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PlayCNC - The Beginning

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An ambitious new project has been started in the Command & Conquer community. PlayCNC is new free service that aims to centralise the entire C&C multiplayer franchise. Essentially making it easier for fans to play their favourite C&C games online. It's still early days for PlayCNC, but here is their first announcement.

 

Convince

For some time now, we’ve watched a huge increase in the number of questions from people finding a C&C game and asking how to play online, and when we try to help we end up having to write paragraphs, often creating diagrams, or short videos because the systems in place are overcomplicated and dotted about on different platforms.

 

We want to help things get better and no, we’re not here to replicate tired systems for C&C, nor compete. Instead, we want to share our project with you to re-energise and develop a better Command and Conquer experience again.

 

One Place

You will only ever need one account with playcnc, and it will open up the entire C&C multiplayer franchise online. To top this off, it will be free. Just have the disk or download at the ready and we’ll do our best to impress you with the rest.

Playing online will no longer have that drag of having to use different servers , we’re centralising everything into one powerful platform. So here’s what we plan to do:

  1. Start and develop from the very first C&C Multiplayer title.
  2. When we come to a suitable stability, release a testing stage.
  3. Once complete, we’ll move on to the next title, and repeat the process until we reach the end.

Over the next few months we will be releasing a weekly development entry. These will allow you to see what our developers have been up to. We welcome everyone’s feedback on these so make sure to let us know how we’re doing!

 

It doesn’t stop there, we will be rewarding both the casual, and competitive gamer. Look forward to slick interfaces, dashboards, and profiles that will allow you to track a whole stack of statistics, ranks, achievements, and awards for the games you play, all in one profile.

 

We are no different to you or any other Command and Conquer fan, Command & Conquer is still an amazing franchise and we owe it to our favorite games to reignite the nostalgia.

 

You can check out the PlayCNC site for the original announcement. You will also find PlayCNC on Facebook and Twitter.

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RainXc contributes! This oughtta be good then :)

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The way this project was put together without even consulting or talking in advance with CnCNet is a bit upsetting. They have no obligation to do that but it would have been in good spirit.

 

While they could've contributed to CnCNet they had to start another project and probably fork everything CnCNet has done so far to achieve what they have said in the first post. Current CnCNet 5 plans are EXACTLY what they are going to do and if they want to create similiar full experience with the first two games (TD and RA) they most probably need to use the CnCNet 5 launching code for them (spawner in CnCNet language).

 

I haven't heard back from Sean yet but the first impression certainly isn't good. CnCNet 5 still lacks a proper client and they could've just done that instead of a new project.

 

While it's always nice to have more people working on keeping the games online it's not healthy for the community to start new projects that can potentially scatter the player base without even trying to work with the current developers of similiar projects first. Improving CnCNet is in the best interest of TD and RA players because that's where they are currently at. I would even be willing to bury CnCNet in favor of a better service but not like this.

 

(Also the unofficial CnCNet 5 alpha client already supports both TD and RA and they work great [TD max 5 players] with some [<-] issues that are still looked into).

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While they could've contributed to CnCNet they had to start another project and probably fork everything CnCNet has done so far to achieve what they have said in the first post. Current CnCNet 5 plans are EXACTLY what they are going to do and if they want to create similiar full experience with the first two games (TD and RA) they most probably need to use the CnCNet 5 launching code for them (spawner in CnCNet language).

Stress "the first two games". That's not all that C&C has to offer, you know. Also, CnCNet 5 will apparently drop RA2 support and CCHyper will make TS support in 4389056 years, so we can't count on that either. Don't get me wrong, I do like CnCNet, but it seems you're helping the non-TD-or-RA multiplayer communities scatter yourself.

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Stress "the first two games". That's not all that C&C has to offer, you know. Also, CnCNet 5 will apparently drop RA2 support and CCHyper will make TS support in 4389056 years, so we can't count on that either. Don't get me wrong, I do like CnCNet, but it seems you're helping the non-TD-or-RA multiplayer communities scatter yourself.

 

CnCNet 5 recently got a compatibility mode with unmodded TS and RA2 that brings basic support for them and their mods. I've talked to DTA and MO dev teams about possibility for them to write their own integrated custom clients.

 

The problem with CnCNet 4 was that it in fact did that scattering unintentionally by providing an alternative to XWIS for TS and RA2 were are best played there at the time community wise. The good thing for mod developers was that they got their own private lobbies instead of a global XWIS lobby where you wouldn't be certain everyone in the room had the same mod and the additional benefits of tunneling mode.

 

I don't support piracy and having an alternative to XWIS for RA2 certainly allows pirated games to play online easier. That's one reason why I was hesistant to add any support for it in CnCNet 5. Compatibility mode turned out to work nice so for mod developers it should be good news.

