Raap

History indicates that the last few times people made lists, things didn't go so well. So ask yourselves, why does Santa need your names on a list? Because the truth is folks, that "Santa" is just some scheming and fat midget-slave hoarder, preparing to go down the lists people send him every year to do both "naughty" and "nice" things in your house, while you're sleeping. And yes, it involves midgets. Oh, the presents you got as a child? Your parent gave these to you. At best, Santa merely touched the wrappings of the gifts. At best. So next time you let someone put your name on a list, think twice of the potential consequences.

You have to let go of a certain amount of belief if you want certain units to make their appearance. The scaling issue always existed, just take a look at the Soviet Submarines, they clearly are down-scaled as well but nobody mentioned it because they lack so much detail that people do not notice it. The new ships were made with higher standards (mostly!), but also, they were outsourced, made by an artist not aware of the gameplay in APB. Were the artist to be more aware of what APB is he might have concluded that such ships make no sense on these small scales, because they truly do not make real-world sense. But then, this is a game and not the real world. Sometimes for the sake of gameplay, some creative routes have to be taken. There are a few minor things that can be done to improve the perception of the scale however, such as removing the doors and life vests from the textures, but then you quickly risk another Destroyer situation, so there is a balance to be found, somewhere in between it all. I don't think it is completely correct to say that they have been implemented into Renegade. While the core of W3D still references or utilizes a significant portion of Renegade logic, none of these units could have functioned in actual Renegade. Significant engine-level changes and additions have been made over the years to accomplish most of the things you see in APB or other W3D projects today. So you'd be discrediting the valuable work of the programming team and past contributors by saying 'this is done on Renegade'. The Attack Dog remains a... Curious topic! Interestingly I believe most of the logic already sort of exists, but there is a matter of designing it to be a fun addition to the game. Either way I am sure Pushwall will figure something out. As for the rest, yeah, APB has come a long way, but with remaining pieces it is mostly a case of how to design it to be fun, rather than being a hard-blocked code limitation. In my personal opinion, support powers - including the current Atom Bomb - need to be reworked to step away from the whole "place a signal flare which magically tells a missile where to go", the whole process of poking a terminal to get a flare, traveling to the enemy base, planting it in the most cheesy location you can think of and then proceed to hopefully kill the swarm of dancing engineers, in my opinion, it needs to go away. I believe that such abilities should simply have a price tag, a cooldown, and a focus on supporting a player-driven assault rather than single-handedly destroying half the opposing teams base. In place of flare planting, should be an overhead map which displays all friendly units, as well as the support powers available (and what price tag/cooldown they have left). Then anyone from the team should be able to fire off a support power from this overhead map - which may be accessed by a special terminal within the base of the player, to avoid people from firing off a support power right as they are about to attack the enemy base themselves. This should encourage some teamwork and communication as well to ensure these support powers have the most optimal results, as a random person randomly firing off an Atom Bomb should not see much more success than causing a few defenses to blow up and only damaging critical structures (meaning actual players would be required to finish off the structures). It will have the bonus of being more true to Red Alert in this way as well. But here would be my special twist: The addition overhead map-fired support powers, could push spy/infiltration game mechanics to a new level. Spies could gain new mechanics to deal with sabotaging these support powers, some more simplistic than others. Sabotaging an Iron Curtain could simply involve interacting with the structure to reset the cooldown, but sabotaging the Missile Silo could involve more interesting mechanics such as a Spy first needing to infiltrate other buildings to retrieve parts of the "launch code", forcing the Spy to do a little legwork within the hostile base which will naturally expose him to other players. If successful however, and all codes are obtained, the Abomb could be significantly sabotaged or perhaps even completely disabled for the remainder of the match (effectively destroying the Missile Silo). This is where Attack Dogs finally could come into play in terms of meaningful gameplay. Players could be able to purchase Attack Dog guards and order them to guard specific areas, and then they would do so with a specific and limited 'leash range' to prevent them from wandering off. Spies would need to carefully avoid them, which is good, especially since Spies are already safe from triggering mines, and this would actually counter Spies a little without needing to babysit your own base 24/7 (however a good Spy player can kill the Attack Dogs). But then lastly, you cannot have this Spy sabotage mechanic work for one team only, that would be incredibly unbalanced. So, the Soviets would need a counter unit - like a Sapper or Infiltrator. Mirrored to be like the Allied Spy, it would be different as well. Where the Allied Spy also functions to disable certain things for a time or gather information reports, the Soviet counter unit could be focused on inflicting situational damage or "debuffs" - Such as causing the next Ore Dump to inflict economic damage and reducing the Allied team's credit pool by the equivalent of that ore dump. And instead of gathering information the Soviet counter unit could be placing proximity based or remote control based traps of various kinds that negatively impact Allied players, for example, placing a spike trap that damages the wheels or tracks of the first vehicle that drives over it, effectively limiting the maximum movement speed of that vehicle. Naturally, this would also require the Allies to get access to an Attack Dog equivalent of their own (No, not an Attack Kitten, that would be silly), perhaps a small 'Sentry Machinegun Turret' that can only be placed in interiors makes sense here, and fits the Allied 'higher tech' niche better. So yeah, dogs, sentry turrets, support powers, new infiltration mechanics, and a Soviet infiltration unit - it all makes for a decently cohesive package that could feature a much expanded infiltration gameplay for both teams, a true reason to have Attack Dogs, and a renewed way of doing support powers. In my opinion you'd be tackling the last remaining gameplay block that APB still lacks with this package.

