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Nope, the trees that turn into blossom trees are tooltipped as such even before transforming, so it's likely scripted.
I didn't know TS blossom trees were destructible. Never had any reason to attack them, the enemy AI also doesn't have any reason to do so, and Ion Storm lightning bolts probably have an astronomical chance of hitting them.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.![]()
Marq FJA
It's scripted, when the mission starts it looks like a normal tree but already mechanically acts like a blossom tree in the sense that the tiberium around it regenerates.
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Major Tom
You're right I think I'm thinking of the late game Mobius level. Really GDI had quite a few missions where the largest challenge was that GDI was nerfed by something in the mission. Rather like the Chinese levels from Generals.
At least a lot of the Nod baseless missions made sense because you were Nod.
I also found it interesting in that there was a Snow map template in Dawn that was only used for a small handful of GDI mission that had tiles that looked almost like the normal temperate map just with some snow decals.
Edited by Roguemind on Dec 17th 2024 at 7:35:13 AM
A preview of some of the upcoming changes for the RA 2 conversion mod Mental Omega. Best has gotta be the extended tooltips for the sidebar; that's a critical improvement since the units in this mod behave noticeable differently from the base game, and Foehn's faction in general is so dramatically separate from how the others behave that without the wiki it'd be impossible to figure some things out.
Which is funny because the snow template commonly used in Red Alert was available in Tiberian Dawn, just mostly unused.
The snow levels in Tiberian Dawn had a lot of things that looked better than the snow levels of Red Alert. Granted, Red Alert's snow template was mostly a Palette Swap of the Temperate tileset with a couple substitutions but there were details in Tiberian Dawn’s tileset that would’ve made for a great in between detail for maps.
Technically the details are separate and mutually exclusive for the most part. But all the stuff you can place on the Temperate tileset in Red Alert simply uses alternate art (usually covered in snow) for the Snow tileset.
Like the civilian buildings. Or the various tree doodads.
Contrast that with Tiberian Dawn where the Snow, Temperate and Alpine (like on the aforementioned Salzburg mission) use this effect but the Africa tileset is almost completely unique and thus mutually exclusive.
Wait, there's Snow and Alpine as separate tilesets? What are the differences between them?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Alpine uses many of the colors and templates as regular Temperate. Giving it a “frosty” look.
Also the Alpine tileset uses a darker green for its baseline grass tile. Almost brown looking.
Snow tileset in TD (largely unused in the original/CNC 95) was all but identical to what was found in Red Alert.
Which now makes me mildly miffed that there wasn’t a subset of the Africa tileset in TD that gave off a jungle/rainforest vibe instead of the desert/savanna theme.
Edited by MajorTom on Jan 3rd 2025 at 8:17:20 AM
https://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/ThreatPosed
The Threat System. It’s a value used to determine targeting usually for AI targeting (human controlled units behave much simpler).
It’s got to be zero for building add ons like Turbines in TS because such objects don’t technically “exist”. Otherwise the AI will seek out and try to attack something it can’t. Also likelihood of crashiness. The Tiberian Sun engine is put together with 550 cord and Elmer’s glue after all. So many hacks and workarounds and crossed up weird functionality.
Some things of note. If an AI Task Force in the ai.ini file is set to Attack Anything (0,1 I believe, D Coder’s AI Editor tells you what they are), it’ll prioritize anything with the Aircraft locomotor such as Orcas or Banshees in TS or Harriers in Red Alert 2 over any other target if the task force has an anti air unit in it. The ThreatPosed value does influence this but you’ll have to have a value of 1 or greater on aerial units like that otherwise neither human nor AI controlled units and structures will passively engage it.
Also such a value must be greater than zero if a unit has no weapons (for example Chrono Miners) otherwise it won’t be targeted passively.
Overall though it’s not worth trying to fiddle with in extreme detail. For the most part, it’s mostly a trigger on whether or not units or armed structures engage various things or not.
That said it’s possible to configure buildings in Red Alert 2 using a combination of a dummy weapon (never used of course) and a ThreatPosed value greater than zero to make enemy bases be automatically engaged until everything dies just like Starcraft.
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I don't suppose you have images showing the Alpine tileset and TD's snow tileset?
Here’s the map image for GDI 8, the Salzburg mission.
This is the Alpine aka winter tileset.
