Raap

I think Pushwall summarizes it pretty well so let me quote him on this;

I don't know that game, so no. (Edit: I just realized that cactus's in real life always grow straight, woops!) Edit2: I have long intended to make a project of my own, and while my current focus is merely a prototype on another engine, if I could find a dedicated C++ programmer to help me out then I wouldn't shy away from using W3D as a platform over something else. There are a few 'ifs' linked to that though, aside of locating a programmer. My main concern with W3D, as always, is the network code and specifically the infantry component, as well as the severe limitations of how W3D handles infantry meshes. But I think we can all mostly agree that W3D has a pretty strong heavy ground vehicle departement, in contrast. Closing note; Working with a non-W3D engine has benefits, but I've certainly learned to appreciate the open-book nature of W3D by working with something that is not W3D. If only the platform had more hands on deck to push it forward.

Great roadmap guys, and yes I am absolutely interested in new tools. I might not have mentioned this, ever, so this may come as a surprise to some, but I actually, really, bloody hate the current tools and their bucket full of issues! I figured I'd mention it, you know, in case I never have before. A new W3D asset plugin would be great as well. Saberhawk was dreaming big, too big perhaps, when he intended to effectively change how materials and meshes are set up. Sure, we need additional material features such as normal mapping and so on, but surely this can be achieved by updating the tools and engine separately rather than making some giant unwieldy mega system akin to current-era, massively funded, engines? The only merit I saw in his proposals, was making sure the engine didn't call materials of the same name more than once, which would mean materials would probably best be made in a universal collection, stored somewhere, and referenced through the 3D modelling plugin. I'd also be interested in a Blender version. As mentioned, Blender is "free", while current-era 3DS Max is "holyshitthatsexpensiveeverymonth" and realistically only accessible to students these days who get free access. From a purely financial perspective 3DS is making itself obsolete, which is a darn shame. Lastly, the "freelance" work style is more or less what me and Pushwall already arranged in not nearly so many words. I am currently working on a different project which has some slight urgency attached to it (here is a small preview of that, this is a demonstration level background, and not an intended play space), but I fully intend to do further contributions for APB/W3D after that. By the way, you are missing something in your roadmap: We found a way to clone Jonwil&Team!

The "Beta" era PR-drive was a one of a kind coincidental overlap of opportunistic events that lead to a lot of project exposure. I think the W3D team quite likely understood that as well by now. It is a shame that the project(s) have less players now because specifically APB today is in a lot better place than APB during the "Beta" days. But who knows, 2018 might be the year of change. Rumor has it EA is working on a new C&C game and might be announcing it this year, and should that happen, then piggybacking on that wave might lead to more awareness of W3D projects. Despite the age of the engine I still think it is a great little gem (a rough one!), I can say this much more easily now while I am currently working on a prototype using a current generation game engine. W3D might not have the fancy graphics but it has game logic breathing space we take for granted but aren't even remotely common anywhere else - specifically the ease of networked replication is practically unheard of outside of W3D.

Can't say I have worms on my top 10 100 list of things I would have expected to ever play as. Makes me wonder if W3D's tank track system can be tricked into sideway movement to emulate delayed turns though, or at the very least stick to terrain more closely.

I didn't suggest this? Your statement confuses me! TS/FS had a stronger atmosphere, a stronger identify when it comes to Tiberium especially. C&C3/KW had much better graphics for most things, but particularly unit graphics were relatively poor and not similar to the concept artwork, due to engine shortcomings related to unit presentation.

Art direction was okay, it had good concepts, but a poor graphics engine resulted in poorer results, see; https://cncnz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/throwback-thursday-15-february2018.jpg I do think more people would have appreciated a stronger continuation from TS/FS though, particularly when it comes to the subject of Tiberium itself.

The last solid C&C game produced post-Westwood. Wake me up when that W3D port kicks off.

Let's take a look at the advanced Soviet infantry roster. Unit: Purpose: Grenadier Anti-infantry and moderate anti-structure, minor anti-vehicle RPG Trooper Anti-vehicle and moderate anti-structure Sniper Anti-infantry Flamethrower Anti-infantry and moderate anti structure, minor anti-vehicle Shock Trooper Anti-vehicle and moderate anti-structure, minor anti-infantry Volkov (current) Moderate anti-everything So in terms of anti-infantry the Soviet roster has 3 dedicated units, two dedicated anti-vehicle units, zero dedicated anti-structure units if you exclude Engineers. So just based on that information alone you more or less confirm the need for Volkov 3.0 to at least have a powerful anti-structure ability, and the only thing I can think of - if you exclude completely new weapons - would be C4 or a cinematic attack, as that is the only weapons currently in APB/W3D with building destructive power without also giving effective power to destroy vehicles. Perhaps the one twist on C4 here could be a revised remote C4 that has a minimum activation delay of ~20 seconds and requires a few charges to do the same job of one timed C4 charge (This requires Volkov to remain alive for this duration), but that requires a code change I'm not sure can be achieved at this time. Hell, maybe even do something interesting with proximity logic and give him something on top of remote C4 so he can be 100% anti-structure focused and also more akin to an infiltrator/saboteur. But whether his remaining focus is anti-infantry or anti-vehicle, make sure it is only one of those things. Perhaps you could make him that advanced marksman unit that he was in the early days, or perhaps you strip down his hand cannon to just one function, either way the end result should be a more easy to balance unit, and also a more easily playable unit. The current 4 firing modes are complicated for new users to get a grip on, its a bit of a play-style overload, and perhaps the focus should be more towards simply mirroring him from Tanya (and possibly spies and thieves in terms of being nasty to have inside your buildings). It's not an easy choice because his concept was never accurately defined in the original Red Alert, and APB is infinitely more layered than a simple top down RTS game. Ultimately I personally never thought that the hand cannon was what defined APB's Volkov, but rather the fact he was a tall, fast moving cyborg experiment wearing a bloody trench coat and hat that would make a Nazi shit himself.

