Aircraftkiller

Those buildings need a lot of proportion adjustment to begin resembling their TD counterparts.

I disagree. There's no absolute need for game art to require beveled edges from high-poly baked normal maps. Quite a bit of detail can be faked via heightmaps in Photoshop. I have a workflow that works very well for that purpose. The amount of quality gained from putting in a lot of high-detail modeling has a LOT of diminishing returns in terms of time invested versus the amount of quality you get. I'm not against the technique at all, but here in my office (where we make models for VBS 2), we can't afford to budget the time to do a high-res bake for over 95% of our models. The amount of quality gained with some beveled edges from up close is not enough to justify the insane work times required to get that detail - much of which can be faked with Photoshop heightmaps that convert into tangent/object normals for painting with dDo. Thanks for the consideration, though. If we go that route, I'll let you know!

I get that, but it's still a risky business to create C&C mods/games for non-EA property. I'd hate to sink a lot of effort into a project only to see it get hit with a shutter notice. That said, I keep my workflow open. Anything I'm making for Renegade is usable in UE4 with minor modifications.

The real issue with UE4 isn't the code so much as the possibility of EA shutting down anything C&C-based.

FWIW, those are diffuse-only textures before I was made aware that Renegade will start supporting normals, specularity, and gloss. I've been remaking those textures using my copy of Quixel SUITE. I've got some things people might find interesting for the next update. ;-)

I'm only interested in working with it since there's support for normals, specularity, and gloss. It means I don't have to adjust my workflow to suit ancient texturing pipelines. I can create PBR-calibrated textures and last-gen textures and the only effort I'm wasting is the time I spend telling Quixel Suite to kick out UDK calibrated textures or UE4 calibrated textures. It's not "raping" a dead game's engine. Think of it more like bringing it up to spec with current generation games and having something interesting to work on while potential plans for UE4 are solidified.

Perhaps "did all the work" is just my way of expressing frustration from 2006 that I still feel is valid today. There's a lot of potential with APB that I feel has been completely wasted and as a result, your community is basically on life support. I get that you want to make it better, but I don't think that's going to happen until someone takes charge and removes the common thread between all of these problems: the current leadership, such as it is. I'm sorry if it seems I'm only replying to certain parts of your posts but it's difficult enough keeping up with this thread as it is. I'd suggest talking to me on Facebook instead. I tried looking you up there but apparently you have me blocked or you've stopped using it entirely

Out of all of those images you posted, the strongest work involves civilian buildings. The terrain isn't finished. The "refill pads" are lacking physical detail, and the textures are blurry. The chandelier isn't making use of a second/detail pass for faked reflections, etc. The civilian structures (including the bridge) are your best I've seen. The rest of it just doesn't look like you put as much effort into the work. I'm not "trolling" anyone. My replies are genuine and stem from my 2006 departure under circumstances best described as "overwhelmed with doing all of the work" as numerous forum posts from back then will attest to. I have legitimate issues with "BHP" as do all of the W3D Hub staff. If I were trolling, I'd be writing up baseless insults instead of criticizing what I feel to be bad decisions by people on your team. The offer is still there to help you out if you switch over to W3DH, even if it appears that we're starting to have some rocky relations with one another.

It's great that you've tried to work on these things, but my point still stands: I continue to see a lot of my work in there a decade later. As we discussed privately on the internal forum of W3DH, if someone loves making something they'll find the time to commit to it. The mod shouldn't be a job if you enjoy the work you're doing. I still see my maps, buildings, sounds, etc. My point hasn't really changed. Regarding years, 11 years ago is when nearly every building in APB was created. I made those. I'm referring to the original creation date, not the time I left. There's no trolling in my response unless you honestly think that I'm simply posting to get a rise out of him, which doesn't make a lot of sense because it's rather obvious that I'm generally making cogent arguments. This works well. Thanks!

I covered that already. He can say what he wants to say. How it plays out after displaying his obvious biases is in question.

