Hacker News Reader

Comment by MortyWaves | Hacker News Reader

> Building and working with this code will not be a plug-and-play affair. The namesake 1995 game and its hugely popular 1996 Red Alert sequel require some older dependencies, like DirectX 5 and the Greenleaf Communications Library (for a full build and tool access) and the Borland Turbo Assembler (TASM 4.0) to compile. Renegade and Generals, however, call for a whole lot more nostalgia: STLport 4.5.3, the SafeDisk API, the GameSpy SDK, the RAD Miles Sound System SDK, and at least eight more.

It is weird that they didn't open source the Remastered edition which already includes two modernised games that I assume use either new technology in place of deprecated versions, or just newer versions of those.

Seems very odd, I don't understand why they would want to keep private their own modernisation efforts.

View on HN

The remastered versions may have just replaced those dependencies with other new ones that similarly can't be publicly released. Game middleware and sdks tend to be very aggressively NDAd.

If they replaced Miles with Wwise, they still wouldn't be able to release that code.

And if anything the remastered versions might be even more heavily integrated or using even more middleware.

> It is weird that they didn't open source the Remastered edition which already includes two modernised games that I assume use either new technology in place of deprecated versions, or just newer versions of those.

Part of the "value add," I'd think. The source code for the original games are released if you really want to play the old-and-creaky version from your youth, exactly as you remember it, ported onto a Raspberry Pi or whatever. But if you want the modern, "batteries included" remaster, you'll pay for it.

EA being, well, EA, you have to assume someone made the calculated decision that any unofficial port derived from the original source would be a sufficiently "degraded" experience compared to their Remasters so as not to be a financial threat. But perhaps releasing the actual Remastered source would have been.

You still have to buy the games to play any source ports that will appear and with most people demanding Steam or similar platforms it's not like EA really needs to be concerned with second-hand sales or other "competition" with their current prices for the remasters.

These were released almost instantly when the game was released: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection

Can at least concur with C&C/RA being difficult to compile; There are several missing sources and the build environment feels like its one grand 90's hack.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com