 

Edit:

 

Got so stuck at TS and RA2. The first two games (TD and RA) are my priority because they had the least working online experience to begin with (TD mostly) and they are more important to me personally. They are also games that I'm comfortable to hack around because I have some support from Nyerguds and iran (who took the lead developer role of ra303p btw.) so working with the games is also pleasant and I get some help when I need it. RA2 hacking is mostly done by the Ares team and they seem to do a good job with their tools for their needs and is completely different how hacking with TD and RA is done (except Arda but the project is closed source anyway). CnCNet 5 full support requires heavy in-game modifications and I'm not experienced in the newer games enough to do that solely by myself.

Edited by hifi

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Will I be banned for my criticism for supporting hifi's criticism of this launch announcement? Because I've been working with hifi on cncnet v5 and therefor it's a "personal conflict"?

 

If no; that's good. Two things:

 

1.) The release announcement is vague, what exactly is PlayCNC and how does it work?

 

2.) Why have no contact been made with the CnCNet team?

 

C&C95 has a really, really tiny online player base. An average of about 50-70 times smaller than Red Alert 95's. From the current stats:

 

[16:27:25] <FunkyFr3sh> CnCNet server status: Tiberian Dawn[1] Red Alert[78] Tiberian Sun[1] Red Alert 2[6] DTA[1] TI[0] MO[0] C&C Reloaded[0]

 

One gigantic issue is the online interface for C&C95, both WChat and (with CnCNet) the LAN interface. Red Alert 95's LAN interface has a lobby with the ability to transfer maps and chat with players, C&C95 doesn't have this and it's really hard to find to other players because of the lack of a good lobby.

 

The current alpha client being developed by FunkyFr3sh is miles a head of both the C&C95 and RA95 online interfaces (including mplayer, kali, gamespy etc), ESPECIALLY better than C&C95's interface.Considering how RA95 regularly has 100+ players online it wouldn't be that out of the question that the C&C95 online playerbase would pick up a bit with CnCNet v5, but it might also not.

 

PlayCNC could fragment the C&C95 player base even more. But it depends on what PlayCNC turns out to be...it could somehow use CnCNet v5 directly or just link to game downloads + CnCNet v5.

 

As a casual reader of this announcement I'd think this is a new online service for C&C games, in competition with CnCNet and XWIS. That's what the announcement implies, but I'm not sure. If thing turn out to be different I have no blame as the announcement itself isn't clear and very clearly implying what I think I'm reading.

Edited by Iran

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Will I be banned for my criticism for supporting hifi's criticism of this launch announcement? Because I've been working with hifi on cncnet v5 and therefor it's a "personal conflict"?

Criticism in itself is never a reason to ban, pointless flaming is. You guys are in the clear as far as that's concerned :)

2.) Why have no contact been made with the CnCNet team?

It might still be in consideration or they intend to do something else.

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Criticism in itself is never a reason to ban, pointless flaming is. You guys are in the clear as far as that's concerned :)

 

Nmenth sent me a PM saying otherwise.

 

"It might still be in consideration or they intend to do something else."

 

that might be true but they should either point out their relation with CnCNet in the announcement or postpone the announcement itself until the CnCNet have been contacted.

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Nmenth sent me a PM saying otherwise.

When and for which post?

 

that might be true but they should either point out their relation with CnCNet in the announcement or postpone the announcement itself until the CnCNet have been contacted.

That sounds a bit monopolistic.

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Will I be banned for my criticism for supporting hifi's criticism of this launch announcement?

Criticism is not the problem, copy/pasting duplicate posts when you were already told to cease is. Now don't make things worse for yourself by derailing other topics to vent over having been reprimanded.

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That sounds a bit monopolistic.

 

Not necessarily. CnCNet needs able developers and is completely open for people to join and contribute. If we can't agree on something then I don't see a problem starting a new project. Overall I always hope to find a common ground but if I have decided something someone seriously needs to prove me wrong before I change my mind. And it's a good thing people prove me some of my methods are wrong as it keeps my feet on the ground.

 

That's one reason why CnCNet 5 is very open for custom clients because it's hard to please everyone and I can then move the blame of a crappy client to the developer and just run the backend. Now I can blame funky for problems in his client ;). He has done outstanding job with it and I'm very happy people have found it pleasing to use.

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I still don't understand why you're rather defensive on this topic. Think of it like this: if they bring some new features (even if they don't include yours initially), then you can learn from each other and mutual work is inevitable if you both want to create the optimal C&C MP experience. If they just make something crappy, you won't have absolutely anything to worry about.

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I still don't understand why you're rather defensive on this topic. Think of it like this: if they bring some new features (even if they don't include yours initially), then you can learn from each other and mutual work is inevitable if you both want to create the optimal C&C MP experience. If they just make something crappy, you won't have absolutely anything to worry about.

 

Because we're not XWIS (means we are flexible [which means we are not WOL restricted]), we have code to launch TD and RA without WChat/WOL and we are missing developers and no one has contacted us about making CnCNet better or telling us we're doing something wrong and showing the way of how things should be done by either a verbal fight with me or providing actual code that does stuff better.

 

It's really only about not talking with us first before going public what I'm upset about as it would have cleared up their intentions, motivations and reasons [why CnCNet isn't workable].

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