Raap

Same outcome would happen in any population, I'd wager. It takes very little effort to suicide a Longbow into the ASP and all it takes for it to work is a ~40 second time window where coincidentally no one looks or not enough players can deal with a Tanya unit (a single Soviet infantry unit typically dies in this scenario). Which just doesn't leave enough response time. That said, more runs will give a more clear picture. I also think people left because it was getting late, each round saw players leaving prior to that point last night. I just cannot always be around to observe it myself. I only happened to play so long because it is insanely hot in my country and even sleeping is a challenge!

Only @Pushwall can decide this as he manages the project. But something to keep in mind here is that the art assets we create use an older version of 3DS Max (8) which dates back to, I believe, 2006. This might cause issues in any modern application usage and will certainly require some 3DS Max tinkering of your own. Secondly all our assets have their textures and materials slapped on them via a plugin in said old 3DS Max software. Newer versions will not know how to deal with this and you will have to re-apply everything. The UVW coordinates however should still be good, so unwrapping won't be needed. So the assets might not even be useful to you.

I think the RPG/Rocket dude needs his pistol back, I found combat to be very "tedious" trying to get direct hits with a slow moving projectile while dancing like a madman between reloads to literally try and dodge bullets. The splash damage just isn't good damage for killing anyone except for trying to finish of a low health runner. Just my 2c.

I think it can safely be said that Tanya does not work on HW unless there was a Flame Tower inside the ASP. Beyond that, still not getting a whole lot of feedback. If people keep disliking both maps without saying why, then just pull them out of the game permanently. I'll just write it off as a loss. Edit: Soviet SAM Sites should be placed ON the walls, they are far too easy to C4 via unlimited refils provided by Naval Transports. Allied AA Guns are already more protected from this.

A unit info page would help. AFAIK there isn't enough space available for the in-game help pop-up? Or maybe the correct path to take is making the help pop-up contain basic text formatting functionalities and sufficient space?

It should still have more health at least, right? But yeah, thing to remember is why I made it in the first place; The economy was too slow, and in the event your team slacked on iceberg duty, the old Ore Silo wasn't enough income to actually make your team able to... play the match. Of course since then, naval units had a small cost reduction, but nonetheless the old economic problem might resurface with this. Might want to keep an eye on the first few matches.

So uh... It's an Ore Silo now?

Yeah, as I said, I'm all for merging units and simplifying the current roster of units, or at the very least bring the number of units of both teams closer to each other. The Allies in particular got significant roster bloat with very niche units. Better to merge those which make sense and have those combinations result in very fun units to play. Thieves barely function anyhow. By the time one can be purchased and reach a Refinery/Silo, the Soviets will have AP mined them to hell. The unit only functions to punish a Soviet team who did not do this, creating a lot of unneeded pressure on the Soviet team during the early game. That said, I also think the stealing mechanic itself needs to scale based on population. In large games the amount of stolen credits can be so massive that it completely flips a match into Allied favor... And that is also where the Thief stops being useful, it is a one trick pony that is not fun to deal with on the receiving end.

