1.0.0 Release Details: Visual-SFX Upgrades & Future Plans news - C&C Generals Zero Hour: Enhanced mod for C&C: Generals Zero Hour

Sup gaymers, it seems like this is the last blog before I finally release the damn thing.

And finally, the least politically charged ZHE blog in this era is among us once again that Gamers have been asking for. Despite the fact that a relative number of people doesn't really hold graphical aspects in high regards, I personally really like them. You can have the greatest book in the world which solves world hunger in one simple step and no one would really read it if it's printed in 100 years old A2 papers strapped together with corroded stapler pins.

In my opinion, it is of the utmost importance to "update" or so to speak to a more modern format and presentation to increase accessibility or get on with the times, so to speak. Now obviously, one can go a bit too far with such a target i.e. 4k pathtracing that 99% of people can't afford to enjoy without blowing up the whole planet.

Sure, the technology is very, very impressive and looks amazing. Now, I don't know about you but, I for one am the sort of person that wants to experience art in its highest possible form that the devs have made i.e. maxed out graphics.

From a rather plain looking vanilla Minecraft to super reflective 3D water with realistic physics, 3D textures and high quality meshes, oversaturated bloom and most importantly, can't do without em, godrays!

I don't know why this is a thing or what caused it but apparently, it's relatively popular as well. That being said, this is a rather subjective matter so don't think much of it unless you really care for the graphics stuff.

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ReShade:
With the replacement of ENB with ReShade comes with many advantages like an actual working anti-aliasing, an actual SSAO, better looking bloom FX, etc. Another great thing about using ReShade is that you can more easily edit the lighting in real time and in-game.

If you've used ReShade or a less ancient version of ENB, you might know what I'm talking about. You can also turn in the screen in CRT or black and white television in case your 100 something years old grandma and grandpa want to relive the terror bombings before they turn to dust.

With ReShade, I also don't have to use the laggy old bloom maps anymore.

"Volumetric" Sunrays and Fog:
Sunrays now use the Counter Unions 3D mod's method of making it into mutil-layer plane instead of actual cones. They do look a bit different but yields a lot more benefits ranging from better performance and better collision handling.

Fog effects will no longer hard clip with camera zooming. If you're a veteran ZHE player, you would probably notice that when you zoom in, the screen effects just disappear. This was due to the fact the effects are just singular plane. By making the effects into mutil-layer plane, they will no longer disappear when zooming in. They will instead slowly clear up as you might expect while walking through the clouds.

Improved Reflective Water:
In previous versions, reflective water planes have always been the staple of the ZHE experience. Well, this is just that but better looking, I think, with some more variety. Now if my memory is correct, there used to be just like four variations? That are the midday, sunset, star field and full moon night.

Well, now there are even more variations such as midday, sunset, overcast, dark overcast, star field, full moon night, night overcast and dark night overcast. And they should look more like water now.

Static Water Caustics:
Static caustics texture on shorelines but can look pretty convincing when you're drunk or zoomed out when combined with animated waves.

"Why no animation?" You might ask. As I highly doubt it's possible to implement such a visual feature in conventional ways, this is the best it could get.

But you wanna see digital caustics and immersive water reflection instead of going to the beach, you can check out OpenSAGE on GitHub. I already programmed in the animated caustics and real water reflection there and it looked quite good for 2003 engine and newbie shader programmer like me.

And by newbie I mean, watching Youtube tutorials once then copy and pasting the thing into the repo with my own twist.

Particle FX Rework:
A complete rework on particle effects to bring you more visually impactful and more performance friendly optimisation than ever in the history of this mod.

The 0.9.x version had a huge issue with unprioritised particles i.e. they all have the same render weight that render every particle in every frame. This evidently hurt the game's performance by quite a large margin. Not to mention the fact some particles ate up a lot of particle count unnecessarily.

Well, the new ones are now prioritised and use a lot of less particle count while still looking way better in most cases.

Ground, Water, Hit Particle FX:
Most weapon detonations will now react rationally relatively to the environment they detonate on in most cases. When munitions hit the ground, the dirts or sand will fly up in the air in magnitude respective to the caliber of the munition in question. Hitting the body of water i.e. pond, river, sea, etc. will make a portion of water and the sprinkles go up the air in the similar that of the ground ones. Colliding when units will play neither of the ground or water variant of the effects but instead play only the core effects i.e. fire balls, shockwave, explosion trails, etc.

Brand New Terrain Textures:
Through an assortment of free textures I searched on Google, I combined them in a brand new textures that kinda looks like they're rendered with normal maps. Although some improvements maybe made in the future as this is my first time doing it so there's bound to be issues.

