Blog 52! news - Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising

Welcome (finally) to this special one year anniversary blog. I doubt we will be dying soon doubters. I'd like to to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped and contributed so far in a little list :)

Special Thanks To: Westwood Studios, "TheKGBspy", James "Chronojam" Brodeur and everyone at Red alert: A Path Beyond, "Assassin" and C&C Source, Joseph "Exdeath7/Spice/DeathAX" Strateger, "DarkAngel", "[NE]Fobby[Gen]", "Tankmaster", The Renegade Modding Community

Special Coding Thanks To: Jonathan "jonwil" Wilson, Mark "Saberhawk" Sararu, Joshua "Neosaber" Kraft, "TheKGBspy" the Renegade Mod scripts Team

Renegade Revived: "[NE]Fobby[Gen]", "Sloth", Renegade Revived Team.

Red alert 2: Verge of Armageddon: "Svensmokavich", "Skierarc", "Darkangel", VOA Team

Red alert 2: Vengeance: "TheKGBspy", "Renardin", "AvroAero2", RA2: Vengeance Team

Red alert 2: Hell March: "Skulking Ferrit", HM Team

Past Members

"Retrocide", "Blkhnd112", "TTadvancer", "Mythdragon", "Guywithawrench", "Mathk1ll", "Assassin", Alexander "AxelSnog" Song, "Ionkill43", "TheCrow"

And finally, thanks to all the fans who have believed in us so far. We couldn't have gotten this far without your support ^^

Now for a history lesson!

The History of Apocalypse Rising

Apocalypse Rising started out as a Renegade 2-based modification called 'C&C Untold'. We were shunned by the community wherever we went. My lacking knowledge of the internet apparent since I used texting language and abbreviations a lot. Our grasp of the story wasn't too briliant either, so we closed it down due to the lack of support, rest assured though, I still have some of the assets for it somewhere....

I was in High School, thinking about how awesome 'A Path Beyond' and 'Reborn' were looking, only to feel that something was missing. Like an unfinished painting, an ice cream sundae without the cherry or a missing third piece of the triforce. Red alert had been done, Tiberian Sun had been done. Red alert 2 had been attempted many times with each attempt failing miserably. Me and cfehunter decided to act on this.

Now for the mod name. I had the word 'Apocalypse' firmly stuck in my mind but it sounded quite empty as just one word. Red alert 2: Apocalypse. I thought long and hard about what word could accompany this. I saw the mod 'Rise of the Reds' and thought "Don't the Reds rise again in RA2?" I tried it out with 'Apocalypse' and put the word 'rise' in the present tense so it was then 'rising'. It worked well. You could say the mod really started then. Me and cfehunter started up a forum and I began to model. Retrocide also joined and taught me how to make models properly, thanks for that man. He left the mod soon after though.

One of my first models was a combination of loads of differant ones stuck together with a few boxes. I gradually replaced the stolen bits with my own and it finished looking like this.

The Scorpion Hunter by One Winged Angel

Soon after the first forums were setup we started looking around for dead fps RA2 mods to get a headstart on the mod at hand. I saw the mod 'Renegade Revived', the mod leader none other than Reborn member, [NE]Fobby[GEN]. I obtained assets from that mod and then went on the search again. The main bulk of our assets came from the BFV mod, Verge of Armageddon. Svensmokavich and Skierarc were happy to give us the assets from their dead creation.

We stopped chasing assets at that point and focused on development. But later, other assets came from the inactive mod RA2: Hell March for BF2. Big thanks to Skulking Ferrit for that. Finally on assets, we make our way back to the Renegade community. RA2: Vengeance. I got into contact with ThKGBspy earlier this year and he has been a great help inproviding me with assets, useful insight on the mod and lots of other little things. Top man!

The stage was set, we had just setup our Moddb page and everything was going well. We needed team members though. Paradox joined us willingly to lend a hand in the early stages and Nameme joined soon after with his knowledge of mapping at hand. Nameme blew us away with his island attack map for Renegade that was really fun to play. We were at Equinox Games, hosted by Xenon Wolf at the time. It was a mess sometimes as hosting was down, but other times were OK. We moved to Blazemods where Xenon Wolf somehow IP banned himself :S Big thanks to Blazedragoon who hosted us all through the summer ^_^. Soon after, we put out some PR recruitement on the various Renegade forums in an attempt to get members. I got emails from Merovingian and another guy called TTAdvancer (who kinda dissapeared). To this day Merovingian has been one of our single most important team members. Thanks for staying with us man, we love you.
Soon after, unwrapper Chevy787 joined us and has been a great help with ideas as well as unwrapping. Another guy, Blckhnd12, also joined us and modelled us an AK47, but he left the team soon after because he didn't have enough time for the mod.

Then came the driving force of this mod.

Ric.

