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There's been a few news in the Command & Conquer community in recent times, so here's a round-up: Direct & Dominate: Absolute Units episode 4 is out (shown above) Amars90 has conducted interviews with Frank Klepacki and Jim Vessella for United-Forum.de, and will premiere an interview with Joe Kucan on August 7th (Friday) at 20:00 CEST as part of their celebration of 25 years of C&C on Twitch, alongside content from other creators. The YouTube channel AI & Games has posted an analysis video on the AI in the C&C Remastered Collection. The annual World Series tournament in Zero Hour ended, with BoYcaH earning his first title. An overview with links to all replays from the event is here.

In the latest update on the C&C remasters (this time official!), Jim Vessella takes it to the video format for the first time since the original announcement to address one of the most pressing questions among the members of the community - how the ingame cutscenes will be managed.

As announced last week, today is the day we receive the final (intended) update for Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection. It's a pretty large one, though, including the following key features: loading screen enhancements including minimap display added local replay file support added 6 player support in Tiberian Dawn added beacons expanded features for mods and custom maps including intro and win/loss videos, updated German translation thanks to the feedback from United-Forum.de fixed numerous bugs You can read the full changelog and dev comments here.

Today, the first patch for Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection is planned to go live. The changelog is quite long, but here is our summary: Performance issues will be resolved by loading everything before the match launches, which will prolong loading times but should reduce stuttering in the middle of the game Private (passworded) game lobbies are now available Muting players in chat enabled Overwriting existing saved games now possible Random faction choices available in custom matches Deploy hotkey now universal to all units with such a function Manual saving in custom missions enabled Tweaked balancing of the Hard difficulty mode in Tiberian Dawn Fixed bug that changed the difficulty of the mission after reloading Nod Cargo Planes no longer destructible Mission-specific fixes Various mismatching tile fixes on maps Map pool adjustments Tweaks to mod menu Jukebox now available in the main menu To read the full changelog, click here.

On September 26th, 1995, after about a month's worth of distribution issues, Westwood Studios shipped the original DOS version of Command & Conquer. It was based upon their 1992 strategy Dune II, but without a book/film license to keep them chained regarding what they could and could not do. Alongside Blizzard's WarCraft and later StarCraft series, Command & Conquer would become the most formative RTS franchise. The Command & Conquer demo was one of the first games I've ever played, and being just a little less than 5 months older than the game itself, I have a special connection to it. Admittedly, I play many different games these days, but returning to a Command & Conquer title feels like coming back home after a long trip - everything's comfortable and familiar. It's also much easier to return to the mentality of C&C than for most other strategy games, and no matter how many mechanical additions later C&C titles would get, they were all relatively simple on a fundamental level. While it is nice to spend an evening thinking of advanced build orders in Age of Empires or micromanaging small-scale shootouts in Company of Heroes, the certain bluntness of Command & Conquer is satisfactory on a different level. It's kind of like eating a few exotic flavours of ice cream and then returning to plain old basic chocolate - no matter how much you love the wacky combinations on your cone, the classics never fail you. While my go-to C&C throwback games are usually Yuri's Revenge, Kane's Wrath, the original Red Alert, and even Firestorm sometimes, the recent C&C Remastered Collection release reminded me of some things that got me hooked on the original (e.g. the feeling of commanding a contemporary-ish army with a few hi-tech gadgets, the lore, the simplicity) and even removed a few flaws that would turn me away from it after a while (absence of build queues, running out of Tiberium on the map, being very careful with new mission savegames, no proper skirmish). That little bit of fresh paint and a good tech refit enabled me to get a bit of that feeling of all-round satisfaction when playing Tiberian Dawn that I simply couldn't get in that level if I'd just fired up one of the original versions on this date. I have further thoughts on C&C as a franchise and RTS as a genre, but these will have to wait for a proper article or two in the coming days. Until then, whether you prefer the original 1995 DOS discs, the fan-updated Gold edition, or the recent remaster, please give Tiberian Dawn a run or two. This birthday is one you should show up to.