I think I said it before somewhere, but either way, I'd rather see the unit replaced entirely. A unit focused on niche weaponry is limited to what that weaponry can realistically deal with until it becomes something else. There are plenty of more interesting unit concepts to slip into the position of the Grenadier, and people who only want to keep it due to "RAlism" need to understand that what works in an RTS, does not always work in a shooter... A lesson that everyone who ever played APB must have learned by now. I mean conceptually the Grenadier is a unit concept that backs you into a very tight corner. You cannot give it too much damage to infantry because then it is just an alternative Flamethrower, you cannot give it too much damage to vehicles because it is too cheap for that and would just compete with rocket/RPG units whom are much better suited for those tasks (from both a gameplay and immersion point of view). And to make it effective against buildings/defenses, you need to turn it into superman, capable of throwing grenades 150 meters with a projectile you can hardly see. And then there are the grenade physics in W3D which are just broken, so the whole unit currently pretends to be something that it actually cannot even be. So yeah, axe the unit, that's what I would seriously be considering after everything else has been tried already. It just gives you breathing room in the unit roster to add roles that are actually needed and fun to play. If you truly want to keep the Grenadier, then make it an Allied unit to mirror the Soviet Flamethrower, and then the Soviets just lose a unit. I prefer a universal removal however because the Grenade weapon type still suffers from all the other problems... Plus when it comes to cutting units, it should really be done for both sides, since the Allied roster for both vehicles and infantry is already larger than the Soviet one. --- And speaking of a similar topic, axe the Radar Jammer by merging it into the MGG. Just like the Grenadier, the RJ is too much of a niche unit, and also incredibly unrewarding to use (and way too easy to find and destroy if you didn't already do so while it is on route to the Soviet base). The Soviets got their Radar Jamming tech built into the Tesla Tank so why can the Allies not get the same treatment? Again, this would help with some of the purchase roster bloat as well. Art-wise, just use the RJ model, and slap a Gap tower on it next to the spinning dish (from the base defense version). The MMG model is ancient anyways! In all naming references the unit would still be an MGG and the term Radar Jammer would stop being used. Gameplay bonus: You could consider deploying the MGG for the radar functionality, as well as a stationary unmanned Gap field, allowing you to defend or repair your MGG at the cost of keeping it in one place. Either way it adds more depth to a single vehicle.

As hilarious as that is, I always thought being in the underwater zone should disable infantry weapons (as well as make your screen blue again)!

Your Reddit post in r/gaming was removed due to: 6.8 No Direct Links to Old Content - Any content that was created more than 1 year ago cannot be directly linked as a submission. This includes reviews, analysis, previews, trailers, etc. If you would like to use old content as context for a discussion, you may link to it inside a self-post as part of the framing for the discussion topic (so long as you also provide a full topic of discussion rather than just linking to the content). This rule only applies to submissions and not to comments. Pretty bizarre rule to have but coincidentally a topic we discussed in this very thread. Which is unfortunate because it was the most productive discussion Reddit post of the three you created. Edit: It might be worth asking their moderation team for a free pass given this is a free project, however, by then the topic won't be front-page any longer. So perhaps it's too much hassle for what it is worth.

Speaking of water, APB uses like 20 different standards for creating this. Every map does it differently and it has a lot to do with the project being old and a lot of hands having worked on the environments over the years. Creating good water is hard. I think the water on Hostile Waters (island shores) is probably the best I've personally been able to get it, but the problem with it is that it is VERY time consuming to create as every wave is a manually placed mesh aligned with the terrain, and the caustics effect could be better as well (unfortunately grid mapping is a no-go for large resolutions). Still, the bright, near-neon colored water seen in some of the older clips is quite dated indeed!

Anyhow, I agree with your sentiment, notable updates on both the engine front (to appeal to potential developers), as well as the games, should be broadcast a little more. A few simple link cross-posts is really all that is required. I do not really think the graphics are that bad for APB (in most cases), and I've first hand demonstrated the engine itself can handle quite a bit of pure model and texture detail work. I imagine if we had better lighting, most graphical criticism will go away since at that point W3D games could pass for stylized graphics - which, at least in my personal usage, is the case.

I think r/games should probably be left given the toxicity there. A letter from a lawyer, haha what a guy. Edit: Looks like he deleted his post. He basically called it a unity asset flip and suggested EA would be shutting it down. Quite a statement to make considering zero assets were flipped to create it, unity isn't used, and EA legally agreed to allow stand-alone releases a decade ago as long as it remained non-profit.

Wouldn't want to be the guy who gets killed by a street sweeper. But hey at least you'll be a very clean corpse, hooray for bright sides.

