Raap

Right, so, in terms of lighting I sort of had to settle on this: Please be aware that I hope to add the missing color vibrancy in some out-of-editor tweaking. As it is, I am not a fan of it, but this is needed to reduce the vertex solve mess.

I appear to have a faulty definition of "short term". Anyhow, development of making this into an APB map hit a bit of a, how to put it, creative roadblock? Not for a shortage of ideas (I'm never out of ideas), but rather which format to settle on and which would be most enjoyable. It's probably going to have to become an iterative process, a testbed of sorts. So when I finally present this side project to Pushwall, I expect to be a little more hands-on afterwards rather than 'submit the level and run the hell away' as it were with Hostile Waters and Siege. So uhm, hooray for updates? Yeah. Side note, this map might wreck your computer if you use a potato, not sure, maybe, it depends on... things. Edit: Oh yeah, and the level is using Siege-style environment lighting now. I do not want to use it but until Vertex Solve is abandoned I just cannot deal with the blocky smudges that are supposed to be shadows. The reason you do not see these on Siege is because the weather is nasty and the sunlight intensity is low. I may experiment with some out-of-editor tweaking to get a decent desert-y look but it will be a challenge. As always, no ETA, this isn't the only thing I got to work on atm.

Nice stuff! You should consider making a more compact cherry picked video that can be shared in places like https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/ which have gained some activity after the announcement of some shitty mobile game. Especially segments like the Yak gameplay are interesting to watch (when you do a bombing run), and it also shows quite well the environments to expect within the game. I'd not go beyond 10 minutes if you were to do this! Edit: I posted a link to your shortest video on the reddit as part of a larger reply, hope you do not mind!

Ah, I was under the impression new ones were added as I didn't recognize some of them.

Heh, aren't some of those achievements extremely hard or impossible? Dominatrix - On Forest of Illusion, lead your team to victory by domination points and be named MVP in a Tanya tournament. AFAIK FoI got benched a while back and is no longer in rotation, right? Death to Traitors - Kill 5 different British / French / German players who are on the Soviet team, or Russian / Ukrainian players who are on the Allied team. *Ahem* You sure you want this one around? It might be better to change this into killing a player for the first time after he switched teams mid-session, and not be based on their real world location. Besides, putting Russians and Ukrainians in the same boat can be a touchy subject. Other than those two the rest seem fine! Whoever makes these; Consider a few more map-specific ones (for maps not likely to leave rotation)!

Nice work. I kind of wonder, would it be possible to preview live gameplay somehow? I'm not saying a full web-based spectator mode (that'd be crazy), but more like a snap shot of a battle. Not an easy thing to pull off I'm sure, given that you effectively need to create a whole set of systems for determining what a player driven battle even IS, how to capture it, and how to push it to a web page. Come to think of it, in-engine spectator mode would be easier to pull off... One more thing, APB runs on a single server right now. What would happen to the statistics logging if more than one server is used? Can several servers push data to the same database without conflicting results? I'd say this is rather important considering that if population ever increases notably then, well, an NA based server has been long overdue. Right now, I feel for anyone playing W3D games with more than 30 ping, since the netcode really doesn't like that and offers limited compensation due to practically zero prediction systems... But, I ramble!

Bloody terrible and infested with bugs and dubious design decisions? Anyhow, looks clean. My only nitpicky thingey would be that the top banner and W3D Hub logo could use a unified design.

I've seen the gameplay and learned all I care to learn about it after half a minute. Monetized, level imbalanced, one-to-one tactical-level gameplay without any of the core C&C RTS pillars. As for TA, please note I described the pre-launch non-monetized version. I have no idea what they did with it after launching officially since that is when I quit due to the previously mentioned change of direction.

I haven't played Rivals, I do not intend to either since mobile games are not my thing. Phones are for calling people, for everything else I use my PC. #OldPeople? But if you compare TA to Rivals on paper then out of two shallow games there can only be one "winner", and TA would currently win this simply based on still having some actual strategy components - which of course got mostly trimmed down to make monetization work, but oh well. Oh, and Rivals has gambling boxes. Fuck gambling boxes. Actually, YES EA ADD GAMBLING BOXES! The more the better; Add enough and your game is triggering new EU laws against this predatory practice. I would not weep if they were not allowed to launch this pile of cash grabbing horse shit in the EU.

Tiberium Alliances, for what it was during beta, was actually fun for a browser game. Until the game got close to launch, where a series of patched slowed down the late gameplay to 'a few clicks a day' to make room for monetization schemes, then it just became terrible. When it was fast paced you constantly needed to keep an eye on your bases, making it the perfect game to hang on a browser tab while you did other things, you always had to keep an eye on it so you could react to a hostile player or base creeper. And I dare say that it had more strategy involved than Rivals does.

Poor timing, and it IS marketed as a main game. I mean just look at the thing, there is zero gameplay or aesthetic connectivity to any of the previous games. This is a mobile game, as generic as they get, with the C&C title slapped on it. If they named this game anything else, no one would care, but they used the name for cheap publicity - remember, for EA there is no such thing as "bad" publicity. I'm just slightly more relieved that at least companies like Bethesda still make good games.

