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Welcome one and all to this long and overdue update from us over at the AR team! Despite the gap between our last update and this one, we're still very much alive and kicking. development has been slow this past few months as the team has gone through education, exams and other life events that take away our AR-time from us. Let me just take this opportunity to update you guys on what we've been doing and introduce a couple of new staff members before we hit into the game updates. One Winged Angel has graduated and achieved his wizard's diploma Masters of Engineering degree in Computer Games Design. Applause!! Also a picture of the man himself in some silly clothes. dtrngd has been on holidays but is now back to work. danpaul88 has recently been taken ill. We all wish him a speedy recovery! cfehunter got a placement and is now working as a programmer for a year! BogdanV is back in action and has been working on destruction animations for civilian buildings. Destructible cities in my AR? Yes please! (This also means destructible bridges too by the way). Eggman891 is going to work with ChAoS to bring good quality first person arms to AR. This means no more Rene-arms! Chevy787 has been taking a break, but will be back to work when he has time again. Guy with a wrench has gone missing. Teamwolf's been working on Isle of War, but he's also been having a lot of success with Battle For Dune: War of Assassins! The rest of the team has been busy with other things. New team members Let's give a warm welcome to TWO new members in the BHP family: Byamarro and Deik10 (formerly known as Silverlight)! Byamarro is here to do general texturing work. This is excellent since we were in desperate need of such an artist! Deik10 has joined to help us with various graphics, such as the Main Menu, the Sidebar, Help screens and so on. These great team additions should speed up our work a little bit and should bring more stuff to show you guys in the coming blogs too, so stay tuned! Game Updates Ever since dtrngd has gotten his hands over the main game build, he's been doing a lot of Level Edit work. Here are the main points he has changed since the Beta 1 test build: New Points System The points system was giving just as much score as veterancy points, which turned out to be extremely unbalanced during the test games. It has been completely revamped and should prove much better. Veterancy Upgrades The upgraded weapons of veteran/elite units have become more powerful, not to mention elite units now acquire their X-Treme weapon, which pack much more firepower than the previous elite upgrades, each with a special addition (for example, double-shell for Grizzly tanks) Here's a full list of what a promotion gives you in the current test build: Veteran Rank *15% faster reload (vehicles) *15% increased range (infantry) *15% better accuracy (spray weapons) *15% more damage dealt *15% resistance against all warhead types Elite Rank *15% faster reload (vehicles)(Note: vehicles with double shell upgrade get the regular reload time back.) *25% increased range (infantry) *25% better accuracy (spray weapons) *25% more damage dealt *25% resistance against all warhead types *Special weapon upgrade (surprise for players ) *Explosive splash damage added (rockets and tank shells) *Health + armour regeneration Battle Fortress When One Winged Angel was doing his masters thesis, he wanted it to tie in to Apocalypse Rising in some way, so when it turned out that he was doing an investigation into team-based multiplayer vehicles, the Battle Fortress was an obvious choice. In AR, the Battle Fortress will be a major threat for the soviets to contend with on the battlefield, but only if the Allies have the teamwork to utilise it's full potential. This behemoth is only armed with a machine gun when only one person is making use of it, so more players have to commit themselves to give the vehicle a wider range of potential. We're expanding the amount of abilities that the Battle Fortress has in AR, compared to RA2. That means that infantry units that had no special weapons inside a Battle Fortress will (within reason); this gives the vehicle a potential support role. Want a bigger repair vehicle? Just put 5 engineers into a Battle Fortress and repair all of your team-mates as they head into battle. You may have seen the vehicle model already on Teamspeak or Facebook, but here it is in all it's glory. dtrngd will be putting this ingame when he gets the model, so it may appear as a special crate unit in the debut release. Dolphin Ketsi is a university friend of One Winged Angel's, who specialises in modelling all sorts of organic creatures. She made the Giant Squid that was shown in the last update and has since made us an awesome Dolphin (his name is Lumpy) to counter it! We decided to take more of an inspiration from RA3 with the Dolphin, since it's RA2 incarnation hadn't really got any decent art references for us to work from. The Dolphin will be really effective at countering Giant Squids. Unlike units such as the Terror Drone and Robot Tank, that are pilot-less, the Dolphin will not be remote controlled. When you purchase a Dolphin, you will spawn in the water and become it. Here's a render of the Allies' flippery friend, Lumpy the Dolphin! Soviet Barracks update Work was halted a while ago on this structure when our former texture artist, TheBeerinator moved over to our sister project, A Path Beyond to help with their paint jobs. But now that Byamarro is with us, he and dtrngd resumed work on the Soviet Barracks internals. Here are a few images of the latest changes: Purchase Icons Deik10 has already jumped into deep water, he is working on the sidebar graphics. Here's a sample of his first attempt at the IFV and V3 Launcher purchase icons: Forum Skins The forum skins we've had on this new forum, haven't really been very C&C-ish, so One Winged Angel has set about making some new ones. He's made an excellent start on a replica of the old A Path Beyond forum skin which will hopefully be rolled out publically soon. This will follow with a Reborn skin, an AR skin, a BHP skin an possibly some faction specific skins as well. Let us know if you have an idea for a skin and we'll consider it, but for now, here's the APB skin in all it's new-old glory. Recruitment We have a shiny new recruitment image! Feel free to spam it around to support AR and help us finish the game faster! AR Team's Funny Corner <center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/68ceVELA-VA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> 4 Year Old Calls 911 For MATH HELP!! <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QxcCC2g1Ke0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Police academy guy does electric guitar with his VOICE o_O</center> Grand Finale We're going to hopefully try and squeeze out a new update once a month, so watch this space!