Project Perfect Mod News

Almost to the day half a year after our last stable release, the OpenRA dev team is proud to finally present to you their latest work - OpenRA Release 20170421!

With 43 developers producing just shy of 800 commits and touching almost 1800 files, this has very likely been one of our slowest release cycles ever. As such, the list of user-visible changes is not as long as you've come to expect in earlier years. However, behind the scenes, preparations for a fundamental transformation of the OpenRA engine are in the works. But more on that later.

As usual, this new release brings with it changes to the balance of both the Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn mods, as well as a huge number of new and overhauled multiplayer maps. In addition, it contains the following major fixes and features:

HiDPI font rendering for players with high resolution displays.
Fixes for several multiplayer bugs that could stall or crash games when a player disconnects.
The Red Alert "shell map" background is now muted.
New behaviour for the Red Alert Gap Generator and Tiberian Dawn Obelisk.
Fixes for asset installation on 32 bit operating systems and from the original RA95 CDs.

The Dune 2000 mod in particular has many changes to make it better match the gameplay and graphical polish of the original game, plus seven(!) new campaign missions.

Comparing regular and high resolution UI rendering in the Tiberian Dawn map browser.

Dune 2000 now comes with 13 campaign missions.

The re-written shroud-generating behaviour of the gap generator in action.

The biggest changes in this release are behind the scenes; technical improvements that are not visible to players, but important for our development and modding community:

A new trait conditions system provides much better control over trait interactions.
Actor vision has been overhauled, adding support for features like the RA active gap generators, D2K actors revealing themselves when attacking, and cliffs blocking vision in heightmap-enabled mods.
Simplified weapon definitions using inherited yaml templates.
Some initial steps towards removing code patterns that are not compatible with save game support.

OpenRA grew out of the C&C modding community, and one of our major goals is to provide a flexible game engine that the community can use for their own projects. Unfortunately, this goal has been hurt by OpenRA's single-engine approach, meaning that every new release would unavoidably break community mods.

After many discussions, we have developed a new mod support strategy that we will implement over the next two OpenRA releases. This release starts by adding support for parallel OpenRA installs, and we have started developing a mod template that includes instructions and scripts to simplify mod development and packaging. Mods built using this template will be self contained games that function independently from our official mod installs.

The in-game multiplayer server list will now list games for all the mods that a player has installed (even across multiple installations), and will allow players to directly switch to another mod when joining one. This applies across versions as well as mods, meaning that future OpenRA releases will be able to coexist, and switching between release and playtest servers will be just as easy as switching between RA and TD servers today.

The multiplayer server list is now smarter about multiple OpenRA installations.

The next release (later this year) will complete the mod-support transition by removing the in-game mod chooser and support for manually installed mod packages: all mods (both official and community) will be listed individually with their own names and icons in your Start Menu / Dock / Launcher.

We hope these measures will give more visibility to third-party mods, and establish OpenRA as a viable and stable real-time strategy platform even for games not connected to the Command & Conquer universe.

For the complete list of changes please see the full changelog. You can find installers for all our supported operating systems on our download page.

We hope you'll enjoy this newest installment of OpenRA!

Here's the official Ares 0.D, which adds some big features like support to change mouse cursors, mechanics and ambulance vehicles, or to make the AI build more than one building of a type. Ivan death bombs are now included, after being cut from the original game, and multiplayer matches can now start with a deployed Construction Yard instead of an MCV.

There are many more minor features like Temporal weapons considering the victim's health, customizable fall rates, digging animations and so on. I think it goes without saying now that several bugs have been fixed also, and many old pieces of code have been modernized and previous features have been reworked.

Thanks once more to all testers involved!

Happy Modding, and see you very soon!

Website: http://ares.strategy-x.com/
Announcement: https://launchpad.net/ares/+announcement/14658
Download: https://launchpad.net/ares/+download
Documentation: http://ares-developers.github.io/Ares-docs/

Hello everyone! You may have notice my silence in the news for a couple of... errr.. months, perhaps. But I think that most of you know the reason: my bloody doctorate, where my situation only gets worse in terms of the schedule. Regardless of that, I am very motivated to keep this site running and increase the activity a lot once my doctorate is over. But for now, I need help to keep the news flowing.

