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Well, hello again everyone. It's been just over a year since we've done one of these, which is pretty bad on our part, but hopefully you'll forgive us in lieu of the wealth of AR info that we're going to be offering today. A lot has happened since the last update; Apocalypse Rising now has a new home at W3D Hub, a new development environment which is already doing the job of proving to ourselves that the gears can once again start turning and that there are still a good amount of W3D developers looking to collaborate if they are given a chance! We've got lots of new assets to show off and we're looking to expand our community and team from here on out. One of the big developments that happened last year was AR's migration to the development build of scripts 5.0! this means that we can make use of the latest and greatest developments from the talented individuals who are pushing the envelope on what the W3D engine can really do! We're thinking that this year will be a great year for AR; we've got a lot of energy back and we're looking to really push forward with the project in a way that couldn't be achieved before. We all hope that the community that we are building here will eventually be the go-to place for all W3D modding, but we'll speak more about that later, so now enjoy the resurgence of Apocalypse Rising! Robot Tank Romanov has done a magnificent job of recreating the Robot Tank for the Allies to utilize in the battlefield. This unit is essentially a hovering drone that mounts a couple of light cannons. Players will need to activate terminals to purchase this vehicle and use it in the battlefield remotely. This means that their character will be vulnerable if the Soviets storm the base, but they will not be killed if their Robot Tank is destroyed. In AR, Robot tanks are a great alternative to the Grizzly Tank in terms of speed and their ability to cross water, however they are not as well armed or armoured as the Grizzly, which is why they are somewhat cheaper. Robot Tank control will eventually be dictated by the Robot Control Centre, but for now their operation will be controlled from terminals in the Air Force Command HQ (until the RCC is modelled). Mirage Tank Romanov has modelled up a new Mirage Tank, since the placeholder model that we have ingame currently is around 10 years old now. We are looking to include more than just Radar Tech in our first release now; so extra battle-lab tech units, such as the Mirage Tank, are being created for full implementation. In AR the Mirage Tank is pretty good against infantry and light to medium vehicles, but it is not as effective against buildings, meaning that any Allied team looking to smash in some Soviet defences will need to back up their Mirages with Prism Tanks (and yes, that means the Prism Tank is coming soon!) Tesla Tank Romanov has also finalised the model for the Russian Tesla Tank (he's been a busy guy this past year!). Soviet Russia has access to this unique, but natural extension of the Tesla Trooper. The Tesla Tank goes against the normal conventions of Soviet Tank design because it is fairly lightly armoured and very mobile. The twin tesla coils mounted on the turret are incredibly effective against enemy infantry as well as being fairly good against vehicles. The Tesla Tank will probably be the first vehicle in the game that makes use of danpaul88's country randomiser. For those of you who don't know, this game mechanic randomly picks from the countries in Red Alert 2 at the beginning of the match so that battles will play out slightly differently each time for the most part. This should hopefully keep the gameplay pretty fresh! Here are some images of the new Tesla Tank, built using the best bits of concept art and RA2 installer renders. Attack Dogs Something that a lot of people have been wondering, ever since the start of AR's development, is whether dogs would eventually be implemented or not. Well I'm pleased to announce that with the hard work of Jerad and Romanov, we have our solution! Jerad from ECW (Expansive Civilian Warfare, the mod that used to be RP2) has recently joined our team to help out with us and eventually fully integrate into W3D Hub (but more on that in a community update). He brings with him a wealth of information on how to create custom character animations and skeletons for Renegade which is incredibly invaluable knowledge given how niche the W3D Engine is. With this, he has been able to set out the framework for attack dogs and how they will be implemented in AR. Here are some videos showing some of the animations in action with a stock model that Jerad bought. Romanov has created the Allied Dog model (a German Shepherd) that will be rigged up to these new animations so that we can use it in AR. Here's a screenshot! Among other things, attack dogs are great against infantry and are especially useful when routing out spies. It is currently being decided on how they will fit into AR's balance, but at the end of the day, they should be an incredibly cool addition! One more thing to note is the fact that now we have a dog skeleton, it will be possible to create Tiberium Fiends for Reborn as well as eventually creating additional skeletons for things such as Floaters, Viceroids and the dreaded Tiberium Veinhole Monster. The possibilities of what we can do with animals and other creatures just became a lot more open! Spys Chronometer and Spyglass Romanov has modelled the "weapon" for the Spy! We say "weapon" because although it acts like a selectable weapon in-game, it is more of a utility. With the Spyglass and Chronometer, you will be able to target any enemy unit from a long distance. This will activate small holographic projectors affixed to the Spy's Tuxedo, making the spy disguise himself as an enemy or friendly unit. Whilst Spies can choose to disguise themselves as enemy units, they can also disguise themselves as friendly units; allowing the Spy to be a SEAL or Tanya decoy to confuse the Soviets. Here's a render of the textured models! We anticipate that the Spy will be a really fun unit to play as once he is in the game! It's refreshing to have a unit that we can really have some fun with and enhance their abilities to shake up the gameplay a bit. Hopefully a smart Spy will cause some entertainment on the battlefield as they troll the Soviets with their abilities! Gurdian G.I.s Spectre M4 Sub-Machine Gun When choosing what weapon we wanted to use for the Guardian G.I., we wanted to pick a weapon that would match the chunky aesthetic of the character. after deciding that using a third MP5 would be a bad idea, we settled on the Spectre M4. Not only does it share similarities with the concept art, it also falls in line with our design for the Allies being a multi-national fighting force that uses guns from all over it's territory (the Spectre being italian). Moonsense has already rigged this weapon up and it's in-game, but you'll have to wait for a screenshot of that. Team Updates We'll hopefully be keeping up this tradition in our new community round-ups! But for now, let's see what people have been up to! OWA managed to procure a job at The Creative Assembly in June of last year. Since then he has worked on and been credited in Alien: Isolation and Total War: Attila as a QA Technician! He has finished the Conscript model and moved on to work on finshing Romanov's G.I., making a new Apocalypse Tank and generally improving the community services! There's an AR forum skin on the way! dtrngd changed his name to moonsense715 and has rerigged all of the weapons with new hands! He also has been working silently on the Allied Airforce Command HQ. danpaul88's been working on the launcher, mainly fixing bugs and upgrading it with new features! cfehunter is back and has joined the graphics/shader department of the engine/scripts team led by Jonwil. Jonwil has been working hard on a ton of new script features for all the mods! Romanov has been modeling and texturing all sorts of assets, as you can see that everywhere in this blog Generalcamo has joined the team and has been working on making aircraft fall on death like in RA2. He should have a video ready soon! Killing_You has been working on vehicle sounds, and will soon be moving on to start on weapon sounds! Dee Bingo and Methelina from the BFD team have been working together on an exciting character model but we can't tell you any details just yet! Squid Empire has been drawing concept art like a machine for developers to use for reference. Nuclear Kommando created a bunch of new Interface graphics and has moved on to upgrade the ingame HUD. Pushwall from BHP helped moonsense with ingame vehicle physics. Byamarro has been lurking around and has textured the Conscript. We are looking for Testers! We need people to test all this cool new stuff we made and are making! If you are interested in becoming a part of history, CLICK HERE to learn how to apply! The last AR Random Corner This is unfortunately the last AR random corner. Luckily for you though, it's a good one! First off we have a sad song to mourn the passing of the Random Corner. If you guys played Metal Gear Solid 3, you'll know how crazy this is. Some interesting archive footage of the Mark VIII Liberty Tank! Also for you 40K fans out there! Here's a remake of Episode 1 of Bruva Alfabusa's If the Emperor had a Text to Speech Device! It's a great series for those of you who haven't yet seen it! Finally, to celebrate Space Jam month here at W3D Hub, here's some Command & Slam! The Future of Blogs and Updates Hey guys OWA here. I wanted to address you all directly about how long it's taken to push this update out. I won't lie to you guys and gals, but the time it took to post this was pretty unacceptable on my part (mainly thanks to my escalating work schedule and lack of motivation over the last year), so in lieu of this I've decided to re-vamp the way we deliver our game updates. What I'd like is for our content to be posted as it's finalised, instead of waiting for a big chunk of stuff to release all at once. I feel that smaller updates will help to keep you guys engaged in what's happening as well as help us out with critique at more crucial times. When we founded W3D Hub, one of our goals was to be open to the community about some of the cool stuff we were working on, so this ties into it quite nicely. Through these smaller development updates, you can keep up to speed on the cool stuff that we are doing! Also, for those of you who prefer reading larger updates, so that you don't have to keep checking back, we are also considering running a fortnightly/monthly W3D Hub community roundup, which will include all of the latest developments from all of the mods, as well as keep you guys informed about what's happening in the community. Please feel free to voice your opinions on this, as we'll take it into consideration for our next updates! See you on the battlefield! - OWA