I hate this version of IPB and I don't generally use quote tags because copy/pasting doesn't work the way I preferred it to. If you know a method to get IPB to copy/paste [ quote ] tags, that'd be great. Regardless of what CNCNZ does or doesn't do, you represent your community. It doesn't mean much to be the face of your community and then say "What I say doesn't reflect on CNCNZ". No one would've accepted that as a response back when the Reborn/APB fight was going on in 2003-2006 because I was the face of APB, and as a result I spoke for it. When you publicly side with APB using Fox News-like disinformation in order to build up a narrative that doesn't back objective reality, you're putting CNCNZ into the position where it also appears to be partial toward APB. At this point I can't say that I trust that you'll handle news posts fairly. Disclaimers don't change opinions, unfortunately. While you may feel that your opinions don't represent those of CNCNZ as a whole, perception is everything. I firmly believe that your posts here have built up a perception amongst the entire W3D Hub community and any impartial readers that you and the site have an obvious bias toward APB.

If by a few years, you mean 2006? Nine years ago? And specifically what happened: I refused to give up my art assets to people who wanted to work on APB unless they could conclusively prove that they were going to be able to do the work I was doing, which at the time consisted of level editing, editing LevelEdit presets, sounds, textures, vehicles, and buildings. Seeing as how my buildings and maps and textures and sounds are still in APB 11 years later, I can see I was mistaken allowing anyone to continue it. If you're going to troll, troll harder or don't troll at all. Apparently it is, because that's what they did. Regarding neutrality, you don't come off as neutral whatsoever by regurgitating APB talking points. Let's not pretend that this is about ethics in database handling. The root of this issue is the way that "community" was run - or rather run into the ground. I have yet to see anyone address why two major development teams and founding members of "BHP" left without using the "ethics" red herring to try and distract from the actual issue. Of course I'm not surprised that you're typing up APB talking points considering CJ's done stuff for you in the past. That's fine, and I understand, but let's at least be honest here and stop with the veneer of neutrality.

Hey, you're right. It is off-topic - very much like how it's completely off-topic to discuss "ethics" when the core issue is and always has been the reason for the split.

I don't mind that you've changed your position entirely but it's just odd that you won't own up to what you used to believe. Nice JC Denton macro, though.

It's still a red herring. A database full of forum passwords that no one is going to do anything with is a distraction from the issue: why they left. You yourself should understand considering you've been very adamant against "BHP" before you were recruited by them, alongside Pushwall and sith_wampa. I'm not taking your replies personally. A "personal attack" used in context is "attacking the character of the person instead of their argument", not that I'm feeling indignant. ;-)

I'm not surprised that someone is attacking me as a person instead of my arguments, that's par for the course. FWIW: if you can't post without personally attacking someone, you're not supporting your argument - you're undermining it Also, armchair psychologists are a big problem.

Let's not kid ourselves. C&C's never been a particularly healthy community to begin with.

I asked who defines ethics as applied to this situation. I didn't ask for a Wikipedia article, but I appreciate the read. I'll get around to it when I have some time. I'm not aware of any sabotage. From my access to the staff forums, I see several statements from the leadership saying "we don't want to hurt APB because we like it" and whatnot. There's no deliberate malice that I'm aware of, and I came onboard after the situation happened because I saw an opportunity to work with a community that isn't full of toxic people. Don't worry about your English. I can understand you perfectly. English isn't my only language, either. Jeg er tosproget men jeg generelt at skrive på engelsk. ;-) If the rights to use the launcher were given by the person who developed it but then something screwed up, it isn't permanent. They can fix it themselves. If I owned a business where someone who developed a program I needed (but wouldn't give me the code) and left for another competitor, I'm not going to throw a fit about it. I'd find someone else who can do it. Therein lies another problem here: APB doesn't have people who can do it because Renegade's community shinks year-after-year. It's a big issue for them because their lack of focus on developing a better mod lead to a dying community for their mod. You can't draw talent from a pool that has none. I understand that you have your perspective of how things should go - so try and understand their perspective. If Catalyst were able to access their database of staff discussions before they had a chance to back up everything they worked on, there's no doubt he would've deleted all of it. Years of work would've been lost, and it wouldn't be discussed here on this site because nobody would care. The only reason this is becoming a big problem is because certain individuals are posting about their indignation here and in other forums. Had they not done what they did, they'd lose out and "BHP" would've faced no repercussions. I can't say that I'll speak for you, but I really doubt anyone who's taking their side right now would care if years of staff discussions were lost - and some of these discussions are "lol ack is teh azhoel" which even I don't want to see lost to the ether because someone got mad enough to screw them over. As far as the ends never justifying the means? There's no universal agreement on that. What you meant was "I don't feel that the ends justify the means", but you have the luxury of not worrying about any consequences for a decision you never had to make.

