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41 minutes ago, NodGuy said:Did someone say Reborn?
This is my favourite xD
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Welcome to the 13th edition of W3D Weekly! This week it's an APB special with some AR thrown in for good measure!
Community News
Keep your diaries clear for Friday the 1st of October, as we will be hosting a game night for Red Alert: A Path Beyond! Find out more details from @ Coolrock and the gang below!
Elsewhere in the wider community, the Generals community is celebrating 18 years of C&C Generals with some events happening across none days starting on the 18th of September. This showcase will feature mods that our very own @ GeneralCamo is involved with, so be sure to check it out!
The image for the event is below and you can find the full schedule here.
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
Rain or shine, APB 3.6 is coming in just a few short weeks!
That out of the way, I (@ ChopBam ) would be remiss if we didn't share another bullet point from the 3.6 changelog this week.
Introducing the Soviet BTR!
Role: Medium skirmisher and scout for the Soviet arsenal.
Its speed and mobility are unmatched among Soviet ground skirmish units, making it great for scouting, early rushes, and intercepting Allied Longbows and infantry.
Its characteristics put it in a role somewhere between the Allied Ranger and APC, with mobility and speed almost on par with the former, combined with the heavier firepower of the latter, all packaged into a unique unit that no longer feels like a copy-paste of the Soviet Ranger while also fitting the Soviet playstyle better than it did.
Price: $750 (tentative). As with all things in a testing phase, it might be adjusted before release.
- Strong vs: infantry, aircraft, mines
- Weak vs: heavy vehicles, seacraft, buildings
Notes:
- Although this unit generally replaces the Soviet Ranger on lower tech maps, it may appear in other places where the Soviet Ranger didn't, like Pipeline.
- The vehicle's textures (particularly the forest and desert versions) aren't final and are still subject to change. While we plan to do that eventually, we decided in the meantime that it's not something that's worth delaying the release.
- Thanks to @ Killing_You for concepting the unit, and @ Ice for providing this unit's model and texture. The rig was originally created by @ GeneralCamo and then worked on and tested by @ ChopBam with help and input from the testing team, especially @ ryknow69.
Short clip of what it looks like ingame.
Apocalypse Rising
Over in AR land this week, we realised that shooting and repairing buildings from the inside was giving way too many points and credits. @ moonsense715 tracked down the issue with some help from the testers and we discovered that the points system was looking very wonky. To counter this, @ moonsense715 has made some adjustments to how we set the score of all of our units and buildings in the editor.
Here are the basics:
- Score = A value we configure in the editor.
- Credits = Score
- Repair Score = 50% of Score
- Repair Credits = 50% of Score
Previously the way we setup score required us to do some maths and if the HP of a unit changed (damage points were setup as a direct multiplier to the health of a unit/building), we would have to redo those maths. But now that we can just setup the score of what a unit is worth in points which makes the entire points system a lot easier to balance! Great job comrade @ moonsense715 !
In other news, @ Romanov has been hard at work putting some finishing touches on Tanya's character model! You can see the model below!
Also on @ Romanov 's list is Einstein's lab, which will play a part in an upcoming map that he's making.
That's it for this week!Come back next time for some more excellent W3D content!
SpoilerHype!
[blurb]The 13th edition of W3D Weekly is now out! This week it's an APB special with some AR thrown in for good measure![/blurb]
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Back before APB version 993 came out, the guy that modelled most of the vehicles (Sir_Phoenixx) used to post his work in progress models up on the forums. I kept a few of these images from across the years which you can see below:
Also here are a couple of bonus Reborn memes for a laugh.
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I missed this thread the first time around. You guys are the best. Late congrats K0V. <3
We should totally start a post-your-old-community-photos thread at some point so that we can be all nostalgic. :D
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Welcome to the 11th edition of W3D weekly! Let's get straight to it!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
This week we would like to discuss the new visible map boundary system added by ChopBam. At the "soft" map boundaries, we use red warning stripes that fade at distance. Once you go past them, they appear green from the other side.
Included below is a quick video of how this may appear in a few different scenarios.
* Note: Due to the way these stripes work, using lower texture settings may make these boundaries appear incorrectly or not at all.
Battle For Dune
@ Romanov has been making new buildings for Battle for Dune. Below you can see some examples of the Harkonnen Barracks and Wind Trap. Work continues on with great progress being made across the board!
Renhalo
@ Jerad2142 is back to working on Renhalo again, currently he’s adding a new level between 5b and 6a as the original campaign has a bit of a story telling jump between the two levels.
He’s not sure when the level will be done but at the very least it will add some more new scripts to the TT branch.
That's it for this week!Come back next time for some more kickass W3D content!
SpoilerYESSS
[blurb]Welcome to the 11th edition of W3D weekly! This week we have updates from APB, BFD and RenHalo! Click below for more![/blurb]
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Welcome to the 10th edition of W3D Weekly!
Dive in for your weekly dose of news below!
