Suspiria

Hello Sarah, Nice to meet you. The name's Meerten. I promised to get back to you on this. I've recently allowed doubt to creep in, as to significantly investing in the OldRen gamemode right now. It may be wise to postpone this to post-release. Nevertheless, I still want to get a sense of exactly which elements are responsible for keeping those 64+ active players in there. While they are using an ancient engine, a somewhat unreliable server list, and several kinds of hoops for the layman to jump through at install time. Other than brand residue and nostalgia, they may still have positive, hard-to-articulate things that we don't. Examples being smooth camera movement getting in and out of vehicles and superweapon weather effects. In the meanwhile, I've been working round the clock on three new features for Renegade-X. We can now commission: - a proprietary access control system - an all-encompassing long-term player-statistics service a.k.a. "RenStats" and - an advanced team balancer, to work with those RenStats These systems are ready for integration and real-world testing. And will be introduced shortly. I realize this comes at the same time as the new shuffling algorithm. I've subsumed that system as a fallback mechanism. In the attachment you will find a list of general suggestions for this month. The "Complexity" and "Effort" columns are estimates. Sincerely, DugeHick May Update Suggestions.pdf

If you'd first read the whole post and thén start typing, this conversation would be different. As we already agreed on this: "A significant part of that post was also about just how critically important it is to gain traction, receive feedback, and to have an online presence established at the point of release. Another of its fruits being the attraction of new developers and contributors." Here goes the strawman again. Again, see: "A significant part of that post was also about just how critically important it is to gain traction, receive feedback, and to have an online presence established at the point of release. Another of its fruits being the attraction of new developers and contributors." I feel that you're coming from a place of reactivity with this. As I did fully address the strawman, and on top of that I actually assumed responsibility for it myself. I respect that. I'm glad we can agree that it's worth listening to everyone's point of view and giving it its due. Goodnight.

I think it's really good that this stuff is debated. Even if we disagree and-or misunderstand each other sometimes. For me, this helps to figure out for myself, what I want to work on. I'll be on the lookout for more ways of promoting this project. While working on some new features for X. Perhaps the OGRen gamemode can receive a bit more attention post-release. I want to thank you for your extensive input here, @MajesticSausage. Good stuff. Have a great day and evening everyone.

I would still like to respond to MajesticSausage's input. For the truth's sake. Your next-to total negation of the seriousness of this well-known phenomenon does not make it illusory in and of itself. And it's not just the successes that should be counted. This is a strawman argument. A significant part of that post was also about just how critically important it is to gain traction, receive feedback, and to have an online presence established at the point of release. Another of its fruits being the attraction of new developers and contributors. I should've linked to it. Thank you for reminding me of this. Perhaps it's not a great idea to put such kind of a spotlight on the OGRen mode right now. There's something in my mind that actually tends to agree with that. I'm sure it seems that way to you. If the OldRen-RenX playerbase ratio were like 15-85, I would never, ever have posed the idea to go take a closer look at OldRen. It's just that it's currently more like like 40-60. Thàt caught my curiosity. I want to rule out a correspondence bias here. I can only imagine how this sentence can be misinterpreted. By this, and by "turning the wheel", I mean: Start Listening to what OldRenners have to say. Not doing AS they say. Rather I'd like to use some of that input as an instrument towards excellence. As I feel that OldRen still has the power to inspire X in certain area's. Such as: - Smooth camera movement while getting in and out of vehicles. - Superweapon weather effects. Stuff like that.

Cool! This sounds more railgun to me than what we currently have. I do also agree with Henk on the tail length - could 'discharge' somewhat longer. Nice work, looking forward to see this in action.

Hello Gaby and welcome back to Renegade-X. I want to help you with this. It sounds like a file is being blocked somehow. Possibly being a false positive by your antivirus, on a Renegade-X binary or DLL-file. To troubleshoot this, follow the following steps: - Reboot your computer - Pause/disable all running antivirus and anti-malware programs that you have installed If you don't have a 3rd party virusscanner, then disable Windows Defender - Run launcher with Administrator rights - Carefully observe and note what happens; be genuinely curious about it If still nothing is happening after 5 minutes, close the Launcher and reenable all your security software again. The clue that we're going to need is in the Launcher's logs. Navigate to C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Renegade-X Launcher. There will be several log files, with timestamps as the file names. Find the most recent one, and upload that to this topic so that we can have a look. While we're at it, also grab yourself a copy of the Windows Event Viewer log by doing the following: - Windows 10: Right-click the Start button and select "Event Viewer" (Older Windows: Start -> Run -> type "eventvwr" press Enter) - Expand "Windows Logs" and select "Application" - Now open the "Action" menu and click "Save All Events As". - Save the file somewhere and then upload. There will be *some* meta-data in the latter log, about what programs you are using on your computer. If this is privacy-sensitive to you, then instead of uploading it to this public forum topic you can also send it to me by PM or email: [email protected] -DH

Yes RypeL, looked into that too. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary there. It's been a while but if I remember correctly I've also caught the bug while looking at STAT AUDIO. And there was absolutely nothing to see changing there. Nada. If I could look into that again, for the sakes of human-memory inaccuracy, I would. Fact is though , that the bug barely happens to me anymore now. It hasn't since the last ~25 games, and before that the record was 49 games without it. With this frequency, it's gonna be more difficult for me to help research this. Except for 3rd party logs - which do not show STAT AUDIO. It would really help to find a way to reproduce this issue. To find the pattern.

