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Bittah Commander

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About Bittah Commander

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Command & Conquer Profile

  • XWIS
    Bittah
  1. There's less less than 24 hours until The Dawn of the Tiberium Age's release. While you wait, here's something to warm you up for what's coming:
  2. Trying to connect the RA and tiberium universes while still taking RA2 and RA3 into account is pointless, since both the story lines of both universes are already full of holes now and there'll be even more plotholes after connecting them. Basically what happened is that some folks (from Westwood Vegas) started the C&C story, which began as TD->TS->TT, although this was quickly changed to RA->TD->TS->TI(->TT?) somewhere during the development of RA1. Then after TS was finished, some other guy (from Westwood Pacific, later on renamed to EA Pacfic) decided to butt in and "contribute" to the story by writing a sequel to RA which could have never existed in the first place. Then RA2 was released and folks at Westwood Vegas who originally started the story found that their story was suddenly divided in two halves without them ever having had a say in the matter and they thought of means to "fix" the inconsistencies which now divided the C&C universe in 2 halves and are those bits of story ideas you might have heard Adam Isgreen and some of the things planned for Renegade 2. Now these "fixes" that were supposed to reunite the C&C universe were obviously never realized and during the meantime EA happily kept on "contributing" to Westwood Vegas' story by making TW, KW and TTse (I'll just call it TT second edition to avoid confusion, since this is obviously not the same TT as Westwood Vegas initially planned). At the same time EA also made RA3, which is another sequel for the "RA universe". Of the colors I used above, only the green text concerns the original story writers, while the rest are "independent" writers "contributing" to the story without any communication with one another whatsoever. So what we have is 3 different story writers (assuming RA2 and RA3 were written by the same people, which probably isn't even the case, making it actually 4 writers...) that all have their own ideas and add whatever they like to the story without communicating with one another at all and 2 of these 3 don't even seem to have any concern for the story's consistency at all as long as they can add in the things they like. Although the original writers had some ideas for fixing up these huge plotholes caused by the existence of RA2, doing so actually would've been way too forced and would've created a messy story that'd still be full of plotholes (in fact, even if you ignore the tiberium related C&Cs, RA2 is still full of plotholes as RA1's sequel on its own). That aside, these original writers are no longer even around, which left the writers that messed up the story in the first place to run the show. So unless you want a story full of holes, the only way to properly connect the RA and Tiberium universes again is by ignoring all of the CnCs that weren't written by the same people. As they say; too many cooks spoil the broth. That leaves RA, TD and TS. If you insist you could also attach TW and TT to that, but considering those had different writers as well, doing so would also add a fair share of inconsistencies.
  3. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age 1.1117