DDoS Attacks
First off I just want to address the elephant in the room here. Over the course of the past week, we've been getting hit with what we understand to be a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. What this basically means is that an individual (or multiple individuals) are flooding our servers with a large amount of incoming junk traffic in order to bring them down.
We're currently investigating what we can do in order to mitigate these attacks with the resources that we have at our disposal, however we are unaware of what the attacker's motivation is at this time. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be taking some defensive measures, but as this is still fresh and we're still gathering data, we will need some time.
I'd also like to personally extend an arm out to the attacker to come and talk to me personally about what their motivation is and whether there is any way we can solve this problem amicably. I am not aware of anything that we have personally done as a team that would warrant these attacks, but I'm willing to hear the attacker out if they have legitimate complaints. If this situation can be solved diplomatically, we're willing to consider it for the good of the games. At the end of the day, all of this effort to shut down a small community that is trying to enjoy a niche game seems a bit much, so it would be good to understand the why of the situation right now.
To the players, you have our word that we'll work to overcome these attacks if they persist, but in the meantime I'm sorry to say that we need more time to put some more substantial defence in place. We'll keep you all informed on Discord in the meantime.
- @ OWA
Tiberian Sun: RebornThankyou to everyone who joined us last Thursday for our Tiberian Sun: Reborn stream! It didn't go quite the way we anticipated, but we used the opportunity to take a closer look at TSR 2.0 form where we left it last year.
If you would like to watch the stream again, it's has been linked below:
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
For the next release, we've made some adjustments to how the score sharing works when buildings are destroyed. In the current build, if a main base building is destroyed, every individual on the opposing team is given 250 points, regardless of their efforts during the match. Support structures and major defenses are 100 points per player and smaller defenses are 25 points per player.
This has led to some complaints of unfairness when it comes to matches and game nights where individual scores matter. A player on a winning side could be AFK most of the round and earn well over 1000 points for simply being on the same team that destroyed the other team's buildings, whereas someone on the losing side who has superb amount of work to defend wouldn't earn any such advantage and may even be placed below the other team's bottom player on the roster.
Our adjustment is this: the team's shared score pool will still earn the same amount of points as before (250/100/25 multiplied by the team's player count), but no longer are any extra points given to those individual players when buildings are destroyed. You must do the work if you want points.
As a result, players will actually need to work to have a higher score, and not earn points sitting around. This also means game night awards will be more fair.
Moonsense715 deserves credit for doing the coding gruntwork, and ChopBam has applied that code to the various parts of the game that need it to get this function working.
Screenshots are included below of how the scoring works in the public (left) and internal (right) builds when one player destroys the War Factory by themself. You can see the Allies gain 1875 points in both, but the only points given to the players in the internal build are actually earned by the one player's work, and everyone else on the teams are still on equal footing with each other.
Additionally to this, there are some points adjustments regarding the nuke flare and C4 charges:
- Disarming A-bomb flares will soon grant a joint 250 points to all the players who worked on it, and the other 250 points will awarded to the team's score after it's disarmed. In the current public build, 500 points went to the player who did the last bit of disarming.
- Disarming C4 charges will soon grant live points to all the players who work on it, rather than awarding all the points to the person who fired the final disarming shot.
Bonus:
SpoilerIf you haven't been playing APB lately, we've been firing up a few games during the week. See what sort of shenanigans you've missed:
Renegade X: Firestorm
Surprise! We don't usually talk much about what other communities are doing, but the Renegade X team recently held another one of their Q&As on Renegade X Firestorm! If you've been living under a rock, this project is a very exciting and ambitious attempt at bringing a redesigned take on Tiberian Sun to the Unreal engine.
Here's a link to the video below:
Tiberian Sun: Rising
Double surprise! We don't usually talk about what other non-C&C-FPS mods out there are doing, but this one deserves a special mention.
Assassin's Tiberian Sun: Rising mod has been in development for a very long time now, but recently showcased some really exciting developments as part of the Tiberian Sun 22nd anniversary celebrations!
A lot of you probably don't know this, but back around during 2005-2006 before the Apocalypse Rising team joined up with the A Path Beyond team, Assassin and the crew at C&C Source hosted Apocalypse Rising for us, which was a really fun time during development. You can read back through the first 20 AR dev blogs that catalogue this point in our development.
One of the more amazing features in TS Rising however, is the Tiberium Ecosystem that evolves the state of the map as you play. Check it out below!
We wish Assassin and the team all the best with this awesome project!
That's it for this week!Come back next time for some more top W3D content!
SpoilerTrebuchet!
[blurb]Welcome to the 10th edition of W3D Weekly! Dive in for your weekly dose of news below![/blurb]
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Welcome to the 9th edition of W3D weekly! Let's get straight into this week's updates!
TSR Game NightTiberian Sun's 22nd anniversary is coming up and to celebrate it, we're hosting a Reborn Game Night!
Join us for some Banshee flying and Titan stomping tomorrow at 7PM BST! We'll also be streaming on http://twitch.tv/w3dhub
Here's a link to some more details!
