Raap

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I guess that is one of the reasons I am still single, I do not think I can handle being told what to do outside of working hours. Typically I also no not appreciate people ripping stuff and calling it their own, but the main usage of W3D importer is not to rip, it is for when your projects lost source files, so you'd have a way of retrieving 3D assets. This is very common for some of the older projects, as files do get lost over time when being handed over from one project manager to another project manager. Or sometimes an artist leaves and forgets to hand over some random files, etc. If file security is a concern (and to me personally, it is because a lot of hours and money goes into art assets these days), the answer lies in data file encryption, so that W3D importing can still be done by people with a claim to those assets. As for W3D importer, it is not pretty but it gets most of the job done. It typically breaks up all triangles so you have to weld everything again, this causes errors that you need to correct via applying a smoothing group. Animations also get imported per-frame, making adjusting them extremely painful. But it is good to have as an absolute backup option if you need to alter an old asset with a lost source file.

Well, that is a convenient choice.

Hello Abjab, nice to see you back in the W3D scene. For a long time we used the RenX and Max8 W3D importers around here, although Max8 has started to become obsolete as well (for some of us more so than others due to technical issues with Max8). As of recently we have W3D tools for Max2017, which is a pretty big leap as Max8 was released in ~2006, while RenX has been obsolete since 1977. If you have not already done so, you should reach out to @jonwil to get up-to-date information of what W3D can do these days. For starters, full source code exists for the game engine, and all tools - minus W3D importer - have been rewritten from scratch or reverse engineered completely, for example we no longer use Level Edit for game logic, but use a completely new tool for this instead (which sadly does NOT support classic Renegade). I think you'd want to make sure you're aware of all those developments over the years, although the W3D format itself is still (mostly?) the same. I am curious though, what brings you back to W3D and motivates you to work on this? For some people here this comes down to being too stubborn to let the engine go.

I suspect we'd have more Linux users if Westwood/EA supported the OS with the C&C franchise. Expanding Linux support might be worth considering if there is evidence of a userbase that would play W3D games on Linux. In the short term thought, I'd argue we're even lacking Windows based users. Certainly a lot of room for improvement at all times in regards to simply speaking of "more players".

Woha friend, use some text formatting next time! Walls of text are unreadable! General/ZH can use Max8 using the tools EA provided for BFME. Up until recently this is what we also used here. Max8 is not free however, you'd have to look into how you obtain this yourself... Note that Autodesk no longer sells Max8 so you'd have to get yourself a copy via alternative means. Max2017 tools do not support Generals/ZH. Gmax, RenX, Max8, or any software like it can be used to create completely new art assets, that is the purpose of this software. But to make them match existing art assets, this is up to you as the artist. You know what you want your units to look like, correct? It is your job to create units that look the way you want them to look. The software does not do this automatically for you. There is no way to convert RA2 voxel art into 3D models that would work in an engine like the one used for Generals/ZH. As I said above, if you want to create a Weather Control Device for Gen/ZH you would need to, from scratch, model and texture it in the 3D software. Not to lose hope though. This could be a great way for you to learn modelling. Take a picture of the RA2 Weather Control Device and then based on that picture, try remaking it in Gmax/RenX. Please note that, unless I am mistaken however, you will need Max8 in order to install the W3D plugin so that you can export the model for Generals/ZH usage. Unfortunately I cannot help you with this process because I never created anything for Generals/ZH and do not know the exact pipeline for it. It would look like Apocalypse Rising;

Hey there, I'm not sure what auto-linking is but the link button is right below the "tools" menu button (under the menu, not inside it). This link button is the one you use in W3D related rigging tasks. There is also Bind to Spacewarp but this one is reserved exclusively for WWskin (infantry rigging). Worth noting is that we do not use RenX/Gmax anymore, W3DHub artists use 3DS Max 8 and 3DS Max 2017 (this last one very recently gained W3D support).

This already exists.

