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


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1 hour ago, NodGuy said:

It's beautiful. :clap:

Haha the original team would be proud.

Just another useless tidbit: So the original 0.900 was a .pkg mod, which isn't really "cool" nowadays. Making it into a standalone wasn't really possible/worth doing (it would use the Renegade menu and tons of other stuff if someone did that), so instead I was able to fool around enough with it to get it to run in version 0.9915, which is 3 versions later, and standalone. And just FYI the two versions in between, 990 and 991; I can't find 990 anywhere. Its the only one I don't have. And 991 was simply broken, damaged in "shipping" and DOA. 9915 is nothing more than a fix to make 991 run at all, and they are otherwise identical. So now 0.900 lives on as a single map within 9915 (both of which are broken in various ways) :v

See? There really are people in this world who are a wealth of considerably useless information :xD:

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  • 3 months later...

Lots of silence lately, and for that I apologize. I just wanted to make a quick note here that this thing is not dead, not at all! I have just not had time to work on it in a couple months due to some IRL things. But stay tuned, it is coming soon:)

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  • 2 months later...

Update!

A much-needed scripts feature was added today. Developers using the latest 4.6 update can now globally enable or disable the VIS (visual culling) system permanently.

What and why? Well, VIS was used originally as a way to squeeze some performance out of the game by "culling" visible objects once they were a certain distance away. It uses fancy math and requires lots of manual setup on the part of the map maker in order to work correctly. So from then (long long ago....) to now, some changes have been made to this system, as well as the level of meticulousness paid by the map makers to its implementation. So what we get when we dump new engine code in with a 12+ year old version of a W3D game, is some really funky looking stuff. What we call VIS errors or "holes". Things that display incorrectly, and can actually be very distracting or confusing depending on where and when they appear.

Ok so why is this important? So with 12+ years of engine improvements in other areas, coupled with the (comparatively) simplistic nature of older games/maps, what we get is the lack of need for a visual culling system. So we turns it off :v

The ability to toggle the system off completely with a setting, INSTEAD of having to import every single map and remove or fix the VIS information is obviously desirable. And it has instant benefits! Compare the screenshots below for a fine example of the weirdness that VIS can cause (first shot), versus just turning it off (second shot). Notice that the FPS is still pegged out even with the system disabled. Performance impact is zero.

Screenshot.1.pngScreenshot.2.png

In other news, development on this has been stalled for a little while now, but hopefully will pick up again in the near future. This is the first notable update in a while, but a very important stepping stone on the road to release. We are so close! Stay tuned and hopefully this thing will be in your hands soon!

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  • 1 month later...

One of my lab assistants has made an observation that we felt was worth sharing with you...

Back in 2007, this is how APB Beta 1.2.0 appeared:

beta_then1.PNGbeta_then2.PNGbeta_then3.PNG

And now:

beta_now1.PNGbeta_now2.PNGbeta_now3.PNG

Hmmmm... Differences. Seemingly very minor differences, yes. But significant differences indeed! But what ever could this mean?

See you soon comrade....

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1 hour ago, moonsense715 said:

Moar maps! :D ...and always.dat is 80MB smaller? o.O

More maps indeed! And hopefully a few more to come in the future if they can be fixed.

So, waaaay back somewhere in alpha, AircraftKiller added several unused assets for things that were planned to be introduced in the future. They were just hanging out in always.dat and went unused for years, along with tons and tons of assets that had been replaced from previous versions, but were never removed, and even pieces of stock Renegade that never got removed. With the help of some fancy new tools we have now, I was able to isolate these unused bits and remove them, reducing the size by quite a chunk. Also the removal of the nostalgic but unfortunately broken and unusable old launcher of that era, and some scripts 3.4.4 and APB custom pieces that were still in play back then helped to reduce the size and file count, as shown in the screenshots. The folder structure of modern W3D games is far simpler than it was back then.

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On 10/26/2019 at 7:23 AM, Jeod said:

So, I imagine there's a reason for this, but given the Beta Remaster, is it now any easier to import old Beta maps into Delta? The nostalgia goggles might wear off after a while. :v

Possible - yes. But more trouble than it is worth really. What would be the gain? Sprinting??? Pasting a 12+ year old map into the current version of APB would be very out of place, and again, difficult to do. And I can guarantee 100% before he even sees this, Pushwall will say no :v

Keeping old maps alive is one purpose of the Beta revamp. Same for the 9935 revamp, and others coming. Snapshots of a period of time, made playable with QoL updates and nothing more. Pasting the old maps in their virgin state into a new game would undermine and invalidate that concept entirely.

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That would have been sometime in alpha (9935 or earlier) if APB ever came with Comrade. Im not sure on that one, it could be a version that I'm missing. I remember that software but dont remember what I played that used it.

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20 hours ago, Einstein said:

Possible - yes. But more trouble than it is worth really. What would be the gain? Sprinting??? Pasting a 12+ year old map into the current version of APB would be very out of place, and again, difficult to do. And I can guarantee 100% before he even sees this, Pushwall will say no :v

Out of place yes, difficult no... unless we're fixing everything that makes it out of place, in which case yes, fine-tuning the map to fit Delta balance and visuals would be a huge timesink.

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4 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Out of place yes, difficult no... unless we're fixing everything that makes it out of place, in which case yes, fine-tuning the map to fit Delta balance and visuals would be a huge timesink.

Well for starters, some buildings got renamed so that breaks stuff right off the bat. Old maps call for scripts that dont exist in Delta, etc. It would be out of place both visually and under the hood, and yeah a big timesink to even begin to fix it.

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On 1/28/2019 at 5:40 PM, thedisclaimitory said:

is it possible to get renegade alert on there aka the alpha or pre alpha to apb??

It seems that I overlooked this question, my apologies.

The older versions of "renegade alert" suffer even worse than stock beta does on a modern PC, but indeed the same treatment renders them playable as well. In the same way that 1.2 Beta has been updated, I also plan to release version 9935, which was the final "Alpha" release.

For versions older than 9935, I have built a "combination" version that doesnt really have a name yet... 9925x? Simply "Alpha"..? Anyway, pre-993, the versions were all very closely related, and thus compatible with each other moreso than other versions (like Beta -> Delta). Unless someone digs up more, there were/are less than 10 public maps up until 993. So instead of updating 5 old versions of the game with 1-6 maps each, I chose to go a different direction and build this "combo" version from 9925, as it can use maps from all previous versions. With some work, it might even do it correctly ;)

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Wait so what exactly are the changes that are going into this? I just figured that Beta was perfectly playable right off the bat, besides some n00b-unfriendly stuff like ships getting stuck in the naval yard.

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12 hours ago, delta said:

Wait so what exactly are the changes that are going into this? I just figured that Beta was perfectly playable right off the bat, besides some n00b-unfriendly stuff like ships getting stuck in the naval yard.

Playable, yes. But there were several issues that were caused due to various changes and fixes in the newer engine, and it could not be released in that state. If you want to see what I'm talking about, install stock Beta, and apply the latest scripts update from the TT website. Thats exactly where I began. Purchase terminals were broken, helicopter cinematic scripts, shaders, screenshots, mechanic and medic healing balance, fog on some maps, function keys, ID collisions on some maps, menu element colors, and a laundry list of other small things I dont remember. Several issues were the product of hacky stuff that was done in the engine back then, and had to be undone in order to work now in the "standard" way. No more special game-specific hacky stuff - we're using the same TT 4.6 engine that Renegade uses now. Just had to make the game's configuration understand that 😉

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