<[Admin]Cobby> Ok Chat now moderated Hola Guys! Oh wait it's moderated Greetings programs! hehe <[Admin]Cobby> We'd like to thank the guys from Westwood for coming in to chat with us about Renegade <[Admin]Cobby> Wanna introduce yourselves? We apologize for Sean "Closer" Decker not being here, but he's fallen ill today. <[Admin]Cobby> In the meantime - we'll be taking your questions ro post on your behalf <[Admin]Cobby> To ask a guestion of the Renegade Team, please type /msg Cobby question and we will post on your behalf (time permitting). Thank you! I'm looking forward to giving away 10 slots for the Rnegade beta. Dan Cermak, Executive Producer. err Renegade I'm Cliff Hicks, better known as the infamous Devinoch, and I'm the Community Manager for Renegade. Delphi here a bit slow might I add hehe <[Admin]Cobby> '=_ I am Community manager for Renegade and RA2 <[Admin]Cobby> eeep d <[Admin]Cobby> ;-) <[Admin]Cobby> Ok let's get started! Lets chat! Fire away! <[Admin]Cobby> *Scorchg0d-_RenAslyum* I would like to know if/how westwood are planning on creating the online "clan" battles. Will westwood set up an official clan ladder with a "clan" battle mode like their stratagy series of games, or will it be up to us to set up and create our clans? will their be rewards for top placing clans? We're working on setting up a whole series of clan things right now. Clans will be ranked on their own ladder, much like they are in RA2/Emperor. Some of the exact details are still being ironed out, so I don't want to give too much away, but we're definitely going to make sure we offer a lot of clan support. <[Admin]Cobby> *FartRipple* Will there be a built in modifying tool, like WorldCraft for Half Life? Good question! We've just announced support for gmax, Discreet's free 3d tool, today. All the details are still forth coming, but you can get an idea of where we're starting by looking at our homepage for the news today. We're going to provide a lot of support for the mod community, and while I don't want to go into too many details, we think the mod community will be very pleased with our level of support. <[Admin]Cobby> *Aircraftkiller2001[R* Will you guys work on adding the ability to fly Orcas and Apaches someday? This has remained a feature that we would like to implement. We have discussed many ideas and methods but it is still on the drawing board. Will it become a reality? Can't say just yet. Sorry! <[Admin]Cobby> *fishy99* Question:Are you planning to let the player play as a NOD character at all? Maybe in an expansion pack? Haven't decided where we are going next (too focused on Renegade). <[Admin]Cobby> *seagle15* It's great to hear that Renegade will support gmax editing. Are you planning to go a step further and release a SDK or possibly the Renegade source code? <[Admin]Cobby> To ask a guestion of the Renegade Team, please type /msg Cobby question and we will post on your behalf (time permitting). We probably won't release the source code, but there will be more information coming about what we will be doing over the next month or two, and, like I said before, I think the MOD community will be quite pleased. Keep your eyes to the Renegade homepage over the next few months for lots of details to come. <[Admin]Cobby> *TheKiller* Is Renegade as it was planned when you started or has it changed all the way through development? the game has gone through many changes. In some ways it continues to change (hopefully for the better). <[Admin]Cobby> *Raxc* When will the game be expected to go gold and when do you guys assume that the game will be released in Febuary? The game will go gold towards the end of January or the beginning of February and will begin shipping February 26th, 2002. <[Admin]Cobby> *Griever* what engine is/was renegade developed and is it simple to mod ? 3D Action Planet: Join us today for our chat with the team from Command & Conquer: Renegade! Sean Decker, Dan Cermak and Cliff Hicks To ask a question, type /msg Cobby your question We built our own proprietary engine for Renegade and currently we are working toward making it as easy as possible to Mod. We are trying to get all the pathways laid out clearly and are focused on making it easier to create levels. <[Admin]Cobby> *flybynite* What cutscenes will Renegade have & will they be as good as Yuri & RA2? Congrats to lastandroid! He just won a slot in the Renegade beta! Our cutscenes are of a different style, we are maintaining the style and environment of the game so we are using ingame assets to make the cutscenes. We also do many ingame cut scenes using the engine. All done with a continuity in mind, we dont want to take the player out of the experience. <[Admin]Cobby> *BanditRenX* question : will you allow people to create dedicated servers in the beta ? Not in the beta. In the beta, we stripped out all the server code. All the servers are run in house. When Renegade is released, however, everyone will be able to host their own dedicated servers and configure the settings how they like. Congrats to Fartripple! That's right Fartripple! He just won a slot in the Renegade beta. With the servers in house, we can tweak with things like whether or not the driver is always the gunner, whether or not friendly fire is on, whether or not buildings can be repaired and other server side options. <[Admin]Cobby> *J-NuKeM* Does the game still have regular deathmatch mode? I like 2 play 1on1 alot on my friend's lan because he doesn't have broadband. No, I know this will make some people unhappy but we decided we needed to focus on C&C mode to the exclusion of all others. We felt if we didn't give it exclusive attention then it would suffer and so would any other modes we created. There are lots of games out there that have deathmatch modes but C&C mode is special. <[Admin]Cobby> *assa* how many weapons are in renegade and what classes can you be? Congrats to Thade! