[OpenRA] Red Alert Global League - Final Standings, Season 1!

[SoScared]

 

Below:

League Tables

 

 

With 184 registered matches played over the course of 3 months, season 1 (hidden beta ) of the Red Alert Global League is officially concluded! A big thank you for everyone participating this season, laying the cornerstone for a continuous competetive event and a venue for people to meet and play some good games, both for fun and for prestige. But before we start planning future filled stadiums on par with LoL events, let's have a closer look at how season 1 went for our participating players.

 

The final matches of the Masters' and Minion's Division came in late but managed to hold off the end results and a lot of anticipation for the league's top placements.

SPOLERS BELOW - go to 'League Tables' for replay files

 

 

 

Masters' Division

 

 

In the Masters' Division FiveAces was to match Medium Tank and Klaas to fight for the last 4 points after Murto The Ray took a 2-point lead when completing all his games for the season. FiveAces' first match-up vs Medium Tank looked to be a league clencher after a quick strong-armed win for FiveAces on Medium Tank's host map Ore Lord but with a surprise turn of events on FiveAces' host map Singles, Medium Tank managed to take away a point after pulling off both of Ukraine's special traits within minutes of each other, blasting his way through the middle and making his way towards FiveAces' main base.

 

With 1 point away from the top still, the last match-up vs Klaas proved to be a big toss-up after Klaas delivered a grade-A match on his host map Ore Lord and took a match point, leaving FiveAces with one last match and final shot at winning the League. On map Sidestep, FiveAces final host map, the battle turned out to be a slug fest after both players tech their radar dome and tech center (both spawning Soviet) before their 1st expansion - normally an unprescedented move on the map but with both players going for the same unorthodox opener the match unraveled into a Worl War 1 style of death and destruction leaving both sides with huge asset losses. The game flowed back and forth but at one point when it looked like FiveAces was about to be completely contained to his main base, Klaas looked to overcommit with shock troopers against FiveAces' V2's left and right leaving Klaas with little assets left to contain FiveAces at his main base. FiveAces eventually reclaimed his original 1st expansion and started to gain on one of his main strength as an OpenRA player - durability - which allowed him to engage in favorable battles against a fatigued Klaas, supported by harassing MiGs, making the match somewhat one-sided the last 5 minutes. FiveAces claimed victory after pushing with a Heavy Tank based army, cleaning up Klaas' 1st and 2nd expansions in one swoop before knocking on the front door of Klaas' main base.

 

The League title for FiveAces is claimed after a tie-breaker with Murto The Ray, referring to their earlier match-up in which FiveAces won a 2-0, avoiding an additional tie-breaker best-of-5 to decide the winner.

 

Congratulations to FiveAces for a great performance in the Masters' Division of the fisrt season of the Red Alert Global League, resulting in a champion title, braggin rights and a nice lump sum of $145 as a division winner!! Murto The Ray claims 2nd place prize of $55 and Medium Tank 3rd place prize of $25!

 

 

 

Minions' Division

 

Just like with the Master's Division the Minions' Division's top spots was decided by the last round. The top 3 spots in the Minions' Division was contended by Abcdefg30, Kazu and myself (SoScared) throughout the entire season. With a super close race all the way to the end it all came down to a delayed match-up between Abcdefg30 and Kazu. After a decisive 2-0 victory for Kazu he managed to claim 1st place with a well earned $40 payout, pushing me down to 2nd and Abcdefg30 on 3rd.

 

Congratulations to Kazu for winning the Minions' Division Season 1, taking the competetive scene by storm with rock solid performance, making a name for himself in the community and we look forward to see him play in the next season's Masters' Divsion!

 

Forfeits in the Masters' Divsion opened up for 5 promotional spots in the Minions' for division advancement. The top 5 Minions' players; Kazu, SoScared, Abcdefg30, Hamb (4th) and Testosterone Rex (5th) will have the opportunity to add on to the top division's ultra competetive scene next season.

 

 

 

 

Recruit Division

 

 

As opposed to the divisions above the Recruit Division has been running with a top contender favourite, OzzyOuzu, which at the start of the season declared his intent on finishing at the very top. He delivered on his promise and losing only 1 match against Flecken he managed to distance himself 4 points down to 2nd place, held by player T. Below OzzyOuzu the rest of the field was involved in a tight race for the top spots which ended up having six advancement spots into the next seasons' Minions' Division. Together with OzzyOuzo and T, player Flecken (3rd), Han (4th), GoldenHippo (5th) and DazUltra (6th) will have the opportunity to play in the next season's Minions' Division.

