Raap
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A Path Beyond Remove rooftop access from buildings?
Raap replied to Pushwall's topic in W3D Hub Discussion
Missing poll option: Add MOAR ladders and staircases! I think this is just one of those hings you got to live with. The moment you enable air units is the moment you know players will try to reach odd locations. You can make every roof a killzone but my personal take on these things is to just go with it rather than fight it. A lot of players across different gaming genres typically like to have as many open paths before them as possible, roof top access adds a path to base defense/assault. I just think we need to embrace stairwells more than ladders however, since you can fight in/from those. That's not to say all ladders should be replaced with stairs, that would be impractical, but more ways to get onto buildings would be good to have regardless, perhaps even from inside. Edit: I also like the elevator idea, but only if fancy magician @jonwil can use fancy magic to make them less of a lag-ride. This is the reason I axed rail carts from the new HW as well, I got way too concerned about reliability. As of right now however, mostly straight stairs are the fail-safe option. At most with one turn in them like on the Advanced Naval Yard - providing they are wide enough so that a lagging user doesn't rubber band all over the place. -
You have no idea how long it took me to get the Ore Trucks to path from the bases all the way into the mine caves on Siege, without getting stuck or without driving too close to the walls to get stuck against player controlled trucks. Edit: also yaks siege when.
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I've officially signed off on the project, and all files have been delivered to Pushwall. Hostile Waters should return to the game map rotation in the near future!
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It'd require more work than you realize. The icebergs aren't just your every-day geometry in W3D, they are a set of different meshes with experimental material configurations. Editing one means editing all and for something so small it is hard to justify. On top of that, I'd also have to make the ocean deeper, and some parts of that area use non-modifier UVW coordinates. Anyhow, with a little luck I get to sign off on the map tonight, and with a little more luck Pushwall may be able to patch it in relatively soon. I've reached a critical moment now where I simply have to finish the last item on my list before I run out of time, while fixing any last minute minor issues that pop up (for example I noticed a vertex light solve problem spot near the new naval yard stair that needs fixing, this is a simple fix, but these sort of small things have a way of piling up).
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Designing new units is time consuming indeed. It's not so simple as the "mobile" SAM vehicle prop you see on the iceberg (that was just me making use of an old obsolete asset I had laying around). Also note that in none of the screenshots I've shown so far is the full iceberg cover, this is actually the current and final task on my to-do list now that I have fixed/changed everything else that needed changing between test builds. But yeah, no realism on this level, at least not in the sense of immersion. You can only expect so much in a game featuring unusual themes. Despite not having a land route, I still believe this version of the level will play better than previous iterations.
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Hah, yes I know none of this looks realistic! I am not going for what looks realistic though. This is purely a case of gameplay before graphics or immersion. I needed to connect those two icebergs for gameplay purposes and I didn't want to use yet another baren ice bridge. I needed to sell the concept that this was part of a base, so this construction became a thing. I pretty much make it up as I go, working on what I need at that particular moment. I CAN do realistic as well, Siege for example is very consistent in appearance, but this map called for something else entirely! That is not to say I ignore the request for more realism entirely, I've for example redone large segments of the icebergs and overhauled the underwater caustics effect to accommodate concerns regarding their appearance. But you know how it is, there is only so many hours I can put into this, choices have to be made. I never played those games, I do not usually draw inspiration from other projects, I made that ramp because gameplay demanded it to exist. Naturally as I work on anything I do use my own methods and actually hope they stand out as something I would do, essentially, sort of like having my own style of creating things. Anyhow, in terms of map progress, I ran into a few small things, one very tricky thing I had to do was to migrate game logic from preset data to local level instances, this involved a lot of re-wiring in the script logic that powers the gameplay on this map. I managed to finish it up with no real incidents or gameplay alterations, but in the long run this migration will help Pushwall, since he hopes to re-use the new naval buildings in other maps. Who knows, maybe the Gem Silo also makes additional appearances on maps that need a greater credit tick income!
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This will be the last update, the map is scheduled for delivery sometime next week, providing that nothing goes wrong. I've fixed various Advanced Naval Yard areas, added some polish here and there, and most notably, added a new area outside the naval yard that allows more quick navigation for the Allied team and make MCT room camping notably more difficult.
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Hey guys, I'm hoping to have Hostile Waters done before the next event, as it is currently really close to being finished (fingers crossed nothing horrible shows up!). I might even get some time to participate next event myself as well.
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Siege Cannon "Shrapnel Blast" alternate fire seems to work okay though, despite firing approximately 15 projectiles in one burst. I'm still biased towards trying a underwater missile launcher, on paper it just sounds like it will solve a lot of problems and potentially be fun to use as well, and "fun" is something that Allied ships lack due to not having a gimmick like submerging. Regardless, I think barrel-throwing needs to change, this ain't no Donkey Kong.
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An anti-sub torpedo launcher mounted on the underside of ships might work out more logically than the barrel-thrower secondary currently used. The only engine problem that would need to either be solved or worked around of is having two weapons divided by a collision mesh functional. Perhaps shifting to this sub-torpedo mode actually shifts your active vehicle to an attached vehicle - giving you blue camera tinting as well? It'd stop all vehicle movement capabilities though I imagine since you effectively aren't controlling your Gunbote/Destroyer anymore. Food for thought? Edit: The sub torpedo launcher mode would have a close proximity camera view that never sees above the water surface for the blue tinting/restricted foggy view to logically be usable on it. Could actually be a really cool naval combat mechanic. The anti-sub torpedo's themselves would be relatively slow moving and have relatively short range, and only deal damage to submarines, with a camera angle limit unable to aim above the water surface (so only between straight forward and straight down).
