Command & Conquer or Red Alert scenario/graphics pack for Civ2?

[Blake00]

Last few weeks have been busy.. but here and there I've found the time to continue work and am now pleased to say all the diagonal 1x3 combo buildings are finished! Here's a few of them!

(note: some of these buildings will have special un-damaged garrisoned versions that sit over the top of them as units)




The last of my 1 cell building conversions are done too.. these government buildings, a resort, big trees, a fountain, and water debris replace special resources. The water rocky & cement debris is a bit cr*p but I had no choice as any bigger and they overlap the seawall in places.




I have also recently finished my first super 3x3 (replacing the simple template you've seen in previous posts), this version is a bit taller, switches the flat roof for a pyramid style, and of course now has a mix of accompanying background buildings squeezed in around it.. I've also finished making the undamaged Garrisoned version too but its not implemented in the game yet (so I'll show it later). Am now working on the second super building of the four.




MetroPolis had some time to kill so he helped me out by sorting out those pesky seawall coastlines I'd been putting off for ages while sorting out the buildings. Looks pretty good hey!

(note: the water debris locations will be regenerated/re-randomized into better spots that don't mess with the bridge graphics)

[Blake00]

Time for some updates..

Red Alert 2 Siege of New York Civ2 Scenario

If you look at the diagonal 1x3 long buildings in the previous post you'll see I pretty much had 2 of the same design which seemed like a bit of a waste of limited space. I'd run out of free slots and wanted to put in a RA2 church and didn't think it would look good in a 1x1 at all so I switched out one of these similar buildings above and replaced it.

Original / New:


The building I took out I'd use as background elements in my 3x3 super buildings.. which brings me to the best part and what was the hardest part of this whole process! Getting all 4 super 3x3 buildings finished and not just 1 version but 2 versions (garrisoned and empty/damaged). Here are all my finished 3x3 super buildings! With these elements complete I have all the buildings I need and can possibly squeeze into the game so I'm now putting the finishing touches to my big city metropolis battleground map.

Un-garrisoned / Garrisoned:
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My Remaster Of Wonx's C&C Civ2 Scenario

Small update for this project too, as I thought I'd show people a full list of my changes to Wonx's units and all the new additional units I've added to his scenario. Obviously Wonx's original units were more Civ2 style with C&C repaints, whereas mine are taken directly from C&C games and mods to create a more authentic C&C feel (but still with some repaints to fit into Civ2's colour palette better). I plan to do something similar with the Red Alert 2 scenario units. As previously mentioned Wonx's scenario is a sort of hybrid C&C1 and C&C2 scenario as it set during the C&C1 Africa Campaign however it features some C&C2 units. I thought it would be fun to continue that theme since C&C2 is of course a isometric 2.5D game like Civ2 which makes asset conversion much easier haha. I still wanted to include as many C&C1 units when possible however C&C1 units are mostly 2D top down and are often too low res even for Civ2 lol so that is why I used units (with permission) from cool C&C2 mods like Crystallized Doom and Twisted Insurrection , along with the Red Alert 2 Mental Omega mod as they include lots of cool remade higher res 2.5D C&C1 units.

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[Blake00]

Update time! And I think people will like this one as ALL BUILDINGS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED!

Have made good progress with my Red Alert 2 Siege of New York Civ2 Scenario project and finally got all the city buildings imported, which meant I could finalize the city layout and map design. This is a moment I've been waiting a long time for haha! Glad to be finally there. Since my last pictures I've also shrunk the unit shields down so that they're in the way of things less, similar to what MetroPolis & I did in the Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2 Scenario. Here is a screenshot of the Allied/American forces area which contains a lot of similarities to the first allied mission area from the original Red Alert 2 game (note: Allied base buildings in the blue glowing areas were not ready yet at this stage).

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As you can see there are many garrisoned buildings allowing for much taller buildings (unit cells are much taller than terrain cells) and of course the illusion of destructible buildings since there are burning crumbled versions under all the building garrison 'units'. With all the different types of buildings with special ones like hospitals, churches, police stations, court buildings, petrol stations, fast food joints and car parks etc the final diverse result is much more city like!

And on the other side of the map here's the Russian side where I wasn't tied down to the original RA2 map layout and was able to create whatever I wanted haha! As you can see this side is more urbanized and densely packed with city buildings. The Russians have managed to take/garrison a number of buildings however the allies still have many. The invading Soviets will have a much larger army (paratroopers, V2s, Dreadnoughts, tanks & zeplins etc) however they will have to fight street by street, building by building, block by block (think Stalingrad) to clear out the allied garrison positions and crush their bases. The US forces will have to try and delay the red advance as long as possible to build up their own army (of ships, tanks & aircraft) to fight back push the Soviets out of New York! (note: Soviet base buildings in the red glowing areas were not ready yet at this stage).

