Redux 3 Demo

[neonext]

The Redux 3 demo is ready for download.

http://www.angelfire.com/empire/dune2redux/downloads.html

For those of you who are not familiar with Redux 3, it is a modern-warfare game, but a Dune mod will be the one of the first things completed once full modability has been added.

Press 'h' to toggle the help menu once you're all the way in the game.

Here is the readme:

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Redux 3 Demo

by Justin Anstead

neonext@msn.com

Game code © 2004 Justin Anstead

Official game art © 2004 Justin Anstead

Placeholder art © their respective owners

Music © 2004 Justin Anstead

DISCLAIMER-------------------------------------------------

Storage and use of this game binds you to this agreement:

-----------------------------------------------------------

This program uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for music

playback. The libraries included within this package are

being distributed under the terms of the GNU LGPL license:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html

Although I'm positive this game is safe, I cannot be held

responsible for any damage resulting from using or having

it. You must own a copy of C&C: Tiberium Dawn, either

the DOS version, or the Windows 95 verison (C&C Gold).

You must not alter this program in any way, You cannot

hack, remove, change, or copy any images or audio included.

You cannot distribute this package, or any of its contents

without the express permission of its author.

You cannot make any personal gains involving this package.

You understand that this is a very early build of the

game, and there will be problems and missing features =D

You will post many comments, suggestions, and questions about

the game if you want to help out with development.

You will consider making a mod, if you like the game engine.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This is a demo of my new real-time strategy game which

is meant to clone a wide range of different titles.

This means extensive mod compatibilty, but none of the game

will be modable yet, except for the music. This demo is

simply an early release to show where I'm going with this

project and what the engine's early capabilities are, so

that potential moders will know whether they want to start

working on a mod, or general players know whether they

should care about this game or not.

I have only tested this on these systems:

Athlon XP 1800+, 512 ddr, 64mb gforce 3

P4 2.4, 512 ddr, 32 mb gforce 4

If you get really bad performance, let me know your system specs.

Only requirements so far are:

DirectX 7 or higher

800x600 resolution with 16 bit color

DirectSound compatible sound chipset

Not sure how much video memory you need, but it's probably a lot.

Several of the things that are missing but will be added soon are:

- multiple resolutions

- cliffs/rivers

- the rest of the aircraft

- infantry

- the rest of the structures

- mod compatibility

- better music and more sounds

- the rest of the graphics

You can import your own music for the game to use. Simply

get the audio in wav format by ripping the song from a cd

onto the hard drive, or converting an mp3 (or other audio format).

Then convert the wav into an ogg using a free ogg encoder. I like

to use OggDrop

http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/

With OggDrop you just grab the files in windows explorer and drag

them onto the application box and it takes care of the rest. Just be

sure to put the ogg files in the same directory as the demo.

This game will only recongize the track names that were included,

so you'll have to remove a song to put in a new song, and you can't

have more than 7 tracks, including the menu music.

You can press 1, 2, 3, or 4 to pick your side, or press 5

to watch all 4 sides be controlled by the AI.

When you're in the game, press h to bring up the help menu.

Remember that this game only supports 16 bit color, so if you

want to run this game in windowed mode (the default setting),

you will have to have a 16 bit desktop color depth.

This program will add an entry into your windows registry. If you

would like to delete it, run regedit, expand HKEY_CURRENT_USERS,

then expand Software, then right click the Redux 3 folder and click

delete. I will have an uninstall program take care of this eventually.

Visit the Dune Editing forums on fed2k

http://www.dune2k.com/

please send any comments, complaints, or questions to me at

neonext@msn.com

[neonext]

CURRENT BUGS/ISSUES/MISSING FEATURES LIST

- helicopters have horrible aim. cost was raised so less aircraft slots would be occupied by almost useless helis.

- box selecting units only works in the 4th quadrant

- units sometimes go into occupied squares, this isnt really a bug, it's an intentional, temporary fix to keep the framerate high until the pathfinding system is optimized.

- the money system is not implemented yet, everything is free but takes time to build based on the cost (this will be changed later to a different value for moding purposes)

- the game doesnt end when all other players have been defeated, nor when you've been defeated.

- aircraft cannot receive orders to bomb structures (but if you tell the bombers to attack a unit right next to the structure, your pretty sure to score a ton of damage on it)

- you can't see the health of anything

- the weather is never clear, except for the sunny climate map (grass with no trees).

- the weather has no effect on anything.

- the unit command buttons and their hotkeys dont work.

- overlays (trees in this case) do not draw over things properly.

- shots don't always face the right way.

