A Path Beyond What else is left?

[Coolrock]

On 11/13/2018 at 12:56 AM, KevinLancaster said:

I really liked the old Destroyer design.

I know the newer one isn't exactly what was wanted, but I don't think the older one compares to it.

Spoiler

 

On 11/12/2018 at 11:35 PM, MPRA2 said:

they just have no color to them

Most naval ships don't have color to them. It's pretty spot on to what the Type 22 looks like in real life. We went for the closest ship that made sense and was available. Not too modern at the least. Anyone is free to tinker with the texture if they can do better. As I said before, this was a way to get everything updated quickly since we don't have a full time 3D Artist. 

[Raap]

It's worth stating again that most people including myself think that the Gunbote and Cruisebote came out fine, so don't look at this like a wasted investment. 

[NodGuy]

I like the the new ships, even though they're not 'RAlistic'. The small size of the Cruiser bugs me but it is fun to use. When I shoot at the communist pigs I get satisfaction from knowing that their screens are shaking like crazy.

[Mezmerize]

Cruiser just needs it's texture modified so it's not obvious that the thing is scaled down. Destroyer needs an actual texture.

It's incredible how the freaking Chrono Tank and the airplanes/fighter jets have actually been implemented in Renegade. The Chrono Tank is expensive as hell but it is a useful tank destroyer/base defense harasser/AA and it's even decent against infantry. 

The only unit left is the Attack Dog, which I've presented a decent idea for how to implement. 

We also need the Naval Transport to carry vehicles. My idea for this is that it can only transport 1 vehicle unit. It can carry any vehicle EXCEPT for the following: Mammoth Tank, MAD Tank, Demo Truck. So, it can transport 4 infantry as well as one vehicle. Would be fun to use on Coastal Influence.

Then the support powers. Spy Satellite I could see being used as an overhead map with all enemy troop positions tracked in real time. Since we already have an overhead map with the Chrono Tank, which does show enemy unit's positions occasionally, the overhead map thing is doable, to my knowledge.

The Badger cargoplane/bomber could be neat, of course tied to the Airfield. Purchase a bombing run, which is a flare, perhaps? Plant flare, and the Parabombs commence. I was thinking, for paratroopers, in the airfield building, have special terminal that has overhead map, you and up to 4 others can use the terminal to load into a cargo plane off map, like your characters get teleported instantly into a cargo plane off map, for a fee, and you are now riding passenger in the Badger cargo plane, and you can exit the plane at anytime (press E) and you deploy parachute automatically (which Renegade does support) make sure you exit the plane before it leaves the map. Or it could be flare bought, and rifle soldier bots being delivered.

Chronosphere superweapon - make a new hotkey for allied vehicles in extended options, that can only be utilized if the map has the chronosphere super weapon enabled. I figure it has a timer and a cost to use. While inside of a vehicle, if the timer has transpired and you have sufficient credits, press the hotkey to bring up overhead map to teleport. It's like the chrono tank except unlimited range. Demo Trucks & MAD tanks cannot be teleported. Unlike in original Red Alert, your tank does not teleport back to it's origin spot after 1 minute or so. Also, maybe prevent Supply Trucks/APCs from teleporting if there are any passengers inside of them, if you think teleporting in an APC fully loaded with soldiers is OP.

Iron Curtain superweapon - make a new hotkey for soviet vehicles in extended options, that can only be utilized if the map has Iron Curtain super weapon enabled. I figure it has a timer and cost to use. While inside of a vehicle, if the timer has transpired and you have sufficient credits, press the hotkey to make your tank invulnerable for 45 or so seconds. Demo Trucks & MAD Tanks cannot be made invulnerable. 

Yah this mod is great. Only other thing I can think of is add more bot players to flesh out the bases, like in Interim Apex, there are bot players patrolling your base.

[Raap]

On 12/4/2018 at 10:42 PM, Mezmerize said:

Cruiser just needs it's texture modified so it's not obvious that the thing is scaled down. Destroyer needs an actual texture.

You have to let go of a certain amount of belief if you want certain units to make their appearance. The scaling issue always existed, just take a look at the Soviet Submarines, they clearly are down-scaled as well but nobody mentioned it because they lack so much detail that people do not notice it.

The new ships were made with higher standards (mostly!), but also, they were outsourced, made by an artist not aware of the gameplay in APB. Were the artist to be more aware of what APB is he might have concluded that such ships make no sense on these small scales, because they truly do not make real-world sense. But then, this is a game and not the real world. Sometimes for the sake of gameplay, some creative routes have to be taken.

There are a few minor things that can be done to improve the perception of the scale however, such as removing the doors and life vests from the textures, but then you quickly risk another Destroyer situation, so there is a balance to be found, somewhere in between it all.

 

Quote

 

It's incredible how the freaking Chrono Tank and the airplanes/fighter jets have actually been implemented in Renegade. 

(...)

Yah this mod is great.

 

I don't think it is completely correct to say that they have been implemented into Renegade. While the core of W3D still references or utilizes a significant portion of Renegade logic, none of these units could have functioned in actual Renegade. Significant engine-level changes and additions have been made over the years to accomplish most of the things you see in APB or other W3D projects today. So you'd be discrediting the valuable work of the programming team and past contributors by saying 'this is done on Renegade'.

 

Quote

 

The only unit left is the Attack Dog. (...)

Then the support powers. (...)