His mouse moves at the speed of light and he is one of the nicest guys I have ever worked with. Ric, I take my hat off to you my friend.

Danpaul88 came and hung around our forums a lot, we were looking for a coder and when he announced himself as being one, we gave him a place ont he team. He has been creating magical wonders with his scripts ever since. BogdanV also arrived around the same time. He was and still is, making a Renegade2 mod. We merged the two mods and he works alongside us. Some of his engine experiments are pretty radical to say the least. ReneCranes anyone?
After Danpaul88 and BogdanV, came Mathk1ll, he did us a few textures but was then lured into the deathtrap that is Runescape. ionkill43 also joined and has done a few textures for us. He is a nice guy as well. A few more names that were relevant are Mythdragon and Guywithawrench, both were on the team at differant times but were then dropped from the hiring procedure for differant reasons.

And we can't forget the testers! Phoenixx has been here since the beginning of AR time and has been a valuable friend as well as a valuable tester. Also, Spetznaz, one of our testers, now a tester/military advisor, has been here for a considerable amount of time too. Nameme introduced us to him and he has been here ever since. And we can't forget Mighty BOB! He has supported us for as long as I can remember. Pies, I mean, Kudos to you BOB. In the latter half of our times on blazemods, I recruited Tankmaster as a beta tester because of his work on an Unreal Tournament mod, RA2: Armageddon. He will be the guy to eventually do our installer when we get the mod released and he is currently working on the website. Expect a nice suprise.

We moved to C&C Source in october. Thats where we got serious about making this mod. Soviet_Deso and Assassin joined us and Soviet_Deso has done wonders with our Apocalypse Tank as you have all seen in previous updates. I saw AxelSnog on deviantart and offered him a job. He accepted an our Colt 45 was textured. Thanks to him for helping us out. We also started doing blogs in october as well which, I find, gets us working towards great things much faster than we usually do. I also love writing them so that is fortunate for all of you ;)

After a few months at C&C Source, with various developments and dramas going on, Reborn broke away from A Path Beyond and we were in a bit of trouble over ftp space and forum downtime at C&C Source. In late March Me and Chronojam decided that Apocalypse Rising was a new "superpower" in the Renegade modding community and that we should join forces. In all respects to C&C Source, this was a good move to make. Since the Renegade community is a small place so there were not many good reasons for us to stay at a community that was made up of Generals and C&C3 mods. We joined up and everyone greeted us with welcoming arms wide open. This was a good feeling.

I see no reason to type any more about this because you can read up on our progress and developments in the previous blogs :)

Now for content!

Guardian GI

rm5248 has been furiously modelling the Guardian GI specially for this blog. Big big kudos to him for this. Let me remind you who the Guardian GI is.

The Guardian GIs are Allied troops that are fantastic against vehicles. Unfortunately, they were not made available for deployment until the Psychic Dominator Disaster (Yuri's revenge). Once deployed however, they are shown to be worth being twice as much as a traditional GI, especially in the role of base defense.

They can be deployed into fortifications like their GI compatriots, but they use steel plating instead of sandbags, and instead of a machine gun, they use a shoulder mounted missile launcher that could take down Soviet vehicles and planes with ease.

In addition, thanks to the fortifications, vehicles cannot crush them, allowing ingenious commanders to use the Guardian GI as a 'Mobile Wall', moving them to different positions as needed and re-deploying them to fill holes in base defenses.

Undeployed, they carry an Spectre Sub-Machine Gun that was effective against other infantry.

Undeployed, they have light armor. They are easily killed by Conscripts, Tesla Troopers, Terror Drones and other Soviet troops. Their SMG, while effective, only fired in bursts that were a few seconds apart, meaning that even against an Initiate, the Guardian GI would be the slower fighter and probably die. This is why they were so much better in their fortified deployment.

Here are some renders.

Nighthawk

Ric has had this done for ages, but we have yet to show it off. The Nighthawk transport is vital to Allied Trooper movement. It can rip infantry apart with it's front mounted machine guns, but it isn't too effective against heavier targets. Watch out for AA defences as this unit is taken down easily when under direct fire. The Nighthawk transport can carry 5 people includig the driver (so one driver and 4 passengers).

Here are some images.

Also, an extra bonus image of something else has been hidden in the blog, can you find it?

Map Objects

dtrngd, chevy787 and drunkill have been furiously baking cakes for you all. You'll have to check which flavour cake it is by clicking the images!

Models: dtrngd
Unwraps: Chevy787, dtrngd
Textures: drunkill

Map Development

dtrngd has been busy like some sort of machine, working on updates for his new map, Rocky_Pass. This map was explained in a previous blog. Soviets have a coastal convoy road that the Allies must storm up the beach to attack.

(Textures not final)

End

Team updates and Community Watch will return next week. Keep your eyes on Command and Conquer TV: Episode 3.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this :)

This is OWA signing off.