Discuss W3D Hub AMA

[FRAYDO]

In honor of W3D Hub's 4-year anniversary coming this weekend, the team would like to open this AMA thread! Anything you would like to ask, ask away! Questions for our developers? For our Admins? All questions will be answered so give us a shout!

When asking a question please tell us who you'd like to pose it to!

Here are a list of people and what they do!

Admins

@OWA - Lead Producer of Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising. Dabbles in everything from development work to community management.
@moonsense715 - Co-producer of Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising, ingame bot programmer, and also our guy for changes to the website and stats pages.
@danpaul88- Lead Developer of our W3D Hub Launcher, our flagship product.
@Strike - Our host and webmaster. Any issues with our infrastructure should be directed to him.
@TeamWolf - Lead Producer of Battle For Dune: War of Assassins. When not developing, he's off drinking.
@Wallywood - Lead Producer of Tiberian Sun: Reborn. Can probably kick your ass irl. Ask him about his War Machine.
@Jerad2142 - Lead Producer of Expansive Civilian Warfare. Likes deer.

Staff Moderators

@jonwil- Head of the code and scripts team, Tiberian Technologies. Avid collector of LEGO.
@Pushwall - Lead Developer of Red Alert: A Path Beyond. Loves when people don't like things and proceed to not give proper feedback as to why.
@triattack - Our guy in charge of all game servers. Report any server issues to him.
@Pyryle - Lead Forum Moderator and Ａ　Ｅ　Ｓ　Ｔ　Ｈ　Ｅ　Ｔ　Ｉ　Ｃ　Ｓ.
@Nodlied - Our esteemed Testing Director, tasked with whipping our testing team when things need doing. 
@Einstein is testing co-director, with equal responsibilities and duties to Nodlied.
@FRAYDO - Lead Public Relations & Human Resources. Any ideas you have to engage the community or updates you want shown off to the world, he and his PR team of Coolrock, Testament, FORCE, and Hiramaky will be more than happy to help! Temporary Human Resources until Patricia returns from vacation.
@ChopBam - Has been around the community ages making maps and working in 3DS Max. His brother, BattleLaf, is the APB EVA. 

A further list of staff can be found here.

Also, if you'd like to ask a question anonymously, please use our idea box. You can find it at the top of our homepage: http://www.w3dhub.com

[thedisclaimitory]

ha and I thought bhp lasted longer nope 

 

[NodGuy]

For now, I only have two questions:

1) What’s going on with Reborn?

2) Can we have it so when you right-click in the Attack Submarine it sounds like a bunch of sailors are singing the Soviet national anthem?

[moonsense715]

I also have questions to my fellow team. I'd like to encourage others too to just ask whatever.

1. When will clanwars be held again? I want to fully support this with my knowledge and most of it has been enabled on the stats pages already.

2. Would clanwars happen on a separate/temporary server or on the main game servers (this would not let other players play the game while the war is going)?

3. Can tools and a guide be posted for clans to be able to host their own clan practice server and let their clanmates join it? A git repo similar to APB SDK along with Asterisk might help this.

[Raap]

Guess I'll ask a few annoying ones. 

• For W3D Hub: Roughly, when can people expect an official W3D Development Kit? [This would be a clean-slate client/server package that lets people create new games more easily, somewhat similar to Unreal 4 or Unity, just minus all the super fancy stuff.]
• For the Renegade support team: The W3D Hub Launcher will be offering support for Renegade at some point this year. Will this be the traditional Renegade featuring all of the legacy community content, or an iteration based on 5.x?  Bonus question: Is Renegade support intended to be something that is managed and updated, or will it be purely a legacy game in maintenance mode?
• For W3D Hub: What are your 2019 plans to gain further exposure for W3D Hub and the games offered within it?
• For W3D Hub: In terms of the under-development projects currently hosted at W3D Hub, which of these games can players expect to see more of this year?
• For Pushwall: With APB being nearly feature complete, what else is there for APB players to still be looking forward to this year?

[OWA]

Hey guys. Please make sure that you state who you want to pose your questions to if you wish to ask a specific person. We'll have a list of people on the first post by the end of the day.

[Threve]

@moonsense715 @Jerad2142

I have wrote a very extensive guide to ECW. When complete is it possible it could be featured on the main page due to it’s depth?

Edited January 26, 2019 by Threve

[Einstein]

For the Admins: When will I get my testing server access?
For Jonwil: What did you do before you began the scripts project? How did you begin, and where did you start breaking into Renegade?

[Killing_You]

@Jerad2142: ECW !setjoin messages when?

[NoSoldier]

• @jonwil: what are the plans upon the continous development of the W3D-engine? Which aspects do you think are worthy of improving [a rework of the network-code for example]? - do you have any C&C-related lego stuff you mind sharing?
• @danpaul88: Any plans for support of custom resolutions launcherwise?
• @ChopBam: Which projects over the past few years did you like the most in the sense of working upon it? If there were any, why? Anything in store that might be related to this?
• @Wallywood: Which aspects of TS:R are the ones you aren't satisfied with? How is life on your side? How did you get into W3D-modding and what led you to "make" Reborn?
• @OWA/@moonsense: Props to you (and the team) for the development of AR. As we are able to see continous progress in the artificial intelligence department, are there any plans to build upon this single-player-wise?

 

And just for the joke, as some things in life shouldn't be taken as seriously

• @Silverlight: When do you think that we will expand over in TS:R and take control of every patch of tiberium? [Without you being in the role of Kane though. No reason for that.]
• Nodlied: As the whole testing team is already bleeding from your godly whips, are there any plans to change from a steel whip to a leather one?
• For Pyryle: As you are in charge of A E S T H E T I C S, are you planning to stop being so fabulous? - Any plans for future induldgement into the world of forum-mafia games and relations for advertisement?
• For Jerad2142: Any plans for a full-deer-mod with tanks and everything? - But to remain serious, you've added some racemechanics into ECW the last patches. Any plans to further build upon that or are you focusing upon new projects?

 

4 years were gone in a blink of an eye. Thanks everybody for your hard work. Cheers upon the next years. After all these years I am still enjoying every game and every match, so give yourself a clap upon the shoulder, as you still deserve it.

[FRAYDO]

I'll take these questions.

On 1/25/2019 at 11:33 PM, NodGuy said:

1) What’s going on with Reborn?

Currently the TSR team is reviewing balance, revamping structures, and implementing bug fixes. We have changed some damage values beginning with the infantry and have resumed testing. Based on the feedback we'll gather, we'll further refine infantry combat and then move on to vehicles.

Back to the revamped structures, rumors are stirring within the Brotherhood that Agent Hasak may be delivering new intel soon. Keep an eye out, brothers.

On 1/26/2019 at 7:55 AM, Raap said:

For W3D Hub: What are your 2019 plans to gain further exposure for W3D Hub and the games offered within it?

The PR team is currently looking to bring in paid talents for W3D Hub exposure. Talents such as Big Man Tyrone and VoiceoverPete. 100% serious about this. It's my idea that we could use the meme boost and these would make great videos for our users to share. Whether this will bring in new users or not to the community is debatable, though making these entertaining videos for ourselves is something I am more than happy to fund.

We're also involving ourselves more in the social media trends, such as the #10YearChallenge that was floating about. I believe that trend will pass soon, or may have already, and so we'll be keeping an eye out for the next one to jump on. Fun engagement and sharable content is our 2019 strategy.

Lastly, @Nodliedand I have devised a plan to compile an all-encompassing W3D Hub trailer to show off our community! The PR team and QA team will be working more closely in collaboration this year and on, and this project will benefit greatly from that. I may open up the project to public users to submit their footage for a chance to be featured, but currently this is a Staff project. More details on the trailer will be given to those interested.

[Nodlied]

17 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

• Nodlied: As the whole testing team is already bleeding from your godly whips, are there any plans to change from a steel whip to a leather one?

While there are plans to exchange the whip for something else, it won't be a leather one. Rumours have it that it will be exchanged for an ice pick.

[Einstein]

1 hour ago, Nodlied said:

While there are plans to exchange the whip for something else, it won't be a leather one. Rumours have it that it will be exchanged for an ice pick.

Dang, I was hoping it would be the new super-balanced Enforcer's gun....oh well.

[ChopBam]

20 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

@ChopBam:

20 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

Which projects over the past few years did you like the most in the sense of working upon it?

