PortableRA Beta

[Nyerguds 100]

Are the .aud files actually present?

[Tiddalick 0]

Are the .aud files actually present?

Hello Nyerguds (thanks for your work on C&C gold by the way),

 

Yes they are. I have both the scores.mix and scores-extra.mix that come with the Portable RA in the main directory.

I can play any song I like without a problem.

The issue is the song that is supposed to play at the start of the single player campaign missions is not working.

 

For example, the third allied mission which has Tanya blowing up the bridges, it is supposed to play CRUSH at the start of the mission.

 

However, it does not. I will try and go into detail as to what the settings seem to do.

 

With the following things selected:

IsScoreShuffle=yes

IsScoreRepeat=no

ShowAllMusic=No

RandomStartingSong=No

 

The mission will ALWAYS start with BIGFOOT, even if this song cannot be selected from the list. Restarting the mission again plays BIGFOOT.

 

With the following things selected:

IsScoreShuffle=yes

IsScoreRepeat=no

ShowAllMusic=No

RandomStartingSong=Yes

 

The mission will start with a random song from the list of available songs. Restarting the mission will again randomise the song.

 

With the following things selected:

IsScoreShuffle=yes

IsScoreRepeat=no

ShowAllMusic=Yes

RandomStartingSong=no

 

Again BIGFOOT plays at mission start, restarting again plays BIGFOOT. Though at least this time it is present in the list.

 

With the following things selected:

IsScoreShuffle=yes

IsScoreRepeat=no

ShowAllMusic=Yes

RandomStartingSong=Yes

 

Random song at start, and random again from restart.

 

Issue seems to be whatever code manipulation is occuring from the patch, it overrides the map settings for the theme song to start the level with.

[Tiddalick 0]

The issue is the song that is supposed to play at the start of the single player campaign missions is not working.

 

For example, the third allied mission which has Tanya blowing up the bridges, it is supposed to play CRUSH at the start of the mission...

 

I have discovered what the bug seems to be after some more experimenting.

 

I have looked through the mission files for the campaigns and I see that a lot of them have "Theme=No Theme" flag.

The reason I expect to hear CRUSH on the third mission, is RA will play the first song on the game list, which for the Allies is CRUSH.

 

I have been able to ensure that the program is reading this flag correctly, by setting the music of the first Allied level. This works correctly with Shuffle/Randomise song.

 

The bug is then limited to this particular setup:

ShowAllMusic=No

RandomStartingSong=No

 

This will play BIGFOOT for an allied mission, even though this is not an allied song. The program is defaulting to the first song in the OVERALL LIST, not the list of songs that is presented to the player for selection.

Allied missions should default to CRUSH instead.

Edited September 28, 2014 by Tiddalick

[CP5670 0]

This is a very impressive project. The higher resolution and new features are great, and the best thing is that most of the random crashing in the original RA has been fixed. I often play RA skirmishes with a custom mod (basically a heavily modified version of the old Future Wars mod) and the game is a lot more stable now in general. Thanks for all the work you've put into this. I noticed a couple of minor issues from what I'm used to in 2.00. I normally use this instead of 3.03, as the official 3.03 changed some things like AI allying.

 

I have a custom map with an extra base building AI, which works properly in 2.00 but not here. The "auto base building" trigger no longer does anything in skirmish. I can upload the map if it will help.

In capture the flag mode, everyone's flag is the player's color instead of their own color. CTF works fine in skirmish otherwise (and did in 2.00 as well, which had the right colors).

 

The AI might not always go to "easy" mode with the difficulty set to "hard." I have a lower cost setting for [Easy] in rules.ini so the AI will build more stuff, but the AI appeared to run out of money more easily in some situations. There may be nothing wrong here, but I seemed to see it frequently on one map.

There is a very minor bug in 2.00 where the darkness crate powerups can't be fully disabled, with Darkness=0 in rules.ini not doing anything. It might be already fixed here, but thought I would bring it up.

You had posted a screenshot of the AI building naval units earlier. Is there some way to enable this, or any of other things the AI never builds? It would be great if those could be turned on.

[Iran 12]

@Tiddalick: I'm not interested in looking into this. It's pretty tedious.

 

@CP5670: My patch is based on 3.03, and not 2.00 as you're probably aware of. Could you check what's working and what's broke with 3.03? I think my patch (3.03p) broke the CTF flag colors (I rewrote parts of the color system which required me to fix some other sufff too), but I think the AI auto-base build thing just doesn't work with 3.03. When I was working on co-op I noticed that in multiplayer the game doesn't call the function that does a lot of per player (both computer and human) housekeeping for the non-multiplayer 'houses'. Basically when you play singleplayer you play with a house like Greece against another house like Russia with Neutral house stuff on the map. In multiplayer all players (including computers) play as multi1-8, the game only calls the code to do per house housekeeping on the multi1-8 houses in multiplayer afaik. This means the auto-base building stuff might not work. I know I had to patch it for coop. (Though I might have broken it when adding coop...).

