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Shattered Paradise Forums are open!

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Hello, I'm happy to announce that Shattered Paradise has now a forum at PPM, as a reminder, Shattered Paradise is a OpenRA mod that aims to expand Tiberian Sun a bit, by adding CABAL, the Forgotten and the Scrin as playable factions. GDI and NOD are tweaked a bit to keep up, of course.

The mod is currently on a beta stage of development but is dependent on OpenRA's updates on Tiberian Sun, currently there are many things ?that missing but don't affect gameplay that much, that's why we decided to open a closed beta to start balancing right away, as balance is what I care about most.

Now, you can see some of the mod's graphics and a few updates that I have been doing lately (haven't done much sadly).




Note: these are gifs, and it seems they can't be played on the main page.
Some simple explosions.

A new Forg unit I want to start animating.

And some retexturing for CABAL's structures.

A special deal for all of you, in the next hours.

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Hello everyone! In order to celebrate the date, we will post a special invitation to a new project that will speed up your modding skills in a scale you've never seen before, at least in terms of graphics creation. I've been working on it for a while for my Doctorate thesis and now I'm in need of people to aid me to test it. So, I will announce it in the next hours (I just need to fix a couple of bugs first, no big deal) and I'll pick the first 3 responses. So, check this site every 5 minutes. You won't regret.


This special project will aid you to quickly build buildings like the ones you've seen from the newest mod to join the PPM family, such as Shattered Paradise



Or infantry and missiles like the ones developed for the recently resurrectedTiberian Sun Reform.








Or either a Fortress Gates that Twisted Insurrection has displayed today.




And much more. If course it mainly depends on the quality of the artist. Nonetheless, the objective is to make the creation of these graphics become faster and more trivial. So, stay tuned in the next hours and the first 3 artists who reply our next news post will be invited to this really cool project.

Project Phantom - Return From the Shadows

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Project Phantom is officially back in the business. While never quite dead, it did have a lengthy development hiatus and even after that was over, not much noise was made until fairly recently when some people were alerted to the fact that it is alive, mostly on ModDB, Facebook and Twitter. Now it's time to convince the rest as well. First of all, let me represent this.




In 1952, a cataclysmic event of unexplainable origin caused appearance of new elements that shifted the course of history & science. These events cause NATO to reconstitute itself as Western Defense Coalition, and rise of a new superpower in form of Eurasian Dominion via aid of technology that can be used to control people's thoughts. War between the two nearly brought the world to the brink of ruin in 90's, and threatens to do so again when the unstable equilibrium is disturbed by an enigmatic organization known as the Phantom Project, that approaches Coalition leaders with a plan to defeat Dominion for once and for all. Project's intentions behind such an offer, however, might be worth questioning. Whatever the outcome might be, it will change the fate of the world, once more.

Yes, this does mean that Project Phantom is no longer set in same universe/timeline as any of the existing Command & Conquer games, something I was hinting towards in description of a promo image from while back posted on ModDB & Facebook. This gives more freedom to work with things, especially considering PP already strayed from things quite a bit. Some might find certain similarities to familiar aspects of Command & Conquer history, although not many of those are intentional.

On another note, new Project Phantom website is now properly online, although it does not have a lot of content available - yet. Keep your eyes open as information on structures and units of the three factions as well as neutral structures & vehicles as well as gamemodes etc. become available gradually in near future, which will be made known at least on Facebook and Twitter, potentially ModDB as well. And people who want to try and help with development of the modification, the recently refreshed Recruitment page could be something to check out.

Oh, and there won't be three years of silence again until you see another one of these. I promise.

FOLLOW PROJECT PHANTOM

Mental Omega News Bulletin #23

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Work on the next Mental Omega release continues, as we're adding and finishing new units of the Foehn Revolt. In this News Bulletin, we'd like to show you some of their infantry and a special power which connects them all - the Nanofiber Sync.



This support power, unique to Foehn, along with their support and major superweapons have also been showcased in this short video I've prepared which shows all of the superweapons of Mental Omega as they are right now.





We're also revealing the next unit from the revised stolen tech roster - the Allied Lionheart Bomber.



Visit MentalOmega.com to see MOre pictures and read about the latest additions to the arsenal. Stay tuned!

OpenRA Release 20160508

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The OpenRA developers are proud to announce a new stable release of OpenRA!

Development for this release started about six months ago, and in this time 50 developers contributed a total of 1,232 commits that added more than 14,000 lines of code.

So what has changed?

A lot of work went into fixing minor bugs and omissions to make the game experience more pleasant:

? ?- Nod units in the Tiberian Dawn campaign finally use their original silver coloring.
? ?- Starting a game after installing a map no longer causes the player to be kicked from the server.
? ?- The lobby color validator will no longer complain as much as it used to.
? ?- Walls now reliably stop bullets.
? ?- Husks blocking refineries can now be targeted and destroyed.

