Let's get this started: regular media updates, here we go! With these I will attempt to regularly bring you news from the development of Mental Omega. We're still pushing the game to its limits and right now, we're working on Act Two of the Mental Omega campaign along with a secret side project I can't disclose to you yet.
As for the status of Beta Revision 2: regular patches for Beta Revision 1 were planned but after the initial release I've realized we've made several mistakes which I hope to fix in the next release. This means that Beta Revision 2 will be another full mod release and not an update. I was hoping for CnCNet5 implementation but the status of that is uncertain for now, so as the months have flown by we've been working on new content to compensate for the lack of regular updates. What I now plan to do is a full release next year with all the new content we've created and new important features & bugfixes which I'll be presenting to you in these media updates, starting now. These weekly or bi-weekly updates will reveal new missions, new maps, new units and even new music.
Speaking of secret side projects, have you seen the latest teaser yet?
It might include some secret side project stuff.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified about upcoming video intel updates as soon as they're up. There'll be a whole new series of shorter and longer development and promo videos.
First of all, you know there's Act One, you know there'll be Act Two. You know how many missions Act One has, but do you know how many missions we aim to have in the complete Third Great War story? The answer is..
When it comes to development, we're 1/3 done with the missions for Act Two with 1 dedicated mapper and 4 mission scripters. However, the more the merrier! Here are some previews from one of the new missions for Act Two, this one's entirely made by Sandman. Can you guess what it's about?
Operation: Power Hunger
With the addition of Toveena to the Mentalmeisters team, the amount of new skirmish maps in the mod is rising rapidly and as the counter grows, I am continuously surprised with new ideas for the battlefield layouts. The skirmish map naming format will also be changed for the next version. The amount of players on a map will be written at the beginning of the file name rather than the end. Because reasons.
Map Preview #1: (2) Tournament City (snow; standard map pool) by Speeder
Map Preview #2: (4) Ebony and Ivory (temperate; standard map pool) by Toveena
Map Preview #3: (4) Temple Toveena (desert; standard map pool) by Toveena
My "(2) Tournament City" is a good start for when it comes to the implementation of Snow Terrain Expansion, which I was uncertain of including before. The need for a snowy city comes mostly from the planned mission in Moscow. The original Red Alert 2 version of that mission didn't exactly look like a huge metropolis covered in snow. Our Moscow will be completely different and definitely in trouble when Yuri reemerges from the shadows.
"(4) Ebony and Ivory" is another skirmish map with a Japanese theme and one of the few new maps to have the rain effects on it. In comparison, "(4) Temple Toveena" is the first map to include capturable neutral vehicles on the battlefield. More skirmish maps will feature them in the next version.
It is true that ever since the release of Beta Revision 1 of Mental Omega 3.0, the Ares Expansion DLL version has leaped from 0.4 to 0.8. I've made use of its many features and its bugfixes, which is something I'll be presenting to you in these media updates as well. There are lots of awesome things you, as a modder, can do with Ares when creating your own mod for Yuri's Revenge so maybe some of this will inspire you.
First comes the way AlexB restored and improved the EM Pulse Cannon superweapon from Tiberian Sun in Ares 0.8. One of the new features I was able to do with it is Drakuv Healthpacks support power. As long as you have a Prison Facility and Drakuv on the field, when you activate this support power, infantry around all of your and your allies' Drakuvs on the battlefield will be quickly healed. This replaces Drakuv's ability to heal T1 infantry. How does it work? A Type=EMPulse super weapon with EMPulse.TargetSelf=yes detonates a map-wide warhead which applies an animation with healing via AttachEffect to all of your/your allies' Drakuvs on the battlefield.
Thanks to Ares, it is now possible to give stealth sensors to buildings, which is why the Soviets now gain these new Sensor Towers. Instead of covering their bases or units like the Allies do with a Gap Generator or the Epsilon does with Chimera Cores, the Soviets can build these counter-intelligence defenses, which will also reveal enemy spies and any incoming enemies to you. Additionally, the Sensor Towers have a sight radius of 14, which is larger than vanilla game without Ares allowed you to have without issues.
The jump in Ares versions allows us to do much more with the game, I'll be covering that later.
Random things from the Mental Omega workshop, no context, only for speculations or maybe just eye candy. The above is all work by Nooze, done in Blender. You can probably guess the scenarios in which some of these objects will be implemented, but I'll leave showing you the maps and in-game screenshots with the new objects for later.
After our message from July in which I had written that we're in need of additional mission scripters to speed up the development of Act Two, our team has grown larger with the addition of Chinese mission designer Sandman who has created the "Power Hunger" mission depicted above and is working on two additional missions. Mental Omega is a project by fans for fans.
We don't hire professional artists and level designers, but recruit people who'd like to help develop one of the last active modifications for Red Alert 2 today in their free time, to keep the game alive by creating something new for the fans to play.
Apart from Act Two, we're working on another big part of the mod which I hope to unveil sometime soon, depending on how fast development goes. Right now we mostly require new voxels and 3D models so if you're interested in contributing to this new secret project we're working on, write to mental.omega.apyr@gmail.com. Even small contributions in the form of single voxels, infantry models or building models are welcome. If you are a capable Red Alert 2 mission scripter, write to us as well.
Edited by Speeder, 03 November 2014 - 09:16 PM.
I've meant some technological mistakes.
