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Killing_You

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Posts posted by Killing_You

  1. 30 minutes ago, Egozi44 said:

    Literally just made a user today (despite "stalking" the site for a very long time) to say thank/goodbye to Zee,

    Zee voiced two of my mod's units few years back,
    And at some point after that he disappeared form nearly everywhere after giving the CNCNZ site keys to Wolf, moving to a new apartment (iirc) and going to live close to nature while cutting all of his former ties with C&C stuff and most of his friends.

    We didn't chatted much but when we did we were always on good terms and seem to have the same kind of humor, he also took the VA roles I gave him very seriously and disappeared only after finishing them, 

    I knew him a lot before asking for his help with voice acting obviously, mostly from his lego vids as well as from seeing him around in various C&C forums,
    To this day I wish he still was the admin of CNCNZ since as far as I knew him, he was a fair admin who also had the drive to try some creative things in the stuff he's charge of, a far cry from what we got nowadays which just show how special he was at what he was doing.

    It wasn't for long but it was fun as long as it last, may you rest in peace rabbuddy

     

    I also wanted to add that I should have the voices he sents me back then somewhere, even the ones I ended up not using in case you will want them,
    I even made a vid that show how his sounds like as he voiced the Condor in my mod back then and still got the vid on YT in case you will want it too

     

    Thank you so much for sharing this. It's nice to be able to hear something "new" from him.

  2. ***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER***The following is a simple, for fun, thought experiment. It is not in any way, shape, or form, intended to reflect actual canon or the development of Red Alert: A Path Beyond. Let's just have some fun discussion!

    INTRODUCTION   This is a question we've all spitballed at one point or another. We've often wondered something along the lines of, "I wonder what kind of Light Tank the Allies would have actually used?" Or, "If they didn't use the Abrams for the Medium Tank due to recycling assets from Tiberian Dawn, what would the Medium Tank be?" It comes up now and then in relation to specific units, but I had the thought of, "Why don't we collect this discussion here?" So, that's what I'd like to do. 

       But first, let's set the scene. Great World War 2 (or Red Alert 1, as we all know and love), is speculated to take place around the late 1940s-early 1950s. I've seen some specific dates such as 1949-1953 thrown around, though honestly I'm not sure what the source is. Regardless, the mere presence of Stalin supports this time frame, as in real life he was in office until his death in 1953 (though an alternate universe with no Hitler and no WWII could arguably extend his life and rule by a few more years, but that's a discussion for another time), so this is what we'll go with. Let's also account for the fact that old equipment often stays in the military for decades on end if it does its job well enough, and the idea that C&C is generally accepted to be ~10 years ahead of our timeline in terms of tech (with some notable oddball exceptions, such as the Chronosphere and Iron Curtain). In general, anything that fits the WWII or Early Cold War (c. Korean War era) should be acceptable.

      Now, for my initial post, I'm going to try to use a British, a French, and a German example, as those were the three playable countries in Red Alert. But really, any European country would count. (If you really want to cite American equipment, though, that can be counted amongst the small lend-lease force lead by General Carville, which would not likely be the bulk of the Allied army). 

       And now... we begin.

    INFANTRY

       So, let's begin with the Infantry. I'll break them down by weapon type rather than unit, because otherwise we'd have the Rifle Soldier, Technician, Rocket Soldier, and nothing else. I'll also be sort of using APB's infantry roster as a reference for the sake of simplicity.

       For Assault Rifles, when doing (quick) research for this post, I didn't expect to find a whole lot of suitable candidates, and was prepared to just give them the FN FAL, but I got a couple of nice surprises. Germany, of course, would get the famous StG 44 (because seriously, who doesn't love the StG 44?), while Britain and France would get a couple of fascinating, lesser known rifles; the EM-2 and the CEAM Modèle 1950, respectively. You could argue that the FAL would be used across the board as it was in our timeline, and it likely would be in the running (alongside other candidates such as the G3) for faction wide late war adoption, but for the early-mid points where a lot of the arsenal would be manufactured in house, those are my picks.

