NProject Mod for C&C: Generals Zero Hour

Hello, is this thing on? So uh, hi everyone, it's been a long time I guess.
It's been... 2 years already since the last news update and release, that was in September 2021. Many things have happened since then. A lot actually, but at the same time nothing really much can be shown for the time being.

First of all, the social medias are dying... in general. Facebook continues to become unusable with dated site functions and unnecessarily tight security protocols so I decided to ditch it completely, and Twitter (now X), also started to go downhill in this couple of years. Because of these I am now still looking for their replacement for this mod SNS, so for the time being I will just post the mod updates here in ModDB and in the Discord server.

GitHub repository is also considered, as it flexibly allows you to file bug reports and suggestions, but there are many things to prepare for that, so maybe not anytime soon. Stay tuned for further updates about this.

Second, we are proud to announce that NProject Mod is now formally under the No Life Studios banner!

I and this mod had partnered with and received a lot of help from NLS since long, especially with this mod being hosted in their Discord server, giving modding discussions space, assistance behind the scenes like the Generals Anniversary event, and so on. The transfer itself was already done months ago, but we never really bother to make an official announcement just for this.

So what does this mean? This means Enlima Studios has become a part of No Life Studios, so all mod projects under Enlima Studios have been transferred over to No Life Studios, so this applies to not only NProject Mod but Tidal Wars as well. How will this affect everyone? Practically nothing! I am still developing these mods like before and you will still receive high quality contents from us, so nothing here to worry about.

Third, if you still haven't noticed, NProject mod is also available on GenLauncher. With GenLauncher you can easily play this mod with less hassle installing it. Just put GenLauncher in the game directory, run it, find NProject Mod in the mod list, proceed to download, and launch the mod. Check over their ModDB page to find out more about GenLauncher: Moddb.com

Talk about GenLauncher, there is something that needs to be mentioned. GenTool is enabled by default in GenLauncher, but despite the quality-of-life it brought and its widespread use, GenTool has been noticed for doing some malicious things such as pushing additional downloads without notice and modifying the game/mod files one-sidedly. Because of that, the GenLauncher version of NProject Mod includes a hotfix to make sure it does not trip the GenTool trigger, otherwise nothing else changed from the latest release (version 2.10.1). Regardless, for best experience just disable GenTool in GenLauncher settings and don't use it at all.

Now finally, let's talk about the actual contents, presentable contents. So what has been done in the meantime? MORE civilian stuff!

So far I have shown that I have fixed the buildings visible shadow bleeds, missing fireports, added the unused models, and also made the vehicles, trees, and props to their full functions. Yet, there are lots of things still broken. I needed to dedicate myself this long to fix ALL of them. So what are these things anyway? Let's take an example comparison:

left: NProject Mod (after fix); right: Zero Hour (before fix)

Things changed above includes:

• Fixed the buildings model smoothing that cause weird shading all over the building, so everything look more crisp now
• Fixed UV mapping errors (such as the roof of the lower center building here)
• Fixed the buildings with missing reflective windows material (only for those intended to have reflective materials in the first place but didn't worked for some reasons)
• Fixed flipped text in several models (usually small signs, car license plates, or on the back sides that are too small to notice from this height)
• Added snow (and night) models for those are missing ones (such as the supply piles, fences, bus stops, and street lamps above)
• Added the missing headlamps for the civilian cars
• Adjusted the fences texture UV mapping so they repeat seamlessly between the segments

Aside from all those visible changes that you can see at a glance above, there are also some that more than meet the eyes. Let's see some of them:

left: NProject Mod; right: Zero Hour

In Zero Hour there are several buildings with off-centered hitboxes that need fixing. Why does recentering matter anyway? If you see the picture above, that walled house is seemingly located on the right place, but the actual object hitbox was placed way to the front, so no units are able to move across in front of that house and instead be able to phase through its back side. Projectiles will also be detonated when they collide with the off hitbox rather than the actual building model.