They have also added the much-requested feature to restart missions and skirmish games, but this does not yet extend to multi-player games. Furthermore, the minimap radar will now also make use of team colors if those are enabled. Health bars can be set to only appear when the unit is damaged. Finally, the ?Fragile Diplomacy? option has been removed.

UI-wise, issues with the left-click orders have been fixed. Additionally, it is now possible to zoom using Ctrl/Cmd+Scrollwheel (the spectator view and map editor offer two additional zoom levels). Two new modifier keys allow disabling line-building of walls (hold Shift during placement) and canceling an entire build queue (hold Ctrl when clicking).

But besides all of that, the biggest changes have been under the hood of OpenRA. The developers have already addressed these topics in the playtest news posts [1] [2], and wiki pages covering them have been updated or written from scratch, but to summarize them again:

? ?1. The dedicated server is now a stand-alone executable, and dedicated servers no longer need to synchronize maps with the resource center. See the dedicated server wiki page for details.

? ?2. The map format has been updated, and the way that the game handles map upgrades has been changed. A wiki page has been created to describe the current map format.

? ?3. In order to allow for packaging mods into single ?.oramod? files, it was necessary to introduce a number of changes to the mod.yaml metadata file. These changes, and the layout of the mod.yaml file in general, are now documented on the wiki as well.

If you are interested, the wiki also has the full changelog which lists all of the changes included in this release.

You can find the installer for your operating system on our download page.

We hope you will enjoy this latest installment of OpenRA!

Mental Omega News Bulletin #24

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We've been posting AI-only skirmish videos on our YouTube channel this week, now it's time to talk about some changes and additions shown in these videos.

This time we're keeping it short and sweet while we finish up details on the vanilla sides and almost approach the end of designing the first batch of features for Mental Omega's Side 4 - the Foehn Revolt.

Thanks to recent developments it is possible for me to become an observer of an AI-only game and with proper Mental AI Boosts an absolute mayhem has taken place. AI-only skirmishes are completely different than human ones, they're highly explosive and full of units and constant action, at least as soon as the War Factories are up.



All Yuri's Epsilon subfactions & Confederation on '(4) Eternal Alliance'




All Soviet subfactions & Euro Alliance on '(4) Double Patrol'




All Allied subfactions on '(3) Mystery Town'


There are some new features, changes and details we haven't shown before in these videos. What needs to be addressed first, is that the economy booster buildings in Mental Omega (Ore Purifier, Industrial Plant and Cloning Vats) all function as a single Oil Derrick, which is a thing that was introduced back in the 2013 release. The only difference now is that thanks to Ares DLL the money those buildings provide is visually presented in the form of small animation. Foehn's ecobooster building will have its unique function but also act as a single Oil Derrick too.

The not-so-short version of the list of recent additions & changes can be read on MentalOmega.com.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Heroes and Experimentals (PP News #1 | 4/6/2016)

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First in series of (semi)regular media and progress updates, detailing progress as the mod moves towards it's eventual public release.

Coalition Structures page has been online for a while now on Project Phantom website.



Hero infantry are something of a staple of Command & Conquer. While Project Phantom departs from C&C lore- & setting-wise, it still pays homage to it on several aspects. Project Phantom features three hero infantry per faction, with only one of them being available at your command at once.



Another element present in original Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge that returns in Project Phantom is ability to spy enemy laboratory structures and acquire stolen technology which unlocks new units. In Project Phantom, these units are referred to as Experimental Units.

For now, you can have a peek at three of the nine experimental units, all of which are acquired by stealing technology from Western Coalition.



Additionally, showing enhanced Temperate and Desert theater terrain as well as completely reworked Tundra theater.



Read the full newspost at projectphantom.net

Follow Project Phantom:

D-Day: Fields of Battle

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It's June 6th, D-day! This day also marks the 14th anniversary of the D-day mod. To celebrate I've created map sized screenshots of five new maps that will be included in D-day's next release, along with information about other maps in development.



Axis:

Click to enlarge: 19mb

A four player tournament style map set in an urban harbour shaped like a swastika. This map served as a test bed for the new sets of urban cliffs & features multi-levelled areas & tunnels. Note: The use of a swastika layout might be somewhat controversial, however the shape creates a balanced yet interesting design & is currently my favourite map to play on. ? ? ?


Allied:

Click to enlarge: 30mb

A five player map in the shape of the Allied star & circle.

Mountain Guns: 6 player

Click to enlarge: 29mb

Mountain Guns is a remake of my favourite C&C Generals map of the same name. This map served as a test bed for the new sets of rock cliffs & features multi-layers cliff faces. Note: The road & bridge graphics will be replaced in the near future.


River Valley: 6 player

Click to enlarge: 30mb

A long six player map featuring a winding river through a valley. It also features a train line weaving in and out of the mountains along the edge of the map. ?


