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C&C: Renegade --> Dying since 2003™, resurrected in 2024!
Anyone remember me? I worked on Renegade and SS at Westwood...
Hi! I was the online lead for Renegade, and prior to that Sole Survivor. Those were great times. Working with the beta community was the most enjoyment I had in my mainstream gamedev career. Let me cut to the chase. I have created an indie game called "Army of Earth" and I have just announced Open Beta for it. It is crucial that I develop a Beta testing community. If you are interested to be involved, please contact me! Please note that it is an INDIE game; no manpower to create beautiful graphics. My focus is on online gameplay and I need your help to develop it... I wasn't sure whether it would be acceptable to post here or not. If this is the wrong place or is inappropriate, I apologize, please delete this post... Of course I would not want anyone to quit the Renegade community. Take care! Tom Spencer-Smith a.k.a. LordMot
Re: Anyone remember me? I worked on Renegade and SS at Westwood...
How can anyone remember you when this is your first post? I googled the name and Tom Spencer-Smith did work for WW on Renegade however I find it hard to believe he did from Sinapore. Also, assuming your are the real deal. You didn't provide a link.
I suspect you are talking about this?
Yep my site is armyofearth.com. I just rejoined the forum today. LordMot was my dev nickname at Westwood. If there are any members who were in the Renegade beta test (or SS) they might remember me. I lived in Vegas during Westwood days. But I'm not a US citizen and now find myself in Singapore. Actually I was originally hired into Westwood out of Singapore too. Anyway the offer is out there, I would be honored to have any of you help me with Army of Earth... Cheers, Tom
It sounds like you're going in a sort of PlanetSide-like direction with this?
Sounds interesting, and for a 7MB download there's not much I could lose out on by trying it. Hooray for free shit!
I never played PlanetSide but it might be similar. The combat arena in Army of Earth is relatively small so you will interact with hundreds of players. It is supposed to be more strategic than action. Just played with a couple of you including TryLee... got some gameplay tasks to work on already! Tom
If you did really did work on Renegade, do you know what happened to the old assets? Pre-release models, etc.
Oh No...Threatfire does not like this game, it says the game tried to change what my firewall will allow in. I moved it to quarentine, anyone else having problems?
Sorry Westwood shut its Vegas doors in 2003. Chances of tracking down anything related to Renegade are slim; only possibility is if you have an EA contact who is prepared and able to help. Renohol: I would recommend you use respected, trusted, reliable protection software... Norton, etc. Turn on windows firewall too. I usually go read the comments for a product on download.com to see what people's experience is. You'll probably find a lot of negative discussion about the one you mention... Cheers, Tom
LordMot wrote on Mon, 07 April 2008 23:03 Sorry Westwood shut its Vegas doors in 2003. Chances of tracking down anything related to Renegade are slim; only possibility is if you have an EA contact who is prepared and able to help. Renohol: I would recommend you use respected, trusted, reliable protection software... Norton, etc. Turn on windows firewall too. I usually go read the comments for a product on download.com to see what people's experience is. You'll probably find a lot of negative discussion about the one you mention... Cheers, Tom Yeah, I kind of expected that was the case. At least we still have quite a lot of pre-release models already.
couldn't uninstall...still attached to C:windows/prefetch at least
Personally, I find that a firewall on the PC is not needed if you have a router with a firewall and NAT built into it plus a good anti-virus and anti-spyware to catch nasties. The router stops attacks from the outside and the anti-virus and anti-spyware ensures nothing nasty gets installed that will try to send unwanted network traffic out.
LordMot wrote on Mon, 07 April 2008 22:56 I never played PlanetSide but it might be similar. The combat arena in Army of Earth is relatively small so you will interact with hundreds of players. It is supposed to be more strategic than action. Just played with a couple of you including TryLee... got some gameplay tasks to work on already! Tom Then you should play it asap. You can download it for free and activate a 14-day trial. It's an FPS that almost requires the strategy of an RTS, or at least it used to when there was a larger player base. Looking at the concept for the game may give you inspiration though. Canadacdn, Aircraftkiller released all of the old assest he got from WS a couple years ago.
I might try this out later .
Cool, I try it out.
