Raap

The hint can be found in the game itself.

They have a three minute respawn timer after someone else picks them up, perhaps that adds to the confusion if you try this in a live match. Beyond that, what I previously said is true, each orb has a different region it spawns in, a specific style of location. Once you found the orb in such a location, you can find it in similar locations next time.

It's short for Text Database Error, and this message only appears when picking up power-ups on LAN. This was not something I could fix as this is a small engine-wide problem. The power-ups do have a string hooked up, but it will not properly display it. The other secret is more of a small easter egg. I don't expect anyone to figure it out.

I'll try to be around for a few rounds this weekend, unfortunately my time is not infinite and I would appreciate a !setnextmap or two. A few fixes for Siege are in the works, but visibility culling remains unlikely at this point, unless an experimental implementation is attempted (flooding the playable world with evenly sized visibility zones). Visual enhancements for Siege are off the table due to performance issues reported by players. In other news, since this isn't new-thread worthy; Frostburn Cove is currently put on hold with no ETA, due to some W3DHub changes affecting my workflow, among other things. I hope to (but have not yet been able to) speak to Pushwall to clear a few things up, and to determine the best course of action when it comes to wrapping up my time here. This isn't really a reason for alarm, but I thought I'd make a public comment for communication transparency, since the last thing I want to do is cause a disappointment.

Just a small side experiment to see what we can do with APB Delta and W3D game logic in general, using only existing 5.0 scripts (the bulk of which being programmed years ago). I imagine I could probably create quite a lot of different things of this nature using existing logic, however, I do confess to some bottlenecks here and there, after all this is experimental and not the intended usage of most scripts. One key bottleneck is that most scripts are 'fire and forget', with no logic built into them to enable a reset of the script following some conditions. This is why certain things only have to be done once right now and then remain done for the duration of the match, something I'll be more wary of doing in the future.

That's some lovely laser weapon weapon sound effects you got there! I wish I could give more specific feedback than that, but I got no real world military experience or weapon expertise (living in Europe means no legal access to firearms), so I don't actually know how any of these weapons are supposed to sound when fired. If it sounds roughly like a gun, it probably is a gun, right? I apply this logic to most things, and it always works out juuuust fiiiiinnne........

There is actually another small secret hidden in the map, but not nearly as big as this one.

Thank you for your input on this. If anyone else had a similar experience, please let me know. Regarding map music, folks, do know that Red Alert and the various remixes are not unlimited in quantity. W3DHub does not have a sound artist contributing to any projects, and Chicajo hasn't made any new tracks since the early BHP days and long ago moved on to other projects. Occasionally we retrieve on odd sound track from the depths of some file archive which we can use in the game after some editing, Crush Remix APB Cut does not include voice remixes, and Hell March Orchestral APB Cut has an extended segment removed. I made those edits myself, but I am not a sound artist or composer. For what it's worth, Frostburn Cove will feature a selection of tracks rarely or never used before, because until now no map could thematically accompany them.

The orbs prefer to spawn in one location on LAN. This is something I can't solve unfortunately! In live gameplay, the spawn system is properly randomized. Blue and red appear to be the hardest... Perhaps you should all just stop licking the yellow orb so much and you'd find them faster! Congratulations to those who finished it. I hope the reward is good enough that, 3 months from now, people will still complete the secret challenge for the benefits.

I set it up as mirrored to other maps, but I did notice that certain tracks occur more often. When I work on these projects I don't often listen to in-game music, and when I do, well, I sort of block it out mentally because hearing the same sound tracks for hours does this. It is possible that the music rotation is not working as intended... As in, the rotation is random at the moment after the first track, which I thought was the point. I could have missed the point. I sometimes miss a point...

Can confirm! That was painful. Nice rewards, though. You can thank Pushwall for sanity checking me on those rewards, they were quite overkill before...The current selection of rewards seem balanced for the effort involved. But yeah, very experimental, all of this. If it proves popular I can talk to Pushwall about adding a few to existing maps (although that would require me to have access to Delta's core work environment, and as a non-staff member that could be tricky). The only hint I'm willing to give you is that each orb spawns in a different type of region, and within these regions there are 10 or so possible spawn locations. So to find all 3 orbs you're going to have to look at 30-40 locations... In a live match you also need to do all of this without getting killed.

This is sometimes how bugs slip through the cracks, you think you fixed them but then it turns out you didn't. In this case, your report is very valid, because I see a clear problem with the mesh. Feedback seems on the light side even over the weekend, this either means people really got little to report, or not enough matches have been played. APB Delta is now starting to have a problem not seen since Renegade; We may have too many maps in rotation... I'm going to hold on for further performance related feedback before assigning time to a Siege visual fluff-up. Understand this; The lack of performance complaints is a big surprise to me and probably to Pushwall as well, because the map has no visibility culling system implemented!