Tiberian Sun: RebornIn preparation for said event, @ Killing_You has taken some time off from Dead Legion in order to release a balance patch for TSR 1.6!
Arnold is FINALLY nerfed!
Check out the full details right here:
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
Thanks to more great work from @ CMDBob , in the next release, @ ChopBam reports that infantry will actually be slightly shorter when they crouch, which means their target box from other players gets visibly shorter, and they can wedge into slightly shorter spaces. Practically, this doesn't have huge gameplay implications, but it's now completely possible to create spaces only accessible by crouching.
These crouch percentage values can differ between character classes, and will be able to be edited live on singleplayer LAN mode with the console command EDIT_HUMAN.
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising@ Romanov has put some finishing touches on the Time Machine, which will feature in a new map that he's making.
Elsewhere @ OWA has been making sure that dogs look cool whilst driving vehicles. Y'know, important stuff!
That's it for this week!Come back next time for some more bang tidy W3D content!
SpoilerOld but gold.
[blurb]Welcome to the 9th edition of W3D weekly! Let's get straight into this week's updates![/blurb]
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Welcome to the 8th edition of W3D weekly! It's a bit later in the week than usual, but we've got some good stuff to show off!
Interim Apex@ Kaskins posted an update for Interim Apex recently which adds a plethora of new vehicles and rebalances a large amount of the game. head to the thread below to check out the full list of changes and updates!
Also, please join me in congratulating both @ Kaskins and @ dblaney1 for becoming fully fledged @Staff Moderators! This prestigious title is coveted amongst all W3D Developers.
W3D Engine - Scripts 4.7 Update 1
Just in case you didn't see it last week, Scripts 4.7 Update 1 is now out! If you're a Renegade player or a server owner, head on over to the thread below and grab the update!
Upcoming EventsTiberian Sun's 22nd anniversary is coming up and to celebrate it, we've been asked to host a Reborn Game Night! Join us for some Banshee flying and Titan stomping on the the 19th of August at 7PM GMT! Here's a link to some more details!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
This week's update comes from @ Ice on the new Artillery model that's being assembled!
It's no secret that our current artillery model remains one of the oldest vehicle assets in the game, and has really been showing its age next to our more recently updated vehicles:
Several replacement models had been worked on by different artists over the years, but none ended up being implemented, and so the increasingly ancient artillery model soldiered on as most other vehicles progressively received shiny new models.
Back in May, @ ChopBam ran a poll on what the best replacement would be, between two primary contenders:
Results were mixed. On one hand, A's large boxy rear was at odds with the open style of the classic unit, and the gun barrel was too small. The model also had too many details which led to an excessive polycount. On the other hand, B's gun barrel was too big, while the large spade on the rear didn't fit the style of the classic unit or the gameplay of the APB version. The model also seemed somewhat unfinished and had some notable clipping issues.
In the end, although both models looked quite nice in their own right, neither was ideal for our needs, and so we went back to the drawing board to combine the best aspects of both into a new design. Given the game's alternate-universe setting and the ambiguity of the available source material, we decided to get a bit creative with it.
Here's a sneak peak, along with some of our sources:
.thumb.png.a8fa628bad84499810e7d9c0c98462f2.png)
In the spirit of classic C&C nostalgia, the new model is now based primarily on the ingame sprite, with details selectively taken from both the cameo model and the Remastered version, all combined into something unique that feels like a more faithful interpretation than either A or B above.
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse RisingThis week we gave the Conscript a new weapon because we were finding that he felt a bit too bland as a unit. We took some inspiration from Red alert 3 and now the Conscript has a Molotov Coctail that he can throw. This deals damage over time in an area, so it's perfect for flushing out deployed infantry and denying passage through corridors. Just watch out, because it does deal damage to you if you throw it too closely to your feet!
By making this, we were also able to create this
horrifying displaymasterpiece of 6 Mama Romonovs spinning on a merry-go-round.
More important content to come next week.
That's it for this week!Tune in next time for some more excellent W3D content!
[blurb]Welcome to the 8th edition of W3D weekly! It's a bit later in the week than usual, but we've got some good stuff to show off![/blurb]
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On 8/8/2021 at 8:47 PM, MaDMaxNXC said:
i had a problem with script.dll i was told enable TLS 1.2 THAT didnt help i found a repair in launcher which fixed it, sense this update i dont see any games its blank so cant repair anything. i did all that was said i still get the same problem launcher was working fine before the update. I think something in update is not allowing my pc to login to launcher cause it worked fine before the update...
Any ideas @ danpaul88 ?
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Probably worth poking @ Kaskins and @ dblaney1 about this one.
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This type of low-content post is not acceptable. I've locked this topic as a result.
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Yeah I think the general idea is to stop repairs if a vehicle sitting on the SD was damaged within the last X amount of seconds.
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Welcome to the 7th edition of W3D weekly! We're a day late, but that's not too bad!
W3D Engine - Scripts 4.7 Update 1
Just in case you didn't see it last week, Scripts 4.7 Update 1 is now out! If you're a Renegade player or a server owner, head on over to the thread below and grab the update!
