Comments - GraionDilach

Glad you found a way to incorporate it in your mod as well. It was a great voxel and I'm still thankful you did it years ago.

Sorry, I completely missed out on this and only found it today on a completely random google search.

I do have everything regarding AS on Ares. I think I still have all the builds I ever made. This includes the 2011-2012 builds which were Whiteboy's Rules-styled unitspam.

There are some things which are missing from the story though. AS didn't die because ORA wasn't ready. The thing is - I worked on getting it ready and I had a lot of progress on that... which benefited SP the most. However I still met with heavy resistance from ORA to get my aims fulfilled which slowly but surely demotivated me to work on the project. I also have a lot of RL stuff to deal with - when I started modding, I just fell out of the university and my most free years were between 2011 and 2015... and most of those time went into MO 3.0/Ares stuff. Since December 2016, I work full time (first as a three-shift manufacturing worker then since mid-2018 as a system admin with constant standby support and oncalls and I ended up as a technical lead without having the tech skills in all fronts to back it up which is a constant pressure) which took a lot of my energy away and while I had a lot of support in the people I gathered, ultimately I couldn't offload things the way which would have been enough to keep it up.

What I'm gonna say though - AS-on-OpenRA was a LOT closer to what I envisioned about the game when I stopped working on it than AS on Ares. Both projects had a lot of issues (AS-on-Ares lacked identity, AS-on-OpenRA had a lot of issues where I tried too hard on getting one) and while I killed the project, I still feel that changing the engine was a good decision.

When I started VSH, Nolt told me he doesn't like it because the new sides are what made AS stand out and this makes VSH's limited approach very pale in comparison and I guess I can agree with him on that. In fact, nothing stops me to reiterate the Confeds today and pull them in.

I like how you brought that side up. If I think back... the Confeds benefited the most from the engine change. The Confeds in Ares were weak and gimmicky, I had to give them in-name-only scrap vehicles to give them an actual chance because YR+Ares wasn't that good on providing a GLA faction (this was prior to unit-to-promotion in Ares which wouldn't have worked for me anyways) but OpenRA provided me the framework to pull off husk pickups and abuse individual factory queues to turn prototypes into a worthwhile buildlimited factory instead of relying cheap buildable Secret Labs until you get what you wanted. It's just that... everything else was subpar. I suddenly had too many options and ran too far with them.

AS would have needed a restart at that point - it just grew past maintainable and it had too many gimmicks conflicting all over. I just ran out of the energy - and even more than a year later I still don't have those mindful moments -, to get back to the drawing board and redesign it from scratch again to cut all the unnecessary fat it gathered in it's first 5 years on ORA.

TL;DR: AS didn't died because ORA as an engine wasn't ready. That wasn't even the top reason. My feuds with the OpenRA community and my workplace sucking away my energy were the two sole reasons I stopped and even today are the two sole reasons I'm still struggling with VSH even. OpenRA as an engine would have worked - it would have been slow and have had a horrible hardware requirement but I could've accepted that tradeoff already in 2017 and still would have accepted it today.

Sure I don't. It was only today I noticed you did a post-mortem on AS even, sorry for missing out - I don't follow ModDB lately much.

Sure and can relate. Get this thing back ongoing, then deal with artwork upgrades then.

Okay, now this is beyond awesome.

A bit late response, but devtest-20200105 should resolve your AI issues. Atleast the Normal AI in that build should be more casual. Feedback is welcome.

BrianPrime also released a Soviet Underground Battle Lab in his PreRA2 dump which looks more consistent next to everything else. You should also consider switching RA2 infantry shadow to transparent.

Okay, that is a valid point. I will look into toning down the AI as part of introducing difficulty levels. The current AI is mostly closer to what I'd call as Heavy anyway. Thank you for the feedback.

Because that's how RA2 mods tend to make infiltration worthwhile.

Amusingly... that also died years later. This means the example amps are mostly gone.

Yes, the new renderers help a lot on performance. The convenient renderer setup and the additional options regarding game settings are definitely worthwhile, I give them that.

AS will go unreleased for the foreseeable future. For Valiant Shades (renamed from Valiant Hearts because an accidental name overlap with an Ubisoft game), you can see Github.com with Github.com as install instructions.

It's aliiiive. :O

Maybe after I really get there to finish the branding (it still uses the ORA RA2 logos and the generated builds have the fallback Ex icons) and have the remaining artwork limitations fixed (incorporating the YR theaters and civilian additions, because atm only vanilia RA2 ones are set up).

I don't think there would be much newsposts to spam the world with anyway since most of the things work already and the next major jump videos could showcase would be if I fix weapon firing offsets everywhere and then set up muzzles for everything (which would be really nice but kinda low priority and might even be done after a first "official" release even).

If you mean AS-as-an-engine or VH, both are released on the AS GitHub account. I'm not sure if I want to do this with either of the AS-as-a-mods (the Ares version still feels more complete gameplaywise than the ORA version, but I prolly should backport selected assets from the latter to the former if I decide to throw that one out to the open).

If this is about the assets I got/made for AS which end up unused in VH - I gave myself options to reuse most of them as tech units at worst. I guess I can review their status after VH's done.

