Zeealex

Looks fake.

Do as you feel would be my advice. It seems Ubi are drifting more and more away from the fans who have been the backbone of the community for so long. Just don't say anything that could put you in line for a lawsuit lol.

Happy Birthday Rocky dude!! Hope it's been a good one so far!

It looks so pwetty 😍

It's an interesting look into why Ghost Recon 1's formula worked so well. And I really hope that Ubi begin to see that Ghost Recon is best served as a shooter that brings something unique to the table, rather than being "cookie cutter" and trying to cash in on trends in the industry, it is better for Ghost Recon to be the rebellious runt of the litter. I think with their refinement of their TPS mechanics they're starting to get that nailed. I'm cautiously optimistic the next game will do something good.

It's an interesting premise. I think a game might be a bit of a far stretch, I know those things can become a costly rats nest quickly and getting dedicated resources on hand to work on it consistently would be tough. I've done a few stints in indie game land to know how bad the turnover rate can get. It's easy to have rose-coloured glasses when looking from the outside in but getting guys who actually do the work is harder than it looks lol. I did start to write a fiction work that was similar to the premise of Ghost Recon but with more of a cyberwarfare and ELINT/SIGINT focus, I was trying to with cyber what what Clancy did with the US Navy and MASINT in Red October. It was outside of the Ghost Recon/Clancyverse entirely. Original characters, teams and setting, but was inspired by GR in a lot of ways. So I'm not sure how relevant it would be. Lost steam on it, I could see if I still have the old drafts around and contribute if folks are interested.

Thanks for the kind words, 101 ❤️ In terms of the many sins of Ubisoft, yeah it was actually hearing the horror stories of friends working for them (Montreal mainly) and experiencing the unfair, sexist and frankly xenophobic hiring practices of them first hand that made me quit my pursuit of a career in the games industry. That plus the general nepotism problem in the industry as a whole. My dream was to work for Ubisoft on a Ghost Recon game, so when it came to put myself out there and I got absolutely smacked down, It really shattered my worldview. In the end I just couldn't face 3dsMax anymore. I regret letting it hit me so hard, but I don't regret cutting losses and getting out while I could. I enjoy cybersecurity way more, bit more of a thrill-ride way more of a reward, especially with everything going on right now. In terms of Ghost Recon, I think it really stands to be seen, I unfortunately don't have a magic 8 ball in front of me that can tell the future, as much as I wish I did lol. My optimistic side wants to say that they'll pull something good off, but I'm certainly not going to jump on the hype train early unless some very specific, yet unlikely conditions are met. I dunno, maybe some narrative director at Ubi read my rants lmao.

I'mma counter that by being cautiously optimistic, as I typically am to a fault these days. It seems the whole games industry is really struggling right now, I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft's days as a major game developer at the very least, are numbered. However, I see the next generation of games they bring out as their "make or break" they'll know that, and while there was a lot wrong with Wildlands and a lot more wrong with Breakpoint, I'll give them one thing, in terms of gameplay, I think they've finally nailed down a formula for Ghost Recon that's accessible for new players while placating some of the older fans of the series. They've gotten their gameplay identity nailed down after 22 years, and as much as there's a lot I don't like about it as one of the "oldies" I can at the very least respect that. They've also quickly come to terms with NFT's not being viable. We also know they were working on a Splinter-Cell reboot that took it back to the roots with minor story adjustments to reflect the world as it is today. I will get through the rest of this without hero-worshipping I promise. If they sort out the major issues with the story and build upon the foundation of gameplay they set with Wildlands and the later versions of Breakpoint I think they'll have a shot. They realised just how far they misstepped with Frontline and very quickly canned it. New players didn't want it, old players were disgusted by the notion. They may yet come around to the idea that the fanbase of Ghost Recon won't take kindly to quick cash-grabs. They can't do to Ghost Recon what they did with Rainbow Six, the fanbase just won't stand for it. In my opinion though, Ghost Recon has found its gameplay identity at last but I think the story leaves a lot to be desired. I'm probably not in the minority here when I say the Michael Bay-esque big explosions and overtly bad bad guys doesn't play well into what Ghost Recon realistically should be. The story of breakpoint felt very much like that really bad fanfic I wrote when I was twelve or some sh**, except with more Addison Cain/ABO flare, and that is not a compliment. I'll be honest, as much as I love the gameplay of the original Ghost Recon games, it was the story and the backdrop that really sold it for me. Hell, the story was so grounded and accurate in the earlier games that the timings of real world political incidents in Georgia, Russia and North Korea matched almost perfectly. You were just a group of guys doing denied ops behind enemy territory, you weren't a living legened, literally likened to a god by your subordinates like Mitchell in the later games was. You didn't personally know the guys you were fighting in some contrived way of adding conflict to the plot like Nomad. You weren't a tech savant with a penchant for stupidity like Kozak, though I could see that being interesting. I think Ghost Recon really needs an injection of that grounded story and crew mixed with the gameplay style that Wildlands/Breakpoint brought to the table. The Ghost Recon 2 crew were a perfect example of that "group of guys" all had their own unique personalities, drivers and backstories but they weren't played up or totally unrelatable. I don't think the tech was quite there for the Ghost Recon 1 crew to shine through in the same way, but they were set up in a similar way, just unfortunately not reflected in game due to lack of tech at the time. So imo, if they hard reset back to the roots in terms of story and start again with the Ghost Recon 2 version of Mitchell and his crew, hell, reset Mitchell and make them a customisable character. Add the new gameplay style, I frankly wouldn't be mad at that. It wouldn't be the absolute perfect rendition of Ghost Recon 1 replicated play for play on a shiny new engine, I've come to terms with the fact that that's just not happening. Nor would it be my absolute dream hero-worshipping game centered around you-know-who, because I realise I'm in a niche minority of the old guard who still even remember her. but, it would certainly get me interested.