Upcoming EventsTiberian Sun's 22nd anniversary is coming up and to celebrate it, we've been asked to host a Reborn Game Night! Join us for some Banshee flying and Titan stomping on the the 19th of August at 7PM GMT! Here's a link to some more details!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
This week, @ ChopBam is here to show off his new Service Depot repair animation, based completely on the Service Depot animation that takes place in Red Alert. Those who are extra observant may also notice a change to the cost of repairs. With some things still in the works that are related to this, however, a proper announcement for that feature may come in a future weekly.
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
Over in AR land, @ moonsense715 has been hard at work lengthening our existing toolkit of modular road tiles. This will offer us more flexibility when creating city maps. Check it out below!
In other news @ Romanov has been working on models for both Tanya and the Soviet union's prime matriarch, Mama Romanov!
Tanya is still a work-in-progress currently, but Mama Romanov is ready to dish out the bowls in the canteen to keep the Soviet war machine well fed (but not too fed!)
Now then, be a good Conscript otherwise there's no borscht for you!
That's it for this week!Tune in next time for some more excellent W3D content!
Spoiler[blurb]Welcome to the 7th edition of W3D weekly! We're a day late, but that's not too bad![/blurb]
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21 hours ago, moonsense715 said:
@ OWA Biggest trolling ever: mind controlling a bus with 16 enemies inside it?
Definitely! ;D
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Welcome to the 6th edition of W3D Weekly! There's been some major developments, so let's unpack what's been happening this week!
W3D Engine - Scripts 4.7 Update 1
The BIG NEWS this week is that @ jonwil has finalized and released the Scripts 4.7 Update 1 package! It contains contributions from @ Jerad2142 , @ Dghelneshi , @ moonsense715 , and @ dblaney1 .
The update consists of various bug fixes, as well as a handful of feature improvements, so if you're a Renegade player or server owner, you're going to need it!
Read more in the thread below!
Upcoming EventsTiberian Sun's 22nd anniversary is coming up and to celebrate it, we've been asked to host a Reborn Game Night! Join us for some Banshee flying and Titan stomping on the the 19th of August at 7PM GMT! Here's a link to some more details!
Renegade X NewsOn a more unfortunate tone, there's been a situation developing recently in the Renegade X community that I felt that we should communicate out, just to spread awareness on the situation. Basically, the old domain is no longer being managed by the current team.
The official statement from the Renegade X team is as follows:
So with all that that in mind, be aware that the official website for Renegade X is now located at https://ren-x.com
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
@ ChopBam reporting. We've had the "per-round reload" feature available for a while now, but it's now going to finally be implemented in our game! When you reload your weapon rounds as a Sergeant, Starshina, Volkov, or Phase Tank, you're going to only reload the rounds that you already fired off. No longer do you need to wait for the full reload time if you just used one or two shots. Check it out in the video below!
@ CMDBob deserves credit for making this feature work properly.
Note: We experimented with the ability to interrupt your reloading sequence to fire rounds, but it never felt quite right, so we're keeping it uninterruptible. Still super nifty!Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
This week @ moonsense715 and @ Romanov have been working on a neat new project (more on that another time!), but whilst working on it, Romanov introduced a feature that everyone needs in their lives. It's basically an overhaul to the visible driver system that allows character models to appear in the driver seat of vehicles. With this new script we can do stuff like this!
Meanwhile, @ OWA has been rigging a couple of new civilian vehicles. we now have our very own Postal Truck and School Bus! Check them out below!
The School Bus has 16 seats, so if you can procure one in the field, it becomes a really great impromptu troop transport! Let us know what you think!
Cold War Confrontation
@ CMDBob here, time for a quick update. This one concerns the new pistol for the WARPAC forces. Beforehand, I had them using the MP443 "Grach" pistol, but I felt that it was just a bit too modern and a bit too samey, as well. Instead, I've replaced it with the classic Makarov.
Only 8 (slightly weaker) rounds per magazine, but it fires very fast and can reload slightly quicker than most pistols. Plus, it's definitely a classic weapon.
Click the image there to get a rotatable, 3D view of the Makarov model.
That's it for this week!
Tune in next time for some more quality W3D content!
Spoiler[blurb]Welcome to the 6th edition of W3D Weekly! There's been some major developments, so let's unpack what's been happening this week![/blurb]
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Welcome to the 5th edition of W3D Weekly! Better late than never eh?
Forum Updates@ OWA has been re-structuring the download database a bit, which means we've now got bespoke sections for Renegade, Interim Apex and ECW content! Keep an eye on it as we look at what we add to it next.
Head here to check it out: https://w3dhub.com/forum/files/
As ever, if you have any suggestions, please let us know!
