Raap

Fair enough! Anyhow, I took another look at my unfinished work, and I got reminded of a code related problem I wasn't sure I could work around. So here is a question to players, from their point of view: How obvious is the shadow bug in the screenshot below? In slightly more technical terms, whats happening here is that W3D doesn't know how to render shadows on certain material surfaces. Now you probably never encounter this is normal environments, but this is an iceberg, and this ice is made up from several meshes, materials, and passes to look convincing. I presume an engine fix is unlikely so if I did get around to finishing this level, should I keep the ice with the weird shadow-cutting, or remove it? Edit: For what its worth, I personally lean towards removing the surface ice as I find the shadow problem to be really distracting. And I got another problem I was never able to solve as well; The Allied Advanced Naval Yard, despite not being touched since the original level release over as year ago, now refuses to export 2-3 specific meshes, for no known reasons. Puzzling issues like this always stalled content development and they certainly contributed to this map never releasing.

Good to see a new addition! But let's say, if I ever went back to work on something for a W3D project, who would I have to be harassing for things like a W3D converter or other previously 'teased' tools such as an updated content editor (LE replacement)? Or am I correct in presuming that at this time nobody is able to take over those tasks? I ask this because there was always one singular constant in any contributions I ever made, both for Delta and BHP; The tools are a perpetual pain in the arse, both in terms of handling and performance, especially on Windows 10.

I noticed Saberhawk departed from the programming team, how much of a set-back has this been? I recall he was the main driving force in engine improvements - although most of it seemingly never got finished. Other than Jonwil and Dan, who else is left programming-capable? Will things such as a W3D format conversion tool, to eliminate the dependency on ancient (and broken) software, ever happen now?

Such small rockets do not need big smoke trails though, short and thin streams would be enough to communicate to players what they are (along with audio, weapon firing and explosion effects). By no means use standard rockets as a point of reference for particle effects for a weapon like this, so try not to box yourself into a corner - similarly, I never believed a game inspired by another game has to always carbon-copy the latter, but that creativity should be applied where it can be justified. Anyhow, good luck with the project.

Most logical would be a lightweight burst-fire micro-rocket launcher, '20mm' rockets to be exact. High velocity projectiles (but slower than average bullets) with small explosive warheads that do minimal area damage but do offer a reasonable punch to vehicles and structures, and when directly hitting infantry. A single burst would be 6 to 8 mini rockets depending on the design of the weapon, see your final concept art, which matches this weapon conceptual nearly perfectly. My 2c. While it may not be the un-animated 'magic bullet' weapon in-game from RA2, I believe a mini burst rocket launcher would fit concept art while also still generally being both cooler and suiting to the unit theme. Edit: Raap, don't try writing words while suffering from coffee deficiency. Bad words happen when you do. Edit2: Come to think of it I may have accidentally ripped this idea from PlanetSide2. Here is their spin on a 'rocket rifle', used by an infantry class that has a jet-pack... (it all makes sense now):

Oh yeah, the days of simple single-file maps are absolutely a thing from the past. Both Hostile Waters and Siege consist of 30+ W3D files and 40+ additional files. The bigger the virtual real-estate, the bigger the file-count and size. It's a big shortcoming of the aging development framework of W3D; we don't have a cohesive file managing system and there is a lot of going back and forth between files and stand-alone applications, none of which feature instant-updates of new files and constantly require re-booting to load updated assets. Icing on the cake: Imagine if more than one person worked on the same project with the above kept in mind, I hope you like manual version control! As for game logic implementation, it is tedious for sure, especially the naval stuff. If you made a generic ground level with no air or naval units then the process is fairly manageable in a timely fashion, since the process has been done so often and those systems have been perfected over a decade, you can essentially produce such a level with zero testing, push it to a live environment, and be reasonably safe in assuming nothing goes terribly wrong. Stuff like naval, air, and especially visibility culling when one or both of these things are present, is a true bitch, and absolutely one of the primary factors in what delayed new level development, at least on my part. To re-iterate, it's not hard to do these things, just tedious and time consuming. Edit: And a personal note, working on naval content, such as Hostile Waters, is very unrewarding, because while the gameplay can be fun, from all other points of view W3D's concept of water is, to put it lightly, falling short. Despite all the work that goes into setting it up, in-game it still looks like a plane mesh with a texture you can walk through. I can make a single promise quite easily: Hostile Waters revamp is the last naval project I'd ever contribute to on W3D if this logic remains unchanged.

