Plok

Mate... GameSpy's services have been gone for 9 years.

Anniversaries have a tendency to creep up on one. It's a big one this time - this very site is 25 years online, maintaining its position as oldest English-speaking (and second-oldest in general, behind only the French CnCSaga) Command & Conquer fansite still up. Times have definitely changed for the franchise in these 25 years. Not just from the perspective of the games themselves, but the dynamics in the community as well. Since the games have been out from the zeitgeist of gaming culture for a good while, there's not a lot going on anymore - it's basically just running through the motions of several mods still being developed and community multiplayer servers still maintaining life support, but that's about it. Only a few content creators still give it the time of day, like Sybert's frequent commentaries or Direct & Dominate episodes and shorts. Sadly, gone are the days of frequent discussions on the gameplay, lore, balancing, new ideas for the series, or just general fan enthusiasm and buzz. Even as discussions have moved from forums to services like Discord and Guilded, actual C&C discussion is getting more scarce compared to what it used to be, and most of us "older" people in the community have gradually but surely moved on to other, more rewarding projects online and AFK, with few new members to pick up where we left off. Every time someone tries to wipe the dust off our projects and mutual connections, all momentum very quickly disappears as other things get in the way and they eventually realize the effort outweighs the outcome (but bless you for trying, you know who you are if you're reading this). While this site will stay online, I would really, for once, like to hear some thoughts and feedback from the few of you who are still around - is there a future at all for C&C fansites that are not focused on a single project/purpose like the community servers, is there a point to adding anything to it, and do you still browse it from time to time? On a more lighter note, how have these 25 years been for you regarding CNCNZ.com and Command & Conquer in general, are there some particular memories you'd like to share? Let us know in the forums and our Discord.

Resident C&C collectors have caught wind of a promotional VHS tape for the original Command & Conquer that was shown in stores before the game's release (as evidenced by the stated May 1995 release date, which ended up being pushed to September), and features various footage and explanations from the developers themselves. The shown build is quite different from what ended up in our hands, and even the old style of misison briefings which quickly flashed at in a prior trailer is shown in full. The tape's footage is actually a few minutes long but is repeated to a full hour so store owners didn't have to rewind as often. Credits go to collector Wesley for tracking the tape down and digitizing, and TaxOwlbear for uploading!

At this point, yes. All three Definitive Editions are now in a good shape.

Beta tests are still a way's off.

I ran a WHOIS of those IPs, I strongly doubt it has anything to do with the patcher itself, but rather the Windows sandbox they use. arc.msn.com is called even on the first run of a clean Windows OS.

For once, I genuinely see a fresh and interesting idea from Petroglyph. I really hope it succeeds.

Thanks! I've been helping out in the design department.

Yeah, more specifically I'm involved with the game's development, as far as this site is concerned.

The DRM can indeed trigger on legitimate copies under specific circumstances. The best thing you can do right now is to reinstall the game, but run the installer as administrator, as the serial key did not get correctly placed in the registry files most likely.

Looks alright. I'm told 1.02+/1.03 has a bug where the game crashes if the AI tries to build Mechapedes. Does the game crash if you play exclusively with GDI/Nod?

What are your system specs? Which version of the game are you playing / where did you buy it? Do you use any mods?

Yet another surprise patch for the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection has arrived yesterday, reporting ingame as 745903.1. It's a small one, with the differential download "weighing" a mere 112 KB on Steam, and features new digital signatures in the executable and main DLLs, as well as fixed support for Intel Xe Graphics chipsets on Gen 11 and 12 laptops with Intel processors. Sadly, no other fixes are featured. Here's the official word from Petroglyph Games' senior producer Ted "VirtualTed" Morris: Hey everyone, Today a very small patch was released to fix an issue around the Intel Xe graphics chipset, commonly found on Gen 11 and Gen 12 laptops with an Intel processor. If you were using one of these laptops and frequently ran into crashes after playing for a short time or even upon startup, this update should address that problem. Thanks for hanging in there while we fixed, and then spent (a great deal of) time testing this updated before rolling it out. -VT This comes during Petroglyph's period of focusing on an unannounced game for a separate publisher, so it's highly unlikely any future updates will be made for the Remastered Collection. Meanwhile, EA's side remains silent regarding the franchise's future.

