AchromicWhite

I don't really see how that'd help very much. I'm not trying to tell people that they can't play like that, if they like it, go for it! Many of these people never come and play with the rest of the community, they're just playing friends. Fair enough. I just think there should be an intuitive way to let them know what a standard match set up, is. So that they can make a decision between the two.

I mean, at least they seem to be trying to do something? OK OK... at least we know that they're watching the backlash. https://forums.cncnz.com/topic/21461-command-conquer-rivals-to-introduce-fair-play-changes/

Wow, pretty much going for that total conversion... kinda makes me want to get back to modding. I just have a bit of other stuff to get through, first, but

Not entirely true. I remember some guys that had only been playing closed games... they finally came out of their shell but had been only playing with 9999999 credits. They'd even built their own metagame where they all just made 3 barracks at the start and pumped rocket soldiers like no tomorrow. The thing is, that's not their fault. There's no way to know how much you should maybe start with... or even there abouts. Heck, even we've argued that 10,000 MAY be too much. I agree that Bases, CTF, tiberium and crates etc are part of the game, but they're not part of a standard competitive match. Obviously CTF isn't, tiberium is just if tiberium spreads or not, and crates can literally be "oh, I got a commando with my scouting infantry, RIGHT outside your base... lol GG". That has no place in a standard match. Yes, people prefer them because they feel that they're getting more to start with (feels safer... less things to worry about early on). Newer players play defensively. They're thinking about a later time when they'll have the most beautiful base and a giant army. For those who know RTS, they know that matches really aren't like that... but that's why it's important to let people play how they like, but by still showing them that there's a clear difference between that and a standard match, and having a system that automatically sets up a standard match if/when they're ready/willing to learn.

Oh, you'll have to replace the shadow pixels with dark grey as they pass over the vehicle's flat top. Because it'll show as shadowed ground in game (like, it'll show the cell the vehicle is standing on).

Yeah, I've approached Grant with just a message to keep it in mind. Not sure if he's that interested in knowing more. It's tricky and I'm not sure who the best person to really approach and how to package the idea. Yeah, my thoughts are to just do what we can for competitive mode. In some ways we're bring true to the original idea... in that we're trying to give a fair set of maps with interesting ideas in them.

Regarding a proper competitive match system, yeah, the two big factors are settings and map. Regarding map balance... I've come to the conclusion that it's near impossible to actually balance a map, which is why I'd rather just see a map archetype system to list the maps into different categories. We'd soon find which categories suit what side better. This would not only help up to make more balanced maps, but also have us know, before a match, if one side might be a bit favoured. You could then play a few maps against someone on a range of maps to see who's better. (utilise different skills on different maps) Sep. Helipads just changes if the helis start on the pads when built, or if you build them separately. Because multiple pads makes them build faster, it usually doesn't make much difference... but it does mean that you can make just a pad and a transport, rather than needing to have spend money on the fighter, before making a transport. I think people can just choose how they like it, I don't see it as an issue either way. I think the new cargo plane is fine. If we wanted to officially go back to the original than we should play low resolution and only play WW maps... etc. I'm never conservative for the sake of being conservative; I try to go with what will give the best results. I did actually think about someone who might put the money lower when there opponent didn't realise... it could be an issue. I actually originally thought to just lock this at 10,000, but when I did a discussion on it, a couple of people said that they liked the idea of playing 7000 etc. It might be true that lower than 10,000 might work better. IDK. Maybe it should be locked at 10,000. It's a tricky one. The original client allowed 0-9999 credits. I thought that now allowing less than 5000 would probably be about right. Yeah, I usually have to be the maker of a match to get it set up right. Nice to see someone having a crack at TD. It's a cool game... more diverse than RA1, IMO.