Overhauls of that magnitude take about as much time as creating entirely new environments, because it is actually the same workload; In both cases you're creating something from nothing, but with an overhaul you got the added challenge of making it fit within an existing canvas. Part of the reason Siege took a decade to be released was these never-ending overhauls, so ultimately I had to settle for a design and stick to it. I can also point at the HW revamp I worked on (and will eventually finish). What you do with revamps is, you select the stuff that needs changing and you press 'delete', and go from there. But there is a bigger problem native to APB; The game logic set-up process has become quite convoluted and nearly all of it is undocumented, this is one of the reasons why Pushwall never got around to making a community development kit, explaining some of the things you need to set up can be confusing even to a seasoned W3D engine developer - and there are few of those left these days. Just another example of this is that before I can release a HW revamp, I have to completely redo the concept of 'water' due to all the various new collision logic that was added in a post-Delta launch patch. But going back to Siege or revamps in general, some of these things are hard to pull off in some places due to the way I texture meshes. Once I've textured something, the 3DS object modifiers are deleted in a particular way so that the mesh can be merged to reduce draw calls in-engine and optimize performance substantially this way. The problem is, this development method assumes that once this process is triggered, the mesh is "finished" and not edited again beyond that point. If I did edit these objects later, then the textures would be stretched and warped, and you wouldn't want that. A vast majority of objects act this way in my work, save for tiled terrain. TLDR: Lots of reasons for why revamps should be avoided if possible and that more thought should be put into initial designs to avoid them.

Unfortunately the word "secret" has been banned from my APB-anything. (Side note, I honestly doubt any of you ever found the last "easter egg" on the map, but it is nothing like the scale of the axed secret area.)

That's a very fancy way of saying "He messed around in the dark while generally being pretty clueless yet despite of it still managing to somehow produce what in exclusively purely technical terms can be considered game levels". As for returning maps, fun fact: I didn't! Hostile Waters got added - then pulled - and I never got to finish the revamp! And Siege was never officially released previously. Still, I'd live fine knowing I did a mere two level contributions to Delta, it'd beat the baby-sitting jobs I got handed to me during BHP's Beta development period. I looked, I couldn't find anything. This forum does not allow transparency PNG's for avatars and I didn't feel like making something new, especially not an avatar, since that requires a capacity to express ones state of mind.

Actually that'd be a positive thing since I didn't expect people to even think of me at all when I die! And I'll be on Steam more, I just don't get around to it a lot. The last game I briefly got to play was Player Unknown's Battlegrounds to see what all this hype was all about - suffice it to say I don't see the appeal in a RNG-infested deathmatch, and have since concluded hat the bulk of the sales of this game are from Chinese businesses that turn a profit from the tradable cosmetics... Yeap, how's that for being cynical!

I'll see if I can polish up the assets for HW's surface play space while leaving the rail network as it is (read: not implemented), as it appears that there will be no opportunity to test such horizontal elevator logic in a larger scale online environment. I unfortunately have no idea what's up with APB's development right now, and therefore currently have no idea on where to tie this up to, but hey, I'm willing to see what I got to work with here. From where I'm standing, I'm OK to deliver something now, for it to be used down the line if activity picks up again. Axing the rail network - despite the hours that already went into creating and testing it - would actually simplify the wrap-up process down to surface aesthetics and gameplay mechanics. But regarding the latter; APB level development had become increasingly more time consuming due to requiring more and more logic set-up with each patch, this also did not help much the last time I tried to deliver this level, it just boils down to increased workload per level. Anyhow, I promise no dates, but "I'm around" and hopefully by the time APB reboots itself, I'll have something to share.