 

Congratulations to OzzyOuzo for delivering on his promise to ace the field and secure his advancement into the Minions' Division and for making himseld a serious contender for future play in the Master's Division!

 

Also kudos to all the players in the Recruit Division for staying the course in a field of absent matches towards the end of the season and a special thanks to player General who despite having less competetive experience compared to the field still completed every match in his division, taking the initiative on his weekly matches and contributing to the health and legitimacy of the Recruit Division's first season.

 

 

 

 

Thank you everyone!

The Red Alert Global League has benefited from a flying start thanks to the interest and involvement of all it's participating players. From the viewpoint of the time the idea of a Red Alert league was conceived the experience of season 1 has passed all expectations with countless of great games and a considerable prizepool. We can look towards the next season with anticipation but first it will be crucial to review and improve upon the established format. Regardless the next season of RAGL is aimed to take off Monday, September 5th. This gives us limited time to advance the format in before the next season but is aimed towards establishing Sep-Nov and March-May seasons wich would then have stable 3 month in-betweens. Registrations for season 2 will be open 2 weeks between August 15th-31st. Existing players will have August 1st through 31st to confirm their spots in the league.

 

For any disputes or questions regarding Season 1, send me a PM or email me at [email protected]. A dispute or request for documentation must be sent in before August 1st as all RAGL email threads will be deleted from my personal email account in preperation for an official RAGL email account used with the next season.

 

Please hold your discussions/feedback for an official post-season discussion thread on Sleipnir starting next Monday!

 

Cheers,

SoScared

[SoScared]

 

All replays for the league are uploaded to Jazz_KCS' file server. File server status thread. The tables are updated at the end of each round (no later than Tuesdays, ca. 18:00/6PM UTC).

 

Match stats per player by Aaron Lloyd

 

Also see: Announcement, Information, Seeding and Public Registration (closed)

 

 

 

Fixtures and Results, Season 1

 

Masters' Division

 

Minions' Division

 

Recruit Division

[SoScared]

(x-posted from Sleipnir's Stuff)

 

Tables for round 7 are up!

 

Naturally you'll notice a few changes. What's been done is that I've stripped the tables for the 2 extra points all the players were given from the forfeited players. Position wise this will be irrelevant by the end of the season but will look different from round to round compared to how I noted the scores previously. Practically I've stripped the tables to the bones, meaning the tables display more of the reality of the situation. Adding the points from the forfeited players round by round only inflated the stats. Visually it may look discouraging for certain players, e.g. for player Barf in the Masters' Division, however these players will have more leftover matches compared to the players with few matches against forfeited players.

 

It's also noteworthy to point out that the remaining players in the Masters' Division all qualified due to the relegation and qualification spots all got filled up by forfeited players.

 

As for the current health of the league due to Masters' Division forfeits, there's no reason to worry. One of the reason we see more forfeited players in the top division compared to the others is that these players were invites from the EU league (not strictly for EU players) from 6 months ago and didn't have to initiate contact in order to register. Most of the invites to the Minions' Division was towards community dwellers, including some of the game developers and active community members only weeks before the season. Most of the Recruit Division consist of players initiating contact and registering weeks before the season. The league is set up in such a way that only active participants will have a chance at moving upwards in the divisions and will in the course of time fill the upper divisions with more active players.

 

Also noteworthy is that the fight over promotion/qualification/relegation spots in the Minions' Division is super tight with 8 players separated by only 3 points! Kazu, Abcdefg30 and myself looks to have somewhat disconnected from the divison.

 

In the Recruit Division it's more or less the same story with only OzzyOuzu putting some distance to the rest of the pack. However, due to the fact that currently 6 players in the above the divisions are forfeited, the Minions' Division will practically have in total 6 spots open for players from the Recruit Division! That means, theoretically, every single player in the Recruit Division will have their chance to promote themselves towards the Minions' Division next season.

 

Thanks to all for having participated so far and I'm hoping for an explosive finish towards the end of the league's first season!

[SteeLDarT]

what is this all about??

 

 

(x-posted from Sleipnir's Stuff)

 

Tables for round 7 are up!

 

Naturally you'll notice a few changes. What's been done is that I've stripped the tables for the 2 extra points all the players were given from the forfeited players. Position wise this will be irrelevant by the end of the season but will look different from round to round compared to how I noted the scores previously. Practically I've stripped the tables to the bones, meaning the tables display more of the reality of the situation. Adding the points from the forfeited players round by round only inflated the stats. Visually it may look discouraging for certain players, e.g. for player Barf in the Masters' Division, however these players will have more leftover matches compared to the players with few matches against forfeited players.

