OWA

February 20, 2008

Welcome to this week's blog! My coursework nightmare is beginning to lay off and I should be totally free by the end of march! Hooray! But you don't want to hear about that now. So lets get to the AR stuff!

<h3>Allied Technician</h3>

I started this today. It is basically the free Allied Technician! He will wield that awesome electric drill that rm5248 made a while back. He will also have a Beretta pistol for fending off soviets on an extremely light level. We may even make an alternate fire for the drill so that you can attack the soviets at close range This guy is the weakest infantry unit to be found on the battlefield aside form the soviet technician, who is equally as weak. He has no head yet, but I'll make sure he gets one soon.

<h3>Firefight on Rocky Pass</h3>

danpaul88 made up the video by adding bots to Rocky Pass and then filming them. There is some pretty cool action in this video, so take a look

>>>Click Here to Download<<<

And here are some screenshots to go with it...

Up top

The Soviets fight an uphill battle

Up top again

On the main field of combat

(The SEAL needs the rig fixing on it)

<h3>Conference #8 Overview</h3>

Here is the eighth conferance overview as presented by dtrngd, Mr MapManMotivator!

-We're gonna set up the infantry speed like in RA2, then change them for balancing. Conscripts and GIs at least should be faster than renegade infantry. At the moment ren. inf. is faster than the Apocalypse Tank which is bad. Also the dogs will be the fastest of all 'infantry'.

-The War Miner will be finished shortly. It will have two animations: one when mining at the ore field and the other when dumping the ore at the Soviet Refinery.

-Ben will have to send the fixed SEAL to danpaul if we don't want errors like this or this.

-The Apocalypse Rising website can be hosted free at n00bstories, we just need to buy the domain name. Buy it or die, almost costs nothing a year.

<h3>.Dat File Patcher</h3>

danpaul88 has been really busy perfecting his latest software innovation which is a dat file patcher. This basically lets us patch the game using much smaller patch files than are normally required.

A few technical notes for those who are interested;

When the patcher creates a patch file what it actually creates is a new mix archive (.dat files are just mix archives with a different extension). The first file it places into the mix archive is a file called rmpdata with no extension (rmp = Renegade Mix Patcher) that basically tells the patcher what actions to perform on the target archive.

The patcher is NOT designed to create carbon copies of the source mix file, and if you compared the source file the patch was created from with the output file created by the patch they probably would not be identical. What it does do is ensure every file from the source archive exists in the target archive after the patch has completed, and this is all that Renegade needs it to do in order for it to be able to use all those files. This does not prevent clients from connecting through XWIS since all that compares is the objects.ddb, which will be the same in both archives after the patch has run.

The rmpdata file that exists in the archive has the following structure;
[__int32:totalInstructions]
[[__int8:instructionType][__int8:fileNameLength]
 [[char:fileNameChar]...]...]

[<content>...] Indicates repeated content, with the number of elements being equal to the
value immediatly before the opening square bracket.
Those of you who understand the structure of mix archives might recognise that it is actually derived from the structure of the filename index in the mix archives themselves.

Running the patch archive on an archive which it was not supposed to be used on is not protected against, and will either execute normally (although the output file would probably not match the original source file since the target archive was incorrect) or it would execute until it hit an update or delete instruction for a file which did not exist in the target archive.

In the first case the user would end up with a new version of the target archive which is of no use to them, in the second case the temporary file created during the patch process would simply be erased and the target archive would remain unchanged.

Because of this it is recommended that patch files are executed by an installer which checks the registry key for the existing version and runs the correct version(s)of the patch file to update correctly. For example if the user had .9935 it might run patch 9935->beta, then beta->beta patch1 and finally beta->beta patch2, or simply a single update for 9935->beta patch 2, depending on which structure would give the smallest overall filesize.

(Or simply offer different downloads for different versions)

If you have any questions about the patch process or want to make any suggestions / comments feel free to do so.

And here is a nice screenie of what we are looking at here.