Wooh, bumping old topics... Actually is a topic old if it is still on the first page? Questions... Anyhow, back when I worked on Siege I sort of used it as a pressure job to keep me from dealing with the real life obligations that one has to go through once a parent dies, so I cut some corners here and there, but one of the corners not actually cut was those ore mine tunnels. I created this map that, essentially, was a vehicle meatgrinder. I wanted to make sure infantry still had places to go and feel useful, so the infantry tunnel came to life for this purpose. There is still a small connection to vehicle play, the passage trough the trench can be a hazard, but ultimately I wanted infantry to be able to easily harass the income of the other team, something vehicles would have a harder time doing. Opening it up for vehicles would completely destroy that component. Back when I actively worked on contributions I always stated a Plan B scenario exists; If vehicles needed more play space, the castle rear could be opened up for play. Similarly, if infantry still struggled, a new infantry-only beach passage could have been added that connects the bunker area to the rocky beach on the Soviet side of the water. Both of these would have taken minimal development time. I do not know if Pushwall ever altered the map beyond moving some base defenses around, so I don't know if anything changed here.

Heya, Raap here, aka the guy who promised some sort of APB contributions but failed to deliver 1/3rd of it. How is things around here these days, and does APB stil have an audience? Despite how I left things during a 'heated moment', and despite an attempt to finish up my last contribution in august was just not working out due to a long excuse-train of reasons I don't believe are worth mentioning, I can't help but feel this nagging feeling of having some unfinished business. So I wonder, is there a point for me to consider making the time available to finish the Hostile Waters revamp that got stuck in a development hell? I'm speaking of this thing here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7fULGRONJ7dNldqVHVRQVhRSGc/view I put a lot of work on various art related things earlier this year to finish it but I just wasn't able to pull through, and unfortunately there is still a lot left to be done unless I trim down the development scope a lot (like axing the completely untested underground railcart system). So, TLDR: Do people still play APB?

Proposing theoretical changes for a basis of discussion doesn't require a programmer to already have done work. I've suggested various changes in the past that got dismissed due to reasons not related to resource commitment. As for Hostile Waters, nice low-blow, I kept you informed on that including my reasoning for the delays. I'm not interested in playing this game so I'll state it publicly: I've not been able to work on HW due to a never ending shitstorm of real life problems including financial ones and family ones. These are the type of problems that do not put me in a creative mood, and based on past experience where I rushed projects out of the door (such as Siege a month after my father died), I rather not repeat that same mistake. Mature. Let me return the favor: I'm withdrawing my plans to contribute entirely. I don't need this shit right now.

My proposed solution would solve this as well since there would be no incentive to use a spy over anything else that can actually guard the flare location. It would require a lot more team work. Unfortunately it seems that radical gameplay changes are not favored here, even if they would improve the game a lot.

I'm curious, what was the reasoning here? Do large particles have some adverse effect on performance that small ones do not, or was it merely an aesthetic concern due to texture stretching (which could have been solved with the texture in use)? My question regarding performance aside, Pipeline allowed for some scenes not really seen in W3D, like this; I wish we had more advanced fog options on W3D as well as particle edge smoothing. Oh well! Add that to the pile of "Things-I-Wish-W3D-Had".

It'd have to be considered experimental and probably only work with direct damage (so no splash damage). I'm just highlighting potential extra usage of such functionality, but my case for it with defenses stands, one needs only try to fight around the cannons on Siege to see that problem.