 

It's also noteworthy to point out that the remaining players in the Masters' Division all qualified due to the relegation and qualification spots all got filled up by forfeited players.

 

As for the current health of the league due to Masters' Division forfeits, there's no reason to worry. One of the reason we see more forfeited players in the top division compared to the others is that these players were invites from the EU league (not strictly for EU players) from 6 months ago and didn't have to initiate contact in order to register. Most of the invites to the Minions' Division was towards community dwellers, including some of the game developers and active community members only weeks before the season. Most of the Recruit Division consist of players initiating contact and registering weeks before the season. The league is set up in such a way that only active participants will have a chance at moving upwards in the divisions and will in the course of time fill the upper divisions with more active players.

 

Also noteworthy is that the fight over promotion/qualification/relegation spots in the Minions' Division is super tight with 8 players separated by only 3 points! Kazu, Abcdefg30 and myself looks to have somewhat disconnected from the divison.

 

In the Recruit Division it's more or less the same story with only OzzyOuzu putting some distance to the rest of the pack. However, due to the fact that currently 6 players in the above the divisions are forfeited, the Minions' Division will practically have in total 6 spots open for players from the Recruit Division! That means, theoretically, every single player in the Recruit Division will have their chance to promote themselves towards the Minions' Division next season.

 

Thanks to all for having participated so far and I'm hoping for an explosive finish towards the end of the league's first season!

[FunkyFr3sh]

what is this all about??

 

This is not about red alert, it is about a fan made game called OpenRA. They have a red alert mod that is able to load graphics from red alert but gameplay wise it is very different (you can't use the same build orders, strategies, there is no Q move etc..)

 

I'll move this thread out of the red alert forums since it has nothing to do with red alert, just to make sure people are not getting confused

[SoScared]

I'll move this thread out of the red alert forums since it has nothing to do with red alert, just to make sure people are not getting confused

 

Fair move given people come to 'Red Alert' to discuss the original. I'd still say tho, OpenRA's RA Mod has something to do with Red Alert

[FunkyFr3sh]

this is the msot fanboyism ive ever seen from funky. THERE IS NO Q. NONE OF THE STRATEGIES WORK.

 

Steel is one of the old school players, just tried to make sure he knows what it's about. He wouldn't like it

 

Fair move given people come to 'Red Alert' to discuss the original. I'd still say tho, OpenRA's RA Mod has something to do with Red Alert

 

It is clearly inspired by red alert! However, this global league you are hosting is exclusive for OpenRA though from what I understood

[Blade]

The banner for it is itself quite misleading, its prominently shows the C&C Red Alert logo, but there is very little to make it clear that its actually the OpenRA Red Alert mod being played and not C&C RA. At sleipnirstuff, that isn't likely to cause much confusion since its pretty much an OpenRA forum these days, but elsewhere it will.

 

For future promotions of this sort I would suggest including the OpenRA logo and making that the  prominent focus and either including a small RA logo as part of indicating the league is for the RA mod or not including it at all.

[SoScared]

Hmm... When it comes to the banner, there's a subtle, transparent OpenRA logo in the middle. Not very prominent for sure but for me, the banner is appropriate enough. I do understand some people can initially be confused (although it say [OpenRA] in the thread title) but I think that's negligeble in the grand scheme of things: To me the RA mod is not inspired by Red Alert but an enabler of the C&C Red Alert universe into the multiplayer scene. From the beginning of development in 2007, OpenRA's RA mod started off with the original formula and altered it over time in order to give the Allies and Soviet units an approprate role online, beyond single player missions. Then you have units borrowed from other games such as RA2's Flak Truck in order to sustain a meta balance between the factions in early- mid- and late-game. OpenRA's RA mod is a platform in which a sustainable competetive event based on RA95 can exist and thrive given its' UI, development and promotional value.

 

The developers over at OpenRA are super conservative in that any alteration beyond the original properties of units and structures has to be processed through extensive discussions and playtesting, often lasting years before it makes it's way into the mods. The emerging competetive scene the past 12-18 months couldn't happen without this long, painstaking process and having it's pillars founded on RA95. The developers themselves would be hesitant to use C&C Red Alert logo for the RA mod's official logo but the Red Alert Global League is an independent event, has no counterpart within the RA95 community and for the most part have it's participants paying homeage to RA95 through OpenRA's RA mod.

