Blogs - Merch2

I've been away from the page for ages now and a couple of fairly recent comments have prompted me to try and explain what happened with RGB2 Chapter 2.

The RGB Mod was one of those things that started as a way of putting a bit back into the modding community to say thank-you to other modders for all the great content I've played for free over the years. I always intended the mod to come to completion at the end of RGB Chapter 2 but the coding limitations of the original GEM editor held me back from some great ideas that I was unable to solve to within that format. To be brutally honest the modding work got so it was taking me away from family life and a change in my commitments was required - as always family come first and a full time job second - that left little free time for modding so I started to use that free time to work on other types of projects that I can push forward and own completely unlike a mod where the assets always belong to the software company. My progress on RGB2 Chapter 2 is archived but my plans for release will be finalised sometime in 2020 when my modelling/craftwork/sculpting tutorial site goes live to the net. I will either commit to finishing the RGB saga on MOW or release the part build to another modder who can see the project to a completion that the followers will be able to enjoy playing. I had plans at one stage in 2017 for an inde release of RGB as a playable story but the learning curve of a new programming language was just too much to fit in with my life style and normal full time job. I realised I'm too old now to spend another 5 years learning a programming system for a game that may not end up being marketable. I wanted to use my free time to build something that could pass on some of my other skills to a larger audience - so I began to work on art and craft video tutorials after success over the years training in industry and working with all the kids in my Wife's extended family doing craft days and scratch building everything from space ships to film props. So ultimately I made a choice to go back to something that may be more useful than my modding. I have been building and tinkering with scrap parts and recycled junk since I was young - so instead of trying to master a programming skill I may never get good at I am going back to basics - and in this super digital age - it is still really satisfying to build something with your hands or sculpt a figure from wire, epoxy and polymer clay. I understand this is not really helpful to the people that still want to play mods - but as I said - I will release the part build if I cannot find the heart or time to do the RGB story the completion it deserves once my art tutorial site is up and running. On a final note - have yourselves a Merry Christmas when it finally arrives and if I get any time between vids in the workshop and Mrs Merch chasing me for getting jobs round the house done on my days off - I will dust off the RGB mod files and take a proper inventory at how many hours will be needed to complete the mod in a form that will work in the GEM. Bye for now ;-)

I can't believe it's been 6 months since my last update - I've been busy with life in general and modding got behind as usual. I've been working on coding the last installment of RGB2 and had to redesign some levels from scratch. I've also started porting RGB for MoWAS2 (the coding tweaks are driving me nuts and some RGB classics are just not possible) so I decided to compile all the WW2 missions from the RGB canon into one 'best of' mod for MoWAS2 called RGB War. Using a word processor to change all the SP human types to the MoWAS MP is taking a while and I am polishing a few of the clunky triggers from the early RGB stuff. To make it more user friendly I plan to use vanilla entities so the mod will run a bit smoother with the frequent updates the game seems to get on steam. (I miss the red MoW vision cone for SP but it is maybe a personal choice as the stealth type of missions seem to be falling out of favour - so I may just alter the code a little and go with MP vision for my older levels). In an attempt to free up some much needed hard disk space on my coal powered PC - been clearing out all the big FRAPS files and made the Kursk vid as it is one of my favourite levels together with Berlin Defence which is being ported and game tested for MoWAS2 as I type (well not as I'm typing right here but you know what I mean...). Hope you like the tank battle vid - it was how I always wanted the old tank attack level in SHOWW2 to be when I first started playing the series.

Hello All, and welcome to 2015 - still here and still modding (for now) - I posted a pic of part of the latest project for feedback - it's a defence mission that can be imported and tweaked in the GEM to make your own scripts for maps. I've been messing about with the idea for ages now but wasn't able to find a way to explain how it works without a million lines of read_me file. Over the Xmas hols I finally got around to making a proper tutorial vid that explains things a lot easier. The concept is simple but for non-modders the GEM work can get a bit confusing - the video shows it off better than I can write it down for sure - I've gone with subtitles as my nasal northern accent isn't so easy to understand if you're not a clog sparker and the original narration was way too flat-cap. Sorry for the subtle spelling error in the RGB Christmas card this year (everbody=everybody) - my missus was slow off the mark hiding the pre-Xmas booze this time and I was half cut when I posted the pic (it's not big and it's not clever - but by it feels great when you've finished work for the hols getting a few shots under your belt). We did the usual round of tears,tantrums and drama this Christmas (and not just when I opened my pressies!) tears when I got sprouts again for the big meal, tantrum when I had to eat them and drama trying to decide between modding on the Pc or sitting thru the Downton Abbey special with my nearest and dearest. I risked life and limb and went with modding so the results are the video tutorial for the RCR script. I hope the results will be worth it. Feedback to the image page for the RCR project - playtesting is done for the first timed battle and seems to work ok - hoping the rest will work out as well so I can post it with the vid for you to try out. That's all for the time being - work on the concluding part of RGB2 is progressing slowly but surely and believe me nobody will be happier than me to see it all wrapped up in a complete package. Have a great New Year - don't be too hard on yourself with all those resolutions!

