Sonic 295 Posted September 15, 2013 Version 0.4 of the Ares DLL project has released. This special DLL file is aimed at the modding community, it adds new features to Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. Ares 0.4 adds the versatile AttachEffect, which allows you to change speed, armour and other properties for each unit it affects, for a certain amount of time or permanently. It also adds a bunch of minor additions and improvements. You can read more about Ares at the official site, where you will also find the download of this new version. Share this post Link to post
keithktam 2 Posted September 16, 2013 (edited) always curious about this amazing dll... wondering if they would eventually add more support to sprites (edit: I meant shp), like aircraft coding seems cannot be applied to units that using sprites... I think RA2/YR engine is great, but in this incarnation, you can already see the visual differences between things that use voxels like tanks, and ships with things that use sprites like building and deploying animation like the one in siege chopper, the engine visual quality seems leaning more towards to the sprites, while voxel, though is double the amount in "resolution" seems lacking behind... in TS, one can notice less of a differences between things that are sprites and voxels though their resolution and colour range are less compare with RA2... Edited September 16, 2013 by keithktam Share this post Link to post
Nyerguds 100 Posted September 19, 2013 Wow. Their list of bug fixes is kind of a giant list of possible exploits in the classic game Share this post Link to post
PurpleGaga27 39 Posted December 2, 2013 Sorry to bump this, but the other fix that Ares has yet to fix is the default main menu resolution of Yuri's Revenge and its mods because it still defaults to 640 x 480. RA2 doesn't do that. Also Ares did not include a lag fix in-game. Share this post Link to post
Nyerguds 100 Posted December 3, 2013 You always feel the need to complain about stuff, lol. Tell them, not us? Share this post Link to post
PurpleGaga27 39 Posted December 5, 2013 (edited) So far this quote from AlexB regarding save/load games: The saveame feature cannot simply be "re-enable" (which makes it sound like a job of five minutes or fewer). The developments of more than the last three years didn't really consider savegames, so many new Ares features will have to be reworked before work on savegames can even start. I'm upgrading the affected logics one by one. In Ares 0.5 it's some Side and IvanBomb tags. After 0.6 there will be only some minor issues (at least I hope so). We will get there, a little more with each release, but don't expect one of the next releases to have it working. Ares isn't going to be very useful in several years or so until this important feature comes back regardless of leftover bugs, glitches and enhancements. The loading of YR, skirmishes and missions is still slow even on a fast PC. Ares on RA2 as of now = worse than Iran's Portable RA from a million miles. I think I'll wait to play a much better version of Mental Omega 3 in several years to come until Ares gets really improved in RA2/YR. Too bad RA2/YR still isn't freeware yet. Edited December 5, 2013 by zocom7 Share this post Link to post
Plok 323 Posted December 5, 2013 Ares isn't going to be very useful in several years or so until this important feature comes back regardless of leftover bugs, glitches and enhancements.Calling it useless for not having save/load functions is a bit radical, isn't it? That's a significant disadvantage, yes, but still, we're looking at something that enlarges modders' freedom. Also, not many mods have unique SP missions The loading of YR, skirmishes and missions is still slow even on a fast PC.Get an average Win9x rig, put RA2 and YR on it and you'll see what's slow Ares on RA2 as of now = worse than Iran's Portable RA from a million miles. How the **** can you even compare the two?! Too bad RA2/YR still isn't freeware yet.And this is relevant to the topic how? Share this post Link to post
Doctor Destiny 41 Posted December 5, 2013 Zocom, you have no idea what's gone into Ares. Share this post Link to post
keithktam 2 Posted December 6, 2013 are you saying Mental Omega progress cannot be saved??? Share this post Link to post
Guest Rabbit Posted December 6, 2013 Yeah, but it's not really a big deal, since you can just select any mission you want to play. You can't save your progress during individual missions, but you can skip a mission if you already beat it the last time you played. Share this post Link to post
Doctor Destiny 41 Posted December 7, 2013 are you saying Mental Omega progress cannot be saved??? Save games have been broken for a while. It's kind of a shame but not a deal breaker. Ares' features are more than worth losing save games. Share this post Link to post
Guest Rabbit Posted December 12, 2013 I believe the reason saves are broken (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is because the information that is saved (unit placement, health, etc) is internal information. The Ares patch adds new files that are not currently capable of modifying the way the game is hard-coded to save, like many other features of the game that just can't be modded. So let's say you have a map with laser fences (only possible with Ares, I believe) and you save. Upon reloading the game, none of the laser fances will be loaded because they aren't hard-coded into the game, so you're stuck with either a crash or a savegame with a bunch of missing data. As such, Ares adds many new features and tweaks that can't be incorporated into a vanilla save file. Because of this, saves have to be disabled, and honestly, unless the mod becomes standalone (which would require the source code and permission from EA), saves will likely never be available. I hope that puts things into perspective. Share this post Link to post