 

Not sure about the darkness crate. The AI building naval stuff was a hack, the game contains a function for it which they hacked out...when enabling it doesn't work properly, when hacked around you can get the AI to produce naval stuff. Problem is the AI always sell his naval yard/subpen after a bit of time because it's on the top of the "sell building with power lower or out of money) priority list. The biggest issue is that there is no AI code for having the naval units attack or do anything else.

 

Please test the CTF flag, autobase building and darkness crate bugs please with 3.03.

[Tiddalick 0]

Hello Iran, many thanks for your efforts with the patch!

 

@Tiddalick: I'm not interested in looking into this. It's pretty tedious.

 

That makes sense. I just thought I would raise it as a bug.

 

It's got an easy work around anyway, I could simply extract the mission ini files and add CRUSH to the Theme flag.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Tiddalick

[CP5670 0]

 

@CP5670: My patch is based on 3.03, and not 2.00 as you're probably aware of. Could you check what's working and what's broke with 3.03? I think my patch (3.03p) broke the CTF flag colors (I rewrote parts of the color system which required me to fix some other sufff too), but I think the AI auto-base build thing just doesn't work with 3.03. When I was working on co-op I noticed that in multiplayer the game doesn't call the function that does a lot of per player (both computer and human) housekeeping for the non-multiplayer 'houses'. Basically when you play singleplayer you play with a house like Greece against another house like Russia with Neutral house stuff on the map. In multiplayer all players (including computers) play as multi1-8, the game only calls the code to do per house housekeeping on the multi1-8 houses in multiplayer afaik. This means the auto-base building stuff might not work. I know I had to patch it for coop. (Though I might have broken it when adding coop...).

 

Not sure about the darkness crate. The AI building naval stuff was a hack, the game contains a function for it which they hacked out...when enabling it doesn't work properly, when hacked around you can get the AI to produce naval stuff. Problem is the AI always sell his naval yard/subpen after a bit of time because it's on the top of the "sell building with power lower or out of money) priority list. The biggest issue is that there is no AI code for having the naval units attack or do anything else.

 

Please test the CTF flag, autobase building and darkness crate bugs please with 3.03.

 

I looked into those issues in 3.03. The auto base building doesn't work there either. In 2.00, some other AI triggers don't work in multiplayer either (like making the AI build teamtypes), but this particular trigger does work. This map has an extra AI with a big base in the center who attacks everyone (like The Hills Have Eyes), so this command allows the AI to keep building stuff. Is it possible to make the game do that stuff for the extra houses, at least getting it to work like it used to in 2.00?

 

The darkness crate bug is also still present in 3.03. I used a really small map and increased the minimum crate count to test that. However, the flags are the correct color.

[Iran 12]

So all my predictions were correct.

 

You can enable coop mode for your map, which also enables the usage of TeamTypes. Use houses that aren't Mult1-Multi8 for the AI player. Be sure to set a win trigger.

 

See feature list: https://github.com/Iran/ra303p-iran/blob/master/docs/features.md

 

>Added new IsCoopMode= option to the [basic] section of a map, this enabled some single player logic like single player AI logic and allows you to make coop maps with working AI production/teamtypes/auto-create/triggers etc and working win/lose triggers. Additional documentation forthcoming.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Iran

[CP5670 0]

Awesome, thanks. It should be easy to add in the usual multiplayer win triggers in that map manually. Looking forward to a new build with this.

[CP5670 0]

I just realized you were saying that this is already in the game. However, I can't really get it to do the right things in that map. With IsCoopMode enabled, the extra AI (GoodGuy) does auto base building properly, but the Multi1-8 AIs won't do it for some reason, even though their IQ is set to 5 (and they also need to have predefined starting locations/units/etc.). The Multi1-8 MCVs just sit there doing nothing, unless the player attacks them. I wonder if there is any way to get the "housekeeping" function you referred to called for the other houses while still keeping it a skirmish/multiplayer map, without using the full singleplayer logic that IsCoopMode does?

Edited October 12, 2014 by CP5670

[Iran 12]

No it isn't possible, it would also break being able to play with multiplayer AI allies against the scripted AI enemy. Plus it would require the player to manually add the AI enemy, which is pretty weird. The map is still a multiplayer/skirmish map and the win/lose trigger working requires the co-op logic.

 

The reason it doesn't work for multi1-8 AI players is because the game sets those AI players as multiplayer AI and thus runs the multiplayer AI code, it doesn't do that for non-multi1-8 houses.

