Attention The State of the mods, but also our communities.

[Dadud]

your maps is bad. But seriously. private testing was a mid 00's thing to do. its freaking 2019. get with the times. abandon W3D, use the tool Saberhawk is making to export W3D models to modern formats, and work on a new, free to use game engine, with public testing. Unity, Lumberyard, Cryengine, UE4, it doesn't matter. W3D is dead and has been for atleast 15 years. you might have to abandon all C&C ties to do so, but im sure you could rename all the units to be compliant and avoid C&D's

Edited January 4, 2019 by Dadud

[Jeod]

2 minutes ago, Dadud said:

your maps is bad. But seriously. private testing was a mid 00's thing to do. its freaking 2019. get with the times. abandon W3D, use the tool Saberhawk is making to export W3D models to modern formats, and work on a new, free to use game engine, with public testing. Unity, Lumberyard, Cryengine, UE4, it doesn't matter. W3D is dead and has been for atleast 15 years. you might have to abandon all C&C ties to do so, but im sure you could rename all the units to be compliant and avoid C&D's

You're not alone in that endeavor.

[wolf]

13 minutes ago, Jeod said:

I asked that too with the advent of RenX. I got a similar answer, that it would mean starting everything from scratch and learning how to develop on a more unfamiliar engine. There's also a certain bit of pride in stretching the capabilities of W3D so far, as seen in APB Delta and AR. Thing is, Renegade X has a nice SDK out now, and a lot more people are skilled in (or have the motivation to be) UDK.

It could be a rights issue, RenX is one thing but if UDK gets a huge C&C modding community? That could be something EA doesn't want. Who knows.

It wouldnt be starting over from scratch. All the basic game mechanics are there. Even mechs are ingame and working. Hell, they even have the Tesla Tanked from APB directly ported over. It only took a few hours to get that thing up and running, tesla zaps and all.

But yeah, UDKs community is massive compared to the handful of people who are skilled in modding W3D. W3DHub would benefit alot from it in my humble opinion.
I love w3d as much as everyone else here, but its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond its expiry date.

Edited January 4, 2019 by wolf

[Yah-Nosh]

2 hours ago, LiamGriever said:

A game that is so outdated it doesnt even have fucking recoil. GOLDENEYE64 HAD FUCKING RECOIL FOR FUCK SAKE

Well, one of the reasons I joined was to implement that into the game, along with better gunplay in general. So I hope this part of your concerns will be addressed soon.

[Frashy]

Complaining about toxicity in the community while simultaneously complaining about not being allowed to be toxic due to removal of the grille is a bit odd. If there are people that got so upset about the grille being removed that they left the community, good riddance, really. That channel was gross. 

It's also a bit odd that this post talks about how bad toxicity is while it itself reeks of toxicity.

But I guess judging from half of the replies in the thread, that toxicity is true to form. Yikes. 

FRAYDO deserves better than this and you should all be ashamed. 

[Testament]

22 minutes ago, Frashy said:

Complaining about toxicity in the community while simultaneously complaining about not being allowed to be toxic due to removal of the grille is a bit odd. If there are people that got so upset about the grille being removed that they left the community, good riddance, really. That channel was gross.

Yikes. 

FRAYDO deserves better than this and you should all be ashamed. 

>Yikes

Uh, if you didn't like it. Don't look at it? It had an NSFW sticker and prompt on it for a reason. You waived liability by clicking on it and the channel followed the rules laid out by the discord TOS.
On BBQ GRILLE 2.0 I don't like some channels that were added and I do something incredible. I MUTE IT AND HIDE IT.

I don't virtue signal and tell people they can't do their own thing and have fun while showing contempt and lording over them with a holier than thou attitude. Jesus, self awareness goes a long way.

FRAYDO's in here right now tho? I answer to FRAYDO

Like I've said before, grille removal is a symptom of a deeper problem.This is gas lighting and ignoring the root issue which is the splintering of the community.

[kamuixmod]

hi

[Yah-Nosh]

7 minutes ago, Testament said:

Like I've said before, grille removal is a symptom of a deeper problem.