       As for Pistols, though, there's no shortage of candidates here. Frankly, you could just go across Europe at the time and come up with a ton of suitable candidates. With that said, I did say that I'd go for one British, one French, and one German example, so how about... the Browning Hi-Power (which is technically Belgian, but it was adopted by the UK in our timeline, so it fits) for Britain, the MAC Mle 1950 for France, and the famous Walther P38 for Germany. (Bonus round: the Spy would use either Bond's famous Walther PPK or the Welrod.)

      Now... Shotguns... sad to say, there's basically nothing good here. As far as I could find, almost nobody outside of the US produced anything other than double barrel shotguns until Franchi came out with the SPAS-12 in 1979. The only exception is the Sjögren Inertia, so that's kind of our best bet outside of importing the Remington 870 or Ithaca 37 en masse. I know, I'm disappointed, too. But hey, sometimes you just gotta work with what you got.

       Thankfully, Sniper Rifles are much easier to find suitable candidates for. I think it goes without saying that the British would sport the Lee-Enfield since it's a damn good rifle. Similarly, it's hard to see Germany using anything other than the Karabiner 98k. France, however, doesn't have any world famous candidates, but it does have one that fits the bill quite well; the MAS-49.

       Onto the subject of Machine Guns. I'll be sticking with heavier General Purpose machine guns that would be used in gun emplacements, pillboxes, on vehicles, etc. Britain, once again, has an obvious choice in the form of the Bren Gun, although the Lewis Gun and Vickers K are also solid choices. France has a few good choices as well, though I'm going with the AA-52 for this post. As for Germany, well... how could I not give them the MG 42? Especially since the darn thing was tweaked to become the MG 3 and is still being used to this very day.

       Time to touch on Submachine guns. Here, I was real tempted to give Britain the Sten due to my personal love for it, but it makes sense to go with the Sterling (which did replace the Sten IRL) instead. France has a very small pool to choose from, but the MAT-49 fits the bill quite nicely, so that's what they get. Germany has no shortage of submachine guns to choose from, but ultimately I decided to settle on the Walther MPL. As much as I love the MP5, I have to admit that the MPL fits RA's time period and aesthetic just a bit better.

       Last, but certainly not least, Rocket Launchers. Technically, these can be separated into Man-Portable Anti-Tank Systems (MANPATS) and Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS). Let's tackle MANPATS first. Britain is easy here. PIAT. Boom. Done. France, same thing. All I could find for them was the 73mm LRAC, so that's what they get. Germany has a few good choices, but my inner Medal of Honor fan simply can't go with anything other than the Panzerschreck. Now, as for MANPADS... eh... none of the three countries had one of note until the Mistral as far as I can tell, so they all get imported FIM-43 Redeyes.

    VEHICLES

       Right, with the infantry sorted out, let's move on to vehicles. This time, we'll just go down the roster of vehicles present in RA1. We'll ignore things like the RADAR Jammer, MCV, and Chrono Tank, since those were 100% fictional designs and I see no need to morph them to real world standards. I'm also not going to go into Supply Trucks or Ore Trucks since I didn't find that particular rabbit hole very interesting, and since the Mobile Gap Generator would've just been insert truck here with a miniature gap generator placed on the bed, that will get ignored. Same goes for the Demo Truck, as we all know it's just a Supply Truck with a nuclear warhead in the back. Just take your pick of the myriad of trucks available at the time.

       Starting off with the Ranger, I fully expected to find nothing for Britain and France, and just give them imported Willys MBs, but once again I was pleasantly surprised. I'll be giving Britain the Bedford MW, and France will get the Laffly V15. They're not perfect fits, but they're solid enough that the Red Alert variants could've been tweaked to fit this role. As I implied, however, Germany has a solid existing candidate in the Kübelwagen.