    Thank you
  4. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age 1.1117

    It's been a while since DTA 1.11 has been released since then our website has moved from cncxs to PPM after some server issues that couldn't be resolved and 6 updates have been released, including today's (version 1.1117). Here's a global overview of the most important changes that have been made since DTA 1.11: Most importantly, two options to improve the performance have been added, of which the most notable one must be AlexB's hack which disables VideoBackBuffer. Without this hack, graphics that are normally allocated in the video RAM first have to be copied to the system RAM before the game is able to use them and this process can slow down the game a little or a lot, depending on your system (for some systems it's even so much that the game becomes unplayable). Of the people who have tested this, the majority was able to notice a significant boost in performance and for a few people the game's performance even went from being so slow it was entirely unplayable, to perfectly playable. There were just a few people who reported that disabling VideoBackBuffer itself made the game unplayable for them however, so for this reason an option to enable VideoBackBuffer again has been added to the launcher (but as mentioned, leaving it disabled is faster for most systems). The other option to enhance the performance which was added before that, is a setting to disable the darkening effect on sidebar icons which you see whenever you build a structure. For all systems this slows the game down at least a little bit (for many systems it's barely noticeable however) and for some systems it this was bad enough to almost make the game unplayable. With videoBackBuffer disabled, the slowdown caused by the darkening effect should have become entirely unnoticeable on most systems however, which makes the option to disable the darkening effect unnecessary for most systems, but it's still there for the few very slow systems where lag is still noticeable when building structures and the few systems where disabling VideoBackBuffer caused problems. Other improvements include that the launcher the now displays how many DTA players are online at CnCNet and will also display this in the bottom right corner of the screen via a text balloon in the bottom right corner of the screen; this way you you'll be able to minimize the game while waiting for other players to come online, while at the same time making other people aware that there's someone waiting to play in the lobby. The launcher will now also check whether all of the mod's files are present and unmodified (to ensure there won't be any issues when playing online), it'll show the total progress instead of progress per file whenever you install an update (or install DTA from scratch) and it will also tell you the size of the update up front. The maps that are included with the mod are now located inside of folders instead of in MIX files and although that might seem meaningless to the people to the people who just play the mod, it means that future updates will be much smaller considering only the specific maps that have been added or changed will have to be downloaded then, rather than the whole 20+ MB MIX files that contain the maps. Mind that any custom/downloaded maps still have to be placed in the mod's main folder rather than inside of the Maps folder however. The map editor now also has an option to disable sounds (although I replaced the map editor's original sounds with something less disturbing, some people were apparently still bothered by them) and there's also 2 new tool scripts; one for disabling building bibs (this is done on some maps where they look bad because of the custom lighting) and one for enabling naval yards for maps. Moving onto actual ingame additions, all buildings with chimneys (power plants, the war factory and the research facility) now have smoke/steam animations in the enhanced mode (which can be disabled by lowering the detail level) there now are hunter-seeker crates (they don't inflict as much damage as the ones in TS, but they can help with finding/destroying that last pesky hidden unit when Short Game is disabled) laser fence posts no longer look like tiny wooden poles and have more hitpoints (about 3 times as many as a brick wall piece), although they can no longer be turned off you can now build MIGs and Tesla tanks after capturing the tech center of an opposite faction and GDI can now build the M.A.D. Tank. Several new maps have been added: Train-ing Holiday The Experiment Lab Frozen Wasteland Beach Landing Field Dante's Desert Red Valley Circle of Death Hectic Oasis And finally, DTA 1.1117 also added Scavenger maps. Scavenger is a new game mode where players have to aquire credits, units and powerups by collecting crates, while only being able to build a barracks, a war factory, a repair facility and some defenses. The war factory can only build a few basic units, while more advanced units can only be acquired via crates. You can also choose to disable bases, which basically makes the game mode similar to the Survivor game mode which older versions of DTA used to have. Have a look at the change log to see all other changes since DTA 1.11.
  5. DTA 1.11 has been released! You can view the Change Log, watch the video above for a preview of the new features or just go right ahead and download the mod.
  6. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age 1.11 news

    Here's a new video showing DTA 1.11's Comp Stomp game type and the new AI:
  7. I recently decided to start posting updates on DTA 1.11's progress more actively and have been doing so (along with Rampastring) at DTA's official website since the past month. A decent number of updates have been posted already, so I'll try to keep this post summarized as possible. To start off, DTA 1.11 has newly made water cliffs for the desert theater. Thanks to a hack from CCHyper the tiberium now gets affected by lighting just like all other terrain. On the left is what it originally looked right and on the right is with the hack; as you can see this is a tremendous improvement for how tiberium looks on darker maps. I converted several terrain objects between theaters to increase the options mappers have to detail their maps with. Also the new LATs I made give mappers extra options for detailing their maps. This is just one out of six new LATs I posted on DTA's front page. The GUI's layout and graphics have been redone. As you can see in this image the minimap is now much bigger and more detailed. There are in fact different GUIs and the one you get depends on whichever screen resolution you've selected in the launcher... ...what launcher? This launcher; it was originally made by Nyerguds as a setup tool mainly for switching between my different GUIs, but it was later on further developed into a launcher by Rampastring. The launcher is capable of automatically updating DTA to the most recent version, which will make it a lot easier for me to release bug fixes/updates in the future, meaning you won't be having to spend ages to see one little thing fixed anymore. And finally... Singleplayer missions. People have been asking for a remade TD campaign and no, there won't be a remade TD campaign included with DTA 1.11's release. It takes a lot of work and time to get such missions done properly after all (especially considering the amount of missions the TD campaign had), but maybe the mappers will be able to pull it off eventually (considering the workload however, and the fact few are actually interested in remaking the TD campaign, some extra help might be necessary). Never the less, DTA 1.11 will come with some singleplayer missions. "The Toxic Diversion", made by Rampastring, is a campaign existing out of 4 missions which can play drastically different depending on the choices you've made during the first missions. Aside from this, missions in the same fashion as TD's "new missions" might appear later on; so far one of such missions has been included already, namely "Under Sige II" by ReFlex (much like TD's "Under Siege", with the main difference that you're playing as GDI instead of Nod). Visit DTA's website to read everything above in more detail, along with a lot more images (including an animation of the airstrike superweapon, which I left out of this post because of its size).
  8. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age v1.10 released

