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Red Alert: A Path Beyond Latest Dev Blog

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All of the forum content was copied yes… But we had every intention of getting rid of anything not directly related to our projects once we launched. However, due the fact that our public release was rushed, it was not done in time.

 

This is the only part that doesn't sit well with me. And probably doesn't for other people I guess. I couldn't care a less about all your other in fighting and bickering. All of you BHP/W3D Hub are the ones coming in here to air your dirty laundry, not us. The fact is you took the BHP database, cloned it and set up your site. Giving you an "insta-community" of sorts. This is not how you lay the foundations of a new site or community, by copying another one. That would be like one of our team here at CNCNZ.com taking our database and setting up another C&C fan site elsewhere to basically compete with it. I would have serious issues if that were to happen.

 

As for your rushed release. Well you only have yourselves to blame for that Plan things better so you don't **** it up and make W3D Hub look bad in the process. But if you had started fresh without a copied database it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

 

The comments I've made here are my own, its how I see things. The official CNCNZ.com view point is we remain neutral and still plan to cover/promote APB, TSR and AR as much as possible regardless of this ongoing BHP/W3D Hub mess.

 

Sonic, their stupid feud is so boring that the world has suddenly became binary. It seems that people are either pro-BHP or pro-W3D Hub (with no option to think differently). And they have to do all this bickering against each other to supposedly win an 'internet war' which we all know that it is an internet argument, which they think it will "make them look like good guys", but the truth is that this is something that takes no one anywhere. Even if somebody believes that it has a minimal chance to change something in this situation, I assure you that it doesn't, because those people doesn't seem to be willing to really listen to others. They just want to impose their words and claim themselves to be either victims of a conspiracy, robbery.. or whatever.

 

 

Likewise you, Sonic, I am not pro-BHP (and not against them either) and I am not pro-W3D Hub... and I don't see a reason to be against them either. I do not doubt that the W3D guys had strong motivations to move out from BHP and that many mistakes were committed from both sides and they are still being committed. What bothers me is a primary misconduct at the process of creating a community. Apparently, it was caused by ignorance of some people rather than the desire of harming the existing community. The process, as you mentioned, is the theft of the database of one site and its public cloning without consent. The database of a community is its soul, as it stores everything that it matters on it (except forum attachments in some cases). It is built by the collectivity that visits that community. The act of cloning a forum database into another place is to clone the soul of one community into a different place. BHP was practically cloned into another web address without their consent. Regardless of the fact that most of its original content was discarded in the new forum, where most of the information that they've kept were related to their projects, the soul of BHP still lies within W3D Hub, together with private messages and other content that may contain sensitive data and were not supposed to be copied.

 

Unlike some of the W3D people claims, they were not subject to have years of their work lost due to the actions of 'eventual' problematic people from BHP who were in charge of their server and the reason for that is that they had access to the files of the server, as well as the database (which ended up being cloned). As far as I understood, they've originally made a clone of the forums in a place that they thought to be private, but it was eventually uncovered by BHP staff, which "forced them to disclose their site to public" faster. Placing web files in hidden addresses is no way considered private in the internet. For those who doesn't know, whenever you visit a site, you inform them the referrer, which is the address of the site that you came from. Web agents do collect this information and process them. If you visit a hidden site and you visit Google after that, be sure that a web crawler from Google will crawl your site and add it to their search engine. And depending on how your server is configured, Google is also able to obtain and browse all directories inside it, even the ones with names that you think that no human being would guess. When you visit other sites, their stats program may collect information about you and inform that the site has received visitors from your referrer. If you want more privacy for your site, you should password protect the directory. It should only allow those who know the password to view the content. If BHP staff still visited your site after being password protected, then you have a mole or a serious breach of trust among your own staff.

 

So, the correct procedure, or at least a better procedure would have been to:

 

1) Make a private copy of the forum as well as a backup of every kind of file in the server that would be required by all projects.

2) Talk to the BHP leaders, expressing the desire to move out and negotiating a way to keep most of the forum data as possible or a possible database cloning procedure with their consent.

3) If these negotiations failed, then a new forum should be created.

4) The important data from the private forum copy should be exported using RSS (it is possible to export forum posts with that and import them in IPB).

5) A new version of the launcher that did not force APB users to update it and that would not use the old server would have to be released. Users would be invited to download it and create an account at the new forum.

etc...

 

 

I am aware that the situation has escalated into a point where things can't be undone. I mean, I do not expect the current W3D Hub forums would be deleted or hidden from public and a new one would be created. I think we can only hope that this feud could eventually stop. That people could stop spying on each other, that some people (and places) could assume their mistakes in public and apologize for it and eventual compensations for losses could be done in a way that allows both places to be focused on working on their projects and perhaps helping each other rather than fighting each other, reinforcing their security against hijackers from the other side and spending hours to recover a service that used to work before these events.

