Tiberian Dawn - Extended Operations *SEPTEMBER UPDATE*

[nariac]

23 minutes ago, Darkstar387 said:

Good catch. Fixed OP.

I'm not sure if it was intended but the Tun-Shou Pass mission was rather easy because Nod starts with a T-Rex next to the GDI base.

[Darkstar387]

43 minutes ago, nariac said:

I'm not sure if it was intended but the Tun-Shou Pass mission was rather easy because Nod starts with a T-Rex next to the GDI base.

Hahaha That is NOT intentional. My Quality control staff apparently took a holiday today.

[nariac]

Okay, I finished A Coid Wind Blows just now.

 

***** SPOILERS FOLLOW *****

Map itself looks nice. A little cramped but that added some extra challenge. Sadly after a while Nod stopped attacking me, and when I got into their base I saw they had run out of money because their harvester had got stuck in the vehicles parked outside the Airstrip. This has happened to me before and as a rule nowadays I try to ensure there's enough room outside the Refinery to stop this - usually by putting the Refinery itself well away from the factory structures.

I liked the Apache attack, it's a clever way to simulate air attacks and/or refill AI helipads after their starting helicopters have been baited away to be slaughtered. However, I'd advise lowering their Attack Base number. I assume it's set to 99 or something because they kept hovering around stuff for a very long time after their ammo had run out. I would advise Attack Base 15-20 here, since it gives them time to group up at the south of the map, fly north and hunt something, then go home.

I built an AGT at the base of the cliffs just north of the start position, and put a Mammoth Tank to block the top, mainly to stop the Apaches killing my harvesters, but the side effect of that was that a lot of Nod teams got confused trying to attack the Mammoth and were ripped apart (slowly in the case of the tanks) by the AGT. Not sure how to deal with this easily, since I like the backdoor route you built there for sneak attacks. Perhaps widen the pass to two cells?

The Temple of Nod and Helipads on the inaccessible mountain to the south west was a little annoying, mainly because there was no conventional way to reveal them. I had to use an Orca and keep giving it move orders on the edge of the shroud by the river until it landed on the mountain. I then had to build 6 helipads and ferry Orcas back and forth across the map whittling down the buildings health (God, it seems Orca damage versus buildings sucks compared to Apaches. 6 Orcas couldn't destroy a Helipad in one sortie!) Unless there's a vital reason for the Temple to be inaccessible, I'd recommend opening the cliffs and putting a river crossing there.

The base defenses on the far left of the Nod base looked dreadfully squashed together. Double Turret + Double Obelisk is very strong, but I much preferred the spaced out layout you used on the other two entrances. Is the far left entrance even needed? Could just remove it, and replace it with cliffs if it would otherwise be a weak point.

Lastly, Nod seems to build a very high number of engineers. There were over twenty of them outside the HoD when I arrived to butcher them.

All in all, it was a nice map indeed. If the Nod base could be rearranged a little bit to address the above issues, I'd say it's perfectly polished. 

 

Will check out the other missions when I have time. The GDI canal one seemed a lot of fun when I tried it, however I would recommend giving the player one or two AGTs in their base(s) because as it stands there's no real incentive to defend the two external power plants - you can just sell them both and the Comm Centre and the one remaining power plant can happily power both your bases. (Yeah, GDI power requirements without an ADV Comm are so ridiculously low. :P)

Edited April 18, 2017 by nariac

[Darkstar387]

14 hours ago, nariac said:

Okay, I finished A Coid Wind Blows just now...

I addressed some issues you spotted in the mission and re-uploaded a newer revision of the map pack. 
The base has been redesigned slightly to allow the units more breathing room. The number of engineers was cut down, that was a mistake that had to be rectified. Also, there was supposed to be a flare that popped up on the cliff to allow the player to target the Temple. There was also supposed to be logic that allowed the player the use of a Chinook but I forgot to put that logic in. I can't believe I put this mission up as is, it clearly needed more testing. 

The dinosaur in Tun-Shou Pass was also removed. It blended in with the cliff and I didn't see it when I removed my testing elements. 

Thanks for the feedback, god only knows how long those errors would have remained if you hadn't said something.

