OWA

We decided against it so that players could actually read the signs and not get even more confused. It's less realistic but more player friendly.

<h3>It's blog time! About time too!!</h3> Welcome to this Apocalypse Rising blog! Sorry we haven't been updating you on our progress as much as we used to. We've been getting a lot of new content in game to show off and wanted to wait until we had lots of shiny new things for you guys to see. You may also see that I'm writing this blog. I've gotten more free time recently so I'm able to come back to blog writing again! Development has sped up a bit and with more content in game, it means that we are fast approaching the end of our Alpha stage! The next internal version of AR will be Beta 1; as we will have every unit that will be in Release Candidate 1 in the game! This is exciting because we can begin to balance the game immediately, as we will only be waiting on 3d models and other art. So, after the modelling and texturing is done, you can expect to see AR coming out shortly after! Allied IFV After many hours of work, the Allied IFV is now done! There will be more IFV turrets on the way as we add more infantry and higher levels of technology to the game. You can expect to see Yuri IFVs driving round insta-gibbing any infantry that get too close as well as Chrono Legionnaire IFVs which will have a better version of the basic Legionnaire's weapon at the expense of not being able to chronoshift. I personally cannot wait for the best IFV that ever graced RA2; the President IFV. When you put President Dugan into an IFV, the player will have access to an incredibly deadly vehicle that fires modified Prism beams to decimate enemy units. "But OWA, does this mean Dugan will be buyable and in the purchase list? That's just silly!" We aren't putting Dugan in the purchase list, but he may pop up in themed mission maps if we have a little spare time on our hands. The Dugan vs Romanov grudge match is simply too tempting to pass up on. Anyway, let's stop talking about this sillyness and get to the images. Rocket IFV: The Seed of Transformation = This is the basic IFV that every player gets when they purchase it. The rockets are pretty good against most targets and have a basic guiding system. when you have a technician in an IFV, you will be unable to change to a custom turret. This is because technicians are not deemed worthy enough to warrant their own fittings for the IFV. Technicians should stay in the base and repair structures, so IFV turrets are granted to more combat-worthy units. Gun IFV: Heavy Machine Guns rip through the enemy. + or = Combine a GI or Conscript with the IFV and you get this awesome bolter turret heavy machine gun turret which is effective against infantry and (suprisingly) structures. This turret isn't bad against light vehicles either, but it doesn't really work against heavier targets. Repair IFV: Field Repairs have never been so quick. + = The Repair IFV is a great support unit that is given to the player when they combine an engineer with an IFV. this version of the IFV can repair friendly vehicles in the field, so teamwork is needed when using this unit effectively. Clever usage of an Engineer IFV can help Allied armour divisions gain an advantage over Soviet units. Guardian IFV: When the Soviets bring the heavies, the Guardian will protect. + = The Guardian IFV is available to the player when they combine a Guardian GI and an IFV. The Guardian IFV is much like the Rocket IFV, but with one main difference. This IFV is specialised in taking down big targets such as Apocalypse Tanks, Kirov Airships and other heavily armoured vehicles. Due to the anti-armour warheads that this IFV uses, it is not very effective against infantry or buildings. Rocketeer IFV: Flying is better than driving. + = The main reason behind the Rocketeer IFV not being made is the fact that Rocketeers have their own form of transport strapped to their backs. Players using the Rocketeer will have no need for vehicles because they technically ARE their own vehicle. This also gets around some pesky combinations which could have proven to be imbalanced (Rocketeer + Harrier anyone?). Seal IFV: Advanced anti-infantry capabilities to stop any rush. + = The SEAL IFV not only serves as a quick transport for the Navy SEAL, but it also boasts the best anti-infantry weapon of any other vehicle in the game. This weapon is to be feared amongst the ranks of soviet infantry. However, this IFV is completely useless against buildings and vehicles, making it fairly fragile. Flak IFV: Re-tooling technology to clear the skies. + = When the soviet Flak trooper gets his hands on an IFV, he gains an incredibly powerful anti-infantry and anti- air weapon which will make the allies wish they were more careful with their vehicles. this IFV has a better Flak Cannon than the Flak Track, that makes it all the more worthwhile. Tesla IFV: Giving the Allies some Shock Therapy. + = One of the more interesting Soviet IFV combinations, the Tesla IFV is essentially a mini Tesla Tank. After the events of Red Alert, the Soviets scrapped a lot of their old Tesla Tanks to make way for the new generation of Soviet weaponry. However, in several war factories around the world, it is rumoured that the Soviets have been re-tooling Allied IFV technology with their first generation Tesla Tank technology; making for a fearsome combination that will make any Allied veteran shudder. Combining a Tesla Trooper with an IFV will provide a nostalgic blast from the past. Ivan IFV: Happy Birthday! : + = The craziest of the three unique Soviet IFVs is the Ivan IFV. This dynamite