- trails aren't aligned perfectly.

- units are not shown in your color on the side bar

- aircraft are not indentifiable by nation (not colored in any way)

- large units disappear on edges of the map

- units ignore the fact that they're being attacked

ADDITIONS & REVISIONS

Alpha Build 1

- Bitmaps are now loaded from files.

- Added main menu system.

- Added mod subdirectory system and loaded of files from them.

- Added loading of unit data from easily editable text files.

[desert_storm]

If I might say something about the download-site, yellow on white doesn't work that well (especialy for links), unless you have super human eyes... or highlight it.

[neonext]

agreed.

i had changed the colors on the screen shot page, but was too lazy to fix them on the rest of the pages ;D

hopefully i'll get a better host soon, and get a little more motivation to make the pages look right

[desert_storm]

didn't gob say that he could host you here at dune2k?

[neonext]

yea, but he hasnt replied to my message

[desert_storm]

oh, ok.

[neonext]

he's just been real busy, the site will eventually be here :)

has anyone even played the demo? ???

is anyone possibly interested in helping with the dune mod?

[Andrew]

I played the demo for about 5 min.

When I started it up and it told me to choose sides, it went very slow there, the mouse wasn't moving fast, would jump around a bit.

But once I get into playing the demo a bit more (only played for about 4 min) and figure out what to do, I will have more info.

[jordos]

yeah, I tried it too, and I got that problem andrew has as well, once ingame speed is fine tho :) . I beat the AIs on my second try, yay! :D , haven't noticed any other bugs (besides the one you listed)

depending on how difficult it would be to mod, I'd love to help ;)

[neonext]

As you can see from the bug list post, I've been busy working on the new version, which will be a normal unpacked exe, except for maybe the sounds (for now). Once this alpha version is out, you will only need to download a small compressed exe for all the new updates, unless new art is added, but that will be kept to a minimum and the downloads will still be small. the main focus of the new version is mod compatibility. this means you will be able to edit all the art in the game, and all the unit/weapon data. some general game data will also be editable, and more and more data features will be editable as future versions are released. all the data you can edit will be stored in easily readable text files.

some other things that are planned for the next release:

- fixed helicopters

- the rest of the units/structures/aircraft

- larger maps

- multiple resolutions, up to 2048 x 1536

- menus and game setup

- hopefully some better music

- updated web site, with fixed color schemes and new screenshots with thumbnails

- various minor changes and bug fixes

i'm on track for the set release of mid-august

[Cyborg]

I can't control the aircrafts...

The enemy blows up my buildings with its bombers, but my bombers just bomb stray tanks... I want to control it to bomb the enemy base.

[neonext]

- aircraft cannot receive orders to bomb structures (but if you tell the bombers to attack a unit right next to the structure, you're pretty sure to score a ton of damage on it)

the AI players cannot tell their bombers to attack your structures either, they are probably getting some lucky hits by attacking units of yours near your structures. if this happens when none of your units are nearby, there might be a unit underneath one of your structures (due to another limitation). also, you probably already know this, but make sure your bombers are selected by clicking on them, which is kind of annoying because you can't really tell which bombers are yours yet.

thanks for the post, i'll make sure these problems get fixed soon. everyone please continue to post things that are most annoying, even if they are already listed

[Cyborg]

What I was basically saying was that I was unable to select my aircrafts...

And helicopters do not respond to orders.

Ground units do, but I need to constantly click the unit to attack...

Can't you make your own units non-automatic?

It's hard fighting against the AI's control of my own units.

[neonext]

What I was basically saying was that I was unable to select my aircrafts...

Yea, there definitally needs to be a hotkey or something to select your aircraft easily. The fighter and bomber buttons at the bottom were first intended for that purpose, and the 'f' and 'b' keys were originally going to be hotkeys to select your fighters and bombers, not launch them. i will make it that way, and have them take off when u select any target (like in tiberium dawn). the only problem with being able to select aircraft from the bar at the bottom is when i add map scrolling you'll end up scrolling south when you dont want to. there's a few things i can think of off the top of my head to deal with this:

1) have the bottom bar hide itself when not being used, like the sidebar on the left (this could be annoying because you'll probably have to manually toggle it every time you want to scroll south)

2) only scroll the map when the cursor is at the very bottom of the screen, past the bar (could be annoying because the bar is small, and you might accidentally have the cursor go too far a lot)

3) only scroll the map when the cursor is right above the bar (could be annoying when the map starts scrolling when you were only intending on selecting some aircraft)

4) only scroll the map when the cursor is to the left of the aircraft buttons (annoying because only the left bottom quarter would be available to scroll)

5) make the bottom bar bigger, so the map only scrolls when the cursor is along the bottom, a somewhat larger area below all the bottons)

Maybe the answer is a combination of some of these, or something else entirely. I guess i'll just test and see which is less annoying, but if you have any suggestions, including other ways of dealing with aircraft in general, i'd appreciate them.