Cold War Confrontation
Here is the model for the M60A3 Patton MBT. Older than the M1 Abrams, but still effective as a second line tank, the M60A3 has a 120mm gun, 7.62mm coaxial and a cupola mounted MG as well. WIth a diesel engine, it's not quite as fast as the M1 Abrams, either, but it can still move around at a decent pace. Click the image to view the model in full 3D!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
@ ChopBam here once again, this time reporting on some inertia improvements. Credit for this next change goes to @ Eggman891 for coding these abilities into our game. There are other inertia abilities available to us also, but the following are likely to be the biggest noticeable changes in APB.
Swimming in the current release version lets you bounce and dodge back and forth instantly. We've touched it up so there will be a bigger gradation in directional changes while swimming. A video will speak much more to this than I can.
Jumping while crouching will no longer offer a gigantic speed boost. See the next video to see what I mean!
There are a few slight other changes due to inertia but they will be less noticeable than those mentioned above.
That's it for this week!See you next week for more excellent W3D content!
Spoiler[blurb]Welcome to the 5th edition of W3D Weekly! Better late than never eh?[/blurb]
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Welcome to the 4th edition of W3D Weekly! We made it for a whole month of updates. Go us!
Forum UpdatesA few more forum updates here this week. More bugs have been squashed now, so the user display on the APB theme should be back to how it was before the update. We're still figuring out which new IPB features to use though.
Stay posted for more!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
@ ChopBam here to say that in the next release, APB will be able to have its own designated Windows Application icon while running, thanks to some clever work from @ CMDBob ! The Soviet red star icon will replace the generic W3D Hub icon in the alt/win tab application list and the taskbar, as can be seen in the screenshots below.
It's a small thing, but pretty useful in the grand scheme of things!
Cold War Confrontation
@ CMDBob reports that Cold War Confrontation is now on the launcher for @Testers now, so stuff can get... tested!
Plus, CWC has the same icon support that I added as well.
Finally, here's a shot of the game's main menu (with a sneaky cameo from the M1 Abrams in the background...)
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
@ Romanov is working on something.
Also, the truck we received is being made into a replacement for our ancient Demo Truck (probably the oldest asset in the game at this point).
That's it for this week!See you next week for more excellent W3D content!
[blurb]Welcome to the 4th edition of W3D Weekly! We made it for a whole month of updates. Go us![/blurb]
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Welcome to the 3rd edition of W3D Weekly! We've got loads of pretty pictures this week, so let's get into it!
Forum UpdatesThe forum has undergone a few stylistic updates to get it back to where it was after the recent update. If you find any bugs, please tell @ OWA !
Expansive Civilian WarfareECW has been hotfixed to version 1.2.2.5! Check out the details in the thread below!
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
New Attack/Missile Submarines have been modeled (credit @ Kane000 ) and textured (credit @ Mighty BOB! ) for us, to be playable in the next release. The current models and textures date back to an age long ago, so with all the other things that have been updated since then, this is a refreshingly welcome update.
What's that thing they say? "A screenshot is worth more than a thousand words"? "Pics or it didn't happen"? Well however the sayings go, without further ado, here is some imagery of our new submarines.
Cold War Confrontation
@ CMDBob here, and this week, I'm going to give you a quick tour of the NATO Barracks.
This building is, like all the barracks in other W3D games, the building that lets you buy all of the infantry classes.
A small watchtower on top of the barracks allows for a good view of the battlefield without being shot at.
The top floor has a number of purchase terminals, and the weapon racks.
Heading down the ramps, the bottom floor has the beds and lockers for the soldiers, as well as another purchase terminal.
The final room on the bottom floor has the Primary SATCOM Uplink and a couple more purchase terminals. Defend the uplink, it controls the entire building, and without it, it won't work!
That's all for this week.
RenArchive
Hi, @ Einstein here. It has been a while since I've done much around here, due to some real-life things that needed tending to. I'm still plenty busy, but I'm hoping that I will soon be able to return to dusting off some old games, and getting them ready to play with a modern version of the W3D engine under the hood. That is, after all, one of the primary missions of the Renegade Archive project - Not only preserving as much as possible, but updating as many of the older W3D games as we can, so that they can continue to run on modern machines without the issues and handicaps that their native form might present.
On 3/7/2021 at 2:34 AM, Einstein said:Well I guess that settles it. By popular demand, RenAlert 9935 will be coming to a launcher near you!
Soon™
When last we spoke, you made clear what I needed to work on next. The last of the "alpha" releases of what would later become what you all know and love as APB. The observable differences are astounding when comparing this project to itself nearly 17 years later!
I have prepared a "mostly working I think" first build that the testers will have access to Soon™. And after a few rounds of them running through it and breaking it in new and amazing ways, and then me fixing what they found, repeat, etc, hopefully it will be ready for a public (re)release. Until then, have a look at the magic of 2004 in 1080p (big thanks to the TT/engine team and the awesome work they do, because this would not be possible at all without them).
Spoiler
I feel like a disclaimer is needed somewhere. The "funny" units you see in some of the pictures are from a few "test" maps from the development of this version of the game. A great many concepts were being tested, some for the first time ever, and there were a handful of maps which these (often ridiculous) ideas would be dumped into for testing, and then some were released to the public (for science!). These "funny maps" or "test maps", were the inspiration for the modern-day Lunar Paradox map, and no proper 9935 release would be complete without them!
