up for testing in a near-future patch. Lets see if increased naval staying power is the thing that pushes the gameplay more aggressively forward. Worth noting is that this is my personal last attempt at solving the issues with HW. I've stated to Pushwall that I'd rather see the map put out of active rotation than to spend a lot of time changing the level geometry.

So yeah I'm doing this Naval Repair Bay thing. Core model complete, missing some detail props such as barrels and lighting, a capture terminal (I'm hoping to re-use some assets for this), and in-game logic implementation. All in all it is not far from completion. I had to include two modified textures and two new ones as for example we had no fishing net textures. Edit: I had to raise the scale by aprox 20% (included in the above picture), now a Naval Transport can fit into the repair bay completely.

Congratulations man, you get to work on something you loved back in the day. This is incredibly rare especially in the game development industry, so you pretty much won a gambling box lottery! I remember some of your earlier Renegade levels which were inspired by that franchise. Sometimes I wish I pursued a carrier in game design myself, but alas, "reasons", and the fact they have a nasty way of happening. Edit: While I do not officially work in the game development industry, I've done a lot of "consulting" work for various companies and start-ups. I've just not yet found a company and game with a vision I can get behind on a personal level, and drop what I am currently doing to jump in. So, hooray, I'm very slightly relevant! Maybe! Alright, I'll just be quiet now. Edit2: Unfortunately a few minutes into the video and the audio becomes so bad I actually cannot hear what you're saying!

Yeah, well, getting killed by me is generally a pretty embarrassing situation, given that on my kill score my most slain opponent is Raap.

Check the health bar and then check the match timer. xD

Thing is, Yaks are an even bigger achievement when it comes to unit gameplay. Whenever an updated trailer is ever produced, this unit should absolutely get two scenes; Pilot and target points of view. Anyhow, always good to see some external recognition, and as always good job to Pushwall and the W3DHub team for keeping the project alive and moving.

I started to tinker with the idea of what an amphibious capturable naval repair bay would look like, and after some quick iterations I settled on a design, here is the draft: It's missing a lot of work but this is the basic idea, enough space on two sides for a naval transport to dock, enough space near the repair crane for repairs, enough space below for subs to repair as well, and the control hub is covered in a little cabin. Any gaps in terrain would be cosmetic, you will be able to walk over this quite easily. The few assets I plopped down are modular; A destruction animation wouldn't be out of the question and this structure could then even serve as naval equivalent of a Refill Pad, if demand for that ever existed (unlikely). It could also be vehicle you have to deploy at sea to gain the repair functionalities, but that is a whole lot of animation work I'm not ready to delve into for just an experiment... So in all likelihood this would just be a static capturable objective.

On the topic on tech naval repair bays: I can quite quickly make a 3D asset for this, but here is the catch: It'd have to be an amphibious construction. Anything that requires terrain embedding would also require significant level terrain adjustments that I do not have the time for (plus changing the icebergs is a painful process due to how they are created). The good news? Anything amphibious without terrain requirements could very easily be added, removed, or relocated across a water body. Is there really enough interest in this? I could set it up as my current task priority.

All fair points. Well. Then let's do the opposite and add a Missile Silo, because screw all logic! Edit: double posterino because quote is broken.

The Soviets use it just as often.

Tanya was an experiment from the very latest patch, it didn't exist prior (the map was T4 prior to this). Suffice it to say I've heard no positive commentary on her inclusion and I share that sentiment. However this doesn't really handle the rest of the criticism. If core gameplay deviation is no longer appreciated by the CURRENT player base then for HW there is no real redemption, save perhaps for hoping smart people like @jonwil can improve network play interaction when it comes to horizontal elevator mechanics, because then I could include the cart rail network that was going to connect the two islands via underground caves. Siege, I've seen the last two matches end in decisive victories for both teams, one was a minute away from victory by base destruction. Perhaps we're overthinking Siege, and maybe we need to lose a building or two per base. It is evident that big bases do not work. Up on the chopping block would likely be the Power Plant and/or Construction Yard, I'm leaning towards Power Plants as there are still a lot of defenses and support buildings, and manually repairing all of them is a pain in the arse. Edit: These things:

Could easily replace the Construction Yards (noting the controller ID's before doing so), and updating the scripts referring to a Construction Yard controller ID. It would speed up the game in the sense that automated repairs are gone. However... I do not know if a Missile Silo is going to add a lot to the game, it'd be like "Tanya for EVERYBODY!!!", and it will just increase the problematic suicide helicopter drops. In fact, there are a lot of spots on the naval buildings where a flare would be incredibly difficult to disarm. @Threve Note that both maps intentionally deviate from core gameplay as there was requests for gameplay diversity dating back ti pre-Beta. HW specifically was actually brought back to Delta based on a LOT of requests. It would seem that, put simply, the people who originally liked deviating gameplay per map, are no longer playing the game.

The only problem I have with crates - dev point of view - is the immense clutter it creates within the tool world view. Perhaps that could be solved in Mammoth via a display toggle though? Hostile Water's iceberg crates for example create a gigantic web of lines. Now imagine having even more of that in all maps, you'd have a hard time using the editor to see your level, and there would be plenty of issues with object selection as well. That's why I hoped for something more automated.