I'd be surprised if APB won anything because it's still incredibly dated looking. That's a big problem for new players. They're still using my old buildings from 11 years ago.

I never told you what to do. I said you should care, not that you have to care. Please stop arguing against strawmen and address what I actually wrote instead of what you think I wrote, Banshee. It doesn't bother me that you don't care enough to actually try and have a bit of understanding of this issue before you make public posts regarding "ethics", which you have yet to define for us - so once again, who gets to determine the "ethics" here and why? Because right now you're buying completely into a one-sided story, and that's not particularly fair to the opposing side. This isn't a case of news journalism presenting an obvious lunatic as an opposing view to reasonable propositions - it's a schism in Renegade's largest (and basically only) community and your reasoning so far is that one side is bad because you're a webmaster, so therefore you're against having databases cloned and you consider that to be unethical. Which, of course, is still a nebulous term in this discussion as both sides of this issue aren't shining examples of great behavior. You say you don't care but what I'm seeing is that you only care because one side is saying "they stole our database" and that resonates with you, but you don't care about the reasoning behind it. So you're commenting without enough information to make a conclusion that isn't heavily biased toward one side. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. @Nmenth: Hey, whatever. It's your site. Have people duke it out on here if you want to

You should care about why they left if you're not just here to shill for a certain side of this subject. People don't up and leave partnerships like the "BHP" thing without good reasoning - especially people like OWA who isn't known for being anything but calm and reasonable as an objective viewpoint. The database cloning is a result of their reasoning for leaving, not the primary issue here. This is me writing as someone who isn't a webmaster for anything but my dinky little portfolio, so I don't understand the attachment to an obscure database of posts. It feels like a big red herring that's distracting from the obvious problem here: "BHP" and their history. "but it was also designed by some of the people there to clearly harm BHP." [citation needed]

If it's not beneficial to feed it, why are you buying the "ethical" red herring? It's an obvious distraction from the real issue here: the reason why they left.

His project? LOL, okay. I'm sure I had vested several years of my life into that project and there's still plenty of my stuff in there nothing to do with it at all. I'm pretty sure CCNZ can do better with forum moderation than to allow us to post this kind of stupidity here. This community is essentially dead. Almost all of the talent has moved on to other games and makes far better mods than anything this community has ever seen. If you guys want to participate in trivial debates about the "ethics" (Whose ethics? Who gets to defines them, and why?) of moving projects away from a community based on how SomethingAwful.com they can be, go ahead. I'm also sure that won't make CCNZ look like they're being used as tools in some kind of hilarious propaganda war with one mod pitted against another mod in a dead community. TL;DR: Consider moderating the forum to remove this petty crap before CCNZ becomes a battleground in the renewed APB vs Reborn war.

Hey look, it's W3DGate. Also known as RenegadeGate, W3DGhazi, RenegadeW3DGhazi, W3DRenegadeGateGhazi, or W3DGhaziGate "It's about ethics in leaving toxic communities! MUH ETHICALS!"

The amount of butthurt this subject has generated is quite amusing to say the least