Battle for Dune
The BFD team have been working on weapons recently. @ AZ-Stalker has been working on recolours for the Sniper Rifle, Shotgun and various utility devices. Check them out below!
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse RisingWe recently got out hands on a new Soviet Supply Truck model thanks to a talented artist called Hokunin! Check it out ingame below! This model will hopefully also be used as a base for the Demo Truck!
@ moonsense715 is also working on improving the Dune Patrol map. Stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks!
That's All Folks!
That's all we've got for this week! See you next week for more W3D content!
[blurb]Welcome to the 3rd edition of W3D Weekly! We've got loads of pretty pictures this week, so let's get into it![/blurb]
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Apologies for taking so long to reply here. We banned this user as soon as we saw your thread. We'll also be adding more registration challenges to weed out bots soon. Hope this helps.
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Welcome to the 2nd edition of W3D Weekly! This week we have a whole batch of updates from various projects!
Let's get started!
Forum Updates
We recently upgraded our version of the Invision Powerboard forum software from 4.5 to 4.6, so if you guys notice any bugs or issues, please report them to me (@ OWA )!
We have a few new forum features at our disposal now that we might roll out in the future, so keep an eye out for quality of life improvements!
Expansive Civilian Warfare
The brand spankin' new ECW client was released last week, so what are you doing with yourself? Go get yourself down to San Casina, grab yourself a job, run with the deer, drive a train and fight the aliens!
Cold War Confrontation
@ CMDBob just announced his personal W3D Project, Cold War Confrontation! Go and check it out below!
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
We've been looking at how to make the game a bit more user-friendly in AR. One of the things that came up in one of our previous tests, is that it's sometimes not immediately clear where the vehicle that you have just bought is. To alleviate that, we've now put a marker on any vehicle a player buys, that stays around until they get into it. This should hopefully help players find their vehicles a little easier.
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
@ ChopBam reports that in the next release, we will be hearing new Soviet elevator music in all of the Soviet Elevators! This brand new track was composed specifically for A Path Beyond (credit goes to none other than ChopBam's amazing spouse) and is inspired by a Soviet FMV, from the original C&C: Red Alert, where there was elevator music playing in the background.
Super RA-listic! :D
W3D Engine Team
This week we're going to talk about one of the new tools that the engine team has made that helps developers to more efficiently make balance tweaks to the games; the Armour Editor.
Before talking about what the Armour Editor is, we'll give a brief rundown of what armour actually is.
- In every W3D game, weapons deal damage and soldiers/vehicles/buildings (let's call them game objects) have HP that can be damaged.
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Weapons have a damage value associated to them which tells the game how much damage it does.
- Weapons have a warhead type associated to them (i.e. Bullet, Rocket, Cannon etc.)
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Game Objects have health points associated to them which tells the game how much HP (health points) they have.
- Game Objects have armour types (i.e. Skin, Metal, Wood, Concrete etc.)
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When a weapon shoots and hits a game object, the damage from the weapon is deducted from that game object's hp.
- This is when warhead and armour type comes into play.
- For example, if the weapon has a bullet warhead and the game object has the concrete armour type, the game will find a multiplier for what bullet-type damage should do against the concrete type armour. Let's say that this number is 0.5.
- Because bullet-type damage vs concrete-type armour is 0.5, the damage that the weapon deals against the target is halved.
- Multiple warheads and armour types form the way in which we then balance the game. This is why pistols aren't good against tanks, but are great against infantry for example.
Previously in W3D development, developers needed to hand-edit the armor.ini text file in order to make balance changes to the armour types and warheads within the game. This is what it would look like:
[Scale_Light_Vehicle] None=1.000000 Earth=1.000000 Death=10000.000000 Harmless=0.000000 Bullet_AI=0.030000 Bullet=0.125000 Bullet_AV=0.250000 Rocket=1.000000 Rocket_AV=1.000000 Artillery=1.000000 Tesla=1.500000 Heatwave=1.000000 Prism=0.700000 Tank_Shell=1.000000 Flak=0.200000 Flak_Ball=1.600000 Repair=-2.000000 Medical=0.000000 Explosive=14.000000 Weak_Explosive=4.000000 Terror_Drone=1.000000 Melee=0.000000 Radiation=0.025000 Capture=0.000000 Disguise_Kit=1.000000 Demolition_Trigger=1.000000 Airstrike_Laser=0.000000 Attack_Dog_Sniff=1.000000 Superweapon=0.500000 Splash=0.000000Every armour type would have a load of numbers like in a long list this which we'd need to first find and then manually tweak, which was incredibly error prone. With the new armour editor this now becomes much easier. Adding and removing new warheads or armour types was also a massive pain to do manually.
Here is the armor.ini file from Apocalypse Rising as an example of how much easier the new tool makes it to edit all of the warheads and armour types within the game:
With the file laid out like this, we get an overview of the relationship between every warhead and every armour type in the game very quickly. It's not something that you'd generally see when booting the game, but improvements like this help us to reduce bugs and make balance tweaks a lot quicker than we used to be able to do.
