A Path Beyond Blast from the Past! Red Alert: A Path Beyond [BETA] 1.2.0 - returning soon!

[Threve]

On 2/1/2019 at 12:04 PM, FRAYDO said:

Want a job? The propaganda team could use a man of your skills. I've recently hired on Hiramaky, and the Game Night we held in January was quite a success. We'll be working on organizing more game nights and potentially inviting YouTubers for coverage. Testament and I are also discussing paid advertisement to expand our outreach. The AMA thread has our current PR strategy, and our outreach can only get better as more C&C Remasters updates brings fans old and new in. Stay tuned!

It would be an Honor. PM and important stuff sent.

[KevinLancaster]

What happened between .9935 and 1.2, and between 1.2 and Gamma (besides naval getting removed). Were they any good?

[Einstein]

3 hours ago, KevinLancaster said:

What happened between .9935 and 1.2, and between 1.2 and Gamma (besides naval getting removed). Were they any good?

Funny you should ask 😉

Quote

v.1.2 ("Beta Patch 2" - December 2007)
---
-New map: RA_AS_Assault
-Removed map: RA_Complex for rebalancing
-Rocket Soldier's LAW splash damage now has a greater effect against infantry
-Rocket Soldier's Stinger replaced with Redeye SAM, which fires faster, more powerful missiles
-Longbow rocket damage increased slightly
-Hind gun changed to 25 rounds/clip, now fires a large stream of bullets
-Hind's camera changed to allow better target acquisition (especially in front of and under it)
-Burn damage caused by primary fire for shotguns is applied faster
-Fixed problem with Heavy Tank geometry
-Fixed lighting issues on RA_StormyValley, RA_Bonzai
-Mine limit upped to 50 from 30 (both teams)
-Fixed problems with Helipads and Service Depots still functioning after being destroyed on certain maps
-Point system altered; buildings now give 2 points for every 5 points of damage dealt (was previously 1:1); buildings no longer give extra points to the person who dealt the final blow when destroyed
-New explosion effect for V2 rockets
-RA_Wasteland now has a small contingent of vehicles
-Tesla Coil damage increased, reload time increased
-Accuracy for Remington 870 secondary fire (slug shot) improved
-Accuracy of handheld LMGs (M60, PKM) decreased, accuracy of mounted LMGs (Ranger/APC gun) increased
-Launcher frontend tool replaces old apbip and configuration tools
-Launcher frontend tool supports multiple versions out-of-date patching

v.1.1 ("Beta Patch 1" - October 2007)
---
-New map: RA_ClassicFjord
-Increased damage for Rocket Soldier, Light Tank and Medium Tank
-Fixed problem where anti-cheat system would get false positives
-Fixed extreme performance issues on startup
-Grenadier grenades can now be thrown to explode after approximately 4 seconds (secondary fire)

v.1.0 ("Beta" - September 2007)
---
-Five new maps: RA_Bonzai, RA_Complex, RA_PacificThreat, RA_StormyValley, RA_Wasteland
-Helicopters now take more damage from light machine guns (M60, PKM, mounted M60s)
-New infantry: Sergeant (Allied)/Starshina (Soviet); shotgun-wielding infantry
-New units: Allied Mobile Gap Generator (cloaks nearby friendly units, blinds nearby enemy units), Allied Phase Tank (invisible assault tank)
-New building: Gap Generator (same effect as Mobile Gap Generator, but larger radius)
-Money is now required to repair vehicles at a Service Depot
-Vehicles can now be sold at a Service Depot for half their cost
-Snipers now have unique scopes
-Rocket Soldier now carries two rocket launchers, one anti-tank and one anti-air
-New models for: Allied Rifle Infantry, Rocket Soldier, Sergeant, Starshina, V2, Tesla Tank, Hind, Longbow, Ranger, APC
-All vehicles now utilize normal and specular mapping
-Speeds and physics of all vehicles tweaked slightly
-Spies now have a multitude of abilities, check the manual for details
-Thieves now steal half of all Soviet funds if they enter the second floor of a Soviet Ore Refinery or get close to an Ore Silo
-V2 now fires rockets in an arc as opposed to a straight line (alt-fire allows for a much sharper arc than primary fire)
-Mammoth Tusk missile splash damage reduced
-Turret fire rate increased

 

Beta also introduced the PT sidebar menu (made to look like RA1), instead of the Renegade menu re-textured. It had aircraft buyable at the main PTs instead of their own dedicated "poke terminals" as they were previously.

As for the era between 1.2 and Gamma, its basically just a slow process of things changing from what you see in beta, into what you see in gamma. I'll try to find a changelog for that.

After 1.2 is done, I think we're going to try to get 9935 worked up too. I've already tried it with the same new scripts we're using on 1.2 and there doesn't seem to be much that needs fixing.