Expect to see this tool working when you eventually get to install AR

<h3>Dune Patrol</h3>

dtrngd has been mapping up a new err.... map. This is based on the RA2 map, Dune Patrol. This map is set in the desert with an oasis in the middle of it. It will feature fast gameplay as the bases aren't too far away from each other. The gimmick is that the battle takes place during a giant sandstorm, so visibility is impaired. After a while, the sandstorm will die down and the battle will resume as normal. If we put our heads together we may even try for random sandstorms, which would produce a unique game experience each time the map is played.

Here is an early WIP shot.

<h3>Team Messages</h3>

I had the public performance for my drama yesterday and it totally rocked. We are hyped and setup for our exam performance next week. I'm off for a university interview to Stafford on Saturday. Rest assured, I will be talking to the people about Bluehell Productions and will use my modelwork as leverage I have a cool new outfit for the interview, check it out!

The whale has begun to reconstruct like Majin Buu and is now chasing Pete across the county of Herefordshire once more.

Chevy787 has been unwrapping stuff.

TruYuri has been rigging stuff.

The rest of the team have been generally doing stuff.

Stuff.

<h3>OWA's Community Hummer w/Tracks</h3>

No news from the community it seems. So you get a Vegeta.

<h3>Blast From The Past</h3>

This week we take a look at Renegade Alert version 0.990!

"This is the public release of Renegade Alert v.990, which is a modification for C&C Renegade. This modification places you in the Red Alert universe. This modification will also add new vehicles, units, and storyline."

So yeah, who would have thought that, after all these years, renegade Alert has become a pretty big buisness in the form of APB. This is where it all started my friends. The old buildings that were riddled with holes, the 200-polygon tanks and the half decent infantry (some of which are still being used today).

If you want to experience the phenomenon that started it all, then get version .990 here.

<h3>Breakfast</h3>

Eggs, Bacon, Sausage and Toast!

Tune in next week and I'll be your host!

February 19, 2008

You guys say that Ivan will be like X unit or Ivan will be like Y. The whole truth is that Ivan will be like Ivan.

February 15, 2008

I recon that Tanya should have enough charges of C4 to blow up 2 buildings or maybe 1 building and like 80% - 90% damage to a second one.

Why will the crazy ivan be able to destroy more buildings without refilling than the navy seal when they both could destroy unlimited amounts but you are making the navy seal only be able to destroy 1 building?

This is all very much endecided on amounts and damage.

The limited big 10 stick dynamite is for buildings like Tanya's C4. The 3 stick dynamite is his general puropse infinite ammo weapon that he can use against anything but does a lot less damage. That's the impression I got.

The 10 stick dyamite will do craploads of damage vs everything, but you'll only have a couple of those or something. The 3 stick charge will indeed be his infinite ammo weapon. We thought of adding the knife because it is in the concept art and it also fits the close range style of the unit.

Also up for discussion is whether the 3 stick dynamite should function like a delayed grenade or like conventional renegade timed C4.

February 13, 2008

Welcome to this week's blog! It was my birthday yesterday so I'm now 18 and legal in america! Time flies eh?

Anyway, on with the blog!

This week, we have been mostly building explosives! The first one we have for you is Crazy Ivan's larger, timed dynamite pack. This will be ideal for taking out buildings, bridges and fortified postitions. These will be limited in supply.

Secondly, Ivan will carry a much smaller triple stick of dynamite which he will be able to stick onto infantry and tanks for maximum carnage. Ivan will carry an infinite amount of these explosives to make him unique to play as well as give a good reason for his name.

We are still debating whether or not to supply Ivan with a knife for some sneaky quick kills. He does carry a knife in the single concept shot concerning him.

<h3>Building Soviet Economy!</h3>

That's right, I have done a number on the warminer and increased the awesomeness of the model so that it is a lot more detailed and has that certain soviet flair to it. The changed includes a completly remodelled front section, tracks and wheels. With edits being made to the turret and back section. This heavyweight of the soviet economy is back and ready to rumble with the best of them. As usual, the War Miner is the source of your basic economy as a soviet player. It is armed with a heavy machine gun to deal with early game infantry rushes easily. This miner can also gain veterancy like any other weaponed unit. When it hits elite status, the miner will gain access to a cannon, to replace it's machine gun, that will deal significant damage to vehicles. Allied tanks beware!