[Kamuix]

I must say i love this map pack and the quality of the maps i was so thankful to find this because i needed a large single player mappack that had westwood like quality maps and these maps are perfect! so since i can now insert maps into the N64 roms i've already inserted many of your maps and i'm about to insert more (this time GDI) here are some screen shots:

 

[Darkstar387]

I'm so happy to hear that! 

You have no idea how awesome it was to see my maps being used in such cool new ways! I never in a million years would have thought anybody would have figured out how to port them over to C&C-64. Your work is incredible, thanks so much for the kind words!

[nariac]

Just finished Canal Crisis.

**** SPOILERS FOLLOW ****

Very fun mission! I liked having to manage two separate forces on either side of a river, gave a sort of Blindsided feel to the mission. Only a few very minor comments.

No Airstrike for destroying all SAM sites makes me sad.  Also there's a SAM site which starts in the GDI south base which is a bit odd.  How did it get there?!

Also, perfectly straight sea with no gunboat makes me sad.

Just kidding about the second one. However, the base on the south bank never felt like it was really under any kind of threat after the few scripted attacks which come from the south west Nod base. Perhaps at some point a Chinook-borne infantry attack against the oil pumps there might mix things up a bit? Or you could use my trick to have a Nod Gunboat attack from the east at some point, which would be really cool and scary.

I also didn't really need the MCV which arrived, since I captured the Nod Construction Yard at the same time. Being able to build turrets then made defending the north bank trivially easy. Not sure what can be done about that. Maybe either don't have a GDI MCV arrive, or move the Nod CY into their north east base? 

The main issue I found was that Nod got stuck and didn't really attack me that hard after the beginning (although the beginning attacks were really very good indeed.) Their unit production base is very cramped, which caused one blockage, although that did randomly unstick itself eventually and everything attacked me ... but I had turrets at that point.  Then I found a whole pile of Nod units on the north shore which were stuck trying to get to the south base. It's odd that happened, since target acquisition should favour units in the north over the south.

I took screenshots of the places things got stuck. Hope that helps!

[Darkstar387]

Thats very odd, I've tested this map extensively and never had units try to cross the river. Their heavily scripted to move along their attack routes, the north and south bases are actually commanded by separate teams so their units won't get stuck trying to cross depending on which base you attack. I'll look into it some more and try to replicate what you did. You shouldn't have been able to capture the Nod Con yard that easy, I'll either have to move it or reinforce that base. My goal was to make it the last base you assault. The southern base should pump out just as many units as the northern side, thanks to the autocreate trigger. How early on did you sneak into the con-yard?

Addressing your comments  in the order you posted them:

No airstrikes in this mission, I felt it made the mission too easy. 

No gunboats, because it felt like a sucker punch and because they're too finicky. I noticed that if a boat doesn't destroy its target on one pass, it becomes transfixed on it and it doesn't attack anything else. 

Thanks for providing feedback! You're comments are instrumental in improving these missions!

 

Edited April 21, 2017 by Darkstar387

[nariac]

2 minutes ago, Darkstar387 said:

You shouldn't have been able to capture the Nod Con yard that easy, I'll either have to move it or reinforce that base. My goal was to make it the last base you assault. The southern base should pump out just as many units as the northern side, thanks to the autocreate trigger. How early on did you sneak into the con-yard?

 

Oh, that's interesting. I attacked it right away. I figured that since I had factories on the south bank and none on the north, I was supposed to crush the south fast before the north got overwhelmed by attacks inflicting losses which couldn't be replaced up there.

The south base never did anything really, I just smashed my way in and captured the CY. They didn't even have a HoN, Refinery or Airstrip. Just a load of powerplants, silos, 3 or so turrets and an Obelisk. I saw them rebuild one of the turrets, but by then the base was done for and I captured the CY just after.

I used the initial units at the very south of the map, plus 3 extra Med Tanks I built and 6 minigunners to distract the turrets/obelisk while my tanks smashed them.

[Nyerguds]

Ew, jpeg screenshots! Why would you do that?