Big thanks to @ Yah-Nosh for getting this one into place, as it's saved us a ton of time already.
If there's any part of the engine you want to know about in future updates or have any questions about this update, leave a comment below!
Other Stuff!
@ OWA is re-watching Castlevania and is also going paintballing at the weekend.
It was @ Yah-Nosh 's birthday on Sunday, so he came over and we cooked some burgers, pork and steak!
@ Metaridley has made an excellent playlist of his APB game night highlights, which you can check out here:
SpoilerSeeya next week!
[blurb]Welcome to the 2nd edition of W3D Weekly! This week we have a whole batch of updates from various projects![/blurb]
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- Popular Post
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Introduction
Welcome to our brand new update format; W3D Weekly! This won't replace our larger project updates but is designed to give you guys more of an idea about what we're working on. We discovered a while back that although we do a lot of work on the projects, we're not actually very good at showing off all the cool things that we're doing.
In these updates we'll be looking at each project as well as what the W3D Engine Team have been up to as well. We've got plenty to show off this week in our first edition, so take a seat and have a read!
Expansive Civilian Warfare
Big news for ECW fans! @Jerad2142 has just announced that ECW has been moved from the older version of scripts (3.4.4) to the newer version (4.X) which means that players should encounter less compatibility issues (goodbye black screen bug) and benefit from smoother performance!
If you haven't had a chance to check out ECW because of these issues, now is the time to go and check it out!
Read more below:
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
@moonsense715 has been working on some improvements for the Ore Trucks and Harvesters across all projects and these updates have made their way into APB!
While driving an ore truck, the HUD will now indicate how full it is. Every yellow pip counts as two "scoops". The pips don't tell you if you've harvested from gems or mixed fields yet.
Also, the per-map mine limit now appears on the HUD. No longer will a command be needed to display the mine limit from the bot!
That's all from @ChopBam and APB!Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
We've recently been working on improving the V3 Rocket Launcher in Apocalypse Rising. It's always been a unit that has been tricky to use, so this batch of improvements should make it much easier.
The first thing we've added to the V3 Launcher is a limited weapon traverse. This means you can move the rocket from side to side when adjusting your horizontal aim, like on a regular tank. This angle is limited, but it does offer the vehicle more flexibility when aiming at a target, because you no longer have to move the entire vehicle when correcting your horizontal aim.
The other big change is that we have completely redesigned the aim helper. We had previously implemented this feature as a toggleable 'Q' ability, but we found that quite clunky in practice. Now the aim helper is a secondary fire mode that compliments the trajectory of the primary fire mode. this means you can hold down the right mouse button to perfect your aim and them hit the left mouse button to send the rocket flying in that direction. You can also cycle between two different rocket trajectories (long range and short range), but we haven't quite figured out what keyboard button should do that yet.
On top of that, the aim helper is only visible to the player who is driving the V3 Launcher, so other players won't see it at all. Check out the video below to see how it works:
Other Game ProjectsNo updates from @Kaskins and the Interim Apex squad this time around. But Interim Apex continues to do really well, so go check it out if you haven't done already!
No Battle for Dune updates from @TeamWolf and co this time, as a bigger update for BFD is currently being planned; so look out for that one in the future!
Without a team to work on it, Tiberian Sun: Reborn is currently shelved for the time being. We've begun talking about who would be interested in picking up work on it again and it looks like we'll have a team to do the job once other projects have had some more work put into them. It's going to be a while, but we will eventually return to the Second Tiberian War.
@Killing_You has been hard at work on set filming Dead Legion, so there's not been much movement in the Ground Zero department recently. Keep an eye out for future updates though! Also, if you want to check out Dead Legion, head here!: https://www.deadlegionseries.com
W3D Engine Team
In amongst all of the development on the games, the engine team has been hard at work making our lives easier. We don't really talk about what the engine team do much, so here is a good opportunity to showcase it on a weekly basis.
Overview
The current public version of the W3D Engine that is being used in projects such as APB is W3D 5.0 (formerly known as Scripts 5.0). Though the name "Scripts" has served us well for so long, the ambition and scope of the project has expanded to the point where major engine changes have become necessary to push the projects further than the restrictions that came with supporting Renegade. W3D 5.0 is not backwards compatible with Renegade as such, so it made sense to change the name of the project from "The Renegade Custom Scripts Project" to something that was more appropriate.
Fast forward to now, and the team is working on many exciting new things, which you can read about below and in future updates.
W3D Engine 5.1
@Yah-Nosh reports that work on the next version of our W3D Engine project is underway, with a focus on fully overhauling the rendering engine. What this means is that whilst the games running on 5.1 will look similar to how they do now the fidelity and performance of the engine will be increased, along with more tools to help developers make cool stuff. we touched on this briefly when we did the Q&A as part of the 19th Renegade anniversary event, which you can check out on our YouTube Channel.
