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Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2019 6:23 am
by Ronald
HELLO COMRADS
My name is Ronald and I've been playing CnC ever since it first came out on PC's MS-Dos back in 1996.
I've also done a _little_ bit of CnC mission modding, with an ini-editor back in those day (can not remember its name).
I've played CnC, TS, RA, Renegarde all the way up until CnC Generals around 2006 and enjoyed every minute of it.


NOW BACK ON THE OPENRA BATTEFIELD:
Recently (4-5 months ago) I was browsing Youtube and found "Five Aces" channel, shoutcasts and other videos about... OPEN? Red Alert!
Five Aces's passionate work instantly re-ignited my CnC and Red Alert passion, I downloaded OpenRA and have now been playing / testing
it fiercely (in skirmish mode only) for the last few months. What a joy, what a beauty she is and fully free and open-source as well :-P

From this joyful experience I first want to thank everyone in the OpenRA community for re-creating and maintaining the good old WestWoods Studio's spirit!.
But then I got so excited that I decided that I want to do more then just say "thank you".


GIVING BACK TO THIS AWESOME OPENRA COMMUNITY
I wanted to give back to this awesome OpenRA community, since you all rock! .
And that is exactly what I want to present here today on the birthday (31-August) of the original CnC.

My "Open Red Alert - Getting Started Guide" (and appendices),
which you can download it from here (from DropBox):
- https://tinyurl.com/openragsg - shortened link
or
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7udkbv4n0kyq ... 1_93mb.zip - direct long link

It contains: 2 Documents, PDF formatted, Size 93mb
A - "Getting Started Guide" - 210 pages - Taking you (back) on a "guided tour" through OpenRA (release 20190314)
B - "Appendices" -------------- 25 pages - Lots of OpenRA hierarchy trees, data, and infographics.

These 2 documents are aimed at OpenRA total newcommers, and/or existing CnC, RA, TS players in the field.
I sincerely hope my document will ChronoShift many (new and old-skool) players back into the OpenRA Multiverse.

Question:
I'm looking for feedback so, will you let me know want you think of my documents?
Thanks for all for your time, efforts and feedback.

Best Regards,

Ronald

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2019 12:48 pm
by FiveAces
Hey Ronald, welcome to the forums! I've already sent you a mail, but I want to reiterate here on how impressed I am with the staggering amount of work you must have put into this project. This is the most comprehensive OpenRA guide to date, it is well written and formatted. Would you be willing to publish it on the OpenRA github page as a gameplay guide? I'm pretty sure it would happily be accepted. Again, great work and definitely worth the 200-page read!

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:20 am
by Blackened
Wow that was a lot of work put into that guide. I skimmed through it a bit and the amount of detail provided is insane! It looks just like something you'd find when you bought the game way back in the day. Well done! I agree with FiveAces. This guide needs more exposer than you'll find on just these forums.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 2:11 pm
by Matt
You might want to contribute to https://github.com/OpenRA/book

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:33 pm
by Ronald
@Five_Aces @Blackened
Thank you for your feedback on my documents content.
I will follow your advice and I will seek contact with people in the OpenRA community, who can help me to create a greater exposure of this document.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:40 pm
by Ronald
UPDATE on this document's cover text:
Penev92 made me aware of the fact that its cover-text was exactly covering its contents properly, so I altered the covert text into this.
openra_gsg_guide_cover_v101.jpg
openra_gsg_guide_cover_v101.jpg (40.02 KiB) Viewed 10643 times
Thanks Penev92 for your constructive feedback.


NEW DOCUMENT DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2h8zdqgqk7udu ... 1_92mb.zip

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:54 pm
by lawANDorder
Could you add licence information so that people who might want to compile this into a website don't have to worry about copyright? IF you want to opt out of copyright, CC0 would be an option, to preserve copyright and attribution MIT could suit your needs.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2019 9:36 am
by Ronald
@lawANDorder - Check out your Private Messages for my reply on your suggestion

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:11 pm
by eskimo
Apologies, forgot to post here before, (when it got linked on the Academy).

This is really top work. The amount of time this must of taken... I hope it comes in handy for those new to ORA. It took me a while to pick up on certain hot keys and commands, so this would of been ideal for me when i first started.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:20 pm
by Strauss
Is it just me or does the dopbox link 404? Both the one in the OP and the new one.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:01 pm
by Ronald
Strauss wrote:
Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:20 pm
Is it just me or does the dopbox link 404? Both the one in the OP and the new one.
Thanks for your feedback and the reminder Straus.
lawANDorder wrote:
Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:54 pm
Could you add licence information so that people who might want to compile this into a website don't have to worry about copyright?
If you want to opt out of copyright, CC0 would be an option, to preserve copyright and attribution MIT could suit your needs.
I have just re-uploaded v1.02 of this document, complete with license information on the 2nd page

The new Dropbox download link is this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/phrtn3f14maut ... 2_95mb.zip

Enjoy!

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:02 pm
by Edi(son Coil)
I can only open the appendices.

I am on Windows 10 and tried with "Edge" and "Vivaldi" as the browsers and have enough space on the partion where the temp folder is.

The error message says: "Dropbox unterstützt .pdf-Dateien, aber hier ist etwas schiefgelaufen."

( translated to english: "Dropbox supports .pdf-files, but something went wrong here.")


Maybe someone knows a fix and here is a fix for the appendices:

On page 5 ( Structure Hiearchy - Soviets ) the picture implies the "Kennel" needs "Barracks" as a prerequisite, which is not true and the "Advanced Power Plant" needs the "Radar Dome".

The same applies to the allies page ( page 4 ) and the fake structures only need the Construction Yard.

Re: Giving back to the OpenRA community - OpenRA "Getting Started Guide"

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2019 7:00 pm
by netnazgul
You should just download and open that pdf locally cause of its size.