    Oh, thanks. I tried putting the video in my post myself, but it wouldn't work when I tried for some reason.
  9. It has taken quite a while for version 1.10 of The Dawn of the Tiberium Age to get finished, but it's finally here and I promise you that it's not just been collecting dust all year long. DTA 1.10 has the longest change log yet, so I'm just going to link to it: http://dta.cncxs.com/changelog. The most notable change is without a doubt the addition of the enhanced mode. While the classic mode aims to be a perfect replica of C&C95 on Tiberian Sun's engine, the aim of the enhanced mode is to improve or add features to the ones you're already familiar with from the classic mode. To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, if you haven't already seen it or you can of course just head straight to DTA.CNCXS.COM to download and play the mod straight away (do watch if you haven't seen it however, because I put quite a few hours in making it ).
  10. After a full month short from a year of silence concerning DTA, it's about due time for me to let people know that DTA is really still quite active and it now even has its very own site! My intention of building the site was to gather all DTA players in one single location, where they can read the latest news concerning DTA, use the forums to share their thoughts and work and use the chat rooms to set up multiplayer matches. So to read the latest news concerning DTA 1.10, view the latest previews and to meet some fellow DTA players, head over to DTA.CNCXS.com!
  11. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age v1.09 released

    Yes, this is a Tiberian Sun to Tiberian Dawn (C&C1) total conversion. I figured it'd be clear this mod is for Tiberian Sun, since it was mentioned in the last news post, but I suppose not everyone necessarily saw that one. Anyway, I'll be sure to remember to mention this in the next news post I make concerning this mod
  12. Just after X-mas I finally finished version 1.09 of The Dawn of the Tiberium Age. As you can see below, the change-log is fairly short, be nevertheless the work that was put in this version was quite a lot. The focus of this version of DTA was mainly on the terrain, which previously almost completely existed out of buildings (or building bibs to be precise) and has now been completely converted/remade as real terrain. This will especially be a blessing to everyone who ever felt like making a custom map for DTA (because I know there's no bigger pain than having to make a map with the use of buildings), but also in-game this will be beneficial (I'm sure everyone loved how a cliff would cloak when a unit picked up a stealth create right next to it for instance). Aside from the new terrain DTA 1.09 also comes with a new look for the menus, a new map and a couple in-game fixes and tweaks. For more information, images and of course to download the mod, head on to the The Dawn of the Tiberium Age forum at PPM. Change-log:Added: Multiplayer map "Deceiving Adjacency"Added: Gunboat (not buildable).Changed: The GUI (the menus); I made it look more similar to TD's.Changed: All terrain was remade as real terrain.Changed: The old 'terrain-structures' were replaced with the new (real) terrain on all maps.Changed: Made the rocket launcher buildable for Nod again.Changed: Made the medium tank and heavy tank accelerate (rather than going from motionless to full speed instantly) to improve balancing.Fixed: The poweroff animation (it used the wrong palette before).Removed: Multiplayer maps "Kider River" and "Village of the Unfortunate". I didn't think replacing the terrain on "Kider River" was worth the effort and the silly cliffs on "Village of the Unfortunate" were impossible to replicate. Credits: DonutArnold: Made the gunboat and attempted to teach me some 3D modeling in 3ds Max.Crash: Made the map Deceiving Adjacency.Gangster: Made the new desert bridges and half of the new desert rivers.Lin Kuei Ominae: Taught me how to use 3ds Max to rotate the terrain (with help of a .max file he provided), which allowed me to convert a lot of terrain I would've needed Gangster to for me before (and because he didn't have much free time, DTA 1.09 would probably would have been released quite a while later).OmegaBolt: Replaced the building terrain with the new (real) terrain on Enemy Lines, Sandy Plagues, Social Divide and Towns of Sudan.
  13. Bittah Commander

    The Dawn of the Tiberium Age

    The Dawn of the the Tiberian Age is a mod (a Total Conversion) for Tiberian Sun which converts it into Tiberian Dawn (C&C95). This mod looks and plays nearly like Tiberian Dawn, but since you have all benefits of the Tiberian Sun engine (like being able to move while firing, drag-scroll, high resolutions, online play and skirmish) the gaming experience is (in my opinion) better. Aside from this there's also an extra game mode called survivor, in which you have to collect crates to get units and upgrades. Possibly some other kind extra stuff will be added in the future. Watch the trailer on Mod DB Download the trailer from TiberiumWeb (you might need to right-click the link and click Save As) Note: The downloadable trailer has a bit higher quality than the one you can watch on moddb, because that one is slight sized down (the resolution is still bigger than I could have on any other site however). Like the text at the end of the video says, for more information or to download this mod either go to http://www.tiberiumweb.com/forums/index.php?showforum=84 or http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/index.php?f=504
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