To say that yesterday's release of C&C Remastered Collection has been a success would be an understatement. Don't take it from me - SteamDB's charts alone (no data on Origin numbers) showed a peak of 42,587 concurrent players about an hour after launch, and the lowest point still being over 16,000 - something even StarCraft II can wish it has. The demand is so high that the multiplayer server keeps crashing, and the package has topped Steam's top seller page (sorted by relevance) days before release and is not letting go. The game's size turns out largely to be due to the fact that the original MIX files are distributed in their entirety in the game's directory. The source code is also within the directory, so you don't need to bother pulling it from Github. There have been issues with stuttering as well, but the team is aware of this and has proceeded to investigate. As a nice little tribute, the icons of the Tiberian Dawn engineer and the Red Alert grenadier appear to have been modeled after the late John "Totalbiscuit" Bain, who was a big fan of the Command & Conquer franchise. And now, time for subjectivity - I've played it for several hours on launch day, and even though I expected a lot given Jim Vessella's transparency and the very positive vibes from some of my friends who were in the community council, I was still pleasantly surprised at the overall quality of the project. It did exactly what it set out to do - not only did it faithfully recreate all the visuals, clean up the audio, and bring all the content from the expansions and console variants, but it also built an unprecedented level of trust that the series is back and there is hope that any future project will follow the same thread of thought. Dear Electronic Arts, as you can see, we have voted with our wallets. As you can see, we bought this not for the games that we have already had for free for over a decade - we bought it to support a kickass team who took their time and effort to make a release as good as it can be. If this were an entirely new title instead of a remaster, I guarantee you the sentiment would have been the same. Unlike the utter trash (and here I am insulting actual trash) that you have tried to give us from 2010 to 2018 and convince us to like it with zero merit, this is what we want - good gameplay, no microtransactions, no nickle-and-diming, and giving a well-suited team the necessary time and freedom to do things right. Was this so hard???

I've been wondering this for quite a while... Back in the day, when you saw the announcement and didn't know what Tiberian Twilight would eventually become, what did you guys expect the game would be in the most optimistic sense? What were you hoping to see in terms of storyline and general design? Also, if you were in EALA's shoes, minus the pressure from the higher-ups to push the game before it even takes shape, what would you have done in the game's development (using Kane's Wrath as the last canon Tiberium title)? The reason I ask is that I want to see some different thoughts on the Tiberium universe. I want to see if people agree on enough fronts to form an idea of general sentiment. Perhaps a community project can come out of that?

Petroglyph seems to have joined up with Team17, another company which hasn't developed a proper title in many, many years.

About an hour and a half ago, Jim Vessella posted an update on the C&C subreddit regarding changes in the beta branch of the C&C Remastered Collection, as per last week's call for community input: The Nod Cargo Plane delivery time has been normalized to 4 seconds on Normal speed The TD Weapons Factory health has been increased by 30% The RA1 naval structures have been removed from the victory condition To address the TD Engineer / APC issue, the APC now has the Repair Facility as a pre-requisite to build Harvester logic improvements AI supported in LAN mode Quickmatch map pools rotated, added selected community-made maps The full post (and it's quite a read) can be seen here.

A couple of news bits regarding the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection have popped up: The cnc.community site has prizes for players of the remasters from 24th to 27th September. Those who rank first in the Tiberian Dawn and/or Red Alert leaderboards for that day will receive a 1-year subscription to EA Play (formerly named Origin Access), and those who finish in the top 50 have a chance to receive a random prize as well. More information can be read here. The Remastered Collection itself is 25% off until 5th October on Steam to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tiberian Dawn (which is on 26th September), while the other Steam C&C titles are 75% off (note that that is 75% off the increased price from this February). All the prices can be seen here. For those who have the remasters and are facing numerous issues, Jim Vessella has confirmed that a hotfix is being made to address at least some of them, but it would appear that the team has already past the deadline to do so, so not all of the issues seen since last week's update may be fixed.

Moments ago, Renegade-X: Firestorm was officially revealed after multiple teases in recent months. As can be seen from the trailer, it is a Tiberian Sun version of the game, but it will exist as a separate mode, or rather set of maps that will be available for seamless switching through map voting at the end of each round. The expected release date is fall 2020.

