Well I finally got the sequel finished and coded - RGB2 is out as the first chapter in a two part sequel and final edition to the Men of War RGB mod canon. I can say without doubt I'm proud of the final version - I've tried to stay faithful to the RGB story and make the missions even more involved than the original. As always I've built the maps from scratch - it saves a lot of trouble with the release permissions and to be honest - it's the coding that is the real work up. Some of the bloated triggers I had to use to get things to happen how I wanted in a level were painful - if you are a coder you can see all the steps in the GEM - I admit some are not as stripped down as I liked - but they are fairly robust and don't crash all the time. There still seems to be no full modders operating manual for the GEM after all these years which I find surprising so some of the stuff I wanted was trial and error till it worked and believe me after a hard days graft in heavy engineering - the old brain isn't too willing to store all those mission codes in one go!. There are some nights when I can only manage to write one trigger in the GEM before I start seeing double (that's double bourbons - to get me thru another week of work!). All this mean the complicated missions where stuff is dropping from the sky and counters are active have took months of real time work in the odd spare afternoon once a week after my shift is over. For all those who have waited patiently for more RGB missions maybe you can understand how it works in a one man mod team. Things take time when you have other commitments - but I still get pleasure from modding all the same - there is nothing quite so satisfying as getting snotted by ai coding on a mission you wrote yourself. I'm the scripter and I still can't win every time! - so all of you out there who feel my mods are too difficult - think on this for a second - I can't justify spending hundreds of hours coding stuff if it can be completed in 10 minutes - the mods are made to be a challenge - deliberately so I can enjoy replaying them too. There is always an easy mode to help if you are really stuck but the bottom line is the challenge is the enjoyment for me - I like nothing better than to sit all evening struggling with a new MoW mod trying to beat the scripter. It may not be for everybody but I can only script the type of mods that I like playing myself - so there is always a stealth and outnumbered element in my missions - the RCR coding was added to try and help with replays. The gungho 300 unit battles have never really appealed to me - I like to micro manage a small team out-numbered by an ai foe - my first PC strategy game was Commandos (enough said?). So my apologies if you are struggling with RGB2 but try not to get frustrated and remember it took me nearly 3 hours to complete Pacific Attack during play-testing with more reloads than I can count but I did end up clearing the map - just to check it could be accomplished if a player so wished...that's about all for now - I'm sure I've rambled on too much already - time to unwind for a few months and get some of Mrs Merch's joblist done!
RGB2 release
Posted by Merch2 on