Random thought: We will probably always have a discussion that XYZ infantry unit needs XYZ weapon, and that doing so is against RAlism or not doing so is immersion breaking. What if we can win on multiple fronts with one solution? What if we added properly randomized crate spawners akin to Red Alert multiplayer/skirmish matches? Not the static spawns we use now in select maps, but countless possible spawning locations of a crate containing non-game breaking PERKS and SECONDARY weaponry? So this would mean: - Pistols of different variations, and possible future secondary style weaponry that do not presently fit on a unit loud-out but do fit the RA universe. Weaponry designed to not replace a units primary weapon. - Perks, special buffs of varying magnitude and varying duration. For example you might loot an Iron Curtain effect that lasts for 5 seconds, or a speed upgrade that lasts for 20 seconds, or a jet-powered-uberkov-jump that lasts for 30 seconds. You name it, as long as the duration is limited, anything becomes easy to balance. The problem? I'm quite sure we have no code for limited duration power-ups laying around, and the concept of spawning a preset (crate) in a random location also does not exist. But these might be solvable topics - if the idea itself holds merit. Thoughts?

I think this proves one thing, topics with trailers get more attention. Gotta get them shinies out!

I could live in this world.

I'd take any form of tinting - even if it is several meters below the water surfaces - over no tinting at all. I mainly look at HW for this one as it is one of the few maps where one can relatively commonly die to a big fall, such as when jumping off the icebergs. The game looks very silly when you die down there with clear vision. Speaking of clear vision, any such tinting effect should perhaps be paired with temporarily fog adjustments to limit vision further? No idea how hard that is to add especially when I will personally be applying ini based settings from here onward due to the greater flexibility there, and I don't think scripts can copy ini settings at the moment.

Yeah the lack of kills always bothered me as well, it made naval combat very unsatisfying. Will be good to see this resolved! As for helicopters, I think it might be too much work to apply the "shore" logic based on elevation from terrain (it would require a messy script zone mesh on each air-enabled map). By the way, is there a way to stop a dead infantry player from falling? Because if you lose your naval unit or helicopter at the moment you go into a free-fall through "water" which just looks really weird. I also think that if you blow up while in a helicopter you should probably just die instantly regardless unless you eject manually before that. Lastly, any chance we can get the blue screen tint back on infantry that enter the water zone?

Consider using quotes then, as you posted below me while commenting on the same subject.

The pistol was nowhere near as effective as alternative anti-personnel weaponry, but it was much more usable than hoping that your rocket's or RPG's landed direct hits. This is the point I'm trying to highlight, it feels very weird to be shooting anti-vehicle weaponry at infantry when the game always tells you not to do so, except until now, because these units have no ways to fight besides using a hammer for a delicate task. Anyhow, I said my piece.

Thing is, from a gameplay point of view it logically makes zero sense to be using an anti-personnel vehicle to deal with the heaviest tank in the game. But when you have an infantry unit who found enough space on his back for two rocket/RPG launchers, yet somehow didn't think of bringing a basic pistol to deal with very common scenarios, the game starts to get a little silly, borderline RPG genre, using rock-paper-scissors with very little individual skill breathing room to break that mold. It makes the game feel like it forces teamplay in a bad way when it should be encouraged naturally through more interesting designs instead. Anyhow, not my game, not my decision, just my 2c!

How I approach everything (not just APB design) is that everything should be judged by its own merits. If something isn't fun or incomplete without something separately, then in my opinion something is wrong. Obviously nothing is ever truly so black/white, but it is just my personal outlook on anything gaming related. I also do not believe in locking yourself into corners because of arbitrary reasoning. It is why I never really understood the "RAlism" concept, because from my point of view the focus should just be about making a game as enjoyable as possible; Everything else is irrelevant. As for intentionally making units have shortcomings to encourage team play, to me this forced teamplay isn't going to make for a more enjoyable game, and instead, become a more frustrating experience to the average player. It's a long topic to get into, but I am not a developer for this game, and it is also way too hot in my country right now for me to delve deep into my thoughts on the matter, so I'll have to cut back and say I simply judge everything on its own merits - as this is what most typical players do.

I would be surprised if you had all of them. There were a lot of weird designs floating around back then!

I get your concern. Something just doesn't feel right in the unit gameplay right now, to me.

Hah, no AircraftKiller made the original Iron Curtain, it was in my pile o' files from back then. Pretty sure I lost all those files by now and even if I didn't, we can do better now since the engine can take a bit more detail. Side note, the main challenge with the Iron Curtain was never the model, but the red glow effect. Edit: Wouldn't surprise me if a whole bunch of other assets got lost over time. Did you know there were like 10 or so unfinished maps from the 9935 - beta days? Probably more than that. But not to worry, what made up a "map" back in those days is what we'd call "an early draft of the basic design" today. Go back to REBARN! Oh man that was such a silly period. Competition is one thing but it got a little weird at times...