I would like to wish everyone a happy 2005. Everyone who is in a position to should make a donation for recovery of the Asian Tsunami and Seaquake.
More TibEd news is available, but now is not the time for that.
Koen
I have started working on editing BFME... right now there appears to be a bit of a problem in the community with a file called Asset.dat which I am reverse-engineering right now at the Deezire forums.
Koen
Merry christmas everyone!
After my last post on BFME I kind of dissappeared... and yes that's because I was playing the game a lot, but also because I had some exams. I think I passed those, and now on to playing lots more of BFME. If you're an experienced RTS player, then start playing the campaign on Normal and you'll have lots of fun. Heck, I had to redo the first mission a few times because I could not defeat the Balrog. That made me think of C&C: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert 1... which is a real compliment.
There are some quirks here and there in the game, but overall it is smoother in gameplay than Zero Hour. Make sure that you do meet the minimum requirements (Geforce 2 GTS) though, because everything below won't play properly.
Koen
Today I bought LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth. My first moment of joy came when I inserted the DVD: I got an error message "This program cannot run on Windows 95". So much for the Autorun of the DVD under Windows 2000... I think EA QA should have caught this as it is a really stupid error!
In the game I lost the first mission of the good side when fighting the Balrog. I selected the Electric sword power of Gandalf (press the button with my left mouse button) and then use the left mouse button to click on the Balrog. But no, you have to use the right mouse button then!
Right after I found that out, the Balrog went off-screen and Gandalf leapt after him. I was so startled of this happening automatically, I didn't even think of scrolling after him. I thought I was getting a cinematic or something. Only after I heard Gandalf yell "Somebody help me" I realised my mistake... but it was too late then.
The BFME INI files are a big mess, and the TibEd 2 INI parser has to be modified in order to handle all the errors in there. The Generals INI files have errors, but having = in the wrong place and having two of them in a row (==) is something I never dreamt would happen.
Have fun playing BFME!
Koen
The system requirements for Lord of the Rings, the battle for Middle Earth are now online at the EA website:
- OS: Windows XP or 2000
- CPU: 1.3 GHz or faster
- RAM: 256 MB
- DISC DRIVE: 8x or faster CD/DVD drive
- HARD DRIVE: 4 GB or more free space
- VIDEO: DirectX 9.0b compatible; Video card with 32 MB or more memory and one of these chipsets is required: NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS or greater OR ATI Radeon 7500 or greater.
- SOUND: DirectX 9.0b compatible
- INPUT: Keyboard and mouse
Koen
TibEd 2 beta 2
Beta 2 has been ready for almost 4 weeks but I never got around to announcing it or uploading the distribution. I've now done that.
There are lots of improvements and adding of units, armors, etc is back in so you won't need alpha 13 anymore. Besides that, you can now also add new Object modules which couldn't be done in alpha 13 (due to architectural problems).
The download links for TibEd 2 beta 1b now point to beta 2; I don't feel like updating the site right now (read on about the Chaos in The Netherlands for more information).
Lord of the Rings: The battle for Middle Earth
Right now I am writing a "Discover" program to automatically locate keys in the Generals INI files which are missing in TibEd 2. Once Lord of the Rings: The battle for Middle Earth is released, this tool should become very handy when building an editor.
TibEd 2 for TibEd 1.x customers: free upgrade
If you registered TibEd 1.x, then you can get an unlock code for TibEd 2 as well. Use the mailform and be sure to include your name, e-mail address at time of registration and/or your home address.
Chaos in The Netherlands
The last two weeks have been very chaotic in The Netherlands. It started with the murder of a Dutch film maker by a radical terrorist. Since then schools, churches and mosks have been set on fire and there have been police RAIDs on various locations. Basically, it's a mess here right now.
Koen
TibEd 2 beta 2 which has adding of strings, units, etc. in will be released very soon. The final build has been ready for over a week, I just do not have time to package, release and post it on the site.
Koen
TibEd 2 has been updated to beta 1b. This version has just one bugfix compared to beta 1a: the registration system will now give you a 30-day trial instead of claiming that you'd already used TibEd for 38000 days. This bug did not occur if you already had TibEd installed previously.
Everyone who updates to this version will get a new 30-day trial. If you already had one in beta 1a then you can restart again at 0 if you install this.
Koen
After a very long time, finally a new TibEd 2 version!
What's new in beta 1a compared to alpha 13:
- Added Music.ini editing
- Completely rewrote edit tree. The new edit tree has images in it and looks much cooler:
- Completely rewrote backend to work with XML files now. You might not notice the difference right now, but wait for future versions to see the difference.
- Registration system: TibEd 2 is shareware and can now be unlocked using an unlock code. People who registered TibEd 1.x will receive an unlock code for TibEd 2 in a few weeks.
- Adding of strings, units, armors, etc is not available right now. Either open your project in alpha 13 to do this, or wait for beta 2
- The jump buttons in the property editor are gone.
You can download TibEd 2 from the download page.