I figured you meant that. On a side note, the Siege cannons cannot be copy pasted into other maps as easily as other defenses, they need an assigned failsafe exit teleport zone and destination, something you cannot do in a proxy. But as Siege's Cannons should tell you, player controlled defenses cause some oddities in a fight, when people use them to hide inside of them. W3D needs to support the ability to damage the driver(s) of a "vehicle" upon damaging a sub-hitbox, so that you can actually kill players to take control of a defense, and to punish people using them as escape shields in a fight. This would actually make Snipers useful as well, and have this expanded to certain open-cabin vehicles like Rangers and the various trucks.

HW's problem is not the map scale or visibility. It is the lack of options for people who prefer to avoid naval combat. This was concluded after polling and feedback collection a while ago, and the new design is already "locked down", with one possible exception on the table; War Factory support if Naval Transports carrying vehicles are to become a thing. As a reminder, HW's revamp will include a "land" route for infantry, a new underground bonus objective, and a unique means of travel not seen before in APB. But anyhow, on the topic of Siege, what happens with the map is entirely up to Pushwall. I do not believe in a new land route however, it would just shift the perceived problem from the castle route to this new land route, which due to time limitations, is likely to be far more barren and lacking in cover than the castle route, which happens to offer more infantry space than any other APB map. Economic vulnerability adjustments, as mentioned, might help - or do worse. I'd say go and experiment.

Infantry maps may be disliked for the same reason some people disliked HostileWaters; Too far a departure from core gameplay. I'm fixing HW with that in mind. But expanding maps like Fissure to solve the same problem would be a lot of work as well. FoI might make an easier cut via introducing new environments with a vehicle focus, you could create pocket dimensions to a long range of possible scenarios with FoI all thanks due to the weird modular setup. A lone iceberg in a sea walled off by a circular fog barrier but supporting ships, or an entrenched battlefield with vehicles, or a scenario that makes use of air power utilizing mainly low-polygon backgrounds for detail so the focus can be on, well, air. Either way my point is you can probably test the theory by expanding one of these maps and re-including it.

Go for the extreme and try both, just to see what happens. The Soviets could rocket barrage them with RPG's from the cliff, the Allies got the forest for cover (might need some ground foliage added near the Soviet base forest side - I saw a cluster bush model that would do the job). It will help end matches sooner, but for better or worse, that remains to be seen.

I've said it before but a lot of identification problems can be solved if you axe RAlism and redesign the transport to look more like something from Tiberian Dawn. You can add passenger seats and enough space to carry the largest vehicle it can carry (Heavy Tank or Tesla Tank). To prototype this functionality prior to committing art resources to the creation of a new naval vehicle, you can temporarily rip the Renegade model. To ensure you got the space without making the "LST" larger, you can trim the width of the exterior "walls" of this vehicle down towards more of a shovel end shape; Mostly flat near the forward end which carries a vehicle. This would solve some hitbox issues as well. Gameplay-wise however I firmly believe this mechanic should not be considered without this level of target and threat identification, but also not without the ability to damage the carried vehicle. If a transport carrying a Light Tank comes to shore after eating a direct V2 hit, it shouldn't "pop out" with full health.

I'm not really kept in the loop on internal W3D progress, but that's how it should be. @Pushwall I gave it a short consideration, more of an impulse really, but feel free to try moving the Ore Silo's for both teams from the current locations and towards the refill and landing pad areas, outside the walls and outside of (ground) defense range. Let's see how the map plays out when critical economic support can be dismembered with less effort via either an air assault or a transport drop-off. It would bring forward the importance of defending those assets, and if failed, defending the Ore Truck. Economic vulnerability would likely improve the ratio of match closure due to base destruction rather than time-out. Or it makes the map play worse for the exact same reasons, hence impulse thoughts. I'll leave it up to you.

That's news to me at least. Yes, high damage cannons were a thing in the initial release. They were nerfed, due to feedback. Recent patch slightly un-nerfed them again, but not fully reverted the nerfs.

The problem is that this deviates from core gameplay a lot. The topic asks why people may dislike Bonsai, I simply gave my prediction that it is the Missile Silo game logic. I could be wrong for sure.