Developer's Blog - A Year Of Development

It’s already a year since I’m start making this mod., so I will tell you the story behind the mod making in this one year.

June 2008. Learning from mistakes I did in my first mod (called Project:Prototype), I’m starting make another mod for ZH after I joined at DeeZire forum. Unlike the first mod that just put random things (major influence from Contra), this new mod intended on fixing current bugs that occurs in ZH v1.04. But later I found someone already makes a balance mod (I’ll not tell the mod name, but it’s a quite popular mod) but I found it destroy some balances instead making it more balanced, so I found this mod another objective: Refine Game Balances. I watched many game replays, listen players (either n00bs or Pros) comments and opinions, then examine the problem. If I found that problem is a critical issue and need to be rebalanced, then I surely make the fix.

August 2008. I first release this little mod on DeeZire. On that time this mod just enable Boss General as new playable faction, and apply some bug fixes that reported at "Coding Mistakes and Useless Things in INIs by EA" thread in DeeZire forum, also major fix for the popular Scud Bug. Since at the time DeeZire forum a little dying, just around 5 members still active in the forum (I found only Redemption, beng, Yayo01, CommieDog, BlueGalactic, and me), only a few people that know this mod.

October 2008. I asked beng what is the best place to publish mods, because I want to know what people think about my mod. He asked me to go to CNCFiles and CnCMaps.com. It gets a good response from peoples, even some said that my mod is still have bugs and often makes the game crashes (ChemSuit Pilot issue). Well, that’s because I haven’t any beta testers at the time. :P

December 2008. I released my second (third actually) installment of my mod. And I just finished playing RA3 :P
From the last release I’ve found the best ZH mod, yes, CnC ShockWave (SW). Then the idea to make game modes and integrate the game itself (not integrate the factions like common mods) come in my mind. I’m starting to put extra maps and housecolor selections, expanding the option menu, put unused scripts for the WorldBuilder (thanks to DeeZire for the info and helps). I also make a blog for this mod on Blogger (nprojectmod.blogspot.com). Then, later I joined ModDB.

January 2009. Because of some problems, CNCFiles and DeeZire forum temporarily closed. Makes me more active on CnCMaps and ModDB, then I joined Fallout Studios. There is where I found how to make batch launcher for mods (thanks to CodeCat for his mod launcher).

February 2009. I released the version 2.5 on ModDB. Because this mod version has no bugs like usually I did in previous versions, this mod version becomes the most stable mod version. This mod version is also the first version that compatible with other mods (except stand-alone mods).

March 2009. An accident makes my computer got a heart attack and must be formatted. So I lost the current build that time and must redo all works from version 2.5. The day I will not forget.

June 2009. NPM 2.6 out. After the "unforgettable moment", I successfully fix almost all fixable ZH bugs and give Boss General an AI. The main menu color also changed from blue to red. Actually I also make the Boss General playable in Generals Challenge, but because some reason it can win on the first stage. I made the fix on August 2009.