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! In C&C mode we have 28 characters divided into 4 ranks and four classes (minigunner, heavy weapons, specialists and engineers). <[Admin]Cobby> *Kid474* besides the modding tools any other suprises? Gee, I kinda thought that the deathmatch comment was a surprise..... Well, we may have a few more surprises up our sleeves, but if we gave them away, they wouldn't be surprises now, would they? => <[Admin]Cobby> *Lynx{1}* question - how detailed it the temple of nod will we be able to see things like Kanes living quaters and other Nod things Kane does not have a heart shaped bed, however it is shaped like the Nod Symbol.... Yes, we have lots of detail in the temple. <[Admin]Cobby> *Yoshi{1}* Was it easy to convert the C&C world to a FPS? What was some of the hardest parts in the conversion? This is a good questions, it will take a bit. It was easy from the standpoint that we have a wealth of information to work with, a universe that was perfect for FPS and a strong character to start with. What was tough was getting the feeling of the war and providing those special C&C moments (tank rush, etc) while staying within the limits of current technology. Congrats to Vertigo! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! <[Admin]Cobby> *Vertigo* What will the multiplayer interface be like? There are a ton of screenshots up for our interface, but for those of you who haven't seen it yet, the interface is very accessible. If you just want to jump into a game, you can do that through Quickmatch, which will find you a good server with good pings. If you want to surf the server listings yourself, you can do that. If you want to page friends, you can do that. We run through Westwood Online, so all that functionality is there. <[Admin]Cobby> *BuBbaJones* What interface improvements might there be in the final version of the game that are not currently in the beta? Congrats to Danc-WS he just won ooops... <[Admin]Cobby> lol =) We haven't collated all the data yet and we will be looking at the feedback to see what we can and cannot do (we are in the process of doing that right now with info that Devinoch has collected off the boards). It is a bit of a wait and see thing right now. <[Admin]Cobby> *Scar_Face* It's nearing christmas and the competition is stiff.... Do you have any special plans? I'm flying back to Nebraska to see... oh, you meant for the game. => Play Renegade of course hehe That's a hard question to answer. We've got lots of cool things planned for Renegade over the next few months, but it's too early to talk about them just quite yet. <[Admin]Cobby> *Grey_Fox_LSU* What other types of multi-play will there be, besides the now famous C&C-mode Get it done and done right Congrats to [BoE]Headless! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! C&C mode will be our whole mulitplayer experience. <[Admin]Cobby> *Tencteri* i have always been a loyal fan to Westwood ever since Dune 2 came out, i was wondering how do you guys come up with the idea of Red Alert 2 and Renegade? Renegade came up during the production of the first C&C. Brett Sperry and the team saw the potential for Renegade and felt that they could really allow people into the universe if they could get them down on the ground in the shoes of a character. The commando was perfect for it. As far as Red Alert, I really dont know <[Admin]Cobby> *ChronoGI* will there be actors or computer generated movies for the single player movies? The movies are computer generated using assets from in the game. We are using the original voices for some of the characters (Kane & EVA). <[Admin]Cobby> *FTracer* Will some of the gmax stuff possibly put out ASAP so we can start making mods. How easy is it to make a skin? Fireup Photoshop and go at it? We will be creating a Renegade version of the gmax tool (interface set up to facilitate making levels) but it will be an interace change. We use 3Dmax to make levels so the current version of gmax is functionally all there. What we will add is an exporter. The skins are done like any other 3D modding tool (photoshop, etc). <[Admin]Cobby> *SolidSnake* Was the beta test choosing completely loterry? Because there were alot of other questions that would help determine good testers. Did you just need to meet the minimum requirements to enter the lottery system? Congrats to C_C_rules! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! <[Admin]Cobby> Please only ask your question once...Thanks! You had to meet the mininum requirements to be considered for the beta. Anyone who submitted an entry but was below min spec was discarded. As for lottery, we set a few guidelines (certain number of modem vs. broadband users, amounts of memory) so we got a god sampling from all sorts of system specs, connection speeds and the like, and from there it was pure lottery. <[Admin]Cobby> *W_____f____TH* question What is the maximum number of players in the multiplayer system? 32 The system can handle more but we will not say we support more <[Admin]Cobby> *C_C_Rules* what precations will you ber taking towards cheaters Cheaters are a tough proposition but we are doing multiple things to help prevent cheaters. We are encoding data and using others methods. I am not the technical whiz of the team so I cannot go into specifics but it is paramount for us to provide an environment that is fun. Of course, all servers will connect to Westwood Online, so if we get reports of a server that is doing things that are blatantly cheating, and reporting those results to our ladder system, we can ban the servers. We'll do our best to keep cheating to a bare minimum. <[Admin]Cobby> *Yoshi{1}* With FPS and RTS being so diffrent how close will the story lines be? Is there any plans for major changes to any of the characters that would affect bringing them back in a future C&C game? We have tried to stay very close to the orginal time line. Our story line fits into the orginal line to the point that you get to place the Ion Cannon beacon on the Temple of Nod. Of course we then let you go inside. As far as characters go, we havent made great changes to the universe, though we did add the Black hand Special Forces to Nod. <[Admin]Cobby> *parad0x* How long are the missions in SP? Congrats to idan! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! Congrats to me! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! hehe <[Admin]Cobby> me??? no me <[Admin]Cobby> ;-) Who's on first? => They are huge in comparison to other games. Take our MP maps x about 10. The environments are huge. They can take from hours to complete each one (depending on your level of play and whether you do every objective) <[Admin]Cobby> *TAF[PVT_]Sealdude* Will there be some kind of point system to buy weapons? Harvesters gather tiberium, which goes into each player on the team's personal credit stash. With your credits, you can buy character classes (which each have their own weapon payload), vehicles or beacons. <[Admin]Cobby> *[BoE]Headless* It seems from recent interviews and articles that Westwood is pushing the multiplayer aspect of Renegade. Is that now the game's main focus? No, we just got it to the point where we can show it off ; ) We are focused on the single player, working on getting it polished and clean. C&C mode is very exciting and innovative but we will sell the majority of units of Renegade based on the single player. <[Admin]Cobby> *Tr0yboy01* question One of my friends on Tiberian Sun says the game is addicting. Is there gonna be like a Renegade annonymous suport group people can go to to break their habbit of playing renegade? Hi, my name is Devinoch, and I play Renegade.... => <[Admin]Cobby> heh I can tell you right now that there are a whole lot of WW employees that could use the service... <[Admin]Cobby> *minushuman* Will there be a console in Renegade like the one in Half-life or UT? Yes there will be a console but it is somewhat limited. We haven't decided what all will be a part of it yet. <[Admin]Cobby> *Bouv4* Can we, in C&C Mode play Nod vs Nod or GDI vs GDI ? No, this is Nod vs. GDI. We havent done it offically, sounds like a mod to me. <[Admin]Cobby> *Periclytes* Dan: In Renegade what is your favorite side, vehicle, character, and weapon? Funny, I would have to say that I prefer Nod. I like the light tank and it feels a bit like the underdog with GDI having all that massive armor. My favorite character has to be Sydney in the suit (even though she is GDI). <[Admin]Cobby> *jamieuk20{1}* will westwood make renegade work on linux and windows op system ? Congrats to sidearms5! He just won a spot in our Renegade Beta! We run under windows XP but no current plans for linux. <[Admin]Cobby> *flamez2k* what plans would you have for the future after you guys are done with renegade? will you guys make an expansion? We have just begun discussing whats next, and only at my level, we are keeping the team as focused as possible. I cannot talk to where we are going yet cuz we just haven't decided. <[Admin]Cobby> *SolidSnake* How far is the range of the MFRLS/Mobile artillery? A long dang way. => Off the top of my head I don't know but it is a very long distance. <[Admin]Cobby> *idan* what do you thing is the most importent thing you have to do in order to win a c&c mode game??? Team work. Somebody needs to defend/repair while others need to support and assault. The game forces you to work together. <[Admin]Cobby> *__White__* Whats Renegades main feature in SP? Congrats to Clapton_is_god! He is the last winner in our Renegade beta giveaway. WOOT! The C&C universe. We put you in the middle of a war between GDI & Nod and allow you to decide how you are going to complete your missions. Oh and the vehicles are cool. *Scorchg0d-_RenAslyum* as one of the top strategy developers in the world how do feel you will be viewed by other fps gamers/deveopers as you venture into the fps world? do you feel you will get a fair chance against the likes of the bigger studios... what makes your game better than the others? We are making our first game with this engine and it is focused around huge environments but our goal has always been to make it so C&C players can enjoy it. If we succeed in that it doesn't matter what others say. Our goal is to please the C&C customer. What makes the game better, subjective question, but the immersion in the C&C universe is key for us (I always say we are making a C&C action game, not really an FPS>) <[Admin]Cobby> *Lydecker* Who was the brain behind shooting that Renegade movie inside Westwood Studios? It rocked!! That came from marketing, probably Laura, our VP. Kucan and a our marketing manager Mike Bell (meatball) wrote it and thats why I end up in a slip.... <[Admin]Cobby> *chiefwu* Will we see any more versions of Renegade in the future? Vague answer.... Some of what happens in the future depends you guys. If we sell well then its an obvious answer, if we don't its another obvious answer. <[Admin]Cobby> time for this one last question: <[Admin]Cobby> *L3f7H4nd3d* Will you guys adopt me? Will Havoc adopt me? <[Admin]Cobby> ;-) Havoc works alone, and I don't know whether you're potty trained. <[Admin]Cobby> ;-) <[Admin]Cobby> We'd like to thank the team from WestWood for being here and answering your questions. Closing comments? (then we'll open up the madhouse!) Later guys! It was fun, I look forward to seeing the new recruits in the Renegade beta. Thanks for showing up everyone! We had a blast!