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APB 3.0.7.2 Changelog


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ho

ly

shit

 

THE CANYON RIVER IS BACK

Wonder if V2 is still as good on this map as it was before :v

I'm excited to give the allies "New Construction Options". I wonder if the hills would be used to completely bombard opponents like in Beta.

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It's always good to see another classic map remade.

 

I think we still got a few left that haven't been remade yet, but that list is getting shorter now.

 

I miss ClassicFjord (I think that was the name). Good fun. :)

 

 

A successor to that map remains my 3rd and final planned contribution to APB. But it will not be a direct remake.

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Would being healed by medics or jumping into vehicles quickly negate Shock's damage now?

 

Also, if C4s are now effective against vehicles, I wonder if we can allow Tanya to throw hers a bit further so she can C4 tanks in the field. We can put a blocker at the base of coil to prevent abuse of throwing C4 up too high. 

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We can put a blocker at the base of coil to prevent abuse of throwing C4 up too high.

 

Tell me how this blocker is going to block Tanya but not repairmen.

 

Would being healed by medics or jumping into vehicles quickly negate Shock's damage now?

Yes. But shocks can just kill those vehicles, and haven't medics been in need of things to make them more relevant anyway?

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Metro was my favourite APB map all time. One of few where infantry were just as important as vehicles, and buying a tank could have been more of a hindrance than benefit.

 

 

 

(until someone added base defenses, they ruined it.)

 

 

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We can put a blocker at the base of coil to prevent abuse of throwing C4 up too high.

 

Tell me how this blocker is going to block Tanya but not repairmen.

 

 Invisible block at the bottom coil ring so Tanya can not throw the C4 up high. Infantry can still stand below coil.

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Ok so what you want comes with a ton of problems:

  • if you want to strela/shock some longbows that are attacking the coil, you can't be anywhere near the coil to do that or else your attacks hit an invisible shield above you.
  • On a map like KOTG where you get high-ground advantage on a coil, you might want to make use of that to easily snipe engineers repairing a coil. But you can't because your bullets will hit an invisible shield. People say they're useless enough already, right?
  • If you want to shoot the coil with artillery, you have to be a lot more accurate than normal because the base of the coil is the part that's easiest to hit and that is protected from above by - you guessed it - an invisible shield.
  • If you're in a V2 and want to snipe some guys attacking the coil, well you just can't because there's a lot less room for you to aim because there's an invisible shield blocking any V2 rockets within ~10m or so of the coil. Unless you plan to use arc shots which are a lot harder.
  • If you're in any turreted vehicle and drive past the coil, your turret is going to freak out because there's an invisible shield that will directly intersect with either the camera or the tip of the turret at some point. Any Beta players remember the aim-spaz that used to be caused by walking/driving through bushes or aiming through tree branches, since those were also things that you could move through that had projectile collision? Yeah, it'd pretty much be like that.
  • If you're in a longbow, you have to remember to target the upper parts of the coil and not the base because your missiles might seek into the arbitrary invisible shield. Always fun to have to deal with things like that when you have limited ammo and the success of a rush is riding on good use of it!
  • Very obviously floating C4. Please.

Before you say just make it not do that for the other projectiles, It's not possible to set blocking on a per-projectile basis; a blocker will either block all projectiles or block no projectiles.

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People ingame ask about Metro all the time and I tell them why not all the time so I might as well have a forum post about it now so everyone knows: it's not likely to happen any time soon. The original Metro is WELL below the visual quality standards set by Delta - probably the ugliest official map even back in its heyday - and buildings are much harder to spice up than terrain, getting it up to standards would be a massive time-sink and I don't really have the 3ds max skill for that either. Frankly I'd prefer a full remake based on the "Allies roll through Moscow" RA cutscene, as that is obviously much more appropriate for the APB setting than old Metro which looks like 1990s Los Angeles or something, but that's also a big time-sink.

 

 

Whatever the improvements, I would love to see Metro or a city map but people need to understand that making convincing buildings is not as easy as making convincing terrain.

 

Man-made terrain or large structures requires a significant amount of time. The castle walls on Siege uses 15 different textures, and that's just the stone, and not counting the wooden rampart segments and props/foliage... For a WALL. Imagine an entire city? This is why few games have very significant urban environments, and if they do, then it often involves a lot of re-used assets all over the place.

 

Level design/environment development is one of the most time consuming tasks in game development, and the least re-usable. You make a vehicle or character model once and you can easily re-use it across your project, but you're not going to be re-using significant level segments.

 

APB Delta has reached a point where, in my opinion, focus should be less on new maps, but more on improved assets for all maps, in order to improve the gameplay within the existing content. New base buildings have been on a wishlist for a long time, for example. If I had more time, I would have been happy to make new buildings (I've already had to do so for HW), especially since creating buildings and interiors is quite a fun task.