I'd wager that (ironically) Siege and HostileWaters are both more likely to attract players at 0/0 compared to a lot of maps, simply because of the tech diversity available. So perhaps making those two bot-supported is something worth considering (which is pretty challenging for HW I admit). It'd actually make Siege APB's most feature-complete map.

Just a small note as it was brought up recently. Projectile collision dimensions are NOT handled via the projectile art file or in the exported W3D file. Anything you add to projectiles such as an invisible collision box is ignored and should not be added. Instead, projectile collision dimensions are handled exclusively in the ammunition preset data, shown here:

Don't forget to bring a bag of cash every month as well. Servers ain't free!

A more realistic angle might be to put a non-EA IP game on a platform such as Steam and package it with the W3D Launcher, which will have a player ripple effect onto other projects. But that still leaves the topic of the engine of course. The team not quite in a position yet where they can make any claims in regards to it, and then there is even the question of should the team want to or not. Lastly, Steam demands a fee for offering the download, normally this is covered by the royalties of the sale or cash shop sales. Completely non-profit games cannot generate revenue and might therefore not be financially attainable to get hosted on Steam, or a platform like it. A lot of these doors remain firmly shut however until EA perhaps one day decides to pass down this particular set of keys (in regards to engine legal matters, not the C&C IP).

Guess I'll ask a few annoying ones. For W3D Hub: Roughly, when can people expect an official W3D Development Kit? [This would be a clean-slate client/server package that lets people create new games more easily, somewhat similar to Unreal 4 or Unity, just minus all the super fancy stuff.] For the Renegade support team: The W3D Hub Launcher will be offering support for Renegade at some point this year. Will this be the traditional Renegade featuring all of the legacy community content, or an iteration based on 5.x? Bonus question: Is Renegade support intended to be something that is managed and updated, or will it be purely a legacy game in maintenance mode? For W3D Hub: What are your 2019 plans to gain further exposure for W3D Hub and the games offered within it? For W3D Hub: In terms of the under-development projects currently hosted at W3D Hub, which of these games can players expect to see more of this year? For Pushwall: With APB being nearly feature complete, what else is there for APB players to still be looking forward to this year?

So uhm, shouldn't we be calling the engine W4D now? Based on... Rational non-dubious logic?

You seem distressed! Do you need a hug?

I'd really like to try and encourage you guys to stay on the path of diversifying your gameplay from existing projects. I believe that W3D is flexible enough to allow for greater diversity, and not just APB clones, so I look forward to hearing your plans for the overal game flow.

It's fine, a decade of online gaming trained me to master the Russian language to perfection, for example: Yes = )) No = ((

I'll try and be there! Although as a Communist European, I must in advance opt-out of any winnings! Winning is, after all, a very capitalistic mentality.

Recoil will help with this as it gives weapon firing some "measurable weight", you'll be able to "feel" the impact of firing a heavy weapon, and notice the more subtle effect of a smaller sidearm. As for audio, well this is a resource matter. Good sounds cost money, and for a lot of us non-US/Canada folks, recording firing sounds ourselves is not an option.

Well, there is still an absolute truckload of gameplay logic W3D does that would need to be re-invented elsewhere, from scratch. Perhaps we should list all the things W3D can do right now compared to, say, a stock copy of Unreal 4. Do not get me wrong, in the past I asked the age-old question as well, "Why stick to W3D?". Asking the question lead me to being better informed about the subject.