Shorter attention span users are the type of users you reel in with shiny graphics. You do not want those people as W3DHub projects cannot focus on purely graphics, so you need to hook them via gameplay. The original extended trailer did so quite well, just minus a few very specific clips. And yeah, a new trailer shouldn't even be on YOUR list given that you got other things to worry about. But I'm sure someone with the software licences could take your raw trailer data and replace a few of the really rough clips! Edit: I'm NOT saying the shorter trailer is bad by the way, to be clear. My personal preference is simply for more footage (as long as it isn't a long drawn out video going past 5+ minutes).

( WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE TEXTURES!?!? )

I always link the extended trailer as well. I'm not sure why the shorter version is prominently used by 'official posts'. My only issue with the trailer footage is the naval battles, particularly the water 'wake' effects, they look so horribly out of place - and still do within the game today. I guess it's been a low priority issue to solve (it is related to particle effects not taking on level lighting correctly). I'd also have loved some Yak footage tossed in to replace a few generic clips... Maybe @OWA can do an updated trailer with some updated segments? (probably best done after the particle issue is solved).

Stealth power-ups always required a bit of trickery to set up. They still got issues in APB as well due to conflicting with the Gap logic (or used to, at least). Bit of a side note, and this might not be relevant what so ever for your Renegade levels, but W3DHub and Renegade no longer use the same scripts version. So while you might not notice it now, there could be a time where things are done notably different in W3D projects compared to Renegade projects.

I kinda wish we had a few more crate-unique toys for such purposes, such as various "short-fuse flare/device" types that did "things" like dropping bombs. Completely useless against anything that isn't a static target. Maybe some weaponry that uses proximity or remote logic (not C4), as those have been unused in APB outside of Minelayers. All of the actual effects could be non-lethal to players and be more orientated towards other tasks. Just tossing some thoughts. Think of power-up crates as a potential testbed. If certain mechanics end up extremely popular, you could promote them to a class ability/weapon. Otherwise, no real harm done since they are crate power-ups which inherently come with the benefit of being non-spammable.

Mortar-rockets sounds like a neat weapon system for a Soviet vehicle to replace the "Soviet Ranger" with . Although... I guess they would need a default function where if they got no lock-on target, they dumb-fire downwards instead of going into the sky until they expire. @FRAYDO appreciate it. My "problem" is that I try to break away from traditions within the standard gameplay, and HW is likely the biggest departure from it. This isn't always equally well received but it does serve as a testing ground for figuring out what people enjoy. So for my upcoming project (which is an asset salvage project originally), the core gameplay will involve protecting and attacking structures. This was the other purpose of this thread. Helping highlight what to avoid doing.

Nope, icebergs. Purely to deal with the map stigma and encourage more naval play. Maybe the tracking is enough though. Either way it'd be unfortunate if people came with another reason for not liking it... There is always something.

Imagine if naval transports were in fact physics objects you could walk or ride onto and shoot from. Makes me a little sad I had to cut the railway system from HW due to server stability concerns, as that would have been exactly this.

Top that off with two more SAM sites near the Silo's perhaps. It might be overkill but perhaps overkill is needed in this instance, to deal with the negative stigma the map suffered over the naval <-> air interaction rules. To remind; All you need to do for that is replace the silo capture scripts referring to a dummy preset, to an abandoned SAM site preset. Should you want to do that, of course.

Paranoid people jump to conclusions quickly. A sensible approach would have been to ask me what it was about, not performing a stoning. "Collaborating", come on Chop, that's a pretty crazy word choice for a few email exchanges that had noting to do with anything that could have been considered relevant to BHP or APB. For one reason or another the team was on edge over something unrelated to myself and I happened to be a convenient frustration release target. Edit: spelling herps ANYWAY! I did not want to bring up actual drama in a dead horse topic. I should have avoided mentioning this but I did, so I tried to clarify. To me it is all in the past, I hold no grudges. Sure I would have liked if things went differently but I'd like to think everyone had a reason for how they acted, even if they were objectively terrible reasons. I'm going to stop responding to this topic now as I think I explained it adequately.