One final note: if you happened to download beta 1 earlier this week (it was available for about 24 hours), then please upgrade to beta 1a as several critical bugs are fixed.
Koen
After restoring the CNCNZ Network, the forums have been restored as well. The backup wasn't completely up to date, so anyone who registered after July 11th will have to reregister. The forums include the TibEd technical support forums as well.
Click here to go to the CNCNZ forums
More news on the next version of TibEd 2 soon.
Koen
CNCNZ is back online after some downtime. The forums (which include the TibEd forums) are not back up yet, but it is being worked on hard to bring them back.
The TibEd 2 rewrite is now two thirds of the way. I will either release a new TibEd 2 version somewhere this week (with less features than alpha 13, as adding units won't be in it yet), or I will post some screenshots of it.
Koen
The current TibEd 2 version is alpha 13. Currently I am working on a major rewrite of TibEd 2, as the current design does not allow adding of new modules to objects to be implemented in a good way. If the rewrite is succesful, then the next version could very well be beta 1 (just give me time).
Koen
As you may have noticed the CNCNZ Network is currently offline. CNCNZ is hosted by GamersPulse and they currently have issues with excessive bandwidth usage.
TibEd.Net is hosted independantly of the CNCNZ network and is still online. At the moment we are waiting for news from GP and (maybe) a temporary site will setup. I'll post more news as we get it.
Koen
You may have noticed it's been a bit silent here recently. That is because I am working very hard right now to become a Bachelor of Science. I should be done on July 2nd so I'll have plenty of time again then.
I know my site has always been about C&C and Dune RTS games, but there are two other RTS games I have played which are cool. The first one is Rise of Nations, which has an incredible pace which should keep you gripped for a while. You can get the game at a discount now in most places (it's one year old) and an expansion pack has just been released (which I haven't got yet).
The second RTS game is Perimeter by Codemasters. Now, forget everything you learned about RTS games. This one is different. It's a shift in RTS games: you can morph units. Not just that, you can morph them right in the middle of a battle. Besides that, you can build energy shields to protect your base. Check out the demo on the Perimeter website in case you're interested. And I haven't even mentioned the energy shield yet... or that it has higher system requirements than Generals but plays smoother if I set graphics to "Fastest".
I need to get back to work :)
Koen
It seems I haven't updated the frontpage in a while, I even forgot to announce that TibEd 2 alpha 13 is out! Now that you know that, go to the download page and get it!
In other news, I removed Google AdSense advertisements. They were truly annoying, and about 0.2% of all people clicked on them, so it's not fair for the 99.8% who had to look at them. You are not supposed to talk about your income through AdSense, but I can say this: it ain't much. It ain't much at all.
Koen
I've signed up TibEd.net for the Command and Conquer Top 101 sites. I removed the link for the C&C Top 50 since they were no longer active.
The CnC Top 101 is a topsite list setup by the community site CnC Community. If you want to look at the Top 101, then click on the button to your left or Click here.
Koen
Yesterday there were some problems with webpages on TibEd.net due to a server upgrade. They have been resolved, however there appear to be some performance issues (long loading time for pages).
I've added Google AdSense below the download list on your right. This is an experiment. You're not supposed to stimulate people clicking them, so please don't click ;)
Voice your opinion about AdSense in the forums.
Suggestions for TibEd 2 are welcome there too.
Koen
A new version of TibEd 2 is available. If you're using alpha 11 then it is recommended that you upgrade because alpha 11 has some stability issues when editing Mod settings and commandbuttons. A full list of what's new:
- You can now add strings for Generals and Zero Hour mods
- Added editing of Behavior modules for Generals and Zero Hour (all 177 of them!)
- Added Science.ini editing
- Added Rank.ini editing
- BUGFIX: no longer crashes on Mod settings and Commandbuttons
- Console output disabled
- Known problem: Zero Hour 1.0 reports missing file Rank.ini) when starting a new project; EA added this file in the patch so update to 1.02 if this annoys you. A more permanent solution is being looked into.
You can give feedback about TibEd in the TibEd support forum.
Koen
TibEd 2 for Generals and Zero Hour has been updated to alpha 11. This version has taken a very long time and seen a lot of prerelease builds, but now it has finally been released. What's new:
- Added "Clone weapon" and "Clone object"
- All new edit component (rewritten from scratch)
- Editing of CommandButton.ini and CommandSet.ini (so you can make certain units buildable)
- Editing of object modules is back in
- ModSelector can now ignore game version
Alpha 11 has done all the hard work, expect alpha 12 soon.
Koen
I've released an updated version of the TibEd 1.x series: TibEd v1.6. It has a lot of small updates, updated components, a new changes browser (faster), an updated string editor and new XP style menus.
I've changed the installer to not include the VB 6 runtimes by default, it will offer to download them for you if you do not yet have them. I've decided to do this because people using Windows XP already have them and they make the download 1 MB bigger. For your convienience, editors for all games are now included by default.
I've also released an updated Voxel Editor plugin for TibEd. You can find this one on the download page too.
Click here to go to the download page
Koen