[[NE]Fobby[GEN]]

[HR][/HR]Hey guys!

10 days until the Black Dawn release! This is the first in a series of 10 blog posts which will be put out until January 28th 2012, the release date of Renegade X: Operation Black Dawn.

Renegade X is a Tactical FPS game with RTS elements. On January 28th, we will be releasing a short singleplayer campaign (Operation Black Dawn) as a demonstration of what is to come in the future. The release date of the final multiplayer version is still to be announced, and hence, we thought it would be good for you to have something to play while you wait. Black Dawn will be a 1-2 hour experience for most people, complete with custom cinematics. It will be an opportunity for you to get used to all the weapons, vehicles, characters, and changes before the upcoming multiplayer release.

In these short blog updates, we will discuss Black Dawn, its characters, and its development process over the last year and a half.

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Blog 1: The Backstory
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Operation Black Dawn takes place on a small island in the Black Sea. The island has been turn into a fortress belonging to the Brotherhood of Nod, an international terrorist organization.

Satellite images show that the island is heavily defended: automated turrets lie on all shores, and troop patrols roam the island day and night. Although it is unclear if Nod forces have access to sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries, there are large forests stretching across the island which obstruct the view of satellites.

On a recent trip to the Tiber River in Italy, Tiberium research specialist Dr. Ignatio Mobius and his daughter Sydney Mobius were captured by Nod's Black Hand elite team.

The UN's Global Defense Initiative, an international military force committed to world order and peacekeeping, has been authorized to conduct a secret naval operation. GDI intelligence has confirmed that the Black Hand smuggled the scientists and other prisoners of war onto a ship to Albania, where they were then flown via C-130 to this Nod island stronghold. Since Dr. Mobius is GDI's leading scientist in the field of Tiberium, he is a valuable asset and must be safely returned before the contagious spread of Tiberium further harms the world population and environment.

Hence, the objective of "Operation Black Dawn" is to destroy the Nod base and recover the scientists. Two GDI battalions have been dispatched to deploy on the southern and eastern shores of the island. The battalion to the east is to distract Nod forces, while a commando team attacks the southern beachhead, flanks the enemy and infiltrates the Nod base with air and ground support.

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The commando team will be led by Nick "Havoc" Parker. Havoc, who grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, joined the United States Marine Corps at a young age. He quickly became recognized for his rough and tough attitude and bloated ego, which made him unpopular with his superiors. His service was unconventional but effective, and it made him a public relations nightmare for the Marine Corps.

He was recruited by the GDI because of his proficiency with weapons and impressive war record. He was assigned to GDI's elite Dead 6 commando unit. Eventually, Havoc, due to the drawn-out anti-Nod campaign in northern Egypt, was dismissed from the unit and began operating solo, using his special forces training to fight Nod his own way, although still nominally under GDI control.

In this operation, you play as Havoc, and you'll be fighting alongside two old friends from the Dead 6 and some other familiar faces and voices. We will be covering the other characters gradually in the next ten days!

That's it for now. Be sure to check out THIS THREAD for the next 10 updates. See you all tomorrow!

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[Demigan]

I have a question:

Since the single player is going to be 1-2 hours, will you have different difficulty modes? And one problem I have with most single players is that even the highest difficulty doesn't offer a lot of challenge, maybe having a difficulty mode where the amount of enemies is doubled or tripled?

yours sincerely,
Demigan.

[SeL]

Awesome stuff! Cannot wait to play it

[Jam]

I have a question:

Since the single player is going to be 1-2 hours, will you have different difficulty modes? And one problem I have with most single players is that even the highest difficulty doesn't offer a lot of challenge, maybe having a difficulty mode where the amount of enemies is doubled or tripled?

yours sincerely,
Demigan.

There are multiple difficulty modes.

[XD_ERROR_XD]

i also have a question: will the next RenX community Q&A be released before black dawn? :Þ

[woandre]

Maybe make a Black Dawn main topic on the front page already, for the bugs, isseus, glitches, suggestions?, help, etc.

[[NE]Fobby[GEN]]

9 days till Black Dawn!
[CENTER]Blog 2: The Dawn of Black Dawn


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When the Unreal Development Kit was released in November 2009, faith in the Renegade X project was renewed. We were at Renegade X version 0.4 at the time for Unreal Tournament 3, and at this point, the mod had been out for two months. The devs and our fanbase had a blast in these two months, but there was always a question of what to do next with the project.

The UDK was released to the delight of Totem Arts, because it was the fulfillment of everyone's dream: a standalone Renegade X. Future versions would no longer depend on just the Unreal Tournament 3 fanbase, but instead, simply any machine that fits our minimum system requirements. This gave us the second chance to do everything we always wanted with the project. With the experience of building the mod from scratch on UT3 and releasing it, we quickly learned what we had done right, what we had done wrong, and how to improve on all of it.

It became clear to us that much needed rebuilding for the UDK version of Renegade X. Most of our code needed to be re-written for various reasons, static meshes and environment pieces were in need, our game's style needed to be revamped, and we needed time to reorganize ourselves. We took our time in figuring out what we wanted to do with Renegade X, and came to the decision to do a short singleplayer campaign as a build-up to the next major multiplayer release. We felt that this was a good move, because it would allow us to create a singular Renegade X experience that did not depend on servers, lag, online exploits and major glitches. It would be our way of introducing Renegade X to the non-C&C and non-UT3 world to build up extra following and hype, while easing our way back into multiplayer. After all, most of Black Dawn's assets will be used for multiplayer, so it has given us the organization and assets necessary to effectively start up properly.

The prototype name of the campaign was "Beach Assault", because that is generally Black Dawn in a nutshell. We wanted to bring in a familiar Normandy-invasion vibe that some movies and games did exceptionally well, and mix it with the classic C&C95 beachhead mission and C&C Renegade together.



So the first things that came to mind were hovercrafts carrying GDI troops and Gunboats armed with cruise missiles on one side, with Nod turrets and bunkers on the other. But we wanted something more than a beach invasion - we wanted to incorporate aspects of the original Renegade singleplayer as well. It was only natural that Operation Black Dawn would be aimed at rescuing GDI scientists, and that a classic commando experience was absolutely necessary.

The following two videos inspired us - the first is the original C&C Renegade trailer, which featured alternative character models. It shows Havoc stylishly infiltrating a Nod base at night, using his covert nightvision, dodging and leaping away from attacks. This type of smooth arcadey infantry gameplay didn't quite make it to C&C Renegade or previous versions of Renegade X, and we wanted to incorporate them into the UDK versions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8o9KGR8V6I

This other video is a classic Tiberian Sun cinematic where a Mammoth Mark II rips into a helpless Nod base. The sense of chaos and utter destruction inspired us for a similar part of Black Dawn, which we hope you will experience for yourself soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlQvZ6TFq1s

Below is the original rough MS-Paint internal sketch for the Beach Assault singleplayer map. It was a starting point to lay some ideas down.



After many revisions, we came up with a much larger idea that still incorporated all the major inspirations described above. The mission went from being a 25 minute extra to a potentially 2 hour adventure. Black Dawn eventually looked like this:



Now it needed an official name. A few of the names we came up with were "Renegade X: Operation Command & Conquer", "Renegade X: Operation Red Sand", "Renegade X: Covert Operations", "Renegade X: Tiberian Dusk", but then we all kind of agreed with a name that took elements of all of the above - Renegade X: Black Dawn.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Be sure to visit us tomorrow for the next blog update - see ya!

[cirex]

When you gonna publish this all in a book? your a good writer in blogs and vlogs :P.

[Demigan]

looking GOOD!

And you gave me the sudden hope that there will be a mammoth mark II, although it's going to be a far, far stretch to get that one in XD.

I was also thinking that you missed an opportunity here, what if you had made the single player based on the renegade-multiplayer experience? So as you travel, you can keep upgrading yourself with money, depending on what you destroy, secrets you found etc. Ofcourse, the actual details would be hard to implement.

I also thought that it would be possible (this is wishful thinking ofcourse) to make a single player that has multiple Tiberium aspects.
Think a co-op mission like black dawn. The AI has a steady spawn rate of various infantry and tanks. They just keep attacking, sometimes an 'event' where a major assault team is assembled and attacks the co-op team.
The co-op team can buy equipment for themselves, but also buy AI units that will form a team, with a max value of whatever credits. These teams can then defend the base and launch strikes vs the enemy base, similar to C&C multiplayer. But with the added component of small divisions and groups instead of two or three people working together.

Yours sincerely,
Demigan.

[TeamWolf]

Really cool updates so far, I love the background work that went into it all. Looking forward to the next!

[helly]

Looking forward to playing it.

[[NE]Fobby[GEN]]

8 days till Black Dawn!

[CENTER]Blog 3: Death from Above


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What's a Command & Conquer game without aircraft? That's what we asked ourselves after completing the Unreal Tournament 3 version of Renegade X, which didn't have aircraft yet. We always wanted to do something special with aircraft in the UDK, especially since we have access to a much better physics engine than Westwood originally had, and Black Dawn will be your first peek at aircraft in Renegade X.

To improve the experience in every way possible, all types of aircraft have been modified in some way, and some familiar units have been introduced. I should make clear from now that no aircraft will actually be drivable in Black Dawn, but you will observe many and take down hoards.

The first unit worthy of mention is the A-10 Warthog, a fixed-wing jet armed with a powerful rotary cannon and missiles. We first saw the A-10 in C&C 95, and then in the C&C Renegade singleplayer. You'll witness these babies coming in a few dire moments throughout the campaign, annihilating ground forces with awe. A-10s will poke their head in multiplayer as well as a part of a new airstrike feature, which will specialize in wide-area damage rather than a specific structural target like the current superweapons.







The second is the Transport Helicopter. While it didn't have a weapon in the original C&C Renegade, our team felt that the lack of any means to defend itself made it useless. It was more expensive than an APC, and yet it was easy to spot and fairly easy to shoot down. So we decided to give it a chaingun on each side - this way, passengers inside a Transport are able to shoot at enemies and potentially cause lethal damage to enemy forces.



The third is the Apache. With this unit, we wanted to find the sweet spot between a realistic attack chopper and an arcadey one. We believe we have found it. While it is highly maneuverable, a player still must skillfully pilot an Apache. You'll notice in Black Dawn that they are perhaps best at strafing runs and hit-and-run attacks, rather than just sitting still in the air.

We also didn't want to make it identical to the GDI Orca, so its weapons and abilities have been set up uniquely. Originally, the Apache had short ranged missiles and a long-ranged machine gun with no reload. In Renegade X, the Apache will have a heavier-calibre machine gun with a slightly slower rate of fire and a finite amount of rounds per clip. It will also have access to quick rocket barrage, which can only fire at enemies ahead of the craft. The Orca won't be making its way to Black Dawn, but you will definitely see it in multiplayer, and it will play differently.





That's it for today. See you tomorrow for the next blog update!

[prodotypical]

Damn! Looks so sick. I can't wait!

[EvilRaffi]

The idea of posting 10 blogs until Black Dawn will finally be released is great. Can't wait to play it! Btw, it looks awesome. You have done an awesome job recreating the spirit of C&C Renegade.

[Jello]

This looks epic! I'm really excited about this, more so any of the mainstream games out there.
I wish you'd left in the old HUD though, the new one looks weird.