War Factory & Staff Changes news - Red Alert: A Path Beyond

War Factory WIP

Cuddling's finishing up the Missile Silo's various props before serious texture work begins, but has also begun laying the groundwork for the new War Factory. These are early shots of course, so they look a little empty. It's roughly 20% bigger above ground than the previous version. It is based off of the War Factory from the RA1 cutscenes of course, and will have various animated bays and equipment for constructing vehicles.

These things are sorta like small maps-within-maps. Therefore for simplicity's sake and for gameplay considerations, not all areas are directly accessible.

The War Factory will have a second floor as it does now with catwalks and overlooks, where you can find blueprints and construction logs. If you get a Spy to this location in a Soviet War Factory, you will be provided with the current list of Soviet vehicles, much like what happens currently. In the basement of the facility you will find process control equipment in the middle of a structurally vital portion of the Factory; this serves as the weak spot, an analog for the current "Master Control Terminal" system in recent versions. Blow it up, and you destroy the whole building.

Team Updates

It's time to say goodbye to some old friends. R34ch, author of Excavation, has no more time in his busy schedule to help us out and is retiring from his mapping position. With any luck, we can pick up the slack and get the couple of maps he was working on finished up. TagDaze has some recent developments at his workplace that mean he'll be out of the loop for a couple months, but hopefully he can return once that settles down.

Also, it's time to change up the testers' roster. The following testers from our current pool have resigned or been let go: Jupiter, Nimbus, Phoenixx, Chad1233, Arch, CmdrCamp, Hydra, Iamrecognized, Loyal2NES, Mammutpanzer, Nozzy, and Tibby. We're in need of 10-15 new testers, details below.

Oxi, who once managed the gameserver, ranking system, and server IRC link has come back after fooling around with Call of Duty servers for a while. Hopefully good things will come of this, because in conjunction with Reborn The Guy he's worked on a brand new system in place to do I/O-free gameserver/management interaction. This means higher server frame rates, quicker updates, and less delay surrounding map changes. Recently, a number of our playerbase helped test these changes and the system worked flawlessly, it was an amazing job.

Ackart is also back to do texture work. He's working on making the water prettier, but one of his main tasks is to work on getting texture work complete for the new buildings that will be making their way in-game eventually. Note that base defenses, which are being redone, will be put in as soon as they're completed (unlike other structures). He'll also help with some sound work.

Recruiting New Testers

We've got somewhere between 10 and 15 new tester slots we'd like to fill for Bluehell Productions. If you are interested, please register on our forums. You'll be assigned to work on both of our projects (A Path Beyond and Apocalypse Rising), and possibly whatever random stuff we're trying out at the moment.

If you feel like applying, please send me a PM on our forums with the subject "BHP Tester" or something similar so that I can easily spot it in my pile of messages. Please include your in-game name, how much time you think you can give us, what days/hours are good for you, your video card and RAM, and how good you are at the game. It's not really required but it will help if you write down why you want to be a tester or why we should take you on as a tester; this will help with "dealbreaker" situations.

Weapon Range Table

The follow table lists what are likely the final weapon range adjustments for Gamma. The balance is really shaping up now, and outranging your opponent plays a fairly large role in being successful in combat. Weapon ranges were a bit of an afterthought in older versions but we've tried to make them a bit meaningful and rational, even though it's obviously a game and not a combat sim.

Note that for ballistic weaponry, you can get more maximum range by adjusting your angle or elevation. For base defenses, listed values are the engagement range; you may still get hit if you dodge in and out of this range, making retreat against things like SAM sites trickier. Ranges given are in meters. Missing from the list are ground-zero AEO weapons which are always activated where you are (such as the Flamethrower's suicidal tank burst, or the Demolition Truck's warhead).

Note that Tanya is outranged by several Soviet infantry weapons. If you can see a Tanya, you can most likely hit her no matter what soldier you are, and try to get some points of damage in on her. Also take a look at the weapon ranges for the tanks; they've been revised and will impact "kiting" tactics. You can also obviously no longer kite a Tesla Coil with a Ranger/APC.

Final tidbit here: Weapons that actually heal a building now cannot be blocked by people standing in the way, be they friend or foe. The range is short on these but it doesn't matter much.