[thedisclaimitory]

ME if gamma was still alive today instead of delta existing now it comes out 3 years from now  and we get this patch for gamma "finaly a patch after 3 years, what was bluehell.pro doing? sitting at home doing nothing but just watching crappy shows on Netflix, instead of patching the game and brining back the maps in witch they took away from us"  yeah I was mad when I found out they took away a good number of maps,  including  the apb map the only new map to gamma was the hour glass map I think it was and it dint do anything I mean maybe you could make it better but idk what happened as to why they took away some maps. 

 

Edited February 9, 2019 by thedisclaimitory

[delta]

On 2/3/2019 at 7:48 PM, Einstein said:

Beta also introduced the PT sidebar menu (made to look like RA1), instead of the Renegade menu re-textured.

Does anyone actually think the old Renegade menu was better? Seems more convenient if you just know you can press E, 5, then 6 to get your Engineer, Medium tank, or whatever, instead of arrow, arrow, arrow, *takes a second to make sure it's the right one* then 4 to do the same.

[GaryOak]

40 minutes ago, delta said:

Does anyone actually think the old Renegade menu was better? Seems more convenient if you just know you can press E, 5, then 6 to get your Engineer, Medium tank, or whatever, instead of arrow, arrow, arrow, *takes a second to make sure it's the right one* then 4 to do the same.

Complete barbarian here, I always click all the way through to my purchases

[Einstein]

48 minutes ago, delta said:

Does anyone actually think the old Renegade menu was better? Seems more convenient if you just know you can press E, 5, then 6 to get your Engineer, Medium tank, or whatever, instead of arrow, arrow, arrow, *takes a second to make sure it's the right one* then 4 to do the same.

 

5 minutes ago, GaryOak said:

Complete barbarian here, I always click all the way through to my purchases

I always click through as well. Its much better now with the scroll wheel working though, it was quite bad without that. Honestly, I never used the numbers...guess I was never in that big of a hurry 😛

[delta]

I think if you click through, the old Renegade menu would be better also. You'd generally remember where the buttons are on the screen, as opposed to the sidebar where it would be *click click click* or *scroll scroll scroll* then *make sure it's the right one* before purchasing. Also, fewer total clicks.

Edited February 7, 2019 by delta

[NodGuy]

10 hours ago, delta said:

Does anyone actually think the old Renegade menu was better? Seems more convenient if you just know you can press E, 5, then 6 to get your Engineer, Medium tank, or whatever, instead of arrow, arrow, arrow, *takes a second to make sure it's the right one* then 4 to do the same.

I prefer to click through the menu but I did like the Renegade menu style better. However, with the current menu it's nice to be able to see your surroundings while using it.

[Raptor29aa]

15 hours ago, delta said:

I think if you click through, the old Renegade menu would be better also. You'd generally remember where the buttons are on the screen, as opposed to the sidebar where it would be *click click click* or *scroll scroll scroll* then *make sure it's the right one* before purchasing. Also, fewer total clicks.

ProTip: The numbers still work. 1-4 infantry and 5-8 vehicles and the down/ up arrow changes the page down/up one page.

So I can press “E”  + 4 for Engineer then press “E” + down + 8 for a tank. 

Much faster and no clicking

[Einstein]

Just a quick update on this:

We are still making progress, though things have slowed down a little. There are two graphical bugs that I would really like to solve before releasing this, but if we can't do this in a reasonable amount of time then it may have to come in a patch later.

For those interested, this is what's left (that we know of):

• Cloaked units do not get a shader applied, even though it appears that the shader is being loaded in the engine. Until this is fixed, I've exchanged the ugly stock Renegade stealth texture for a nicer looking one. FIXED
• The Tesla Coil sometimes attacks with no firing animation. It feels quite strange to just suddenly be struck down with no blue lightning bolt to indicate what happened. FIXED

Aside from those two issues, certain maps are not working for the following reasons:

• Some maps have no music. Not sure why, as the music is present. Should be fixable I'm told.
• Some maps simply can not be loaded with the newer version of the engine because it is really picky about ID collisions. I think we have a workaround for this though (basically disable the check and run it anyway). FIXED

Thats it! Hopefully this won't take too long to sort out.

[Einstein]

It turns out that this wasn't fruitless in benefiting other projects as well. I noticed a strange thing happening, which once I reported it, was identified as a bug (albeit microscopic in nature) which affects all 4.x and 5.x games (so everything except ECW). @CMDBob made quick work of the fix, so hats off to him!

---

Also,

On 1/28/2019 at 1:59 PM, Einstein said:

• The stealth shader is different. The stock Renegade stealth shader is being used because the one that was used in beta did not carry over. We might be able to implement this (or a better one) in a future update, but not at this time.

A misunderstanding on my part previously. The shader was not activating at all, due to lack of configuration on the new engine, and thus merely displaying the underlying texture. This has been mended. Even better, this or another change appears to have passively fixed the tesla coil issues as well! We are closer now than ever before comrades!

[moonsense715]

On 2/9/2019 at 7:06 AM, Einstein said:

It turns out that this wasn't fruitless in benefiting other projects as well. I noticed a strange thing happening, which once I reported it, was identified as a bug (albeit microscopic in nature) which affects all 4.x and 5.x games (so everything except ECW). @CMDBob made quick work of the fix, so hats off to him!