But hey, at least the game looks a lot less like Galactic Battlegrounds and more like Starcraft 2.

AI Upscaled Textures:
Most building textures are upscaled to provide a lot more fidelity ranging from bridges to civilian buildings to faction buildings giving you 16 times the details.

vGen textures are quite passable nowadays but vZH textures are downscaled for some weird reason or that maybe that SAGE engine is quite broken as is it. As a result, everything looks more mushy in the expansion. And that's not the case anymore at the cost of performance, of course. So that being said, I advise you to experiment with what works best for you.

If you can run it smoothly without crashes, you can run it. If you can't run it smoothly without crashes, you can't run it.

Better Materials in Buildings:
As you've probably seen and noticed, faction buildings are now ZHE certified shiny. Probably not the realistic thing ever but it does looks cool when paired with ReShade imo. There's also the new light effects like flickering damaged lights, welding light FX, neon lights or reactor glow FX.

Perhaps a futuristic/cyberpunk look for a contemporary era military game but I liked it!

Revamped Fountains:
The most important visual update of all time. The fountains now look like, well, like FOUNTAINS!!! As you may have seen from the GIN Palace front fountain, other fountains have also been completely remade. There's also the fountain sound when they're in hearing range. C&C Generals Zero Hour is finally playable again.

SFX Rework:
Fixed a major WAV related crash and added lots of new SFXs for weapons and units. The 0.9.x version had a major issue with sound buffer as I've mentioned in the first blog. What I didn't mention is I've also added a shit ton of new SFXs for pretty much almost everything. Some stuff are recycled from 0.9.x but that's in minority I think.

The new SFXs are still pretty impactful but don't make your ears bleed as much. Best to experience them yourself than me describing them in great details in my usual 3000 words essay for sure.

GUI Elements Rework:
Major overhaul to user interface that's either redesigned by hand or upscaled to QHD resolution. I think I've covered everything from the intro to the main menu screen to victory screens. Not sure how to really describe all of them without just showing them so it's best to you just to check them out yourself. I guess it's best to summarise it as it's in the same style as the previous versions but better.

More Bridge Shadows:
I've come with great news that one more hideous looking bridge has been enhanced. The rectangular industrial bridge now casts its grill shadows like it should rather than the vanilla plain shadow box. It'll cost some performance hit but it looks a ton better imo.

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(Bonus) Snow Particle Effects:
Well, this may comes as a surprise feature for you but SNOW is back on the menu once again. Despite not being in the trailer, (I couldn't finish it in time) it's here once again so if you know what it's like, it's the same exact deal you've had before but BETTER!

Now in the previous versions, that was an annoying issue where if I didn't copy and paste the whole related FX codes into each map, it'll display the last FX visual that you loaded in with codes available. Meaning that if you've loaded into a map with snow codes, quit and loaded into another map without any codes, your FX will display the snow version of the FXs.

This was very annoying especially for me to deal with since there was a bunch of the same damn code everywhere and editing once was a nightmare. But nevertheless, this is mostly backend issues that only modders have to deal with so players probably won't notice much.

"So, do players get anything new in regards to this feature?" You may ask. And I would say absolutely YES! With the ground, water, hit particle FX feature, the ground version will be replaced with the snow version while everything else is still fully functional.

Pretty cool, huh? I honestly can't believe it actually works pretty well or even possible.

(Bonus) Revamped Tech Buildings:
Well, some of them to be exact. I haven't gotten around to do everything just yet but at least the ugliest ones have been finally enhanced.

No more 5 polygons smoke stack with god rays and reflective water in the background.

You may noticed that the Oil Derrick might look a bit "off" and you would be right. The Oil Derrick not only cast grill shadows now but it's also taller as well. "But why?" No particular reason; I just thought it looked hilarious taller.

The Oil Refinery doesn't look that much different apart from it being a lot rounder than 6 polygons and it casts grill shadows now.

The Reinforcement Pad saw some enhancement particularly in its captured state that you may have noticed in the trailer. Apart from that, it looks more polished in general with higher polygon counts.

While the Radio Station hasn't gotten any visual updates, it did get a special power revamp. It now has two special powers that are calling air-drop veterancy crates and air-drop faction vehicle. Kinda serves the same role as a Reinforcement Pad but the player can more precisely call in reinforcement at any target location plus the ability to train units faster with veterancy crates.

(Bonus) New & Revamped Supply Buildings:
Another set of updates I couldn't finish on time both for the new faction building screenshots and the trailer itself. The supplies have always looked really bad even in the enhanced 0.9.x versions at night due to flat lighting. Not only that, options for world building are also very limited leading to only TWO choices in vZH.