I've now made my first Beta bugfix - in response to something abombm1 found and posted to my forums (www.armyofearth.com/forums) I also want to hear everybody's thoughts in particular about the top few most glaringly obvious things that urgently need improving, in your opinion. BTW ingame and in forums I call myself CodeMonkey. Cheers, Tom
Just played it, it's great fun, I love that you can build stuff anywhere and keep making the base bigger and bigger. Need to get more people playing this.
LordMot wrote on Tue, 08 April 2008 05:25 Yep my site is armyofearth.com. I just rejoined the forum today. LordMot was my dev nickname at Westwood. If there are any members who were in the Renegade beta test (or SS) they might remember me. I lived in Vegas during Westwood days. But I'm not a US citizen and now find myself in Singapore. Actually I was originally hired into Westwood out of Singapore too. Anyway the offer is out there, I would be honored to have any of you help me with Army of Earth... Cheers, Tom That means we're in the same country... cool! Maybe you could tell me which part of SG you live in... I'll try it this weekend ASAP.
Just tried it, its quite good, simplistic controls make it very easy to jump straight into, everytime I built something outa base bots killed it straight away
Thanks IronWarrior The bots are not very stimulating opponents, they are really just filler at the moment. But I suspect the game could be very fun with scores (or hundreds) of human players. With balancing and other improvements. Nopol: yep. Living in Toa Payoh, and looking for an HDB to buy in this overheated market Where are you? CodeMonkey
LordMot wrote on Mon, 07 April 2008 23:03 Sorry Westwood shut its Vegas doors in 2003. Chances of tracking down anything related to Renegade are slim; only possibility is if you have an EA contact who is prepared and able to help. Renohol: I would recommend you use respected, trusted, reliable protection software... Norton, etc. Turn on windows firewall too. I usually go read the comments for a product on download.com to see what people's experience is. You'll probably find a lot of negative discussion about the one you mention... Cheers, Tom Norton.... reliable?
It's reliable in the sense that only formatting your computer removes it...
AVG is always a good bet for anti-viruses, can't go wrong with macaffe really either, Norton is just useless bloatware.
Nune I had that problem too, they kept killing my precious buildings. BAD BOTS!
Kinda cool if this was made into a Renegade imitation.
LordMot wrote on Tue, 08 April 2008 21:23 Thanks IronWarrior The bots are not very stimulating opponents, they are really just filler at the moment. But I suspect the game could be very fun with scores (or hundreds) of human players. With balancing and other improvements. Nopol: yep. Living in Toa Payoh, and looking for an HDB to buy in this overheated market Where are you? CodeMonkey I live in Bukit Merah, somewhere down in the south. Good luck in finding a flat!
LordMot wrote on Mon, 07 April 2008 15:15 Hi! I was the online lead for Renegade, and prior to that Sole Survivor. Those were great times. Working with the beta community was the most enjoyment I had in my mainstream gamedev career. Let me cut to the chase. I have created an indie game called "Army of Earth" and I have just announced Open Beta for it. It is crucial that I develop a Beta testing community. If you are interested to be involved, please contact me! Please note that it is an INDIE game; no manpower to create beautiful graphics. My focus is on online gameplay and I need your help to develop it... I wasn't sure whether it would be acceptable to post here or not. If this is the wrong place or is inappropriate, I apologize, please delete this post... Of course I would not want anyone to quit the Renegade community. Take care! Tom Spencer-Smith a.k.a. LordMot so, you show us few unreleased E3 screenshots them?
I played it, it was amusing. I am curious how you would re-team players when there team loses. I mean, if there are six teams and you know that you will be re-teamed anyway if you lose, you might tactically lose at some point to ensure you're on a particular team. Logically you would re-team someone who has lost to the lowest ranked active team. But an early suicidal base might mean that the lowest ranked team suddenly becomes allot stronger. Perhaps re-distributing the players from the team that lost one by one to other teams based on the teams current rank (taking into account there team rank each time each player has been redistributed) might be helpful. But this could then lead to someone who has played awfully getting an eventual win, which is demoraling for players that are better. Unless maybe the end-game rank takes into consideration how many times a player had to be re-teamed... What are your intentions on this? I am genuinly interested in this potential dilema.