 

OpenRA will never be a competing platform vs RA95, online or offline. It's simply a venue for players to relish Red Alert through competetive play having the totality of Red Alert's units and structures at their disposoal. In this regard, boasting C&C Red Alert's original logo, in full, with the event (with perhaps a stronger emphasis on OpenRA), to me feels appropriate.

[Blade]

So basically, you are saying that because you feel that the OpenRA Red Alert mod is descended in some way from Red Alert that it justifies advertising a competition for it by downplaying the use of the OpenRA engine and mod and emphasizing the link to the actual game of C&C Red Alert to the point that a casual glance would think this was a C&C Red Alert league and not anything to do with OpenRA?

 

Frankly I think that is an insult to the developers of OpenRA to downplay their work which this league is going to rely on and misleading to people who might want to join a league for C&C Red Alert and not OpenRA Red Alert. Your response reads like an advertising blurb trying to sell me on the idea that OpenRA RA is somehow opening up the multiplayer scene for RA when RA already has a strong multiplayer scene.

 

I get it, you like OpenRA RA and want more people to play it, so sell it on its own merits, an open source RTS with ongoing balance development with familiar looking graphics. Don't try and sell it by fostering confusion with C&C RA, you'll just attract people who will complain it doesn't play like they expect it to. Especially here

[SoScared]

duplicate of reply below

[SoScared]

Your response reads like an advertising blurb...

 

Had to stop for a laugh  I'm not gonna stand here and claim my reply wasn't thouroughly fleshed out and selling the game is in my nature (although it's COMPLETELY FREE, come get!).

 

That said, it was an opportunity to adress OpenRA's legitimacy as a legacy and tie-in to RA95 given the above discussion, including the use of the original C&C Red Alert logo in the Global League banner. Obviously this is all my personal interpretation and I'm not looking push anything down people's throat. Although if more people were to come over to try it out, liking it or not, is just a good thing.

 

Btw that's the longest 'So what you're saying...' argument I've seen in my life But no I don't think my reply could honestly be interpreted as an insult to the OpenRA developers.

[Blade]

Do you not perhaps think that in your love for OpenRA and your desire to link it to C&C RA which inspired it that you have created something that is somewhat misleading? I don't think your reply can be interpreted as an insult to the OpenRA devs, I was referring to the almost complete lack of reference to it in your advertising banner when the league is in fact all about OpenRA and nothing really to do with C&C RA, like you are trying to hide the OpenRAness of it.

 

On the topic of OpenRA carrying any legacy of C&C RA, i don't see how it can be considered to when looked at rationally. For one thing, C&C RA still exists in a playable form, its not like there aren't multiplayer servers online any more, so C&C RA in fact carries the C&C RA legacy still.

 

For a second point, the OpenRA devs never started from the original formula of RA and moved over time. The OpenRA engine does not work anything like the original engine does as as such cannot really be said to have been the original formula at any point. Even taking the unit stats from rules.ini means nothing if there is no understanding of how the engine interprets those values.

 

You also contradict yourself in saying the OpenRA devs are ultra conservative in their changes... perhaps they are now, but the fact you mention that there are additional units and features taken from later games demonstrates an extremely liberal take on how to modify the game in its early development. The units might look like the units from C&C RA because of the shared graphics set, but they sure don't act like them in a lot of cases.

 

Despite your feelings, from a rational POV, the game that is OpenRA Red Alert is a completely different RTS game from the game C&C Red Alert and any attempt to portray them as being similar is misleading. Tiberian Dawn is probably more like Red Alert than the OpenRA Red Alert mod is.

 

People like you who love OpenRA, love it because its not Red Alert, so why try and attract people by conflating it with Red Alert, sell it for what it really is and make it clear that it isn't C&C Red Alert. Sell it on why you think its a better game.

[SoScared]

Some of the developers are directly participating in the Global League (Minion's Division), so if you wish, go and ask them if they feel insulted by anything related to the competition.

 

As of now you're pretty much handling this as a debate rather than a discussion. I've already admitted to being biased towards OpenRA so you can take it for what it is but your "rational" arguments for what constitutes legacy and a conservative development seems to me to be personal.

