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AlexB

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Everything posted by AlexB

  1. Hello all, I've been working on a small Red Alert project I started last February. It is a DLL like Ares for Yuri's Revenge that was meant to support The Lost Files movies without the need for a customized executable file. So it is not merely patch, though it tries to fix many bugs I encountered. Besides the fixes, it contains some new features aimed at players, some new features might be interesting for modders also. The project will support the Red Alert 3.03 beta patch (English only), The Lost Files and hifi's CnC-DDraw DLL. I'll reveal more information about the project in the next week. It is still a beta version and it has not been tested throughoutly yet, but it should be usable already. I'd be glad if there is anybody interested in testing it. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask. Greetings, Alex A version for testing has been released already. Please note that this is not the final version and bugs and crashes can still occur. You can find the latest version here.
  2. Hi all, yesterday I read about RA2's bad graphics rendering performance in Windows Vista and 7, which cannot be improved by that special ddraw.dll because the sceen would stay black. I created a tool that can patch these games to make rendering faster. It should work with Tiberian Sun (2.03), Red Alert 2 (1.006) and Yuri's Revenge (1.001). Download and more information. (.net Framework 3.5 required.) If it is working, please drop me a note. If not, you can post here, too.
  3. Hi all, I'd like to point you to the thread Faster rendering and less lag in TS/RA2/YR in the RA2/YR section. There's a patch I created that should also work on TS and make rendering faster. Would be nice if anybody could test this and post the results here. See ya! I hope this does not count as double post. I couldn't think of a better forum to post this. If there is a more appropriate forum: sorry!
  4. AlexB