 

The Attack Dog remains a... Curious topic! Interestingly I believe most of the logic already sort of exists, but there is a matter of designing it to be a fun addition to the game. Either way I am sure Pushwall will figure something out.

As for the rest, yeah, APB has come a long way, but with remaining pieces it is mostly a case of how to design it to be fun, rather than being a hard-blocked code limitation.

In my personal opinion, support powers - including the current Atom Bomb - need to be reworked to step away from the whole "place a signal flare which magically tells a missile where to go", the whole process of poking a terminal to get a flare, traveling to the enemy base, planting it in the most cheesy location you can think of and then proceed to hopefully kill the swarm of dancing engineers, in my opinion, it needs to go away. I believe that such abilities should simply have a price tag, a cooldown, and a focus on supporting a player-driven assault rather than single-handedly destroying half the opposing teams base.

In place of flare planting, should be an overhead map which displays all friendly units, as well as the support powers available (and what price tag/cooldown they have left). Then anyone from the team should be able to fire off a support power from this overhead map - which may be accessed by a special terminal within the base of the player, to avoid people from firing off a support power right as they are about to attack the enemy base themselves. This should encourage some teamwork and communication as well to ensure these support powers have the most optimal results, as a random person randomly firing off an Atom Bomb should not see much more success than causing a few defenses to blow up and only damaging critical structures (meaning actual players would be required to finish off the structures).

It will have the bonus of being more true to Red Alert in this way as well.

But here would be my special twist: The addition overhead map-fired support powers, could push spy/infiltration game mechanics to a new level. Spies could gain new mechanics to deal with sabotaging these support powers, some more simplistic than others. Sabotaging an Iron Curtain could simply involve interacting with the structure to reset the cooldown, but sabotaging the Missile Silo could involve more interesting mechanics such as a Spy first needing to infiltrate other buildings to retrieve parts of the "launch code", forcing the Spy to do a little legwork within the hostile base which will naturally expose him to other players. If successful however, and all codes are obtained, the Abomb could be significantly sabotaged or perhaps even completely disabled for the remainder of the match (effectively destroying the Missile Silo).

This is where Attack Dogs finally could come into play in terms of meaningful gameplay. Players could be able to purchase Attack Dog guards and order them to guard specific areas, and then they would do so with a specific and limited 'leash range' to prevent them from wandering off. Spies would need to carefully avoid them, which is good, especially since Spies are already safe from triggering mines, and this would actually counter Spies a little without needing to babysit your own base 24/7 (however a good Spy player can kill the Attack Dogs).

But then lastly, you cannot have this Spy sabotage mechanic work for one team only, that would be incredibly unbalanced. So, the Soviets would need a counter unit - like a Sapper or Infiltrator. Mirrored to be like the Allied Spy, it would be different as well. Where the Allied Spy also functions to disable certain things for a time or gather information reports, the Soviet counter unit could be focused on inflicting situational damage or "debuffs" - Such as causing the next Ore Dump to inflict economic damage and reducing the Allied team's credit pool by the equivalent of that ore dump. And instead of gathering information the Soviet counter unit could be placing proximity based or remote control based traps of various kinds that negatively impact Allied players, for example, placing a spike trap that damages the wheels or tracks of the first vehicle that drives over it, effectively limiting the maximum movement speed of that vehicle. Naturally, this would also require the Allies to get access to an Attack Dog equivalent of their own (No, not an Attack Kitten, that would be silly), perhaps a small 'Sentry Machinegun Turret' that can only be placed in interiors makes sense here, and fits the Allied 'higher tech' niche better.

So yeah, dogs, sentry turrets, support powers, new infiltration mechanics, and a Soviet infiltration unit - it all makes for a decently cohesive package that could feature a much expanded infiltration gameplay for both teams, a true reason to have Attack Dogs, and a renewed way of doing support powers. In my opinion you'd be tackling the last remaining gameplay block that APB still lacks with this package.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Raap

[Threve]

On 11/9/2018 at 12:41 PM, des1206 said:

I still can't believe we are at this point, that we have functioning Chronotank, Migs, Yaks, Cruisers! Thanks a million to all the devs whose hard work make it happen.

So what else is left? Chronosphere, Iron Curtain, dogs, Badger Bomber, spy planes, para-troopers. That's all right? Are we finally close to the finish line as far as full unit implementation is concerned?

Like Renegade, the Final Evolution would be implementation into a newer engine such as Unreal Engine. But with the almost dead community of Renegade, lack of RTS titles to bring popularity to this genre, amount of work required, lack of artists/modelers to work for free on a project of this scale, the whole dev team here having to learn the in's/outs of a New Engine.. I don't believe it would happen or at least anytime in the foreseeable future.  The only way it could is advertising to make it worth it and paying artists but I don't believe anyone here wants to invest that amount of input and i don't blame them. For APB in its current state it is incredible what has been done with what we got. When and if this game reaches a finalized completed state i'd still rather play this than a new era graphics version due to the aesthetic. There's something about the quirkiness and pixelated block characters that give this game a certain charm in my opinion and connect a little better with the Old Schoolness that is RA.

A Path Beyond as it stands is an incredible game and compared with most titles (much less mods) is very well balanced and unique. The only irony is that such a great game requires players to really make it shine as of which it is difficult to accumulate 10 much less 20 at a single time. This type of game was made for high player count and it stands out when played as such.