ApexMods

Why not just sign up a couple of Gmail accounts for this?

Yes!!! :'> Great to see you energized for GR again, mate!

Mouth-watering video! Thanks a lot, Lighty!

Here's a counter-argument to that claim: Blizzard Entertainment. One of the absolute best and most successful game developers (and publishers!) of all time - and btw - multi-platform for Mac and PC from the start. Strictly speaking, Blizzard could even be called an 'Indy' developer, because from their humble beginnings (founded by three UCLA graduates in 1991) they remained independent from the big publishers and kept doing almost everything in-house. Sure, they too were 'acquired' by some financial conglomerate early on, had their share of stormy merger & acquisition times and been changing hands a lot before finally ending up as 'Activision Blizzard' under the French Vivendi umbrella - but nonetheless they stayed true to their course. Blizzard offer several examples of excellent (and extremly successful) sequel policy. Here's one: From 'Warcraft: Orcs and Humans' over 'Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness' and its expansion 'Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal' up to 'Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos' and 'Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne' - Blizzard took their brilliant game concept and kept expanding upon its core idea, refining it, modernizing it as new and better technologies became available, but never changing the underlying philosophy of the game. And they did this with an almost stoic patience and pace, taking more than enough time for each and every expansion and reiteration of the game to guarantee far above industry-average quality. But they don't stop there. Once a game is released, it seems they poor even more efforts into supporting it, e.g. with continuous updates - not to fix bugs (there rarely are any in Blizzard releases), but to actually enhance the game even further as customer feedback comes in. Yes, Blizzard actually listen to their customers very carefully and their paying attention to customers' wishes is reflected in each and every update patch they release. And those patches just keep on coming - just look at their 'Starcraft' title. A science-fiction spin-off of the medieval Warcraft series, released in 1998 and continuously (and frequently!) updated and refined to this very day. Which brings me to another important point. It's OK to do spin-offs - but maintain the core concept, philosophy, and quality of the original! Don't just milk a brand name with some half-hearted shovelware which is completely besides the point of the original. Stick to what is good and make it even better - that sums up a good sequel policy. This is neither impossible nor doomed to be financially non-viable, as Blizzard keep demonstrating to this very day.

Me neither. Sounds very good to me.

Yes Rocky, I see this in a very similar way. While my overall respect for Ubisoft is wearing extremely thin these days, I still hold a deep sympathy for Red Storm Entertainment, the company founded by Tom Clancy and his friend, Royal Navy Captain Doug Littlejohns, the company that created the tactical shooter genre with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, the company that turned the concept of first-person-shooters on its head by emphasizing brain over trigger finger, tactics over reflexes, realism over special effects. Although Red Storm was purchased by Ubisoft, and Tom Clancy sold the rights to his name as a game brand to them, I cannot help but wonder how he feels about his own name being raped for mindless mass-approval shovelware, not to mention Captain Littlejohns, who probably wouldn't want to see the fruits of his labor being dragged through the mud of cheap action shoot'em-ups, either. And while I don't know how many and who exactly of the Ghost Recon development team is still working at RSE, I am pretty sure the new crew is very much aware of the enormous legacy they inherited when the GR4 contract fell in their lap. Sadly, Red Storm's communication with fans here at GR.net is somewhat lacking, to say the least. But maybe they are listening closely, and secretly prepare a giant - and this time positive - surprise for us. As long as there is time for it, I intend to voice constructive thoughts about the future of Ghost Recon and maintain some optimism. Should 'they' fail us once again, there will be plenty of opportunity to unleash our never-ending wrath upon them. Oh, did this sound like a threat? Well, it is!

:'>

Welcome to the forum, jconradh. Thanks for the nice words and for posting your ike.log - most of the entries are 'normal' for Ghost Recon, for example lines like... ...will always appear when you start a standard game type like e.g. Firefight, because the game loads as many opposing force actors and weapon kits as are available, starting with opposing_force_0.atr/opposing_force_0.kit and moving up sequentially. Once all present files are loaded it will look one last time if there is more to load - e.g. opposing_force_7.atr while opposing_force_6.atr is the last one - and report that more files could not be found. So this is standard behavior which you will see without the mod as well and nothing to worry about. The line... is the same story - it is found in the non-modded game as well when there are stationary weapons on the current map. IIRC those camera helper points where never implemented in the game. A little troubling are these lines: They have actually nothing to do with the mod either, but rather point to some potential problem with your server setup. From the looks of it the server cannot write to the game directory - maybe a Vista privileges issue? Finally, please make sure that all players have the mod installed and that you adjust your game options to settings appropriate for your hardware. With your CPU, RAM and video card, I suggest you set all graphics options to 'Medium' (please refer to the included ReadMe file for more detailed information on options setup). The most common reason for game crashes with Heroes Unleashed are graphics options set too high. The mod is extremely(!) hardware demanding and will easily require 256 MB graphics memory and 2 GB of RAM when set to max graphics details, and high shadow details alone can slow a 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo to a crawl on some missions. Hope this helps.