Heya! Thank you for sharing that, sir! That is a mute issue. And doesn't look like the same sound bug to me. There are certainly many games with "audio issues" out there, but it's important here to discern between the kinds of issues. Ye have mute situations, user errors, sound quality issues, wrongly selected sound device, or simply no output at all even though nothing is set to muted. Usually it's one of those categories. During my research, though, I have found that in our case there is actually a signal being outputted to the buffer when audio goes out. If you look at your VU-meter in Windows when it happens, you'll find that something is actually overloading that system. You can also hear it when you change the volume. It's definately *doing something*. It looks to me to be some kind of algorithm being stuck in a loop overloading the buffer with somewhat of a flat signal - can't call it a wave at all. As if its being fed corrupted memory, and the kernel going into a protection mechanism. I've never seen anything like it. I've also noticed that the audio from other programs sounds somewhat less in quality as long as I leave UDK.exe running like that. Meaning that it's definately still throughputting *something* into the sound device. We have a very, very particular kind of situation, that I haven't been able to find on the webs with any other UDK-based game. And which, to my knowledge, does not fall in the usual category of audio issues. That's what still makes me think that WE are doing something in the code - or in a setting - that is actually causing it. And this is why I'm sharply on the lookout for any kind of abnormal setting, user pattern, or quirk in our code that might cause it. Thanks again for sharing your Borderlands 2 experiences. It might just have been a big, big help. Ye never know with these things. Like roweboat said: No stone should be left unturned. I don't believe it's the same issue though. As a mute issue should simply zero the signal, and not go out with a small bang while showering your audio device with a bunch of bullshit-bytes. -DH

Ahhh I had indeed quadruple-checked this!! Only now I've discovered that the engine can be horribly inconsistent. Sometimes it overwrites the existing UDK ini's, other times it doesn't. It really depends on the weather outside. I should never have used the word "reliably" there. Thanks again for pointing this out, Sarah. Cool! Yes, I concur that there's still a reasonable chance that this may be a 'bandaid'. Curious fact remains, that I can't find any complaints on the internet about this particular kind of bug in other games made with UDK. Or UE3 for that matter. It seems waaay too RenX specific to me, to really consider it to be permanently out of our reach. If anyone is able to find exactly this bug online with other UDK games, surely do let me know. I had no success with it. ~~ And thank you for enabling the little 64-bit option in the launcher, Yosh & #dev ! I'm really happy with that, and so are some others I believe. 🙂 Have a nice day! - DH

Hear, hear!

I appreciate your viewpoint. This is about the Renegade-niche. That's not everyone. Ofcourse we're not gonna take a backwards facing view when thinking about the future. This is indeed about a nod towards nostalgia. Blizzard is doing it with World of Warcraft. In essence, I agree with this. Yet this is coming from the judgemental perspective that ALL those people will always be toxic and are just plain bad. Those same 'toxic' people are among us too, right now. It wouldn't be about rewarding those attacks. Heck, I don't even know if those DDoS attacks came from that direction. It would rather be about creating an environment in which such PITA behaviour - which is right around the corner - is far outshined by a happy community. A Classic game mode wouldn't be about separating into two camps. It's about bringing together the Renegade niche instead of fighting and judging each other all the time.

The function allocates persistent memory for the XMA audio system of the Xbox 360. It may not fix our issue, yet it doesn't seem to be supposed to be set non-zero on PC. With a in-file search application, I've found that this value we set is actually cooked into maps aswell. Therefore I still recommend setting this value to 0 in all ini's, in the next cook. To rule out the possibility that the map itself somehow overrides the .ini's. In the meantime I'll be on the lookout for a pattern, and dive deeper into the belly of the beast.

