More RoN modding.

Posted on January 24, 2005 by Snake

I’m frequently amazed at how half-assed the modability of RoN is. Nevertheless, I’ve been continuing to work on the new mapstyles. The count so far is 5, but I’m not totally in love with the Wasteland style. I changed it a bit and added Wasteland2, though, which is totally bitchin. I’m not out of ideas yet, just don’t have the time to test and build all the styles. But here is a collage of the 3 newest styles I’ve done: The aforementioned Wasteland2 (each player is surrounded by mountains and the only trees are inside of this wall of mountians), Sea Wall (just about the best you can do with cliffs and water, based on “East meets West”), and Black Forest (based on the AoK style by the same name; besides player and random clearings, there are only trees with very tight, maze-like paths). Anyways, check out the screenshot for a better idea.

I’ve also been working on my Uber Resources mod again. Following a tip from someone in the community, I’ve begun perfecting methods to include the T&P CTW rares in games. The part that sucks is that the rares have to be included in every mapstyle 😕 . Although I was told they could be added to the default style, I found this to not work. The only thing that really sucks ass is making graphics for the new rares. As far as I know, there’s no way to include animated models for the animal resources (huskies, cattle), so they’ll have to be static. I was almost done with an olive orchard the other day for olive oil but then fucking psp crashed 😡 😡 😡 and I didn’t have the autosave option on. I was so fucking pissed. There were a dozen layers of work that I totally lost. GRRR. I’ll redo the entire thing some other time. Here’s a screenshot of the gold rare, though.

And Marcus and I blogged. Enjoy.

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Demo Review and RoN

Posted on January 17, 2005 by Snake

There’s right, after at least a year of no new demo reviews, I have finally added a review for Act of War. If you like commando games and C&C, you’ll have to check this one out here. Also, anyone that’s interested in demo reviewing can email me about it. It’s a shame that my demoboard system doesn’t see much use.

I released a minor bug-fix version of RoN Script Maker the other day. I fucked up royally with the Object Stats saving and loading 😕 , but it’s fixed here. I don’t think I’ll post on the RoN Heaven forum about RSM anymore, so I’ll just stick the last changelog additions below. I’m already working on another minor release that will have a few fixes, hopefully (finally) resizing of the app, and add craft max to the Object Stats (for generals, scouts, etc).

Changed in 0.9.27:
-fixed a little annoyance when setting up the script list after a save causing the loaded script to be unselected
-fixed a bug where the object stats in the RSM save file were not cleared before saving again. this caused changes to be appended and unremovable.
-email links in the about tab now get my current email address from s–l.com. should still open your default email app (tested with outlook), but also leaves a blank browser window open (tested with ie).

In other RoN news, I’m working on a new area of mod development: Map Styles. As far as I know, nobody has really touched on this in the community. I’ve been getting tired of the old styles, so I plan on modifying all the originals and releasing a pack that will install and swap in and out the mod with the originals. There are 4 main drawbacks to developing map styles, though. One is they can’t be loaded like a mod (they must be loaded on game opening, when it reads the internal_strings.xml file). Second is they can’t be added to the list of styles (making the swapping necessary). Third is the lack of documentation on map styles (except for a few xml comments). Finally, the game retains some elements of map generation (mainly water placement), however trees, rivers, tileset, mountains, rocks, fish, ruins, and rares are all fully editable. It’s a pain, but it’ll be worth it :) . As you can see from the following screenshot, I’ve already composed two new styles: Island of Eden and Wasteland.

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playing games and stuff

Posted on December 29, 2004 by Snake

I haven’t had as much time to work on the site and apps and such as I’d planned because I was given Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 for Christmas. The former I just finished yesterday after an unexpected and rather uninspired ending. I have much criticism of HL2 and it just doesn’t deserve the 98% from PCG and unpresidented 11/10 from MaxPC. First off, my biggest gripe is Steam. It works on the assumption that you will only be playing games from Valve and have a broadband connection. It’s also a huge annoyance for its new piracy measures. Not only did I have to copy everything from 5 discs, but I then had to sign up for Steam, decrypt the entire 4GB of data, download critical parts of the engine, and then download the latest update. Five hours later, I actually got to load HL2. It takes a while to load, and I’m afflicted with some kind of bug that causes the game to hang while loading after roughly 15 to 20 loads (quickloads and new area loads). It also wasn’t that fun of a game. After the first few hours of “woah, check out this engine!”, the gameplay gets rather unexciting. There’s nothing you haven’t seen before. It only looks better. Then there’s only half the number of weapons that HL had, a weak plot, and unclear mission objectives. I had the feeling a number of times that I was just wandering through the linear maze of a level and shooting things without a purpose. However, there are a few isolated cool scenes in the game. One being the Tremors/Starship Troopers “Ant Lions” chapter. Some of the squad stuff was also fun. While HL2 may look absolutely stunning, it plays rather lame.

I just installed Doom 3 today. I was initially put off by the fact that Doom 3 doesn’t like to run when Daemon is installed. I immediately went for a NoCD that fixed it right up. These game developers and publishers are going too far with the piracy protection. It’s almost a pain to be legit these days. That aside, Doom 3 is quite impressive. It sure did scare the shit out of me when the accident happened and the guy right next to me became a zombie. However technologically advanced, it still feels reminiscent of Doom.

And because you never have too many screenshots:

Now for the real news. LOL. 😉 I fixed the email script and there’s a new major beta release of the RoN Script Maker. It now comes in two flavors: Full Version and Lite Version. The difference being that Full has an installer/uninstaller, makes start menu shortcuts, and installs necessary redistributables (hard ass word to spell and type).

So that’s the news. 8)

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Well, everything is just booming into place.

Posted on December 18, 2004 by Snake

Except the mail script I mentioned a few posts ago…I broke that unfortunately. I was trying to add multiple mailto addresses and, like a ret, overwrote the working script testing the new one. I’ll fix it one of these days.

Newegg and Fedex are just amazing. In just two days, I received my new stick of RAM–during the holiday season no less. It installed perfectly :) . I’m doing Dual-Channel now with an obvious speed boost :) . Rise of Nations is down from a couple minutes to unload to like 15 seconds 8) . That’s mostly to do with the fact that I doubled my RAM amount to 512. The system feels so smooth now…so relieved. It’s like taking one of those huge shits that just plops right out 😛 . Screenage:

The RoN Script Maker is coming along nicely. Actually, I only just started back working on it today. I completed one of the more daunting tasks, though, and with relative ease. I programmed RSM to read the unitrules.xml file for all the default unit settings so I’ll have some default values to work with in the unit stat script functions. I was actually surprised at how well Microsoft implements and supports XML. It also seems rather proliferated–should be good for older OSes. Tomorrow, I suspect I’ll write an editor for the unit stats and then saving and compiling routines. Here’s an alpha build screenshot:

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Another Column

Posted on November 27, 2004 by Snake

I’ve started a Column today comparing Yahoo! Personals to Match.com in a head-to-head style. The way I designed the page make me feel like I’m calling state electoral votes for a presidential election. You’ll have to see for yourself to understand. The Column is located here. Make your bets as to whether or not I finish this one 😕 . Over Christmas, I swear I’ll finish my VB Apps Column and this one 😛 .

And doodilidoo…back to my term paper.

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Working on term paper…

Posted on November 24, 2004 by Snake

Just felt like a pictorial update. Additionally, I blogged. So boom.

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