RA3 Modding?

[alleylee 0]

How about modding programs, or instructions to mod, for RA3? i mean, i'm sure there is a mixed review about RA3, but it'll still be interesting to mod it. any ideas? or words of wisdom other than RA3 flops/sucks/or the sort?

[Saracen 16]

I'm no modder, but details on RA3 are still sketchy at best. Looking around the modding community, it seems like most are waiting for patch 1.05 for RA3 to come out before making any strong commitment to modding the title. The patch will include world-builder, but that's apparently not much different from the current C&C 3 version... although EA did mention that it could be used as a modding tool as well... Banshee of PPM highly doubts that however.

 

The ETA on the RA3 mod-SDK is also unknown. It may not be coming out for a couple of months yet. For most people this will be the primary port of call.

 

As for programs.... well it depends entirely what you want to mod and how far you want to take it. The most basic form of modding (and sometimes the most effective) is the editing of the game's XML files. Just make sure you back up the original to somewhere safe before you play with those though.

 

Outside of that if you're not looking to change the core areas. 3D Studio Max is a great program to edit or create textures, and other graphical stuff. as well as editing or creating new units. Conversion can be a little tricky, but programs such as 3D Object Converter can be good for the job. These do cost money however.

 

On the free side of the coin, there are programs like OS BIG Editor, and Final BIG, these will open the games .BIG files, so you can edit the .ini files like you would in some of the older C&C games.

 

Instructions on how to use will generally be at the programs source websites... In the case of 3DS Max, sites like PPM can help out tutorial wise....

 

Hope that helps. As I said, I'm not a modder, but I know a few basic principles that should help you get started until the RA3 Worldbuilder and the Mod SDK show up. Also, once patch 1.05 is out, we'll make a dedicated modding forum for RA3, so hold on in there... it's all about waiting for EA to deliver the goods.

[Koen 2]

Still no ETA on the Mod SDK, so it won't be here in 2008.

[BlyTwo 0]

It runs on the same engine as C&C3, and the way EA makes games, it is no doubt it will be very very similar.

[Koen 2]

I do expect the RA3 Mod SDK to be very similar to the C&C3 Mod SDK. But I always like having stuff sooner rather than later

[Regs 0]

Wasn't it almost a year if not more before tiberium wars SDK came out after release?

[Koen 2]

No, if I recall correctly, the game was released March 2007 and the SDK in August 2007. So that was 5-6 months.

Now, the game was released October 2008, that would put a release in February if you allow for a similar timeframe. But I'm not sure it will be out before the expansion. It's been so quiet lately...

[Koen 2]

The Mod SDK has shown a sign of life, by Apoc in the RADEN comments section: http://www.cncgames.com/index.php?subactio...amp;ucat=5&

So it will arrive, and I'd now update the estimate that it will be here <= March. Just because it showed a sign of life.

[alleylee 0]

so you can't create mods like in red alert 2/yuri's revenge with red alert 3?

[BlyTwo 0]

Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 were very nice to edit, very user friendly, simply a text file.

The Generals engine is not even close to the Westwood engine. The Generals engine uses .xml (same category as .html, .htm...) files, individual ones for each modified object, and it all needs to get packed up into a .big file (an archive file, similar idea to .mix .dat .pkg .bin etc...) And you need a .SkuDef to identify it in the mod browser. (That is just a renamed .txt file though I think.)

Edited February 2, 2009 by BlyTwo

[CCHyper 3]

Err, all games from TD to RA3 use the same based engine

 

You might find that the community working with BIG archives and XML doodleys is hard / annoying. But EA would have a big class of apps that have fancy interfaces and scripts that automate stuff, pack stuff etc, fast execute debug code and so on.

 

You can actualy mod RA3, if you want to find the time to write a extensive raw bin opener (changed since TW?), thjough i do recall JonWil writing a few updated tools...

[Mighty BOB! 5]

>_<

 

No they do not use the same engine, no it is not called the "Generals engine," and only the recent incarnations use .xml.

 

For a brief and oversimplified history, TD, RA1, and Dune 2000 use the same engine.

TS, RA2, and YR use a second different engine.

The engines in these games are two-dimensional and fake 3D with .shps and voxels.

 

Generals, BFME, BFMEII, TW, and KW use a 3rd different engine. This engine is real 3D and it is called the SAGE engine. Earlier versions used .ini, newer versions use .xml, all of them use .big archive files.

RA3 and Uprising use an extensively upgraded version of the SAGE engine (according to EA they rewrote at least 60% of the code) called the RNA engine.

 

In any case, you can't mod the game without the SDK.

If you're an uber-l33t Chinese hacker who has low-level assembly decompiler software and know how to rip things directly from memory you might be able to edit code (this is often where "trainers" come from) but editing art is still out of the question because the amount of (very illegal) hacking and cracking and writing of custom software is beyond the vast majority of people in the C&C community, even for our best coders.

 

A far as RA3 is concerned (and actually TW and KW), jonwil's tools can only extract. They can't put anything back in. That requires compiling which requires EA's tools.

 

I really hope they release the SDK soon, but EA's (lack of) modding support is kinda killing the modding community just due to time.

[CCHyper 3]

All the games have the same base engine, file system and memory handling. This is all part of the Westwood Library, each game is its own extension of this library that EA still use. W3D (Renegade) made the jump a little further by adding code from another engine, particualy the rendering part to create the of branch, Westwood Library -> W3D -> Sage -> Sage2 -> RNA