I have just replied to a comment on the Mafia2 vid I posted earlier and it struck me - how many of the classic games I love to play over the years have been flawed or the studio closed. It maybe something to do with my older outlook but I can't be doing with these run of the mill cash cloned games that are getting released on a fortnightly basis these days. It seems that the only thing the developer would have you do is rush through the f**king thing at top speed. If the aim is to get you finished soon as - so you spend your hard earned on the next title then the cheat modes and walkthru guide books work like a charm - talk about mugging you off. Whatever happened to enjoying the playing? - I was astounded at some of the graphical detail in a modern era FPS I tried out not so long ago - but the gameplay worked on rails nearly - try to break off and explore a bit and you either got snotted by pop up AI or found a flimsy dead end (you know the type - 2 oil drums and a 3 foot high chain link fence blocking the alleyway). When you look at the big free roamers like Saboteur or Mafia2 - there is as much enjoyment for me driving or walking around the huge map area as there is in playing the missions. Somebody has worked really hard to paint that grass in between the tarmac cracks or place a collection of scrapyard junk down so it looks just right (I know - I have to do it myself in mods) so I like to appreciate their work by exploring around for hours. The change over from video arcades to home entertainment seems to be part of the problem with gaming quality (and I don't mean the graphics or the frames per second) I'm taking about the experience, the buzz, the sense of excitment you get from sitting down with a fresh game - you must remember that feeling. In the days of the old arcades there were no piss take - play it and forget games - the developers new how to hook you in and get another 10p (25cents) out of your pocket. There was a proper ending to the games and rewards and achievement as you played - the crap games got wheeled out on a trolley before the older teens poured soft drinks into the console electrics or burned the screen with cigarette ends - talk about instant customer feedback. You get a poor game on the PC or PSBONE17 now and you just rue the cash you've parted with - maybe go on line and bleat a bit about it on Steam but the developers still had your cash all the same. I won't buy anything without a demo first these days unless it's a real cheap deal and I mean under £8 and I don't support developers with my purchases who take the piss out of gamers by promising free stuff then charging later on. As for support - you would think it's a no brainer - if they make games that can have moddable content - they get perminant free advertising for as long as the community is modding. Worried about assets getting stolen? - do me a bleedin' favour - the cost of some of these stock tweaked low poly off the shelf models must be outweighed a thousand fold for the advertising content of mods alone. If RGB makes it all the way to Indie I vow to try and keep the cost as low as possible and my gameplay will always be made for the gaming experience never for what we can shave a few quid off or charge for later on. Right I'm off for another donut with milk Moddb.com and put my grumpy old fart t-shirt in the wash.

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!

It has been far too long since my last but busy busy busy. I've blasted through the play testing and coding for 5 missions and the last is underway now. I have decide to go with RGB2{chapter1} to get the mod out there and playable in the next month or so as I have committed to another project that has a time deadline so the mod needed to be split into two halves to get a workable outcome. The story got a re-write and what was a middle level map got reworked into an end of mod epic. The coding drove me nuts as I have tried to push the GEM to it's scripted limits - there are three rounds set on one big map for the final mission and each progresses on from the next without a carry over.The gameplay is tough without a doubt but I have tried something new this time - you get to choose how hard you work in earlier rounds to affect the outcome of your last fight. If you wimp it early on in the map the price in the final round is a tough fight - but there is an in level counter so you can check your progress as you fight.You have seen vids already for the abandoned marine base, both water plant maps and the Moltke Bridge. The TBC [To Be Continued] level I'm keeping a secret till release - the lack of video updates was explained last time - it's to prevent spoilers ruining the story for you.I don't really know how many MoW players are still interested in the RGB mod this far in but I want to finish the second chapter RGB2{chapter2} as my swan song for the RGB canon on the GEM. I have indie development plans for the series and really want to expand the story and the gameplay into different directions. I will always be a modder at heart but it is now time to move on a bit for the future. I realise that splitting the release into two parts is not ideal but it was either that or give up on the mod for good which I'm not willing to do - so bear with me a bit longer and look at it this way - all the edited maps that got cut previously are back in for RGB2{chapter2} we get to see Paris by night - find out what really happened to the rogue u-boat and yes the follow cam Mustang will definately get an outing. I also have a secret to reveal about why the bell tolls to wake the dead and the power behind the skeleton totem.To sum up you should get RGB2{chapter1} (6 maps - 3 single story and 3 multiple round missions) in a month or so then I will continue with work in progress for RGB2{chapter2} until completion at which point the canon for MoW and RGB will be finalised...bye for now - back to scripting!