Posting news takes a while, in order to find news to post, analyze it, figure out the most fun way to express it here, etc. Sometimes I take half an hour, sometimes I take a couple of hours. And, in my current situation, it is being hard to dedicate so much time with it.

But, of course that this place can survive without my news. Any of you (registered and non-banned members in the forum) can post a news at the Community News Forum. And if it is written in a proper way, it takes less than 30 seconds for me to promote it to a proper news post.

The forums are still quite active with development on Ares, Thyme, some hosted mods like Colony Wars, The Dawn of the Tiberium Age, Twisted Insurrection, some non-hosted projects like Arrakis Reborn, YR: WIP, RA2: New World Order, etc... There are also a couple of interesting voxels and SHPs being posted. And once in a while, OpenRA's dev blog gets some interesting updates related to the upcoming Tiberian Sun mod for it.

Outside this place, I've also heard news of a new patch for Mental Omega, a new patch for C&C Ultimate Collection from Bibber fixing another one of Origin's nasty collateral damages, a new C&C Legos movie at CNCNZ.com (which is now under the supervision of Zee Hypnotist), new patches for A Path Beyond at W3D Hub, a revamped CnC-Communications Center and a couple of updates on Contra. And that of course means that I must be missing a lot of stuff, I am pretty sure of it.

The problem is that even the task of writing this news took much more than 30 minutes, but I hope it helps us to get more support in the news front.

The first 17 seconds of the randomly selected video below shows our feelings about it. Spare us a couple of minutes to share interesting C&C and modding news by posting a topic about it at our Community News Forum. And that's it, brotherhood, unity, peace.

The OpenRA developers are pleased to finally announce playtest-20170722, the first release candidate for what will be the biggest OpenRA release in many years. Core development has focused on three areas, and they have included many other great improvements contributed by our open source community.

You'll notice the first major change before you even start the playtest: the "OpenRA" launcher is no more, and has been replaced with individual launchers for Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn, and Dune 2000. This is part of a major reorganisation of the project structure to improve backwards compatibility and modding support.

Individual mods are now launched directly from your Desktop / Application Launcher.

The in-game mod chooser has been removed, but it is still possible to switch mods when joining a server from the Multiplayer list. Even better, if you have multiple versions installed (e.g. Playtest and Release, which now install to different locations on Windows) the server list will show games from all versions, and will switch to the correct version when you try to connect.

The second focus area relates to how you control your units on the battlefield. For many years OpenRA has supported features like Attack Move, unit stances and queuing orders using hotkeys, but these have not always been obvious or intuitive to use. They have added a long-planned command bar interface for these, and made some adjustments and bug fixes to make them better and behave more like the original games.

A new bottom command bar is now available for issuing common orders and changing unit stances.

The final focus area fundamentally changes the way that buildings occupy space and receive damage, taking inspiration from the original Dune 2000, which was more advanced than the earlier (and some later!) games.

New building physics improves the way that structures are targeted and take damage.

Some of the smaller but still important new features include:

- Automatic discovery of LAN games in the Multiplayer browser.
- Improvements to the Global Chat UI.
- New search and filtering options in the Map editor.
- Another 9 campaign missions for D2K, which is now half way complete!
- Missing maps can now be installed directly from the Replay browser.
- Significant performance and memory improvements when playing music.

Please see the full changelog for information on many more improvements that we have not mentioned here.

It is now possible to search and filter actors and tiles in the map editor.

This playtest includes big changes which may have broken your favourite feature, and which have definitely affected the game balance in all three mods. This makes it more important than ever to play games on this and future playtests and let us know of any issues via our forum, our GitHub issue tracker, or in the comments below.

Don't forget, if you're on Windows or macOS you can have playtest-20170722 and release-20170527 installed at the same time, and switch between the two when joining servers with other players. So head over to our download page and give it a try!

And now for a special note to our modding community:

As OpenRA modding grew in popularity it became clear that requiring players to manually install mods on top of our OpenRA releases, with the in-game mod chooser to switch between mods, was more of a burden than a benefit. The OpenRA developers have listened to the feedback from both players and modders, and have spent the last few months working on a comprehensive solution.