 

As already stated the Red Alert mod for OpenRA is and always has been aimed towards availing the Red Alert universe on to a competetive multiplayer platform. And let me tell ya, it's good. You will learn you develop core strategies, like utilizing heavy tanks and infantry to dominate the field and gain early map control as a Soviet player. You can take a risk by teching early Radar Dome in order to gain air superiority or get access to V2's and Artillery, banking on doing damage vs a lesser aware player or play it safe with a Service Depot, aiming for mid-tier tanks and looking towards an expansion to get ahead in economy, while holding off the opponent from picking you off in the process - perhaps with an early grenadier rush or a potentially devestating flamethrower rush dropped from multiple APC's. In the late game you have in wait for you Russia with it's infamous tesla tech, Shock Troopers and Tesla tanks, able to punch though any weak spot and melt any units or structures in mere seconds of it's arrival - likely with the aid of a fully charged Iron Curtain. Ukraine, able to deliever crippling damage to strategic targets with it's parabombs or if neccessary, going high risk-high reward style by getting a nuke truck in an attempt to clean out a vast field chock full of units or find a sneaky way towards the enemy base to take out some crucial tech or production fascility. Tanya. In a phase transpot. Scouting behind enemy lines and look for an opportunity to do devestating structural damage or delivered right on to the battlefield to lay waste to platoons. Chronoshifting your MCV behind your opponent's base. Micro Submarines and Destroyers to fight for sea control in order to reach additional routes towards the opponents base, perhaps with a follow-up of Cruisers or Missile Subs to force players away from the shoreline.

 

People like you who love OpenRA, love it because its not Red Alert...

 

I beg to differ.

[Rampastring]

I have to agree with Blade here. Some of the advertising that you do with OpenRA is confusing and annoying. When did you last play Red Alert (the real one)? When it comes to gameplay, it's entirely different from the OpenRA mod. OpenRA's version uses the same graphics and is clearly inspired by the original, but that's where the similarities end. Everything from basic unit and projectile behaviour to game pace, tech trees, UI and tactics is completely different, but you still rely on the original game's logo when promoting an entirely different game.

 

To me the RA mod is not inspired by Red Alert but an enabler of the C&C Red Alert universe into the multiplayer scene.

How does OpenRA's RA mod enable multiplayer for Red Alert? The original game already has a lively multiplayer scene and has had one for half a decade thanks to CnCNet; the original's multiplayer scene actually seems more active than OpenRA's multiplayer scene.

 

The developers over at OpenRA are super conservative in that any alteration beyond the original properties of units and structures has to be processed through extensive discussions and playtesting, often lasting years before it makes it's way into the mods.

Maybe they're super conservative in altering the balance of their own game, but they surely haven't been "super conservative" or actually conservative at all when making changes compared to the original Red Alert. OpenRA's RA mod has new units, completely different balance and tech trees, and lots of new features compared to the original game. It's not really a "bad thing", but OpenRA Red Alert is completely different from the original Red Alert and so it's misleading to showcase it as being a "replacement" for the original game.

 

People like you who love OpenRA, love it because its not Red Alert...

 

I beg to differ.

From talking with some OpenRA fans I know that many OpenRA Red Alert fans dislike the original game. They're used to OpenRA's systems and design and don't like the original game's design.

 

Note that when talking about being misleading, I'm meaning it in general. This particular topic isn't that bad, since you mention OpenRA in the topic title. (although the banner could've been clearer)

[SoScared]

Wow, like setting fire to a hornets nest. All right, adressing my love affair with the original Red Alert and my path to OpenRA, because why not:

 

When I was around 13, my dad took me to the states to visit my family (his side) in New Orleans for the winter holidays and was my first trip to the states. I'm a Norwegian and visiting the USA is a big thing for any Wegan kid. We were staying for about 2 weeks and I was given an allowence of $100 (a Ben!) for casual shopping when going out. As a video game geek I quickly found my way to a video game store at a mall and located the PC compartment and on the game shelves was this gigantic game box displaying Red Alert, Red Alert: Counter Strike and Red Alert: Aftermath. Back home I had a demo version installed on my computer but I also got to see the game played briefly on multiplayer at a friend of a firend's house with multiple PC's connected up in a big room by his dad who was working with something related to computers. I never got to play there myself because this kid, who was around 8 or 9) was a complete jerk and didn't allow me or my friend try it out but we got to stand behind the chair watching him play Soviet in Skirmish mode, spamming tesla coils. Anyways, back to the store, this big ass box that was almost as long as a kid's arm's lenght had a price tag of $99 dollars on it. I picked up the box to read the back cover of it but obviously by then my mind was already made up. My Dad was fine with it knowing how crazy I was about video games but my family thought I was nuts spending all my money for my stay on 1 game. Back home to the family house, I delved into the content like a pirate finding treasure. I still had over a week before travelling back home so I had plenty of time studying the contents, the manuals, the game guide telling you how to start the first Allied base on one of the first missions by basically securing your ore income and "go crazy building pillboxes". The music CD by Frank Klepacki was my first experience intro to the music genre and I listened to it fanatically on my portable CD player.