The very first time I poked my head in there, I was immediately greeted by /pol/-tier shitposting. I fail to see how such content is so desperately needed to keep the Renegade community together. And yes, one can just mute it, except its existence essentially means it has the W3D seal of approval. And since we're talking "community" and how to retain it, maybe there are members of the community who aren't pleased by it being approved. And maybe it just happens to be something that the people who make the mods don't want to be associated with.

If the overwhelming majority of the Renegade community demands that such channels be left alone, then it can be a discussion. Until then, there's tons of other places where you can share this kind of content all you want.

[Testament]

16 minutes ago, Yah-Nosh said:

The very first time I poked my head in there, I was immediately greeted by /pol/-tier shitposting. I fail to see how such content is so desperately needed to keep the Renegade community together. And yes, one can just mute it, except its existence essentially means it has the W3D seal of approval. And since we're talking "community" and how to retain it, maybe there are members of the community who aren't pleased by it being approved. And maybe it just happens to be something that the people who make the mods don't want to be associated with.

If the overwhelming majority of the Renegade community demands that such channels be left alone, then it can be a discussion. Until then, there's tons of other places where you can share this kind of content all you want.

FREE SPEECH.

S H U T - I T - D O W N

This is the type of thinking that turned it from ironic to unironic. It's not exactly officially approved, it's just put into its own containment board. Everyone who goes BUT MUH RACZISM missed stuff like us trying to save bakfiets from homelessness or the daily conversation we had about anything and everything. It was a place to freely express opinions and debate ANYTHING. Shutting that type of thing down just gives credence to the points made by all the people whom these certain people have an issue with. All they had to do was join, and put them in their place if they felt so strongly, anyone was free to do so.

Yah-Nosh, the majority of the Renegade community are huge advocates of freedom of expression. I was blamed as a ring leader for saying things I've said for years (and everyone else has) that are suddenly unfashionable or unacceptable because a few sensitive sallys who can't be bothered to take it up with me directly have to go tell the playground monitors on me. That's a separate issue though. If you didn't like the Grille, then you didn't need to even look at it. It's like being mad people are saying things you don't like somewhere you don't even have to frequent and imposing your will on that. That's what I will never get, this autistic obsession of controlling how other people conduct themselves.
Like I said before, it's something no other Renegade communities have, and it was a community favourite among many regulars. If you didn't like it, you should have muted it immediately and forgot about it.

 

Existence doesn't = approval of the boards content. Containment boards are a strategy utilized by online communities since I first started posting online back in 2005.

[wolf]

4 minutes ago, Testament said:

FREE SPEECH.

S H U T - I T - D O W N

This is the type of thinking that turned it from ironic to unironic. It's not exactly officially approved, it's just put into its own containment board. Everyone who goes BUT MUH RACZISM missed stuff like us trying to save bakfiets from homelessness or the daily conversation we had about anything and everything. It was a place to freely express opinions and debate ANYTHING. Shutting that type of thing down just gives credence to the points made by all the people whom this certain people have an issue with. All they had to do was join, and put them in their place if they felt so strongly, anyone was free to do so.

Yah-Nosh, the majority of the Renegade community are huge advocates of freedom of expression. I was blamed as a ring leader for saying things I've said for years that are suddenly unfashionable or unacceptable because a few sensitive sallys who can't be bothered to take it up with me directly have to go tell the playground monitors on me. That's a separate issue though. If you didn't like the Grille, then you didn't need to even look at it. It's like being mad people are saying things you don't like somewhere you don't even have to frequent and imposing your will on that. That's what I will never get, this autistic obsession of controlling how other people conduct themselves.
 Like I said before, it's something no other Renegade communities have, and it was a community favourite among many regulars. If you didn't like it, you should have muted it immediately and forgot about it.

 

Existence doesn't = approval of the boards content. Containment boards are a strategy utilized by online communities since I first started posting online back in 2005.

I dunno, kinda sounds like you're the one who is obsessed over something that doesnt seem that important. Calm down your tits. Whats stopping you from being a libtard on other platforms?