      Getting good APC candidates turned out to be an interesting case. I could go in any direction, but I opted to try and stick as close to the M113 as possible for aesthetic purposes. With this in mind, Britain has a few different possibilities such as the Universal Carrier, but I think the ideal choice here is the FV432. France will get the AMX-10P, though I was heavily tempted to go with the AMX-VCI instead. Now, Germany is an interesting case, and I struggled with this for quite a bit. About the only period appropriate APC I could find was the Sd.Kfz. 251, which doesn't fit the aesthetic I'm going for. The experimental Gepanzerter Mannschaftstransportwagen 'Kätzchen' was closer, but the visuals are still off. In the end, I decided that they'll be importing the Pansarbandvagn 302 from Sweden. I feel like I'm copping out a bit here with imports, but given that it's a period appropriate European vehicle that fits the aesthetic, I feel like this is fine.

       Jumping ahead to Minelayers, this is easy. Just take any of the above and add the necessary components (such as a shovel and winch) to create an Engineering variant. No need to overcomplicate this one.

       Now we get into the meat of where this discussion usually springs from, starting with the Light Tank. Now we're really getting into personal preference territory, as there's a TON of variants that have been tossed around over the years, largely thanks to World of Tanks and War Thunder bringing a lot of them into the public zeitgeist. (Friendly reminder not to leak classified documents on this or any other post, please!) Now, for Britain, they don't really have anything that fits the bill for a round turreted, 75mm gun, so this is going to be a "my gut" pick, and for that I think I'll go with the Crusader Tank. France will get the AMX-13 with the FL 11 turret for that distinct roundness. With Germany, I was initially tempted to go with the Panzer III and do something weird to justify this, but I stumbled upon an even better candidate: the Spähpanzer Ru 251. True, it was never made IRL, but I never said anything against experimental designs being turned into viable units for this alternate universe!

       On to Medium Tanks. Initially, I considered giving Britain the Centurion, but in my research I stumbled upon a tank that fits the aesthetic much better; the Chieftan, which is what I'll be giving to the British for this post. The French don't really have a whole lot of great candidates for this, but the AMX-30 fits close enough, so that's what they get. As for Germany, once again, there really is no better pick than the Leopard 1.

       Let's finish off ground vehicles with one that has been the subject of major interest in the last year due to the advent of a new model: the Artillery. I has a bit of a tricky time finding something for Britain, but the FV433 Abbot fits well enough, so that's what they get. France, on the other hand, there's no contest. Mk F3 155mm, hands down. Germany has a few candidates, none of which are perfect, but I think the Hummel works well enough for them.

       Now let's move to aircraft, starting with the only buildable air unit available to the Allies; the Longbow. This one is going to be a cop out, since Europe didn't have a homebrew attack helicopter until the Agusta A129 Mangusta, so I very nearly just gave everyone imported AH-1 Cobras and called it good... but then I stumbled across something interesting. As it turns out, the early stages of the Cold War nearly saw the advent of Project BO115, a German attack helicopter. So, for this post, we'll say that this project got completed and was adopted across the board by the Allies.

       Before we move on to navy, let's touch on Bombers, since they'd be dropping troops and parabombs every now and then. Britain has many, many choices here, but I'm going to go with the Handley Page Victor. France has significantly less choices, however, with the closest candidate being the Latecoere 570, so that's what they'll use until the Victor gets standardized. As for Germany, I'll give them the Junkers Ju 390.

       Time for Navy, starting with Gunboats. This one was a bit tricky, as what exactly the Gunboat was originally was a bit weird, so I looked at corvettes, patrol vessels, and light destroyers. Here, after sifting through dozens of potential candidates, I decided to go with the Flower-class corvette for Britain, the D'Estienne d'Orves-class aviso for France, and the Type 139 patrol trawler for Germany.

       Destroyers are a weird subject, as guided missile based frigates/destroyers are a relatively recent thing, so the entries here will have their armament stripped off and replaced with a missile launcher. The exception is the British Type 22 Broadsword-class frigate, since that comes with a missile launcher as standard, and is the main reason why it was picked to be the Destroyer in APB. France and Germany will modify the Aconit and the Köln-class frigate, respectively.