 

Back home in Norway I got to install it the moment I had access to the PC. To my big disappointment the resolution was different than I had previously seen it in my friend's friend's house before, it was all zoomed in and didn't look as pretty as how I remembered it. I still played it non-stop but after a week or 2 I somehow figured out how to change the resolution back to the proper scale which made me extremely satisfied. I played the shit out of the game, playing the campaigns over and over (didn't care too much about the expansion missions) and in school my friends and I took turns listening to the soundtrack in between sessions.

 

I should mention, my previous RTS experience involved watching my friend (same as above) playing the Dune 2 campaigns, and I got myself a private copy of WarCraft 2 installed on my computer by the big brother of a school mate back when I was around 11 which I had to pay 50kr (ca $6) for, obviously without my parent's knowledge. WarCraft 2 was my first real experience with an RTS game.

 

After Red Alert my love of RTS brought me over to StarCraft but I quickly went back to C&C with Red Alert 2 when it got released. Red Alert 2 was the first game I got to play online and after playing the campaigns I got completely hooked on online Quick Matches which was at the time a very functional match making service getting you to play against other equal skilled players in your region. After playing a ton of quick matches and reading strategy guides online I eventually found myself playing in the top 200 on the European server using cheap Soviet rush tactics getting Rhino Tanks and collecting tears of Ragequitters all day long. By this time Red Alert 1 had taken a back seat as I moved on to other games (big fan of the Settlers and Civ series) but it wasn't before High School (Videregående) before I took up RA1 again when I befriended other RTS fans and being very competetive we frequently LANed up playing then "old school" games against eachother for years including series as AoE, Settlers, Civ, StarCraft and Red Alert. At a point we played Red Alert against each other excessively for a couple of years, going 1v1 for hours on particular maps that were huge and asymmetrical, maps such as River Basin, Death Valley and Tournament Hills (courtesy of this site for putting all RA1 skirmish maps on display) that allowed for big arenas in which tank blobs would pose around each other and look for a position to move in, eventually getting into a fight doing the stop-and-move dance to deliver as many tank shots as possible while keeping on the move to reduce damage taken yourself. This went on for quite some time and we had a ton of fun with it but one day we accidentally came across this relatively small open-source project OpenRA (around 2011). Despite it being very unpolished and ridden with bugs we found it fascinating how the system of unit production was tweaked as so as you had a strong incentive moving up the tech tree and engage the opponents with more options and made available the gameplay that we were looking for in Red Alert.

 

For anyone who's wondering, the biggest and most important difference between the RA95 and OpenRA's Red Alert is the way production works. The additional production fascilities built in RA95 cuts the procuction time by a huge margin per fascility all up until a single tank are built in a few seconds. In OpenRA's Red Alert the added production fascility cuts the production by a small margin and caps the production speed reduction at 50% with 7 fascilities. The 2nd production fascility rewards the player with a -15% in production time, 3rd with -10% etc. This setup made it applicable for the player to look for additional means of production besides mainly the War Factory, with added infantry, air units and possibly naval in addition to take advantage of the tech for each faction. In turn this initially exposed a great deal of game imbalances since in RA95's multiplayer, for obvious reasons, most of the units, structures and tech aren't used in the meta and thus initially never had a need for balance tweaking. Units such as Tanya, Mechanics, Medics, Shock Troopers, Tesla Tanks, Artillery, YAKs, MiG's and tech structures such as the Chronosphere and the Iron Curtain are and always has been utterly void in high level RA95 competetive multiplayer and therefore have had no attention payed to them other than with plots in the Red Alert campaign missions. All these assets are a part of my fascination and nostalgia trip with C&C Red Alert and having these available as part of an arsenal when playing against an opponent are immensly satisfying.

 

So that's my story I guess! Needless to say we never looked back on RA95's multiplayer but that isn't to say RA95 is bad or with a lesser value. RA95's multiplayer experience is unique and has a great sense of fun with it as it is. The story is that Westwood Studios, as great as they were, never invested much time in to making the original Red Alert (same as with Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun) as a venue for online competetive multiplayer. Naturally because of the limited household internet at the time but within the current modern era of internet, hardware and programming the possibilites are endless in making Red Alert more accessible, be it with a re-invention such as OpenRA or new emerging projects such as Red Alert++. I, for one, prefer OpenRA but that's my personal preference and I have legitimate reasons as to why I consider it to be a superior platform to access the very core of what Red Alert means to me. I just want to see more people discovering it for themselves so that I can have more players to pwn on a daily basis

 

gg

 

edit: words

[SoScared]

Here's the original full 1080p RAGL poster:

 

 

Notice the small OpenRA tag in the top left corner as well as the subtle star behind the center title. To extend the olive branch, I could simply pull the 'OpenRA' tag in closer with the cropped versions.