Hey, LordMot, I vaguely remember your nickname. It's been like 6 years, so... I used this nickname and I was a part of the beta testing from the first day we got our disks in the mail. I'll try and get a chance to try out your game as well. I think in the Renegade community you will find a lot of people who value playability over eye candy.
reborn wrote on Wed, 09 April 2008 02:41 I played it, it was amusing. I am curious how you would re-team players when there team loses. I mean, if there are six teams and you know that you will be re-teamed anyway if you lose, you might tactically lose at some point to ensure you're on a particular team. Logically you would re-team someone who has lost to the lowest ranked active team. But an early suicidal base might mean that the lowest ranked team suddenly becomes allot stronger. Perhaps re-distributing the players from the team that lost one by one to other teams based on the teams current rank (taking into account there team rank each time each player has been redistributed) might be helpful. But this could then lead to someone who has played awfully getting an eventual win, which is demoraling for players that are better. Unless maybe the end-game rank takes into consideration how many times a player had to be re-teamed... What are your intentions on this? I am genuinly interested in this potential dilema. Hi reborn. At present, teaming and reteaming is random although you are assigned to the smallest team. Some other teaming mechanisms that may be incorporated in future are: * Balancing teams for skill (based on rank points) * Manual teaming - later on a server option will allow team selection so that you can play with your friends. * Clan support - clan vs clan. I'm excited to have 6 clans battling it out. I may even expand the number of teams above 6. The current implementation with the reteaming has a couple nice features: * Players are active throughout the entire game, because they are reteamed. * Players are motivated to play for whatever team they are on, because points are only earned when another team is defeated. Hence even if you are down on points after your team is defeated, you still have a chance to get into positive points territory on the next team. I.e. you are always motivated to fight hard for your current team. But anyway, team dynamics will be iterated on to ensure fairness and enjoyability. I'm aware that this is a very important factor. Cheers, LordMot a.k.a. CodeMonkey
Darn, duplicate post. How to delete? Crimson: at last I am vaguely remembered! I hope you can spread the word, would love to work again with some of the original Beta testers LM
LordMot wrote on Wed, 09 April 2008 08:23 Darn, duplicate post. How to delete? Crimson: at last I am vaguely remembered! I hope you can spread the word, would love to work again with some of the original Beta testers LM You can't delete a post, once it's posted it's here forever! (Unless you edit it)
I still think you should look at PlanetSide and toy with the idea of making this a persistant world.
Thanks for the tip - I will look at PlanetSide. Army of Earth will have player-hosted servers, to promote scalability and to allow users to customize the server settings to their own needs. However we will certainly look for opportunities to incorporate more persistent and meta-game content.
Some of the names on the Army of Earth leaderboard sure look familiar from the good old Renegade beta testing days Am I imagining it? [url=http://www.armyofearth.com/leaderboard.php] LordMot
The game's concept is nice, but playing with humans will probably be much more fun than against bots. One small thing: no azerty keyboard support?
this game is fun cant wait for the multiplayer great work
Goztow wrote on Sat, 12 April 2008 08:51 The game's concept is nice, but playing with humans will probably be much more fun than against bots. One small thing: no azerty keyboard support? Yep, need humans. Although I think I will also need to improve the bots for the fun factor. azerty kb? What is that?
Bolleno wrote on Sat, 12 April 2008 09:55 this game is fun cant wait for the multiplayer great work Thanks. Confusing, but thanks!
LordMot wrote on Sat, 12 April 2008 10:55 Goztow wrote on Sat, 12 April 2008 08:51 The game's concept is nice, but playing with humans will probably be much more fun than against bots. One small thing: no azerty keyboard support? Yep, need humans. Although I think I will also need to improve the bots for the fun factor. azerty kb? What is that? I believe it's a keyboard with a different placement of keys, like the QWERTY keyboard for example. QWERTY for life, motherfuckers!
Thats a weird layout...It would kill my touch-typing. Strange how the right-hand side home row and row above it are the same as QWERTY
It's all a matter of habit.