PS i have no idea what im talking about

[Testament]

Just now, wolf said:

I dunno, kinda sounds like you're the one who is obsessed over something that doesnt seem that important. Calm down your tits. Whats stopping you from being a libtard on other platforms?

PS i have no idea what im talking about

u wanna fite me

[LiamGriever]

Can we not derail the main topic at hand please

[Jeod]

Testament, please try to steer the discussion towards Griever's intended purpose for it rather than grille stuff. This isn't the place for it.

[Yah-Nosh]

3 minutes ago, Testament said:

FREE SPEECH.

S H U T - I T - D O W N

Give me a break. Nobody is going to your house to arrest you for what you posted into that channel. Nor did the shitposting and any humanitarian actions depend on each other. This kind of rhetoric makes the concept of "free speech" a joke. While there are people out there fighting actual legal battles for real violations of free expression, here we are, arguing over the fact that a Discord channel got axed for being full of content people don't want to associate themselves with.

7 minutes ago, Testament said:

Existence doesn't = approval of the boards content. Containment boards are a strategy utilized by online communities since I first started posting online back in 2005. 

If you want, I can offer my own experiences: not long ago, a Discord server I'm a member of was nearly axed by Discord staff itself over someone reporting it for inappropriate content. Whoever did it was probably a troll, but it was a difficult case to convince the admins, mainly due to a lot of people (un)ironically posting alt-right memes and whatnot in that server. So it's not even just a thing our staff might take issues with, Discord itself does not like this kind of stuff. You don't like it, take it up with them. Personally, I'd rather not see the W3D server get dropped over something like this.

And as others have pointed it out, we are going off topic, so that's my last bit of input on that subject.

[FRAYDO]

58 minutes ago, Frashy said:

FRAYDO deserves better than this and you should all be ashamed. 

This is the only post that matters.

[Frashy]

Could this toxicity that's expressed through "Freedom of expression" (ignoring the fact that private entities such as this website are free to express what they want on their website) be part of what causes the community to splinter over and over again into smaller and smaller pieces?
No, that couldn't possibly be it!  That's impossible!

🙄

Edited January 4, 2019 by Frashy

[Frashy]

3 hours ago, FRAYDO said:

I feel I should add as well, everyone is free to express their opinion without repercussions.

im of the opinion ur a dummy

[Testament]

3 minutes ago, Frashy said:

Could this toxicity that's expressed through "Freedom of expression" (ignoring the fact that private entities such as this website are free to express what they want on their website) is part of what causes the community to splinter over and over again into smaller and smaller pieces?
No, that couldn't possibly be it!  That's impossible!

🙄

We should try to teach a cat to eat vegetables - The post

[FRAYDO]

I believe we need to look again at the purpose of this thread and the main argument. Forget the Grille, we need to address the community as a whole.

[GraYaSDF]

There is some sad statistics for you, gentlemen. My comrades from russian community mostly prefer to play C&C Kane's Wrath, C&C Generals, Red Alert 3 and Mental Omega, almost no one is playing TSR or APB, but when the conversation is about classic C&C Renegade or Interim Apex, few of them are ready to play or already playing the game. But only a few.

 

The fact is the most of them is always up to see a completely new game from Electronic Arts or Petroglyph Games or any other company that should first be creative to recommend themselves to usual players and fans. Funny thing happened with C&C Rivals, people are still playing it, no matter how the trailer or gameplay itself looks like.

 

The same thing happened with Interim Apex, but this happened with much smaller crowd.

People are mostly talking about RTS, not about shooter, they know C&C and Dune as those games from which RTS genre was born. "We" have only one topic about Renegade (that does not separate from Renegade X and from mods and standalone games based on W3D-engine), and that topic is almost inactive, while there is a bunch of active topics about RTS-games from Westwood Studios and Electronic Arts. Me and others were trying to make an event to play C&C Renegade or any other game based on its engine, but each time we were planning an event, it came down to one or two games which basically were Mental Omega and Kane's Wrath.

