Raap

ACK, aka @Synaesthesia was, at the time, being suspected of steering up drama (for the record, I never witnessed anything that would give credit to that bizarre theory). During this time I had my disagreement with how BHP was operating, and I also happened to have private dialog with ACK via email about some of his work. This was a friendly conversation not even remotely related to BHP or APB. Unfortunately, some people are vulnerable to extreme paranoia, so when someone "dug for info" and found I had a dialog with ACK, they (I won't mention names) kinda went from unfriendly to hostile quite quickly, making my decision to leave final. Wew, dredging up some old and long dead horses here!

That air dominates should be no surprise, Siege started development a decade ago with the purpose of being an airplane-enabled map, which is why the level design is so open. Of course, back in those days, there was also talk of Allied airplanes... So we're half way there after a decade! Fun side effect of this map requiring to be so open was the insane design challenge at making it look remotely decent. And unfortunately due to performance issues with older iterations, a lot of detail had to be cut. So now you're left with a map that only partially achieved its design goals from so long ago, while also having suffered a lot from unanticipated requirements. OH WELL!

At it's core, C&C RTS games were a sandbox. The game gave you a bunch of units and structures along with related mechanics but ultimately it was up to you, the player, how you went about utilizing any of the tools the game gave you. Two or more people, with their own strategies and tactics, fighting each other over bragging rights. The whole concept is truly this simple. Forget e-sports and crazy twitchy micro management. The original games offered a very accessible gaming experience that was very unique at the time, and even till this day there has not really been many games like C&C RTS games. Most RTS games fail to get any traction at all because they always miss one or more fundamental pillars that C&C games nailed down (and perhaps Westwood did so more by chance rather than intentionally). The RTS franchise as a whole has been completely tunnel vision focused on e-sports when there simply is no audience for this. For the onlooker, RTS games are a difficult to follow mess, and for the participant, the barrier to entry is massive because of the huge skill ceiling that comes with micro managing and fast reaction requirements. C&C games in particular had much more success in the hands of "the average player", the casual player that wanted to play some RTS for either story or a match versus some equally skilled opponents, or simply with friends. To most players, the over-designing of later RTS games did not add anything of value. All that really mattered was that factions were diverse and offered plenty of unique and fun units, structures, or mechanics. RA3 was a good example of over-designing, where so much time was wasted on making the units e-sports friendly, that in that process they forgot to focus on everything else, resulting in bland and forgettable units at best, and cringe-worthy units at worst. Naturally, earlier C&C games added upon that in terms of game setting, background stories, and general game character. It resulted that people gained a sense of ownership to these units and structures as they became more immersed into the universe. This isn't something many other games managed to emulate, because the traditional C&C themes were original and strong (until EA absolutely murdered all of this post C&C3). TLDR: C&C games are beautifully simple games. Later C&C games and other RTS games cannot reach the potential of the older games because game developers do not understand what made these games sell.

Enabling Chinooks would require re-positioning of some of the AA defenses as they are currently relatively restricted in their line of fire, with intentional blind spots. This is certainly mutually exclusive to T5 infantry. The reason why I disabled Chinooks originally was my concern that they would too easily bypass the defenses and icebergs, as well as being an 'opt-out' option of dealing with naval units. I am concerned that their inclusion wil result in nobody bothering with naval units any longer and at this point the map might as well be called Hostile Airways. And of course having Chinooks available does kind of render LST's obsolete unless LST's offered something that Chinooks do not offer. Being significantly cheaper helps but will it be enough during late game? It should be a strategic investment and not a default spam option. Edit: Maybe... Maybe there should be two additional capturable SAM Sites on the outskirts of the iceberg cluster? It would make this a little more challenging to pull off while also encouraging sending forth a landing unit to capture the SAM Site you're attempting to fly over. Could probably highlight the SAM Sites on the radar instead of the other objectives, or you could link the SAM Sites to the Ore Silo capture logic, these now use a dummy mesh for this (to avoid script crashes, although Dan fixed this crash later).

That dramatic death animation always amused me. Edit: His right leg looks broken though!

The island changes were done in the last revamp, based on feedback that the islands were too easy to assault, which used to be the main criticism the map was receiving... So how we go from that to them being too difficult to assault... I do not think this is the real problem. Besides, the only buildings truly unreachable are the Gem Silo's, as is intended. Gem Silo's were created as the economic fallback in the event your team cannot secure an iceberg silo, as well as ensuring the early game economy is not a snail simulator. As for powerup creates, feel free to axe them entirely or remove the weapons from them. That still leaves some credit packs and other things for flavor. They were added to help increase the value of holding the islands but it is pretty clear that there is already enough value without them. ... So in short: Siege: Option A: Removed the two outer cannons and adjust the central cannon primary weapon to fire at a shorter range. Option B: Keep all cannons but make Shrapnel Blast the only weapon mode (for both primary and secondary firing), reducing the role of the cannons purely to anti-infantry and close range anti-vehicle. This also means no more cannon anti-air wonder shots however. In both cases, remove the cannon game hint message as it becomes obsolete. If this still results in negative map feedback, the only option is to dry up the river entirely - literally, despite the severe loss of map aesthetics. Hostile Waters: Increase non-naval building damage taken from naval units by some percentage. Remove Engineers. Reduce the power of crates, or remove them entirely. For both maps ideally any terrain alterations can be avoided due to the time requirements that would go along with that. Edit: T5 infantry on HW might make the icebergs a Volkov Party.

