I've now got animations working as a part of actual game engine (I've had animations working for some months outside of normal gameplay circumstances) and am now debating how I'm going to present them. I mean, I could take screenshots, but still shots of animations and/or videos kinda defeats the purpose of showing them off. If I do decide to make little video screen captures, I'll also have to up my hosting to the next level; I'm almost out of space :(

Minor issues aside, I hope everyone has a good Christmas this year. I know I will; no work for a couple of weeks!

Trees! :D

Just 1 new Red Horizon screenshot to show-off. I've finally got the overlay tiles to display correctly, as well as the alpha blending to work the way I want it. Both of these minor achievements can be seen in the latest image in the screenshots section.

Well it didn't take long for me to use the sketch mentioned in my previous post:

• Wallpapers - Shelter From The Storm

With the Christmas season approaching, I'm hoping to have more time for things like these. I'm gonna have a nice 2-week break over the Christmas / New Year period; plenty of time to do whatever the hell I want :)

Just some minor updates to the last post. First of all, one new sketch to the Artwork section:

• Sketches - Apparition

Secondly, I've added 2 semi-old development screenshots of Red Horizon. The first has the program simply displaying the Red Alert title screen, the second shows it drawing the map tiles of Red Alert's first Allied mission. Note that the map is drawn in 800x500 resolution, instead of the older 640x400.

Although work has still been hectic, I've managed to find time again for Red Horizon. So I'm starting to build the screenshots section for it, and then I'll add some more recent pictures of development progress.

In Red Alert related news, I've been helping-out with some of the graphical aspects of someone's mod. I've mainly been converting icon pictures into useable icons for in-game, but just recently I've also created a title screen. The mod's thread can be found here (my picture can be found on the last pages of that thread).

Whoa! WTF?! I just got the notice that my old hosting plan (the one I had before moving to where I am now) has been terminated. About time too, 'cause I stopped paying for it and asked to close that account several months ago! Anyway, I thought I'd make sure that it was just the hosting, not the domain name part, that was cancelled, and made a trip to my site. And what should I get but some error saying that ultraq.net.nz cannot be found! So I went to check-up on my domain name account (which is still managed by the guys who just terminated my hosting account), and the entries pointing to name servers, and other things were all gone!

Sorry to get all technical on you, but I had to re-create all those NS, CNAME, and A records so that people can once again find my site. In summary, everything's back to normal, but I'm just a little bit more pissed-off than I was a few days ago >:|

Following-up on the previous news post, I've got 1 more screenshot to show. Link can be found in my latest post in the same place, and shows a properly loaded map. Well, just the map tiles part anyway.

I'll start putting these together in a proper screeshots section once I get around to building a page for it.

OK, so they're not the sorts of Red Horizon screenshots I've been wishing for, but since somebody asked I've posted some very un-exciting pics of some in-game GUI, and me messing-around with loading images. The topic with the links to the pictures can be found here.

I've spent the past few days overhauling the behind-the-scenes workings of this site, using the many things I've learned at my work since it's last major overhaul. It's been a good little practice for me as I spend some time and practice with technology during any lulls at work.

Now that's out of the way, I'm gonna work towards adding a few screenshots to the Red Horizon section. After checking-out other C&C projects out there (like a port of C&C to the Nintendo DS), I told myself I really gotta get some pics. So next on the agenda: playing some videos from the missions and taking screenies to put up here.

Another small update, but this time on the state of Red Horizon. The small subsection dedicated to this project is pretty much done, but will only be a (very long lived) temporary home. It really is a mess, especially the progress section. For something of this magnitude, I should create a whole new look-and-feel subsite using that 1 subdomain I get with my hosting plan :P

As for progress on the program, I've got pretty much everything done EXCEPT gameplay! So it installs, starts, shows some options, but when you hit play... nothing happens! When you hit the close button of that 'nothing happens' phase, it shuts-down, hopefully taking with it all of the resources that it took. I'm pretty confident that it does, but I should write some small aspect profiler to verify that.

In other news, my entry for the art competition didn't receive a pedestal position, so I guess that's that :(

Very small update: made a few 1440x900 (16:10 ratio) versions of my wallpapers for a friend of recently bought an Apple MacBook. It's a cool little thing with a cool little widescreen monitor.

Time to cross-off one of the items on my new to-do list: my entry for the unknown-prints art competition is done:

• Wallpapers - In The Embers Of Dying Stars

A print version is in the works, and when that's done, both will be submitted to my deviantArt gallery, store, and the art competition. I hope you like it. Heck, I hope whoever is judging the competition likes it!

Still working on Red Horizon and the section for it. Firstly, I want to get the first milestone release done: a showcase of my ability to display the old file formats of Red Alert & Tiberium Dawn.

All of the file formats are now readable and playable, but I want to add some optimizations, especially the videos. Just yesterday, a 4MB VQA video file took 200MB of memory to play it! While I had a good laugh at that, I know that is totally unacceptable and so have begun to work on it. As of today, that same video now takes 100MB of memory. Hopefully, after implementing some sort of 'streaming-content' system, the memory usage should drop to somewhere in the order of less-than 20MB.