Scuttlebutt in the gaming community indicates that Ubisoft is struggling financially and they've had to cut off several of their IPs However, it appears Ghost Recon has survived the cut for now and a new game is rumoured to be starting production with a release date of 2025. Of course, this is all rumor for now, nothing solid. What's your wishlist for the new upcoming game?

Yeah, giving away the source code of what is officially someone else's intellectual property is a pretty big NoNo from a legal and ethical perspective. It would get shut down super fast and that person can kiss their career goodbye. We're unfortunately stuck on that front unless someone manages to compromise ubisoft's network and somehow find it and leak it. I would be surprised if it was on a live server though, unless they're actively working on a reboot it's probably in cold storage. For clarity; I am by no means recommending any sort of cybercrime in relation to this. It would be very silly to break that many laws for some source code.

okay so as a security professional everything about this gives me the heebiejeebies but: Just an FYI you perform these steps at your own risk, by performing these steps you're agreeing that you will not hold anyone here including myself liable for anything blowing up in your face. Create a comprehensive offline backup of your system and files before proceeding further, you may choose to skip this step however doing so is on your own volition. Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L87haCbSNJIgC2urg2I66Ymik5uSxBmR/view?usp=sharing Place atiumdag.dll into the root folder of Ghost Recon (where ghostrecon.exe is) Attempt to run the game, it should now no longer complain about a missing component, if it still does, you may have to place atiumdag.dll into C:\Windows\System32 instead, risky, so take care. I've taken a cursory glance at the .dll file I've linked and I can see that it does appear to be a legitimate driver component for the old ATI radeon GFX cards, it doesn't appear to call anything I wouldn't expect, but I've not done any comprehensive static analysis on it so please take it with a pinch of salt. Also footnote; please keep Windows up to date lol. A broken game is better than ransomware.

Aye, doing good here, Wombat, how about you?

https://www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-shares-very-early-look-at-splinter-cell-remake It looks like Ubisoft are starting to think remaking their older Tom Clancy titles may be in their best interests, with it confirmed that they're working on a splinter cell remake, and with Operation Motherland DLC for Ghost Recon Breakpoint bringing some retro characters back, I'm wondering if a Ghost Recon remake may be on the cards if this project works out well for them. discuss!

if I put my information security GRC hat on a minute. I think in this day and age people are starting to see just how much people's data is exploited for profit and people are now very cautious about who they share their personal data with. Not saying that GR.net is in any way, just it's an unfortunate by-product of big tech companies like Facebook and Google just throwing around personal data willy nilly, people don't wanna take the risk anymore. While the risk of sharing a name or an email address to GR.net is low given that it is unlikely to be associated with a password or any other personal info, I can understand this person's concern. I wouldn't take it personally ❤️

As finished as my 16 year old butt could get it lmao

Project Novo??

I'd kind of like an RPG in the Ghost Recon series honestly, maybe as a spinoff game as opposed to a game in the main line. I think it could work really well, but it would have to embrace the SP RPG playstyle all the way, in-depth story in a very rich setting, player choices, character development, and so on, unfortunately Ubisoft sucks at those things in particular.

I think the game's 'servers' in the more colloquial sense are sperate to the game validation servers which is part of the Uplay service, I believe. So provided Uplay is still connected, the game will still be playable, albeit in single player. Quick way of testing I guess is to block internet access from the game .exe in windows firewall but keep Uplay open and connected, if the game runs, then it will be fine when the gameplay servers go offline.

