Command & Conquer: Dawn of Tomorrow teaser thread

[Kilkakon]

Extracting the frames of the original in the first place. :O I right clicked and exported as PNG (as that's what Red Horizon wanted) and got the wrong colours. But it is easily fixed, I just have to go through my now PCX files and reimport palettes.

[Nyerguds]

Peculiar. Don't all these CPS files have internal palettes?

[Kilkakon]

Yup. Still not sure how it went wrong. If I compare my animation to the original one, like all the teals for the landscape are darker in the original, and a few of the cloud pixels are black in the original, so I get black splotches.

 

For this one I'm fine using the original palette but for the next one I'll need to learn how to change the palette properly.

[Nyerguds]

Well, if you got trouble getting the original palette out, you can always just take a screenshot ingame with cnc-ddraw. That should get you an image containing the right palette.

[AchromicWhite]

I'll also pop in and say;

OMG that is completely amazing!

[Kilkakon]

As far as these compliments go, keep 'em coming! :yo: Good to have some hype as I try to knock this mod out of the ball park in a month! I've got some time tonight so I'll have a crack at the colouration I think for the campaign itself. I won't give spoilers though, so you'll only see the "before the world goes to pot" world map

 

...that Commando line doesn't actually work as my mod doesn't have the commando XD Whoops.

 

 

[Kilkakon]

With all the technical problems I've had with the campaign map, time for a bit of dialogue!

 

 

What do you think about the idea of the tear gas tanks being buildable? They have the standard chemical spray weapon (in classic C&C terms) with double shot. Would this be balanced? Should it be slower than the Flame Tank? More expensive? Your comments are welcome If it's not going to mesh well it can stay as a non-buildable hero unit like the Recon Rover, so no biggie either way :laugh:

 

The regular Flame Tank is better in this mod due to less anti-tank in general and is $700.

 

As a fun note, the map pictured was started by me and then taken up to 11 by MattAttack purely because he wanted to!

[MattAttack]

heh heh, it's so hard not to spoil what's going to happen next in this picture..... Guess you all will have to play the mod   Although another instance where that c-17 in the place of "allow win" would've been handy had I realized before I constructed the house of cards that is the script!

 

As far as the tear gas tank goes, if it's little to no effort to make it buildable then why not? It's not like it's super OP or anything.  Although personally as Japan I like to spend all of my money on tank hunters.  I love those little buggers!

[AchromicWhite]

It should be fine, chem spray is pretty similar to flame. If you feel the attack is a bit OP, just nerf the health or up the price a bit. Single player is usually fine in that way.

[Kilkakon]

Time for an update! Bam! Had a bit of a delay due to getting mopey but not having enough cuteness in my life as well as the whole wsa thing just not working out at this stage. That means the campaign map is still not ingame! I will do my best to try and get things going and provide Blade with some more information after this post.

 

I decided to go ahead with the Tear-gas Tank and put it into the game! But of course for that we need a cameo and I didn't just want to recycle the flame tank's existing one. I decided to dig up the scan's from Nyer's archives...

 

...and colourise it! This is the result:

 

I also have managed to make a start on finishing off those maps, in this case Jacko's contest submission!

 

As his map was so barebones I had to make some decisions myself about how I wanted things to pan out. I decided to move the airstrip and have it as a mission critical structure hat the player owns--I hope you all enjoy the map when it's done! It might be on the easier side but oh well, we can have a few maps on the easy side, haha.

 

I've also done some testing and managed to get a video or two ingame (tested with a raichu boy and a YR vid). So the good news is that while the campaign map might be in doubt for the time being, the videos should be fine. I'm still in the process of storyboarding and writing a script but watch this space!

[Nyerguds]

The dark background on that icon looks odd. Couldn't you have started from the same image in the flame tank video? Or doesn't that show the whole tank?

[Kilkakon]

I have a semi-theme with the Japanese cameos going of having them at night or in urban environments. Tried to give a sense of consistency. You're welcome to provide more feedback on the full version of the image here:

 

The background is quite desaturated to try and enforce some contrast between the Japanese coloured vehicle and the terrain.

[Nyerguds]

Ah... well, if it's consistent in the other units too I guess it won't be too obtrusive.

[Kilkakon]

It's time for an update!

 

It is with a great sense of accomplishment that I can announce that all of the maps have been completed for C&C: Dawn of Tomorrow. I've been quite active with C&C over the last few weeks; trying to experiment with getting WSAs working (nothing yet alas) as well as finishing the aforementioned maps.

 

Both of the 2 remaining maps had buggy AI that was fixed with the addition of 2 wide horizontal river crossings. Thanks to Nyer for hexing the change. For Temperate and Snow I've used RA's graphics, for Desert I made my own.

 

But let's start with some screenshots! First off is my Japanese map, Sunrise, in which Japanese forces invade Siberia:

 

And last but not least is GoatMessiah's desert map that he submitted in my contest this time last year:

This particular map was very challenging. I've spent days and days on this one--it's quite a relief to see it finished, I can assure you! Making a Tomorrow map difficult takes a lot of work due to how strong Tomorrow is in general so the AI aggression needs to be kept up throughout the game.