<h3>A little C4 knockin' atcha door!</h3>

Aramour/Poggel has modelled the SEAL's C4 charge and detonator for us. A certain number of C4 charges will be required to level a building, so the SEAL will be equipped with the sufficient amount of charges for one building destruction.

The C4 will be a hybrid of remote and timed C4. You will place the C4 charge and to start the timer you will have to arm it with the detonator.

Here's some pretty pics.

Tanya will use a similar type of C4, but we'll reveal the details to that in a later blog.

<h3>Launcher</h3>

Katz/Jayrun has been working on developing a launcher for AR that is similar to that of APB's. This has been made using the graphics from the RA2 archive files as well as Kat's delphi coding skills. Hat's off to that man! This was previewed to us today, so now you can get a glimpse of what you'll be loading up AR to when it is released

<h3>Team Messages</h3>

I'm 18 now! I got lots of money from my family and friends as well as a book on foreign mistranslations, a Duff t-shirt and from Shannon, the bioware game, 'The Witcher' Party at my house tommorrow, wooo!

Pete's bringing his whale steaks round for a second barbeque! Roll up roll up! He also sold half the whale on eBay and bought himself a new quad core. Shiny!

danpaul88 coded a dat file patcher that can more effectively patch the bigger files used by the current w3d FPS engine.

dtrngd has been learning to texturise. Check it out.

LeAlex has resigned from his post of texture artist. Good luck wherever you go!

TheBeerinator is under judgement as a potential staff member. Our verdict will be announced soon!

Happy valentines day for tommorrow, make sure to wish your forum buddies the best via this thread!

<h3>OWA's Community Love Shack</h3>

Mathk1ll came to me to say that Scud Storm and Star Wars mod are in need of people to work on them, since their development team is miniscule. If you think you have what it takes to fix these old relics up, go and make an application over at http://scudstorm.team-nx.com/forums/index.php

Red Alert 3 looks awesome. People have been going "OMG BHP have a new project now". My answer is this. None of us are stupid enough to start a new project at this stage whilst we still have two projects in the making. Who knows what may happen after both projects are relatively complete.

<h3>Blast from the Past</h3>

This week, let's take a look at Scud Storm.

Scud Storm is a mod that takes the dubious C&C Generals universe and puts them into an FPS packege. The curent build is an alpha version that was released last year by Laeubi. The mod has since been taken over by Neo Games and is in semi-active development.

My idea of Scud Storm has always been that it looks like crap and plays like crap, but what it does featurewise is incredibly clever. For example, you can build more Ai supply units, capture oil derricks, use EMP weapons, target superweapons without a beacon, change your vehicle depending which General character you put inside it, upgrade your vehicles, build defences with the dozers and be warned when something is blocking the purchase zone: Something that APB currently lacks.

So to round it up, Scud Storm is like a big and ugly but remakably clever person. It's a pity it was never beautified somewhat.

Grab it here.

<h3>Bombs Away!</h3>

KABOOM!

February 12, 2008

Thanks guys!

February 11, 2008

Is there also a Tech Outpost that can act as a Service Depot, or am I just remembering that from a mod?

Yep, there's that as well.

February 11, 2008

auto-repairs will be faster at elite veterancy and will make it so you can spend even more time away from the depot.

Machine shop + elite veterancy + Apoc Tank = ownage

February 11, 2008

we have, we decided on IFV forms before we came here.

Techie will be standard IFV you'll have to get an engineer to make a repair IFV.

Read the forums

We changed that months ago.

Also, you won't have to go back the the depot if you get the required veterancy for auto healing or if your team captures the tech machine shop.

February 10, 2008

This is a bomber, not a transporter. This is not APC rush, this is Mammoth Tank or stank rush. And to make it somewhat realistic, it has to have more than 1 person in it for it to run at full capatcity.

Too bad we aren't going for realism then.

February 10, 2008

im so looking forward to this game

So am I.