Just as infantry squads and individual infantry units can be placed separately in Worldbuilder (because of how the squad system works), the same goes for Mechapedes. What you need is the AlienCustomizableVehicle object, which acts as a "squad" entity in this case.

No, you needn't use the CnCNet client for anything other than the options screen (which affects both the standard RA2 and YR) and multiplayer if you wish down the line. Again, you run RA2/YR as you did before, the campaign option is still there in the original EXE's.

Download CnCNet's YR multiplayer client (bear with me), run it, go to the Options menu and choose a different graphics renderer until the game stabilizes enough (different options work better on different hardware). Run the game from Origin as you normally would.

A streak of anniversary posts, eh? On 27 October 1997, CNCNZ.com first came online (then under the name TiberianSun.Net.NZ). While a good year for Command & Conquer, with how the Remastered Collection reinvigorated public interest in the franchise, it was another quiet one on this front. Another round of personal obligations, interests in other (often higher-level) communities and even grabbing a position in a game studio didn't reflect well on the willpower to reignite this site's activity. Also, with the C&C community being increasingly decentralized yet again, thanks to numerous topical and off-topical Discord servers which catch news and things of interest before we can, I think a proper discussion on what the site's future direction really should be is in order. This is in no way a criticism towards those servers, as they have in fact been instrumental in getting a lot of projects going, mods progressing, and even the remasters themselves patched (at least to a decent degree). We just need to find our place again. Also, I am aware of a glitch on the non-forum part of the site preventing drop-downs from appearing on mouse hover, and medium-to-large gallery pages ending up blank. IIRC there was a similar issue before but I can not remember what the solution was. I will investigate it by the end of the week.

The Ultimate Collection has a separate procedure: https://cncnz.com/features/technical-support-help-guides/fully-updating-the-ultimate-collection/

The TFD 1.03 patch and other unofficial patches for most classic titles include no-CD functionality. The procedure is here: https://cncnz.com/features/technical-support-help-guides/fully-updating-the-first-decade/

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the original Command & Conquer, Jim Vessella posted on Reddit what the series means to him, but more importantly, he addressed a common community dilemma of what is acceptable in a Command & Conquer mod and what is not. So for the first time, we have a written general modding FAQ on the official website, which can be read here. Finally, he informed the fans that the Limited Run collector's editions should be shipping soon, but that it may take a few weeks to reach individual locations. The entire post can be read here.

As we reported yesterday, and as was to be expected considering the problem reports from around the entire community, the C&C Remastered Collection received a hotfix patch to resolve some of the issues that have arisen since last week's major patch. Again, the team did not have much time to resolve all issues so they concentrated on the more critical ones. Here's the full post from Jim that you can read while letting Steam/Origin auto-update the game: Following the launch of last week’s patch, we heard about several key issues players were encountering during their experience. We didn’t want to leave the game with these issues, and have released a final update today to address several of the most prominent items. They include: Fixed an issue where vehicle turrets were disappearing or sorting below the chassis Fixed an issue where vehicles were drifting / sliding during their movement Fixed an issue where certain fire animations were choppy or missing animation frames Fixed an issue where the Attack Cursor was not always reflecting properly Fixed an issue where helicopter units were not landing on the Helipad when using certain hotkeys Fixed an issue where Turkey’s sub-faction bonus was not working properly Fixed an issue where the intro cinematic was not playing when restarting custom missions Fixed an issue where the gameplay would freeze when restarting custom missions Fixed a crash (we hope) which was occurring when accessing the Options menu Adjusted Harvester behavior: Here is some context on the chain of events here. In the August patch, Harvesters would jam up around a single Refinery and often get stuck. We made a change in the September patch to encourage Harvesters to search for an open Refinery, but this was resulting in less desirable behavior where the Harvester would drive to a Refinery far away from their current resource field and become far less efficient. So in this update, we attempted to make an adjustment based on community feedback. We have reverted the original change in the September patch, sending us back to jamming Harvesters. But Harvesters can now be re-assigned to a specific Refinery and will remember their assignment. So players who wish to optimize their resource harvesting can do so through attentive micro, and try to keep a balance of Harvesters on each Refinery at their nearest desired field. We hope this is an acceptable compromise. Adjusted the implementation of the Church capture in Tournament Ore Rift Our previous fix for this issue resulted in the behavior of making all neutral buildings non-capturable, which was negatively impacting the flexibility of User Maps. So we adjusted the fix for this to specifically prevent just the Church object (V01) from being capturable. Removed “Canyon Pursuit” from the Tiberian Dawn Quickmatch pool Removed “Electric Avenue” from the Tiberian Dawn Quickmatch pool Both of these removals were originally requested by the community prior to the September patch, which is now possible with the addition of two new maps below. Added “Tournament Middle Camp” community map into Tiberian Dawn and the Quickmatch pool Added “Tournament Desert” community map into Tiberian Dawn and the Quickmatch pool We also attempted to add several other community maps, but did not receive permission from their associated authors or had difficulty contacting them. We promised not to use community content without the authors’ permission and respect their decision. Thanks for the support and patience as we worked through these items, and we’re eager to hear if this update improves your experience with the C&C Remastered Collection. Cheers, Jim Vessella Jimtern