No need to cut anything off. We're all on the same "side" here. Noted. No way in heaven. What is being discussed (and worked on) is about investing *some* of our resources into developing a very decent Classic Game Mode as an option. ... Not changing the game back to something that is boring and underdeveloped to the majority. If such a mode would be truly for an absolute maximum of only 50-60 people, then it wouldn't make much sense to do it. It's just that I'm not so sure yet about those numbers. I think those are actual Active players that you're talking about. With a somewhat dormant playerbase behind it. Who go through the struggle of getting OldRen to work, and are somehow not turned off by the older engine. OldRen has a different kind of magic about it. It's quite spooky, dark-industrial, mysterious, mystical even. As are its sounds. What I primarily want to figure out here, is this: Where exactly did those hundreds of players coming from? My guess is that most of those people were all more or less Renegade-specific fans. As we have never been allowed to advertise with the C&C brand. Did those hundreds leave because of the technical and social difficulties that were had for a while? .. Or did those hundreds leave because they didn't like the new non-OldRen UT3-like non-eerie/mysterious feel? Where did those hundreds come from in the first place? How is it, that we can or cannot repeat that process? I think this is worth investigating. It seems to me, that while you think it's the former, I'd like to leave open the simple possibility that it might be the latter. I want to make absolutely sure that that, is not in fact the case, first. Before "cutting this one off". Maybe you can fill me in as to what engine Renegade-X was using before UE3? Because for many the UT3 look & feel alone already counts as straying far, far away from OldRen.

Performance issues may still be a valid point. Imagine switching 64 people into a game which 24 can't run. That's not cool. The 7970 has been a while ago that I tested that. And it's not the worst of cards either. The Q6600 now I'm not sure anymore, could've been on my 3930K already. Human memory.... Ugh. No ECC on it. We'll have to see this-the-go. And perhaps further "undress" the Marathon edition, should significant performance issues still arise.

Quoting myself here for a bit: " The difference between a good and a great product, is the difference between having a hard time selling it versus having it pretty much sell itself. If the product is great, then the persistent word-of-mouth will be your most powerful ad campaign that you will néver have to pay for. Those are X^Y walking billboards all over the f place, that don't have to be managed ánd who don't ask for money all the time. All of them can work fór you, or against you. " Right now, we might even have things working AGAINST us. Ren-X apparently had hundreds of players in the beginning before the attacks (by who?!?) and now has a reputation of not being C&C Renegade enough. I'm afraid we scared off those players by not making their expected port. Were they right to expect a port from us? Maybe not Did "they" want a port from us? Definately, yes So many outrage and disappointments, heck DDoS attacks even. That's a huge signal to start turning the wheel. That negativity and disappointment needs to be called out and catered to. WITH, a drop of honey. Thing is, with any product ya have to follow the market. It's about what the audience wants. We are ought to listen to it and steer accordingly. The way I see it, it will certainly help to offer a new home to those diehard Renegaders. Start getting them IN HERE already. They're our allies and fellow C&C-lovers, not our 'toxic' enemies! And once they feel at home within our community, they're waaay more likely to switch to the X game mode aswell. And tell their gamer friends. We could use their company right now, while we are still quite an endangered species. So afaic, we're not just building some tiny little OGRen knockoff mutator. Nah. We have to build a serious Classic/Old-School Game Mode. And ask for forgiveness. We had hundreds of players earlier, we can do that again... Yet we have to start Listening - with the big L - more closely. To (some of) those disappointed, sad, and 'toxic' people. Those are pain-points right there. Nostalgia is there for a reason. If we can provide for them, then they can provide for us. And it'll become a strong WE. All those people all sharing their 2cts and joining in on the fun. I'm sure I sound like I know everything now. I can absolutely be wrong about this. For sure. It's just that my intuïtion is telling me otherwise right now. We gotta stop resisting our audience, lol. A respectable chunk of it, that is. So let's get back to work.

Hi there This is a DirectX issue. Coincidentally I had the same issue on my Windows XP server today. First I installed DirectX 9.0c and that did not help. Then I discovered that there is 9.0c and there is 11 and there is also DirectX "End-User Runtimes". Installing the latter resolved the issue for me. I suggest you try (re)installing those end-user runtimes. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Nope. No launcher. Tried it again just now @ CT Testing. Goes at full speed. Afaik there was some kind of technical issue that sometimes the redirect worked but other times it reverted to channel-download somehow. That was a real showstopper as people had to open their browser to download the map and manually install the thing. Idk if that has been fixed, or that I just had a lucky streak.

Amazing, DoctorAnubis! It's absolutely stunning. Solutions, solutions... Shading issue: Loading screen with hint, and/or have the launcher warn the user upon clicking 'Join'. Map downloading: Use the launcher to pre-transfer the map upon clicking 'Join' to avoid channel-download malfunction. * Desire to make it all work increases when there's enough people in the server. FOMO and such. I (still) think it may be a good idea to code a minimum playercount before the map becomes votable. Call the map "Paradise-XL". Also, I'd say: Definately no need to do away with all the fun spots, minigames, and spawning events and such. Just fork the map so that we have a Marathon-compatible one, and then another one, say, "Paradise World", in which there are no limits. As the Ren-X community grows, "Paradise World" could become a nice side-dish. As people already know it from the marathon-map "Paradise-XL". * I just downloaded this map with the client through the redirect at 40-50Mbit/s. Took me about a minute. People with slower connections apparently still choose to download several gigs of standard Ren-X files. They must be pretty used to it.