    Faster rendering

    That does not sound like a problem with this patch, because it can be reverted completely. If the game does not run with this patch disabled again, I suspect it did not run before you applied it. Try to run the game as admin. If that does not work, you might have to reinstall (run the setup as admin, if you haven't done so before).
  5. I created an empty 128x128 map with a bunch of V2RLs and some destroyers on the lower border. The V2RLs were made to leave the map through a teamtype. I don't know whether I still got that map somewhere.
  6. Thanks for the code snippets. Most likely the credit crash will help, but I already updated the AI to behave a little differently. It's just not released yet.
  7. Minor correction for question #3: With Ares you can have up to 4 campaigns on the campaign selection screen. That is the graphical menu you can select Allies, Soviet and Tutorial in RA2 (and only the former in YR). With Ares' Campaign List feature, you can show any number of campaigns.
  8. I haven't had that much free time lately. I looked into what would be needed to allow adding new units, but this is rather complex. It's five different systems that decide what the AI builds, with at least two modes each. But this should be the easy part. I know of a problem with the credits, but I don't know the reason yet. It happens when the first line of text reaches the upper screen border. (Btw, you can click the WW logo without holding down the shift key. That's only needed for the ant missions.)
  9. Hi Vlad Razvan, Sounds like an ambitious project. It is very easy to add an unbuildable (preplaced on map) unit or building. It was one of the first things I did. But before I can add new buildable units or buildings (from a new rules.ini list) I need to create the infrastructure that supports them. Many features -- almost everything, actually -- are hardcoded. The Gap Generators use the internal firing timer for gap regeneration, the game only creates gap for [GAP] buildings, radar is hardcoded, SAM and AAGUN firing / target selection is hardcoded, Radar jammers only jam DOME and SAM, ... Another one of the hardcoded things is the Owner= tag, which gets special treatment, if it isn't set to allies or soviets. I've seen on CnC Comm Center that certain buildings don't remap. I found the remap settings and I think I can add a new tag quite quickly that would enable this.
  10. @Iran: I got a bunch of macros that take care of putting the parameters into the right registers and retrieving certain return values. I don't know yet whether I'll make it open source. @Bullet: Without excepts I can't help. The first crash address is no valid game instruction. The second one lools like tying to call a function on a null pointer. I have yet to look it up what's going on there.
  11. Do you have the except.txt files from the crashes? Without them, the first one makes no sense.
  12. I like it (as well as the other episodes), including the commentary, because it is a more personal way to look into the subject than just stating facts.
  13. Hi Chad1233, at the moment I'm working on Ares again. There won't be updates in the next days, but when the new stuff is in the testing phase, I think I'll find some time to work on RA again.
  14. Possibly that or more. Who knows... I removed the aircraft check to build a radar more quickly.
  15. Hi FunkyFr3sh, please mind that you are getting Arda for free. Requests like "Don't do X, because we have other requirements" and "Remove feature Y, because RA becomes incompatible to people playing without Arda", aren't really things I'd like to consider, because they eliminate the fun I have coding Arda. It's not like I'm locking players out, but why should I try to please people who don't even use Arda? Is it my fault they don't use it? I wouldn't gain a damn thing if they would. "Not interested in doing anything for the online gamers"? Really? They are free to download it also, but I won't feed it to them. I don't even remember when I talked to any of the online players in the last few months. In the last weeks I found out what most of the important functions and do and what most of the fields in the classes are about. I succeeded to add new stuff to savegames and to send arbitrary network events. Even before the last update I worked on the AI. It's fun to push around bytes like this. Nothing of this is what online players find remotely interesting. I specifically marked Arda as being incompatible so it wouldn't collide with non-Arda players. Sure I could rip out all the new stuff and create a compatible version for online play. It could contain hi-res + longer sidebar + the health-on-mouse-over. Then it would be more like a cheat, because players using Arda got an unfair advantage. I could even add auto-repair, map reveal, activate all spy effects, and whatnot without other players noticing. The only thing that wouldn't work is the bugfixes, because if one player doesn't use Arda, the game would still be over. This really isn't what I had in mind. For fairness reasons, Arda should be incompatible to the original version, even if it added of the "real" cheats. Aside from this rant, Arda already supports the TLF videos, and it is multi-language, even if only the 3,3 MB package is used. It doesn't require the registry keys like CStrikeInstalled, because they can be read from an INI file.
  16. Isn't that the same with just one more level of indirection? If you pay you get to the next level in less time or you get to a higher level in the same time. The effect is the same.
  17. EchoLocation: Yeah, again, ants are hardcoded not to smoke (which is reasonable and more healhy). Should be an easy addition. ROB: Without posting what you actually tried I can't give any good advice. Here I posted the codes for the MLRS I used to convert the 1TNK (or 2TNK, don't remember). You have to set Ammo= and Turret=yes also. If you are using Ammo=3 and the Image=MLRS from C&C, it should work, though when the first rocket is fired the image should not change. This is because the file only contains images for 2, 1 and 0 rockets. If ammo is larget than 2, 2 rockets are shown. If you added a fourth image set with a third rocket, put it before all the other turret frames and set AmmoTurretCount=4.
  18. In the same folder as the debug logs. If you sort the files by date, the excepts should be next to the related debug.log of the same match.
  19. Hi codeine, Arda should have created an except.txt for this, which might help to find the reason. Can you upload it?
  20. E7 is the worst infantry unit to test the voice list It has many hardcoded sounds like for dying, idling and C4ing buildings. I experiemented with building animations already, but there is no way to create your own as of now.
  21. ROB: I'll look into this. Do all the voices you added to the list exist? If defined, the voice list should replace the original lists completely, so no knowledge about the internal voice lists should be needed. Prisoner416: Does this also happen if you disable the SingleCPU option in ddraw.ini?
  22. It's two different things: The slow build speed setting that is available in Internet games normally multiplies the build time, and the fact that multiple factories reduce the build time. If new Aftermath units are enabled, the multiple factory logic is capped at 2, thus the second factory will give you a bonus, the third one will not give an additional bonus any more. It is possible to lift this change, or make it customizable.
  23. Can you post the except file at pastebin.com?
  24. The other installers have been updated also. codeine: To change how often a certain crate appears, have a look at [Powerups] in rules.ini. Sum up the first values. that's the total share. If you divide one of the values by this number and multiply this by 100, you got the percentage of probability a crate appears. With ddraw.dll, Ctrl-S creates a png screenshot.
  25. If you download and install the mini-release over the current installation, the launcher should now work.
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