Plok

An AI content mill that caused quite a few giggles in the main community Discord last week. So many things misconstrued, mispronounced (Guardian G One, ffs) or just written horribly. The whole channel has an output of 3 videos per week that are each at least an hour long, which is impossible to do right for even a big team of writers and editors.

CNCNZ.com has turned 29 today. While I was preparing to talk about another quiet anniversary, it would be remiss of me not to mention a recent humble, but definitely welcome blip of activity here on the forums - thank you to all who drop by! Even with modern ways of connecting communities, it is nice to see people remember classic places like this. It has also been nice to witness other things that happened in the community since the last writeup: Zero Hour has had a true renaissance since the official source code was released last year. Most notably, the teams behind the SuperHackers' community patch and the GeneralsOnline server have been instrumental in fixing the issues that the game has had for a very long time, and have, in a short amount of time, managed to gather a playerbase the size of which has not been seen since the GameSpy shutdown of 2014. Red Alert 3 and Kane's Wrath received some pretty impressive community updates, the latter even getting proper skirmish AI improvements very recently. Tiberian Sun and Yuri's Revenge got more iterative changes under the hood and some that are aimed at custom maps, but it is still great to see so many classic titles get updated for all players to enjoy. The oldest-running fansite, the French CnCSaga, turned 30 this year. Happy anniversary! Renegade X officially left public beta with version 1.0, with the Tiberian Sun-themed Firestorm apparently just around the corner. W3D Hub's standalone titles have been getting thoroughly polished as well. OpenRA has been busy with tweaks, interface, Dune 2000 campaign support and even adding the ability to play with Tiberian Dawn Remastered assets, though only in playtest builds for now. Mods, as usual, are a very active space with Dawn of the Tiberium Age (with the Shadow Exodus update), Red Alert Redux, Rise of the Reds, Tiberian Sun Synthesis, Tiberium Dusk, Zero Hour Enhanced and more. While the usage of AI is still very much controversial, it has resulted in some interesting projects like OpenCNC3D/RA3D and Zero Hour Reforged. With as many community projects going around, aimed at both vanilla and mod players, there's no way people can ever get tired of this franchise.

I've decided to make a topic with lesser known tidbits about C&C and its covers, manuals, inside errors or possible Easter eggs... whatever I can think of. ENTRY 1 - May 16th, 2013 KANE'S WRATH COVER When looked at closely, Kane's mask has a reflection with Westwood's original Tiberian Sun render of CABAL, albeit without the logical side flip. The Croatian-localized cover mistakenly states that the expansion adds up 2,5 GB to hard drive usage instead of 4 GB. It is possible that Algoritam (the book and multimedia selling company that localizes games in Croatia) did not receive the movie files that would complete (and surpass) the correct hard drive usage. Unlike many localizations in Europe, the Croatian ones do not change the movie voiceovers, so EA likely did not consider this neccessary.

Kane's exact relation to Tiberium wasn't ever properly explained, other than being a means to provoke the Scrin. The series' lore never went deep, alas.

Quite a unique piece of C&C history! Must be tempting to open the seal and find out if anything else got misprinted

The statement has long been associated on the wiki with this post from Adam Isgreen: https://web.archive.org/web/20131221054943/http://www.petroglyphgames.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2770&st=320&p=63624#entry63624

Please do. Haven't heard of many misprints since the 1990s...

Moments ago, the Steam and EA App versions of Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection received a hotfix, specifically the 2D titles in the compilation. While a major patch is being developed, this hotfix was pushed forward after recent Windows Insider builds had broken compatibility with the games as they were thus far. Thankfully, the DDrawCompat build 0.5.3 was made about a month ago which, among else, fixed these issues. Below is the official announcement: To apply the patch, simply allow Steam/EA App to auto-update the games.

The Earth made another circle, and so have we along with it, for the 28th time. While there has been nothing new on this site, the past year has been eventful elsewhere in the community: The Command & Conquer franchise marked 30 years. The community organized a month-long celebration with tournaments, and even interviews with Louis Castle and Erik Yeo. The recent source code release resulted in the creation of GeneralsOnline, a community server for Zero Hour that makes use of a modified source code fork by TheSuperHackers group. It not only fixes bugs, but also has an experimental option to run multiplayer in 60 Hz logic tick rate, both being long-time wishes of the playerbase that are now finally possible. Red Alert 2: Apocalypse Rising came out after many years of anticipation. Updated versions of the following mods have also been released: Red Alert Redux, Tiberian Dawn Redux, NProject Mod, The End of Days, Generals Evolution, Red Alert 20XX, Fading Dusk, Dawn of the Tiberium Age... We even got a Generals Challenge-like mod for Kane's Wrath. EA was conspicuously silent for the big 30, and just reposted the community celebration trailer on their social media. With them being bought out for $55 billion last month, C&C was actually named as one of the legacy franchises that will be evaluated by a market research firm and even a potential sale is an option. As EA keeps focusing on a select few flagship IPs, this means there's little chance to see anything new from them. But it does not ultimately matter - seeing the fans keep the torch lit gives the impression that the spirit of C&C will never, ever die. And this site still stands as an archive of that fact being true since the beginning.

