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Red Alert 2 is one of the most enjoyable games that I've played, the engine is really smooth and the gameplay feels fast and accurate, but limited most of the time (palettes, tiles, features, performance, and more). after all, this game is a good engine for modding, and this mod wants to go to the limits of the engine with realistic combats and graphically memorable.
Current Ion Storm [WIP]
Visually RA2 uses a memorable style but not a serious style as Tiberian Sun, GC wants to emulate the style of TS.
Global Crisis has changed a lot of times, evolving and improving the quality, that is one of the reasons why this mod is taking a long time, and here we can compare one of the first versions with the current one.
One of the main changes was the composition colors and design of environments (artistic direction), using just sprites instead of another kind of graphics (as voxels).
The first image is the voxel without render (not in-game) looks cool but can't compare with a sprite that use can emulate materials and can use anti-aliasing, Of course, the sprite has better quality (depends on the quality of the render). Voxels works as 3d objects in-game can use physics, recoil, and tilt with the terrain and more, but limited.
The Voxel version is really good in-game anyway but takes more time to make (most of the time painting manually textures and normals) and the result depends on how the engine renders it (most of the time the light is wrong).
we can compare two ages, when the project was trying to use voxels and how they look now as sprites.
-Some stuff is still [WIP]
3ds Max was the main program used for the projects; modeling and rendering everything, including cameos, FFX, and more, no plans to use Blender in the future because I think that I don't have enough time to learn everything again...
This one shows the next Russian tank in-game KURGANETS-25, this one was modeling almost for complete, sometimes I use free models of the community (like almost all civilian vehicles).
One of the most recent changes in the project is all the effects and animations; explosions, particles, clouds, and environment details. and yes, using 3ds max for it, probably the explosions is one of the most demanding rendering it, and making explosions as sprites without alpha channel was a nightmare all those years.
Environmental events are iconic on apocalyptic games, as Tiberian Sun, GC is testing some events like Ion Storms, SandStorm, Rain, cloudy, and more future ideas.
CnC Launcher makes everything more easily, now is possible to mix all those events at the same time on any chosen map.
plus Reshade:
All explosions will be redone, but still take time, for now, the results looks realistic with some tricks and the fix of code of the game (Apollo's fix). the combat feels more realistic at this point, frow now those explosions are WIP (too big).
Cities and civilian stuff always have important for this project, more realist the project is using real-life buildings using Graphisoft Archicad (architecture program), and the results are incredible.
-City in yellow zone
Tell the history of this world need a lot of ruins and Tiberium, here are some of those ruins that were made with simulations and architecture programs.
-Red zone
After a long time... Russia is here ready for the battle, with some iconic units (t-14 armada, Pantsir, Buratino, Scud launcher, and more).
Russia still needs a lot of work with its buildings and the infantry but is almost done.
Please don't take this as a political issue, this was planned at the start of the project (2012)
-Russian army
-USA base
Here is a detailed image with a US military base under the Ion Storm, here you can see the size of some sprites and the effects that are putting the engine at the limit.
-Ion Storm [WIP]
Sound in games are really immersive, so here are some examples of the sounds in-game
-Ruins and rain
That is all for now, next update will be about how complex is to create a new unit, and the final presentation of the two main factions; Russia and the USA.
-SCIPCION.