Dawn of the Tiberium Age Version 11

Prepare for battle, Commanders! A major update for DTA has arrived, and it includes our new Advanced AI! Check out its trailer below!





Advanced AI is a new game option that entirely replaces the base-building logic of the original TS AI engine. To list some of its features, the new AI:

• dynamically base-crawls towards Tiberium and Ore fields, places refineries near them, and so harvests the map much more efficiently
  
• builds multiple factories when its economy allows it to produce units at a faster pace
  
• places defenses towards the direction where its enemy is, instead of randomly placing defenses everywhere like the original AI did
  
• considers proximity to an enemy when placing down buildings; for example, super-weapon buildings and helipads it tries to place far away from its opponent, so those buildings are harder to destroy
  
• cheats less: because the AI plays smarter, we found it can be a challenge even with reduced monetary cheats!

These changes make the AI much more interesting and fun to play against, especially on big maps with lots of resources to harvest!



The Advanced AI checks the direction of its enemy when placing down defenses, which often makes it build formidable defensive lines.


QoL Improvements

The new AI is far from the only improvement in version 11. There's also a bunch of bug fixes, balance changes, and QoL updates! There are too many of them to list individually in this news, but we'll highlight one specific item.



The message list, usually shown top-left, is now instead drawn at the bottom-left of the screen, like in most modern RTS games. The top-left message interface simply doesn't scale very well to modern widescreen displays. There is, however, a toggle for this in the client if you prefer the classic behavior.


New multiplayer maps

Like almost all DTA updates, version 11 also comes with new multiplayer maps! Some older maps have also been remade as improved versions.



New version of [2] Field by Chronoseth. The similarly named C&C Renegade map was converted into RTS form.



[3] Top o' the Hill, from Yuri's Revenge, remade for DTA by Chronoseth



[6] Cool Down by BaghiraRTS



[6] Stormy Valley, from Tiberian Sun, remade for DTA by Rampastring



[8] Red Mountain by Rampastring



[8] Arctic Circle, from Red Alert 2, brought to DTA by Chronoseth


Stability fixes

Anyone who has ever played Tiberian Sun or its derivatives knows that the engine has historically suffered from severe instability-causing bugs.

Co-Op Multiplayer has been particularly problematic. When playing against AIs, many players have sometimes seen a "Synchronization error!" (also known as "Reconnection error") dialog stop their game. These sync errors have been very hard to debug and figure out, but we've finally made progress and managed to reduce these errors by a significant number.




The dialog above has been significantly less common for us while testing DTA v11 compared to earlier versions.

In addition to fixing desyncs, we also fixed one AI-related bug that could sometimes cause random crashes.

Change Log and Downloads

For more detailed information about changes in DTA version 11, check the full changelog.

As usual, if you have DTA installed already, you can fetch the update by using the client's updater.

Otherwise, you can download DTA from our Downloads page here at ModDB.

We've had great fun playing Skirmish and Co-Op against the new AI, and we hope you will also enjoy it to at least the same degree. See you on the battlefield, Commanders!

Version 11.0.0:
Released: Oct 28, 2023

• Added: The "Advanced AI" game option.
  
• Added: A top-half-snow/bottom-half-winter cliff tile set (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Added: New multiplayer maps:
  - Cool Down (Credits: BaghiraRTS)
  - Stormy Valley (Credits: Rampastring)
  - Red Mountain (Credits: Rampastring)
  - Top o' the Hill (Credits: Chronoseth)
  
• Added: Transitions to allow the "Autumn Grass" terrain to be placed on snow (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Added: Rough Snow Ground (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Changed: In-game messages are now drawn at the bottom-left of the screen instead of the top-left.
  
• Changed: Naval units can now be built in classic mode (these are identical to enhanced mode).
  
• Changed: The appearance of Tiberium on snow maps has been improved (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Changed: The "Field" multiplayer map has been remade from scratch and expanded (Credits: Chronoseth).
  
• Changed: The "Arctic Circle" multiplayer map has been remade from scratch to more resemble the RA2 map it's based on (Credits: Chronoseth).
  
• Changed: Winter terrain was added to some areas of the "Trinity" multiplayer map (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Changed: Machine guns and Gatling guns can no longer destroy walls.
  
• Changed: The volume of the credit up and down tick sounds has been lowered by 25% and 40%, respectively.
  
• Changed: Silos now have wood armor instead of heavy armor.
  
• Changed: The build range for land mines has been reduced from 15 cells to 10.
  
• Changed: You can no longer base-crawl with anti-air defense structures.
  
• Changed: Various improvements (balance, build space, map details and lighting) have been made to the "Tower of Power" multiplayer map (Credits: Chronoseth).
  
• Changed: Various improvements (balance, map details, lighting, and triggers) have been made to the "Death Valley" multiplayer map (Credits: Chronoseth).
  
• Changed: The CnC-DDRAW renderer was updated from version 4.4.6.0 to 5.7.0.0 (Credits: FunkyFr3sh).
  
• Changed: You can no longer build Soviet Flamethrower Infantry, Chem Warriors, or Shock Troopers in the "Scavenger" game mode.
  
• Changed: The bridges on "Forest of Fear" were made wider (Credits: Rampastring).
  
• Changed: Oil Refineries now use light armor instead of wood, making them less vulnerable to artillery units.
  
• Changed: Flame Tanks are now more responsive while attacking (Credits: AyleeJenn).
  
• Fixed: Synchronization errors are significantly less likely to occur now (Credits: Rampastring).
  
• Fixed: The game could sometimes crash when an AI player ran out of money and had no harvesters left.
  
• Fixed: The game only used a single CPU thread (unless you used the ts-ddraw renderer).
  
• Fixed: The "[Terrain] DTA Temperate -> Winter" conversion profile for MapTool caused maps to become corrupted when there were fords present on the map.
  
• Fixed: Groups of friendly MIGs could damage or destroy one another while attacking targets at certain angles.
  
• Fixed: Auto-saving would stop working for a while after restarting a singleplayer mission (Credits: Rampastring).
  
• Fixed: Civilian units or defensive structures attacked their own walls on these maps (Credits: Bittah Commander):
  - City in Conflict
  - Far Harbor
  - Frosty Lake
  - Frozen Bay
  - Island Conquest
  - Island Raiders
  - Tiber
  - Trinity
  
• Fixed: The Chrono Tank in combat mode had some pixels that appeared to glow on maps with dark lighting (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Fixed: The ORCA and Longbow's elite weapon's missiles moved slower than the missiles of their regular weapon.
  
• Fixed: The Soviet SAM Site's base overlapped infantry and tall vehicles that moved along its bottom (Credits: Bittah Commander).
  
• Fixed: Units were able to move through tree groups and large bushes on the "Forgotten Forests" multiplayer map.
  
• Fixed: The AI's Tesla Coils used heavy armor instead of light armor.
  
• Fixed: A potential crash in the "Bunny Lockdown" Co-Op mission.
  
• Fixed: You can no longer build on the edges of ice LATs.
  
• Fixed: Individual gems will no longer grow over time.
  
• Fixed: A swamp in "Extreme Marshlands" was accessible to vehicles when certain terrain objects had been destroyed (Credits: Rampastring).
  
• Removed: The "Extreme AI" game option.

Version 11.0.1:
Released: Oct 29, 2023

• Fixed: The Submarine Pen wasn't buildable when playing as the Soviets with ships enabled.