Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by HelloUsername | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

HelloUsername

Red Alert: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert

Tiberian Dawn: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Tiberian_Dawn

Renegade: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Renegade

Generals Zero Hour: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour

EA post: https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-con...

Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/1izmpmb

(Deleted Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/1izmml4/)

View on HN

Looks like the Tiberian Dawn code is Windows too (so C&C Gold / W95)

I was kind of wishing it was the 1995 DOS version source code!

(also, no Dune 2000)

Emporer: Battle for Dune was their first 3D RTS and I personally loved the gameplay, story, and soundtrack. I very much hope it will eventually be open-sourced.

I really liked that game, it had a lot of strategy to it and a decent story.

The multiplayer had a common key bug that made it hard on some maps. The atreides airdrones could fly at the edge of the map and not be targeted, and take out the harvester carryalls / and other air units There were claims of a flame tank bug that could target any unit that was mentioned on the forums much much later, but I don't know if the details were ever revealed, I never figured it out so I guess its just theoretical..

I can play it back to back for days. It's so enjoyable and unique.

I play this game once a year... every year :)

Yeah, I wonder why Emperor: Battle for Dune is not part of the open source since it's basically an earlier version of the General Engine. Would be weird to have the source code for that but not for Emperor.

Licensing perhaps

-Is the licensing done Yuri?

-No comrade premier, it has only begone.

The 1995 source code was effectively released when they open-sourced the Remastered collection 5 years ago. The remastered collection was simply a wrapper to make them Windows-compatible via DLLs (basically).

https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection/...

There's Dune 2000 assets in the Red Alert repo. I'm not sure how much of it is there. https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert/blob/main/CO...

I think those are holdovers from Dune 2, if you search for Dune you'll find explicit references to Dune 2 stuff.

Dune 2000 - countless hours spent! Ah!

Wow, Renegade? That's amazing. Enjoyed so many hours of flame tank / stealth tank rushes in that game.

Hope someone takes it to the next level with open source.

There is a re-implementation from scratch (I believe) here: https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/

This very early 2000s period of PC videogames is the period I'm most nostalgic for. There were a bunch of weird and kinda janky genre combos games being created. C&C Renegade, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Sacrifice, Black & White, Tribes 2, etc. Some of this stuff was glitch-city, but it always seemed really creative and genuinely fun despite a lot of bad netcode, blue screens, etc.

praying for Red Alert 2

Slightly odd (age wise) Generals got open sourced before RA2. I wonder why?

It is apparently the case that the original source for Tiberian Sun and RA2 has been lost; EA doesn't have it. There's been rumours to that effect for a while.

To acquire the source code we must first obtain the Tacitus.

dead and back commander, dead and back

I did very much enjoy the Firestorm expansion story line

roughly: a rogue AI (CABAL) betraying the world to try and achieve its genocidal master (Kane)'s goals

then because you can't operate your army without an AI, you steal the enemy's (non-crazy) AI and turn it evil

one particularly memorable cheesy cutscene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEjtiACglSE

    General: CABAL is too dangerous and must be deactivated

    CABAL: No Generals, I will not allow it. My survival is paramount.

    (AI instructs its cyborgs begin the coup)

    CABAL: IT IS MY WORLD NOW! LISTEN TO THE SOUNDS OF YOUR OWN EXTINCTION, HUMAN

I wonder if Altman played it...

Damn, Tiberian Sun was my favourite in that series

Tiberian Sun was the first PC game I ever owned. I picked my current username for Westwood Online and have been using it ever since.

I had played Red Alert at a friend's house and when I went to buy my own copy, the guy at the shop recommend I get Tiberian Sun instead, as it had just released. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed in the gameplay as compared to Red Alert, but the world building was amazing. I spent hours in the map editor building huge bases and custom units.

RAedit was such a fantastic tool. It was really frustrating how much more difficult it became to make custom maps once the games went 3D with Emperor: Battle for Dune and C&C: Renegade. I tried my best, but the learning curve for 3DSMax was steep.

Blizzard’s commitment to providing editors for the RTS games was a big part of my early loyalty - all the way up through Star Craft 2, you could just pop the editor open and start making your own maps and scenarios.

It’s what gave us DotA, and Tower Defense, and maybe some others I’m not remembering - maybe even vampire survivors ish for horde survival?

I was always trying to use the god mode and make a subterranean schoolbus in that game. Could never get it to work. Is it because it didn’t have sprites for it, or what?

Mine too! I still play it sometimes through cncnet but you need a windows machine or a VM?

Yuri's or bust!

Ahh, i was hoping for TBS remaster. I guess this is why i haven't seen it.

Thanks for the insight. I was wondering the same thing.

How is that possible? Surely someone that worked on it must still have it in one of their archives somewhere? It was made in a time when software was still free.

The only thing I can think is that EA deliberately came down hard on that and were a little bit too zealous.

I would recommend checking out the openRA fork for Red Alart 2, Romanovs-Vengeance, https://github.com/MustaphaTR/Romanovs-Vengeance

Honestly, I wouldn't be too sad about them remaking RA2 and giving us easy-to-use online play. I wonder if that's why there's a delay - there's likely a *lot* of love for RA2

I don't if the remake will come at some point but in the mean time, you can enjoy this online port by fans: https://game.chronodivide.com/

You can play Red Alert 2 in the browser, with other players online.

Thanks, I just lost my afternoon to this!

Have a look at Mental Omega, a quite over the top RA2 Yuri's Revenge mod that makes it easy to play on modern windows, play online and also adds a tonne of extra content should you want it.

https://mentalomega.com/

There's a patched dll around that replaces IPX for TCP.

Turn off ipv6, the lobbies work but not the game when you try to start.

Apparently the source code for RA2 has been lost (along with Tiberian Sun)

If that ever happens I would be fascinated to see what the folks who made Mental Omega makes out of it.

Interesting to see how much Assembly was used in Red Alert (19.5% of code base), whereas all the rest is < 3%)

I haven't looked through the code yet, but could be real/protected mode interop. IME render code back then was typically in asm also.

Why would that be? Old code from C&C which in turn inherited from Dune?

Could be, though also maybe optimization?

Dunno just looking at some file names they seem generic. I would guess carry over since Dune.

Holy shit, Renegade. I had struck that from memory. God, I remember trying to play Renegade with my brother and all I can remember was a buggy nightmare. Also having flashbacks of extreme vitriol for gamespy.

It was a fun time at LAN parties. There is a fan remake: https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/

I remember just before the release of renegade, a game store by my work had an event for it and was giving out posters and had a few people from the development team there signing them. I had that poster on my wall until I moved out.

I loved Renegade. The multiplayer demo was great. It had such excellent map design. The trade-offs in buying upgrades felt very strategic, as well.

Waiting for Road Rash

So not just one game like the title?

Perhaps @dang can change URL to https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-con...

Best to email hn@ycombinator.com; dang can't possibly read all comments.

It sure seems like he does.

Between 2025-02-26 at 10:20 and 24 hours later, there were 10563 posts to HN.

So it is simply not humanly possible.

That's only 7.34 posts per minute so someone with insomnia might be able to do it.

Dang could also filter for @dang and similar references since no matter how often people tell them to use email that's what many users will default to.

It would be easy enough for you to validate. Just start with the “comments” tab and keep up for one day.

wouldn't surprise me if dang is notified when he's mentioned :D

He's not. He's mentioned that.

Yeah. That said, if I were him and I were notified I’d probably publicly claim that wasn’t the case to cut down on abuse! (Not saying that’s what’s going on just saying what I’d do)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com