Build time calculation
This should have been a single response rather than a full blog post. I'm only putting it here for the sake of future improvements or references.
Unlike the garrison ROF where it is possible to reach frame-level precision by creating a reference group which fires once per frame, there's no way of doing so here since one cannot build two structures/units at exactly the same moment. The starting and ending timestamp of the building time must be read manually from the SW countdown timer, leading to an error of no less than 0.5 seconds = 7.5 frames. Therefore the result cannot be "proven" accurate, but the algorithm is undoubtably corrrect.
The following algorithm is deducted by debugging game.exe from vanilla RA2.
- Multiply the structure/unit's Cos…
Notable Changes Omitted in the 3.3.4 Changelog
2018-10-17: updating page according to changelog modifications
Comparison of the RulesMO files reveals lots of changes which are not mentioned in the changelog. Here are some changes which impacts gameplay the most:
Only listing changes not on the changelog Ordered by importance inside each section
- 1 A.I.
- 2 Changes
- 3 Allies
- 4 Soviets
- 5 Epsilon
- 6 Foehn
- TeamRetaliate=no => yes
- When a strike team member is attacked. The entire team will retaliate instead of only the member itself.
- Units on the hunt will now retaliate.
- AIAutoDeployFrameDelay=15,25,100 => 1,1,1
- A.I. GIs and GGIs deploys faster when guarding an area.
- TotalAITeamCap=50,75,100 => 100,75,50 (brutal, medium, easy)
- Increased A.I. team cap. This is more likely a fix which makes harder A.I.s more challenging.…
Patch 3.3.4 Mission Panoramas - Spoiler Alert
Using CNCMaps Renderer version 2.3.1: Github, JPG encoding quality 80.
The XML will not be disclosed because it contains some of the you-know-whats.
After some nerdy debugs, I found out the reason of the crash. Some files in expandmo96.mix are OBSOLETE with incorrect sizes and palettes. Listing the external MIX in reverse order (i.e. 99 - 96) fixes the crash.
I patched the Renderer to bypass one exception which crashes the program. The patch is trivial in nature, however under GPL v3, any modification of the source code should be make public:
Garrison ROF Calculation and Best Practice
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The problem
- 3 Best practice
- 3.1 Power underestimated
- 3.2 1 + 1 < 2
- 3.3 Ceiling exists
- 4 Trivia
First of all, I'd like to thank AlexB whose advices and insights greatly assisted this research.
Garrisoning has always been a significant mechanism in Red Alert 2. Although easy to comprehend, the precise numeric value is much harder to calculate than anticipated. Few documentation can be found on this topic, moreover these hardly ever fit to test results. This blog will go deep and deduce the precise formula.
In this blog we're talking about infantry garrisoning only. Tank Bunker's ROF is trivial.
During gameplay, one might notice that each unit in a building takes its turn to fire, regardless of their respective ROFs. For example, even though a…
Cooperative Mission Panoramas - Spoiler Alert
Using CNCMaps Renderer version 2.3.1: Github, JPG encoding quality 80.
The XML will not be disclosed because it contains some of the you-know-whats.