Indeed. And this is why any new feature additions to core gameplay should come with various configuration options (including disable). Perfect realism however, in my opinion, should not be the goal at any point, since there are plenty of game engines that already do this out there. But if a certain modern mechanic has a lot of positive feedback due to the fun-value merit it holds, then by all means I see no reason why it should not be considered for inclusion. As it stands, I think recoil patterns might be the most sensible thing here (with the added option of auto-correction). It would allow the weapons for both infantry and vehicles to handle a little more modernly without changing the fundamental gameplay flow too much. W3D already supports movement based cone of fire bloom so it wouldn't be a far stretch of the imagination to see recoil working in these games (and this would include automatic fire mode cone of fire bloom as an optional thing to consider as well). In my personal opinion, things like damage drop-off will just add another layer of needless complexity to the games without serving any gameplay value other than "realism for the sake of it". It will cause a lot of cases where people will get frustrated because of the damage fluctuations. ADS is interesting as well because honestly it does very little. It typically just raises the first person weapon to be closer to your point of view, while lowering the field of view. Given that W3D already offers a toggle between 3rd and 1st person view modes, ADS might be redundant. It already does a field of view reduction in APB, for example. The only thing missing in APB is the weapon position being closer, but then we're talking significant rigging/animation changes for all character/weapon combinations. Something like recoil patterns would not come with such steep implementation costs.

All of these things would be interesting (edit: interesting doesn't always mean good gameplay) to have, providing that they are optional and offer a lot of configuration possibilities (like different recoil patterns). Something I'd NOT want: Leaning, also known as the ultimate peek-a-boo corner camping tactic. Let's keep the games as games and focus on fun gameplay. Just because you can do something in real life, doesn't mean it translates into fun gameplay. Side note, there are other weapon-type things I personally requested from the code team. While not all of these would apply to GUN-play, they could nonetheless expand gameplay options for other usages. Edit: Besides, leaning would require a whole new animation set supported by the engine, and adds a lot of artist work. If we ever needed engine-wide animation additions, it'd have to be support for diagonal movement with greater priority than something specific as leaning.

Understand that there is not "a mod team", W3DHub is a collection of W3D based projects (and quite possibly with more on the way), managed by their respective project leaders. For the creators, this is their hobby, they do this in their spare time for their own entertainment and at their own expenses (none of this is free). They are not here to work on projects they have no connection with, and forcing them to do so will get poor results, as there would be a lot less passion going into the work. We all would love to see projects like AR release sooner rather than later, but we're limited by what individual people can work on. Take me for example, I am currently trying to find time for an AR level and documenting the process, but I am still very much limited by factors such as time and motivation, and these have to align for a hobby project.

Good to see a new project kick off. I had no idea you guys were planning on trying something yourselves! I hope you keep it achievable for a two man team. By the looks of it you aren't going to need a lot of new game logic so that's at least something, but you are looking at a lot of new artwork to handle all these units! In terms of visuals, are the environment screenshots an indication of your aesthetic direction, or is it still something you're planning to determine?

Spawn delays are risky and they can quickly become frustrating. But that said, the current spawn system is broken. Half the time you can force-respawn by left-clicking during your death animation, and occasionally you have a slow-motion death animation you cannot cancel early. Regardless of design changes here, fixing respawning to take a consistent amount of time without differing per player, should be seen as a bug fix request rather than a feature request. Beyond that, I think the main gameplay design error dating back to Westwood is the fact that the re-spawn system has no intelligence to it. It feels incredibly bad to attack a base building interior, get it to low health, kill a defender and then have that same defender instantly respawn on top of you with full health. Ideally, the re-spawning logic would check for hostiles in the area and if so, change to a different spawner in a different building. I do not know how likely it is for APB to be gaining any respawn changes. I know AR is considering changing how spawning works but I imagine it isn't exactly on top of their to-do list right now. In short, plenty of room for improvement here, but increasing spawn delay is not one of those improvement.

I'll hold the unfavorable opinion that A Path Beyond-The-Map is not a design that suits A Path Beyond-The-Game and I can say that not just with lessons learned primarily from Siege but also the fact that it has inherent design flaws for both gameplay and in terms of environment, both originating from the limited source material. As yourselves if we really need another open grassy map that might as well be called CoastalRidgeInfluenceWar. The map name "A Path Beyond" in general might simply spark confusion as well. The Woods Today suffers from a similar problem but at least it can be spun around to look quite unique, with some considerable work. It helps that TWT is significantly smaller in size. Bigger maps simply take more time, plain and simple.