They have done this by decoupling the game engine (OpenRA.Game.exe and support files) from our default mods, and have put the mod in charge. Mods now manage their own engine files, which means that they can exist alongside our official mods with no dependencies between them.

The new mod SDK provides a development environment that simplifies the engine and dependency management, and allows you to generate proper installers for players to install your game. Games built with the mod SDK will not be affected when the player upgrades or even uninstalls other OpenRA-based games.

The mod SDK is still a new project, and our documentation is still rough. They encourage modders who want to port their projects over to the SDK to file issues if you have any problems, or visit the development IRC channel (webchat) if you have any questions during european-timezone evenings.

www.openra.net

I know it has been a few years since I last talked about this mod. and I was planning on including it in the C&C Mod Spotlights, but that was only until its lead developer, Omegabolt told me he was working on an update, since the CNCnet4 was no longer working and it breaking the mod a bit.

So tonight, August 18 2017 at 18:00 GMT OmegaBolt will join me as I will do an old fashioned Pre-release Beta stream of his mod: YR Red Resurrection!
We'll have a trip down memory lane and remember why I loved this mod so much as well as showcase some new units, support powers etc.

I hope to see you all then on my channel on Twitch

^Rampastein has recently announced a new version of the Tiberian Sun Client, which for those who are not aware of it, is an upgraded Tiberian Sun with numerous interesting features. Here's the changelog:

Quote:

Version 5.38 (August 19, 2017):

Added Fan-made map "Lost Contact" (Credits: Tuc0)
Added support for multiple sides for Prerequisites and AITriggerTypes (Credits: AlexB)
Fixed several minor spawner issues (Credits: dkeeton)
Fixed several minor client issues (Credits: Rampastring)
Added OpenGL version of the client (Resources\clientogl.exe) (Credits: Rampastring)

Head for Tiberian Sun Client ModDB profile and the Tiberian Sun Client topic at PPM for more information and downloads.

A bit over a month after the previous OpenRA playtest, we are pleased to announce the new release candidate, playtest-20170902.

In addition to all the new features and improvements the previous playtest brought along, in this new playtest we fixed over 40 issues that were identified through feedback from players and modders. Among the more noticable ones were the movement stuttering that ground units were showing, air units sporadically returning to base as well as some issues with the new command bar and some other UI hiccups.

Furthermore, the Red Alert mod in particular received a larger balance overhaul, along with a new map (Agenda). "Agenda" and the updated "Great Sahara 2" now serve as examples of more prominent use of civilian 'tech' structures that provide various benefits when captured.

The new capturable civilian tech structures, displayed on the new map Agenda. Forward Command provides build space, Communications Center reveals terrain.

Tiberian Dawn balance received some further polishing as well, making bridges more robust (in particular to light weapons and flames) as well as making Orcas and rocket infantry less effective versus infantry in general.

A new version of the Mod SDK is also now available with a few improvements and bug fixes. The big new feature is the ability to automatically create installers for your mod "in the cloud". We encourage everyone who is working on mods for the last release to try out the Mod SDK and report back any issues you find or suggestions that you may have, so that we can iron out any remaining issues before the legacy oramod infrastructure is removed.

The new playtest can be downloaded here.

Just like with the last playtest, we ask you to give this a try and report any bugs or balance issues you might come across, as this will likely be the last playtest before the next release. The changelog for this playtest (as well as the previous one) can be found here: changelog

Hello,

in this community update, I will relay what's been covered in today's CNCNZ.com community update, followed by some other non-C&C news bits which may interest this audience.

The Red Alter mod team have started working after a long hiatus, and have released the source models of what they've created so far.
Kane's Wrath Reloaded (a Tiberium Wars mod despite the name) has been updated to version 1.91.
Rampastring's alternate Tiberian Sun client has been updated to version 5.40 (use 5.30, then update it manually), and now even features the missions that were exclusive to the demo.
An unofficial hotfix was released for the Zero Hour mod Shockwave, which resolves the pink Pathfinder texture on snow maps, fixes Kwai in the General's Challenge and makes Tao use his advanced nuclear silo in skirmishes and the General's Challenge. A full install of Shockwave version 1.201 is still required.
OpenRA playtest version 20170902 has been released, featuring 40 resolved issues, a balance overhaul and the new "Agenda" map for the Red Alert mod, balance tweaks for the Tiberian Dawn mod, and a new version of the Mod SDK.

