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Hey everyone! It's been a long while since the last update, but here's a new one to stop those AR blues. Plus, we simply couldn't have APB and TSR releasing new updates without us! We missed the boat on posting an update last month, so here's a new one to cover January and February! We've done a fair amount of work (or rather danpaul88, dtrngd and ChAoS have) since the last time we updated! Here's what the team have been up to recently: One Winged Angel recently turned 23. He's still a handsome devil though. dtrngd has been working on AR's presets recently and there have been a lot of updates for the testers to play with, but now he's moved his attention onto Reborn, so that a playable build can be constructed. fear not Rebornites! your game is in very good and capable hands! danpaul88 has been working on loads of great new scripts; some of which are demonstrated and explained in this update! ChAoS has been rigging weapons using the new first person hands; a cool video of that is on show below. BogdanV has been modelling bits and pieces, but has a fair bit of University work that has been getting in the way. The rest of the team has been up to various bits and bobs. Beta 2 Gameplay Footage danpaul88 has recently posted this video on the BHP youtube channel which shows lots of lovely Beta 2 gameplay! Watch Grizzly, IFV and Harrier rushes on South Pacific as well as some infantry action on Rocky Pass and capturing structures on Freezing Straits! Not much else to say about this one, so enjoy the video! New First Person Rigs ChAoS has been hard at work rigging the weapons up in first person! Once we get enough weapons into the game, we can transition over from the old renegade rig to our new shiny rig! The problem with the Renegade skeleton is that it's old and quite simple compared to what we could potentially do. so what we have done (or rather what Eggman891 has done) is create a rig for a new set of hands that has a lot more joints in it; this way, we can produce better animations that look nicer. It's only an aesthetic change, but it does affect the whole first-person mode of the game, so we're going to make sure it's done right. :)In the future we could potentially create more hand types and every infantry could have their own set of hands, but that's a maybe. Check out the video below where ChAoS runs through some of the weapons that he's completed using the new rig. Conquest Mode AI As well as playing the game, danpaul88 has also been coding up a storm recently. We should have really called this the Janbruary Update: danpaul88 and ChAoS edition! Anyway, back to the news at hand. a new AI objective system has been written up so that bots can actually play various game-modes! Why is this important? It's important because it means we can put bots on any map that we want to and have them play entire games out by themselves (in the simplest form). For example, a SEAL will be able to work out that infantry are more important to shoot than tanks, but he won't be smart enough to place C4 on weakpoints. In the past, bots needed waypoints that they could follow like a trail of breadcrumbs around the map, but now we can auto-generate our pathfinding data, give a bot an objective and they'll find their own way to achieve it. This is currently how our miners work, which is incredibly easy for mappers to setup and is incredibly flexible if we want to do multiple ore fields (se the next segment for more on that). The key points concerning this new AI is that it's based on two simple concepts; offence and defence. An offensive AI will swear at you loudly and show you his arse prioritise attacking over defending and will also decide what to attack based on it's unit-type. I.e. A Rhino Tank will look for other tanks to attack when assaulting a position, whilst a Navy SEAL will always prefer to attack infantry. Defensive AIs will prioritise defending over attacking and can be assigned to defend key targets. Just captured an oil derrick? No problem; some Grizzly tanks will move in to defend it for you. This could also be used for maps where defending the ore miners are key; so each miner could have an escort of a couple of tanks when moving out into the battlefield to harvest more. Objectives are also unit-type based depending how suitable they are for certain units. To test this new AI out, danpaul88 set up a test game of conquest mode to find out if it was capable of playing an entire game by itself. The results were good! All of the documentation for this new AI can be found here: http://doc.tiberiantechnologies.org/scripts.dll/classdp88___a_i___objective.html Re-Growable Ore Fields danpaul88 has worked more magic by creating scripts that will support re-growable ore fields! You heard it right! This basically means that ore fields will shrink as they are harvested by miners. Then when the field is fully depleted, the miner will move onto the next field (and yes the AI is equipped to do this on it's own). If a field is depleted, but it has an Ore Extractor, the ore will regrow over time; so an ore field that gets depleted at the start of the game, might become a source of income again nearer the end! So now we have the potential to create maps that start with a small field of ore or gems close by that will get depleted, thus making the miner search for alternate sources later on into the game. This will give a massive C&C-feel to the game which will hopefully get everyone buzzing with nostalgia! The documentation for these scripts are public, so feel free to check them out below! Ore Field Script: http://doc.tiberiantechnologies.org/scripts.dll/classdp88___ore___field.html Ore Extractor Script: http://doc.tiberiantechnologies.org/scripts.dll/classdp88___ore___field___drill.html Misc. Other News In other news this update, here's a list of other things that we've been up to: The doors of the War Factory are actually targetable now. this means that shooting them will do damage the building itself! Dawnblaze has been working on the %5Burl=%5Burl=]Soviet Spy Plane[/url], but it's not quite ready yet. The new Rocketeer physics are ingame! This means that when you deploy the rocket pack now the Rocketeer should fly like a proper VTOL with a lot less lag! We tried giving Crazy Ivan a grenade-type weapon to make him more effective against infantry, but now we've removed it in favour of a more RA2-style small sticky bomb. We're working on getting parachuting reinforcements into the game. When you lose your War Factory, extra vehicles will be parachuted down to you. We might even be able to parachute down weapons and equipment for when the barracks is lost as well. The Engineer IFV now repairs continuously instead of in bursts. This has made it a much better vehicle! Rand00m Something for Zelda fans. Something for Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter fans. Aaaaaand something for C&C fans. Fini See you next time guys and gals!