Some of the big features to reasonably expect as a part of W3D 5.1 are full dynamic lighting, GPU skinning, instancing, better lightmapping and better shadows. GPU skinning has recently been completed, which will allow higher resolution animated characters to have a much lesser impact on game performance. The next item on the development agenda is particles (explosions, fire, weather etc.).
Stay tuned for more W3D 5.1 updates in the future!
Weapon Ammo Visibility
Improvements have been made to the weapon code to allow ammo that properly hides/disappears when fired. Right now this works in the game with stuff like the V2 Launcher, but it is done via an animation, which makes it quite inflexible.
For example, if we wanted to give the V2 a cool animation (like a deployment animation or a radar dish that spins), we wouldn't be able to, because any other animation we give the V2 won't be able to figure out whether the missile should be visible or not.
@CMDBob has begun to move the ammo hiding tech into W3D properly now, so that we will be able to use special ammo bones to hide ammo that has been fired, which frees up these animation requirements. This will be especially useful for aircraft, which require both ammo hiding and landing gear animations.
New Data Format for Developers
Until now, developers had to use a stock Renegade data format (objects database) to save game data such as balance changes to infantry, weapons and vehicles. But the team has been working on converting this into a text-based format.
The way Renegade's data is structured is efficient, but it has it's downsides; the biggest of which is that multiple developers cannot make edits to the file at the same time. The new text-based format allows multiple people to work on the main data of the game at once and then merge all of their changes together at the end.
This makes collaboration on the game projects much more effective, as it's a lot easier to search for errors that may have been made and compare future versions of the data against past versions.
All in all, this won't affect players in the slightest, but it will make our lives a lot easier.
Other Stuff!
Here's a quick round up of other things that are happening around the team!
- @Nodlied made a big financial mistake after visiting a hobby shop. Though he's not that sorry...
Spoiler
He also bought a house. But that's less relevant.
- @OWA has been playing a bit of bass guitar. Maybe he'll record something at some point.
- @TeamWolf just bought some golf clubs. We're off to hit some balls tomorrow with @Eggman891
- It's @Yah-Nosh's birthday soon, so we're going to eat some BBQ food to celebrate!
- @alphoca is starting his content creation journey! Please ask for the link when you see him and support him!!!
- @ChopBam just returned home from a trip on the East Coast of America!
SpoilerSneaky Random Corner makes a return!!
[blurb]Welcome to W3D Weekly! In these updates we'll be looking at each project as well as what the W3D engine team have been up to as well. We've got plenty to show off this week in our first edition, so take a seat and have a read![/blurb]
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On 3/11/2021 at 10:28 PM, Battle_Hedgehog said:
ehm, any similar plugin for Blender?
Indeed. You can find it here: https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE.BlenderPlugin
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3 hours ago, Coolrock said:0
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I can't believe that this website still exists. xD
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W3D Weekly #14 - 22/09/2021
in Community News
Posted
Welcome to the 14th edition of W3D Weekly! Let's get into it!
Community News
There's nothing too new to talk about on the general community side of things, but something worth mentioning is that @ Coolrock made a thread on the forums recently for people to post their old community photos. There's some good ones in there already, but if you have some moments that you want to re-share, feel free!
You can find the thread here:
Red Alert: A Path Beyond - Releasing 3.6 Soon!
Today, we're going to report which levels will have new bot support. Stay tuned though, more exciting APB info below.
The following levels are likely to be added to the lower player count rotation since they now support bot play:
Be sure to attend our APB 3.6.0.0 game night on October 1.
That is...checks watch... next Friday! I guess we'd better release by then. Have I mentioned there will be prizes involved??
Since we have too many updates to share and not enough weeks to stick to weeklies, we would like to share with you an APB update every day until 3.6 releases, so stay tuned for that!
Cold War ConfrontationMore info from CWC this week! Today we're showing off the 3 basic NATO defence structures.
This is the MG Nest. Armed with a .50 caliber M2 Browning heavy machine gun, this defensive structure will make quick work of any infantry trying to attack a NATO base.
This is the TOW Nest. This structure is very similar to the MG nest, but is armed with a TOW missile launcher, perfect for eliminating vehicles. (Be warned, the TOW missiles WILL track you down once fired!)
Finally we have the Stinger next, which is the anti-aircraft defensive structure. It has a pair of Stinger missile launchers mounted to a fire control system, as well as some camo netting. Going near this with a helicopter is not advisable.
Don't worry, though. The Warsaw Pact has its own set of defences which shall be revealed all in due time.
Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising
No real updates from us this week, but rather a question. We've ben talking about the Battle Bunker again this week and how we should implement it. We have dug out one of our old demo videos which has an interesting implementation with key-carded doors, but we're a bit undecided on it at the moment. Check out the video in question below!
Let us know your thoughts and ideas about how you feel this structure should be implemented!
That's it for this week!Come back next time for some more bodacious W3D content!
[blurb]We've got more APB, CWC and AR updates in this latest weekly update! Come and check it out![/blurb]