Thanks, wombat. Yes, I do the same thing every time I watch the clips. I just knew you would love that part!

Meanwhile, I started playing around with some gameplay videos on YouTube. Nothing fancy yet, just some clips to test different video encoding qualities (so please don't mind the gameplay). Anyhow, here's the YouTube link to some early test videos.

Giampi, any news on this?

Hmm... difficult to understand - another case of a failed Google translation, I guess. You created a 3D model of a ship (Titanic?) and want to get it in-game as a map, correct? Did you use 3ds Max? Have you installed the required Ghost Recon plugins from RSE (found in the 'Extras' folder of the Island Thunder disk)? To create and export textured 3D models as Ghost Recon maps is quite an endeavor - there are several tutorials available here at GR.net e.g. here and here - a place to start would be here, for example.

I love the idea of a more in-depth guide on playing Ghost Recon especially in regards to controlling your team and various tactical aspects. I know there are some game FAQs/walkthroughs etc. out there but they don't really cover what MarkAm_i and Rocky have touched here. Maybe someone finds the time to put something comprehensive together in this regard?

Hmm... I'd be extremely interested in this little gem, too. Any ideas how and where to beg/buy/borrow/steal this? (The stealing part is of course a joke!)

Welcome to the forum, mrflanell! One way to do this is to create a map zone at the actor's position and then use a "ProximityPlatoon" trigger event, so it triggers when a member of your team is within - let's say - 5 meters of the actor's zone. Then you have the choice to use either trigger response "DisplayMessage..." or "DisplayMessageBox..." to display your text. The first will display a text overlay in the upper left corner of the screen, while the second displays it in a separate text box in the upper center of the screen. Hope this helps.

Tsss... Rocky - we constantly have to clean up after him!

Thanks, John. Doesn't show up in the "Latest Mods" section of the news page, though?

Thanks a lot, firefly. Taksi and CamStudio would have been my first choice (open source), but unfortunately taksi won't do sound at all (not yet implemented) and CamStudio would simply not find any sound source other than the mic. Edit: Got audio to work with CamStudio, but it won't allow recording to uncompressed video so you end up with very bad recording frame rates unsuitable for gameplay recordings.

Yes, the price is OK and I will probably buy a license for myself, but this request is not for me personally but for a group of people probably not willing to pay for this just to use it for one project that won't take longer than a couple of weeks. For my Mac I have spend quite a bit more on a professional AV-capturing solution.

"What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon." -- Napoléon Bonaparte

Nope, there's no such mod due to GR's hard-coded perspectives. There is a 'spectator' mode in GR that you can access when e.g. your game character dies which lets you follow any of your teammates in 1st or 3rd person view, though.

Yes, that's what everyone keeps telling me. FRAPS, FRAPS, FRAPS. Meanwhile I have found at least a temporary solution for PC called GunCam. It's another commercial (non-free) app, but at least it allows unrestricted use for 15 days, after which it adds a watermark to all movies. It works OK, although slightly more complicated than FRAPS.

Yes, it's an updated version. As far I can gather, they updated the older ones and added several previously unreleased maps.

Completely forgotten to mention that Punisher, Monoman, and RoeM have released their latest Ghost Recon mod some time ago. "GRPA: Reloaded" is version 5.0 of the extremely popular map pack for Mac and PC. It features over 30 new maps and 15 new weapons in one very slick package. "GRPA: Reloaded" Download for Mac and PC

I am waiting with bated breath for the next two masterpieces of Ghost Recon modding: Ghost Recon: Blood Oil & EDF - Eritrea Defence Force 2009 turns out to be a very good year for Ghost Recon! :'>