The repositioning of Command & Conquer series as not only an RTS but also a shooter is still a non-healing wound. Westwood Studios wanted to make the next shooter but EA did not allow them to finish that, Petroglyph Games are still planning to make something similar to classic C&C Renegade but busy with their RTS-projects, Electronic Arts never released Tiberium shooter, and so on.

 

 

Petroglyph Games: Hey, GraYaSDF! We love Renegade (especially multiplayer) and would love to make something like it again in the future. Currently, no plans to develop something like it in the near term, but it's always good to keep it in mind.

 

Westwood 3D Hub has to keep these statistics in mind when developing standalone games. But despite the statistics, I always have an idea in my mind. That will be actually a dream, if W3D Hub community officially becomes the developer of Renegade 2 and at some point will collaborate with Petroglyph Games, while constantly working on and releasing the game engine as open source.

Edited January 5, 2019 by GraYaSDF
Spoiler tag is broken for me, sorry...

[GraYaSDF]

So, I am trying to say, that W3D Hub as a community should also work more to expand their auditory, to show good games. Just like in that song from Tiberium Dawn OST, remember? "Reaching out to the other worlds!" Why not to bring back the golden age of Westwood Studios? 😃

[wolf]

3 hours ago, GraYaSDF said:

So, I am trying to say, that W3D Hub as a community should also work more to expand their auditory, to show good games. Just like in that song from Tiberium Dawn OST, remember? "Reaching out to the other worlds!" Why not to bring back the golden age of Westwood Studios? 😃

Thats a bit much to ask from devs who dont get paid for their work. :P 

[GraYaSDF]

5 hours ago, wolf said:

Thats a bit much to ask from devs who dont get paid for their work. :P 

Then why should we make games for free, lol?)) For example, to add more languages to each game is not an easy task, I agree, without cash it is going to take months. But people can just launch the game, and at least see notifications and interface on their native, this feature partially breaks the language barrier. The reason why we cannot buy games made by W3D Hub is obvious. The necessary rights to a whole Command & Conquer franchise are still in Electronic Farts hands (maybe even in legs, I do not know how are they holding them).

[GraYaSDF]

By the way, I did not see any problem to join this community. On Renegadeforums.com I had a problem of communication. On MP-Gaming I had the same problem. It sounds like each foreign Renegade community lives on its own, and it mostly happened after Red Alert 3 release date or even earlier. In earlier days, Command & Conquer was something... unifying.

[FRAYDO]

21 minutes ago, GraYaSDF said:

It sounds like each foreign Renegade community lives on its own, and it mostly happened after Red Alert 3 release date or even earlier. In earlier days, Command & Conquer was something... unifying. 

I was interested in seeing what we could do to bridge yours and our communities together. It may be difficult with the language barrier, though I am open to suggestions as to how we could achieve this. I was also interested if you had suggestions or ideas in unifying other communities as well.

[GraYaSDF]

26 minutes ago, FRAYDO said:

I was also interested if you had suggestions or ideas in unifying other communities as well.

I could suggest to connect with cncseries.ru admins in Discord, because that large portal unite people from different communities and publish or share news about their projects dedicated to Command & Conquer franchise, and they even make conversations with developers, but... you know, it is a gaming community only. Usual users and players do gaming events ("we" did it once for TSR, also recorded few long videos), organize tournaments, editors publish news, developers and writers which exist there do whatever they like to do - they all together use the portal as a platform to showcase what they did. But W3D Hub is not only a gaming community. W3D Hub is also a modding community, community of developers, and it of course has its own launcher for games, that's a bit different from what I had before joining.

[OWA]

On 1/4/2019 at 7:22 PM, LiamGriever said:

Renegade is dead. End of. It doesnt even have what counts as a community anymore. The "communites" that do exists dont work together. The communities that do exists all only exist to flame eachother and claim to be better so they can sit on the throne of a game that fucking sucks. A game that is so outdated it doesnt even have fucking recoil. GOLDENEYE64 HAD FUCKING RECOIL FOR FUCK SAKE

In some ways you're right. RenForums is a ghost town and there are only a handful of server communities left hosting servers which have definitely seen better days. Renegade as it stands is pretty dead. That's why we got some retaliation when we launched Interim Apex; the owners of those stock servers didn't appreciate the competition that we brought into their space and our server was subsequently blacklisted by the owners of the RenList server.