I know the snow tileset exists because the Remastered version has a (barely functional) Skirmish mode that uses the old multiplayer maps plus some new ones. Some of those maps are the Snow tileset.
Edited by MajorTom on Jan 9th 2025 at 4:17:00 AM
Ah, so Alpine is just Temperate with some snowy "trims" on the cliffs, trees and roads. That's... underwhelming.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Anyone encountered this bug in TS and RA2? On some maps there are patches of terrain, units refuse to traverse, despite being passable. It happens mostly where there are lot of sloped tiles. Sometimes it's possible to navigate a unit by short distances but most of the time the units either get stuck or when given a move command across the problematic patch, they don't move at all (the target line disappears slightly faster than usually).
Why does this happen? Something wrong with the worldbuilding?
Terrain bug. It happens.
I think it has to do with leftover code for terrain deformation from TS in RA 2’s case. Because sometimes perfectly level terrain tiles on really rare instances become unbuildable and sometimes impassable.
Also it might be a locomotor bug because I’ve seen that happen to naval units.
I don’t know the exact cause or how to fix it (excepting Chronosphere use) but I know it exists.
I've posted about the C&C: Combined Arms
standalone mod before here on TV Tropes, but for those who want to see a Youtuber review it and show off some gameplay, here you go. It's even got several campaigns now!
sohibil
Threat Rating is partly Dummied out Content, there was supposed to be a GDI upgrade for the Upgrade Center called the Threat Rating node which would set base defenses to operate off of the Threat rating concept, so instead of targeting the first target that entered their range the defenses would target the target of a greater danger. I think ultimately they just made it part of the AI in general making the upgrade redundant, it might have also been tied to the abandoned Lighting concept where the base defenses would prioritize a target under a spotlight. There was so much they wanted to do with Sun that the time available and the technology to make it work, just wasn't there.
There's a reason why some missions have dynamic looking lighting and shadows, glowing buildings, and spotlights that lock on to enemies when they enter their field, because Westood originally had mission lighting as an idea of something that would affect accuracy. It's actually kind of fascinating how there's a whole series of invisible lightpost structures that are coded into the game to provide lighting and it's pretty much every color at the time, even a negative light post that can make an area darker, it's why on some night maps, you can't build in certain lit up areas, there's an invisible light post there.
I've also gotten that bug before, though it's strange predicting when it'll happen.
Major Tom
I'm pretty sure the Snow Tileset for Dawn only exists in the remastered because they stuck both it and Red Alert on the same Engine, playing around with editors in the original CNC only shows tilesets for Temperate, Snow (Alpine), and Desert. Though perhaps it was so bad in the original that the editors just didn't bother to code it in as an option.
Marq FJA
Pretty much, which is why it was only used in a couple missions and Red Alert used a proper snow tile instead. It's possible Red Alert's snow tile was their original plan but as Dawn was the first game and they barely knew what they were doing, they gave up half way.
Edited by Roguemind on Jan 26th 2025 at 12:38:11 PM
Best not to think too hard about it, cause the guy who wrote the voiceover lines probably didn't.
Best I can figure they were picturing the Technical crews as being part of some Taliban-style rebel group where tribal allegiances play a big role, but it falls apart when you realize not all of the GLA factions operate a similar command structure. Case in point, Dr Thrax's faction, or any of the guys operating any of the more advanced equipment such as the SCUD Launcher crews.
I figured it was sort of an espirit de’corps of sorts among Technical crews. They themselves were the backbone of the GLA and thus hyping themselves up as a position of strength.
Much like how Scorpions hype themselves up as “no lack of courage”.
Even though both units are woefully inadequate at fighting symmetrical foes, especially at advanced levels.
And speaking of Technicals. I did some looking and calculating over the original statistics of the unit and I’ve come to the conclusion that point for point, salvaging is a Power-Up Letdown generally speaking.
The original machine gun does 8 points of damage, the first salvage upgrade brings that up to 16 at a cost of like a fifth the fire rate (1000 milliseconds vs 200 on the machine gun). Yes it’s now actually dealing full damage to enemy vehicles and structures but the machine gun still deals greater damage per second. The only real advantage salvaging gives at this level is splash damage against infantry mainly.
The missile upgrade is even worse off. It deals like 40 damage at the same rate as unmodded tanks (2000 milliseconds) and less splash damage than the cannon upgrade.
It’s a complete letdown.
Naturally I’m fixing that in my mod.