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I've had a couple of people tell me to stop bloody posting zoomed in 2:1 images and show the darn map hahaha! Well I couldn't then because I didn't have a city made. Now that I do have a finished city I shall finally reveal the entire map layout in a regular 1:1 zoom screenshot! As you can see both factions are separated by a bridge and the New York Harbour. Also those with a keen eye will notice the Statue of Liberty is now a city and its own faction (that very bad things are going to happen to haha). As previously stated the New York Police Department are also their own faction with a number of Police station bases and will have police car units charging around the map (also getting in the Russians way haha) to recreate the effect of the police cars roaming around the original RA2 city missions.

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And now for the final missing peice of the puzzle. Base buildings are completed!!! Which means I'm finally done with all buildings lol!

MetroPolis taught me a trick when we were making the HoMM2 scenario where if you either remove settlers from game or the tech that gives railroads you can then use railroad formations for extra decoration. So as previously posted I decided to take that idea and create base buildings (eg Refineries, Factories, Barracks & Radar) around the command centers (cities). Wasn't easy as railroad and irrigation slots are so darn small so epic amounts of downsizing was required but the end result looks pretty cool. I especially love all the glowing tesla reactors around the red soviet bases haha.

Now I can finally start working on units next!

Soviet bases
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Allied bases
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[Blake00]

Update time!

Command & Conquer African Campaign Scenario Remaster news:
Forgot to post this a while back but I've updated Wonx's title/loading screen for the scenario with titles & faction logos. His original one hadn't been converted to Civ2 MGE palette so it had all sorts of crazy hypercolours lol!
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Red Alert 2 Siege of New York Scenario news:
I'm pleased to say I have FINISHED all unit imports (along with stat balancing and costing), custom technologies, city buildings and all theirs icons for the Red Alert 2 scenario! So how about I show you guys some of this recent work...

Firstly I've created a loading splash screen for the scenario similar to the C&C scenario one I posted above. It's based on the original Allied New York mission loading screen from Red Alert 2 but has some soviet stuff added.
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Next comes the big stuff! I'm finally at the stage where I think the scenario is good enough to make a picture to use in videos and other promotional materials, which those who've been following my work will know is the reason I needed to get this far before returning to finishing and releasing my other projects as I wanted to advertise each project while making videos of the others so I needed to make something good enough to use! It's a very nice feeling to know that all my scenarios are now in the final stages requiring only a bit of sound design and testing before being ready for release! Anyway this promotional shot will be often displayed as a thumbnail so to ensure items are clear and visible I've gone with a zoomed in shot that'll look a bit weird here in full screen HD but it will look great in smaller thumbnails. Because a zoomed in shot cuts off a lot of good content from the map I used the track enemy movement windows to show off other cool areas. You can see a lot of my finished units in this shot!
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"Well that's annoying.. I want the zoomed out 1:1 shot!" you're thinking? Well alright lol.. Here's a nice zoomed out shot that shows a lot of the Soviet side of the map! As you can see I've also chosen a background for the city screen too. Those with a keen eye will spot some of the newly imported buildings and of course even more of the new units in this screen which I'll be showing more of later.
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Here's the full imported unit line up for the scenario! All stats and abilities have been completed as well, which took ages as ensuring balancing but faction uniqueness is not an easy thing lol! As for the graphics, well unlike the custom high res C&C assets that gave me no end of problems and converted pretty badly into my C&C Africa scenario these RA2 unit assets were actually very similarly sized to Civ2 ones so I was able to do nice 1:1 conversions of most of the units resulting in a better looking lineup. In cases where downsizing was required I did my best to make it as small a reduction as possible. Probably the only units that required a nasty 50% reduction were the Kirov, Aircraft Carrier and Dreadnought units but I changed their angle slightly to gain more room in the sprite cell ensuring as much detail was kept as possible. The Red Alert 2 colour palette also converted very easily into Civ2's so all that was left to do was some recolouring of the team colours to make the red and blue more pronounced (so they stand out on a huge map). Just for fun I also stuck all the build icons/photos from RA2 plus a couple from fan mods into this picture and even made a few of my own (only seasoned RA2 players will probably spot the fakes though haha).
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And to finish off I figured I'd post another nice promotional screenshot I intend to use around places. Here's a standard zoom 1:1 shot showing some of the allied side of the map which was heavily based off the original RA2 New York Mission map.
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