 

I also added extra map triggers which allows for doing cool things like dropping nukes, iron curtaining units etc and giving/substracting money. I also added a key to allow the chrono reinforcements trigger to be used with every vehicle unit, instead of Chrono Tanks.

Edited October 17, 2014 by Iran

[Chad1233 0]

Hey iran I got a cool idea for the ''Lost movies'' addon. You can combine the missions in a mini-campaign in the same order Retaliation has them and that way it will play the videos correctly (Like the generals giving you briefing over several missions) and use the soviet/allies win ending correctly as well!

Edited October 16, 2014 by Chad1233

[Iran 12]

Hi Chad, that's a nice idea. You can create your own min-campaign that way if you want and release it. Remember that the 3.03p supports the custom missions list, mini-campaigns and the option to skip the map selection screen for individual missions (as part of a campaign too).

[Silver83 0]

Is there a reason for the portable RA site being offline?

[CP5670 0]

No it isn't possible, it would also break being able to play with multiplayer AI allies against the scripted AI enemy. Plus it would require the player to manually add the AI enemy, which is pretty weird. The map is still a multiplayer/skirmish map and the win/lose trigger working requires the co-op logic.

 

The reason it doesn't work for multi1-8 AI players is because the game sets those AI players as multiplayer AI and thus runs the multiplayer AI code, it doesn't do that for non-multi1-8 houses.

 

I also added extra map triggers which allows for doing cool things like dropping nukes, iron curtaining units etc and giving/substracting money. I also added a key to allow the chrono reinforcements trigger to be used with every vehicle unit, instead of Chrono Tanks.

 

After looking into this further, it seems that there is some issue with Multi1-8 deploying their MCVs under IsCoopMode. If I make Multi1-8 start off with construction yards instead of MCVs, everything works like it's supposed to, with no triggers needed. I've basically got this map working the way I wanted now. The player has a fixed starting location, but that's minor.

[Nyerguds 100]

btw, can you just make RA accept custom video filenames? I never understood why they restricted that after C&C1.

 

The problem in RA is that the savegames save IDs instead of names, but that can be fixed by using -1 as ID and making that -1 the trigger to read a bit more at the end of the samegame. Namely, the video filename.

 

Though I guess the whole "look up video by ID" logic would need to be changed too, then

[Iran 12]

nope

[Venom 1]

Hi there Iran,

 

first, let me thank you for a great piece of work you have made with PortableRA for everyone in community who enjoying playing the classic CnC games. But mainly, I wish to ask you, what happened to PortableRA site http://iran.cnc-comm.com/ra/ ?? Will it be active in future? I have the backup copy of PortabeRA but it will be good to have your site online again anyway.

 

Thanks.

[Iran 12]

Hey. The site is up again.

 

Thanks for the comments ;-*)

[Venom 1]

Superb!! Thanks for fixing it!

[Tiddalick 0]

I think I have found a small bug with the current release at http://iran.cnc-comm.com/ra/ .

 

The credits (after finishing the original campaigns) play the correct music and scroll the names without issue, but the background images are absent.

Normally the background would flash up still images of the cutscenes through the game.

I had a look at the "hires.mix" that is embedded in the "redalert.mix" as this is the location of the .pcx files in the original CD release.

They appear to be absent in the release from http://iran.cnc-comm.com/ra/ .

 

As a test I added these images back into the hires.mix using XCC tools. However, this did not fix the issue with the credits.

Looking at the start of the credits carefully, there appears to be some graphical corruption that appears for the time that the first image should be displayed, but afterwards nothing.

 

[aftr_hi.pcx, aly1.pcx, apc_hi.pcx, aphi0049.pcx, bnhi0020.pcx, dchi0040.pcx, frhi0166.pcx, lab.pcx, landsbrg.pcx, mahi0107.pcx, mig_hi.pcx, mtfacthi.pcx, needle.pcx, prolog.pcx, sov2.pcx, spy.pcx, stalin.pcx, tent.pcx]

[FunkyFr3sh 7]

I'm pretty sure we removed the images some time ago because of these graphical glitches

[PurpleGaga27 39]

Say Iran, is PortableRA finished or shall this go to the full version instead of beta version? There hasn't been much of an update(s) for several months.

[FunkyFr3sh 7]

He is working on Red Alert 2 atm, I was doing some new Red Alert 1 patches but i don't have the single-player stuff ported yet so it could not be used in portableRA atm

Edited February 21, 2015 by FunkyFr3sh

[PurpleGaga27 39]

Iran's website to Portable RA isn't working (so is FunkyFr3sh's site) and I got a message saying "the connection has timed out". I haven't download the most recent version of Portable RA for a long time. I am just wondering if there has been any recent update to Portable RA lately in the last year or two, other than the RAED standalone tool.

Edited February 19, 2016 by zocom7