Only Belgians could have such a warped keyboard layout Anyway, on topic, this game sounds like it could be a lot of fun, if I ever find any free time I will be sure to give it a go. Good luck with the game, and I agree that gameplay is always more important than graphics, although it's nice to have both. One thing that annoys me about recent EA games (BF2, CnC3 etc) is that while they might look nice and have fancy graphics the gameplay itself is appalling.
I have just announced some coordinated daily play times, to consolidate human players: 7PM PDT and 7PM DST (6PM GMT) in GAME 2 server The first such session will be for Europetonight (although globally all can play). Guess what? You're all invited! Bigger play sessions (more humans) provide the best chance to increase rank. danpaul - yep, there will be a lot of iteration to make this game better and better. Overall feedback so far has been positive and I haven't even done 1 live update yet...
Renegade is living proof that graphics < gameplay.
How could I forget the great LordMot? I beta tested SS. I was a sysadmin for SS. I beta tested Renegade and I ran the most popular C&C Renegade fansite - cncrenegade.com. I flew out to Las Vegas and meet the real LordMot. Sadly, that meeting was far too short. LordMot is the real deal. He knows way too much about the real LM to not be him. I stumbled upon this thread while cleaning up my ICQ list and googling random people from my SS & Renegade days. I'll be sure to check out this game when I get home from work. I'll also pass this info along to the few SSers that still show up on ICQ
KingZeus! I was hoping to dig up some of the SS folks! Would love to have you and your people involved in Army of Earth, if you have any time and inclination. The game is in the very early Beta stages but I expect to put out a new version in the next 24 hours. 0.517 will be a good improvement on the first Beta release - with great help from the existing testers, a bunch of whom came from this forum. I'll follow up when 0.517 is out. Cheers! LM / CodeMonkey / Tom
0.517 is out - with a bunch of changes suggested by Renegaders Army of Earth is not a triple-A title with complex building and player models - but if you think you might enjoy a large-scale (hundreds of players) strategic team-action game with a small download, I encourage you to give it a go! There aren't hundreds of players yet of course; bots act as stand-ins for now. Also, if you are interested in contributing your ideas to a product and seeing them realized... http://www.armyofearth.com Cheers all, LordMot
Yeah, it's a pretty good game. But a nightmare to play with a mousepad on a laptop I like that everyone looks like a Dalek! EXTERMINATE! D:
Stitch wrote on Fri, 18 April 2008 19:21 Yeah, it's a pretty good game. But a nightmare to play with a mousepad on a laptop I like that everyone looks like a Dalek! EXTERMINATE! D: Haha - yes it is designed for laptop rendering capabilities, but not for mousepad!
Top 10 list for April has now been computed. I wonder how many of these are Renegaders? 1 MISKAV 2274.06 2 YANG 1968.36 3 JAMIE 1826.52 4 WYRFRAME 1762.26 5 ZAPWOW 1718.07 6 AMPHAREL 1676.69 7 CHUCKNORRIS 1667.49 8 MERITON 1661.28 9 RHASIIR 1647.78 10 NEWGUEST 1641.77 www.armyofearth.com
as of right now i can recognize one... thats chucknorris
i recognize a few... one is me...
i dun rly get the game tbh
Hey LordMot, this is PhazerX from Sole Survivor. I'm very interested in testing your new game, and would love to talk to you about some other projects if you have the time!
Sure - I emailed you back... Renegade players - please try Army of Earth asap - because it has the FilePlanet Indie Spotlight ATM and there are some players in the servers; you'll get a taste of the real game if you try now. Sorry I should have mentioned this before... http://www.armyofearth.com
Hey Renegaders! I've added a particle system to my game now, if any of you wants to take a look: Website: http://www.armyofearth.com/ Download (7 MB): http://www.armyofearth.com/downloads/armyofearthsetup.exe Cheers, LM
Cool new stuff
Add Buildings, Tanks, Soldiers and AOW Mode.
Hey all, I've just released a new version of Army of Earth (0.521) which includes a couple things the Beta community wanted - controllable Bots, better AI, and a co-op mode. I also reworked the 3D audio, much better now. Bunch of other improvements too. Come check it out if you like... http://www.armyofearth.com LordMot
Your game is addicting.
I'll be sure to download this when I get a change I've got so much gaming to catch up on
Maybe we could ask him about points fix? Though I doubt he'll remember this .