IFV- Looking good. I can't wait to see the full versions. But in RA2, the unit in the cameo had distinctively different color scheme. Just out of curiosity, will this color scheme be available for use?

Yeah, probably, ingame it was that blue colour but then on the cemo is was just a plain tan colour. If I remember rightly.

It doesn't make a bit of difference guyz, the ba... it will be called Petrol Station ingame.

I lol'd!

And we've decided we're an indie game now.

Kirov wont be in release one, your ideas are appreciated but we're going to of forgotten them by the time we get around to implementing release two.

We decided AR was an indie game months ago dude

I don't think the idea is technically practical anyway. It works for the Dreadnaut and Aircraft Carrier because they have multiple units spawning from them (yes, big missiles do count as units). The Kirov is good as it is, a slow bombardment unit. We don't want people using it as an uberblimp transport anyway.

February 9, 2008

screw british humor. american shock comedy is the way to go.

You're probably only saying that because you don't get the jokes

February 6, 2008

now its been 7 days 0 hour and 37 minutes. wheres the blog? (j/k)

Damn you people from the future

February 6, 2008

Where next blarg?

Can't you just wait patiently like everyone else?

February 6, 2008

Lots of images flying out of nowhere this week. It was pretty fun recieving all this stuff because it's always good to have tons of stuff for you to see eh? Look below for the goodies and stop reading this drivel eh?

<h3>Crazy Ivan</h3>

Crazy Ivan is the codename given to a Soviet explosives expert. They are able to strap bombs to nearly anything. They can be seen strapping bombs to enemies, their own team-mates (presumably so the soldier could act like a suicide unit), and they can even be seen putting bombs on cows!

Having just enough radar jamming equipment to prevent themselves from being seen on radar Crazy Ivans can sneak into Allied bases and plant bombs on buildings.

In a more sinister usage of weaponry, Crazy Ivan can wire up his own units and charge them toward the enemy as a sacrifice. This is often done with Attack Dogs because of their speed.

The best defense against Crazy Ivans are to ensure all entrances to a base are guarded to prevent them from sneaking in. Pillboxes are a cheap solution for this. Engineers can defuse the Crazy Ivan's bombs.

Here he is in all his 3d glory. I decided a while back that it was time to step up my game on the 3d side of things so I taught myself how to create characters with help here and there from a few people. So yeah, here he is, Crazy Ivan, my first infantry model.

<h3>Petrol Station</h3>

Ric has opened up the sides on the petrol station ready for the windows to go in. He has also added some more to the texture too. Things are really pulling together here. I tought up a new garrisson buildings logic which could potentially work really well with smaller buildings as well as larger ones. I'll go more into detail about that as it is tested though. However, here is the petrol station.

Rest assured, you will be seeing garissonable portaloos!

<h3>Tesla Reactor</h3>

As some of you may know, I've been working over at C&C Reborn, helping them to get their infantry beta out. After many hours of frustration at the string table I finally conquered it. As I helped them with that, Dark has greatfully offered to take some of his time to model us up a new soviet tesla reactor! Take a look at the images below. The internals are still being thought out, but it should end up nicley either way

Katz came out of nowhere today with a semi textured IFV which is looking really awesome so far! Some more detail is to follow but this serves as a great start towards getting things textured and ingame!

<h3>New Rigger</h3>

Congratulations to TruYuri who has now been hired as a weapons and vehicles rigger for Bluehell Productions! He applied to us a while back with some work so we thought it over and accepted his offer.

So I am pleased to welcome TruYuri onto the BHP dev team! Good show!

If you think you have the skills to work on the BHP team, don't hesistate to drop either me or Chronojam a PM and we'll take your application into account

Well I had around 7 replies for the position of PR guy, but one reply really stood out from the rest. That was Chris2k4's submission. He clearly has experience in the field of PR since he has worked on a number of source engine mods before including the great-looking Black Mesa Mod. It showed in his post submission. He is also a fellow englishman like a fair part of the AR team are, so that's nice since we can share our awesome british humour

Thankyou to all of the people who expressed interest in this position.

Let's take this opportunity to welcome Chris2k4 into the team as well as the community!