PurpleGaga27 39 Posted December 12, 2013 (edited) I believe the reason saves are broken (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is because the information that is saved (unit placement, health, etc) is internal information. As such, Ares adds many new features and tweaks that can't be incorporated into a vanilla save file. Because of this, saves have to be disabled, and honestly, unless the mod becomes standalone (which would require the source code and permission from EA), saves will likely never be available. If RA2 is freeware now, Ares would have a huge chance of more modifications and stick with the content that RA2 was meant to be played. Right now it looks like Ares works very well in the Multiplayer/Skirmish portion. Only way to pray for the RA2 source code and permission from EA, make RA2 freeware once and for all. Edited December 12, 2013 by zocom7 Share this post Link to post
Plok 323 Posted December 12, 2013 I believe the reason saves are broken (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is because the information that is saved (unit placement, health, etc) is internal information. The Ares patch adds new files that are not currently capable of modifying the way the game is hard-coded to save, like many other features of the game that just can't be modded. So let's say you have a map with laser fences (only possible with Ares, I believe) and you save. Upon reloading the game, none of the laser fances will be loaded because they aren't hard-coded into the game, so you're stuck with either a crash or a savegame with a bunch of missing data. As such, Ares adds many new features and tweaks that can't be incorporated into a vanilla save file. Because of this, saves have to be disabled, and honestly, unless the mod becomes standalone (which would require the source code and permission from EA), saves will likely never be available. I hope that puts things into perspective. Maybe the saves aren't hardcoded, but the new features are still incompatible with them because the game hasn't fully learned how to handle them? Only way to pray for the RA2 source code According to the folks at XWIS, EA lost the source code during the transition of the franchise to EA Pacific in 2003. Share this post Link to post
Guest Rabbit Posted December 13, 2013 Maybe the saves aren't hardcoded, but the new features are still incompatible with them because the game hasn't fully learned how to handle them? It's basically the same thing. The save system is not something that can be changed right now without violating the integrity of the game. I think the only option in this case would be to somehow code in an alternate save system. They can't easily modify the current save system, and even if they do, who knows what errors or problems people would have to deal with upon trying to run vanilla YR. I think when people are referring to modding a C&C game, something that is "hardcoded" is simply something that can not be changed by replacing a mix file (or the contents within). The save system is definitely one of these things. With the Ares patch, they're adding features to the game, not resources, so they're not changing the programming, they're just adding to it. With this direction, they'll more than likely have to add an entirely new save system that both mimics the old one and accepts any new information it needs, which frankly, is not an easy task if they don't have the source code. It's one thing telling the game what information you want saved, it's a whole nother beast telling the game how to direct itself to save that information. Share this post Link to post
Doctor Destiny 41 Posted December 14, 2013 IIRC, they know why it doesn't work but it's just a slog trying to fix said problem. Maybe that was VK who knew with NPatch. Either way, save games are broken right now and won't be fixed for a long time still yet. Share this post Link to post
Iran 12 Posted December 15, 2013 (edited) Not sure where you guys get yourinfo from but the reason they don't support savegames is because in the early years Ares was under development they didn't support savegames. Their development team is now gradually adding savegame support for their features bit by bit but it isn't finished yet so savegames are still disabled. At least that's how AlexB explained it to me. Edited December 15, 2013 by Iran Share this post Link to post
Guest Rabbit Posted December 15, 2013 That's not really any explanation of the reason they don't support savegames. That's like saying "the reason gravity works is because it worked years ago." I'm trying to explain the possible technical reasons the savegames aren't supported. Share this post Link to post
Iran 12 Posted December 16, 2013 uh, yes it? The explanation is cause they didn't support it the first few years and they're gradually adding support for savegames now for their features, but it's a lot of work and not a priority so it isn't done yet. Besides that it's pretty trivial to get the game to save/load more more memory, that's what I do for ra303p and CCHyper does for TS. It just takes a while to apply that to all features as Ares has a lot of code. In fact a few of their features already support savegames, it's just that they need to support ALL features to re-enable savegame support. You're just making up random stuff lol and spreading extremely wrong info about Ares development. Share this post Link to post