That being said, we aren't a traditional Renegade community. We put our focus into improving the engine rather than hosting stock Renegade content; our latest version of the scripts  project (version 5.0) doesn't event support base Renegade anymore. This year though, we do plan to support Renegade a bit better, in order to try and unify the communities a bit more. As it stands, I feel we are distrusted by communities such as MPF and Rencorner, which works against us, but I hope we can change our image for the better in the coming year.

As for recoil, we've actually been talking about whether we should implement it or not. We have quite an amazing level of flexibility for new features these days and it's definitely something that hasn't gone unnoticed.

On 1/4/2019 at 7:22 PM, LiamGriever said:

Moreover, the community aspect is what made this game good. Because lets be perfectly honest, Renegade is anything but "Good" in an objective view. Until you lot, MPF, and whatever little else still counts as communities anymore around here can work together again, renegade will never again have that community feel. Even internally in W3D, you guys as a community are a laughing stock. You literally have a splinter community because a couple of your admins got overly PC. This is a community of people from a game in the 2000s, PC was never a thing then and in a community that is filled with those people it never will be!

The community makes the game, but the game also makes the community. There's a lot of charm in Renegade, but something that it does incredibly well in particular is vehicular combat. There were still games being released 10+ years afterwards that has worse vehicle implementation than Renegade. What we should definitely look to do is expand outwards, but also try and heal these wounds as you say, so that we may move forward as a community that is a fair bit more united than it is currently.

I honestly don't feel that we are a laughing stock. Who's laughing at us right now? It's certainly not the rest of the C&C community or EA.

I disagree about the 2000s being less PC than today though. I'm not sure if you were around in the APB/BHP community during the 2000's, but it was a really wonderful place to be (despite Aircrafkiller banning anyone who looked at him in a funny way). We had a large community who regularly played (and modded) our games, but also respected each other thanks to a moderation team that kept shitposting to a minimum and thoroughly enforced the community guidelines.

Anyone who said the N word in-game or on IRC was instantly banned. You can imagine the cry of "CENSORSHIP + MUH FREE SPEECH THO" from the Grillers if that were to happen today though.

Spoiler

We're having a meeting soon though, so we'll decide the best course of action for the Grille and associated behaviours there. With that said, I firmly believe that harbouring a miniature version of 4chan's /pol/ board has no place in a community about modding a video game from 2002.

 

On 1/4/2019 at 7:22 PM, LiamGriever said:

I remember a time when the communities werent toxic. Where they all pooled together to create patches and security for the game. Where they shared ban lists, had tournaments, and the communities were all essentially a big community. Because of the lack of this, Renegade and its mods arent that anymore. Its a vanity project for the Game Dev College rejects who couldnt make a fucking java game to beat bloons tower defence. (Not a jab at your skills, some models, maps, etc are great, but is definitely a jab at your dedication to one project and time management)

I remember that time too and you're right, it was great! Unfortunately MP-Gaming has been dead of nearly a decade now and we're the only community hosting APB. MPF did a approach us about hosting an APB server, however we refused because the population in APB was so small that it didn't warrant an extra server and we also had doubts about MPF leaving the APB gameplay experience in-tact, given their track record with previous servers and questionable mods.

I'd say this, AR has always been my passion project, but it has most certainly also been a source of portfolio material for me. These projects got me into the games industry and have introduced me to so many wonderful new friends from around the world. Your comment about Game Dev College rejects is rather shortsighted seeing as a large majority of our dev team are now working professionals, with a significant amount of our new code team hires being skilled professional programmers.

To your last point though, it does make me realise something; we aren't as transparent with our team structure and "who's working on what" than we used to be, which may be a contributing factor to your comments. Granted, it does take us a long time to get our arses into gear and make content, but the split across the teams is a bit more polarising than you might think.