The development teams of Tiberian Sun: Reborn and Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising have formed a new group and launched a base of operations, called W3D Hub. The entirety of the teams has migrated there, so you can be sure you'll still be playing the Renegade-derived games you know and love. Discussions relevant to those two mods have been ported to the new forums as well, so you will not miss out on anything. Click here to see their forums and greet them.

The development of the second patch for the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection is well underway, and players can test out its beta right now. Aside from an early version of LAN play, it has a feature that will bring a smile to many players - a slider which dictates the speed of Tiberium/ore regrowth, among other changes that will be officially announced once the patch is finished. Here's Jim Vessella's full update: Fellow Command & Conquer fans, Today we are inviting you to try a Beta version of our in-development patch, which most importantly includes an early version of LAN Play. Our goal in sharing this Beta version is to get your feedback on LAN Play and ensure this feature is living up to your expectations. We’re looking for both qualitative and technical feedback on the feature, especially with regards to playing multiplayer LAN games with Mods enabled (either locally or over VPN). We reinforce this is an early version, and certain elements (including AI) may not work correctly in LAN play just yet. Everyone who owns the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection on Steam is able to participate in this Beta version of the game. Please follow these steps to gain access: Go to your C&C Remastered Collection page on Steam Click on the Manage button (gear icon) Select Properties Navigate to the Betas tab In the dialog box, enter “TDRABetaPatch1” Click Check Code Once the code accepts, select the “Public Beta” branch from the drop down menu The game will now update to the Public Beta version, at which point you can play At any time, you can update back to the standard live version via the same drop down menu Please note, there are several dozen other improvements in this Beta version, which we’ll list out in more detail when the patch is officially released. However, please keep an eye out for these key items: The ability to choose the speed of Tiberium / Ore regrowth. This is now a slider in the game rules section. (0 being disabled, 1 being default, and 2-9 being multiples on default). We’re eager to see if this feature satisfies requests from the community, and we’re also looking for feedback on what the new Quickmatch default regrowth setting should be. If you saw increased framerate stuttering or launch crashing after the June major patch versus the launch version, we have an experiment you can try: Go to your C&C Remastered Collection page on Steam Click on the Manage button (gear icon) Select Properties On the General tab, select “Set Launch Options…” In the box, enter “NOSPLASHPRELOAD” Click OK and launch the game This will effectively revert the texture optimizations we made in the June Patch, and may help performance / stability with certain hardware configurations (This launch option will also work with the standard live branch as well) Please note, while playing in the Beta version, online play will be disabled and certain mods may not be compatible. Please play the Beta version and alter Launch options with caution and understand there may be a risk. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on LAN Play and other improvements. Cheers, Jim Jimtern

Update on the hot topic of balance issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/hsy1t0/remaster_update_and_july_balance_feedback/

I really should unpin this thread. See links in the post above yours to see the updated procedure.

From my experience, the performance is definitely smoother.

Give it time