And now for the rest:

The unofficial 2.02 patch for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch-king has reached release 7.0.0, featuring numerous balance fixes, bug fixes and an overhauled experience system (so much so that it has its own changelog). The Age of the Ring mod, which requires patch 2.02, has released a compatibility hotfix to prevent issues with the new version.
Kotaku UK wrote an article covering the recently released BFME1: HD Edition project by the team at Revora, even plugging the T3A:Online multiplayer service.
Petroglyph released an official update for the Steam version of Star Wars: Empire at War and its Forces of Corruption expansion, bringing their multiplayer to Steam's servers three years after GameSpy's implosion, and incorporated Steam Workshop capability. However, this makes retail and GOG versions of the game inferior, and with no ability to redeem retail keys to Steam at this time.

With the new Ares 0.E, which is just fresh out of the oven (so grab it while it is still hot!), many more IFV modes are now possible, as well as Tunnel Networks known from Generals. Another focus was on warheads: Kill Driver got CellSpread support, sonar and disabling weapon effects are also possible now, and damage can be dealt using a similar logic like the MAD Tank from The Aftermath.

There are, as always, several new minor features like half a dozen of new Veteran Abilities, a new spy effect to blow up a structure, and more. As always, the inner workings of Ares have been overhauled and some noticable performance gains will now benefit players.

There's more to come, but for now that ought to be enough.
Happy Modding, and see you later!

Website: http://ares.strategy-x.com/
Announcement: https://launchpad.net/ares/+announcement/14777
Download: https://launchpad.net/ares/+download
Documentation: http://ares-developers.github.io/Ares-docs/

With two months and two playtests behind it, the OpenRA developers are now almost ready to push the next OpenRA release!

They are today releasing one last (planned) playtest with two notable changes:

- An "Assault Move" modifier has been added to Attack Move to make units always target buildings (overriding their active stance) while attack moving.
- Music playback has been reworked to fix the pausing and skipping issues that have been reported by some players on the previous playtests.

?plus a handful of other minor fixes that are listed in the full changelog.

The Mod SDK has also been updated to use the new engine version, and to create ?portable? windows packages that do not require installation.

Hold Ctrl when issuing an Attack Move order to activate Assault Move.

This playtest will be your last chance to report any bugs or balance issues, so we encourage everybody to play a few games, and let us know of any issues via OpenRA forum, our GitHub issue tracker, or in the comments below. As usual, you can find playtest-20170923 on our download page.

After working on and off on this mod I finally have a good enough version open for the public to download.

v1.01 brings in CnCNet5 Client support among other new features thanks to the Ares DLL extension.

There is no single player capability yet but there are 4 countries playable in multiplayer; America and Germany for the Allies. China and North Korea for the Eastern Empire.

What is RotE about?
Rise of the East is a mod for Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge and was created with graphic & balance improvements, new features and playstyle variety in mind.

Balancing
- Yuri: Was flat out broken in the vanilla game and a lot of players would agree. By breaking his faction into two, one specializing in stealth/ambush and the other psionics I hope to bring balance to this faction.
- Lack of variety: Most units go unused and some units are too good to go without. RotE presents the player with units specialized at different roles and less one trick ponies.
- Weak infantry: All infantry should be useful no matter their tier requirement. They've been made cheaper and were given strengths based on role/tier. For example, Tier 2 anti-tank infantry cannot be crushed by vehicles. They've been made more susceptible to anti-infantry weapons to counter this buff.

Each country has their own unique weapons systems and support powers, the new side, Eastern Empire (or East Asia if you wish) focuses on the following:
China - Highly flammable weapons and self buffs
North Korea - Long range assault via missiles

The story
The campaign will be heavily focused on the Soviets (following the Allied victory), starting from the beginning of YR as they go back in time to stop their defeat, they go back further than necessary (no, not to kill dinos) to the day of the East Asian defeat by the Allies.. stay tuned for more.