 

So what's next for the project, I hear you ask? Well that's movies and campaign transitions! I need to master these WSAs (they still aren't working ) so I can get the campaign and faction selections down pat, and then I can work on casting some voice actors and storyboarding. And finally, a redesign of my website so C&C has a prominent and worthy place online to reside.

[Blade]

To be fair, the WSA issues might not have anything to do with your inability, it might just be the tools still aren't right. I was trying to create a version of the compression code that would match the WW code exactly and I'm close, but it isn't there yet and I'm busy with other things.

[Messiah]

awesome!

[Kilkakon]

To be fair, the WSA issues might not have anything to do with your inability, it might just be the tools still aren't right. I was trying to create a version of the compression code that would match the WW code exactly and I'm close, but it isn't there yet and I'm busy with other things.

Yeah I'm not sure what's going on. I might need to try some more control tests with westwood original stuff or just wait for you to figure things out on your end.

 

Thanks Goatmessiah!

 

I've been playing around with the cinematics a bit, having got a video ingame with audio syncing up correctly. I'm not 100% sure if I should stick with the default 320x156 resolution or go to 320x200 for a bit more detail. My leaning is towards the 200 so that the style I'm using will work a bit more smoothly (characters would be more centred that way), even if it means some stuff will be widescreen and some not. Feel free to throw in your 2c people!

[Kilkakon]

Hi there all. It's time for an update--sorry to have been so long without one! I hope you all had a safe Christmas and are enduring the new year successfully.

 

I've had a bit of a minor meltdown over the last week or so with both of my computers breaking, back pain and other such circumstantial nonsense. Slowly getting back into gear and I want to finish this mod so badly!

 

I do have some good news to report, I did get some work done over the Christmas period, specifically in the cinematics area. I've written all of the Tomorrow campaign out and just need to get started on the Company of Answers one. I've also had some videos commissioned to help speed things along (this part of the project is going to be costly, voice actors and all!).

 

Check out this preview I've uploaded! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkP8G9jzGxk Looks great!

 

I've worked out how my videos are going to look as well. They'll be using sprites and have subtitles on screen. Fans of the Ace Attorney series will note similarities with my approach, although I will be including voice overs.

[MattAttack]

those cutscenes look awesome, kilk! good job!

[AchromicWhite]

Damn boy, this looks great!

May I ask what software you used for these?

[Nyerguds]

Nice, nice! Of course, I already saw the USA one

 

Damn boy, this looks great!

May I ask what software you used for these?

He commissioned them.

[Kilkakon]

Hi there folks,

 

I can announce that I have returned to active development on this project. I didn't want to say anything until I had something to actually report, as we've heard those "I'm back"--only to disappear declarations before.

 

So what's new, I hear you ask?

 

I've commissioned the fourth logo animation, this time for the Company of Answers. It's pretty fancy! Still have to do the Tomorrow one, which I'll handle myself, however that's been waiting on voice work I have to do. (I'll touch on this in a bit)

 

In the WSA department (campaign intermissions), I've been working with Blade to get a version of his tools that works well with C&C. So far, I've managed to replace two of the three wsas I need to replace, and I've figured out how to change the palette of one of those files. Jury's still out on choose.wsa, but I'll be able to work on these now that all the technical problems have been resolved.

 

There's also the question of "which factions should be represented on the map?:--I mean, USA and Russia don't control the world, haha. So should I leave everything neutral? Seems boring. While I'll think about this one further, feel free to give some opinions guys! There's some errors I need to correct, as well as just finishing off the stuff graphically, as I stopped working on it when I hit the aforementioned tech issues.

 

I've also started to remake my website. I really want this project to be a success. Everything I've worked on to date has either released with a whimper or been a dramatic flop. So as a part of that I want my website to be up to date and really promoting C&C the best it can be, rather than it being a single page, having all the tech trees and unit descriptions and everything that's fun to read and explore.

 

Finally, I have tried to do some more voice work for the game. It's been a big struggle. I unearthed my ancient XP laptop to try and get the voice work as close to the original samples as I can, but I just can't do it. The problem isn't the voice artist--my voice, the problem is the equipment and the processing. The original clips (which I love!) have distortion on them because they were recorded on a rubbish mic. The new ones, they don't have this distortion, and nothing I can do with my nooby Audacity skills gets it close enough to not sound like a different voice. I'm honestly stuck on this one. I know it's an audio processing problem, but I know next to nothing about how that sort of thing works. Over the last two evenings I've been recording for hours upon hours to try and match a voice clip that's impossible to recreate with my current equipment I don't mind the campaign videos sounding a little different, but the EVA ones do need to match up.

 

At any rate, that's what's new! I am back in action and working away on the website and C&C. This will be the best release I can make it, and thanks to everybody that's helped and submitted maps and other things along the way. Once I have the voice EVAs done for both factions (I'll commission the CoA ones) I will do a few videos to show off the maps that were submitted during the 2014 contest.

[Graion Dilach]

Regarding the voice thingy: convert the files to a really low Opus bitrate (<15 kbps) and back would be my first suggestion. The Opus compression artifacts do sound like a terrible radio.

[Kilkakon]

Are you ready to select a target Commander?

 

[MattAttack]

neat! Does this mean you got it to play in-game?