Disable Engineers? I mean, the tech buildings no longer require them anyhow. Would require a unique purchase roster though, and that's always a pain in the arse...

Try popping it up on a singleplayer local match. It uses a lot of custom art and two semi-new buildings, along with capturable tech buildings.

I think that any further level design iteration will be hamstrung regardless due to the perception of power on the part of the cannons. So a first step would be to alter those somehow, as mentioned above. Keep in mind that level iteration can be time consuming. Siege is a little unwieldy, difficult to work with using the aged 3DS Max 8 software we use. So before anything is committed to, the design process has to be carefully finalized. The cannons are too much of a 'what if' as of now, so let's see what happens when that is resolved. As for HW, a notable lack of feedback might indicate that the map has not been played much since the last revamp it received. Maybe just switch it back into rotation manually when the population is 20+?

Well, shiet. Easy fix though? Lower the projectile lifetime and/or increase projectile gravity. OR Keep all cannons and make Shrapnel Blast the only firing option? That might actually be more fun.

Yeah, ok. Maybe try removing the two outer cannons for now. The internal one should be fine given that it cannot reach bases. It is true both maps were certainly made with bigger populations in mind. HW can be a real hand full to manage both the icebergs as well as defending your naval building AS WELL AS CONTROLLING THE SEA amagahd too many things (hey guess what, there was even another bonus objective in design phases that involved capturable gun emplacements to take down off-map naval convoys of your opposing team, SURE GLAD I AXED THAT!). My biggest take on this is that non-standard maps should not be created ever again. So, this means that my current 'asset salvage project' will have to included bases. Fortunately, I have enough room in the map to do so. I wonder, what do you guys think of a Missile Silo in the middle of the map, two teams fighting for control over it and after some time it fires at the ene--- oh, what? EA did this? Oh okay, guess no Missile Silo's for Dread Plateau...

Hey guys, I was digging through the server statistics to find some information on what works well in the current gameplay meta and what should be avoided. Turns out, Siege and Hostile Waters are the least played maps (especially HW), the only maps less played are not in the default rotation but admin-triggered special maps. So while I won't be able to do major reworks on these maps, I cannot help but feel the need to ask, given that these were my contributions, what the problems are within the gameplay on these maps today? For Siege I already know that most rounds end via time-out. This is very unpopular but unfortunately it is how the map was designed intentionally. How has the game been since Pushwall added the extra bridges? The data here is hard to read as there is no patch filtering available. Did the extra route make the map more enjoyable and less meat-grindy? Whatever the answer, know that I will not create tug-o-war style maps again given their lack of popularity. And how is Hostile Waters nowadays? I noticed it is barely being played, despite having received more revamps than most maps in the history of APB (YES! I BEAT FOI'S RECORD!?!?). I brought it back from the pre-Beta days based on a LOT of requests when Delta launched, I redesigned it from scratch, and overhauled it twice afterwards. It uses experimental gameplay and graphical effects and all of this creates a very non-standard gameplay - could this be the simple fact that non-standard gameplay just isn't enjoyed enough by most people? Or is it something else? Anyhow, just trying to figure out where I went wrong with these maps. I might be edging towards repeating mistakes if it turns out that most people dislike anything that deviates from the core gameplay, so better for me to take the hint early and avoid doing it a third time. Thing is, my aim is typically to deviate - and perhaps my aim is off. Let me know!

Same way to fix anything in W3D: Use a bigger hammer. Because I know where this animation is located to play within the world, I've added visible-but-under-terrain boxes in a 360 radius (hidden meshes do NOT work for this), as well as one in the middle of the level. This ensures that no matter where your camera turns, you will always be rendering the animation. This cannot be applied to emitters, only to 3DS-created animations. It also is most reliably used for static environmental effects and nothing dynamic that could spawn animations at odd rotations (else you'd get floating boxes in the air). Not a perfect silver bullet solution to all animation issues but it certainly works for me here. Edit: I updated my previous post with an updated image alongside the old one. If anyone has an opinion on which looks better, let me know.

Hooray for experimental things! Added periodic dust storms that blow into the map from afar (dev note: I solved the problem of animated effects no longer rendering when the origin point is not within view, so this effect will now always appear). Late Edit: I made some alterations, such as raising the fog brightness. I kept the old screenshot above to allow for comparisons.

Ah so that's what the include option does. After you mentioned the dependencies stuff in your previous post I noticed it but didn't know what the purpose of it was (I'm probably still conditioned into ignoring half the options from LE, given that most did nothing useful). Anyhow, sounds like Neijwiert is quite an asset!