What's to come?
The next version will have the Soviets ready to go for skirmish and multiplayer. Future versions will include a revamped client unique to the mod, new multiplayer maps, singleplayer campaign and much more.

Head over to our ModDB page for download link and changelog.

Thanks and enjoy, all feedback is appreciated.

***STATUS UPDATE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD***
C&C Tiberian Dawn Redux patch version 1.44 is now live! This patch completes the long awaited story campaign remaster with the cinematic sequences included!

Check out the latest trailer below:

After 10 years of tedious work overcoming lots of headaches to fully adapt a classic game into a modern 3D game engine,
the C&C Tiberian Dawn Redux Mod has finally completed the remastered story campaigns of the original Command & Conquer released over 20 years ago with over 30 singleplayer campaign missions and their cinematic sequences!

As seen above, when designing the existing campaign missions, a great amount of work goes into every map in order to attain the best possible accuracy and detail.
On the left is an image layout of the original C&C95 map of the respective campaign mission and then the recreated version in the Mod can be seen on the right rendered in the C&C Generals World Builder.
And yes with some clever hack and mod work utilizing World Builder scripts and the existing campaign system in Generals, the epic ending cinematics will also be included!

To conclude, I feel that anyone who is a C&C Fan and an RTS Gamer should give this Mod a serious look as I think you will be pleased with the quality of the finished product considering that
this is a still just a C&C Generals Zero Hour Mod. It has come a long way since the early days!

Check out this fantastic gameplay video courtesy of TaxOwlbear.
***WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!***

I again want to say THANK YOU to everyone in the C&C Community who has followed and contributed to this project since the beginning! As of this writing the mod is officially finished! However, I will not rule out additional releases in the future in the form of bug fixes for rebalancing or making additional bonus missions for expanding the SPEC OPS campaign.

***DOWNLOAD THE LATEST PATCH HERE***
***DOWNLOAD THE FULL CAMPAIGN CUTSCENES HERE***
***GET THE FULL VERSION OF THE MOD HERE***
Also feel free to like and follow the Mod on Facebook!

Hello everyone! Today we are celebrating the 17th anniversary from Project Perfect Mod. Actually, I'm in a situation where I do not know how I'm gonna celebrate it this time. I have a less than a month to finish the implementation of my thesis, as well as finish a full paper about it for a journal. I'm under serious trouble with that.

Anyway, it is always good to remind that PPM started as a naive idea for a new Tiberian Sun mod has evolved into a game modding (and even a game development) community that we are today. Unsurprisingly, the original mod was never finished, as you probably know already.

But don't worry. Once this bloody doctorate is gone, we'll resume to improve this place with new features, improved news coverage and much more content. Until there, be patient. Next year, we'll have a much more optimistic birthday news post. Oh... and in order to not say we have something to show you people in this birthday, you can now check the evolution of our birthday news posts since 2003 for the sake of fun.

That's it and here's the cake:

The credits for today's cake goes to this site

Thanks to everybody who reported issues with the OpenRA Playtest-20170923 last week, today we are releasing another playtest with several more fixes. Playtest 20170930 includes:

Fixed in-game map installation on Linux and Windows
Fixed a crash when using Attack Move
Fixed incorrect global chat timestamps when returning to the lobby after a match
Added RA minelayer deployment to the command-bar
Improved attack-move cursor behaviour outside the map

See the full changelog if you are interested in finding more details on these fixes, or head on over to our download page to try it out!

We believe that we have finally addressed all the major issues with the playtests, so our planned October release should be identical to this playtest. If you know of any remaining bugs that should be fixed before then, report them immediately via our forum, our GitHub issue tracker, or in the comments below.

After three months of public playtesting the OpenRA developers are pleased to finally declare ?Mission Accomplished? on the new OpenRA release! Release 20171014 makes some fundamental changes to the way that the OpenRA game engine works, plus a few similarly important gameplay changes to the default mods.

The first big change will be visible as soon as you go to launch your favourite mod. The in game mod chooser has been removed, and mods are now launched directly from your operating system. This is part of a much larger set of changes to the game engine to support multiple OpenRA installations and the new Mod SDK.