[Plokite_Wolf]

It's all well and good, OpenRA is quite different from regular RA, and with some changes I can agree with (like the Soviet Flak Truck), it's just that it needs to stop pretending to be regular RA when advertising itself. An OpenRA Global League would have been a more appropriate name.

 

from now on soscared youre not allowed to post here unless cncnet is installed and openra is in trash can

You're being a fanboy in another direction.

[anjew]

An OpenRA Global League would have been a more appropriate name.

Soscared may have changed it since but the title of the thread says "[OpenRA] Red Alert Global League." Within OpenRA there is the Red Alert mod as well as Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000. Hence the Red Alert

 

 

You just described yourself 12345

letting your biased fanboyism and fetishes get the best of you

 

I'd argue anyone still clutching onto Red Alert as a balanced and perfect game is in a mindset of "Westwood can do no wrong." It's delusional and nostalgia driven.

I love the original Red Alert though.

RA 1 has great singleplayer.

RA multiplayer though was restricted by its meta of tanks only so attempting to play that game competitively is stupid because it just turns out like this every game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w64o97PD1Y

Building 2 units only is not the sign of a good game. It's the sign of a game that doesn't get updates and a game people have played and exploited to the point of no return.

 

OpenRA aim is to balance the game so all units have a place in the meta. Sure it doesn't have the exact have same stats but it plays like RA, it looks like RA and just as fun as RA so why nitpick just for the sake of your elitism?

 

ps. I will agree that the pathfinding in OpenRA is 10x worse than any Westwood game but unlike Westwood games, this one can be updated with the help of a community

[pchote]

An OpenRA Global League would have been a more appropriate name.

 

Not really.  Removing the mod name would imply that this was a cross-mod league, which it isn't.

[Plokite_Wolf]

An OpenRA Global League would have been a more appropriate name.

 

Not really.  Removing the mod name would imply that this was a cross-mod league, which it isn't.

Right, OpenRA did have cross-mod tournaments. But still, OpenRA should be stressed in the name.

[Nyerguds]

:boring:

[Graion Dilach]

openra and their community is terrible. they literally bastardize and ruin all the C&C games they support and in my opinion everything about openra sucks. interface sucks, path finding sucks, gameplay sucks, engine sucks, etc.

 

Your opinion is blind, though.

 

One can argue about the community, it did went into "pr0 srs bsns" to the point of meh. Especially since balancing can be changed "on the fly" (between release cycles, I'd say 5 months atm) and that means 95% of the active topics are balance discussions. The interface is clearly better. It actually provides less need to scrolling/hotkeys/whatnot with the tabs (something RA2 also introduced btw) and it also don't have the onhold-when-you-run-out-of-credits bug. Pathfinding could be better, that's true. Gameplay is a very YMMV stuff, so whatever. Engine sucks... compared to what? Westwood? Are you kidding me? It's widely known that while you can respect WW for creating what they did, their coding skill ended up more and more choppy with the years.

 

The OpenRA engine might lack at cases - and I do grind my teeth sometimes when I run into these cases - but it's definitely not "bad" compared to Westwood coding. It do has it's own fair share of spaghetti shenanigans, but I feel WW had worse. Even better, you need a lot less effort to polish OpenRA (because you have the source code and thereby fix sloppy coding there) compared to the classics (because you need to binaryhack through ASM if you can actually capable of changing what you have to).

 

I respect CnCNet for what they achieved, and you guys will have RA++ longterm to resolve the skill issue required for maintenance (and hopefully to fix the sloppy coding on WW side), but blind idiot hatred without actually understanding what you hate is retarded.

 

I'm actually looking forward to RA++ in this matter, because I'm interested to see where the traditional community goes with it: will it start polishing balance along with the bugfixes when they get every tool for actually doing that or really keep everything strictly 3.03p, or add thousands of switches on top of 3.03p to customize it for one's needs, kinda like how gameplay evolved in OpenTTD.

 

The thing is, right now OpenRA can evolve on a lot faster pace than CnCNet (I empathize the speed, I'm aware CnCNet also evolves, although on a different rate and on a smaller field), and evolution isn't a bad thing. Yer, it's only bad if you're a strict purist, because OpenRA decided years ago to go it's own path and not aim "to reimplement everything on an 1:1 basis".