I love doing the work of designing and developing map terrain. There is pride involved in manually handcrafting terrain, as opposed to taking a large plane and using a basic brush to push and pull hills out of it. When I was a kid I loved trains and always lived in wonder at the the paths that were already carved out for them, the mountains, valleys, and tunnels they would be led through. I believe this is a similar principle to mapping and carving out the various vehicle and infantry paths present on APB's maps. The knowledge that, at any point during map creation, I can think about how these particular extrusions of polygons will be walked on, driven on, mined, and fought over for years by players is a pretty cool thing.

That all said, Canyon River is probably my favorite recent-ish project, and I'm excited to get back to mapping sometime, although the vast majority of my time is spent fixing and improving things that already exist.

20 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

If there were any, why?

Hm I guess I answered this already above. xD Just the passion for carving out paths and bringing imaginary worlds to life, then watching and playing with other people on that terrain. It brings me satisfaction and happiness.

20 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

Anything in store that might be related to this?

I guess this is the part of the show where I plug the RA_ShallowGrave thread. The next APB map project could be any of those, really, but there are still things in the meantime that need fixing with other projects, such as with TSR. At some point I may also be interested in helping AR with their mapping. It's a different style than the APB one I'm used to, and I'm interested to try my hand at it sometime. There have also been talks since KOTG's inception of bringing various iterations of KOTG to AR and TSR.

[Liten]

2 hours ago, Nodlied said:

While there are plans to exchange the whip for something else, it won't be a leather one. Rumours have it that it will be exchanged for an ice pick.

How barbaric.

[Pyryle]

23 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

• For Pyryle: As you are in charge of A E S T H E T I C S, are you planning to stop being so fabulous?

Not any time soon...

23 hours ago, NoSoldier said:

• Any plans for future induldgement into the world of forum-mafia games and relations for advertisement?

I haven't really been interested in forum mafia. Even if I was, my IRL job as a hospital nurse wouldn't allow me to keep track of whatever day/night cycle shenanigans; The work I put into my job can get really physically and emotionally draining at times.

As for ads/relations, I would occasionally post on the W3D Hub Facebook page with content generated by myself...

Content such as this rekt-video-turned-forced-meme among some of the APB players

 

[Pushwall]

On 1/26/2019 at 5:33 AM, NodGuy said:

2) Can we have it so when you right-click in the Attack Submarine it sounds like a bunch of sailors are singing the Soviet national anthem?

No, nothing else will be getting a horn or anything resembling it. Sorry!

On 1/26/2019 at 1:55 PM, Raap said:

• For Pushwall: With APB being nearly feature complete, what else is there for APB players to still be looking forward to this year?

Courtesy of @Yah-Nosh: planes that act more like planes.

Aside from that, I hope to do one or two more maps, particularly ones with planes and botes since there is a lack of those. Most likely candidate for me is the Volcano rehash I mentioned in the Shallow Grave thread.

There's not much else in the pipeline besides general scripts improvements that all 5.0 projects will benefit from; for example you will no longer have your floating player name blocking your view when using a first-person vehicle camera, and weapon firing sounds won't cut each other off anymore.

As ChopBam mentioned, he is more occupied with non-APB projects, and that's perfectly fine; I may end up contributing more to the other projects too, now that APB is nearly feature complete. But I'll continue to keep an eye on balance here.

[FRAYDO]

Holy shit, Pushwall. That was a close call with that cliff. That has to be a stupid amount of luck, don't lie to me.

[Threve]

@Jerad2142 and anyone else in the know

 

There have been rumors that ECW has hit its stride and that there will not be anymore Major updates or that the game is for the most part finished besides an occasional weapon or so. Is this true and/or how do you feel about the current state of ECW?

[danpaul88]

On 1/27/2019 at 1:27 AM, NoSoldier said:

• @danpaul88: Any plans for support of custom resolutions launcherwise?

 

I'm curious what your use case for this is? The launchers resolution list is populated by asking Windows what resolutions are available, so all supported resolutions for your hardware should already be in that list;

 

Are you trying to do something like a split screen layout only occupying half of the screen or something? That's not a use case I'd considered previously but now that we have borderless window support its possibly a feasible use case 🤔

[danpaul88]

On 1/26/2019 at 4:45 PM, Threve said:

@moonsense715 @Jerad2142

I have wrote a very extensive guide to ECW. When complete is it possible it could be featured on the main page due to it’s depth?