Yeah, so the idea is that you'd only be able to change credits and sep. helipad. The rest would not be changed in a standard match. As it stands, you can just turn the credits up to 99999 turn on crates and Cap the Flag and whatever. You can just make a mess of it if you don't know what you're doing. Which is fine for having some sort of friendly sandbox mode... but as soon as you want a match with some integrity, it's just a mess.

Yep, if some paths were blocked with Tib, that indeed could make for an interesting choice for strategy in certain areas. It's worth noting that Nod uses almost all light vehicles for attack, while GDI almost always has accompanying infantry. So while having some areas blocked off can create certain advantages for Nod, if the whole map is covered, it just stops GDI from attacking. Yeah, I don't see it hurting anything. And I'd be happy to continue seeing how it changes the match environment and evolve it/revoke it if issues came up. How do you mean? Lobbies don't have locked options, but because there's nothing to show the difference between how a standard match plays vs a sandbox game, people trying to learn often just turn them all on etc.

Well I think we could have somewhere in forum where maps are submitted to be used in standard matches (or competitive, or however we want to name it). We make sure that there's a clear list of what the map must have and what it can't have (terrain needs to graphically fit together etc, no mass tib blocking attack paths etc), and then have a team of people who figure out it's archetype. If it passes the test, it then receives it's archetype and is placed into the official list of standard maps. If you start a "standard" match in lobby, you're given a list of all the maps (their archetype stated), and you can search for them through archetypes and/or by name. The settings are mostly locked: Unit count: 0 Credits: 5000-10000 (optional) Bases: on Tiberium: on Crates: off Separate helipad: optional Cap the Flag: off MCV redeploy: off You could even set up a system to find a random map. Which could make tournament style matches pretty interesting.

Well I talked about this when I drew up ideas regarding map standards. The hardest part was getting people to actually respond to the threads in detail. I even wrote up a questionnaire to quickly gather data on what the community thought... but no one wanted to fill it out. https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/8483-tournament-map-standards-and-variables/

I think you could always click links that are shared in CnCNet, both within the chat windows and the main lobby. The client even gives the website name when you enter a link.

Well, that's the thing. We can't get rid of the maps... but then, if people enjoy them, and that's what they want to play; why stop them? This isn't about telling people how to play, it's about explaining the difference between a sandbox styled game and well designed environment for a match. There needs to be an intuitive (not explained in words, but something they can just see i front of them) way for people to see the difference between the two, so that they can choose. As it stands, there's no way for them to see the difference.

Oh, there WERE some videos there, but it would seem that the channels that they were both on are now gone. I think they were Ferret's old twitch and youtube accounts. The balance, at least asymmetrically, was done pretty lazily by me, so I'd like to rethink that out. Some of it's tricky, because the depth of modding ability was enhanced by a program called ARDA, which no longer works with this version of CnCNet. So I have to rethink some areas, too.

Oh yeah, how could I forget.

Well, if you were around during the WWchat days at all, you'll know that there was only a few options to change and maps you could choose from. Units could only go up to 12 with bases on, and you could only have 9999 credits etc. Now, we can not only have as many credits as we like and as many units as we like, we can have a re-deployable MCV and any maps we chuck together. This is fine, in a sense that there's just more options and we can choose to play how we like, but regarding any competitive play, the standard for what a normal match looks like is getting increasingly blurred. Not TOO bad if you were around in the WWChat days and know the limits for these things; you just set up the game as you know it should be, but if you don't... Then you end up starting with too much money (helipads WITH a helicopter build VERY fast and so you can just spam then right at the start of the game), and on a map with too much tiberium (obviously troops can't go walking int he green crystals, so this messes up unit movements). Can make for a laugh, but if you're new, then you'll think that this is the actual game... Yet it them just feels like a mod. There's no space in an environment like that to learn and improve, so naturally, people just think that the game is dumb and just leave. Which is sad, because 20 years after it's release, we're still pushing the tactical limits of the game. Now, we might think that a quick fix would be to just have a norm game be using only the WW maps and WW original settings, but some of them are quite bad. Crates almost always make the victor by whom finds good crates, and many of the WW maps are simply not that well balanced. Our whole community has made some fantastic maps that allow for a range of tactics and help to bring more balance to the game, where the designers failed a little. I've written a comprehensive map design thread here: https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/8062-understanding-map-design/ While maps are almost impossible to completely balance, we can help to make them somewhat more balanced and at least place standards on them, like NOT having tiberium everywhere. For maps that have all the standards that we might like, we could them simply have an archetype system to file the different types of maps, and make sure that we have a good variety. I've made a thread on this in the past: https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/7108-map-archetypes/ By having these systems be an obvious way to set up a match, we could help new people to learn and increase the player base. It's also important to keep the more sandbox version where you can make the game any way you want, as there are people who come in frequently and enjoy that, too.