Island Roulette: 8 player

Click to enlarge: 55mb

An extremely large eight player map of a circular island with separate areas for each player connected to a central mountain. ?


I have several other maps in various stages of Development for D-day...

No Man's Land:
A World War 1 themed map with a large network of trenches, that players can occupy & fight over.

Train Duel: (wip name)
A two player map featuring buildable armoured trains & two loops of track that run parallel to each other in the center of the map.

World War:
A large map based on the world map.

Corregidor:
A large island map based on the US base on Corregidor in the Philippines.

Paris:
A large map of the French capitol, featuring the Eiffel tower at the center.

Washington DC:
Large map of the US capitol, featuring many famous landmarks & monuments.

Soviet:
Counterpart to the Axis & Allied maps. I haven't decided on an exact layout yet, but this will be the first snow map in D-day.


Lastly I would like to point out that all of these maps are subject to change. Some of the graphics will be replaced in the near future & new terrain that is currently in development will be added. So you can expect the maps to have more details when they are included in the next release.

Ares 0.C is ready for download

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The final Ares 0.C has arrived, with new features like the long requested Bounty, particle optimizations, and many other assorted new toys to play with. Overall, again a smaller release, which adds a moderate amount of new features while also extending and reworking older parts like spotlights.

A few fixes are worth mentioning: Ivan Bombs can now be detonated on deactivated units or units that are berzerking. Also, NodAdvancedPower is now again considered as default power plant, and soviets again build the Nuclear Reactor to satisfy their power needs.

As always, a lot of internal changes were applied, which weren't too interesting this time.

Thanks to all testers for making Ares happen, and Happy Modding!

Website: http://ares.strategy-x.com/
Announcement: https://launchpad.net/ares/+announcement/14014
Download: https://launchpad.net/ares/+download
Documentation: http://ares-developers.github.io/Ares-docs/

Frontline Chaos - June 2016 Update

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Today, a showcase of the revised primary resource of Frontline Chaos.

In the time since last update there has been work done on various parts of Frontline Chaos. Besides the usual bug fixing and tweaking of various stats, the notable changes / additions are:
    *new trainable infantry unit for Revenant
    *new support GP for Revenant which includes another new infantry and vehicle
    *completely revised primary resource

As this all is a bit too much for one update, I will now focus on the last mentioned change, the revised resource. The story (and oh boy what a story it is) behind the new infantry and GP will be for a later update.

If you are not fan of long design choice stories, skip to the bold TL;DR part

So, to the subject at hand. Resources. As referenced to in the March 2015 update, the primary resource in the mod is Litenium. It has the looks of Red Alert's Ore, the mysteriousness and toxicity of Tiberium's... well Tiberium, and overall was a fancy idea at the time. The idea to use geodes (aka rocks with crystals in them) came as a random suggestion from a fellow modder, and was more original then what I came up with back then. The ingame look went through various iterations, but basicly remained the same idea: piles of rocks with some crystals thrown in for making it look less dull and to hint at the geode origin.

However, lore wise it was kind of flawed. Geodes normally form over a very large time span. In the current timeline of Frontline Chaos, there are roughly 6 years between the 'delivery' to Terra and the first documented discovery. The other lore issue that existed is how can it spread itself? A rock cannot 'grow' another rock, and a potential dangerous resource that can be removed permanently by simply harvesting it after being discovered is not that dangerous after all.

Initially I handwaved these facts and pushed these issues ahead to get on with the mod. The idea I had from the start with this resource is to have it grow / regenerate ingame eventually. Roughly a year later when trying to finally implement said idea I begin to see the flaws. How do rocks regenerate or grow? They don't. The next best idea is to have some kind of mine that drills up Litenium from time to time, but that also had some issues:
    *the idea is boring
    *designing a mine drill that looks original but also works ingame is hard
    *lore wise, how can you drill up something from underground if the resource has only been around for 6 years

After going back to the drawing board and putting random ideas out on paper, my eye fell on the idea of using plants as a resource. Plants could solve many lore issues I had: plants can grow quickly, plants can reproduce themselves, plants can have self-defence mechanisms that can be dangerous. An sufficient alien look complemented the idea.

TL;DR Time to introduce the new resource in Frontline Chaos: Prohicus Litenii or Litensplant


Quote:
"Litensplant at first look resemble a hybrid of ordinary Terran plants. The base of the plant consists of a large red-purplish root. ... From the top of the main root one or more sets of dark blue leaves grows ... The usage of the leaves is eventually the same as that of other plants: to be able to photosynthesise."

"The primary way of reproduction for Litensplants is by the supporting roots, and underground shoots that grow out of the main root. These shoots will spread laterally underground to form new plants nearby. This way a single Litensplant can slowly but surely reproduce itself ... A recent theory is that the new plants are genetical 'clones' of the original plant."

"The oily substance created during the photosynthesis process has been found to be highly combustible. As one of the first companies to research the possible economical values of Litensplants, M-Tec was able to discover several uses for the Litensplant oily substance."