By the events of C&C3, there was already a network of ion cannons as per the intelligence database: https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Intelligence_Database

I don't think the script author knows what they're doing... Tiberian Dawn's 1.06 patch has been around for about a decade and it doesn't require 1.05 to install. Also, it doesn't mention a thing of what it does to other titles. Thing is, even on Windows, TFD is a bit tricky to fully update these days: https://cncnz.com/features/technical-support-help-guides/fully-updating-the-first-decade/

If there's a ddraw.log in your RA2 directory, submit it to the CnCNet RA2 forums or their Discord. They maintain the launcher and some of the renderers. https://forums.cncnet.org/forum/56-red-alert-2/

None.

False positive for sure.

No idea on the specifics, but ya, sadly the domain is still in the hands of someone who's doing nothing with it with a seemingly dubious rights claim. The true community was first on ren-x.com as a replacement but now that's just a redirect to the Totem Arts site.

No need to post the same thing in four different subforums. https://www.origin.com/irl/en-us/store/command-and-conquer/command-and-conquer-the-ultimate-collection

You're behind on the news for about a year or so; there was an internal divide between the devs and one ex-dev who commandeered the most common-used domain for a short while. Said ex-dev had exactly 0 community support for what he was doing so it went nowhere. Anyway, Ren-X is very much alive: https://totemarts.games/forums/topic/79341-renegade-x-patch-563282-patch-notes/

Change the renderer in the CnCNet client until it works for the main executables. Different ones work on different PCs, so there's no single solution.

After a successful first version, GenPatcher 2.0 has finally arrived. As before, this tool streamlines the installation, patching and configuring process for C&C Generals and Zero Hour on modern systems, implementing multiple fixes at once and tackling pretty much all known causes for problems in setting the game up. This new version, which had been in beta since November 2021 and downloaded by 3000 users, introduces new fixes and also incorporates optional downloads such as GenTool, ExiLe's Control Bar Pro, GenLauncher for mods, Leikeze's hotkey preset, Adriane's modified Worldbuilder, and over 100 maps. Whether you're playing alone, casually with friends or competitively, this tool is an absolute must have. It comes in online downloader and full offline bundle versions, so you can even plan offline LAN parties like in the good old days. Full information and downloads are available on the author's website, Legi.cc.

On 1 January 2002, official Sole Survivor servers on (the now also former) Westwood Online were shut down, leaving the series' first multiplayer-centric title without a way to play online. Only repetitive 15-minute deathmatches against AI opponents have been available to us since then. A small group of community members (OmniBlade, CCHyper, tomsons26) have taken it upon themselves to create some sort of alternative that would allow fans to play this game online and even experience the game modes that have been scarcely mentioned or documented. Currently, development is still ongoing and the tester pool is small (including some of the players who were part of the Sole Survivor community back in the day!), but there have already been livestreams by Jarmo and PapasNowPro as early as two weeks ago that can give you a taste of what the game truly looks like. While there is no strict timeframe for wider community access, the team did announce that they are planning to let more people in once they are satisfied with the stability and performance of their project. Truly great news for game historians, as whatever one may think of titles like this, we will soon be able to fully understand Sole Survivor and gain yet another argument on why relying solely on proprietary servers is a horrible, short-sighted decision that has taken more than one game from its audience...

YR AI has been rather softened compared to vanilla RA2 AI, never figured out why. What you can do is use CnCNet's YR client and run skirmishes from there. When setting up a match, you'll have a "Brutal AI" toggle which will essentially fix the AI's problems and bring it to RA2 levels.