Edited by Raap
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The red alert moscow assault cutscene was actually the design theory for the new metro that drunkill and I concepted together in 2010. I modeled out most of the terrain for the map, but stopped when I realized how big of a project it was to model out a host of unique civvy buildings from scratch, plus all the other props that make a city a city. I have hope that I can do something like this in the future but don't expect anything soon.

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and if they do, then it often involves a lot of re-used assets all over the place.

 

Even the minor villages in APB, that make JRPG villages look like metropolises by comparison, use a lot of the same houses and ruins between different maps. Some of them even have 2 of the same house/ruin on the same map.  :v I wouldn't think of trying to make any villages larger than Stormy Valley/To The Core's with the few houses we have, and certainly not a proper Moscow-esque city as we have absolutely nothing for that besides Metro's icky and anachronistic assets.

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I had a moment to check out the new CanyonRiver.

 

Great work Choppy, here are a few thoughts:

 

  • The tunnels got visible terrain seams - this is not your fault, this is a W3D issue that I also battle a lot. But you can remedy it by adding a mesh around the caves to act as a "wrapper", this will also make the caves a bit darker as it blocks more light. If you ever get this issue with buildings, flag the biggest elements as 2-sided to remedy those cases for the most part (2-sided materials on meshes also happens to combat camera clip exploiting).
  • I thought the ladders attached to the cliffs were a neat idea!
  • 3-way material locations such as tunnel exits can get covered up with rocks more easily by making the transition blend area smaller and more manageable to cover up. (3/4-way blending is still on my long W3D engine wishlist, but that's not likely to ever become a reality, so we're stuck with... "creative" solutions.)
  • The cave sunlight effect was cute. I was experimenting with such effects for a CanyonRiver update that was never finished, although my cave was very different (uglier and unfinished), as far as my memory goes.
  • Lots of trees, I'm wondering how the engine even deals with it, since the design of the map isn't very VIS friendly (you can see from base to base). Perhaps I can review your VIS implementation so I can apply it similarly to Siege?
  • Such a pretty map, but you had to ruin it by using my old, ugly, Bonsai wooden bridge model? Why.  :(
  • Some tight tunnel and cliff spaces such as the one near the fuel barrel behind the Soviet base, are recipes for latency based frustration. Consider applying collision meshes in such spots to smooth out player movement to avoid incidental falling or rubber banding. W3D netcode is just too unreliable.
  • Plenty of off-map routes ensure this canyon isn't a box canyon, so good thinking there.
  • Above the Allied base, on the top road, there are some black 'twigs' sticking out of the ground. Seems like a proxy gone bad.
  • Scripted weather makes me wish we had dynamic day/night cycles in W3D that ensures each map players differently based on real world times... Unfortunately, W3D's (terrain-) lighting isn't capable of anything like this.
  • Lots of unused space in terms of gameplay. I'm much in favor of map-specific gameplay elements to fill up such spaces with a purpose.
  • The flowers near the graves were a nice touch.
  • A suggestion, but each time you make a new piece of foliage or a rock, consider dumping them into a shared assets file so other maps can use them as well. It means that other maps can get time assigned for new props rather than re-creating environmental elements time and time again. It's easy enough to swap a material when a model and unwrap are already done.

 

Lastly, running around in CanyonRiver only really helps to support my line of thinking, that time should be spent more on updating existing maps in terms of visuals and gameplay, rather than pumping out new maps all the time. Despite Delta's raising of the bar, notable inconsistencies remain between the various existing maps. Improving commonly used assets, like base buildings or civilian props, should be part of this. It's best to start with this sort of thing soon, and not when you got 50 different levels to update. If time allows, I could assist with this after my 3rd and final map contribution is completed.

Edited by Raap
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and if they do, then it often involves a lot of re-used assets all over the place.

 

Even the minor villages in APB, that make JRPG villages look like metropolises by comparison, use a lot of the same houses and ruins between different maps. Some of them even have 2 of the same house/ruin on the same map.  :v I wouldn't think of trying to make any villages larger than Stormy Valley/To The Core's with the few houses we have, and certainly not a proper Moscow-esque city as we have absolutely nothing for that besides Metro's icky and anachronistic assets.

 

Pushwall's right; Well-made urban maps require a lot of unique assets (namely, buildings, civy vehicles, misc. city props like street signs, etc.) which take a lot of time to make, and then there's also figuring out how best to arrange all these assets to suit gameplay and performance.

 

Plus, as he said, we can't even re-use Metro's assets since they're both horribly outdated and completely inappropriate for RA1's setting. An urban map in APB would ideally look like a European city in the 1940's (since the devastation of WWII didn't happen during the 1940's, most places would look largely the same as they did before the war), and not Los Angeles circa 1990. :v

 

This all being said, I've got some small assets on the go which could contribute to an urban project; Antique-style traffic lights, vintage street signs, and a couple of old civy vehicles. I did start trying to make civy buildings awhile back as well, but unfortunately life's been very busy this year and those had to be put on the back burner for a while.

Edited by Ice
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