The Real Combat Inheritage of True War | Phoib | 01:18 07-11-2001 | | |
Real Combat inheritage
Rob began some 2 years ago with the Red Alert mod Real Combat, a mod created by Marcel "Sniper" who wanted to get Red Alert realistic, with modern day weapons. When Tiberian Sun came out, we switched to TS, and started editing. Then I joined the team, as a rules editor.
The rules of TS: RC had some great things, like the cluster missiles, full scale atomic bomb and a way to choose your country with your MCV next to it. This version never saw the light, despite the fact that Rob and I made the rules for the USA, Russia, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.
This had one solid reason, the absence of voxels. Sniper started to make voxels, but at a slow rate. When Red Alert 2 came out, we had some 50 voxels, of the 500 units planned. We switched to Red Alert 2, because there were ships, aircraft, spawnable weapons and so on, and the mutilated landscape of Tiberian Sun was unfitting for a realistic battlefield. The rules quickly came online, and after 3-4 months, we reached the point were we had stopped with the TS rules (although a version was released, it crashed during load up, and Rob and I never found the time to fix the problem.)
The voxels however, were a different story. Red Alert 2 uses a different type of normals, and the old voxels of TS, which had enlarged normals, became unusable. We were back at were we started. After that 4 months, Sniper produced 2 voxels, the M1A1 Abrams and the M1A2 Abrams, which are the same, except for a tiny thing on the turret.
Enraged over Sniper's slow rate of production, I started to make voxels too, at a steady pace. During the months that followed, I made the voxels (and the versions with small difference, such as M2A2 and M2A3) of the Bradley, the MLRS, the M109, the APC, the PAC-2 launcher, the A-10A, the LA, LCAC, BTR-80, BRDM-2, 2S19, 9K58, 9K79, S-300V, Sarych, Shucka-B, Udaloy and Zubr.
Sniper made the voxels of the Ticonderoga and the Russian tank voxels, in the same period of time. (Another member produced the HMMWV and the BMP-3, with the wrong normals, so I had to rework them completely.) In stead of making voxels, Sniper spent his time with pointless debates over the damage of a rifle, falling over trivial points whether it should be 79 or 80, and such other small things. After a while, Rob, Sniper and I agreed to use a voting system over such small issues, to speed up his voxel production.
After 2 months, Sniper suddenly refused those votes, saying that he founded RC (which is partly true, he started RA RC, but Rob and I made the first files of RA2 RC, so we founded it, in stead of him.) and that he therefore had the supreme right to cancel a voting decision. Rob and I disagreed, and we threaten to go away, and I said that I would publish the voxels I made, so the community could use them. Sniper replied that I shouldn't do that, since they were the property of RC. When I asked why they were RC's property, he replied:" Every file submitted to RC becomes the property of RC."
The fact that I didn't sign a contract over such matters didn't persuade him. This was the drop for me. I left RC, and contacted Rob, who left earlier because of the voting issue. We both have worked hard for RC, and as a thank you, our work was stolen. Because we had invested too much time to let it slip away, we took the rules (which were made by Rob and me exclusively) ,voxels (of which 90 % were made by me.) and cameo's (50 % made by me, the other 50 % by Sniper.) and started True War, which link can be found below.
We will stop using the voxel files which are not ours, under one single condition:
If Sniper stops to use the rules Rob made and the voxels I made. This is the only condition we have, and it is not open for discussion. Mail Sniper to inform him of this, and say that he shouldn't steal our work, in order for us to stop using his work (as little as it is).
We already have replacement files, so it's up to Sniper.