The mod chooser screen has been replaced by separate launchers for each mod.

The next big change is the new command bar at the bottom of the screen. This new UI improves discoverability for several advanced unit commands and served as a focus for several gameplay changes related to unit stances and the Attack Move command ? read through the in game button tooltips to find out more!

A new bottom command bar is now available for issuing common orders and changing unit stances.

The final group of big changes is less obvious, but just as important: the way that buildings are targeted and take damage has been reworked (taking inspiration from the original Dune 2000) to account for the size of the building footprint. This has a range of balance implications, for example Tanya and Commandos no longer need to run to the center of buildings to demolish them.

Other great new features in this release include:

- Automatic discovery of LAN games in the Multiplayer browser.
- Nine more campaign missions for D2K, which is now half way complete!
- New search and filtering options in the Map editor.
- Installing missing maps from the Replay browser.
- Improvements to the Global Chat UI.
- Significant performance and memory improvements relating to music playback.
- Community-driven balance improvements to Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn.

See the full changelog for more details, or go directly to their download page to try them out for yourself.

New building physics improves the way that structures are targeted and take damage.

Supporting the C&C modding community has always been an important goal for OpenRA, and this release takes a big, but disruptive, step forward in this area. Back in April it was announced the planned mod chooser removal, and in July they have released the first version of the OpenRA Mod SDK that replaces it. From now on, all mods should be built using the SDK, which makes it easy for you to build your own stand-alone installers that do not rely on a base OpenRA installation. See the SDK getting started wiki page for more details!

Other improvements for modders include further adoption of trait conditions, improved error checks and logging, and a collection of new and improved game logic for energy walls, tunnels, and subterranean units.

It has been a long road to this release, and we hope you enjoy it!

Hello everyone! We've been working on the Key Words feature for our forums since january 2016 to improve the organization of the content generated here. Progress has been slow on that one because my main focus is still my doctorate (and yea, that nightmare is not over yet).

One of the main milestones was the launch of search by key words in the last year. At that time, we have also coded a feature that would display forum posts with posts with certain the key words in a specific forum. But at that time, it was bugged and this is why that experience was restricted only to OS SHP Builder Documentation and Tutorials, where practically nobody posted anything anyway. During this year, we had a couple of attempts to fix it. But now we are glad to announce that this feature works. And yea, it makes our tutorials forums much more friendly.

To have a better idea of what I am talking about, take a look at the Media Hut Tutorials Forum. You'll see there topics that were posted at Media Hut Tutorials and topics from other forums with the Key Words #Tutorials #Media. We have also applied this feature to our:

- Tiberian Sun Tutorials Factory,
- Red Alert 2 Tutorials Vault,
- Generals Tutorials Warehouse,
- Command & Conquer 3 Blue Zone Tutorials,
- Red Alert 3 Red Army Tutorials,
- OS SHP Builder Documentation and Tutorials,
- Voxel Section Editor III Tutorials.

And we can now use it to start tutorial forums for other games, without being intimidating empty forums. For instance, a tutorial forum for OpenRA could start with 39 tutorials in its first day according to this old news post. Expect one soon.

Consider it our late birthday gift for this site, because the cake is never enough Wink

Ladies and gentlemen, resuming our previous news post, we are glad to announce the recently opened OpenRA Tutorials Database.

It starts fresh with 41 tutorials that may aid you to modify OpenRA, allowing you to make an interesting mod or even a game from it. Surprisingly enough, at least 12 of these tutorials were written before OpenRA has gone public. Is it a time paradox? He who commands the future, conquers the past? Actually, no. That happens because some of these tutorials were written from Red Alert 2, Tiberian Sun, some public graphics tool or they are just graphics based tutorials with tips and knowledge that may help you with certain aspects of OpenRA modding. However, OpenRA offers some challenges that our other covered games doesn't. It is a work in progress project and it may receive changes that may render some of these tutorials obsolete. If you find out that any of these tutorials are obsolete, please, warn us and, depending on how much obsolete it is, we may remove it from the OpenRA Tutorials Database.

Also, we'd like to invite everyone to post new tutorials here. It may receive feedback from our members and help many of them to improve their skills. And enjoy it!