"In its raw form, it has been discovered to contain various heavy metals ... After many experiments a way was found to split these heavy metals from the oily substance ... The waste product of this process is still very similar to the unrefined form ... When thinned by several chemical processes, the product has proven to be a working alternative for fossil-based oils."

"Alternatively, scientists have been researching the combustible properties for military purposes. As the raw substance sticks to most materials, it is comparable napalm ... a mixture of the oily substance and napalm has proven to give a much more intense flame, which burns longer and sticks even better then normal napalm."



Quote:
"The plants themselves continuously release a bio-corrosive agent in gaseous form. This agent is highly dangerous to nearby biological lifeforms ... A single mature Litensplant causes plants and grasses in a 3-6 meter circle to slowly wither and die. Trees fare better, depending on the species and range from the Litensplant ... Small wildlife like birds or rodents are easier overcome by the fumes, as the gas can enter the lungs. This results in a slow agonizing death, as the lungs are slowly corroded away, suffocating the creature."

"The effects of a field of Litensplants are disastrous. ... Dead wildlife surrounds the field, having succumbed to the noxious gasses ... Unprotected humans fare no better. The lucky ones succumb to the gasses as they corrode the lungs away ... The unlucky ones who hold their breath or rely on their own air supply will be corroded from the outside. Blisters will appear on the skin, and the skin will be eaten away to reveal the flesh underneath ... Unconfirmed report exist of individuals that were able to keep standing or walking long enough to see their own flesh being corroded away to the point that bones became visible."

"While a hazard to biological lifeforms, field research has proven that the gasses have limited to no effect on other materials. Trials with hazmat suits have shown that the gasses are unable to breach most Tier-2 hazmat suits. Metal also seems immune to the effects, even in larger Litensplant fields. As long as the gasses are filtered out, vehicles will have no problem passing through even the largest of Litensplant fields."


I hope you enjoyed the story / stories cooked up for today's update.
More info on Litensplants will be revealed in future updates.
Dutchygamer signing off.

XCC Utilities (PPM's Distribution) is now available!

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Hello everyone. Once in a while, a random member of this forum updates a tool from XCC Utilities, which Olaf van der Spek (the real author of these utilities) doesn't seem to be so much interested to update them anymore.

One year ago, tomsons26lv has released a new version of XCC TMP Editor with few bug fixes and a special edition there to edit 96x48 tiles as well.

Earlier in this month, Blade has edited XCC Mixer to encode SHP (TD) in a better way and, as a bonus, it also reads red alert 1's mouse shp correctly.

So, why not just do a install package with all of them. I've just grabbed a XCC Utilities.nsi from an old svn repository, updated it a bit, organized XCC files to fit it and voila!

You can now download the latest XCC Utilities installer with all changes created by our community at the CnC Editing Tools forum.

And if, for some reason, this topic also disappears from your radar, bear in mind that we have a download link for it at the left menu of this site -> CnC Editing Tools -> XCC Utilities. Just grab the PPM's Edition there. And yea, everyone else is invited to redistribute it in your sites as well. At least until our friend Olaf gets interested in his utilities again.

Revealing Dawn of the Tiberium Age Version 1.15

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We haven't posted any news for 5 months. That has lead to some fans lately asking us whether we're dead or alive. But if you're a long-time follower of DTA, you probably know that our radio silence usually means that we're working on something large - something awesome that we haven't wanted to reveal yet.

This is it. This is the official announcement for our upcoming version 1.15 of Dawn of the Tiberium Age.



Like in our previous major releases, a star of this release is going to be the client. In fact, I've entirely re-written the client. While the previous client worked, it wasn't as smooth to use as it could've been, and especially in online play it had this tendency to crash occasionally. I also wasn't happy with the quality of the client's graphics.

Along with the re-write, the new client has a more advanced technological base. While the previous clients used the Win95-era Windows Forms to display their graphics, the new client uses DirectX11 (OpenGL if you're on XP or Mac/Linux). This enables us to make better graphics and also special effects, like fade effects for opening and closing windows.



These changes make the client very smooth and pleasant to use compared to the old client. All sub-windows now open in less than a millisecond without any of the flickering that the old client displayed. We've also improved the UI functionally. As examples of this, the statistics window now has an improved layout, and the map preview in the Skirmish and CnCNet/LAN game lobbies can now be interacted with.

Another focus of the re-write has been stability. The goal is that the client should never crash in use. From internal testing I can say that we're pretty close to that goal.