I realize that. Hey there, Yes, valid points. Just know that we're on the same side here. I'd absolutely looove to see this map go mainstream..... Kindly answering your questions: Well, I have simply been listening and empathizing with a couple of admins some time ago, and I am attempting to deconstruct that information here. As to the points that were made, one of which was that the map would be way, "way too big". Three issues with that: 1. They were afraid that people would get distracted by the minigame and fun spots, and RenX gameplay would suffer for that. 2. If you die at the front line, it's gonna take quite some time to get back to the heat of the match. Travel distance can get frustrating especially for n00bs. 3. Because of the travel time, quite a few base entry points, and many opportunities to sneak in, I can only imagine how tough it can be to defend a base. I mention the bot AI because I happen to disagree with the answer #3 of yours. With 10v10 it would still feel like 4v4 to me, because the 10th is AFK and the map is so damn huge and fun that you will probably never meet those other 5 on your way to the enemy base. Practically speaking, people usually barely stick together unless someone actually calls for a rush. So yea sure there will be some combat, but nothing like the spectacular crazy battles. Personally, from 16x16 and upward I myself would *maybe* not get bored playing this map for longer periods of time. And that's just my experience, and may differ for everyone, to each their own. And yes I've played this map enough times to know what I want. So I guess it's somewhat of a mix of gameplay and social factors. Btw I have not had any serious FPS issues on this map even with my old PC Q6600 & R7970 on FHD. So that sounds like a job well done to further optimize this for higher resolutions and older PC's. Sounds good! Not just your opinion, sir. If you guys still believe in this and don't give up, and if Ren-X doesn't die in the meantime... Then I definately do also believe that Paradise will come to receive the attention that it deserves. So my questions back to you: What do you think the current admins of FPI and CT need,.. to add this map to their map rotation? What do you feel is holding them back right now, to do so? Have you asked? How did that conversation go. Sincerely, -DH

True story

Darn, that was my favourite. We'll see. 😛

Everything that is post-Tiberian Dawn and/or not-buyable, should remain truly a surprise to receive. Let's suppose for a moment that the total spawn chance of exotic crates is made to about -25% of what it is right now. And the rest of the crates are more ordinary vehicles like Humvee and buyable tanks, and spy and money crates. At the same time, rewarded exotic items will be +15% stronger. You'll be feeling damn lucky! When you get something thát special, and powerful. And on top of that, others should truly fear you. Because you're pretty diehard now. ... The current situation though, is that now everyone is driving the M.2. And 'Legendary' characters are pretty common to see aswell. ... It's just as with fine cuisine... Less, is more. Don't saturate the thing. And another component of this, is more like with money: If you have little of it, like most of us: That sucks. But if you have a lót of it, then at a certain point it does not make your life better anymore. Actually, you'll lose your impartiality, and often also your privacy. Should you go >100M, or less, even. Having surprise-crate chances this high, ruins the genuine-surprise effect on players. A true surprise feel is introduced, when the chances to get something are low(er), and the rewards high(er). That's a dopamine kick right there. That is "awesome" at its finest. ... Same with the Tiberium visceroid, if we were to introduce it. Make it so, that there are "rumors" out there that the visceroid has actually been implemented. New players aren't even sure if those rumors are true. And then only after quite a few matches, they're suddenly confronted with this cute hellspawn. It's pretty strong also. Players really have to make a concerted effort to get rid of the thing. Either to kill it, or to somehow try to lure it towards the enemy's base. They're usually unprepared for this, because the phenomenon is Rare enough. And that can introduce that bit of fun. Please consider this all! - DH

Let's just say "not yet". The way I see it its success depends on the synergy of the following two factors: 1. The general growth of the RenX community. People want different things. 2. Greatly improving bot AI, so that servers actually have a chance to fill up to 64p. 3. Make this map unvotable if there are less than 50 people in the server. If we could get those three things right, Paradise might have a chance to go mainstream.

I'll get back to you on this.

Wow! I am absolutely blown away by this! This is hard, hard work! I very much respect the effort that you've put into this. I've been looking through all the code and it absolutely amazes me just how many lines of code are in there and how complex some of those systems are. Crazy! Absolutely nuts; in the way that I like it. I'm looking forward to see most of these features in action. (And then I looked at the date..) ..Although I'm not sure which of them are april's fools jokes. The visceroid literally being on my list of suggestions. Some of the other updates may, however, kill this game's soul. For example the removal of SBH and the blue reskin of Nod. Who feels at home with that.. And Buggies and Humvees are no more, if they get these upgrades. That's more C&C Generals than it is Renegade. We're not playing World of Warcraft 2 guys. Simplicity is king. I wonder.