That all changes with new ZHE supplies including but not limited to now more than EIGHT options ranging all the way from the original small pile to medium pile to the BiG pile with updated night lighting.

(Bonus) New Maps:
So I've gotten around to do some new maps. Yes, you've read that right! New maps! 7 new maps by me and 3 classic maps by other creators which amounts to 10 in total.

I know it's not a lot when compare to other mods since either I have to make new ones or convert them to ZHE versions which can take quite a long time and lots of energy to do. But I have some *ahem* let's say "surprises" waiting to you to discover that will probably make up for the lack of quantity.

Just please, don't get angwy at me :>

(Bonus) Even More Infantry Variations:
So I had some time left before releasing that I was just generally testing and wrapping up on fixing some visual and coding flaws and I thought that I would just add a few more variations to the infantry visuals to be more consistent with the new lore.

I've always wanted to do something like this but got really lazy especially at the time of making the infantry batches. Not anything revolutionary like the water or fountain stuff or anything. I just wanted to do it.

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Future Plans:
Air Rework - Probably one of the most important and obvious plan I have for the future. Planes do really an upgrade and you compare them to other stuff I've added so far.
Special Forces - Another quite and obvious update that is needed. I'm talking about the GP special forces, buildable special forces and maybe mounted infantry. This, however, going to require quite a lot of work hence I've postponed it for my future self to handle.
Super-heavy Tank Addons - The NATO and GIN super-heavy tanks are lacking the addon options that the Overlord has. Would only make sense that they have own as well.
New Defensive Structures - Adding some more defensive relative to the tier upgrade system would be nice since I for one have always like building defenses. I'm talking about more MG emplacements, bunkers, anti-tank emplacements, artillery emplacements and so on. This also gonna require copious amount of work apparently.
More Individual Vehicle Upgrades - Something like tank commander, mine sweeper or point defense system would be nice for the future.
Chinese Small Arms Modernisation Upgrade - Sounds like a small deal but it's actually very hard to do still they have reversed grips meaning I have to whole lot of new set of animations.
Infantry Animation Variety - Adding variety to non-essential animation states like idle, damaged, cheering, etc. would great but as it said in the few first words: non-essential.
Bring Back Subfactions & Challenges - Since the new version was too overwhelming to complete everything all at once. I've decided to take them out for now and re-add them back later as future updates are rolling in. I have some ideas lying around like more contemporary African leaders like Ibrahim Traore but let's not get too ahead of ourselves just yet.
More Maps - Yes, even more random maps when I feel like doing it especially SEA and African themes.
More Bridge Variety - One of the things that the Situation Zero mod did back in the day iirc was ice bridges. If I could add that in the future, it would be nice.
Missions - So perhaps a good idea for a solo developer such as myself is to do missions in small chunks and then pack them up together once the whole thing is done: into a full campaign. This will also give me an opportunity to develop them over time alongside other updates.

And I guess that's all I have in mind for the future.

On closing thoughts, this has been an amazingly awarding experience at least for me. Seeing everything I've worked for coming together is sure something I would remember for a long time if not for life.

When I first picked up the Reborn The Rise To Power mod from a local CD market stall (the ultimate average 3rd world experience), and also grilled squid stick (that shit was fire), that was my first introduction to the concept of mods like ever. Playing as the Super Weapon General in Tournament City map was like my favourite thing to do after school. There's something about the glowing control rods at night that lured me in like fireflies into a BBQ fire. And, as much fun as it was, my game always crashes on that stupid map even until today. That is until a work around is found called "turn off the damn shadows."

But I liked the concept of a more unobscured real life elements introduced despite the obliviousness what was going on at the time. But let's be real, Generals has always been spicy even for its time. That is the same concept being introduced now be it extra spicy (Thai style.)

If only my younger self only knew what her older self would be capable of, she wouldn't have been so depressed as a teenager. Adding the new stuff in code shouldn't be too hard now. The hard part is to actually create all art required.

Someone also actually recommended me to add something like the Paragilders into the game. Maybe something like an advanced version of the Combat Cycle but have the ability to make a short jump like the Rocketeer but this is just an idea so far. Thinking about it is easier but the work required for it will probably be the end of me.

And as for upcoming release, I've also decided to do a little giveaway. That's right, if MrBeast were to be born in Thailand, he would have been she that is MsBeast instead. So I'm giving away the old stuff from the 0.9.x version like infantry, vehicles and buildings. So if you're a modder, it's free real content! So look out for that.

Well, see you again at release, I guess. Bye!