We've always focused heavily on the CnCNet online gaming experience, and with the new client it's also getting improvements:

  • We've added an option that makes it possible to connect to CnCNet automatically when you launch DTA, and stay connected through your session
  • Private messages don't open a separate window anymore, but are handled by a Steam-inspired overlay that informs you of new PMs and allows you to respond quickly
  • Instead of opening separate windows for the Game Lobby and CnCNet Lobby, the client now runs in one window with a top bar that allows you to switch between the lobbies (and view private messages). This setup is much more convenient and closer to RTS gaming standards than the old one where you had to manage multiple different windows
  • Support for a friend list as well as an ignore list have been added






Now, the client is just an interface for accessing the game. The "game" part of DTA 1.15 will be bigger and better as well; there will be new maps (with new terrain!) for regular multiplayer, co-op, as well as singleplayer. We've only revealed two of these maps so far, but there are many more to come. Like always, we've also improved the balance between our 4 factions. More of these improvements and additions will be detailed in a later news post and other future updates.

DTA 1.15 will be released at the end of the summer. Until then, stay tuned for more information!

Twisted Insurrection: July Newscast

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Good day everyone, welcome to the July Newscast.
Since the blast of activity in late March, we've been rather quiet in the radar.
As unfortunate as it may be, real life must sometimes take precedence over sweet hobbies.
Things have not quite yet returned to their former status, but worry not!
We're slowly ? but steadily ? rolling towards the next public release of Twisted Insurrection.

This brings me to our first announcement.
To avoid confusion with the old Public Beta 5, we're renaming the next public release from Version 0.5 into Version 0.6.
This is only a nominal change ? we won't actually skip a release.
The new title also fits nicely with the next OST release, Volume 6.

Now, for the actual game content. Version 0.6 will feature an all-new client software, re-written by Rampastring.
Here's a preview of the (still WIP) client:





In addition to client-related changes, we've also added a ton of various new terrain objects to make our maps ever more diverse.
Many of them are not just for eye-candy, but serve actual functions like blocking tanks.


(Click the images to view them in full size)

All 179 objects were created by our SHP and Terrain artist MigEater
(some slightly modified by Crimsonum).


Next up is music.
We've recently added a total of three new tracks to the game, respectively titled "Just War", "Black Hand", and "Still Alone".
All three are made by Bobek (Bobisfaction) and Swirekster for Twisted Insurrection.
Check them out below:










Last but certainly not least, our ever-diligent artists Swirekster and Bobek, with the help of Slawomir Polok and Bartosz Nawrat, have done some impressive TI-cosplay in addition to Swi working on a TI-related sculpture.
Can you guess who it portrays? Wink









That's all for now folks, hope you enjoyed! Take care and have fun!

Mental Omega News Bulletin #25

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A quick heads up about all the recent more or less stealth updates happening on MentalOmega.com in the Factions information pages.

I have updated the information pages about the Structures, Infantry, Units & Tech Trees of the three original sides. This information now matches the state of the mod that it is currently in and will most likely be released as in the upcoming months. The Allied/Soviet/Epsilon Info pages that open the Factions information will be updated last as they'll contain lore and updated storyline details for each of the subfactions. The Foehn pages will be up shortly before the release so that the surprise is not (entirely) spoiled, and the new Stolen Tech page will appear last.

There will also be a new trailer before that happens, in which you'll be able to see the Foehn subfactions in their full glory, including their bases with all their structures.









Stay tuned for more updates and more Side 4 information soon.

C&C Tiberian Dawn Redux is back! (v1.42)


Frontline Chaos - August 2016 Update

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Today, a showcase of several Revenant infantry and one infantry's personal transport.

As half hinted on in previous update about Frontline Chaos, I've been working on some additional infantry units and vehicles before / while I was doing the Litenium / Litensplant revision. As I've never shown detailed (if that can be said of Generals) infantry renders before, I decided to dedicate this update to some of the Revenant infantry. For variety I've also thrown in a vehicle, partially because it is related to one of the infantry, and also because I don't want to spoil the entire Revenant infantry roster in one update.


Warriors are the basic troops of the Revenant army. Cheap to train and quick on their feet, they can outpace most infantry on the battlefield. While not effective on their own, in groups they can take on enemy infantry with their Manchow assault rifles. When properly upgraded, they can also capture neutral and enemy structures.

While fast and a threat to enemy infantry that lack dedicated anti-personnel weaponry, their armour is only meant to provide basic resistance against small projectiles and shrapnel. When forced to take on Enforcers in equal numbers, often they lose the battle. The odds are stacked even more against them when facing advanced infantry like Dark Raiders, and are next to nothing against most vehicles unless in large hordes.


Vanguards are a common sight in larger Revenant infantry platoons and Revenant compounds. Clad in a bulky exoskeleton, these men and women can use their tri-barreled gattling guns to lay down an impressive storm of bullets against any target that presents itself. Besides providing strength beyond normal human capabilities, the exoskeleton also provides targeting assistance to track faster targets. This enables Vanguards to use their weapon against aerial targets. Especially slower units like helicopters are a favoured target among Vanguards. The last advantage of the exoskeleton is that it makes Vanguards virtually uncrushable by vehicles.