Hah, alright! I will not be doing any persistence in any potential project I may or may not begin sometime next year. Not because I see no use for it, as I could certainly do a few interesting things with the concept of persistence. No, I am avoiding it simply to not bury myself in work within a field I have zero expertise in - and your reply confirms I made the right call here. The lack of persistence does bring with it a certain benefit; It keeps the game you're making an actual game, where you can log on, play, do stuff, and forget it - a lack of persistence removes a certain burden from players as they will feel less likely to be forced into playing a specific way "because the game remembers their actions". Real life already does that enough for us, so no, I'd keep it nice and simple! But anyhow, I still am impressed by the end-product that ECW is, and despite your own relief of not having hundreds of players to deal with, I do hope you can gain some more activity for your game - you earned that.

You didn't click your mouse button hard enough.

It does look like the Microsoft NET installer is failing and we do not package those (that would be quite dubious), the W3DHub launcher simply uses the official installer Microsoft provides. However perhaps the error you're receiving can be debugged? Perhaps a newer installer exists that can be bundled with the launcher? I have no idea, but @danpaul88 might want to look at this thread to see if the issue is something he can fix on the W3D side of things.

That would be a shame because ultimately the W3D gaming community is small and should be more supportive of initiatives that are done for the players we have. This is not a rivalry, we're not competing companies out for revenue gains. One could say "IA is taking away players from APB!" but that's just a one dimensional way of looking at it. I'm just seeing players playing what they enjoy the most. Could someone be disappointing that their game is enjoyed by fewer people? Yes, but then evidently your goal was not to satisfy players, but to satisfy yourself. That also, isn't inherently wrong, but just be honest with yourself in terms of why you make or host games - and then with that in mind, revisit your game or hosting service and improve it so that players start enjoying your game or service again. Nothing wrong with some friendly competition, it helps keep every project moving and evolving.

Pretty hard to create realistic death sounds unless you go out on a real life stabbing-spree while recording the whole thing. I guess the closest alternative would be to hire good voice actors, and then in the middle of a very normal voice line, tell them you can't actually pay them.

It's worth stating again that most people including myself think that the Gunbote and Cruisebote came out fine, so don't look at this like a wasted investment.

Your field of view and camera settings trigger me. Make sure you work in perspective view for creating assets in this engine, else you easily lose sight on your scene in relation to how it is suppose to look in-game. Also you can raise your FoV in Customize -> Viewport Configuration -> Field of View (bottom right). Anything below 45 will give you an extremely limited view on your scene. If you're running Windows 7 and are therefore not hamstrung by Max 8 <-> Windows 10 compatibility issues, you should also look into improving your texture lookup so you do not get such blurry textures in your scene. You can do that at Customize -> Preferences -> Viewports tab -> (Choose Driver should be OpenGL) -> Configure Driver -> Texture settings flag "Match bitmap as close as possible". Disable if you do have performance issues.