Yeah, this mod is pretty old now. It doesn't even run of the current version of CnCNet. I should really get around to remaking it for the new version and pumping some maps for it... it wouldn't be TOO hard but it would take a good streak of dedication to get it up and running again. Could be worth it as all the new graphics I did for it were pretty good, and I've made even more graphical assets that I could use in it, since then.

Neat! The only part I'd really criticise would be the choice of that light grey for the flat top of the truck, as it blocks some of the details of the turret (the colours merge). You could either change the colour, or add shadow as the turret rotates, to fix that issue.

And that's the thing... nothing seems to move them. I think they genuinely don't understand how much of a problem it is. I'm convinced that we DO lose a lot of players because of this issue. I just don't know how to tell them. The last time we had this issue we had a "advanced AI" option, that made harvesters chase bikes. It was hell... I pretty much had to harass funky to get him to change just THAT. God knows what I have to do to get them to see that this is a serious problem that's hurting not only the integrity of the game, but more importantly, it's hurting the ability for new players that want to be competitive from having a fun time.

I've talked about this so many times, and I just keep finding these people. The last guy I played wasn't even that new. I've seen him around here for at LEAST a year, maybe more. Yet not only can he make almost no progress, he's only just learning how to set up a match. If a game you play is that unstable, why would you continue to play the game? We'll just be losing players to other games while we don't have a feature for standard play. Part of the issue with having a standard play mode is that it's almost impossible to get a consensus on what it should look like, but even if we can get MOST of something like that up and running, it'll give an idea of how the game should be played... even if people don't like all of the features of a standard mode and go back to sand box set up and just copy MOST of what's in a standard mode (change the parts they didn't like), that'll help to bring some stability. After I had this match, I did explain to him that starting with too many credits messes up the game, and that the original designers capped it at 10,000. And I gave him and rematch and a good chunk of advice to get him going. Thing is... I shouldn't have to do that just to get someone STARTED. They should be able to start themselves though an intuitive system. What will it take to get a standard game mode for C&C?? Tell me, I'm willing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuhOsK-uGMU&feature=youtu.be

It's possible that RA1's graphics were more rushed... given that TS was already underway. C&C took off pretty quickly, the wait between even C&C1 and RA1 was too long, and WW had to pump out CovOps to keep people happy in the meantime. There are also unused animations of the Chronosphere, Iron Curtain and the airfield, which can be seen in the SHP files for the structures.

Wow, I've never seen something like that, that's really cool!

O.O wow, I didn't know anything about that. Sorry to hear. I think RA1, as an engine, was a pretty cool thing.

Yeah, the silos feel about right... I'm kinda happy that I whined and made you give the silos a bit more efficiency. It drove me a bit nuts, before that. Your mod is now more stable, I kinda doubt you'll make any more massive changes to unit stats, so it makes more sense to write that up now, rather than when it was less stable and stuff was being changed all the time. The only thing I remember being maybe too strong was the flyers. But it could just be that we don't know timings and such.

That's a good point. I kinda always thought that TS would have been more interesting if they'd just said that Nod won the first war and like, shot the white house with the Ion, or whatever.