launching vehicle makes Crazy Ivan live up to his name. We decided to differentiate this IFV mode from the RA2 version a little bit so that Ivan and the Cuban Terrorist's IFV modes weren't identical. Primary fire throws out dynamite bombs whilst secondary fire will retain Ivan's original mini-demo truck superdeath attack (bound to 'Q' so that there hopefully won't be many accidents!) <h5>IFV How To Use Guide</h5> For those of you who haven't used an IFV before; here's a quick guide on how the IFV turret change will function in game when AR is released. Step 1: Get in the IFV as you would with any vehicle. Step 2: Push 'Q' and wait as the IFV turret is changed. Step 3: The IFV turret has now changed, the new weapon is available (you can also push 'Q' again to change back to the Rocket IFV). This mechanic has been put into place to pre-empt something called "turret spamming". This is basically when you can insta-switch IFV turrets to make your battlefield role change stupidly fast. If a limit wasn't enforced, players would be able to change their turrets quickly; allowing them to change weapons stupidly quick. E.G. You are engaging Kirovs in a Rocket IFV, but you see a few Conscripts running up to you. You switch to the Gun IFV (because you have a G.I.) and kill them quickly before switching back to the Rocket IFV to engage the Kirovs again. Enforcing this time limit, stops the IFV from becoming overpowered. IFV users will have to think on their feet about what turrets they will need to use for what situations and plan accordingly. The IFV is unarmed whilst it is changing weapons, so it cannot fire back if you decide to change turret in the face of the enemy. Keep this in mind when piloting an IFV when AR is released. <h5>In Game Shots of the IFV</h5> For those of you who are fans of camouflage, we're not going to disappoint. Guy with a wrench has textured the IFV to account for four camo patterns. This also accounts for all of the custom turrets as well, so they won't look mis-matched on the field, pretty cool eh. Anyway, here's some pictures of the different flavours of Rocket IFV ingame. Allied Nighthawk The Allied Nighthawk Transport is a massive helicopter that is capable of carrying infantry to and from the front lines. It is equipped with a minigun that is effective against soft-skinned targets such as infantry, Terror Drones and Flak Tracks (if they don't fire back that is). The Nighthawk can carry 5 infantrymen into battle, so it is useful for providing mobility to the Allied infantry forces. Despite being a helicopter, the Nighthawk is built in the war factory and ascends through the giant roof-doors to present itself to the buyer. The Nighthawk is tough, but in AR pilots will need to keep their wits about them because Flak Cannons are an air unit's worst nightmare (especially for one as big as the Nighthawk). Here are a few screenshots of the Nighthawk ingame. Ric unwrapped this beast and Guy with a wrench did a great job of the texturing work; along with dtrngd who rigged it up! Can anyone say "Pick 'em up"? Allied Prism Tower Guy with a wrench has been a really busy guy recently. He's textured up the Prism Tower and it's now in game and working with dapnaul88's Prism Tower charge-up scripts. This means that Prism Towers function EXACTLY like they did in Red Alert 2. When one tower sees a target, it will relay the other towers for a firepower bonus. This means that the Allies start off with a strong defence that gradually gets weaker as Prism Towers are destroyed. Here is an image of the Prism Tower in game. Mirror Force! Soviet Base Thanks to dtrngd, the Soviets have a textured base! It's by no means final, but at least it helps players navigate the buildings better; unlike older test builds. Eventually, we hope to get some really nicely textured buildings that will pay the ultimate homage to Red Alert 2. Nice base you got there comrade Handy Signs I modelled some handy signs a while back to help players navigate our large building interiors. dtrngd textured them to form the basis for this new handy system. We've taken a bit of inspiration from Team Fortress 2's 2Fort map; where specific map locations were signposted to help new players. We hope that this cool system of signposting will stop people getting lost on their first play. So far, we only have the exit sign, but more will follow. Here's some screenshots of the new signs in action(if you can call it that)! Informative! Team Messages I'm free from university for the summer, so I'm aiming to hone my skills and get better at my jobs whilst working on AR. dtrngd has taken a break to work on exams. cfehunter has been moving into the realms of code. danpaul88 has been fixing up the .mix patcher for APB Gamma's 2.1 release, but he'll be back to implement some things to get ready for our next big update. Guy with a wrench has been churning out textures for our models. Finally TEXTURES!!! WallyWood is taking me to Orlando, Florida to hunt for unreleased trading cards! Lord_Kane is bathing in a pool of lava without breaking a sweat (he's also organising something cool for the near future). Catalyst is now on the team providing server support! The rest of the team have been pretty busy with other things. OWA's Random Corner Let's celebrate by blowing something up! VQVT0bOPLqg Pull! Lets also dance awkwardly with Solid Snake to celebrate the fact that university is over for the summer and I have more time to work on AR again! ANjLNm-crHI Do the Otacon! That's All Folks! That's your lot for now. We'll be back with more updates soonish. Remember, if you have any questions about AR, feel free to ask us!