<h3>Team Messages</h3>

It's my birthday on the tuesday of next week! So I'll be 18 then. I still can't believe how far the mod has come in relation to how relatively young I still am. It's awesome!

cfehunter announced that he is barbequing the whale, so everyone is invited round to his house to play super smash brothers.

dtrngd has been working on geting the battle bunker to work nicely with our new garrisson logic idea type thing. Here are some screenies.

Spice has offered to lend us a little bit of a hand in the rigging department, so the tester better brace for vehicle testing!

Chronojam's roommate likes APB so much that the rifle sound is starting to embed itself within the catacombs of Chronojam's mind. If you see him typing in big text, it's because he is competing with the APB rifle shooting type noise what comes from the rifle right?

Well we came second in the moddb unreleased indie game of the year contest, just pipping Reborn to the postion but just losing out to Infinity: The Quest for Earth. Good game guys, good game!

<h3>OWA's Community Support Caravan</h3>

havoc8r came to me today with news of a new total conversion project that he is starting up for C&C3. It is apparently based on an epic movie of last summer. If you want to know a bit more, got to this thread or ask havoc8r for more info!

srowell3 also brings news of his website C&C Legends and of his mod for the .9935 version of A Path Beyond, Red vs Blue. This mod is a skin and model replacement mod that aims to turn all the colours of the units back to their totally red and blue RA1 counterparts. Kicken and V0LK0V released a similar mod which is also being utilised in this mod to make it the definitive RAlism mod for APB. So check it out!

<h3>Blast From The Past!</h3>

This feature deserves it's own section now.

Today we shall be looking at the Turok: Rage Wars mod by Oblivion165.

Basically, Oblivion had been working on this mod up until last year when he released it. It is a remake of the classic N64 game, Turok: Rage Wars and it primarily consists of deathmatch combat. Everything you see was practically made by Oblivion. There are a lot of weapons and NPC bot characters on the levels to spice things up and the mod is pretty well made, aside from the obvious lack in graphical quality and limitation of the w3d engine's handling of infantry based units. The best thing about this mod apart from the nostalgia is the fact that you don't even need Renegade to play this!

Get it here!

So I'll seeya next week!

January 31, 2008

Hahaha, the trailer was funny(Taco car FTW!!!) But the mirage tank is suppose to shoot a fire beam not a shell. Anyway I love how the logo was made, really spiffy. Keep on the good work guys

Yeah we know, we just haven't made the graphics yet.

January 31, 2008

Next: McBurger Kong?

Needs more monkey.

January 30, 2008

January says goodbye but the best month of the year, February, says hello! It is my birthday soon but before mine is Venompawz's on saturday! Make sure to post in Chronojam's obligatory thread on the day eh?

<h3>Petrol Station</h3>

Ric whipped up this petrol station and has begun to texture it. Current progress is great, so both army's vehicles will never be short of fuel.

<h3>Conference #7 Overview</h3>

Here is the seventh conferance overview as presented by dtrngd, sponsored by EAâ„¢ whether they like it or not.

Here is the overview.

-Chevy's idea about the mapmusic-disabling script zone:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v377/che...musicscript.jpg

If not this, then by another idea, but it IS possible, and it HAS to be done (cuz everyone likes music variety)

-Building Garrisoning:

We tried out the vengeance battle bunker, we just simply stood to a hole and shoot out/in. The guy inside the building always died faster, since all the bullets that went through the hole, went into the guy's head inside the bunker.

Here's Zion_Fox's idea:

You go in, and poke a terminal. The building gets boarded off and only team members may enter or leave. There will be turrets that you can man to shoot out of, however not all windows will have it.

That's pretty cool we all agreed on it. Zion will write up a more detailed description soon.

-TheCrow seems to be still alive out there, we shall give him a bell and ask him how's it going and if he'd like to do some stuff for us. If he won't, then let's hope if we win any moddb awards, we can draw some people in the team to help.

-www.apocrising.com <-once we get that domain, we can set up the Apocalpyse Rising website there.

Peek here.

-We don't want to change the game engine.