Finally some more progress to show - Christmas was a super flu wipeout this year so the modding got kicked into touch for the holiday - had to resume in second week of January and have managed to complete the coding and play-testing for two more levels. The ruined airbase in 1964 and the Moltke Bridge in 1945.(the RGB saga has a few flashbacks in it as part of the storyline) both levels are defensive in nature - Moltke has your limited infantry versus Soviet troops with tanks and the airbase has a bit of RCR and puzzle thrown into the mix - with infantry only combat. I'll update the completion percents later on this quarter as I get started on the last maps and levels. I'm afraid the Paris map will have to wait for another mod as the coding was too complex for the simple story I wanted to tell as part of Uncle Joe's flashback - I have swopped the map for a Pacific Island tale with a shock in store and a major plot twist. Hopefully the whole RGB canon should fall into place logically for the last big map you will play after Joe's section is completed and the final battle should be as complex and demanding as the GEM scripting will allow.

Finally got a big one crossed off my MoW wish list - tactical gun lights - managed to squeeze some workable code out of a brainstorming session with the GEM and it's files. Had to restart the editor after each crash which felt like a hundred times at least until I got something useful! Hopefully the tutorial will help the rest of you have a go at altering the stock weapons contained in MoW to use for your own missions. I had to rush the map for RGB Halloween to get it posted and used a searchlight tweak so the new tutorial uses the boat light instead which should mean the in-game searchlights are not dimmed down to a pencil thin torch beam. Also got rid of the 'fireflies' halo effect on the beam - this looks great on a street lamp but not so good at the end of your gun barrel. I look forward to seeing some more mods with night missions included. If you want the best scares then you will need to include the tweak for invisible minimap enemies found in 'RGB extras' or 'RGB Halloween'.For those of you who are wondering - it is possible to clear the map in RGB Halloween as the enemies are not on unlimited spawn but you may need to pick up some melee weapons to finish it all!

Well it's been over 3 months since my last snippet - and how the time races by. Loads of hassle at work has tied me up recently and I picked up an old PC game to unwind with in the evenings - got 'Saboteur' by Pandemic for the PC. It's been a real revelation and has kept me going for the last few weeks. Sure it's got plenty of glitches - they never ironed out all the performance bugs before the studio got closed down - but what a blinder. It won't be everyones cup of tea but if you cross Tomb Raider with Hidden & Dangerous 2 and mix in Mafia 1 - you get 'Saboteur' - where else can you scale a 150 ft high tower to shoot down a Zeppelin with a rocket launcher?. I've enjoyed it so much I decided to try and recreate a little bit of Paris for RGB2 - didn't think it was possible till I started exploring the non destructable buildings in the GEM from the Africa section. Manged to clag the top half of a windmill on one of the buildings and it looked like it might be possible. The video only shows the WIP but the streets look half decent now before all the prop dressing gets done so I'm quite excited. I envision some stealth tasks - some car theft and the sanction of a highly prized enemy general.Julian will need to help the Resistance and there will be NPCs to work with a bit like the old FoW. I'm not sure if Paris had trams in '42 /'43 but I wanted civilian traffic on the streets at night and only trams fit in with the GEM entities. Hope you like the power wires criss crossing the streets for the trams - lining up the components took ages but I really think it adds a bit extra to the map. Imagine getting run down by a random stopping tram just as you are trying to put a complicated ambush plan together - that's why I needed the extra element of a map with trams on. This is the final bonus mission for RGB2 so I'm off now to continue dressing the Paris map and maybe take a medicinal drop of whiskey to keep the rain out...

Whilst playing the excellent '3000 miles to Tokyo' mod a few weeks ago I found the cave cut scene with the infantry follow cam a real exciting prospect and thought I might be able to modify a code line to run as a playable feature instead of a cut scene. A long weeks worth after work evenings of frustrating trial and error with notepad, the GEM and the old SoEdit program for the angular values in the matrix 34 table and here it is!
The follow cam works with most human functions in normal gameplay and just like the Kingtiger from RGB and the Mustang for RGB2 the viewpoint remains a trade off between leaving enough horizon in view to see where you are going and to steer/aim in direct control mode. This cam also works with thrown items like knives and nades and doesn't lock up pointing skywards.
I always wanted a human follow cam a bit like shift+F in the GEM but for real gameplay - well it's finally here and there is a notepad tweak for the mod that will even convert it to full first person style - although it is a bit hard to control your man with that mode. Because the camera hovers against a blank wall whenever your player is in cover there I've modified the triggers to allow the camera to be switched on and off at will to prevent bad vision sectors ruining the gameplay. Also unlike RGB if you don't like follow cam you can switch it off for the whole of this stealth level and just play with normal camera.
I had to shrink the 'active' icon (yellow arrow around the selected soldier) so it didn't fill up half the screen in follow cam and adjust the FoView to a larger angle than normal gameplay to get all of the body in view or when you lay down the player disappeared off the bottom of the screen!
Have also worked on some new skins and portraits this last few months to wrap up the storyline for RGB2 - progress continues slow but steady - the follow cam has added an extra twist to some of the levels but this will be the last code tweak as I need to get back mapping and scripting again to get this all tied together. That's all for now and thanks for your support so far...