This all comes at a cost. While deadly against personnel and aircraft, the gattling gun can't do much against heavy armoured targets like tanks or structures. The exoskeleton also slows the Vanguard down compared to most infantry, making it easier to pick them off. Lastly, a Vanguard is vulnerable to ambushes as the gattling gun takes some time to spin up to maximum firing speed.


The remaining part of the update comes with a small story. One of the things I liked about Generals was the GLA salvaging system. For those not familiar with it: when GLA units killed enemy vehicles, there was a chance for the vehicle to leave a crate upon destruction. This crate could be collected by any GLA unit (friend or foe), and would provide money or free rank for infantry, and weapon upgrades for most vehicles.

For Frontline Chaos I've redesigned this system. Every vehicle kill can leave a crate upon destruction. The difference here is that only infantry can gather these crates. The boons they can get from these crates are similar to those the GLA infantry had, namely money or free rank. Depending on the original rank of the killed vehicle, the amount of cash gained increases, and the chance it's a free rank also increases.

Toying with this idea, I wondered if I could get the whole weapon upgrade logic work for infantry, as in Generals it was only used on vehicles. One experiment later I concluded that it could work. Then I went to the drawing board for a weapon that could be carried by infantry, could be upgraded with salvage, and was not overly hilarious or unrealistic. The weapons I ended up with where either a kind of shotgun or a rocket launcher. A shotgun could get heavier ammunition scavenged from vehicle wrecks, while a rocket launcher could get better guidance salvaged from vehicles. Initially I decided to go with the rocket launcer idea, and merged the weapon salvage with an existing infantry idea, namely a soldier with a large deployable missile launcher.

After several attempts it proved that the unit would be hard to balance, and it looked odd from a lore point of view for a dude carrying a unwieldy rocket launcher to double as a sneaky scavenger that sniffs through vehicle wrecks. The units were split up again, with the missile launcher infantry kept as a trainable unit from the Barracks, and the newly christened Scavenger (with the shotgun idea) relegated to support power call-in.


On the battlefield there are few soldiers more resourceful then Scavengers. Carrying multiple pouches with various tools, Scavengers are specialized in sabotage and actions behind enemy lines. With their trusty tools they can repair vehicles, and if needed capture structures for their own (or Commander's) use. For self-defence, most Scavengers prefer to use a highly modular shotgun provided to them by Revenant forces. Combined with a generous supply of both buckshot and miniature explosive rounds, Scavengers can rapidly take down infantry and even hold their ground against light vehicles.

They are not named Scavengers without good reason. Used to live a life on the roads, they quickly learn that everything has a value, no matter how bad the looks are. On the battlefield they have the reputation of checking vehicle wrecks after (most of) the shooting has stopped, looking for loot they can use. It must be really bad for a Scavenger not to find something useful in a wreck. Especially ammunition and still functional weapons are a prized find. Whatever is found is quickly recycled to its bare components, and reused when necessary. Scavengers are fond of upgrading their shotgun with extra parts, for that extra punch when pulling the trigger, or those extra few shots they can fire in a moment's notice.

Scavengers are available through the Scavenger Drop Support Power.


A Scavenger is rarely seen without his heavy personalized Mongoose truck. Designed for off-road usage, it's durable 6x6 chassis is utilized to carry the Scavenger and his crew around. Trading protection for manoeuvrability, a Mongoose is light enough to be dropped out of an air plane by parachute and land with no problem. This is the preferred way for most Scavengers to appear on the battlefield. A turret on the back is armed with twin machineguns, and a single missile launcher to tackle armoured targets. To save weight and costs, the turret is controlled by the passenger, and will not function when the Mongoose has no passenger. Finally, the Mongoose has one more trick up it's sleeves. Mounted on the back of the truck are several mine dispensers. With the push of a button a small minefield can be laid behind the vehicle. These mines are a combination of fragmentation and high explosive mines, designed to hinder and incapacitate all kind of pursuers.

In all, a Mongoose is not meant for direct combat. While enough to protect its cargo against small-arms fire, the armour is not meant to protect against tank shells or missiles. The Mongoose is a hit-and-run vehicle used to provide fire support for when a Scavenger's shotgun isn't enough, or when an additional distraction is required.

Mongooses are available through the Scavenger Drop Support Power.

And that basicly wraps it up for this update. Hope to see you all next time.
Dutchygamer signing off.

Dev Blog #2

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August Update, WARNING: This post contains a great amount of animated images, if you are reading this article at the main page, look for the forum post instead as the gifs don't seem to animate on the main page. This is a clone of the article I posted on MODDB yesterday.

A few months have passed since the last update from Shattered Paradise, a lot a things got in, some units got reworked, some dummy workarounds have been replaced with proper traits, and the most important incorporation are the new Super Weapons.



First things first, CABAL?s artillery got reworked, the idea of it being a sneaky unit that slowly dealt damage didn?t fit his style, instead now it?s a heavy mech that floods the enemy with drones and also converts killed enemies into cyborgs, nom nom nom. Their tier 1 anti armor drone has been removed from the rooster and it was replaced by something more interesting...