Silver lining? The volume of negative feedback might give EA's investors the idea that there is still a demand for a traditional PC RTS game. ... And they would no doubt butcher that as well, with their horrific designers which they picked up off the streets, with zero experience or sense of attachment to the franchises they work on. Edit: Or overpaid hipster designers like Greg who literally got their careers carried by pure chance of being at the right company at the right time (Yuri's Revenge), while having otherwise created a list of games they wrecked with ridiculous implementations. Remember how RA3 became insanely micro intensive compared to past games? All his doing. Biggest irony now? He is complaining RTS games have been too difficult to get into... Yeah no shit, with people like him in charge of design, it is no wonder that RTS died.

I know the material 'type' is part of the material system, but given that it is a non-visible element (the logic of it), I wondered if there would be a way to force a change on it during a game session. The idea of using collision mesh swapping... My God that would be beging for problems. All the problems.

That gives me an idea/question, is it possible to change terrain types via post-load in-game events? Say you have dynamic rainy weather in your map, can you accompany it with a change that makes terrain 'wet' for character movement? I know changing terrain materials dynamically isn't possible, so no visual wet effect can be added, but it could be neat for footstep sounds/walking effects.

I can't quite put to words my thoughts on this matter, so I'll leave it at that.

You might get your wish this Saturday. NOPE

I think your Yak comment holds some merit. The Yak is what you can call a high-maintenance unit with the largest barrier to entry compared to any other unit, it is also currently the rarest unit. All of that considered, when in the field the unit seems to have very little staying power. If the current typical damage pass uses up 2/3rd of its ammunition, perhaps bumping up the ammunition by 25% to allow for two full damage passes seems more reasonable - even if the damage output in total remains the same, it's more of a unit gameplay issue.

It is the kind of W3D vehicle movement likely to be amplified over network play, so yeah, people crashing sounds about right. Honestly it is already interesting to see where you got it now, and this seems to be the last notable issue with 'air plane physics' on the engine. No one needs to know the whole thing hangs by duct tape when said duct tape has pretty paint on it...!

Slight bump/update, due to my original idea of a new game being frozen until I can find a C++ programmer with experience in user interfaces and gameplay logic, the initially previewed desert demonstration level will be converted into a non-core gameplay APB level. It's the best I can do in the short-ish term, and it will give W3D a level to chew on that utilizes mostly 4096x4096 textures in the materials, for graphical performance testing purposes.

Yeah I instantly understood the bridges were kinda dumped there to see how the game plays with them, but that's why I focused on issues rather than aesthetics. I personally would have just added two more sets of rocky/sandy crossings like the ones already in place, although they would require more foliage cover, which is rather taxing.

The hint menu worked fine for me. Upon loading the first level post-patch I got a notification informing me of the new key binding for the help unit menu, and it worked as well in-game after that with the H default key. Good to see this function returning, I'd like to see it applied for literally everything a player can take control over. Edit: Spotted a few problems on Siege, firstly since the building updates, War Factory roofs extend slightly outward. Not a problem in normal environments, but here it causes vehicles to get stuck (both sides): Nothing that a simple vehicle blocker wrapped around the corners cannot fix. The new bridges have some difficult to navigate terrain in these locations: There are a few graphical issues in these parts as well: Lastly, I noticed the Yak, while on the Airfield after a flight, has a pull towards the left or right that isn't based on user input. I have not done extensive testing however.

I suppose co-op might be more feasible now thanks due to Moonsense's MoreSense AI overhaul project (cough). I still do not like the overal behavior of infantry AI personally though. At least vehicle AI is forced to use some basic movement physics, even if they aren't very brilliant when it comes to pathfinding. W3D used to struggle when too many AI units were on-screen though. Both client and server performance goes to a crawling pace after a certain amount of units are activated. This means any form of co-op would need a level design that forces AI units to come in waves - meaning each progressive play space needs a finite number of opponents, with some scaling based on player quantity done primarily through adjusting the difficulty of the AI units rather than the quantity of them.

(@Silverlight Stop making screenshots, they are an insult to the red colour spectrum.) @AZ-Stalker How does the ant map perform these days? I'm curious as the graphical intensity has some relevance for me, specifically when it comes to a scene where VIS has no functionality (due to no terrain to hide things from). I'm not able to test these things myself since for me W3D operates at 2000+ frames per second unless I am in a 12+ player match and then it drops to 100...

Implementing music into the projects - like artwork or anything else - requires the permission of the original creator, obtained either via request or purchase. This particular remix has some slight issues, it is a Tiberian Dawn remix and not a Tiberian Sun remix, and it also doesn't share the same style as existing music. As for music in general, I'd personally go with a unique score for a new release. There are plenty of composers out there that would be willing to do a good hour worth of unique thematic music ambient music for a modest price. Even APB has a few custom tracks that were paid for (and have also mostly gone unused).

The rocks are somewhat experimental in terms of textures. I'm using fine detail on the flat surfaces while making the edges slightly blurred and lighter in colour. It makes them look better from a distance, but if you put your face into those edges you do see the lowered detail. Modern engines use texture scaling methods in their materials for this, but I am 'faking' it by applying details to where it makes most sense. The catch? This method can only reliably be done using 4k or above texture resolutions. Edit: I may be publishing my design documentation in human-readable form in an effort to fish for a short term software development partner that could at the very least help me realize a prototype. I'm a bit careful when it comes to sharing my concepts openly, the last thing I want to do is undersell it due to oversights. Also, because it is a wall of text it wouldn't be appealing to the average person to read. But to assure you guys, the kind of game I've been wanting to make is a game that does not yet exist. I takes notable inspirations from several genres but the total package is, as far as I am aware, never been done before.