About It Came From Red Alert! (28/09/09) feature

About:

It Came From Red Alert! is a mod that brings the original Red Alert into Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge. It requires Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge V1.001. Beta Releases 1 and 2 do not require Rock Patch, Beta Release 2.5 requires Rock Patch 1.08SE to work correctly and Beta Release 3 requires NPatch Special Edition #0019 to work correctly.

The Past:

The mod was started on 25th November 2006 as I was becoming frustrated trying to play Red Alert without some of the interface features added in later games (primarily the right click scrolling, the tabbed sidebar and queueing the production of units), the mod was first announced on the 29th November 2006 and Beta Release 1 was released on the 1st of December 2006 with mostly RA2 graphics and Red Alert code.
This initial release was soon followed by Beta Release 2 on the 2nd of January 2007 which included alot of new graphics, some missed units and a number of accuracy fixes, but a couple of significent bugs that were found after release lead to a BR2.5 being released on the 7th of January that required the Rock Patch.

Beta Release 3 emerged on October 14th 2007 with a number of accuracy fixes and graphical updates/additions including additional terrain, redone building graphics with animations and new graphics for the capturable tech structures aswell as making use of the newer NPatch (SE #0019).

The Future:

There has been sporadic progress since BR3 on a fifth and "final" version of ICFRA!, to be dubbed Release Candidate 1. It has a few small but significent changes (the Tesla Coil fires properly for example) but is primarily focused on allowing maps and missions to be made (the campaign menu is re-enabled and Volkov and Chitzkoi have been coded in, but aren't available in skirmish games). It was also intended to include the first campaign mission for each side ("In The Thick Of It" sees Allied forces attempting to rescue Einstein from a Soviet base, while "Lesson In Blood" features Soviet forces demolishing a cilvilian town) though RA2's almost-isometric view is making conversion from Red Alert's flat top-down view more difficult than original thought). The last significent progress was on August 15th 2008, with damaged frames for the buildings and completion of the terrain being the major sticking points preventing a release.
I'm mainly geared towards Unreal Engine 3 modding now, but RC1 seeing the light of day isn't out of the question.

I've got a version entitled RC1 on my hard drive that has the following change list.

Removed NPatch requirements, due to techinical differences the following things have now changed:

· G.P.S. Satellite is no longer a super weapon, the Allied Tech. Centre functions like the RA2 Spysat Uplink,

· The M.A.D. Tank affects an area 62% of the size it used to,

· The Parabombs have gone,

· The Soviet Spy Plane has been moved to the Radar Dome,

· The multiplayer colours will look incorrect on the pre-game menu but are fine ingame.

Changes/additions in this version:

· Flame Tower's fireball reinserted.

· Volkov added (coded, not buildable).

· Chitzkoi added (coded, not buildable).

· Removed ugly texture from Iron Curtain animations.

· Tesla Coil weapon now correctly fires in 3 bursts.

· Re-enabled campaign menu and added UI art.

· First Allied campaign mission added.

· Reverted to none-NPatch menu system.

· Soviet Rifle Infantry's text string corrected.

· M.A.D. Tank has visual explosion.

· "Retro" and "Retro Contraction" removed, remappable graphics are now forced.

· A number of small voxel detail fixes.

· All voxels renormalized with latest auto-normals.

· New map - The Hills Have Eyes Redux by Dutchgamer.

There are a couple of quite important things in there such as the NPatch removal, the Tesla Coil actually working properly (massive "feel" issue) and making the fireball graphics work so I need to get this out at some point.