It?s a hover drone that can be deployed, once it?s deployed it cloaks itself and will fire on any target near without breaking it?s cloak, similar to a good old Zerg Lurker, well I played Lurker Defence for years so there was no way I wasn?t going to add something like it, the only catch it has is that this unit also converts killed enemies into cyborgs, so it can be useful for defence and ambush operations (Cabal?s main turret is anti armor, so this unit pairs well with those).



The Forgotten Bull got a new mechanic since I felt that aura units give little to the gameplay, so it switched to something more active, when attacking, it will spit gas as its enemy as well as it will also release hormones nearby, making any putting infantry units near in a berserk mode, that means their speed is increased along it?s attack speed, but they also lose health in the process, at the start I tweaked them so your units could die from the effect of your toxins, but since that can also lead to some good amounts of trolling, the poison will stop draining health when the unit has less than 60% health, here you can see an example of how not to use the unit, the lesson here is that you should be very careful when using the Bull and also the Forg MRLS, which is the unit that created those nasty gas clouds.



Another small detail with the Forgotten Beasts that I felt was needed to differentiate them from standard infantry is that now once they reach less than 50% health they become frenzied, which means they become uncontrollable but gain increased combat stats, mostly damage resistance, speed and attack speed, they heal back to a controllable state moderately fast once the fight is over of course but yeah, beasts are not meant to be disciplined and controllable, so be careful how you handle them in a fight.



Also, I decided to give the Scrin Colossus an aura damage effect when ordered to deploy, similar to a desolator, the reason for this is that the unit was mostly a tanky infantry that could be ignored very easily.



Finally we also got Super Weapons, for this mod I decided to follow the red alert 1 and 2 Super Weapon designs, meaning 1 Offensive power and one utility power, now I?m going to show you an improved version of the Forgotten and Scrin superweapons, which was made possible thanks to the effort of Graion Dilach.





CABAL also has his own Super Weapon: a Plasma / Energy / Hype cannon named after my favourite band that fires three shots at the targetted area, I?m still unsure how I am going to balance all of this but, atleast it exists.



About the Forgotten and CABAL support super weapons, the Forgotten get to spawn neutral Veinhole monsters on the map and CABAL will be able to flood a location with nanomachines, repairing nearby units and converting any fallen unit into cyborgs, I would show some graphics for those but there are not enough to justify.

Finally, even tho the Beta stage of the mod could be considered ready at this point (the primary goal is completed but the game still misses sounds, voices, maps and animations), the mod won't be released in this website until the Tiberian Sun mod for OpenRA is out, that doesn't mean people can't play it tho, you are free to join as a tester if you desire to, the mod still lacks a great deal of balance, so any help in this matter would be really apreciated. Join my discord server if you are interested!https://discord.gg/yf5pFzg (My GMT is -3).

That is all, I hope you like what you see, until next time.

Mental Omega News Bulletin #26

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So what are we doing these days? We're testing the client created by Rampastring of the Dawn of the Tiberium Age fame who's been so kind as to help us make the next version of Mental Omega, which has now been labeled 3.3, happen.

This new client will make Mental Omega work with CnCNet5 and make use of other various advantages that this client provides. If you're not familiar with DTA, you should check this video to see what it's all about. We're also testing new and old missions, skirmish for bugs and crashes and of course doing some balancing since an entirely new side is now involved.

Speaking of the 4th side, the Foehn Revolt, I've prepared this short video which reveals the recent additions to the unit roster of Mental Omega in more detail. Take a look.



Mental Omega 3.3 - New Units Showcase #1


As I have tweeted quite recently, we've finished creating and voicing the units for the Foehn Revolt and there will be about 50 of them in its first release. After that, if we get some good ideas for new ones we will expand their tech tree accordingly. The only thing that will not expand is the stolen tech roster once it hits 16 units. And speaking of stolen tech, we've got another two new ones.


The new stolen technology roster: 8 units to go.


For more information about all of these recent additions and a revised selection of Tech Buildings visit MentalOmega.com. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified about the newest Unit Showcase videos.
Stay tuned for more updates!

First public release of TDX

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It is done.

After years of adding this, tweaking that, fine-tuning here, TDX has finally reached a state where I consider it release-worthy.
While it doesn't match what I originally envisioned it to be in terms of singleplayer, in terms of gameplay and audio-visuals it is pretty much how I wanted it to be.
There might be some remaining bugs or balancing issues hiding somewhere, but that can be adressed with a patch (or an updated version for the next OpenRA release).
Update: The release has been updated to version 0.51 which fixes a few bugs.

