Plokite_Wolf

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.

Exactly 20 years ago (25 October 2000), Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 hit the shelves in North America. It was the first time a Command & Conquer title was developed mostly by a team other than the original Westwood Studios folks at Las Vegas, and the new developers (Westwood Pacific, from Irvine) would end up making one of the highest-regarded titles in the franchise. A true icon of the genre, Red Alert 2 alone brought so many legendary units, quotes and moments to the, by then, already rich gaming world, and is still well-enjoyed to this day. For me personally, Red Alert 2 (with the Yuri's Revenge expansion pack) shares the top spot as favourite C&C game with Tiberium Wars (again, with the Kane's Wrath expansion). It is probably the RTS I've played the most, and one I'd always put as ground zero for anyone who wants to make their own game in the franchise - do not take anything from it (without a valid replacement), just base the gameplay around it. It is always easy to pick up and entertain oneself with, the units and techs are creative, and the campaign never gets old. I only wish that there was a fourth AI difficulty that would actually put up a fight on its own in 1v1... What are your favourite RA2 memories? Let us know!

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 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.

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

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.

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.

In Jim Vessella's latest update, he mentions the latest addition to the C&C Remastered Collection source code package - the map editor itself, which is something that the community has loved to expand on for multiple titles in the series. But alas, next week we will see the last intended patch for the C&C Remastered Collection, as the team feels the game has reached the vision that was meant for it during development. It will, however, include bugfixes, quality-of-life changes, and the introduction of the beacon system in multiplayer. Here's the full update: Fellow Command & Conquer fans, It’s been a little over three months since we launched the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection and we continue to be humbled by the response from players around the world. It’s been wonderful to see Command & Conquer back in the mainstream conversation, and the growing community even more engaged in the long-term success of the franchise. Over the past three months our full-time focus has been on supporting the Remastered Collection. We’ve done our best to listen to the community, and deliver upon some of the top requested items in a transparent and collaborative manner. Next week we aim to launch another Major Update for the C&C Remastered Collection. The focus of this update is also on community requests, including a Beacon system to ping your allies and displaying key information on the Multiplayer loading screen, amongst a handful of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. We’ll also aim to reset the leaderboards and incorporate some Matchmaking Rating and timing adjustments to address community feedback. With this patch, we finally feel the C&C Remastered Collection will have achieved the vision we had for the game when we first started development. As such, in our spirit of transparency, we wanted to let the community know we anticipate this will be the last patch for the game. To prepare for this transition, our goal throughout development was to create an ecosystem where the community would have the resources to take the Remastered Collection even further. Within this goal we released the DLLs and source code under the GPL v3.0, embraced community content with the Steam Workshop, and incorporated LAN Play with modding support. Today we want to add one more ingredient to that mix, which is the release of the Map Editor under the GPL v3.0 as well. The Map Editor source code is available now on Github at the link below, and will be included in the root game folder once the upcoming patch goes live. With these assets available to the community, we hope the Remastered Collection and other community projects will continue to thrive for years to come. https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection We’re then soon approaching a special date in franchise history, with September 26th marking the official 25th Anniversary of Tiberian Dawn. We’ve of course been highlighting this anniversary throughout the project, but hope you will all come together for a special week to celebrate this franchise which we all love. Thanks so much for your ongoing support and looking forward to the rest of September. Cheers, Jim Vessella Jimtern This announcement and roadmap may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.

A quick update for C&C Remastered Collection has been released, this time focused on fixing several game-breaking bugs that the community has reported since the last patch: Fixed an issue where extra enemy Harvesters would instantly spawn in campaign missions Fixed an issue where extra enemy aircraft would instantly spawn in campaign missions Fixed an issue where the extra Key Binding conflict dialog box was not disappearing (we suppressed this extra dialog for now) Fixed an issue where the radar offline / low power sound is heard after completing a game Fixed a game freeze and connection lost error with player certain games on custom maps Fixed a connection lost error when playing in LAN / Skirmish Fixed an issue where the AI could take over player functions in certain custom maps Fixed an issue where the Repair and Sell commands were not working if you loaded a previous patch save game in the new version Further performance optimization in larger scale maps with tons of resources Expanded the Quickmatch MMR search ranges to help players get into games faster All users should receive the patch automatically upon launching the game on Steam or Origin.

The new patch for the C&C Remastered Collection is now live and available to everyone. There's a lot of changes, including those from the previous two beta branch patches (both documented and previously hidden ones), and possibly some new ones. Read the full change list and roadmap here. NOTE: If you were using the beta branch patches on Steam, make sure you DISABLE the beta participation for the game to receive this update.

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.

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.

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