WW3MOD - RA total conversion for realism

freadyfish · Post by **freadyfish** » Fri Jan 26, 2024 8:05 pm

Okay, so I've been working on a complete re-write of Red Alert including engine. It totally works now, but it isn't "done".

I only have so much time and I am writing this post to see if someone with a similar vision want to help out.

The vision: Added realism and more dynamic gameplay while keeping the Red Alert feeling. Hell March playing and everything.

For example:

- Units shoot further. Like much further. They no longer have to walk up to the enemy's face. Range of an Abrams tank is currently 25 cells. And it works great, in case you're sceptical! Especially since I removed the zoom limit (because why not??) But I don't dare telling you how far an Iskander mobile ballistic missile launcher can fire or you will think I'm crazy. Also, most shots actually misses at long ranges but they can still suppress the enemy - reducing their combat effectiveness. In tactical engagements this allows you to not always focus all your brainpower on making sure all your units are firing as much as possible, but sometimes you can have one group suppressing the enemy while the other closes the distance and makes an effective kill before the enemy have time to react properly. There is room for lots of cool and big brain gameplay here!

Btw: Did you know just how many rockets a Hind helicopter gunship can carry and fire in short order? Besides being a transport and having a big gun, ofc.

: ww3mod-hind.jpg (362.04 KiB) Viewed 1980 times

- No more base building, sorry but it's all about the frontline. You are a battlefield commander. You are not the supreme commander who has to worry about power plants, you are in charge of a single Company/Battalion (depending on your computer strength lol). Your units spawn at your map edge and your objective is to drive the enemy back and capture the sector, cutting of their possibility to reinforce. If you just love base building and can't live without it we might be able to arrange a checkbox for that.

- All units have limited ammo. Supply trucks are no longer just money donating devices. This introduces a new gameplay where cutting off a group of enemies from their supply lines might be the easiest way to defeat them. Btw, all weapons have realistic loadouts. So a Grad MLRS now fires 40 rockets, then has to go rearm. Either to the map edge where it is technically "sold", meaning it was rotated out of the battle safely. Or you can build supply centers (MCV) that deploys and can rearm vehicles and infantry. I have some improvement ideas here.

: ww3mod-openfire (1).jpg (306.04 KiB) Viewed 1980 times

- Units can hide. No, I dont mean cloaking on/off. I mean that every single unit has a visibility from 1-10, that increases if you move/fire/etc, decreases if you lay down and dig in for a time. Sight/Fog is also progressive so it fades slowly making it harder to see infantry than tanks for example. Also currently working on a "shadow caster" which IMHO might just be the coolest thing for C&C since the Tesla coil. Shadow casting means that units' sight is blocked by objects. So you can hide a platoon of soldiers behind a forest for example to set up an ambush for when the enemy comes around the corner. Oh and btw, infantry can walk through(hide in forests now - because it kinda makes sense right?

I could write a hundred of these to cover everything that is changed but I'll stop there.

Start a conversation! Tell me what you think, tell me your ideas, and tell me if you start feeling like you might be interested in helping out. Everyone is welcome to "Do your part!", be you Ukrainian, Russian, American, European, Chinese, or even Swedish (god forbid). Here we fight each other in-game, not outside of it.

And btw, yes, the "story" I have in mind for the mod is of course that the Russo-Ukrainian war escalates. Sorry if that offends anyone

Furthermore, if there is ever any campaign I think it should end in nuclear apocalypse no matter if you win or lose, as some kind of poetic war=bad thing. Also a good excuse to show animations of nukes because who doesn't love those. Then the next game, WW4, is based on the dystopian vibes of Tiberian Sun, but instead of toxic Tiberium there are nuclear blast zones contaminated with radiation. But okay, stop me, one thing at a time.

I intend to create a ModDB page sometime soon just a bit busy modding. If anyone is awesome at doing graphical work that would be so helpful because it takes too much time for me and could really lift the whole thing visually. Also currently looking for someone good with the process of saving data to the map.bin file, I need to store some shadow caster data there (>1MB). Let me know if that might be your thing because I am not too familiar with binary streams.