So without further ado, here are the changelog and download mirrors, with ModDB following shortly:

Code:
TDX v0.51 - Changelog

INSTALLATION
- Migrated to .oramod package. See INSTALLATION inside the .zip for details

BUGFIXES
- Removed empty 'lava' folder from maps which could crash the game when selected
- Fixed compatibility of title logo PNG with OSX/Linux
- Downsized rank insignia so they don't hide infantry and small vehicles as much as before


TDX v0.50 - Changelog

NEW FEATURES
- Day/Night cycles (only enabled on the shellmap, Break of Day and Lost in Paradise)
- Caribic tileset (including 2 exclusive MP/skirmish maps, Pirates of C&C and Lost in Paradise)
- Revamped balancing (leaning closer to the original than OpenRA's C&C)

NEW UNITS
- GDI Medic
- GDI Mobile RPG Launcher
- Nod APC (replaces regular APC for Nod)
- Nod Chem Tank
- Nod Scorpion Heavy Tank
- Nod Hind (replaces Apache)

AUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
- Stereo music (mostly tracks from the Sega/PSX versions of C&C1)
- added various sounds from RA1 and TS for more variety

VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS
- added directional cannon muzzle flash (16 facings)
- added RA1 napalm animations (smoother and more 'complete' than their TD counterparts)
- added RA1 water splashes
- added variant of MISSILE with red nose and fins (for use with SSM launcher)
- added different explosions and explosion sounds depending on what terrain or target was hit
- added alpha lighting to several explosion effects
- added blending to some fire effects
- added blinking lights to some buildings
- increased facings of minigun muzzle flash from 8 to 16
- increased facings of flamer and chem spray animations from 8 to 32
- increased power plant and adv. power plant main cooling tower height
- fixed mammoth tank antennae position
- fixed missing shadow on one of moebius' running frames
- tweaked medium tank barrel to point straight forward rather than slightly upwards
- tweaked mammoth tank graphics (replaced shadow on barrels and tracks with real color)
- tweaked adv. guard tower graphics (slightly)
- tweaked helipad graphics (very slightly)
- enabled shadow for all missiles and large bullets


Download Mirrors:
PPM
GitHub


Installation: Copy the 'tdx.oramod' found inside the zip into the 'mods' subfolder inside your OpenRA system directory. If there is no 'mods' subfolder inside the OpenRA system directory, create one first.
IMPORTANT: If you still have the original v0.50 release installed in OpenRA's installation directory, delete that old TDX installation first!

Future TDX releases will always come as .oramod packages that simply overwrite the previous version.

Requires OpenRA release 20160508!


OpenRA can be downloaded here:
http://www.openra.net/download/






DTA 1.15 Preview & Release Date

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While DTA 1.15 was announced to be released at the end of the summer, the date was intentionally kept vague to allow everything to be finished on time. The summer is technically already over however (even if the weather and temperate strongly argue otherwise), so the announced date unfortunately wasn't vague enough. We apologize if we made you get your hopes up too much.

Without going into details, we're still waiting on a few things from several sources that are independent from our staff, but it fortunately is possible to work around this if it turns out to be necessary. So without further ado, we'll announce a more concrete release date: September 23rdYes 2016, smartass ?_?(that's a Friday).

We're also making good use of the extra time to finish up some assets that we otherwise might not have been able to finish.

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To ease the wait, here are some global things to look forward to (aside from of course the awesome new client, which was already covered in the previous news post):

The ingame options menu windows have been improved a lot.



Not only do they look a lot more like those of the original games, but the visual theme of the options menu window now depends on which faction you're playing as.





GDI and Nod share the same theme, while Allies and Soviet have their own unique themes.



Take note of the new "Chat" keyboard shortcuts.

As always there a good number of new maps, including 1 singleplayer mission, 6 multiplayer maps, as well as at least 4 new co-op missions.





And maps of course couldn't be made without terrain, which also received a decent amount of improvements and additions for mappers to put to good use.



All bridge and platform tiles were improved and can now also be connected to the newly added ramps.



The new tiled and brick floors can be placed on any other ground type.

And if you think those floor tiles look familiar, you're right:



DTA finally introduces interior terrain in version 1.15.

There are also a good number of changes under the hood, bug fixes and balance changes.
The balance changes concerning naval units were the most drastic:

  • All first and second tier ships were made 20% cheaper and their weapon range has been reduced by 33 up to 48 percent.
  • The weapons of tanks, aircraft and especially artillery units were also made a lot more effective against ships.
  • Ships no longer self-heal unless they become elite.
  • Ships inflict more damage against one another.




The goal of these changes is to make naval battles more fast-paced paced and fun, while also giving players a much better fighting chance when they're attacked by naval units while they don't have any naval units of their own.

If you paid close attention to the image, you might have noticed that there are both Tiberium Refineries and Ore Refineries visible. This won't be any different in DTA 1.15: you'll be seeing the correct refineries in all enemy bases from now on.

And that's all we'll show for now. We hope to see you on the 23rd and hopefully we'll get a nice number of online matches going.
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