Now I understand why you think a spy plane is helpful; You got none IRL! You poor bastard.

Heh, coincidentally I created a Nuclear Submarine for the original HostileWaters back in 1977. I had no idea such a unit actually existed in RA! I'm just not sure what it would add to APB that the Missile Sub cannot already do.

I think slowing down the MiG's flight speed slightly could help with the targeting difficulties. But that said, I still think lock-ons made more sense. But ya know, dead horse, etc.

Realistically I think only superweapons are left, and that could include an A-bomb mechanical rework (which in my opinion it could use). But for units? Except for a sapper type Soviet infantry unit, we pretty much covered all typical gameplay roles and all official Red Alert units. There comes a time when a game is simply "done". APB isn't quite there yet, but its closer now than it has ever been. Which raises the question; When it happens, what's next?

If its the one I'm thinking of then you need to retool it to avoid the "Siege problem", you also need to make the naval routes not take 2 months to finish. What could be fun is, if the naval route wasn't at the side of the map, but straight through it, with land on either side. You could then take a page from the previous HostileWaters and connect land masses via high pass rock formations (the current concrete bridge would clip too much into the ships). Perhaps disallow naval vehicles from going around, it would force naval unit players to not take a boring long route and put them close to the action. The middle might have to be a multi-path route though to avoid meat-grinding. You would save a little development time by not needing to create super detailed external-facing cliffs and underwater regions. The challenge though? Create waterways big enough to let Cruisers do their thing while still offering enough ground-level gameplay above it (so, not 75m straight and long bridges), And then this also leaves you with two very distinct vehicle lanes, each with their own environment and gameplay. Granted, with all that said, you're basically making a new map by that point... Although purely theoretically it sounds fun to play and unlike the current maps in rotation in terms of design.

Your linked video certainly has relevance here. There is a barrier to entry in regards to creating ideas and bringing them to life on a platform like W3D or Unreal or whatever. The initial steps of entering unknown territory - unknown tools, working environment, standards, and missing knowledge all create a high-pressure situation that most people quickly want to walk out of. This is a perfectly natural human response, most of us don't deal well with such things. The problem originates from stepping into these situations blindly, without assistance, and without support - as you say. The problem is often compounded by other people sharing these negative experiences, which then creates an echo-chamber within your head which basically serves to reinforce that "this is hard, and everyone else thinks so too". You're left with a wish to create, but no means to pull it off. So yeah, you put a different light on an old issue. You speak about it from an angle most people don't really consider, but I think it is a good idea that you try to highlight it. It might, as you say, 'unblock' some people into trying something again... Hell, I know several W3D projects are literally begging for more environmental artists, so it's not like the whole 'job' is unwanted!

How is this new HostileWaters playing for people? I admit I'm still missing the work I put into the icebergs, and LST/infantry gameplay seems non-existent in the current version. All fun and games while the units are fresh and new but I fear people will be back to hating the lack of diversity that initially made me add so much infantry focused content in the first place, and we'd be back to start again. That said, I do think the game needs more T5 naval and air-enabled maps. I think we need a HostileWaters with land based gameplay on the map pool. I do find it highly amusing that Siege seems to be the most popular map now, up from being the least popular. It's funny to me because I always designed that map (back in 2008 when Chronojam was literally pushing me for an open space map) to be a map where airplanes would play a role. That the map sucked until said airplanes got added should not have been a surprise. And the Chrono Tank also plays very nicely with the terrain in general, doing what it does best; Utilize shortcuts. If I had the time - and confidence - I'd look into a T5 naval/air map. Maybe someone else can do a map for once and not just Pushwall, Chop or myself. Edit: Perhaps a short term solution could be to refit some of the existing maps with naval and air gameplay. Pipeline seems like a good candidate for naval, although for air gameplay we'd need another airfield paint job (not to mention a greatly expanded map backdrop)...