Howdy! We have more news today and this is a good one! Two new updated programs at once. The big deal is with the newest version of Open Source HVA Builder 2.14, although Open Source Voxel Viewer 1.83 also goes as a bonus.

Ok, I know some of you might be aware that we are not talking about a state of the art version of the HVA Builder, since stucuk was working on a 2.2 work in progress version. Unfortunately, he did not distribute the source code of his version yet, so I couldn't use it. From the features of his version, 2.14 only fixes the View Transform. But it comes with its own modest set of features as well. Here's the change log:

2.14
- revisions by Banshee:
- Updated: Voxel Engine updated to 1.40.
- Added: You can now cap the rendering speed of the program up to 60 fps. It prevents it from unnecessarily burn your gpu and battery. FPS cap is enabled by default, but you can disable it in the Preferences -> Rendering Options.
- Added: You can change the palette in the Preferences -> Palette Options, using palettes from the TS and RA2 directories. The game is also determined by you, by choosing it near the Preferences in the menu.
- Bug Fix: View Transform now works correctly.
- Bug Fix: If you've downloaded the 2.13, the rendered voxel always update when you change something on the interface or on the voxel itself.
- Bug Fix: Additional memory leaks were fixed with screenshots, voxel sections and voxel views.
- Bug Fix: 360 degree animation no longer has blank frames.
- Bug Fix: A minor issue with 360 degree animation rotation has been fixed. The rotation starts after the first frame.
- Note: Despite versions 2.13 and 2.14 were coded from 2.1 the code (instead of 2.12), all features from 2.11 and 2.12 are valid for 2.14. This version does not have the features from 2.2 WIP 1 from stucuk, since its source code has never gone public.

This version also marks the first OS: HVA Builder that is in our SVN, together with OS: Voxel Viewer and Voxel Section Editor III at the same repository.

Since OS: HVA Builder shares the same Voxel Engine with OS: Voxel Viewer, we also have a quick update on the OS: Voxel Viewer itself. But, truth to be told, I don't think anyone will see any difference in this version. Except for the updated help file.

Anyway, here's OS: Voxel Viewer 1.83's change log as well:

1.83
- revisions by Banshee:
- Fixed: Rotation does not move in the first frame of a 360 degree animation.
- Improved: Updated with Voxel Engine 1.40. It eliminates a couple of memory leaks.

And now, you no longer need to apply quick patches for the OS: HVA Builder. You can grab 2.14 in a single package. OS Voxel Viewer 1.83 can be downloaded here. If you run a website, feel free to also mirror these tools there. Enjoy it!

Hello everyone! Today we are releasing new versions of two tools at once, again. Both OS: HVA Builder and OS: Voxel Viewer were updated (just in time for my birthday... err on the US Pacific Time Zone... which does not reflects my location at all). Anyway, today's features are very interesting, since both programs can be used to simulate the results of TurretOffset and PrimaryFireFLH tags (and more). Actually, much more. OS: HVA Builder was the big star of the day again and OS: Voxel Viewer has been updated as a bonus.

The current version of Open Source HVA Builder allows you to do everything that Stucuk's 2.2 work in progress version allows, except for screenshoting the whole directory, which is something that, by design, I won't add to the HVA Builder (maybe I'll add it to the OS: Voxel Viewer). Show Grid, Show Section Center, changing Palette (ok, in Preferences), Fire FLH simulation... it's all in 2.18. The other design changes was the way sections are highlighted and that default remaps are still red (I won't change it to white, in respect to other OS tools).

Here's the Open Source: HVA Builder 2.18's change log:

