Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
r34ch

CnCNet - ra3.04 community patch possible?

Recommended Posts

Since there seems to be so many knowledgeable people in this forum, I wish to start a debate / get some answers :D

 

 

 

 

I have read repeatedly that many new features from both RA and TD (from Iran, Nyerguds, AlexB), will not or cannot be implemented into the game/exe for on-line play because it would either cause too great a disadvantage or a sync error for people not running that exe.

 

Currently for online RA play, patch 3.03 is required, released by WW in '97 and technically, never left Beta. This patch is required to play on CnCNet, which is run by the community.

 

I know almost nothing about the online patch version connection process but I have two guesses as to how it works;

  1. A client connecting to CnCNet can only 'see' other clients running the same version of the game in the lobby, and as such doesn't see players of newer or older versions that are present in the lobby.
  2. A client connecting has their version checked against the version the server is 'running'. As such all players on-line run the 'latest' patch, and other players are somehow redirected to download the latest patch.

Well you see where this is going...

 

What are the major stumbling blocks to releasing completely new community patches (ill just call them CnC1.07 and ra3.04) to add all / agreed new features in CnC1.06c and ra303p / arda that could be implemented, but currently cannot because of on-line sync errors with the existing on-line patches?

 

I don't mean problems with agreement on new features, changes, in-game balance etc, but rather the deployment of the new patches.

 

 

 

Literally 1 year ago, it seems RA1 went from completely dead for years on end (in terms of modernising / modding it) to having a multitude of people making massive strides in all areas of the game. It seems that people are sharing their work too between each other and even CnC95.

 

It seems only logical then, to think that everyone's work will eventually merge into one single RA patch, with people helping each other more efficiently (git-hub most likely). So when that time comes, will a community patch be feasible for deployment to replace the ancient WW 3.03 patch?

Share this post


Link to post

Nyerguds' 1.06c patch for C&C95 is already online incompatible with earlier patches. AlexB's Arda is only compatible with other people running Arda. My patch is compatible with 3.03 and only has some RULES.INI settings that can be modded that will only work with other people running my patch (e.g. AI sending tanks to the northern top of the map fix, no production speed multiplier cap with Aftermath on etc).

 

CnCNet v5 will use a browser lobby to launch games and it will come with a patched RA95 that will probably come with all my bug fixes and improvements without trying to stay compatible with 3.03. I need to implement a few fixes still that Arda has and are incompatible with 3.03 or give you a disadvantage compared to players running 3.03, but that will come in a few months.

 

I'm already sharing my work with say Nyerguds, for example I added support for extended sidebar, resolution independent sidebar (still has a bug that Nyerguds has to fix), de-hardcoded hotkeys (Nyerguds need to add support for reading them from an INI like RA95 has), crash dump support and I fixed some mouse wheel sidebar scrolling code CCHyper gave to Nyerguds.

 

Nyerguds, hifi and CCHyper have all been helping me a lot too. I'm already using Github.

 

RA1's player count has about doubled since last summer, hitting around 130-140 players regularly in the European evening compared to 70 last summer. What's important now is for me to release the first version of a patch that's bug free, getting a community together (other old games like Age of Empires 2 also have them) and spreading download links to the game.

Edited by Iran

Share this post


Link to post

Long time no see, r34ch. Yeah Iran, I think you should move your thread to the Command & Patch forum as you are certainly the defacto leader for RA1. Sooner or later I should extend my batch mix-patching tool so it can be used in RA, and then I hope it can be used for its intended purpose building a distribution from the github.

Share this post


Link to post

I hope that CnCNetv5 will be compatible with AlexB´s Arda Patch and that you Iran hopefully will give all your fixes to him, especially that cnc-ddraw Mousefix and compatibility with SingleCPU Affinity for less crashes.

I use Arda for my Perfect RA Mod and CnCNet to play it online. Until now that worked if all had Arda installed, but if that wont in the future, that would be a step backwards.

Share this post


Link to post

CnCNet v5 will use a browser lobby to launch games and it will come with a patched RA95 that will probably come with all my bug fixes and improvements without trying to stay compatible with 3.03. I need to implement a few fixes still that Arda has and are incompatible with 3.03 or give you a disadvantage compared to players running 3.03, but that will come in a few months.

 

Ok, I sort of understand. The new CnCNet will automatically update everyone playing on-line to use nyerguds and your new patches? So even people completely in the dark about this project will one day boot up RA to find a new launcher and all these features etc?

 

I guess what I'm also trying to ask is will you guys name the patches something other than 3.03p or 1.06c?

 

 

I'm struggling to explain these projects to my computer illiterate friends. They remember patch 3.03 as being the last patch for RA years ago. I'm trying to explain about 'Arda', the 303'p' patch and the 106'c' patch and the tons of new features they all bring and how they are kind of in Beta - and the first question my friends all ask is;

 

"so will the live patches be named 4.0 or something?"

 

For you guys who dive into the byte code day-in-day-out, this might sound like a ridiculous question, but for myself and my friends who only know modern games by the patch numbering systems, most patches which bring massive improvements are usually 'n.0'.

 

 

 

Also hi Sonarpulse :3

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×