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Minus the buildings, a great majority of the things you mentioned have been redone. I spent a good deal of time converting your things to 3ds max (including the building exteriors and interiors), fixing countless bugs, adding LOD, making new props (adding LOD and proxying them in the process), and completely redoing terrain (including the textures). Some of these fixes and changes have been in test builds only for a few years, so perhaps you are counting back to the last major art release, which was in 2011, a mere five years after you quit. It's funny to me that you would say eleven years in this context, when you quit nine years ago, and most of your things have been redone, many of which had even been redone by 2011's public release, while at the same time calling out BattleLaf for saying "a few years back" when it was a few more than a few. It's also funny that you would call someone else out on trolling after saying all of these things.

 

Personal lives and free time play a lot into development time. Did you have any job or school commitments when you made all of these things? I hate to refer back to the "starving cats lul" incident, but it appears you would be comparing apples and oranges here, or at the very least, comparing your achievements to those of others in a similar line of work, but ignoring everything else (e.g. free time, manpower, and necessity, which are all completely legitimate reasons to not have thoroughly completed certain elements of this unpaid job).

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.

I hated this too until I found "BBCode Mode," a small button at the top left of the post editor which lets you type, copy, and paste post elements including BBCode.

This works well. Thanks! Edited by Aircraftkiller

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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.

Unfortunately I lost access to that forum around the time we were discussing this. After Gamma's release, I worked towards creating some new things for the game, most of which showed up in a blog or two but have not been applied to a public release yet. See: refill pads, house (forgive the unfinished lighting and interior in this render), wine cellar with chandeliers added after the render, Raraku, a Soviet Tech Center (latest render), tech console for the Tech Center, a redoing of the majority of the map RA_CoastalInfluence [before|after] to actually bring it to the game, and a bridge [with
] for said map.

 

Fact is, I love creating new models/textures/scenes and challenging/pushing myself to learn new things. Over the last few years, I've applied it to APB, with some, I'd like to think, great results, especially for this increasingly and supremely dated game engine.

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.

The vast majority of your maps were overhauled to varying degrees. The least modified would be Metro, and that was the only one not imported to 3ds max, retextured, meshsmoothed, reshaped, etc. Many of the basic map designs and flow have been preserved, as they remain for "nostalgia's sake," which would also describe why the maps remain in the first place. I suppose one could say I've been improving things over the years for better gameplay experience (graphical and gameplay improvements while preserving nostalgia, since I love playing this game, and that's where a lot of my passion for it stems from), and not always for the sake of brand new things (although even this has changed in recent years, as described above).

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any tiling terrain textures of yours that remain in the game. They were all replaced by 1k textures and applied to the maps.

 

The factoid about the buildings being 11 years old I will not contest. As far as memory serves, you made newer buildings before you left, but they never made it into the game. There have been a number of base buildings modeled/textured to varying degrees since that time (helipad, war factory, refinery, missile silo, tech centers), but none are ingame due to the vast amount of work that takes. All of the base defenses and walls have been remade, animating when they die (something which did take a lot of work, but made it into the game and should not be ignored).

 

As far as sounds go, I don't know which of the sounds you're referring to, as I recall several [complete?] sound overhauls occurring since your departure.

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.

You appear to be trolling APB and its developers. You are trying to make a strong case for how so many of your things are still ingame, but as I've stated above, I feel it's an argument that falls short, and I feel can more accurately be described as scorn directed at the alleged shortcomings of BHP staff in the wake of your exodus. Edited by ChopBam

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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.

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Sonic, their stupid feud is so boring that the world has suddenly became binary. It seems that people are either pro-BHP or pro-W3D Hub (with no option to think differently). And they have to do all this bickering against each other to supposedly win an 'internet war' which we all know that it is an internet argument, which they think it will "make them look like good guys", but the truth is that this is something that takes no one anywhere. Even if somebody believes that it has a minimal chance to change something in this situation, I assure you that it doesn't, because those people doesn't seem to be willing to really listen to others. They just want to impose their words and claim themselves to be either victims of a conspiracy, robbery.. or whatever.

 

 

Likewise you, Sonic, I am not pro-BHP (and not against them either) and I am not pro-W3D Hub... and I don't see a reason to be against them either. I do not doubt that the W3D guys had strong motivations to move out from BHP and that many mistakes were committed from both sides and they are still being committed. What bothers me is a primary misconduct at the process of creating a community. Apparently, it was caused by ignorance of some people rather than the desire of harming the existing community. The process, as you mentioned, is the theft of the database of one site and its public cloning without consent. The database of a community is its soul, as it stores everything that it matters on it (except forum attachments in some cases). It is built by the collectivity that visits that community. The act of cloning a forum database into another place is to clone the soul of one community into a different place. BHP was practically cloned into another web address without their consent. Regardless of the fact that most of its original content was discarded in the new forum, where most of the information that they've kept were related to their projects, the soul of BHP still lies within W3D Hub, together with private messages and other content that may contain sensitive data and were not supposed to be copied.