And helicopters do not respond to orders.

I'll have to look into this, as far as I know helicopters accept move and attack unit commands, they just have really really bad aim.

Ground units do, but I need to constantly click the unit to attack...

Hmm, i think there may be at least a couple bugs related to this. One is that the cursor you see doesn't always represent the action that will be given - this would be the case if you are trying to attack units that are moving. The other is pathfinding problems, which would be the case if you're trying to attack a unit and your selected units just sit there completely ignoring your orders.

Can't you make your own units non-automatic?

It's hard fighting against the AI's control of my own units.

This is also a possibility of why your units don't listen to you sometimes. Perhaps the AI is giving them orders after you have done so - i dont think this is the case, but i'll look into it.

As for unit automation, i believe they move once after being built so that the exit doesnt get all clogged, and then they attack units within range (and move to track that unit if it goes out of range). I would remove the tracking part, and just have the units only fire at enemies within range, but it sounds like that would be the guard order that i eventually have to add.

I dont know, does any of this fit the behaivor you are describing? If the AI is really giving your units normal commands, especially for moving, that it shouldnt be, then there must be some bad bugs that i'll have to track down soon

thanks cyborg, for your bug reports, your help is very much appreciated

[neonext]

website has been redone. first alpha version (modable one) will be out any day now

[Cyborg]

This seems to develop into a quality game. Keep up the good work.

[vidiware]

Nice game...

The same old icon :P

Keep up the good work! I agree about the unit AI... maybe you should be able to control airunits and let the tanks be in a "standby" mode until you move them, or the enemy are withing target range?

[neonext]

i remembered the icon part at the last minute, and my art editor doesnt edit icon files. i was too lazy to download one ;D

in general i really dislike doing the art, i'm way more interested in getting the coding done. i might not release this until all the placeholder art is changed though :-

[Inoculator9]

Awesome job Neo ;)

[neonext]

i'll have to phase out the art as i go along, because it takes forever to render the units (and i dont even want to think about drawing the structures).

i've got a few pathfinding bugs to fix and a few features to add, so it will still be at least a few days

[neonext]

Alpha Build 1 is ready. Most of the changes were to add the ability to mod the game and to add settings. Few bugs were fixed and it is likely more bugs were added.

Go here to download:

http://www.angelfire.com/empire/dune2redux/downloads.html

You will need a little over 30 mb of space for this, and the download filesize is 14.7 mb. Fortunately you will only need to download most of it once. Updates will be about 1 mb each; slightly larger when art files have been changed.

ADDITIONS/REVISIONS since the demo build:

- Bitmaps are now loaded from files.

- Added main menu system.

- Added mod subdirectory system and loading of files from them.

- Added loading of unit/aircraft/weapon/game data from easily editable text files.

- Added support for standard resolutions from 640x480 to 2048x1536.

- Added ability to change mod in settings file (will be selectable in main menu in a later version.)

- Added skirmish menu with weather, terrain, players, and sides.

- Increased map size and repositioned structures (and updated all code to support this)

- Added scrollspeed.

- Added ability to set resolution and windowed/fullscreen mode.

- Added auto-switching to fullscreen at beggining when toggled on.

- Changed/added some hotkeys and updated help menu.

- Added multiple menu background loading (randomly selected).

- Fixed bug where sidebar contents would change if one of your structures was behind the spot on the menu you were clicking at.

- Changed long-distance pathfinding to decrease pathfinding load.

- Added centering of screen around your structures at game start.

- Increased number of in-game music tracks to 7.

NEW BUGS/LIMITATIONS:

- Aircraft bar does not fit in 640x480, and whole bottom bar is a pixel from bottom.

- Units do not always follow orders correctly.

- Units get stuck a lot, especially AI units.

- Cursor alignment for giving orders is sometimes off.

- Aircraft are sometimes invisibile.

- All units/aircraft/structures disappear on edges of screen.

[Vidi]

i just tryed it but the mouse pointer is really slow :(

[Cyborg]

The frame rate is very bad at 1280*960 pixels, and thus the game is too slow to play.

[neonext]

what are your specs, both of u?

is it slow from the start, or does it get slow after a bunch of units are moving around?