EA Releases Source Code For Old Command and Conquer Games (pcgamer.com) 25
EA has released the source code for several classic Command & Conquer games, including Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Renegade, and Generals & Zero Hour. "They're being released under the GPL license, meaning folks can mix, match, and redistribute them to their hearts' content without EA lawyers smashing down the door," adds PC Gamer. Additionally, Steam Workshop support has been added for multiple C&C titles, along with updated mission editor tools and a modding support pack. From the report: As for the Steam Workshop? That's getting switched on for C&C Renegade, C&C Generals and Zero Hour, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, and C&C 4 Tiberium Twilight (they can't all be winners). EA's also gone and "updated all the Mission Editor and World Builder tools so you can publish maps directly to the Steam Workshop." Plus, it's putting out a modding support pack that "contains the source Xml, Schema, Script, Shader and Map files for all the games that use the SAGE engine."
Per C&C producer Jim Vessella, EA commissioned C&C community veteran Luke 'CCHyper' Feenan to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection," and this is the fruit of his labor.
Per C&C producer Jim Vessella, EA commissioned C&C community veteran Luke 'CCHyper' Feenan to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection," and this is the fruit of his labor.
The SAGE engine is/was pretty cool... (Score:2)
For the time, the SAGE engine is/was pretty cool for what it did. It would be interesting using it for some new items. Not a "retro" game, but a game good enough for some new type of RTS, perhaps an RPG, or with procedural generation, a dungeon crawler. Pretty much anything could run it, so the focus would could shift to low poly art assets and gameplay.
Very cool (Score:2)
Sweet (Score:1)
I'm sure we'll see a flood of stuff on Steam that derives from this but frankly those were great games so anything built on them has at least a study foundation.
Ah... the glory days of the lan party (Score:4, Interesting)
I dragged my full tower 486dx2-66 with 16MB ram to an office with 7 other people for weekends, where we played C&C: Red Alert, Quake, Total Annihilation... light years better than dial up, and so much more socially enjoyable.
So much fun in looking at somebody across the room, and seeing their face when you dropped your TA radar jammers all at once and his screen suddenly showed he was completely and hopelessly surrounded... or hearing, "Nuclear Launch Detected", followed by a deadpan, "Oh fuck."
Now, with decades of dev under my belt, looking at the source code is both professionally interesting and nostalgic.
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16MB of ram? Damn. I'm pretty sure I only had 12 MB of ram in my 486dx2 @ 66. I eventually got a pentium overdrive chip in it, 85 MHZ. Oh lord, was it fast then, talk about cooking with fire.
You listed my bread and butter. I loved TA, C&C, Quake. TA I really was fond of and enjoyed it's spiritual successor supreme commander.
It was also fun when they finally visually scouted you and realized there was a lot of units around their base just hidden by jammers. Or if you had the expansion, sure OG big bertha
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TA was great, and it had a slow enough pace that I could enjoy it instead of feeling harried, though that might be a skill issue. I think they eventually kind of ruined it with too many units that were too similar, when "what they should have done" was make more factions which differed.
Quake, on the other hand, was almost perfect. It had IMO most excellent feel of any FPS ever, and it was early enough in the brown shooter era that you could still see stuff. What I remember playing at parties was lmctf. I th
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16MB of ram? Damn. I'm pretty sure I only had 12 MB of ram in my 486dx2 @ 66. I eventually got a pentium overdrive chip in it, 85 MHZ. Oh lord, was it fast then, talk about cooking with fire.
My 66MhZ DX2 "only" had 8MB RAM initially. Well, technically 4 straight out of the shop but I paid for an extra 4 because mere 4MB would have been too debilitating. Memory was actually quite expensive back then - more expensive than the processor/MB and the HD - so vendors skimped out on memory chips to keep the list prices for new computers attractive. I think Doom would have run on 4MB (ISTR that was the official minimum) but would regularly crash to out of memory errors. You needed 8MB or more to play Do
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That 16MB cost me about a thousand dollars.
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You are right. My memory is clearly combining a few years and system generations into one. While I'm certain of the other titles, Quake was likely further down the line.
In my defense I was a reluctant player, and when I played I was an incorrigible camper. No skill at all.
New Hope (Score:3)
I hope somebody will port these to LInux. Those are really great RTS games, possibly the greatest aside from Warcraft and Ages of Empire. It would give us retar(e)ds so much fun. :)
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Have a look at https://openra.net./ [openra.net.] Runs natively on Linux with mono, but they package it into an AppImage.
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https://openra.net/ [openra.net]
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I hope someone will port these to Windows! They need to start by writing shim libraries for DirectX 5. XD
Kidding by the way I know that these have already been ported. But the description on Github is quite scary "does not fully compile" right in the project description.
Not entirely newly released (Score:3)
It's worth noting that the DOS code for Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert were already released by EA under the GPL v3 ~5 years ago for a similar purpose. Slightly modified to compile the games to DLLs loaded by the remaster collection, but all the DOS code was still there, including superfluous stuff like DOS optical drive support.
What's new here appears to be the source of the Windows versions of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, as well as the additional games (Renegade, Generals: Zero Hour).
Conspicuously missing are the games released in between Red Alert and Renegade, that is, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. They were the logical next remaster targets after Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, so here's to hoping that they've not released their source code because they're still working on a remaster that they just haven't announced yet...
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Conspicuously missing are the games released in between Red Alert and Renegade, that is, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. They were the logical next remaster targets after Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, so here's to hoping that they've not released their source code because they're still working on a remaster that they just haven't announced yet...
I was thinking exactly the same, RA2 (+ the Yuri's Revenge expansion) are where the C&C series peaked in quality and replayability IMHO, I've been waiting for a remaster for a long time. So I'm desperately hoping the same as you, that their absence from these lists means we're finally getting a remastered version.
Licence (Score:4, Informative)
From the compilation instructions: To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game. The C&C Ultimate Collection is available for purchase on EA App or Steam.
Not au fait with GPL, but it talks about 'conveying' object forms, not running. Are EA not truly open-sourcing, or are they just talking about the assets?
Re:Licence (Score:5, Informative)
The assets are not part of this release. If you want to compile the code, you get a binary. But that binary doesn't have the game data at all.
It's just like all the other source code releases out there - the DOOM source code is out there under the GPL, but it doesn't include the game data needed to play DOOM.
This code is useful though if you want to play the game on other platforms - it can be ported to Linux, say, or made to work on modern machines or have a modern UI. But if you want to play the original game you need the original game data.
This would also allow mods, or people to come up with their own scenarios even if it doesn't ship with a scenario editor.
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Thanks, makes sense. Similar to openra.net, who reimplemented in .NET (including RA2), but of course requiring the original assets. Fortunately I've bought this game about three times over the years!
Was just playing.... (Score:2)
Wow I literally just exited a Zero Hour game, been deciding to play it the past few days.
What a strange coincidence.
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There are a lot of people in the world. So there's always going to be "coincidences" due to probability.
Voxel'rific! (Score:2)
There's more to a game than code (Score:2)
Does that include the art assets, or just the software?
I mean, it's still interesting if it's just the software, but releasing the complete game open source to tinker with would be doubly so.