The CY ladder issue is game-wide (or should be) since buildings are proxied and un-editted. The landing pad issue is notable, and I know what causes it, an oversight on my end; The top doesn't have a proper collision mesh.

That's a different issue than the stuck one mentioned here. To make ships clear out, you'd best go about it via making a script that starts a timer on unoccupied vehicles, destroying them after 30 seconds without occupants (resetting when someone enters). It would help thin out the Naval Transport "blockade" on the icebergs also, although they might need a minute instead of 30 seconds. It's not like you can really enter an unoccupied ship in the middle of the ocean, you got no way of reaching the entry transition zones and pressing E.

This is the first time I've seen or heard of this Destroyer stuck bug. If I had to make a guess, the driver disconnected on the edge of the gate trigger zone, lifting it up. Unoccupied vehicles are known to have some different physics behaviors, since if this happened while someone occupied the Destroyer, the door would simply push the Destroyer out, as this was actually tested. There is nothing there for the Destroyer to get stuck on, since the gate model has a collision mesh which is a simple box, so no hooks or odd corners. The problem is, you do not want the gate to be lowered from the other side, because then Submarines could go inside the dock and block vehicle purchasing (This is also why Gunboats cannot turn while inside the dock, so they don't end up blocking two spawn zones).

These events can be late for the EU timezones. I personally couldn't make it at the event time, but I played a few hours before with a decent number of people! But no, having a substantial internal QA session happen at the same time doesn't help. Nothing being posted at CNCNZ is another thing as well (which AFAIK is literally the last remaining C&C 'news' fansite). Better luck next time!

I was originally going to punish a mistake in the final room with instant death, but I thought that would have been too harsh... It can already be very time consuming if you don't know what you're doing.

The SAM Sites aren't perfect and can be avoided easily, same applies to AA Guns. The SAM Sites are just a bit more vulnerable to it, so that's why they have an extra one. Base defenses on this map are not intended to make your base bullet proof, but just idiot-proof. I felt that we had enough maps already with strong base defense layouts, and we could use one with less ideal layouts. The downside of solo testing is the potential of missing issues like this. If it really is problematic, Pushwall may have to create a duplicate armor of the one it is currently using (MCT), and lower the repair rate on this new armor type without affecting the TTK for other things against cannons. The same lowered repair values can then also be applied to the debris armor type. It's probably worth noting that what you experienced was likely the effect of a golden wrench, not a regular repair tool. (EDIT: An alternative solution is to make the MCT armor clone receive more damage from air units. The cannons are supposed to be taken out by aircraft mainly, followed by infantry, this is why they are mostly defenseless against them.) There is an infantry path, it's called Chinooks, and BOTH sides can purchase them on this map. The idea is that using Chinooks, you can cros the lake and avoid the castle entirely. The Soviets can land on the cliff near the Allied base, and the Allies can land on the beach or farm near the Soviet base. It pays to station anti-air in those locations and try to destroy incoming aircraft while they are above the lake (causing passengers to die to the water/fall damage).

I'll keep an eye on this thread for the weekend, but if nothing comes up by Monday, I'm officially moving on from this project, to work on my last contribution. If you got no bugs or gameplay issues to report, do feel free to comment of client performance (during an online match). If enough people report good performance, I'll enhance some parts of the map. If I hear nothing, I'll side with being on the safe side and not make any further changes or additions.

No one solved it so far? Curious. It was designed to be solved. It's easier for me to make something that is impossible to solve, but what would be the fun in that? The challenge is in making something like this solvable.

Well since I worked on it, it did stand out instantly to me, especially since it no longer smoothly transitions into the shoreline effect.

Hey guys, Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the map alongside any of you, so I'll ask it here; How does the map play, and how is the performance (FPS)? I'm still available to make any adjustments for gameplay (nothing dramatic however). If performance is consistently perfect for everyone, then I'll give Pushwall a file to import, which adds some more detail across the map. I was holding back on going crazy on more plants and base props due to performance concerns... Smooth gameplay is more important than anything else, after all. Known issue currently is the black water, this is due to a rendering change and requires updated water settings. EDIT: I will not give away any tips on how to solve the map secret, you can stop asking now.

The source of the black water issue is traced down, it happened in this latest release and not in internal builds due to rendering changes on the engine. It's not a "bug" in rendering, it's just a change to the way things are rendered and in the case of water, some different settings are needed, but I wasn't aware of those changes being required for this patch, since I wasn't informed. So the water will likely be corrected by Pushwall in a future update - sorry for the eye-pain until then. Fraydo's screenshots show how it was supposed to look like.

I did a quick run around on siege, seems the water is missing the proper texture (it's almost black water, instead of dark green). Beyond that, good to see it finally be ready for live gameplay.