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Blog 69 (20/02/08)


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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 :p 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.

 

AlliedTechy-1.png

 

<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 :)

 

 

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

 

 

(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.

 

post-1542-1203342002.jpg

 

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.

dpatrol1.jpg

 

<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 :D 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>

HummerH2-tracked.jpg

 

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!

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skipped the stuff about the data patch whatever. map looks cool, hummer looks cool :D , and its nice to see that AR's techs won't be dangerously obese (compared to APB)

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Guest EVA-251

Good blog, good blog.

 

The only complaint is the SEAL, who looks extraordanarily FAT. Why are the Allies throwing guys with beer bellies into the SEAL program? In RA2, the SEAL looked somewhat lean...Also, the SEAL didn't wear a helmet. :D

 

As I said, it's deliberately coded like that, because that's how it was in RA2 :)

I just finished a test run of my mod for YR, and I can assure you, that does not happen. When a unit gains veterancy, the 2 things can happen to their armor.

 

1: Damage is reduced by a set number. In the case of mod, this would be a 30%. This was done because WW was lazy and did not want to account for issues that would come with units changing their actual Max Strength.

VeteranArmor=1.3 ; For armor, think of it as max strength being multiplied by the number (in reality, damage is divided by this)

2: A very slow self-heal.

 

They never regenerated their armor fully.

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Guest Allie29

What unknown version are you playing? >.> I specifically remember when my units got elite, I would hold them back and wait for them to regen to full health.

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Guest EVA-251

What unknown version are you playing? >.> I specifically remember when my units got elite, I would hold them back and wait for them to regen to full health.

Wrong terminology. What I was saying is that they did not suddenly jump up to 100% armor/health.

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