       Last, but certainly not least... Cruisers. Or, as they should be called, battleships, given how they operate in game. Frankly, it only makes sense to follow through on that thinking. So, to finish us off, I will give Britain the Revenge-class battleship, France the Dunkerque-class battleship, and Germany the famous Bismark-class battleship.

    CONCLUSION

       Whew. That took quite a bit.

       But what do you think? Do you agree with my picks? If not, what would you think would be better suited for these roles? Or rather, what would your ideal period accurate Allied arsenal look like? How would you arm the other nations? What, if any, of these would be across the board standard by the end of the war? Please discuss away!

  3. Harkonnen Flamethrower Reload- UNCENSORED EDITION [NSFW]


    You know and love the Flamethrower and his amazing reload animation. But have you ever noticed how, sometimes, he seems like he should say a naughty word, but stops just short? Ever wanted to hear the full version?

    Well, in celebration of BfD's anniversary, you can now hear the full versions for the first time! Just extract the two audio clips into the Data folder within Battle for Dune's directory, and hear the reload quotes in full! Rather than stopping short with "Mother-" and "Son of a-," he will now saw the full quotes on occasion.

    As should be obvious, this sound pack is not safe for work.


     

  4. Hello everyone!

    Well, we did it! Tiberian Sun: Reborn 2.0 has officially landed in the hands of the public. Our hard work has paid off, and we had an absolute blast during the game night! We saw some of the highest population games in TSR's history, to the point where the poor server had issues keeping up at times!

    That all being said, we'd like to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about 2.0 as it stands? What are some things you really liked, and what would you like to see changed? Discuss away!

  5.      Ahh, Siege. We all know it, some of us love it, others not so much. But I'm not here to debate the actual balance or gameplay on the map; I'll leave that to a different topic someone can make. Instead, I want to take a moment to analyze the centerpiece of the map: the castle. Is it realistic? What kind of castle is it? Does it resemble any in real life? Can we estimate when it may have been built in-universe?

         Well, that's what I'm here to determine! Let's start from the top with a bird's eye view:

    R4GM8dj.png

         Right off the bat, we can see that this deviates from the "typical" castle design. There's no towers present, nor is there an obvious gatehouse. We only have one outer wall with a few bastions attached to a central keep. The bailey also appears to have been heavily dug into, which may or may not have been done during the height of the castle existing? The main reason it's hard for me to tell is because the trench actually opens into the undercroft (at least partially). The tunnels where the Ore Trucks go were clearly dug out long after the height of the castle's life, so we can ignore them.

         Honestly, those tunnels and the presence of the ore could tell us why this castle is here in the first place. After all, castles were built as defensive structures first, so it's entirely possible that this one was built specifically to guard a rich mine. It's likely that the mine was so rich (or an enemy attack was so swift) that parts of it were left untouched by the time the castle fell into disrepair. All it would take is a curious prospector to discover that this location has a lot more left to offer, and suddenly the Allies and Soviets have great reason to fight over it.

         One more noticeable detail is the fact that the wall isn't flush with the shoreline. This could tell us quite a bit about the history, as most castles built on or near water ways would generally line up the walls with the shore to minimize the possibility of enemies bringing soldiers or siege equipment up against the outer wall. For reference, let's look at Bodiam Castle:

    Bodiam-castle-10My8-1197.jpg

         As you can see, the castle is surrounded by water, but the water appears to have receded over time. Indeed, this may be exactly the case with the castle on Siege; perhaps at one point, the walls were, indeed, flush with the shore, but the water level went down over the centuries. It's likely that the land bridges to either base on the map are fairly recent and would have been shallows back in the castle's heyday.