A really well-done video, the interview bits are a gold mine of info.

If it doesn't recognize your installation, you can try breaking open the installer. You'll need UniExtract: https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2 With it, extract the contents of MODSDKv3.exe to a folder, and from within that folder, extract data1.cab, also using UniExtract.

It means no specific Windows version of Covert Operations was actually compiled. C&C95 just knows what files to look for to enable Covert Operations content.

If Nyerguds, as the person with the highest C&C1 knowledge out there, couldn't figure out a way, it's not an Easter egg.

It's supposed to work with the C&C95 version.

Apparently not.

WrathEd Mod Launcher is obsolete. If you're using the Steam or EA App version of the game, you need to use either their unique mod launcher (run the game with the -ui parameter to reach it) or use the manual method (note you'll need to replace all instances of 1.2 with 1.3): https://cncnz.com/features/technical-support-help-guides/running-mods-in-command-conquer-3-kanes-wrath/

Today has been quite eventful for the Command & Conquer franchise. A lengthy Reddit post (available here) was written by Jim Vessella and CCHyper, which is a recommended read, but for those in a hurry, here is the abbreviated list: All games in the C&C: The Ultimate Collection package on Steam and EA App have been updated - this fixes some issues discovered since launch (e.g. broken cutscenes in Red Alert 2), adds missing PDF manual versions, adds bonus content (Tiberium Wars Kane Edition, bonus maps for Red Alert 3, etc.) Source codes are now available for Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert 1, Renegade, Generals + Zero Hour, and an additional repository for all 3D titles in the franchise that will help with developing mods (modding guidelines updated accordingly) Newer titles got a version bump - 1.09 for Generals, 1.05 for Zero Hour, 1.10 for Tiberium Wars, 1.03 for Kane's Wrath, 1.13 for Red Alert 3, 1.01 for Uprising, 1.04 for Tiberian Twilight. Steam Workshop support added for SAGE games Archived footage from the development of Renegade and Generals has been digitized and uploaded on YouTube (see above) The franchise is on sale on Steam right now! oh, and Tiberium Alliances got a Steam release Big thank you to everyone involved behind the scenes on this update, and making sure the C&C legacy is available in as accessible a package as possible.

Get GenPatcher to resolve most issues related to the actual files: http://legi.cc/downloads/genpatcher/ After that, all you can do is make sure your connection and your opponents' connections are as stable as they can be.

A new and very detailed interview with Louis Castle has just been published. As part of the Titans of the Industry series, Alex Mejia of Human Interact sat down with Westwood's co-founder to talk about pretty much everything - early days with SSI, Dune, The Lion King, Monopoly, Command & Conquer, Blade Runner, move to EALA, details of how the studio worked with the technical limitations of the time, behind-the-scenes business circumstances, his perspective on what is important in game development... the works. This is a must-watch for anyone interested in his work or just the gaming industry.

Even with EA doubling down on releasing their back catalogue on more digital storefronts, this news came out of left field: Tiberium Alliances, the browser game from 2012 most of us tend to even forget exists, received a Steam page. The game whose servers have outlived many core titles over the years apparently has enough of a playerbase to warrant a proper PC frontend. The release date is not yet known, nor whether a Steam account will be enough to connect or will it still depend on EA accounts.

Patches for C&C: Remastered Collection continue surprising us, but the changes are welcome nonetheless. This is another smaller service update which fixes crashes on Intel drivers, proper GPU detection, maximum framerate limits and tooltips. Here's the official changelog:

C&C Attack Copter was shut down from Pogo.com 14 years ago. No archive was made.

Another year has passed. And another year we've been online. People come and go - more so in other spaces than here, mind - but ultimately there is always an ongoing interest in the franchise, no matter how small it may seem. This spring's Steam release of older Command & Conquer games brought some new buzz, and an additional incentive for community projects to go on. Thanks to sites like SteamDB, there's now a tangible and surprisingly consistent number of players to point towards and say - it's worth keeping the lights on for them. While this site is mostly an archive of old files, news and discussions at this point (surprisingly even to me, people still make use of it as such), I am confident that no matter what happens, the players and the tool/mod creators will keep the series alive long into the future.

The SAGE Engine modding crowd might know: https://discord.gg/TfdcQTn

The Worldbuilder has issues with present-day systems. You can apply the 4 GB patch on it: https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/ Or, if you're not comfortable with that, go to View -> Set LOD (last option in the list) -> Very Low or Low.