Volkov has been cornered into this jack-of-all style ever since he was given a hand cannon. Without adding more to this discussion I will say this: What if the hand cannon goes away? Just like that, you then are back to just giving him one specialized weapon, that in turn will be much easier to balance. Something to think about. I personally would not shed a tear for him losing the hand cannon, it's been a source of problems since it was created all those years ago. Edit: In the ancient days, Volkov used an anti-material rifle (essentially the Renegade n00b cannon). I'm not going to suggest to return an overpowered hitscan weapon, but perhaps you could draw inspiration from this old concept of Volkov being a specialized marksman unit.

Based on my observations during a few matches, these seem to have a notable impact. More of these excellent improvements, @jonwil & engine team!

Seems the siege cannons are a never ending source of skill shots. ;P

Remember to give water at least once a day. Trust me, I know things.

In my opinion, TD doesn't have enough interesting material to work with. It is all quite generic in terms of units and gameplay, and very much 'been there, done that'. If I look at the C&C games left without a project running on the W3D platform, the only one with the potential to stand out from the existing projects in both graphics and gameplay would be a C&C3 inspired one. I know I'd have fun creating assets for three separate biomes (blue/yellow/red zone concept), and there was enough unit variation there to allow for the creation of two fun teams to play by cherry-picking the best of them. That said, I would personally most likely not focus on it being C&C mode in the traditional sense... Again, strong case of been there, done that. I'd opt to go for a gameplay focused on alternating objectives that teams compete over, mission-style. A bit more 'open world-ish' and a large degree of randomness in what is available to fight over. Just my 2c.

I always wanted to try and sneak in a scripted 'boss-like' encounter (for APB), I just never had the right and suitable scenario for it. Maybe I should look into those fire ant assets, they have been unused for a while...

You did configure the waypoint path segments correctly, aye? Beyond that, it becomes hard to determine the problem, but did you inspect your production facility? Is everything OK there? Are you using temporarily presets for any buildings? Unfortunately I do not have Renegade installed otherwise I could have taken a look myself... Perhaps, when you ran out of all likely options, @jonwil can look into your problem if he has the time. That man can usually find and fix everything.

In case anyone is wondering why the airfield asphalt still looks relatively blurry, that is because despite using 8 2048x2048 textures in two rows, the airfield is still very big. It looks fine when looked at it from an aircraft point of view however. The sharp edges of the runway paint is achieved through a 3rd pass material, this is why it doesn't blur along with the main texture, and also why it can reflect light, useful if there ever is a night-time air map. In hindsight (cough) I could have opted to go for an asphalt with less observable patterns, but I only had limited asphalt materials to pick from and believe me this one was the best I had on hand, although I think the original photograph quality could have been a lot better. Consider it an error I'm unlikely to repeat again.

Good work. As I've told Pushwall, I'm available for more environment related updates. As long as I got time, I can work on updating APB's more out-dated assets... So long as he stops touching my noise filters.

Good! Sometimes you just got to use a bigger hammer.

Yeah I made those wood plank sets with some re-usability in mind. They have a lot of individual UVW settings which took more time than you'd think. As for the bridge, the shadows are caused by the grass overlapping on a vertici. The problem is that you can never provide 100% guaranteed a lack of shadow issues, when different levels have different sun positions, alternate light sources, or have the bridge at different rotations. Kinda wish we had a mesh-specific setting for being affected by light solve but not generating shadows itself.

May I suggest you look up how proxies work? They are a very convenient way to place presets in 3DS Max. In short, you could be placing GDI purchase terminals by naming a 1x1x1 box mesh in 3DS Max: pct_zone_gdi~ The ~ at the end of a mesh makes the game not look at it like a piece of terrain but rather it checks for what presets exist with that name and loads those in place. You can have endless purchase terminals placed this way, numbers after the ~ do not affect preset loading. Do note that a lot of RENEGADE presets have too lengthy names. W3D meshes cannot have names exceeded 15 characters (a silly limitation), so if a preset is called SuperFancyBuildingSegmentFiveThousand then you're going to have to create a replacement temporarily preset with a shorter name.

The bridge uses the same X and Y dimensions as the old Bonsai "bridge", but I made some changes in terms of height, mainly to allow for easier placement in more common locations. Bonsai was not the testbed for this and my apologies for having to alter terrain to make them properly usable.

Collection script zones need to be better covering the area of the waypath destination, so make sure the zone is made larger, extending about two meters higher. Adjust and re-generate sectors. I'd also tone down the ambient noise you got going on in your map, and as for music, consider using scripts to play it rather than dumping an audio preset in the level, long duration audio presets are inconsistent between clients.

There is an applied noise filter because without it the meshes are too bright compared to other terrain, so no, Valpha and the noise filters were there intentionally. It's also not an extra material pass. A pass can consist of two textures (stage 0 and stage 1). It should not require an additional draw call as I understood it from Saberhawk. Believe it or not, there is logic in the way I do things... Sometimes!

Are the plugin files where they need to be? It is the most obvious cause for this and also the most likely problem. If they are in the right places, then consider a full re-installation. On Windows 10 3DS Max very regularly resets certain things like which UI to load, it should be more stable on Windows 7 but it has been a while since I used that.