I have processed the entire civilian assets library and fixed them all, be it slight or severe off-centers, through both model and code editing. With adjusted hitbox sizes and positions I hope it will give more fair results on how such objects interact with each other.

But you may also notice above that these fixed off-centered building positions have shifted in the maps. Because there's no way to automate this task as far as I know, I have to readjust their positions manually in the WorldBuilder in order to return them to their proper positions after their model edits. I'm currently in the process of fixing all the Official Maps included in this mod by default for this, but custom maps are out of my control. So as a little forewarning, if you try to play custom maps using this mod you may find some buildings become misaligned, you'll have to contact the original map author about that.

You also may notice that many buildings have broken fireports in the original game. At first we thought this problem was due to those buildings simply having missing or misspelled fireport points, but apparently there are more than that.

In NProject Mod latest release I have attempted to fix those broken fireports but some garrisons still prefer to shoot from the center of the building even with enough fireport bones. I have investigated and discovered a way to fix this, so now garrisons will be guaranteed to never shoot from the center point of the building and only shoot from the designated fireport points.

This list is just a very little in comparison to all the fixes have been done in these couple of years. The full list is MASSIVE. We will go to present more details of them a bit by bit in future updates.

As a bonus, here's another comparison pic to show the works done for night map assets:

You think we're done? Nope!
Aside from all those civilian fixes I have made several changes to the playable factions as well. We will get into them some time later, but for now I can show you this:

Toxin General Demo Trap has been changed, visually and stats wise. Toxin General base defenses are unique compared to the other GLA faction defenses. Toxin Tunnel got their unique model from the original Zero Hour, Stinger Sites also received their unique Stinger Soldier model (and later also the portrait cameo) in this mod, and now it is only fair to give the Demo Trap a new unique model especially due to its distinct functions. By just looking you'll know that this is a rigged toxin tank that will explode in a cloud of toxins, rather than just a normal Demo Trap.

Toxin Demo Trap was also seen as impractical and severely underused because of its underwhelming stats. For those who are interested, here's the changes done to the Toxin Demo Trap so far, these are subject to change anyway:

• build cost reduced from 600 to 500
• build time reduced from 16s to 8s (has been implemented since long, but undocumented)
• explosion damage increased from 250~100 to 400~175 (making its overall damage comparable to the normal Demo Trap, able to burst kill enemies and trigger nearby traps properly)
• explosion effects now follow the toxin upgrade level color properly
• Demo Drop version of the Toxin Demo Trap damage increased from 120~80 to 180~135

Now let's talk about the future. As you see this mod has been in development since 2006 (wow, that's a long time already), and yet there are still more things to be worked on. Since its first release on ModDB in 2009 it has undergone several direction changes, it started as a simple Boss General enabler, then expanded to add all the cut stuffs in the game, while at some point trying to fix all the coding mistakes as well as adding lots of new contents like many mods were doing back then.

Eventually, it became apparent that it is impossible to please both those who want simple quality-of-life improvements with minimal changes and those who expect something new on the table. Thus I see the need to set up a plan for the direction this mod will go in the future.

Because of that, I've decided to split the mod into separate versions that each can fulfill the needs of a specific direction path.

One path will continue the current general direction of the mod in adding more cut content and new cool stuff, with more relaxed constraints and less restriction to become "something more", without worrying about "sticking to the base game very much".

While the other path, that I dubbed as “NProject Lite”, is a version where it only includes the bug fixes and QoL improvements, stripping all the unnecessary additions out. This version aims to be “the patch” that everyone wished for the base game, hopefully can become the fresh new starting point for players, modders, and mappers alike in future generations. This will also most likely become the base of Tidal Wars development build proper. About time!

So when will this happen? Realistically speaking, I cannot promise the exact date, but I predict it will be after one or two more public releases after this. I still need to implement some contents and make sure the mod is in a playable state, and after that some final checks before the split can happen. So for now, let's focus on the content updates that will be brought soon. See you around!