Wanted to see if the latest build of the unoptimized version was able to survive the stream without crashing. the fact it did indicates newer changes have been positive and we might be able to finally release something. Given it didn't crash, trying to get some things finished up to look at getting something out.
So it wasn't without purpose we are working towards this end.
What you fail to realize is that unlike many other modders I've work professionally in the game industry. The fact it wasnt released always had me wanting to come back to finish the project. When I was under a contract at a game studio I usually ether not allowed to work on side projects or my time was extremely limited due to the high demands of working at a game studio.
While I wish we had followed a similar pattern to TE with early release, Unfortunately once I started working for the game industry I entered into a world with very unstable jobs structures, not alot of spare time.. and to save this project and keep it going I've had to make sacrifices I've even passed on some opportunities to instead get this done because this project and community mean alot to me. However I still need to do "something" for a living and at the level I'm at now I have to give alot of my time to my job.
Having some more help would really help move things forward, but its difficult to get volunteers for an aging project like this. So working hard to finish it. But dont try to tell me I havent had community at heart if you'd known even half of my journey you'd see just how much I've been through to get this project done FOR the community and I've asked for nothing in return to do it (we've never asked for money or anything).
It'll be out, theres been some incredible tough years and obviously it wasnt intended to quite go on this long. But it'll get released before that point.
Age of the game doesn't matter, quality does matter theres incredible mods being made for games even older than Tiberium Wars .
As said in retrospect kind of wish I had released the old Generals version way back and kept upgrading it from there. But you dont know what challenges we've faced in our real lives and this project has really helped keep me going in some of the toughest of those itmes.
Your clearly not interested in playing the mod by the sounds of it so look thats fine good for you.
We are serious, do keep in mind some of us got jobs professionally in the game industry.. that left us with periods of time where contractually some of us couldn't do much for the project. But we always came back to it, we bring a lot of experience to the project at this point. But also our standards are even higher as a result.. that said evaluating the latest build of the unoptimized version at the moment.. as improvements have been made it might be stable enough now.. still running more tests.
The reason we held it back was we want people to have a good time with this especially after such a long development, if it just crash's a lot then its no good to anyone. Thats why we've been on a mission to make it as stable as we possible can and really refine this to ensure people have a good time.
Been trying to finish it properly, meeting the high standards set. In retrospect it probably would have been good to release early from the start and keep updating it. But not sure would have stuck with it, this way at least stuck with it until it was done and good enough.
Its getting to that good enough stage, there's some areas to finish off.. the optimized version is taking longer then we wanted, we're evaluating the unoptimized version for release at the moment see if it can hold up without crashing enough to be worth releasing. The 2 hour stream we did at the 24th Anniversary was a good start its showing some good indications here.
I live streamed for 2 hours during the 24th Anniversary of Tiberian Sun event, for those who missed it check it out here Twitch.tv
Full disclosure I was using the memory patch.. but I was evaluating stability of the latest version of the unoptimized code branch (the optimized version is a whole new codebase and is significant amount of work that's still in progress). The latest unoptimized version has benefited from some improvements we've made in our newer optimized version. We're running more tests and we've got some small areas to wrap up but seriously looking into getting something out.
We have previously placed in the top 10 of unreleased mods, in the unreleased category. The only way we can win MOTY is to release, we release updates every MOTY not because we're trying to win (we've already won unreleased) we do it to celebrate the year, the event of MOTY. If you read closely what I post each year I keep saying "Vote for your favorite mods".
That said I've also used interest in the project at each MOTY as a yardstick to decide whether to keep going or not. The strong support people have demonstrated each year has helped keep us going through some very hard times. We are at a stage we can release something soon I know its been a long time. I appreciate everyone's patience and the support over the years has been incredible its thanks to that we've come so far.
We're live on Twitch! Twitch.tv
Thats some good feedback Aporna's we'll look at updating the webbing style. (that is not the final effect).
Yeah things were too big before particularly our structures and you ran out of build space on some maps. The rescaling not only fixed some inconsistencies in scaling between different objects in their relational sizes but also dramatically improved the gameplay. It also strangely felt even more Tiberian Sun after doing so (I think because Tiberian Sun we remember building bigger bases and the zoom level is further out in TS then default C&C3;).
Yes, @MrTimm has been doing great work on the buildup anims :) they've been coming together beautifully. Keep up the great work MrTimm!
Of course I know :)
As for the timeline for this, GDI didn't put Disruptor tech into terraforming Blue Zones from Tiberium infested zones into well after Firestorm had concluded that is correct.