[nariac]

1 minute ago, Nyerguds said:

Ew, jpeg screenshots! Why would you do that?

i've got some juicy PNGs coming up just for you, don't worry <3

[Nyerguds]

No, I'm actually genuinely wondering why anyone would decide to still use jpeg nowadays. It's ugly and blurry

[nariac]

1 hour ago, Nyerguds said:

No, I'm actually genuinely wondering why anyone would decide to still use jpeg nowadays. It's ugly and blurry

Just habit from the old days when forums disliked uploading PNG because the quality was too high, making the file too big. 

[Nyerguds]

It's plain wrong, though. I just cropped a random screenshot with about similar stuff in it to the same size and saved it as png, and it was actually smaller. The ctrl+s png screenshots from cnc-ddraw have the advantage that (when edited with the right programs) they retain their 256-colour depth, which often makes them smaller than jpg.

[Kamuix]

Does anyone know who made the map called "MattAttack - Defend The Obelisk" I find it interesting on the N64

[nariac]

15 minutes ago, Kamuix said:

Does anyone know who made the map called "MattAttack - Defend The Obelisk" 

 

I'm pretty sure that was made by MattAttack

[Nyerguds]

lol, yes. MattAttack is just the guy's name

[Kamuix]

ahhh ok now ic  here's another good one buy darkstar called 'Power Keg'

[Darkstar387]

Looks like somebody tinkered with the map . I didn't put a construction yard there!

[Kamuix]

Ah yes, see i was playing the original, and i had 1000 credits and 3 engineers by the time i got to the base(one was used to capture a transport helicopter) so even with capturing the Conyard, Weapons factory. comcenter, even if i sold both the communications center and the factory i still wouldn't be able to build a refinery so i decided either it's not winnable or there's a hidden 2000$ crate somewhere or something... i barely had any men to spare so i decided to edit the ini and turn the light tank into an MCV, than by capturing and selling the GDI construction yard i'd have enough money to buy the refinery :P. was i missing something? also i didn't read the briefing text so maybe i missed something there

[Kamuix]

I JUST found out what was wrong with it... Nyerguds had mentioned that in the N64 C&C the only 3 usable houses are Neutral, GDI and NOD so anything set to team 'SPECIAL' won't show up so i am now looking at the map in the map editor and seeing a refinery in the GDI base that was not there when i played it on the N64 but it was because it's team was set to Special, it's an easy fix i guess what i'll do than is just change it's team to GDI or Neutral

EDIT: I love the 'Replace' Function in notepad. i've just replaced all Special own stuff to GDI and i'm going to insert it into my official work in progress alternative N64 Rom mod i'm working on, not yet sure what level it's going to be yet, perhaps i'll put it in the place of nod level 11 or 12, im about to make the 3d terrain for it, ill upload it and show you when i'm done

Edited April 25, 2017 by Kamuix

[Nyerguds]

Yeah, I did warn that not all missions would be convertible because of that.

[Kamuix]

Well most of them can be modified so that they work just with a few missing small aspects of it overall it's pretty the experience will be simular

 

Because of the complex cliffs on the map some of the cliffs had to be turned inside out if you know what i mean, so the cliffs were not moved but just reversed in the exact same position otherwise it would of taken me much longer to do, but it turned out great the entire map

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Kamuix

[Nyerguds]

Ah, so you edited the map to fix it? Nice. Looks really amazing

[Darkstar387]

17 hours ago, Kamuix said:

I JUST found out what was wrong with it... Nyerguds had mentioned that in the N64 C&C the only 3 usable houses are Neutral, GDI and NOD so anything set to team 'SPECIAL' won't show up so i am now looking at the map in the map editor and seeing a refinery in the GDI base that was not there when i played it on the N64 but it was because it's team was set to Special, it's an easy fix i guess what i'll do than is just change it's team to GDI or Neutral

EDIT: I love the 'Replace' Function in notepad. i've just replaced all Special own stuff to GDI and i'm going to insert it into my official work in progress alternative N64 Rom mod i'm working on, not yet sure what level it's going to be yet, perhaps i'll put it in the place of nod level 11 or 12, im about to make the 3d terrain for it, ill upload it and show you when i'm done

Hmm... thats both interesting and unfortunate. I use the "Special" house quite often, its imperative to some of the missions I've put up. I don't know how differently some missions will play without that house, I'd have to go through and review the importance of the faction in each mission, but its clearly important in Powder Keg.