I like this post. Nice wits.

No, the capture point is only affected by engineering tools. Yes, hopefully. Fango has gone AWOL without notice, so we may never get any of the work he has done for us. This saddens me.

Nice capture system

BFD will come out sometime. I don't acknowledge that C&C3 thing as a mod. It's more like a collection of models.

I think Tiberium Wars would be a good FPS. I would have thought that RA3 would be a little too batshit insane to translate over to FPS.

With skill. (We're not sure yet).

Nor can I. Thanks

Uh yes, yes and yes. Isn't it obvious?

We currently have 5 unique maps that we use on the test server which will probably make it into the first release. None of them are from APB.

It's too early to tell.

He's referring to Fango. You're lucky I didn't warn you for a low content post. Perhaps, but whether we'll be willing to make it is another matter.

You are misinformed. This forum is on a server and the website is on a server.

Thanks! Yuri won't be a faction in the game, but the Soviet Yuri unit will be in there.

This ^

Not exactly. The same weapon models were used because they are from Renegade and we don't have most of our weapon models yet. However, they aren't balanced or are anything like the Renegade weapons in the presets, so they aren't technically the same weapons. They are only the same weapons visually. None of our stuff is dependent on Renegade's core build anymore. (Renalert wasn't dependent on Renegade either, but the level edit guy was too narrow-minded to change the values to RAlistic ones back then).

Wait what? The new camera needs to be tested in the next alpha build, so we'll get some tests in to see whether I did good or not. Free aim in first person would defeat the object of it. He means the guy that blows up. The sound is really crappy quality, so when turned up loud it rapes the ears.