2.18
revisions by Banshee

- Updated: Voxel Engine updated to 1.50.
- Updated: Highlight section behavior has been overhauled. First of all, it is no longer red. Instead, it makes all other sections transparent and it also shows bounds size as a distinguishable transparent box. This option is no longer enabled by default.
- Added: Draw Grid. You can now add a transparent grid to the scene that gives you a reference of size. It works like a ground and you can even customize it by replacing GridTile.png inside Textures/Ground/ with another png file. If you want your image to repeat indefinitely, you must add Tile at the end of its name (like in GridTile.png).
- Added: Draw Section Center. You can now add another 3 axis to the scene at the center of the selection section.
- Added: Tools -> Simulators -> Turret Offset. You can now simulate the result of the TurretOffset tag used in art.ini/artfs.ini/artmd.ini in your model by playing with this option.
- Added: Tools -> Simulators -> Fire FLH Simulation and Draw FLH Bullet. You can now simulate the result of the PrimaryFireFLH, SecondaryFireFLH and other related tags used in art.ini/artfs.ini/artmd.ini in your model by playing with this option. Note that, at this moment, this tool may not work correctly with multi-sectioned bodies, like Mammoth Mark II.
- Bug Fix: Back face culling now works only in the voxel models. We?ve also fixed some lighting issues with Draw Center Lines/Draw Section Center.
- Bug Fix: Voxel Rendering engine has received several bug fixes.

Open Source: Voxel Viewer 1.84 has received a Fire FLH coordinates simulation as well and all rendering fixes from OS: HVA Builder 2.18. I think that the screenshot above says all. Here's the change log:

1.84
revisions by Banshee:

- Updated: Voxel Engine updated to 1.50.
- Added: Fire FLH Coordinates and Draw Fire FLH Bullet. You can now simulate the result of the PrimaryFireFLH, SecondaryFireFLH and other related tags used in art.ini/artfs.ini/artmd.ini in your model by playing with this option. Note that, at this moment, this tool may not work correctly with multi-sectioned bodies, like Mammoth Mark II.
- Fixed: Turret Offset is now reliable and it has been shorten to a single axis.
- Fixed: Back face culling now works only in the voxel models. We?ve also fixed some lighting issues with Draw Center Lines/Draw Section Center.
- Fixed: Voxel Rendering engine has received several bug fixes.

You can download OS: HVA Builder 2.18 and OS Voxel Viewer 1.84 here or at the left menu of this site. If you run a website, feel free to also mirror these tools there. Enjoy it!

Hello everyone!

AnNo1935, webmaster of the German Command & Conquer fansite CnCSaga.de, recently gave Twisted Insurrection some limelight with an interview.
Be sure to check out the full interview for interesting bits on our history, C&C, the community, and the release of version 0.7 Wink

Here's a snippet of the interview:

Quote:

Please tell us something about your mod, how did it all start?

Crimsonum: Twisted Insurrection was founded by Aro all the way back in 2004/2005 as a set of custom missions for Red Alert 1. In 2007 he moved the project to the Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge engine. It didn't even take a full year before he again decided to switch engines, so in late 2007 the project moved to Tiberian Sun: Firestorm, where it has remained ever since. By that point the first team had formed, they developed many elements that are still integral to the game (such as GloboTech, the Thorn creature and the Interior theatre). While our team composition has changed a lot during the years, there are still a handful who've been aboard the project since day one.

It's amazing to think back and see how Twisted Insurrection has evolved from a tiny campaign to a small mod, and finally to a huge standalone game with unique assets, factions and story.

What makes this mod special?

Erastus: I think what makes this mod special is its premise, an alternate take on C&C history where Nod won the first game, not GDI, and all the implications that come with it. We also show progression from the Tiberian Dawn era into the Twisted Insurrection era as technology transitions over the course of the first act.

Click here for the full interview on ModDB.

You can also check out the German translation on CnCSaga.de forums.

OpenRA Release 20170421

Ares 0.D is available

Requesting reinforcements...

OpenRA Playtest 20170722

YR Red Resurrection Livestream by Hecthor Doomhammer

Tiberian Sun Client 5.38

OpenRA Playtest 20170902

Community News - Early September 2017

Ares 0.E has arrived

OpenRA Playtest 20170923 now available for testing

Rise of the East v1.01 Released

Tiberian Dawn Redux Campaigns Completed! (v1.44 release)

PPM is now 17 years old!

OpenRA Playtest 20170930

OpenRA release 20171014 is here!

Key Words Update at PPM Forums: Tutorials Forums Upgraded!

OpenRA Tutorials Database is now open with 41 tutorials!

Open Source HVA Builder 2.14 has been released!

OS: HVA Builder 2.18 and OS: Voxel Viewer 1.84!

[TI] Interview by CnCSaga.de