APB May Update! news - Red Alert: A Path Beyond

Staff News & New Work

Feuerteufel (on IRC and Teamspeak as DieDiktatur) will be joining us as a very much needed character artist. Most of our infantry are fairly ancient, and this will give us a chance to update them, add in the missing ones, replace the ones identical between the sides, and (rather importantly) make sure there is a fairly consistent style between them.

He seems very up to the task, and has already started modeling out various design concepts for the Allies, and is working on a sort of infantry design document to keep the focus right and decide how we want the teams to look. This will go together with the new arms, which are likely being re-redone by Eggman and TheBeerinator. There may be new skeleton and animations developed along the way, we'll have to see how that goes. Contrasting with our current redneck building staff, here's a couple sketches of more professional looking technicians he's done.

Main Tank Modifications

Kane000 is redoing the tanks as you know, and had a bit of free time to start working on a new version of the Medium Tank. In Gamma, it's a pretty solid tank as you'd expect. Pretty fast, pretty good traction, and its new AP shells do pretty well against Mammoth Tanks. This is very much WIP and is very prone to change.

R34ch has been making adjustments and refinements to Kane000's Light Tank as well. In Gamma it's quite an irritating unit, with a high rate of fire and a huge range of motion for its turret. It climbs hills easily and can even engage helicopters. In the backgound is a reference photo of an M24 Chaffee, which our Light is based off.

R34ch has also been adjusting the Heavy Tank a bit. Right now all three tanks are rather high compared to our usual poly counts, as we intend to generate some normal maps off of this geometry before simplifying it for in-game use. Heavies are pretty nasty in Gamma now that their shells travel much faster than before. You can hit a Ranger a lot easier.

The Rocktrap and the Moon

For lack of better name. Cuddling's been working on a small deathmatch-style map for concept purposes and to try out some new techniques that can then be moved to other levels. Reminds you almost of a miniature Canon River, which is being entirely redone if you recall.

To keep myself amused I started work on another lunar map, perhaps the second of three that could go out with Gamma. This one is a bit expanded compared to RA_Luna, which was itself a concept piece originally. The third will probably feaure moon bases but I am not that ambitious presently. This new one, uncreatvely just titled Moon, is designed entirely around the premise of "Luna but bigger!" And it is pretty big in all honesty.

Helipad revised

There's honestly not too much you can do to make the simple helipads of Red Alert more interesting, but R34ch has put in some effort and here's some WIP shots of the new helipads. They come in either Soviet (boxes of chaingun rounds) and Allied (boxes of hellfire missiles) flavor. Still not sure if we want to have multiple helipads per map, but there is a pretty simple solution for that if we decide to.

The Chronosphere

We're still working out the details (even now) of how to properly implement other superweapons; who will trigger them, how will you target them, all that. We may even adopt a system where any player can freely target once in place, no need to carry a flare over or interact with the building. But those uncertainties are no reason why we cannot make the building! Cuddling, in charge of buildings still, was finishing this up a little bit ago.

MOVIE TIME

In case the above doesn't make up for waiting for another update(I tried to put interesting content you could actually see!) here are a couple of great quality videos taken by Player1 during Gamma testing. Plus a final one from Verti60. You might notice a few things that are pretty awesome, but you may notice a few oddities or things missing. Don't get caught up on that, we're aware that Volkov's sweet new napalm canisters don't display their sweet new explosions (more on explosions below). The top one is a five minute cut of play on To the Core and Bunkers and is well worth a watch, even if you ignored the rest of this blog.

Beyond the Path

We'd like to take a moment to promote Beyond The Path, a brand new APB based machinima made by a core group of fans who hang out on our Teamspeak 3 channels. The first episode, shown below, introduces the characters and setting for the upcoming ten-part series. Please forgive the audio quality, apparently between three audio programs and Youtube there was a bit of garbling. This was a learning experience, and each successive episode has been much clearer and the video quality is more consistent. A second season is planned once the first arc is complete, so this could become a regular thing if it catches on. Check the credits at the end to know the full list of those involved, but it's a lot of our Teamspeak (ts.mp-gaming.com 9987) regulars took part, directed by our new staff member Wallywood (coincidentally hired as a sound guy after beginning work on this series).

Enjoy below, "Rise of the Reds," the second installation of Beyond the Path, continuing the story.

And here is a quick teaser they put together about the quality issues in the first couple episodes :)

SAM Site Death WIP

Cuddling's still working on buildings in addition to the map work you've seen. After making the SAM explode, he will be working on the Flame Tower, which was also recently redone and has been shown alive and killing Allies in recent blog video. This is a work in progress video.