It's true that voxel tilting logics are missing from the game (the game lacks any ways to control tilting for voxels) and they can't be used for projectile images (debris will never exist as a separate class in OpenRA though, it's just a glorified weapon - so just fire weapons instead).

I was the main programmer who provided the additional gameplay logics to Astor (and Nolt for Shattered Paradise) during their time. I indeed have access to a more advanced version of OpenRA, but that's because I write the code for it myself (currently I still maintain my codebase and add new stuff to it occasionally).

From what I've noticed, most of your effects are just debris tricks. Firing multiple weapons at the same time is completely doable in OpenRA, although RA2 Prism Tank-akin shrapnels require my additions. Lately I'm having fun with porting a good amount of VS-INI's additional tricks to ORA and there are a lot of overlaps between what Toveena did and what you're doing here.

If you'd give it a try, I tend to be available on Discord on Kerb's Mod Haven, feel free asking me there - discord.gg/k4SVuMm.

Don't want to bump a comment of yours in 2018, but...

>OpenRA has a long way to go to reach the same state as the original game, and then an even longer way to improve the graphics. I think OpenRA is for the people that care more about gameplay and balance then graphics.

Even in 2018, ORA was ahead of graphics than what TS or RA2 could dream of. It's the gameplay logics department where OpenRA lacks. The things missing from ORA compared to TS/RA2 in the graphics department are Translucent=yes (which does blending-over-time) and voxel debris/tilting. Everything else are gameplay logics. Graphicwise, ORA already got 32bit palettes (JASC32 with alpha channel officially in 2018, unofficially in 2016), multiple blending modes (mostly added during Dune2000 support), voxels rendered as 3D models (from the get-go)... so yeah. The official projects doesn't showcase the graphics department well though.

The Nukesmoke covers the entire Grizzly. I like the rest but IMO that one obstructs the view too much.

Classic rules and tournament-OpenRA rules differ too many ways to have them together within the same game as a checkbox in the skirmish settings menu. Even if it's doable, it would be a hell of a maintenance burden.

Separating them out is the best option. Since the standard rules are frozen, updating them along with the releases is relatively easier than trying to maintain everything within one complicated setup tied to a checkbox.

Most newcomers only expect the game going though and not an 1:1 rendition, since they don't remember such exact details of the balance anyway.

Sorry for late response, but...

Hungary joined the Axis because Germany was the sole major power supporting the post-Trianon revisionism mindset of the Horthy-era against the "Little Entente" of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania. Excluding Austria, pretty much all his neighbors hated the country for one way or another (mostly because Austria-Hungary was really bad at respecting minorities, like Slovaks or Romanians).

Gyula Gombos's program started in 1932-33 would have positioned Hungary into the Axis, regardless of Hitler or not.

You've missed out on a lot. Hell, all of the customvoiced Soviets are related to me in a way - either being myself or a RL friend of mine. :D

Seriously, RR has a lot better flow than MO ever did and tbh I'm glad I got involved around 1.0 or so, I think.

The Sea Sled is from CannisRules. If you want to emphasize old assets, atleast point out their sources properly. If you only know Mental Omega - then shut the hell up, MO 2.0 didn't added that many original designs.

Tell me the map and the setup. I'll record my gameplay to prove you it's absolutely doable.

And I suck. Hard. Got bad response times and can't micro for my life.

Your allied AIs won't attack back until they are fired by an enemy - they remain passive. That's a RA2YR bug and no mod could work around it. Still, you can safely defend your allies until that point with a few Pillboxes/Bunkers.

And you'll be prioritized if you're the closest to them.

I never tend to have issues with a 4v4 on Mirage Oasis for starters.

This mod is balanced through regular PvP matches. Earlygame Soviets do need more tactics and strategy involved and it is possible that the AI can't pull that off.

Still, don't call AI idiocy a matter of balance. Bigger maps help a lot to give the AI room to push through the slower startup of Soviets.

I guess I coulda try hopping in for China/GLA - but notsure if my accent fits. Refer Rise of the Reds Wolverine/Mauler/1.85 RPG Conscript and a bunch of other misc roles I had already in various RA2 mods (Red-Resurrection Bazooka/Stalin's FIst/Tupolev/Cazador, Mental Omega Mortar Quad etc.) over the years.

Oh, you got the Rampaclient working? Cool.

Tactician and Wyvern cameos blend too much into the background I feel. Rest looks good.

Do you play any CnCNet-enhanced TS/RA2 (mods)? Can you tell which renderer you use within those?

Holy moly. Best modding news of the month for sure. :)

Sorry for the late response.

There were discussions within OpenRA developers a few weeks ago to separate sound types akin how the games had with the groups with SFX/EVA notification/unit responses, but nothing grown out of that yet so far.

I'm on the other side though with unit responses - preRA2 voiceovers are too generic and boring excluding some units (RA Shock Trooper, TS cyborgs) and even some of the nongeneric sets are very terrible (TS Hijacker, RA Mechanic).

I can understand that the SP harvester can be added to the latter list, but I don't find the other sets that terrible tbh and even if we start replacing/adding voiceovers longterm, I'd still keep that one around limited to the Forg one ultimately.

The volume differences are known but we haven't came up with a definite fix yet.