Welcome to the blog guys. You may have noticed that I'm not writing these as often anymore; however, this enables us to show a lot more new stuff, instead of showing things that we've already shown you (if that makes sense). Anyway, onto the blog! <h3>G.I</h3> Our newest member, Fango, has put his skills to work swiftly and has produced this great G.I model, which is still a work in progress. Models like this ensure that Apocalypse rising's graphics will maintain a high quality. I'd even go as far to say that by the time we've got some infantry ingame, they'll be the best looking infantry on any w3d-based project. Just putting it out there. Anyway, take a look at this! Don't bother asking for the poly count on this one, because Fango is using a method of modelling which involves making a high poly model, then downgrading it to suit the engine. <h3>Prototype Tutorial</h3> dtrngd had some time off, so he decided to look into making tutorials. With Wallywood's help, he has made a start on a prototype tutorial map. There's not much else I can say, so check the video out! <center><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyC82Ck1Jj0?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyC82Ck1Jj0?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyC82Ck1Jj0?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></center> <h3>Tesla Coil Update</h3> Guy with a wrench has been working on getting the Tesla Coil ingame and rigged. He's done a pretty damn good job as well, since he's been playing around with one of danpaul88's scripts that allows us to change the model and texture based on damage. This means that at half health, the Tesla Coil will appear to be bent slightly, with visiable damage on the texture. When the coil is destroyed, it'll explode and fall over, much to the amusement of the Allies. This has now been handed over to danpaul88, who will now attempt to get the coil into the main test builds and setup the Tesla Trooper charge logic. Here's an image of what the Tesla Coil looks like ingame. <h3>Third Person Camera Position & Bunnyhop Nerf</h3> I've been having a play around with the third person camera, and have changed it so it now appears like this. I was hoping to do an "over-the-shoulder" style camera, but unfortunately, that's not possible in the engine. Check out the screenshot below for an idea of what it's going to be like. Also, if you have any different ideas about where the camwera should be positioned, post them! Also, danpaul88 has taken a look into how we should effectively kill bunnyhopping. The answer? Limit the jump height to a more realistic level. The default Renegade jump height is rediculous when you take into acount how high your character is actually jumping, so we've limited it to stop bunnyhoppping for good. You can still strafe quickly from side to side, but it's killed off the main problem, which was the hopping. <h3>Dreadnought </h3> danpaul88 was looking through some of the old test builds and found the Dreadnought sitting idly, so he decided to give the Allies a shock and play around with it. This monster is armed with two triple-barreled cannons (as seen in the concept art here), two massive missiles and a salvo of smaller missiles (as seen in the RA2 intro movie). It's nostalgic to see this monster back in game, since it's from a time where we were using the Renegade vehicles and such to do our testing. I think we've come on a lot since then. Our next test build it set to include more units to help with balancing, but we shan't be seeing this monster ingame for a while sadly. Fortunately though, we have some really epic plans for the Dreadnought, the Aircraft Carrier and the Naval Transports which will blow your minds. But I'll keep them til a later date. <h3>Team Messages</h3> I've been working a lot to get some money to get back to university with. I'm also off to my frined Scott's place because it's his birthday! cfehunter is back and working on the IFV dtrngd has been doing amazing things with the tutorial prototype. danpaul88 has been making a building capture script for oil derricks and other tech structures! Guy with a wrench has been working on some more civilian structures. The rest of the team is doing various things. <h3>OWA's Random Corner</h3> <center> Washing Machine Self-Destructs! <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TqBSI8ZBzQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TqBSI8ZBzQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TqBSI8ZBzQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> Bonus! Blasto the Hanar Spectre <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGldy-ABbsw?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGldy-ABbsw?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGldy-ABbsw?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> </center> <h3>Til next time!</h3> Seeya!

All of those will feature in the game eventually. I don't want to say when we are gong to release because it puts pressure on my team to deliver. If something comes up and we are delayed, we'll get flak for it. So I am not yet ready to make the chance of estimation. I'll let you guys know nearer the release date however. We aren't including Yuri's Army. Yuri himself will make an appearance though. The release data is probably going to be a newspost in which we tell the public that we are releasing the game.

Yes to all. The Battlefortress will be a vehicle with mannable turrets stuck onto it.

We've got Repair Nodes dotted around the buildings that give off a repair bonus to any technicians repairing via it.

1. Yes! and probably! 2. Unfortunately, we can't do this because it is impossible to convert meshes to heightfield terrain.

We can't. It's impossible on this engine. Have a bit of a learn about the w3d engine first and you'll find out.

I think that we're going to put infantry blockers in place, but don't quote me on that.