What was the bug/fix?

[Einstein]

5 hours ago, moonsense715 said:

What was the bug/fix?

The button-pressed state for main menu buttons had a hard-coded black color value where someone forgot to rig up hud.ini keywords for it. The code to change it was there and functional, just with a hard-coded value for some odd reason. Likely overlooked a decade ago.

[Einstein]

Big thanks and shout-out to @dblaney1 for doing some scripts work which fixed a couple more issues we were having. One involved a bug with health on defenses, and the other was a modification which allows us to turn off some error checking on maps, which allows them to load and play normally, even though they might have hidden issues (which ultimately don't affect gameplay).

At this point, there is ONE more known bug which needs to be figured out, involving the Allied Mechanic's repair ability. Once this is solved, we might be looking at a release!

[Quake]

OMG! looks nice the update's.

 

Keep doing that job and can leave from the gulag

[Abjab]

Wow, talk about a blast from the past !

Great work guys, keep it up.

[Einstein]

15 hours ago, Quake said:

OMG! looks nice the update's.

 

Keep doing that job and can leave from the gulag

 

2 hours ago, Abjab said:

Wow, talk about a blast from the past !

Great work guys, keep it up.

Haha, thanks for the support guys!

[Blujet]

I remember trying to get 1.2.0 to run on my computer to no avail (and endless amounts of salt.) It'll be nice to finally be able to try this out.

 

[Einstein]

5 minutes ago, Blujet said:

I remember trying to get 1.2.0 to run on my computer to no avail (and endless amounts of salt.) It'll be nice to finally be able to try this out.

This right here is precisely why I wanted to make this happen.

As of the TT 4.6 milestone update today, and moving forward, this project will be using the most current public release version of the 4.6 engine. This is the exact same as any fully updated Renegade client/server installation, and only slightly varying from what the IA project uses. In other words, no forseeable compatibility issues

[Inferno]

Epic.

[Einstein]

16 hours ago, Inferno said:

Epic.

Glad you think so!

We are ever-closer, and I'm running out of things to fix, so thats a good sign. This evening I've been doing some tidying up and trying to make this thing as streamlined as I can get it.

[Einstein]

On 1/29/2019 at 12:19 AM, MPRA2 said:

I boycott this until CamosCrossing gets fixed. I want my Manya/Medic hill rushes.

Hey you. Guess what. Thats right. It works now

I can't say for sure exactly when this is getting released.... But if I were a betting man, I'd put money on one day this week

[Coolrock]

9 hours ago, Einstein said:

Hey you. Guess what. Thats right. It works now

I can't say for sure exactly when this is getting released.... But if I were a betting man, I'd put money on one day this week

Tell us when!

[Einstein]

2 minutes ago, Coolrock said:

Tell us when!

But I can't! Because I don't know yet!

Soon™

[Coolrock]

1 minute ago, Einstein said:

But I can't! Because I don't know yet!

Soon™

Last time I did that, I got yelled at 

[danpaul88]

On 2/6/2019 at 4:02 PM, delta said:

Does anyone actually think the old Renegade menu was better? Seems more convenient if you just know you can press E, 5, then 6 to get your Engineer, Medium tank, or whatever, instead of arrow, arrow, arrow, *takes a second to make sure it's the right one* then 4 to do the same.

I've always preferred the original Renegade PT menu personally for that very reason. Requiring scrolling for anything not on the first screen is so clumsy when everything on the Renegade PT was keyboard accessible

[moonsense715]

4 hours ago, danpaul88 said:

I've always preferred the original Renegade PT menu personally for that very reason. Requiring scrolling for anything not on the first screen is so clumsy when everything on the Renegade PT was keyboard accessible

Except that you couldn't enter the vehicle list screen at all to be 1 keypress away for a vehicle purchase after it became unbusy, while waiting.

[Einstein]

On 2/18/2019 at 12:50 PM, Einstein said:

I can't say for sure exactly when this is getting released.... But if I were a betting man, I'd put money on one day this week

Well, we've hit another snag, so I guess its probably a good thing that I didn't actually make a bet on this  

Not to worry though, you'll get it as soon as its ready!

---

In the meantime though, I can tease something else that I've been playing with! (which may or may not ever see the light of day)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you......the first ever......*drum rollllll*  1080p screenshot of "Renegade Alert" version 0.900!!!

Yes... I, for some reason, felt it was necessary to dig this dinosaur up and give it the 2019 TT scripts treatment. What you're looking at, believe it or not, is none other than "Keep Off The Grass", officially the oldest public map in APB (and the only map included in version 0.900). However, it bears almost no resemblance to its 17-years newer self.

Why am I showing you this? Good question. Guess I'm just a nerd who enjoys playing with old forgotten games

[moonsense715]

Damn that looks SO crap compared to now. Every piece of art in that screenshot XD