And when that's done, I'll put the project on hold to start work on my entry for that art competition I wanted to enter (link on the right). It's about time I created a new picture anyway :)

I've been working on the new Red Horizon addition to my website, as made evident by the new links in the navigation bar to the left. If you investigate these new pages, you'll soon see that lots of it is still to be completed.

As well as these new links on the left, I'm trialing a to-do list and current progress list in the Stuff bar on the right. People keep asking me what I'm doing now, or if there are any updates on this or that, so hopefully this will answer that question. If it doesn't, well I'm at least hoping that it will inform others that I'm only a 1-person shop spending little time on his hobbies and more time getting distracted by other things, like Halo ;)

Woohoo! Graduation ceremony just last night :)

In website and project related news, I've made some more progress with my Red Alert revival project (under the working title of 'Red Horizon'). As well as being able to read content from the MIX files that contain most of the game's sounds and graphics, I've also been able to display the graphics of units and structures to a rendering context using OpenGL.

A section of my website dedicated to Red Horizon info and progress is still in the works.

I wanted to announce my latest Command & Conquer related project, but didn't yet have a section of my site dedicated to it. So I made a post here about it until I can get around to creating a small 'about' page for it. In short, it's a programming project with goals very similar to the now defunct FreeCNC, but if you haven't heard of that either, then go to the forum post I made about it to get an understanding.

Mini-update, but one that's been a long time coming. After working with the staff from PlanetCNC to resolve a minor issue with their new file management interface, my campaign is now available on their FilePlanet servers! The link has been added to the Campaign - Downloads section as appropriate. Hopefully, finally having the campaign up on a site with as many visitors as PlanetCNC will help increase the visibility and distribution of my campaign.

Not long after my previous picture, I've finally had a change to give Terragen a go. Here's the result:

• Coloured - Boundaries Of Heaven 2.0

In the future I'll probably do a very polished version of this picture (v3.0 anybody?) once I get my head around how to work this Terragen thing properly.

With PlanetCNC's recent facelift, the Red Alert Tech Center is currently in a little transitional phase with regards to hosting. Even the link I used in the last news post to the RATC is already old! So at the moment, the only place serving Campaign Ultraq 2.0b, is, err, right here.

I've also got a new space picture to add to my gallery. I get the feeling that it's not as 'in-your-face spectacular' as the other ones, but I'll still put it up anyway:

• Wallpapers - Safety In Light

I'll upload this picture to my deviantArt gallery sometime soon, and I'll upload a print version of another of my earlier pictures at around the same time.

The small bug found in my campaign (a crash when trying to select mission 10 in part 1) is now incorporated into the downloads for my campaign. Well, not all downloads. Only the one available from this site is up to date; I've just asked the guys at RATC to update their copy, and I've asked PlanetCNC if I can update the file that's still in their queue. Yeah, it's been several months since I submitted it now, lol. I'll update this news post when each of the sites have updated their copies.

As for my space pictures, I've finally opened a prints account with deviantArt, and have had my first picture, Sacrifices, accepted for sale! It's currently available in 12x9 inch and 24x18 inch sizes. But because it was my first one, it's not of the same 'original' quality as my later works, and so isn't available at the largest size of 40x30 inch. If you're at all interested, go check it out!

If you're reading this, then your DNS has been updated and now points to my latest host for my website :)

After the debacle with my previous host and their JSP hosting issues (their short answer about whether I can get JSP hosting fixed: NO!), I've finally moved on to a host that can supply those services. But what does that mean for you? Probably nothing at all :P

This whole migration to JSPs was both a learning experience, and to make maintaining my website much easier for me. But that doesn't mean you've gained nothing out of it. Firstly, the space wallpapers are now available at maximum JPG quality (the ones via the links to the various resolutions, not the display image). Secondly, I've been working on adding a few walkthroughs for some of the more difficult missions in my campaign. If you go to the Campaign - Missions page, you can now find that some of those missions names have become links! Give 'em a click, you know you want to ;)

(I've used 3 smileys in this news post alone; I must be in a good mood)

Someone has discovered an issue with my campaign: a crash when selecting mission 10 after completing missions 9a or 9b ("Ashes To Ashes" or "Dust To Dust" respectively). I've provided an interim fix here, and the link to that updated file can also be found under the Campaign - Downloads section. Just place the updated file into your Red Alert directory. That should stop the crashes at that point.

Looks like there will be future versions of the campaign to get rid of little bugs like that :)

Nothing much to report: just fixed-up some broken links, and some HTML in the Artwork pages (the justified alignment tag was working too well in FF 1.5).

And a very belated happy New Year's day to you all.

I've been looking into putting my space wallpapers up on deviantArt prints so that I can maybe make a dollar or two from doing something I enjoy. Sorta like work, except that it's the work you want, the work you like. I've received a few comments here and there encouraging me to do so, hence my slight interests in it. If only I could find-out if my work is of a quality (in terms of image size for printing) high enough for the sizes of prints I want to make available, before putting forward the printing subscription fee. So before making any hasty moves, I'll ask around for some more opinions before committing to anything.

Speaking of space wallpapers, I have another one to share:

• Wallpapers - From the Ashes

This one was intended from the beginning to be a potential print: a large portrait-oriented wall-scroll/poster. I've made it into a wallpaper as well, but because of the orientation, it doesn't really fill the screen like the previous ones. Still, don't let that stop you from checking it out.