Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:45 am Post subject:
Happy 2018, from Project Perfect Mod!
Subject description: One 2018 vision, one 2018 purpose: keep the PPM Techonolgy of Peace... Through Power!
Happy new year and hello everyone! One vision, one purpose. We wish you brotherhood, unity and peace. You know that today is that time of the year, I always make a news post wishing a happy new year, reminding some good things that happened last year and our plans for the current year, which we do not expect to see it happening in full scale, but it is posted just as a some sort of a roadmap that eventually gets forgotten. So, according to our famou script, here are some of the good things that happened last year:
- We have enforced SSL support for the main PPM domains, such as the PPM Home and PPM Forums.
- OS: HVA Builder 2.18 has received a plenty of new features, such as a FLH simulator, turret offset, grid, section center, palette choice, several rendering fixes, vsync enabled and everything that 2.12 had. Its source code is now available at the SVN and its documentation is also properly updated. OS: Voxel Viewer 1.84 has also inherited some of these features, such as FLH coordinates simulation, turret offset, rendering fixes, vsync, etc. Voxel Section Editor III has received some bug changes and it has been incremented with someshortcuts.
Lin Kuei Ominae has released the Image Shaper, which is a tool that combines images and convert sequence of images into SHP files. Starkku has released the MapTool, that apply changes to tile, overlay and object data of map files of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun & Red Alert 2 based on pre-defined conversion profiles. You can use it to convert desert maps into snow or urban maps or even convert RA2 maps into TS, under certain conditions. Also, tomsons26lv has released the Westwood Color Conversion Utility, which is a RGB to HSV converter that takes into account Westwood's HSV range (255, 255, 255) instead of the traditional (360, 255, 255). Nyerguds has updated the Westwood Font Editor 1.10.5, adding transparency support for pasting images and adds the ability to save edited palettes to a new entry on an external file, among other things.
- Ares has received some upgrades in this year. The version 0.D allows additional customization to mouse cursors under several events, it also allows infantry and vehicles healing different unit types, AI players can be ordered to build a pre-determined number of specific buildings without the need of using work arounds and clones, etc... The version 0.E has brought the tunnel network feature from Generals, further customization to IFV like units, KillDriver logic has been expanded, additional warhead effects and logics were added, and much more.
- The Tiberian Sun engine has also received some reinforcements in this year with the Tiberian Sun Client 5.40 that allows you to play the Tiberian Sun demo missions in the final game, while 5.38 added support for multiple sides for Prerequisites and AITriggerTypes and an OpenGL version of the client. You can also use the C&C Executable Modifier to customize pip storage for tiberium, waste, passengers and ammo.
- OpenRA engine has advanced a lot in this year. It has started by providing new trait conditions system for a much better control over trait interactions; overhauling actor vision to support features like the RA active gap generators, D2K actors revealing themselves when attacking, and cliffs blocking vision in heightmap-enabled mods; simplified weapon definitions using inherited yaml templates; etc. Later in this year, the mod support has changed considerable to add proper support for multiples mods without deprecating them when a new version of the engine is released. It has also added a command bar at the bottom of the screen for issuing common orders and changing unit stances. There were also countless fixes in terms of gameplay, AI and so many things.
And finally, the plans for 2018. Considering that, for all these years we have been posting very long term plans, do not expect us to change much from the previous years. In fact, we do not expect to finish any of them in this year, just to move closer to this direction. So, yea, I am practically copying and pasting it from the previous years, with minor changes:
-> Re-design and modernize the main website, merging the main site with the mobile one: We plan to use modern web based design solutions to make a clean looking site that offers the current content. Furthermore, such new design should make future expansions to different topics (game development coverage) easier in a long term plan, as well as approach the content of our hosted TiberiumWeb to our own. As a bonus, this new design will remove Revora's network bar from our site.
-> Expand the site to become more popular with games beyond Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 and OpenRA scope: We are slowly adding content for other games here, but we are not getting many modders interested to discuss them in our community yet. We are already trying to change this situation by adding more content and trying to approach communities from other games. Now we can also re-use our existing content to quickly expand new subjects that can be covered here, which is something that we did recently with OpenRA.
-> Progress with VXLSE III's 3D model export feature: This is our ultimate goal to become a significant community that modifies or develops 3D games. We have many voxel assets that would be very useful in newer games if we are able to convert them. Don't expect this to be finished in 2018, since I have a doctorate to finish first and the my thesis will be used on this solution (being a small, but significant part of it).
-> Attract more high quality mods: We need fresh blood and attractive content in this place. PPM is still an attractive place to have forums to advertise your projects and it still holds a community with skilled modders and artists to improve the quality of your project in the long term.
-> Improve news coverage from other games and communities: Nowadays, we are covering news related to RTS Command & Conquer games and OpenRA, while we want this place to become a modding reference for every game. We plan a more aggressive approach to obtain news generated in this community and also from other sources. We plan to use bots to help us to collect these news and provide a quicker way to transform this information into news posts. Obviously, these news posts will still be written and revised by humans. We want to use it to increase the activity of this site and the attractiveness for game designers and user content creators that are not restricted to the universe that we cover nowadays. We expect to do that by using the RSS importing feature of this forum, the keywords feature and writing softwares to interpret the collected data and convert them into readable posts.
-> Improve the organization of our content: The News Tracker and the Key Words features are a nice way to organize the content that we may explore. Now we need to use these resources to expand the potential of this place as a good reference for game design and user content creation, as well as a good place to learn news about it. We will also improve the way we organize our key words.
And finally, I said last year that I was obligated to finish my doctorate in 2017. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and I am still doing it. However, unlike in the last year, I do not have strict deadlines to finish it (at least in a low term), although I do have financial limitations which motivates me to finish this doctorate faster. Regardless of that, I am fully committed to keep this place running and improve it. I understand that this place is important not just for me, but for many people and the modding community as a whole and I am very motivated to work on it, although I have to respect my limits as a human being. Happy new year and let's keep the party running in PPM.
Also Known As: martx Joined: 28 Oct 2016 Location: PH
Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:12 am Post subject:
Happy New Year to you as well Banshee!
Another inspiring post you have made, showing the progress of the C&C Community, but it seems that not many people like RTS Games that much, specifically dead ones, but I'm glad we're still here to give new life to the dead C&C Games, and make them much more popular than ever.
On the side note, we have a surplus of great coders but a deficit of talented or skilled artists, attracting new artists as well might be able to help the community. _________________ all my posts before 2020 were made by a 13 year-old, forgive these if you see any, thank you QUICK_EDIT
This was a big year for me in this forum _________________ If you are a MetalHead (Heavy Metal Fan) and don't want to be a metalhead, Just remove your metal ball from your head. �:p .
QUICK_EDIT
You cannot post new topics in this forum You can reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum