A little something you should be proud of guys!

Since we have set up shop here, we have gained 51 members to the community. Not only that but we have also managed to develop the game further and enhance the game-play experience for the average user.

This time last year I was building D-Day with Tjdagger and we had a pleasant time doing it albeit a couple of headaches but never the less we persevered and produce a quality mission for the community.
This was at a time in the CM forums where we (the community) were dwindling sharply and there were just a few of us left that actively visited the forum. Not many missions were being made at this time and it was quite depressing to see this happen to such a wicked game.

Now 12 months down the line I want to show you a couple of things that have been introduced (if you are not aware of them) to make the game better.

Animus produced a working radar and parachute script, aswell he discovered how to make tunnels in the mission editor. This has spawned an idea for me to continue along the tunnels route and create my own. Tjdagger produced a code that would make an endless corridor of tunnels with them spawning and despawning. THis is great to play with. You will definatley see this in one of my future missions.

Tvig buried himself into the .xml files. He came out kicking and screaming gasping for air, with the EDITOR EXPANSION. This is a marvel of a tool and will hopefully help produce a new wave of missions form the community. He also discovered one of thing that people have thought about and would be amazing to do, and that is placing a shed on the airfield. Yep he discovered he was able to create new place for a building right in the middle of the airfield. Downside of this though, he can't find the physics to it, so there is not much we can achieve with this at the moment. But still with a bit more digging and if anyone can help him out on this we could possible have new villages placed where ever we like on the map.

Tjdagger along with TVig has been making modules for the EDx. These will help you out big time if you want to make a mission and don't have a good understanding of how the code works. I have been making a mission now for the past week or so and it is so easy to build using the formats I have now. If you want to build simple missions or even go the whole hog a make a full island free roam, embrace these tools, they are great to use. They haven't been fully released yet though only due to a few bits of fine tuning, but I assume he will release them as a package as soon as he can.

gtaekwondo has convinced TemplarGFX to rework the UAI files. By what I have heard progress is working nicely and things are coming together. Also Templar is planning to release IW3 in the near future so that should be fun to play with.

I have managed to get my hands on some funky custom sounds and placed them in the missions I am toying with. I will release this OWP sound file and put up some tuts for them when I get chance. Also with a bit of help from TJdagger we have managed to create some ambient lighting at the airfield. This makes things slightly different at night now, but it does look pretty cool in the missions.

NFMZ1 is setting up a Complete DR package to release to people so if you have any ideas or content you want put in, get in touch with him via pm. The package is going to contain literally everything that has been made for DR over the years since it has been released. Missions, mods, tutorials, pictures, you name it or can think of it to do with DR it will be in there.


MP is not dead despite what people think! it still goes on in places, and its been nice to see people actually meeting up and battling it out online with friends.

We have all worked tirelessly on things to do with DR no matter how large or small and all I can say is WELL DONE GUYS!

The forum has picked up pace since its inception in December last year, I know I had a little rant abck at the beginning of the year but I'm over that now and see the forum in a different light. Thanks for sticking with the game, joining up to the forum and throwing in the many hours to work, promote, enhance, modify, play, build or whatever it has been for the game and for the forum. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to you all and personally say thankyou for living by the term:

KEEPDRALIVE!

Cheers

MD

p.s. if you can think of anything else I have missed put it in here.

Everyone this is our community and our game now i think we can safely say. This forum is the heart and brain of Dragon Rising simply because without it where would we talk about the game, and if we dont swap ideas the game will go stale.
Things i would like too see added to the game, and remember all the things that have been done people said couldn't.
The Holy Grail for me a night / day system when your on mission if it could be speeded up, without too many drawbacks "Twitchy Grass"
To attack the airfield by day, rout the enemy " dig in " build new defences " sandbag implacements " machinegun nests in game, lets say it would take two hours to manufacture build a mortar bunker machinegun nest.
Your orders were too hold the airfield and expect enemy attack.
You find claymores anti tank mines in the base somewhere, a stockpile. Plant a minefield to slow the enemy attack, mines arn't used enough in my opinion, nothing better than PLA flying through the air, he he. Could a small skull & cossbones sign be made with the word mine, strike fear into enemy troops.
Even if a minefield couldnt be made, if you saw a sign with " Mines" would you cross the land?
PLA dont counter attack until the night, giving the airfield a whole diffrent feel with the lighting effects. Light them bases and villages up at night, inside the buildings and street lighting. Get the guards to pratrol the base. Maybe storm effects at night Thunder and Lightning. PLA could attack using a smoke barrage all around so as you dont know which way there attacking from?
The other million dollar question? could we build new villages or just add enough buildings to double the size of existing towns? Add in bunkers with machinegun nests, crisscross arcs of fire "killzones"
Also with coding UAI files maybe crank up the use of grenades, dont think iv'e ever seen AI use grenades. As for sounds this isnt given as much thought as it deserves, We've all played this game to death, and just as something visual makes you think " Oh thats new " cool also speach the first time you hear your team mate yell "**** they've shot me " or the like, its like WOW something new. Idont think a sound speach file can be underestimated.
Just a few ideas, some maybe ridiculous as i'm no coding expert i wouldn't know! Feel free to tell us your own ideas,for me this is what the forum is for, who knows your ideas maybe in the next great mission, and with those pesky PLA getting a revamp DRAGON RISING is ALIVE!
cheers dewi

well some of those ideas will be in my next release, certainly the custom sounds and lights mate! I got some cool **** to release with it.

As for some of the other things you are talking about. there was a code somewhere on the old CM forum for IED's, this was used in one of the user created missions. Pretty effective too! your right they don't get used enough, but with the modulation Tjdagger was discussing this idea with me and making a module for it. Unfortunately we cannot make signs or anything that would represent a sign to go in the game, we are stuck with the props we have. You'd have you use what you have a bit like playing Lego and build what your idea is in the editor.

The bunker construction idea aswell was part of the early SLT releases and you would go around the island setting up bases where you could whilst protecting your mobile construction unit. But I do believe that Templar is working on a similar idea with IW3, where engineer units are to build you a fob once you have taken an area etc.

We would love to build new villages, this has been a thought in everyones mind since the beginning I think. Tvig has managed to move and "mirage" of a shed, like I mentioned in the first post. But you can walk straight through it. If it is possible the physics to objects can be found within the .xmls then I can guarantee you that not only would new buildings be placed in weird locations but new towns and villages would start appearing. In theory we may be able to have new buildings, walls, possibly trees etc, all the stuff that is unmovable on the island at the moment, moveable and also placed into the props lists in the editor.

so if any of the new guys that have a very good understanding of .xmls and those eluasive files and think they can manage this and wants to lend a hand maybe they could get the heads up from Tvig about where he was looking and dig deep.

The PLA are not the only ones getting a revamp also. The US units are included. From the early days of modifications with DR no one has to date managed to do anything with the use of grenades. We can't register the throwing of smoke to signal a landing zone for helos believe it or not. Also frag grenades are not registered aswell so, the only way the grenades get registered is if the pla or us are in combat and the AI decide when they want to throw a grenade. It seems to be a situational thing more than anything.

Something I forgot to point out in my first post that, I think myself and Tj are particularly proud of was the stealth code we developed. It was a bit long in terms of coding, but there was a number of environmental factors in the Nighthawk mission that effected your ability to stay hidden in game.

If you haven't played Nighthawk, you can download it here:

Operation NightHawk

We also managed to create a Napalm and cluster bomb CAS. Which involved using Hotkeys. When you wanted to deploy CAS on the PLA you would go to an overhead view of the area and you would then be able to zoom in and out of the island and pin point exactly where you wanted the CAS to hit. You didn't even need to have line of sight for it.

Additional to this I developed this into the A10 by configuring the script to suit the sound effect of the A10 doing a gun run. As you may have seem it was pretty awesome. Every time I play it I burst out laffing at the way it works.

Tj developed a wicked mortar script where you didn't need to be inside a mortar bunker to call in the mortars, you just had to make sure one of your team mates were inside the zone.

Tvig worked on a Cam script that basically gives the user control over moving cameras in game. You could do this via hot keys, rotating moving up,down left, right etc, going anywhere on the island.

During this past year we would not have been able to do most (if any) of the things we have done without alot of the work that Tvig has poured into the game. May sound like I'm blowing smoke up ya ass here mate, but you don't get the credit you deserve sometimes.

Anyway, with all the work that we have produced and hours wasted on refining things for the better of the game, I think we have a solid base for some real cool fresh missions to come out soon.

It has been quite a year in both extremes - personally looking to see what this year holds with the added tools and knowledge we have.

I bought OFDR in 2008 and it's been dragged out only twice (and put back with equal enthusiasm) over the years.
It wasn't ArmA and just the fact you could not lean left or right never got me much past the first objective on the Demo Game.

And it's a shame. I have a feeling this game will play out the way GRAW did when I compared it with Ghost Recon Classic.
In the end, I just loved GRAW for what it was, a Solid Co-Op Gaming Experience.

Straight off I can sense just how small this community is compared with the ArmA series, and that's a shame, because if as many people had gotten involved with this game earlier I'd have a completely different game to play with today. As it is, this game probably was not so much overlooked as it was shunned for using the Operation Flashpoint tags, which was shamefully employed to sell the game.

However, if it had not upset quite so many, perhaps these loyal folk would have given OFDR more than just a fleeting look and scornful rebuff and found themselves ripping through the game files and modding it into the game it could have been.

Still, you guys are here, there has obviously been a lot of effort put in to make the game twice what it started out as and thats a victory you can all be proud of.

So, it is great to be here at last, and whilst my stay may be brief I just wanted to acknowledge you guys, for setting up this website, as a knowledge and File repository in my case, and hope that it remains active for years to come.

Nice words dude! thanks for the praise and all, and Thanks for joining us first off.

The few that actively put in the work for the game so passion and love for the game that could have been greater to start off than what it was.

We few are passionate and give full support where the game needs it. Like I said on the one of the Steam forums, "if CM won't support it, WE WILL!"

Hope your stay won't be as brief as you say, we are always looking for fresh ideas and as you can see the EDX has given rise to a whole new set of missions to be released by the community.

cheers

MD