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Red Alert 3 Community Summit Page 4 |
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And then we got out to the lobby and got shirts of Red Alert 3 color and loaded onto a bus to go get dinner. But not only was it dinner, it was also an entertaining show at Medieval Times! Red Knight! We all were seated in the Red Knight section, and there were five other sections for other colored knights. Ours was the best knight obviously, and was cheered to no end by us every time he rode by. They had competitions while we had dinner. It was somewhat accurate to the time frame, cause we had no silverware to eat with. Chicken, Soup, Bread, Cake all with hands.
Then they got to the important to-the-death jousting competitions in which the knights slowly were eliminated one by one. Red Knight defeated all comers, and just as he was about to face the other last knight, Green, he was lanced in the back COMPLETELY unfairly! Unfortunately, it was not a reconnection error, so only the Red Knight lost. Then the King's son came back and defeated the Green knight, blah blah blah... The fun went out of it when the Red Knight died. LONG LIVE RED KNIGHT!
The next morning we headed back to EA, got the obligatory Breakfast Burritos and as soon as we were done, we could start playing RA3. So I finished the first. I'm so good I win at breakfast!
Then we were allowed to play Multiplayer to practice up for the tournament. But I chose to take more notes. It takes about 1 hour for me to get through all of the faction. So I wasn't the best prepared for the tournament, but it'll be alright.
We had two more presentations. The first was by Andre Bremmer and Colin Lewis about the C&C website. It was good to have them address this, as it is some cause for concern. The new C&C website will be the "Franchise Portal." You'll be able to access information on all C&C games (assumedly C&C3 and later).
Right now, there is information on C&C3 and Kane's Wrath. There's News, Media and stats somewhat tracking them. It's developed and hosted by Gamespy. The development has editorial control only. So they can add new media and news, but can't do much else. Some of the issues are these: It's hard to add new features, it's hard to expand to new games, the usability of the site just isn't good at all, there are lots of performance issues, and there's no RSS.
So what they said they want to do is create a home for All C&C. They want to create a seamless experience on the website to the ingame experience. They want some game features to make you come to the website more than just to check your win/loss ratio. What they're working on now is a website along those lines. It is a hub for C&C. They're going to first relaunch C&C3 in August and Kane's Wrath, then add RA3 when it comes out in October. The website is owned by the C&C team, so they can be closer to the fanbase.
It's going to feature inline commenting (like you see here), Rating, RSS, Related Content, User Profiles, Blogs, Buddy Management, Groups, Teams, Integrated Forums and Embeds. Groups are people who want to compare their stats with each other. So we'll have a CnC-Files group where we can all see each others' rankings and see who's the true winner of RA3 among us. Teams are people who play with each other, like a Clan. You'll have a single user account to access all the games. Duh, that's obviously a good idea.
One of the cooler features they're planning is a matching service. Sort of like social networking, but instead of your age and likes and dislikes, you put in your playing style and times you play, and you can find other people with similar habits. Then you can add them as buddies and play with them ingame. Hopefully that'll make it easier to find people who play like you do and make it easier to have fun.
So what's the plan?
1. Shut down Gamespy website.
2. Launch C&C3/KW in August.
3. Launch RA3 content in October
4. Switch forums -- waiting to figure out a good way to moderate forums.
5. Switch stats
6. Switch match making.
You read that right, no longer is Gamespy going to be hosting the matchmaking for C&C games! Maybe it'll go back to being as fast and painless as Westwood Online was!
The last presentation was that of Charles C, Scott Smith and John ___. It was on World Builder and some new features added in RA3. In trying to make the graphics hearken back to RA2, there is a build grid. It is how you set up buildings, roads and cliffs in World Builder. The grid makes it easier to plan where you can and can't build which makes it easier to balance the maps. Cliffs and Roads are now made of Geometry, no longer 2D.
The unfortunate thing is that we won't be seeing the ModSDK at release, but when we do get it (yes, When), we'll be able to model new roads and cliffs. Water is easier to create now, Caustics auto-apply to terrain. What does that mean? I don't really know. There can be only one layer of water because that is unfortunately how reflections are built into the engine. So you can't have a higher lake body of water. Another new feature is the ability to open a .TGA file and use it as a height map. Paint it in an image editing program with the terrain heights you want as the Hue of the color and when you load it, it'll automatically create the map for you. Nice!
Unfortunately, there is not a way to automatically create the mini-map or anything else to help make easier the map creation, so we got on those folks rather hard about it. They'll see what they can do.
After that, we had lunch, played some more RA3, this time though, we had multiplayer going on! And then a tournament. Read all about it!
After the tournament, we went into the debriefing room and gave feedback on the game. We gave feedback, suggestions, told them what was good and bad, and what we'd like to see changed. They didn't take many notes this time around, as the feedback was mainly bug related. That's good because that means that the general gameplay was good! And I would agree with that. I'm looking forward to playing it for real in a few months!
And then, it was time for the community presentations! Blbpaws (CNC Generals World) went first and talked about why modding was good for EA, and why they should support it. That was a very good presentation and well executed by Blbpaws. Then I was showed off the latest video, which was well received. Then SmurfBizkit demonstrated Mid East Crisis 2. It has three very different sides, a new resource mechanic and plenty of awesome firepower and special abilities! It is a truly impressive mod. Finally, Mastermind (who's now working for EA) showed off Asylum, the psuedo-Halo conversion for C&C3. It is looking pretty, but as someone who doesn't know much about Halo it just looked like typical Sci-Fi.
I would say that we just had pizza and went back to the hotel and went to bed, but in between there, we got some gift bags from EA which included a nVidia 9600GT (thanks, nVidia!), a C&C3 shirt and a C&C3 mug. T'chutch from CnCSaga was very nice in that he gave me a GDI and Nod patch which are sure to be featured in the next video of ours. Then back at the hotel, I talked with Andrew my roommate for a while about games in general. It was a good discussion.
On Saturday, I headed back. I rode with Mike, who's a cool guy too. Got to the airport with plenty of time and plenty of extra goodies to return home with. I got to sit on the back seat on a 757-200. It cruised at 37,000 feet and got back safe and sound!
So what to say in conclusion? It was, as usual, a blast! Red Alert 3 seems to be shaping up to be an awesome game! It is different than C&C3, but it is not a stranger to the C&C universe. Thanks to EA and Apoc for bringing us down there and providing everything for us. Tell me that's not nice! Then also thanks to Dell and nVidia for getting the computers for us to use. A shout out to Hexetic for being such a sport and providing me with some pictures... My cell phone doesn't really cut it. And also... Red KNIGHT!
Now here's a sneak preview of what's to come:
-Full breakdowns on all the factions
-Multiplayer gameplay thoughts
-Tech Trees, YAY!
-All the powers and secondary abilities from ALL the sides
-Introduction of the Empire of the Rising Sun
Just you wait a few more weeks...
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| | | User Comments | | The following comments are owned by the user that posted them. Command & Conquer Files is not responsible for their content.
Total comments: 3 | Last comment: 06-26-2008 at 11:15
Gothic_Warrior
Joined: June 4th, 2008
Posts: 34 | Wow - sounds bloody like it really will be a TRUE RA game! |
Reaper2006
From:  (Port of Spain)
Joined: January 21st, 2007
Posts: 154 | AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH SOO MUCH CENSORSHIP!!!  |
mlord5000
From: 
Joined: October 22nd, 2006
Posts: 523 | one question: What is it woth EA and buritos?
game looks like its gonna be good but Frank should have let you hear how HM3 is coming along |
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