Goztow wrote on Wed, 09 July 2008 15:40 Maybe we could ask him about points fix? Though I doubt he'll remember this . That's a good idea!
I downloaded it and played for a bit, but to be honest I found it a bit boring. The bots need to be more aggressive in taking humans down, and I may have missed it, but there needs to be an upgrade system for heavier weapons. I found it quite frustrating to go three miles, get to the base and ping away without any help and have the lasers shoot all the projectiles down. Also: If I hold the mouse left click down I want it to rapid fire. I don't want to keep clicking. I'm sure there are probably all these things in-game but if you're going to design a game for easy pick and play you need to make it easy to understand and learn quickly. I don't want to reassign hotkeys, read readmes or do training. I want to jump in and play well enough to make a difference and if I can get addicted I will learn the finer feautures later. There are probably things I never even learned about Ren, but it doesn't matter because it's an intuitive interface. On the positive side I like the terrain mapping as well as the lighting and coloring and the music was fairly good though limited. All in all: It's a nice freeware distraction for 1/2 hour but I uninstalled it the same day.
Actually, its freeware till it becomes popular and huge.
Thanks Kirby for the feedback. A few notes: - Bot toughness varies from server to server as well as the number of bots. - unit upgrades and new weapons are coming but not yet implemented. - I agree that there is a problem for new users: difficult to get past lasers and cannons to destroy buildings. I will have to figure out some way that new users can get into the beginner server and accomplish something without being trained by a helpful player. - The music is live streamed and configurable. I haven't provided any alternative choices yet. Did you play 0.520 or 0.521? 0.521 has swarming bot AI and a co-op mode. Cheers, LM
Goztow wrote on Wed, 09 July 2008 03:40 Maybe we could ask him about points fix? Though I doubt he'll remember this . I forget what it was in particular? Some changes have been made, for example Bots are no longer included in the leaderboard. LM
LordMot wrote on Thu, 10 July 2008 05:21 Goztow wrote on Wed, 09 July 2008 03:40 Maybe we could ask him about points fix? Though I doubt he'll remember this . I forget what it was in particular? Some changes have been made, for example Bots are no longer included in the leaderboard. LM I can't be sure, but I think they are asking about a renegade coding issue regarding a mistake in calculating points.
The points fix is explained here: http://www.renegadeforums.com/index.php?t=msg&goto=281299&rid=21143#msg_ num_1 I doubt you ever heard about this bug, but some people seem to think it was done intentionally, so perhaps you can clear that up.
Thanks for that Surth. The points = damage thing Spoony talked about is not correct though. It should be: damage = rawdamage * warheadmultiplier; for infantry/buildings/nongreen health vehicles: points == damage * pointsmultiplier. for green health vehicles: points != damage * pointsmultiplier The formula for calculating the points is correct, although it is done before the points get calculated (it will do * pointsmultiplier later on) so the exact formulas would be: green health vehicles: damage = rawdamage * damagemultiplier * warheadmultiplier points = rawdamage * damagemultiplier * warheadmultiplier / warheadmultiplier * pointsmultiplier other objects: points = rawdamage * damagemultiplier * warheadmultiplier points = rawdamage * damagemultiplier * warheadmultiplier * pointsmultiplier This explains the high points for ramjets and such perfectly well. The rawdamage for ramjets is very high (200 opposed to ie. 5 for an auto rifle) and the warhead multiplier for ramjet vs vehicle is very low. Because of that the ramjet does not apply a lot of damage. However since the damage multiplier is missing from the green health vehicles points calculation, the points will be significantly higher than the actual damage. I based these formulas on reverse engineering the DefenseObjectClass::Do_Damage function in renegade. Thanks for the info btw, and sorry for getting offtopic here...
When I say points = damage, the '=' is basically an abbreviation for 'is directly proportionate to'
Hey all, Just an update on Army of Earth- http://www.armyofearth.com/ I've just released a new version (0.522) including some of the features some of the Renegaders were asking for - manual teaming, private messaging, and a bunch of other stuff. You're all most welcome to come give it a try. Ask for help ingame and hopefully somebody will train you up. The forums can help too. Cheers, LM
Very nice update.