Category Archives: Modding

More RoN modding.

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

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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Tinkle Tinkle Poop Plop

I couldn’t think of a title that wasn’t trite, so enjoy the quote from Beavis. On to business…

I’ve been playing a lot of CS: Condition Zero lately. I flip flop between the botmatches and “Deleted Scenes”, but of course the botmatches are the most fun. The old models suck, though, so I replaced them with some of my better downloaded ones. Just my luck, they didn’t work right. I spent the last two weeks figuring out how to fix them, though. In the course, I devised two methods of upgrading the models to CZ standard, one of which I wrote a program for in VB. As I believe other CZ players will have this problem, I wrote a guide to upgrading CS models. It can be found here.

Other than that, there have been no other updates. Some Columns are still in limbo currently. Given the end of the semester for college and the end of my relationship with Beckie as well as my lack of acquiring a job, I’ll unfortunately have a lot of free time, now 😕 . At least the site will get some upgrades, perhaps even a new graphics set soon. Although, in the gloom of my current love life, the bloody walls are strangely tranquil. Which reminds me: Gandalf and I have recently blogged on our mixed pool of emotions and thoughts. Enjoy.

Peace. Fuck you. Whatever.

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Give your GTA3 some Snake.

I just finished a skin of myself for Grand Theft Auto 3 because I was tired of playing as someone who looked like a mute, ignorant, long-time crack addict. It looks snake, it looks like a pro; a middle-class cracker with brains. So, if you’re tired of playing with the crackhead, give Snake a try. Notice the classic, blue coat, the airwalks, typical jeans, glasses, and skin so white that you know this cracker has been playing GTA3 all week. Linkage. Screenage:

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Snow and Snipers

I’m a little late with the news of our glorious snow and ice, but consider this a postscript to that. I have uploaded the new video of the snow, for all of you broadband people. It has decent quality, because I used the DivX codec for video and MP3 for the audio (the background track skips, though; dunno why). Thing is, I recorded all three scenes during the night, and the camera didn’t pick it up quite that well. Still, it is just as good of a video as my last one. Download it with the pictures below before I have to delete it (14MB is a crunch on the 200MB of the server).

And now a followup on some even older news. Sniper, a scenario for SC: Brood War, has been uploaded. It is still not complete, but I have done some trigger adjustments, more balancing, and included documentation (with a walkthrough). I’m going to design the last objective, and then do some post production stuff, like a script which Que and I could read off, some other sound effect, intro vocals with Loogie (the dropship), outro with Bleys (the Battlecruiser), and all the sequencing for the aforementioned. So far, I’ve worked on this scenario about 30 hours, most of which was spent balancing the gameplay and figuring out how to make the best of triggers. One set of triggers that I did fix today were the ones for resource gain from kills. Now, all kills are used, as before if you nuked 8 guys at once, you wouldn’t get any resources from that. Linkage. Screenage:

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And if you still haven’t…

Then here’s some more screenies to convince you of the uber asskicking that jDoom is. In part because of my Flat and DED Mod pack, which you can grab here. This is a monumental release as I have finally reflatted (yes, I made that word up) the entire E1M1. There are 30 flats in all (including the 3 that make up the new 512×512 NUKAGE flat) and 2 add-ons for KickStart beta 7 that will add nifty fog and nukage fumes. SCREENAGE:

And boom. “When will the jDoom news end?”, you ask? When Jaakko stops updating or Doom3 comes out.

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