[Renegade X: Black Dawn - Download Now!]

Very sorry for the double post, but I am unable to edit my post for some reason. My text disappears and clicking on the box where it ought to be doesn't bring up a typing cursor.

Just wanted to say, I didn't even mention the graphics. The reason why is because the graphical assets are so good for a free shooter, there's absolutely nothing I have to say about it. This graphics certainly don't disappoint, providing your PC can handle it I guess.

[Renegade X: Black Dawn - Download Now!]

Hi, I would like to add some more positive criticism, because I really enjoyed playing through this mini-campaign. The cut scenes are really well done and it gives everything else the feel of a professionally produced Renegade sequel. It actually makes me quite sad to see "what could have been", as much as it makes me happy to play some "new" Renegade missions. Very nostalgic for me. Good job on actually following through with this, because creating even a short single player campaign can't have been easy.

I said quite a bit about Black Dawn over at another forum (bluehellproductions.com), and I'm going to copy/paste some thoughts that you might find useful. So here goes:

The most obvious turn-off is the mechanic for killing you 5 seconds after you drive into a patch of jungle that "isn't part of the mission." It's completely stupid and counter-intuitive. Lots of times, it looks like driving through the jungle is a shortcut that you should be able to take to the next mission objective. You're actually going the right way, but you get killed. It doesn't make any sense why you'd die for driving through some trees to kill some tanks, instead of taking the road but ending up in exactly the same place. That kind of dumb stuff is something that will turn people off in droves, out of frustration. If they wanted to make you take a mostly linear path through the levels, they should have used natural blockers, like APB is doing for the map boundaries. At least that way it makes sense to the player why you can't drive through this area.

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Can't tell a big difference between the difficulty levels. The AI is very bad, due to standing still so often. It's very easy to snipe everybody in the head, on any difficulty. But at the same time, it does kind of feel like being the Commando in C&C. Since that's what he did... run around one-shot-killing everyone, lol. I don't think the hardest difficulty is anywhere near hard enough though. Just the enemies doing way more damage to you would make you need to use cover more often, and use health/armour power ups intelligently. I haven't noticed taking much more damage, but it might be because everyone is getting shot in the head before they can shoot.

So while I applaud you guys a lot for what you've managed to achieve here, I don't think this singleplayer release is "finished." I know you probably want to just go full steam ahead on your multiplayer version, but if you leave Black Dawn as is, I think it will turn some people away. I don't want to sound mean, but the "death 5 seconds after driving through an area it looks like you should be able to drive through" is unforgivable. I think you should probably go back and spend some time making this release as polished as possible, so that too many players don't quit screaming "WTF WHY AM I DYING FOR DRIVING THROUGH SOME TREES IN THE DIRECTION OF MY OBJECTIVE!!???" then never come back for your next release. I think you need to make sure you support this version and don't just call it "done." Doing that will give people more faith in your next release being high quality, so they will want to keep following your progress.

If you do decide to continue doing some work on Black Dawn (and I think you should), finding a better way to keep the player from leaving the "mission area" is a must. Don't just have people die because they didn't drive their tank in the direction that you imagined them driving it. If you want them to go in a certain direction, block all other directions in a way that is intuitive to the player. Natural blockers, like trees that are too close together to drive a tank through, razorwire, etc. Do something so that it looks like you can't get through that way. Just because you guys know how you're "supposed" to play the missions, doesn't mean that the average newbie does. As soon as I figured out which paths you wanted us to take, I had a lot of fun with your game... but I am a longtime Renegade fan, willing to overlook the bad stuff because I like the idea of an updated Renegade so much. Don't assume that casual players will tolerate a counter-intuitive system of where you are allowed to go on the map. They'll just uninstall the game. Most people don't care that you did all this for free, or that you want to focus on more important things. You have to sell the game to them by having it be high quality and enjoyable, not making excuses if it isn't.

I'm saying this harsh stuff because I really, really want you guys to succeed.

Lastly... while I understand why you couldn't make the campaign longer, it is just too easy to complete. Can't you go back and mess with the difficulty levels so that people can get more replay value out of this? You've put so much work into something that many will play for a few hours, then never play again. What else is there to do once you've completed the missions two or three times?

Is it possible to add many more waves of enemies on the hardest difficult levels? To make the game last longer and be more difficult, without needed to improve the AI? For example, have the "besieged tank battalion" contain more friendly tanks, and have the battle last much longer, with many more waves of LTs and APCs... before the A-10 scripted event occurs. The same goes for the battle outside the Nod base. You could have several waves of all kinds of Nod units come out of the base, rather than just that one wave of Artillery. You could also have more power ups and vehicle drops occur on harder difficulties, to enable the player to keep fighting against more waves of enemies. I don't think the enemy does enough damage on the hardest difficulty either. I could hardly tell the difference, and I expected to be forced to use cover and search for health/armour packs to stay alive. Instead, I waltzed through the whole thing just as fast as before.

I hope you'll at least consider my ideas, and good luck.