 

Unlike some of the W3D people claims, they were not subject to have years of their work lost due to the actions of 'eventual' problematic people from BHP who were in charge of their server and the reason for that is that they had access to the files of the server, as well as the database (which ended up being cloned). As far as I understood, they've originally made a clone of the forums in a place that they thought to be private, but it was eventually uncovered by BHP staff, which "forced them to disclose their site to public" faster. Placing web files in hidden addresses is no way considered private in the internet. For those who doesn't know, whenever you visit a site, you inform them the referrer, which is the address of the site that you came from. Web agents do collect this information and process them. If you visit a hidden site and you visit Google after that, be sure that a web crawler from Google will crawl your site and add it to their search engine. And depending on how your server is configured, Google is also able to obtain and browse all directories inside it, even the ones with names that you think that no human being would guess. When you visit other sites, their stats program may collect information about you and inform that the site has received visitors from your referrer. If you want more privacy for your site, you should password protect the directory. It should only allow those who know the password to view the content. If BHP staff still visited your site after being password protected, then you have a mole or a serious breach of trust among your own staff.

 

So, the correct procedure, or at least a better procedure would have been to:

 

1) Make a private copy of the forum as well as a backup of every kind of file in the server that would be required by all projects.

2) Talk to the BHP leaders, expressing the desire to move out and negotiating a way to keep most of the forum data as possible or a possible database cloning procedure with their consent.

3) If these negotiations failed, then a new forum should be created.

4) The important data from the private forum copy should be exported using RSS (it is possible to export forum posts with that and import them in IPB).

5) A new version of the launcher that did not force APB users to update it and that would not use the old server would have to be released. Users would be invited to download it and create an account at the new forum.

etc...

 

 

I am aware that the situation has escalated into a point where things can't be undone. I mean, I do not expect the current W3D Hub forums would be deleted or hidden from public and a new one would be created. I think we can only hope that this feud could eventually stop. That people could stop spying on each other, that some people (and places) could assume their mistakes in public and apologize for it and eventual compensations for losses could be done in a way that allows both places to be focused on working on their projects and perhaps helping each other rather than fighting each other, reinforcing their security against hijackers from the other side and spending hours to recover a service that used to work before these events.

 

Thank you these are my exact feelings about whats going on here and I'm staff of both sides... Personally I think this news post should just be locked as alot of the "Duscusion" here is just plain dumb arguing thats getting nowhere...

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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.

These are fair criticisms. Indeed, I've put the most work into the bridge and the house, and they are also some of my newest. Part of what I've always admired about you is your attention to detail and desire to become better and to help others do the same.

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.

There are different levels and angles of trolling, and I still disagree with you on that point. I can agree, however, that many people have issues with each other. I don't think personal issues are unworkable or unresolvable. It takes compromise and humility, but too many people want to be leaders and take charge without backing down on anything, which has led to a lot of fighting and problems.

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.

My loyalty lies with APB, as that is the game I have spent so much time on and been having fun playing. I started playing it in HS and always dreamed of having the opportunity to make it better, a dream which came true in 2008. I admired your constant art updates when you were in charge, and continue to be interested in seeing your work and critiques. Moving to W3DH wouldn't be feasible, considering 1)I do not seem to be trusted very much there (probably due to my BHP affiliation), 2)APB is still with BHP, 3)I don't personally enjoy playing the other w3d games, and 4)I don't have time and can't make time to double up on my work efforts. I do wish W3DH all the best in their endeavors, and I am interested to see what they produce.

 

As far as rocky relations, I see you as a currently talented artist with a dramatic history in this community. As such, I enjoy seeing your work, but also cringe when old drama is brought up, especially as it relates to the game on which I've worked so hard. I appreciate your ability to disassociate myself from your dislike for BHP, as well as your offer to help with improving my 3D artistic ability, so I believe many of your feelings in this matter are genuine. I don't have any problems with your behavior, except what I brought up earlier about trolling. If you did "all of the work," and most of your work has been redone as described in my last post, and the necessity and manpower required to redo all of your work in higher quality has been lacking, then you are using, at best, unconvincing points to make your case, and this is what originally prompted me to respond to you here.

 

I have been attempting to correct misinformation and inaccuracies that each side has posited about the other side since this whole split started. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons to have legitimate problems with some staff members at BHP. I totally get that. But the points made should be legitimate points, and not the things you've claimed about the "poorness" or "lacking" development of the game itself, which totally makes sense considering the timeline, decisions, and the personal lives of those involved.

 

I apologize for the long post(s), and any offense that might have been given, as it's not intended.

Edited by ChopBam

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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

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I tried looking you up there but apparently you have me blocked or you've stopped using it entirely

Hm, strange. I can see your profile. I'll send you a message.

 

Sorry everyone else for taking this a bit off-topic. I hope some of the information presented is helpful for you all.

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