Quick Community News!

Banshee

Hey guys. Damn global crisis. If taking over 50% of my money wasn't enough, it also took my job today. So, you can imagine how I'm in a very good mood right now. Anyway I'm still visiting the forums daily, but posting less news and showing up less on MSN. I have a deadline of June 23rd to finish my final graduation project. That's so far my hope to get a scholarship for a master course in my university. Unfortunately, the mission is a bit hard. I need to finish working on my technique to convert voxel models into 3D models. And I have about 3 weeks to write a whole thesis about this algorithm. If I manage to finish it, I'm sure I'll really get graduated, since I'm doing quite good on physics this time (it's about time).

So, if everything works fine with the final project, you'll see a neat feature on VXLSE III: You'll be able to preview (not export yet, sorry) your voxel files as 3D models. No, I'm not talking about a looking at a bunch of cubes, which program does for ages, and now it does it with a proper model structure. The models will look like the ones you see on Red Alert 3, with a bunch of triangles. But in the first stages, things will be a bit more simple, since I'll leave textures out of my final project and I won't optimize the faces yet (also due to lack of time). I hope one day I'll make it export models with the minimum amount of triangles and with diffuse, normal mapping and perharps bump mapping textures. It should be a rather complicated thing to code, but it's not impossible. And definitely, this feature will be much more useful on OSGIC than on VXLSE III. Anyway, this feature should make the mission of creating infantry or SHP turrets with VXLSE III much easier, don't you think?

You can view the progress HERE, replace the vxlse_iii.exe from the 1.38 installation with this one with the latest features and discuss it HERE (guest posting allowed).

Anyway, it's time to promote what's going on other C&C sites as well:

Contests:

-> Command & Conquer Communications is organizing a multiplayer map competition to the first Command & Conquer game. The rules are very simple. You need to create a map from scratch and send it until june 12th. But only one map per contestant is allowed. Regarding prizes, there is no info, but I'm sure that the winner will be a TD mapping god for a long time. Check CnC-Com forums for more information.

To start mapping for this game, use CCMap or XCC Editor.

-> At CnCRA3.Net, Godsun has announced a Red Alert 3 1vs 1 competition to be held on June 20th. This is a very simple tournament focused on casual players. You can inscribe your name on it at this topic. The winner gets 10 bucks!

New Tools:

-> Nyerguds has released a new version (1.26) of RAED, which is, as anyone can guess, a map editor for the very first Red Alert game. This new version reads maps from Aftermath. And CnC World is hosting it. Grab it there.

Community News:

-> CNCNZ has a new roundtable discussion. This time with questions posted by fans about EA's post release support, holywood celebrities, C&C game for Wii, MCV and Sidebar in a potential Generals 2, art booklet and the bonus from collectors edition games. The invited people to answer the questions were:

* Sonic - CNCNZ.com
* Luk3us - CNCNZ.com
* Lion - CNC Den
* Banshee - Project Perfect Mod
* Chickendippers - CNC World
* Blbpaws - CNC Generals World
* JohnWE - CNC-Files
* Assassin - CNC Source

And you can read this edition HERE.

-> The Official Command & Conquer site has a new episode of BattleCast Primetime. Unfortunately, it is the last one with David Silverman, who will move to Bioware.

There are other news and I might post them in a later time.