Bit sexist and baseless, but okay. All of the production managers for the original ghost recon were women. There was at least one woman in almost every main team in the original Ghost Recon's production Female characters have been present, no, integral to the game since the very start. In a time where it was very uncommon to include them except as eye candy in low cut belly tops or skin suits for guys to ogle, it was a risky move to include respectfully written and developed women suited up like the guys in such a time, yet they still did it. There was also no "for boys" restrictions to the game, it was made for anyone who wanted to play it, I, a person who happens to be a woman, played it and modded it religiously and still do. The base of female gamers has increased since 2001 - however this does not forseeably account for why Ghost Recon's gameplay has shifted. Correlation =/= causation. Furthermore, of the board of directors in Ubisoft, today, March 2nd 2022, there are three women sitting on the board, and 10 men. Only one of those women would have had any steer in Ghost Recon's development, as she was a senior gameplay programmer for Ghost Recon specializing in AI (go figure). However she appears to be a new addition to the board and so far would not have had much in the way of steer for the franchise in recent history. The other two women, specialise in recruitment and IT operations, the day to day running of the business and ultimately would have had very little impact over the gameplay. Unless you want to say that the increased use of Z-Brush and AMD based computers is also a cause of Ghost Recon's gameplay deteriorating or something. This fundamentally is not a "woman" issue. To conflate it as such is an exercise in myopia. This is an issue of Ubisoft fighting off multiple controversies and hostile takehovers from stakeholders (see Vivendi) while also desperately trying to keep up with the increasingly demanding consumer base and complexity of modern systems and as such over the years losing their identity to greed. It is also, most likely, a simple lack of proximity to Tom Clancy. You know, cause he passed and all. He was a big advisor in the first (and I think second) game. RSE started to have less and influence in GR after GR:AW and the development of narrative and also gameplay was dished out to other studios. This lack of proximity and resultant lack of narrative flare was also more likely a major contributing factor than "person has uterus, person bad"

I don't do 3D anymore unfortunately, especially with max 5 lol. Max 2013+ has a neato little tool called skin wrap which makes the rigging process 900x easier. Having to do it all by hand is just way too stressful for me after so many years. Happy to show peeps where the buttons are, and I'll still be trying to chip away at a CHR plugin for modern max versions (and no doubt harassing the other Alex lol) at some point, but otherwise I'm taking a wee break from 3D.

Lol right?! Character modelling in any game is a PITA honestly, lots more moving parts, literally. I don't have max installed anymore (gg me) but I think I have a VM with max 5 on, I'll show you how to modify the model hopefully sometime today

It's also worth noting it appears you've moved the bone positions to fit the model as well, bad juju. If you change bone positions the character will not work well in-game. You need to fit the model to the bones. There's an example character file lying around somewhere, lemme see if I can find it.

Unfortunately not, unlike more modular games such as Arma 3 it is not possible to change the memory allocator for the Ike engine. There are injectors such as enbseries which can inject some functionality of DirectX 9 however this does not do much except add bloom and other global screen effects (at one point it did fix the game for Windows 10). The rest of the rendering goodness such as the new optimizations 9c offered is limited by how the engine uses it, as Ghost Recon was designed and built around DirectX 8.1 it cannot take advantage of the newer API functions. You would essentially need to have the source code, a really good reverse engineer, or rebuild the game from the ground up in order to have it manage memory in a more modern manner. Process injection can only go so far, and in doing so you would be opening the game up for further instability as you could inject data into the wrong memory address at any time.

I wonder if it could be an engine/rendering API issue. Where it's having to make so many new draw calls per frame that the engine simply can't keep up. Its a theory, but it would make sense given the age of the game. So, iirc replays in GR work super weird. It's not technically a video replay but actually just a record of every move every character took and every shot that was made and what the effect of that shot was being replayed through the mission file, pretty neato, but it's essentially rendering everything again in real time, hence enemy characters might actually be different than when you played. If you're running mods that have higher resolution textures and higher poly models, at 8x speed, it's having to flush and redraw a lot more than, say 1x speed. For example, you're in iron dragon, at the very start you can't see the caves, so the rendering API doesn't draw the caves and the engine has little need to commit the textures or models to VRAM, because you simply can't see it. However, as you get closer, to the point where you can see it, the rendering API makes a draw call, the engine commits vertex indices and textures to VRAM and the caves are drawn on your screen. At 1x speed, the engine and the rendering API really don't need to change that much to draw a new frame, or load too much into VRAM. you might see a new character or a piece of scenery, however that's a few new draw calls at most. Now, at 8x speed, the difference between frames might be huge, you might go from the start of the mission all the way up to the caves in just a few seconds, which means the engine is having to work much harder to quickly call the rendering API to 'draw that character in this frame' then commit the necessary textures and model files to RAM, instead of just a few times per second, it's now having to potentially do this dozens, if not hundreds of times per second. Add non-billboard, higher resolution textures and higher poly models to the mix, the game may struggle to flush these out when not needed or appropriately allocate memory for each model and texture file. While your computer may be able to handle it, the engine will have an upper limit where performance begins to diminish, Ike was optimised for fewer lower resolution models and textures. And I think it usually begins to see a performance drop at 20,000 vertices per frame, despite having an index buffer which would allow for 65535 vertices per model. I'm sure someone will come over and debunk this theory as GR has many little niggles I'm still wrapping my head around after many, many years, it could be that simply the mods don't play too nice with replay files.

I'm trying to write a .chr plugin for modern max versions, that will allow for use of the features in those versions such as skin wrap which will make things about 900 times easier lol its gonna take some time especially with my work schedule.