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HostileWaters seems to have passed through the bug fixing phase and I'm now doing a final polish pass. One last thing popped up that did require my attention, but otherwise, 3.1.5.x cleared the road for HW to be included in a near-future update. After this is completed, I will have finally concluded all promised content for APB Delta - despite being over a year overdue on delivering this last part!
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< and >
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I didn't think you complained. I was just making a general "if anyone got a concern let me know". The map is feature-locked now, and I produced a first potential release candidate. Due to game file consistency issues I cannot share it for public testing however. Here be Allied Gem Silo:
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Due to time restrictions I will need to be finishing up development very soon. If anyone has any last minute concerns, now is the time to tell me.
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The 'Advanced' Naval buildings are largely unchanged from the last HW release, outside of a few small corrections. If you think the pen is big, you haven't seen the Allied 'Advanced' Naval Yard... AFAIK it is the largest functional base building in any W3D project and not without reason. Both naval buildings feature protected spawn bays to prevent camping, so the naval yard had to be big enough to allow for a Destroyer to be spawned inside of it. Unfortunately I cannot present an in-game screenshot reliably due to an always.dat interference issue that's a bit of a pain to constantly work around with each update, but next APB patch should hopefully have that resolved. Edit: I accidentally deleted the bridge screenshots from my Google drive so here is a new one from that:
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Another small update, this one is on the Soviet base layout. The whole base is elevated about 3 meters above the rest of the island, the walls hide this elevation and the 4 ways into the base are therefore also serving as uphill ramps into the base. The Gem Silo is protected by these (indestructible) walls, and can only be destroyed by infantry or air units. Same will apply to the Allied Gem Silo. I needed to help ensure the match economy isn't easily broken so these structures are harder to blow up than regular Ore Silo's. On top of yielding more credits per second, they also have a bit more health, as well as EVA voice-over warnings upon taking damage and being destroyed. Base defense placement is not final, and there will be helicopter landing pads as seen in Siege. But for now, I am liking the Tesla-Coil-like placement of the single Flametower; It can currently reach most places of the base due to being positioned on top of a wall. Lastly, the area around the red arrow is not finished, but it will feature one-way terrain; Players can jump down from there to exit the base quickly, but they can not enter the base from there.
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Added underwater caustic effects, as seen on Siege. Also made the under sides of icebergs a darker shade of ice. Currently also fighting an issue where weather is bleeding through the water. Lastly, all previously linked images of the bridge are outdated again as I've done a number of texture changes. Nothing is ever really 'final' with me until I reach a hard deadline.
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The Mobile SAM is... immobile and a static prop. But I made a fully rigged version for Siege that didn't make the cut. More than a single turret doesn't work properly.
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It's pretty silly that a company that creates a forum software package relies on a text editor from another company. Especially in Chrome this editor has a lot of shortcomings in usability. I've seen it on other IPB forums as well in recent months, some are barely functional anymore. Source view would at least allow you to clean up messy editor stuff that the editor itself cannot remove or edit. Oh well, I guess I'm just extra easily triggered after having had to solve 463 3DS/W3D bugs just to get this project going again.
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Yeap well I'd edit the post but I cannot edit it any longer. These links should work; https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IFrej7AuGmyV7p46IesQAzPm8ez63sd0 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oCTgOP4hpRPzkTnYLoNYl5z7GGy7AN6d https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mBDvlRI4zHzVO9pL2oxHm6Bwse1HvIMq I'm not using imgur because they started downscaling images a lot lately and I've yet to find a reliable host beyond that, so that's why I am forced to use google drive for the time being.
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Here is how that section looks ingame at the moment, keep in mind more things will be added, this area was in need of some further changes anyhow.
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"Why not"? Because modelling a Cruiser and a Dreadnought (which is not native to the time era of Red Alert 1) would take as long as two additional levels! The size of such vessels make them large enough to be maps of their own, and they would not be able to fit even in the Advanced naval buildings. Anyhow, I needed a somewhat industrial bridge. You can make things in two ways; Straight forward towards the concept, or the Raap way... So this thing below is an infantry bridge connecting two icebergs, hooray?
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Nearly all major development roadblocks resolved. I got one last 'major bug' on my list and the rest is just graphics development time, AKA the less brain-melting part of level development. Fingers crossed nothing else super weird pops up.
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Sorry, no Cruisers, or other game-breaking units, for that matter! Currently managed to lose my 3DS installer... after uninstalling to try and fix an issue. Pending magical installer delivery service.
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As I said in my reply 10 seconds after you ninja-posted, LST cheesing will become much harder, and infantry versus air engagements will be more enjoyable due to having more cover, as well as any form of repairing being usable to capture buildings, which means SAM Sites will be able to shift ownership more easily, and your team will not be automatically "screwed" upon Barracks destruction. This forum is pretty nasty to use without source view, I cannot edit quotes into a post without it, so that's why this is a double post.