The new Ground Zero project, for example, is being entirely developed by @Killing_You and @Ice (so far), who have never really held any sole allegiance to any particular projects before. KY has previously worked on audio a lot, but this is the first project that he will be doing the unit and structure work for, making this a new learning experience for him; as well as a cool game for you guys. ICE is a military specialist with 3D skills, which he will largely be carrying over to GZ. 

On 1/4/2019 at 7:22 PM, LiamGriever said:

Sorry guys, but thats more or less of whats become the truth to me around here now. Take of it what you will. I'll still be around to play games because as individuals most of you are alright to chat with and hang with. But Owners, Admins, Devs, all of you higher ups. Something needs to change, or these little projects of yours will end like AR, Reborn and Dune. Sat on a back shelf for years gathering dust and an interest in them largely lost.

This thread will definitely be a talking point in the upcoming meeting, so thanks for posting. We do have some fairly lofty plans brewing for wider C&C community integration, but I'm not really at liberty to talk about those yet. Rest assured though, we've heard you and we will be discussing our next moves carefully.

Also, AR will never end as long as I live. Come at me! 

On 1/4/2019 at 9:16 PM, wolf said:

I still wonder why you guys didnt move over to UDK a few years ago. I asked once and all i got was a bunch of excuses. Too hard to do walking animations for mechs, too much work bla bla.

I think moving to UDK would breath new life in to this community and its games.

The thing is, we quite like developing for the Renegade W3D Engine. This is the main reason amongst these other ones:

• UDK is now essentially a dead game engine because of UE4.
• Renegade X is on UDK, but barely has more players than stock Renegade. The draw to change engines just isn't worth it.
• Moving to UE4/UDK would leave us with a very high dependency on creating current/last generation art assets that require specific pipelines; e.g. PBR (Physically Based Rendering) or Normal/Specular. We don't have a team who knows how to create such assets, as we develop solely using diffuse maps.
• Moving engine would require to either buy or create animations for infantry, We currently have no animators on the team.
• Moving engine would throw away the years of work we have put into the codebase; essentially putting our code team into a position where they have to code the most basic Renegade gameplay elements (i.e Harvesting, Buildings, Purchase System) back into the new engine, which would take a lot of time and effort.
• Little-to-nobody on our staff roster knows how to use engines like UDK or UE4. We would have to re-learn a lot of things to become competent again.
• We do this in our spare time. It's not like we're being paid to make these games. Part of the reason we make these games is because we enjoy working with the engine and improving it as a hobby.

Other than better graphics (which we can't have due to lack of artists), I don't exactly know why the suggestions to switch engine game time and time again. It's just not realistic.

On 1/4/2019 at 8:24 PM, Testament said:

Please take discussion surrounding the BBQ Grille to a different thread instead of derailing this one. Cheers!

[Dadud]

2 hours ago, OWA said:

• Little-to-nobody on our staff roster knows how to use engines like UDK or UE4. We would have to re-learn a lot of things to become competent again.

Whats stopping you? You're about a year or two from irrelevancy to basically everyone but yourselves. move to a new game engine. take some fucking initiative to learn something new. You're literally beating an already beat to a pulp game engine with terrible net code that makes it basically unplayable on less than high quality internet connections. You're stagnant, and adding ships and pretty textures wont change that. 

[wolf]

RIP APB/Reborn/AR.

 

 

[OWA]

5 hours ago, Dadud said:

Whats stopping you? You're about a year or two from irrelevancy to basically everyone but yourselves. move to a new game engine. take some fucking initiative to learn something new. You're literally beating an already beat to a pulp game engine with terrible net code that makes it basically unplayable on less than high quality internet connections. You're stagnant, and adding ships and pretty textures wont change that. 

Have a read of the other points I mentioned and try not to focus on just one. Moving to a new engine is not a good idea collectively because of all of those things.

It's like telling the Mental Omega team that they should move to the C&C3 SAGE engine or the OpenRA guys that they should be using UE4. It's just not gonna happen.