         Now that we're done looking at the outer wall, let's move into the keep.

    ajzMng3.png

         Looking at the keep itself, we can see that this isn't the typical keep design. The Donjon has fallen, and appears to have been built in the middle of the main keep rather than on the edge. This is not unusual, and was a design feature present in some Germanic castles. Take, for example: Wartburg Castle:

    photo0jpg.jpg

         Much like the Siege castle, we can see that the Donjon rises out of the central keep, which itself is rising out of one of the big buildings. Granted, it's not perfectly centered, but close enough for these purposes.

    aerial-view-on-wartburg-castle-near-eise

         Beyond that, we can see that the castle uses a mansard-style roof:

    hn67BfgCC9giO5InZKtAICw_ExVJIc_R6QesHplZ

         This is truly unusual, as mansard roofs typically weren't used on castles until much later on when they started evolving into palaces, mostly because mansard roofs are a visual extravagance, and don't really offer defensive measures. The Siege castle is not a palace, however, as it's too well fortified outside of this, which is especially apparent given that it has stone where the roof flattens out, as well as on the upper areas. This is a strong defensive feature, as it's not as flammable as wood while being a lot tougher, but at the cost of being more difficult to build. In fact, this tells us that the castle features a vaulted ceiling:


    Temple_of_Jupiter,_Diocletians_Palace,_S

    I00004gvtZVx.0Fk.jpg

         Of course, a castle with all vaulted ceilings is also not unheard of. Don't believe me? Look no further than Dover Castle:

    10707_700.jpg?anchor=center&mode=crop&qu

         The central keep has a complete stone roof, only possible via vaulted ceilings. So, absolutely possible. That being said, I've never seen a mansard roof combined with a vaulted ceiling, but it's possible. Likely impractical, but possible.
     

    vKKtBjp.png

         Moving on, there's a small courtyard on the upper level, complete with a central statue. Nothing informative (apart from the further evidence of a vaulted ceiling), I just thought it looked neat and wanted to point it out.

    E3rkKEP.png

         Now here we see the main entrance to the keep. This, by the way, is why I kept referring to the castle as having an entirely vaulted ceiling; this door implies that there is an entire level on the ground. There were castles which did not have a level on the ground, and the interior instead sat on an elevated stone foundation, but they were in the relative minority. 

    PrJe8tR.png

         Now let's take a closer look at the bastions themselves. The very presence of the cannon platforms shows that this castle likely wouldn't have been built prior to the 13th century, as that's when gunpowder (and especially cannons) rose to prominence in Europe. Interestingly, the cannon is situated upon a vaulted(ish) platform. Bastions of this type were either hollow with staircases or solid:

     Bastion_(PSF).jpg

    Castillo-de-San-Marcos-fortification-Spa

         As you can see, the amount of cannons is different. Though, to be fair, the cannons featured on Siege are absolutely enormous, rivaling even the Tsar Cannon in size:

    rha-29-3001.jpg

         Yeah, this castle has some serious firepower.
     

    84eeQGX.png

         Moving on, let's look at the main gate. This is... interesting to say the least. It appears to have once held two large wooden doors (which are now missing, likely removed for various reasons after centuries of disuse). However, there doesn't appear to be any sign of a portcullis, nor anything resembling a traditional gatehouse:

    castle-parts-gatehouse.jpg

         This means that either resources were low when the gate was constructed, or that the castle was built later than what we think of as the Medieval period. Portcullises and gatehouses were intended to protect against waves of infantry and older siege weapons (such as battering rams). So far, nothing about this castle indicates that it was intended to protect against such threats, and therefore isn't a traditional style of castle. Instead, this is something known as a "Bastion Fort" or "Star Fort":

    FortBrescouGrande.jpg

         These rose to prominence in the 1500s as gunpowder became the cornerstone of European warfare. They were designed specifically to deflect cannon fire and provide protection from incoming musket fire, as many siege weapons of the medieval period were rendered obsolete by these advanced weapons.

         There are more details I could point out (such as the two rear bastions having random wooden roofs, or the large wooden area behind the keep that serves no discernable purpose), but this analysis covers everything I wanted to talk about. I hope you had as much fun reading this analysis as I did making it.

  6. 1 hour ago, Pyrocob said:

    Sorry to create you a deadline ahah.
    I'm more than happy to have you in the Tiberian Sun Anniversary event !  I can't wait to play on 2.0 with everyone !

    Hey no worries! In a way, all you did was inspire us to release a 2.0 Open Beta in the first place!

    Looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

  7. Technology is a pretty poor way to judge timeline IMO. We don't really have a "technology tree" set in stone IRL, and alternate universe shenanigans would naturally lead to different designs appearing at different points in time. Plus, Anachroism Stew is nothing new and shouldn't be used to assert time period (unless you're ready to argue that X-Men: First Class takes place in the late '80s due to tomahawk missiles being shown, or that The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is set in the 1890s or later due to Tuco handling a Bodeo M1889 in one scene :P ) Having Stalin added late in the development cycle would certainly explain the jump in tech out of universe, but it wouldn't effect the in-universe timeline.

    Frankly, the timeline ending the war in the mid-1950's makes a lot of sense, not just because of Stalin, but because of Red Alert 2. That game is soaking with the atmosphere of the height of the Cold War, from Dugan being somewhat an amalgamation of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon to the penultimate Allied mission being very obviously based on the Cuban Missile Crisis, so it's almost certainly set in the 1960s.

  8. 1 hour ago, Jeod said:

    You know it's funny, so have I. Verti was going to host something, and then KY was, but that TV series he was going to base it on didn't release on time...

    I do still have that one in the works. I was planning on finishing it up and posting a signup thread once the finale releases (AKA mid-late July). Only reason it's taken this long is because post-production and release have been kinda... difficult. (A large part of it being on Amazon's end, but I won't bog down the thread with that.)

  9. The manual did, indeed, specify the GAU-3 for GDI and the M16 for Nod. This was the reason we were originally planning to have Nod use the M16A3 for a while. But as previously stated;

    On 6/7/2022 at 8:32 AM, Killing_You said:

    [blurb][/blurb][blurb][/blurb]we decided that using yet another AR-15 variant would just be boring (namely @ Killing_You , who has made his preference for exotic weaponry well known).

     

  10. 35 minutes ago, Chad1233 said:

    The QBZ-95 is such a weird choice since Nod in Tiberian Dawn relied heavily on American equipment. I'm trying to find an old source I read but can't find it, but the explanation behind all this was because there was corruption in the United States Department of Defense and sold much of their equipment to Nod. But as of right now this holds no water. :p


    It may of came from the official C&C1 strategy guide by Brady Games which contains many behind the scenes lore of C&C1. Like Nod actually hacked into GDI's EVA system and stole a beta version of it for their own use. But I don't own it and only managed to read a few scanned pages of it.

    It is, but as stated in the OP, the decision was a push from me because I didn't want to use yet another AR-15/M-16/M4 variant. The QBZ was kind of a stroke of luck in that regard, not only because of the time period being ideal, but because China actually was Nod aligned in Tiberian Dawn:

    906437-command-conquer-dos-screenshot-wo

    It was like getting a weird craving for a very specific flavor of potato chip from a very specific brand, and then spotting a party-sized bag of exactly what you wanted on sale.

  11. 7 minutes ago, dblaney1 said:

    You could just make the nod weapon do more damage per shot and have a slower ROF. 

    We could, but that would radically change how each basic class plays, plus this could severely impact the ability of the GDI minigunner to engage at range. Appreciate the suggestion, but we're going to stay the course with our current plan.

  12. 18 minutes ago, dblaney1 said:

    The m900 really should have either a 50 or 100 round magazine capacity. Theres no reason a drum style magazine would only have 30 rounds. 

    We went with a 30-round mag for balance purposes (GDI getting 50 or 100 rounds compared to Nod getting 30 wouldn't be very fair), plus we're taking into account the upgrade from 9mm (what the real life Calico uses) to 5.56 (what the fictional GAU-3 uses). It is, fortunately, helped by the fact that it's a fictional gun, so we aren't beholden to as many rules.

  13. 2 minutes ago, Gummiel said:

    So you go for a much more sensible option for the PT (Why have noone done something like that before, something like that should really be in all the projects...), yet your throw away sensibility for GDI mini gunner weapon choice? Can you make up your minds? :P

    Well, when we're presented with an opportunity to embrace accuracy to the source material and the alternate universe aspect of C&C, we just couldn't help ourselves. :v 

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