<h3>RA2_SouthPacific</h3>

dtrngd has basically finished the terrain for this map as much as he can at this moment in time so we stuck it ingame and took some screenies. This map features a tech airport and a tech oil derrick for you to command and conquer.

SEAL from up close

Run chevy! Friendly fire is on!

SEAL rush! THEIR BASE IS DEAD!

<h3>:Waves:</h3>

I've been working on the hands for my infantry person. It's a little bit touch-and-go but I'm getting there slowly. Take a look below.

<h3>Still Hiring: PR Guy</h3>

We are looking for a new PR officer to manage site news and the moddb page.

You need to be active as well as have a good grasp of the english language.

(Making your own banners and graphics is also a plus, but it's really the way you write that will interest us)

Think you are up to the task? Then PM me with an example of what you can do using an AR image/video/announcement from one of the past blogs and making up a mock news post. The new PR guy will be announced in a blog to come! We hope that you submit an application

Current Applications: 2

This is a nice little job, I wonder why people aren't grabbing this opportunity...

<h3>Team Messages</h3>

It was my mate Grogsy's borthday today so we all went to wetherspoons for a meal. cfehunter was there so we talked about how awesome Apocalypse Rising is. My girlfriend also bought some purple trousers which are exactly the same colour as the RA2AR staff usergroup colours. Cool huh? I also finished my exams for this season! Party on! New banner and avatar for me too ^_^

cfehunter lives! The whale couldn't hold him inside after he climbed out of the blowhole using his amazingly long beard as a grapple hook. Safe to say the beard was shaved and he rejoined us for the meal ^_^

(Note: any beard that cfehunter had is purely fictional)

nameme99 has gone and won't be back til summer.

<h3>OWA's Community Support Cotton Wool</h3>

This week has been a week to remember!

A Path Beyond ventured into the moddb awards and cut most of the opposition down to come second in the released indie games category! Score! Even though there were more entires in the unreleased indie games category, there were no awards for the category, so Apocalypse Rising got a reassuring pat on the back from the moddb people.

[FW]Wolf contacted me to say that the BFD mod is doing great over at www.battlefordune.co.uk

Correct me if I am wrong but this mod is now being devloped by a team known as FW Productions which promises a few mods on differant engines. Sounds cool.

v1410nl has been making a fanmap for Apocalypse Rising called Blizzard. This map is set in a dark snowy tundra in the middle of (yes you guessed it) a blizzard! Take a peek at some of the screenshots below.

Venturing into the darkness...

Tunnel based sumo!

When you thought that Wile E. Coyote's disguises couldn't get more rediculous...

This week's blast from the past is the Sole Survivor mod for Renegade; devloped by SomeRhino, bigwig992 and the old Dri-Reign community. This mod was actually completed, but due to the small community, it was never played online very much. It is in fact the closest Renegade has been to Tiberian Dawn so far. The mod contains includes 8 different game modes, over 14 multiplayer maps, 1 singleplayer mission, 11 characters, 17+ vehicles and all new weapons for all-out team-based multiplayer combat fun.

Download Here (screenshots here as well)

<h3>Hsinif</h3>

Same time next week, ok?

January 30, 2008

that video on youtube of it was added 1 year ago so it must of been out

The game is out when I say it's out

What you saw was an internal test build.

January 30, 2008

I Didnt know this was already made 1 year ago i whatched the youtube video of it

i thought it was being made anyway were can i download it

Game isn't out.

January 27, 2008

Ah, then I was wrong.

January 25, 2008

Oh! I wanna see it.

Red light spinning round. It had a few issues with sticking to polygons, but that is fixed now.

January 25, 2008

Looks more like a simple old school Renegade texture projector to me.

Well it isn't. Since I have a video here somewhere of funky per-pixel disco lighting.

January 24, 2008

hmmm really love it but the only thing that gets me is the Flak track ....the huge Soviets rock/hammer design on the hood kinda looks off to me (well i just looked at it again and maybe its just the color of the texture ...is a little off )

Texture is nearly 4 years old, go figure.

January 23, 2008

The trailer is music only. No SFX.

January 23, 2008

Updated!

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