Support classes should always remain support-orientated, if you ask me. I was mainly thinking of the odd cases like Allied Spies and Thieves, possibly Soviet infantry that currently have a bit of a niche focus, when it comes to the topic of a "stronger secondary" compared to the other classes. The Allies actually more or less got this concept half-way given that the silenced weapons are in some ways stronger than their regular variant. Anyhow, worth mentioning again is that this is, in my opinion, the maximum number of items in the standard unit inventory (two items). Going beyond this is bloating the classes and raising the learning curve, but on the flip side of this, having just one non-switchable weapon can certainly be seen as boring. That's why I came to my conclusion of reinforcing the concept of secondary weapons.

You solved most of the VIS and pathfinding problems? Nice work then, I can finally uninstall Level Edit and leave it back in 1977 where it was created. Reading the ini's sounds good. Next step is a UI that can write them, right? As for dependencies, can you explain this? It isn't being exported by default - the ini is in the project editor cache folder. Had to do the preset dependencies work-around to make it export.

Sorry for being late to this topic, but I just want to mention that, just because you can add something, doesn't mean it is the right thing to do. With that being said, something I wouldn't mind seeing added is a reinforced concept of "secondary weapons". Riflemen are equipped with a standard assault rifle as their primary weapon, but I always felt like sometimes having a secondary weapon, like some variation of a pistol, would help finish off an opponent since switching to a small weapon is faster than reloading. It would add a little more interaction in the standard infantry gameplay - but not a lot. Just enough to make the "gun play" slightly more modern since the concept of secondary weapons is very common nowadays. The only problem of course is that you need a new secondary weapon model per faction; One intended as a "primary-type" weapon for classes that do not have traditional heavy primary weapons, and one that behaves differently, and slightly less powerful. So even if this were something Pushwall were to consider, there would still be an art bottleneck, at the moment. Edit: Lastly, the inventory system W3D uses is a mess. My own plans for a new project hung on this as the system is completely in need of re-writing from scratch in order to be more versatile in use. Until that happens, classes that use a lot of different items or weapons are a challenge to master.

Last public update on the topic of scene light. This last one took a bit more time than expected... AFAIK this is a first for APB; Unique skydome settings. It doesn't quite fix the lighting issue but at least it brings SOME colour back into the scene. @jonwil would it be possible to hook these ini file configurations into the commando editor? I wasted a LOT of time going back and forth, re-exporting every change, because these settings do not export correctly with the 'run game' option. Further more, because it is an ini file, it also means I have to include a somewhat clumsy dependencies preset.

Oh man, that is sad news. I had some brief engagements with him over W3D/Renegade related things. He was a very spontaneous man with a lot of crazy ideas, and seemingly his modus operandi was to always "try a bunch of things quickly and see what sticks". You could turn your back to him for a moment and then return to witness a whole bunch of crazy shit happening. This spontaneous behavior always put Zunnie at odds with people who did things more "carefully", and it is why he was sometimes a challenge to work with. But one thing is clear: He had a lot of fun doing what he did, and I dare say he knew how to have fun with development much better than most people did. I have no idea what he worked on at MPF, I do hope he had fun doing it... Ultimately that is all that matters, right?

Let's hope some people catch this. W3D is a lovely versatile engine and it could be pushed forward simply by having more programmer hands on the team. It is worth pointing out the user accessibility as well I'd think. Compared to the UDK for example, W3D is much more approachable for common multiplayer game types; First and third person shooters and games with RPG elements. Me, as someone who does not program, is able to spin out levels for games within the engine that offer very unique gameplay using the script library that has been created over the years. Make sure you post this on gamer-oriented outlets and not just programmer outlets. Chance is significant that the people you're looking for are also gamers, after all!

No rose tinted glasses here. I might have inaccurate information at worst. We did have a lot more publicity back then however, that is a fact. But as I mentioned, that was also about the only good thing. The working environment at BHP was very "rough" to the point where I limited myself intentionally to only deal with a few people within the team (such as yourself, ChronoJam, and PointlessAmbler (if I got this name right)). I spoke to others of course but not that often. Then I kinda snapped eventually after sitting on the sidelines so long watching the nonsense certain individuals spewed out, I commented on it within the internal forum and then shit escalated quickly. I didn't care to work in a 'team' with people who acted like children and at that point I resigned (Edit: Actually I resigned after CJ accused my bringing up of the topic as part of ACK's plan to bring down BHP, I mean seriously, what the fuck?). And unfortunately the only thing I really accomplished was a never-ending set of bug fix lists, there was never time for me to actually create anything new. So yeah, no. No rose tinted glasses my good sir! Just salt. A lot of salt.

Yeah, APB's history has a lot of trouble spots, but so does any project that spans over a decade. Things hit boiling point during the tail end of BHP's days, but I was fortunate enough to have missed most of that given that I left the team in '08 due to... Drama! But with all that said and done, when APB transitioned over to W3DHub and launched Delta things have probably never been better. Sure, the publicity and population of Beta is not here anymore, but neither is the mess that came with it. Further more, having seen firsthand the different project leads that handled APB, I can safely say @Pushwall is the best person for the job.

Gotta love the physics sometimes! Honestly there hasn't been a game in the world that got physics to be flawless in a multiplayer environment. It is a perpetually recurring joke across any online game, ever.