[Blade]

I think there is one thing we can all agree on here, no matter which RTS (or RA version for those who feel more connection) we prefer, and that is that 12345 is clearly an idiot that neither camp wants to be associated with.

 

Though the debate over whether the OpenRA RA mod is legitimately a decendant of C&C RA or a cousin on the RTS family tree may rage on eternally at least we have that.

 

12345 you are the weakest link, you are fired and must leave the big brother house immediately. GTFO.

[tomsons26]

Agreed.

OpenRA RA mod is NOT the Red Alert, should not be represented, implied as or advertised as such.

 

It’s wrong to use the original games logo for this because it’s not it.

 

You (you as in the OpenRA team in this case) need to think of a your own way of designating the separate mods for cases like these and etc.

 

It’s funny really how the ora team even let that logo be used in the first place for this.

 

Some time ago they were like hurdurur you can't uz original stuffz cuz copeyraits frankly everything should be replaced with cc stuff dur hur, but that the same time they ignored that themselves on many accounts.

 

When a new UI was being made for the D2K mod i tried to pinch in, browsed through the original assets and eventually noticed the texture WW used was from 3ds Max (and can be found in probably all 3d modelling apps that come with textures and as far as any copyright goes to that the textures shipped with 3d modelling tools are free to use for anything and this particular one was abused to oblivion in the early 2000s) and gave it to them proposing to use the original instead of that sin awful thing they intended to.

 

In return they went all copyright hurdurhur on me.

 

Funny how the RA UI used the metal texture taken from the original RA manual and no one even batted an eye https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/blob/bleed/mods/ra/uibits/chrome.png

https://picasaweb.google.com/113361105083292812413/RedAlert#6144970289232999266

 

But when i started adapting the original RA2 UI for the RA2 mod and then even remaking pieces from scratch to point accuracy and they lost their collective shit and in the end xanax’s take on what I was doing already was used anyway.

 

As for "conservative in that any alteration". No, just no.

 

When i was introduced to the RA2 mod, it’s supposed goals and intentions, it was presented as with intent of getting things working more like the original RA2 thus paving a way for RA2 modders to have an opportunity to accurately recreate their mods in ORA.

 

The more I worked on that mod the more I learned that keeping anything as original as possible is not of any intention what so ever and in fact they didn’t even want to know how things were done in the engine that much.

More time passed more I learned really the intention is to have something that looks and seems to act like in the original.

 

(something RA2 also introduced btw)

Not really, Westwood started experimenting with different UI's that have tab sorting of sorts in the PSX games and in N64 C&C.

 

and it also don't have the onhold-when-you-run-out-of-credits bug.

It's not a bug…

 

Pathfinding could be better, that's true.

If it still (screenshots are from 2015) lights up like a Christmas tree causing massive lag when nothing is even moving then "could be better" is a major understatement.

 

Engine sucks... compared to what? Westwood? Are you kidding me? It's widely known that while you can respect WW for creating what they did, their coding skill ended up more and more choppy with the years.

The OpenRA engine might lack at cases - and I do grind my teeth sometimes when I run into these cases - but it's definitely not "bad" compared to Westwood coding. It do has it's own fair share of spaghetti shenanigans, but I feel WW had worse.

True, ORA's engine doesn't suck, when it comes to that it’s quite versatile and with more attention to ideas mod developers have for features and expanding the engine instead of endless (un)balancing taking priority and i'll do what i want cuz i don't give a fuck's, it could become even better as a generic RTS engine that could serve as a platform for other developers.

 

Your opinion on the C&C engine and WW coding is really really biased.

You are basing it off of your experience with the C&C Gen 2 engine which is TS/RA2/YR, off of RA2/YR specifically.

 

The code added in RA2/YR doesn't really represent how things were done in the original C&C Gen2 engine Westwood Studios built for TS that much anymore. The engine was reworked in many things during the RA2 development by a programmer team at Westwood Pacific without much involvement from Vegas in programming terms in the project.

 

Yer, it's only bad if you're a strict purist, because OpenRA decided years ago to go it's own path and not aim "to reimplement everything on an 1:1 basis".

It did chose its own path, but in a lot of moments it feels like it, anyone involved is relentlessly trying to sell it as a pure true replacement to the original games. If someone is gonna clame that ora is that no one really from the dev team has any interest of stepping in and clarifying what ora is and what isn’t

Of the oh so many, latest case point http://kotaku.com/fans-remake-classic-rts-games-like-command-conquer-r-1775451029 which sells it as a modernized remake.