To help explain why the world didn't end in 6months after Firestorm (which was cannon the earth would be uninhabitable in 6 months was said at start of Firestorm). GDI was developing this tech during this time period it was just in prototype stage a lot of GDI's attention was diverted away from it for the Second War and the Firestorm Crisis. These Sonic Emitters are just mere prototypes. While they can repel Tiberium from a small area... they are nowhere near powerful enough to terraform/clear an entire region from Tiberium (which is the kind of tech GDI was employing on Blue Zones much wider area and more effective versions).
After the Firestorm Crisis GDI made some breakthroughs that averted the 6 month end of world disaster. As the technology matured GDI was able to clear wider areas reclaiming what we call Blue Zones in C&C3; although it still took years to reclaim areas that big.
There is the rather small chance a blossom tree might get created from a nearby mutated tree that is true. In which case Nod has no easy way to prevent Tiberium growing through their base the way GDI does.
Happy Birthday Sgtmyers :) great to see a long time follower still here. I hope you enjoyed the show!
It's a showcase, not a release yet just to be clear. We're certainly getting closer to release thou :). Everyone has been wanting to see the latest work up close, gameplay etc so we'll be doing that and going over the state of things etc what's left.
Well, Blue Tiberium is so valuable I hope you wouldn't be deploying Sonic Emitters near it. But that said with the way the Sonic Crystals are employed here will harmlessly shatter blue tiberium crystals.
Blue Tiberium under conditions usually only detonates a chain reaction when hit with missiles, shells or other explosive weapons.
However, what is currently unknown by GDI is what would happen if these were deployed around the Big Blue Crystal at the centre of some blue tiberium fields (the spreader).
Did you just miss the new update?
Not at all working very hard to keep it all progressing. We have our next update in the works we'll be posting up soon :) so it's not just end of the year.
Previous mentions of being close to release in prior years particularly ones prior to 2018 were most defiantly over-optimistic at the production quality we've been working at.
This was more inexperience than anything else. Unlike when I started this project I now have professional experience making games now where I learned a lot. Also in terms of features that others claim to not be possible. We have some of the most experienced and knowledgable people of the SAGE engine on our team. The creator of WrathEd works on TS Rising not to mention we've been working with this engine a long time we've got more collective knowledge and experience on the team than most C&C3; mods.
But as Einstein says in Red Alert "Time vill tell sooner or later time vill tell". See you at release :) but everything we've shown and promised is indeed very real.
Thank you! I'll pass that onto the team :)
We modelled it off Westwoods Mobile War Factory design from Firestorm. Note that the screenshots of the Fist of Nod deployed is the SAME model as the vehicle (the vehicle animates perfectly into the structure) we do not switch out the models for vehicle/structure for this unit.
Yes it was like this in Firestorm (see the newer shots for updated look of Tiberium Algae).
No problem I've been trying not to bog people down in technical jargon but also trying not to sound so vague it just sounds like excuses so been trying to find the sweet spot I do apologise for the walls of text was struggling to explain it concisely.
That's a good point maybe I should have snapped all the other Subterranean vehicles in this shot as well as the mobile vehicles. Ah well :).
We're delivering every feature we promised there has been no empty promises and because we've never previously announced an actual release date there was no empty promise on a missed date ether. Yes it is true the whole project is a long promise but so is every game until it releases. By the way the years 2010-2015 were some of my most intense years working as a professional game designer in the industry and hence why a lot if that period I was pretty quiet. A lot of progress was still made on TS Rising but it was some super intense years working almost non stop round the clock.
Not many other modders here in the C&C Community juggle working in industry and modding. So I do just want it noted that it did make things more challenging then I had originally anticipated.
No by optimisation I mean actual memory optimisation this is a 32bit game and almost every C&C3; mod crashes the damn game because eventually, it goes over the memory limits for 32bit. Even Tiberium Essence suffers from this.
We've actually gone as far as memory profiling and extensive testing to massively improve/fix the situation. As we were finding it was affecting TS Rising more then Essense and other mods and getting quite frustrating for the player.
This is normally a process only professional game developers do, fortunately having worked on some professional teams where we did memory profiling/optimisation like this we know what we are doing here. (Though its a damn shame we don't have tools like Unreal 4 or Unity's memory profiling tools which woulda made this a ton easier).
That said we've mostly completed that stage of getting the memory usage way down we're still migrating everything to our new codebase without just undoing all the optimisation made. So it is a time-consuming process bringing everything in and maintaining the memory & technical standards we've put in place.