Yeah the Destroyer was not made with the same standards. The art for the naval units was out-sourced, both visually and technically the Destroyer is a mess and I believe a few people are already looking into updating it substantially (for starters the whole thing needs to be re-unwrapped). I don't know the specifics of the deal but I'd probably not go into business with that individual again, personally, given the fact he delivered half a ship here. At least the Gunboat and Cruiser came out okay, especially the Gunboat.

Sorry let me clarify what I meant; With "not exciting" I wasn't trying to discredit the small roles handed to it via game logic. I purely meant that in terms of audio/visuals the weapon looks and plays too much like similar weaponry, even if game logic allows it to do other things. Just my opinion, anyway!

Locking it back to a ground focused unit is fine by me, you're right, the Chrono Tank (and to some extent, the Phase Tank), do seem to serve the AA role well enough right now. Still, if you do ever find artist budget, I wouldn't be against a more distinct APC top gun, the current one is so small and feels too similar to Rangers and Captains from a gameplay perspective. Could be why so few people ever buy it, its just not a very exciting unit.

I'm pretty sure I at some point suggested more role and visual clarity for the APC, specifically to give it a single-row anti-air mounted top gun, or a triple-barrel rotary variant for more rapid fire anti-air. I still don't think the APC screams "anti-air unit" and it needs some work ideally, but unfortunately creating weapons isn't my field. Lastly I guess we always could revive the idea of a Mobile AA Gun vehicle - although it needs a new model, so again, more art work that would need to be done by someone.

Subs exit under them, and you're not supposed to camp that area, just like you're not supposed to camp the allied naval spawn bay. They help cover an angle from attacks, it used to be too easy to camp a sub pen with ships. Kind of the whole point as to why I redid those naval buildings ~2 years ago. The invisible geometry and floating ladders does seem weird, I think falling to your death makes more sense. It's even a bit of a maze down there with invisible walls everywhere. Edit: I think you might be able to place flares down there as well.

What a lovely little patch.

Well, I think we're moving more to higher resolutions. I've first-hand tested scenes with a crapload of 4k textures and high detail meshes and in single player environments they work fine even without occlusion culling put into place. Even APB is beginning to use it for newer assets. I think we're likely moving very rapidly now towards 4k being a standard for bigger assets, and me personally, I will not be making new things with 1k textures anymore (unless it is a small prop that simply doesn't need the space). So in the long run we will begin to start seeing those advanced DDS format benefits - but not quite yet for the current projects, since they are based on a legacy of older assets. Side note, I do think 4k is where we will remain for years to come. 8k or higher simply does not make sense with how monitors work; There is only so much 3D space a monitor can view, and with 4k you practically eliminated texture tiling (my demo map is proof, although note that you need to still fill the scenes with more than just one texture). So think of a move to 4k to be a one-time investment that will last another decade. But, we have bigger priorities in terms of graphics. I imagine this topic will be brought up a lot when we ever get around to seeing W3D mesh and material systems being redone. As for paid applications, as long as they have no monthly fee (like 3DS Max does), I'm sure we can pool the funding for a single licence shared across W3DHub, or hell, maybe get a free one if we use puppies with eyes. Or puppy eyes? Whatever it is that makes people charitable! We're already spending money on these games on a daily basis without getting any back - from hosting to licencing and to straight up purchases.

Guess it's nice for winter times or when you want to warm up your food quickly.

I'd love a follow-up on this for when we begin to have a more established W3D 5.x 'pipeline' on how to properly do graphics. BC7 is a very curious DDS format. From everything we know about it, it would beat DXT5 in terms of graphical quality : performance ratios. But BC7 is a ~2 year old format now and has seemingly gone almost completely ignored by the gaming industry and specifically toolset developers (images and 3D). This must be simply due to the severe complexity of how BC7 files are created. Regardless, I'd love to see support for it in W3D when we get around to seeing rendering engine improvements becoming a reality. As for DXT1/5 compression comparisons, it certainly seems we as a group should be looking into Crunch, the examples you provided do not lie, in almost all cases they are superior results. Thanks for writing this up! I'd mark this a 2-star since there is a lot of technical talk here that will be complicated for beginners.