Whilst this isn't directed at me I'll just mention that if jerad approved I can add a link to it from the ecw game page in the launcher really easily - just an XML tweak on the ftp

[moonsense715]

On 1/26/2019 at 5:45 PM, Threve said:

@moonsense715 @Jerad2142

I have wrote a very extensive guide to ECW. When complete is it possible it could be featured on the main page due to it’s depth?

Sure.

On 1/27/2019 at 2:27 AM, NoSoldier said:

• @OWA/@moonsense: Props to you (and the team) for the development of AR. As we are able to see continous progress in the artificial intelligence department, are there any plans to build upon this single-player-wise? 

Bots are primarily for multiplayer (you can play against them alone on the servers or on LAN too), but as I've separated their logic into 2 big components, the simpler AI can/will be used in the Tutorial mission.
We don't have a single player campaign planned though.

[ChAoS]

@jonwil Is it possible to port the FDS to linux?

[danpaul88]

Back in the day there WAS a Linux version of the FDS (known as the LFDS) but since nobody used it scripts.dll stopped supporting it a long long time ago

[Threve]

@FRAYDO

 

Would it be possible to add APB or ECW to the Steam store itself? I believe it would MASSIVELY increase player counts as a free game. Of course the big elephant in the room is EA games but assuming they gave the go ahead would it be something anyone would consider?

Edited January 30, 2019 by Threve

[danpaul88]

We don't own the IP rights to the CnC universe and as EA hasn't listed any other CnC games on Steam it would be very risky to try and put any of our games on Steam - that's assuming we could even raise the money required to submit the game to Steam in the first place.

 

Even if EA were to put CnC games onto the Steam store, trying to list ours would probably still be a non starter.

 

If we ever made an original game with our own IP and no ties back to the CnC franchise then maybe, just maybe, it might be feasible... but of course then there is the engine question to consider.

[FRAYDO]

8 hours ago, Threve said:

@FRAYDO

 

Would it be possible to add APB or ECW to the Steam store itself? I believe it would MASSIVELY increase player counts as a free game. Of course the big elephant in the room is EA games but assuming they gave the go ahead would it be something anyone would consider?

 

3 hours ago, danpaul88 said:

We don't own the IP rights to the CnC universe and as EA hasn't listed any other CnC games on Steam it would be very risky to try and put any of our games on Steam - that's assuming we could even raise the money required to submit the game to Steam in the first place.

 

Even if EA were to put CnC games onto the Steam store, trying to list ours would probably still be a non starter.

 

If we ever made an original game with our own IP and no ties back to the CnC franchise then maybe, just maybe, it might be feasible... but of course then there is the engine question to consider.

As danpaul stated, the legality of us putting APB/ECW/anything W3D on Steam is a bit questionable. However, I think danpaul missed the fact there are other C&C games on Steam.

Now if it is possible after all, I would be more than happy to fund it.

@danpaul88 While I am not made of money, I can easily foot the bill on putting W3D onto Steam. You just have to ask.

[danpaul88]

Last time I heard EA were refusing to put CnC games onto Steam since they were busy trying to ram Origin down everyones throats. Guess they had a change of heart at some point. Doesn't really change the fact that we don't actually own the CnC IP though. I rather think EA would take a dim view on us listing our games on Steam.

[ganein14]

Would it hurt to send EA an email? At worst they'd just say no I believe

[Yah-Nosh]

19 hours ago, FRAYDO said:

 

As danpaul stated, the legality of us putting APB/ECW/anything W3D on Steam is a bit questionable. However, I think danpaul missed the fact there are other C&C games on Steam.

Now if it is possible after all, I would be more than happy to fund it.

By "putting us on Steam", do you mean actually being able to sell the games, or merely feature them as F2P mods? I would love either scenario, as even without money, the extra publicity would be a great boost. And with EA's apparent enthusiasm about the remasters, maybe they'll also be more lenient about mods.

It's probably a pipe dream, but making some kind of deal with EA to officially endorse us, in return for some profit-sharing, would be super amazing. Would definitely make it a lot more appealing for devs to join if it's not just an unpaid hobby. Then again, I fear that even if EA were willing, they would (rightfully) also demand some QA benchmarks, which I doubt we could meet the same way AAA dev teams can. And this is probably why they don't even consider it.

Also, w.r.t Steam: while the existence of C&C games already on there speaks in favor of putting W3D projects there as well, the recent issues with Steam (e.g the feud with Epic) might also be worth considering. Of course, while EA won't feature C&C on Origin either, there's not many other places we can go.