Tib Essense is in a different category since it's released I even voted for them (thou I usually do there a great mod). So just saying there aren't many mods in the Upcoming category but just be aware that released and unreleased mods aren't competing in the MOTY. But we've also won Best Upcoming in the past so look we're just honoured to still be nominated and voted so thank you all for continued support.
It has some differences from GDI's Limpet Drone (like not needing to deploy). The main intention was to give Nod something with capabilities comparable to a GDI Mobile Sensor Array (As Nod does not have the MSA in TS Rising).
Oh no EVA had to restore entire video footage from near destruction but even when that completed. It took time for GDI to declassify this down to the Commander level for briefing. You all just got clearance finally :). (Yeah sorry for the delay).
Ahrimansiah
I am more than happy to provide some more transparency for our long-time fans following the project and I can understand your scepticism. Now buckle up because this is going to be a long story so I apologise for the length but well. My way of trying to explain this concisely was in our news update above. It really wasn't the intention to slow down updates after last year’s MOTY and the timing of this update had nothing to do with MOTY since we have already won Best Upcoming before and as I confirmed in the update we sadly won't have a release during the MOTY window this year.
Last year we had a slew of updates for 2019 to end the year, We started testing release candidates putting them through their paces for a public beta release and found some concerning stability issues and worse than we initially thought. Now C&C3; memory problems have plagued other mods but we found this was really souring the experience and happening more regularly then expected.
So, we started investigating solutions and fortunately we’re very lucky to have some of the most experienced people with the C&C3; SAGE engine on the team in the modding community. We discovered a solution that would not only solve the stability issues, but the game performance overall was going to benefit a ton and in testing exceeded our wildest expectations. The price of this however was a pretty drastic overhaul of the project’s codebase refactoring massive sections and painstaking and tedious amounts of testing to implement.
We’ve been working on that since early in 2020, now memory optimisation and refactoring are largely invisible progress to our audience but also pretty draining it also makes planning news updates harder. So, this was a massive time investment on our part but also when we first started working this new process, we had quite a lot of technical problems with the engine at first. Problems we have since resolved after a lot of testing, trial & error and we now have refined the process and Tiberian Sun Rising has been migrating more consistently to this new codebase a lot more smoothly now.
Then COVID19 hit and that put a lot more pressure on not just me but particularly on members of my team. One of which was a key person involved in the optimisation phase of Tiberian Sun Rising that had helped make it possible in the first place. This really slowed things down as it was a lot harder for us to collaborate as they were having to work tons of overtime for months.
Fortunately, we still made decent progress and now things are generally slowly improving for most of the team. Besides optimisation during this time animations, VFX and other departments were completing work and polishing areas of the mod. Most of the team that were affected are now closer to amount of time they had to contribute before the pandemic started. Which has been a huge impact for my time as well as it made the optimisation journey easier and more like originally planned before COVID hit.
The optimisation process is now moving more smoothly than ever. But yeah this is why its probably felt like beating a dead horse to some of you its been a very though year. Also with my time and capacity just being completely drained by having to take on initial optimisation efforts solo, a new job in RL, COVID , keeping the team running I just haven’t had the time or energy to post updates much except on our Discord until now things have eased up a bit.
Now we’ve gotten through the hardest parts of it all and we are super excited about 2021 and ecstatic with how the mod is performing in latest builds where now this is something we can be proud of to launch but there is still more optimisation work ahead and more to code/content to migrate so we’re busy working on it as I stated in our latest update above. Also memory optimisation is not something many mods do so we really are busting out everything to make this the best experience we can for you when we launch (thou I’m sure there’ll still be bugs and hence beta) but being able to run stably most of the time was key for us to achieve that for you.
So, there it is, for those of you who made it through reading all that wow well I’m just happy you felt it was worth reading to the end. For anyone still sceptical I will be more than happy to do some comparisons of unoptimized TS Rising and the optimised version in progress in some of our updates next year to demonstrate just how massive the improvements are.
Well, they only just released the C&C Remaster so TS/RA2 will be a little while at least assuming they're doing them, but yes we are working hard on a beta. As mentioned in the update we're putting a lot of work into optimisation at the moment. We made some great strides this year on that side of things so it's getting close.
AssassinCS
David joined
My name is David Thompson I am a professional Game Designer and Producer. I currently teach Game Design and Development at Box Hill Institute. I'm the Game Director on Tiberian Sun Rising and I've worked for game studios Gameloft, PikPok, Wooga, Immutable on game titles for mobile, PC and VR.