Dear C&C Community,

It’s been a few years since I had the opportunity to reach out and engage with you directly. I’ve truly missed that. I hope you have all stayed safe, healthy, and positive since my last post in September of 2020.

I realize many of you have been wondering about the status of Command & Conquer over the past several years. After the launch of the first C&C Remastered Collection, I told our Community Council I would continue to try and find opportunities to support the C&C community and franchise wherever possible. With that in mind, I do have an announcement we think the entire C&C Community can get excited about. The C&C Ultimate Collection is now live on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/

How did this come to happen? Well, a while back I heard some team members at EA had the desire to launch some of our classic titles on Steam. After hearing about this initiative, several of us proposed we include the C&C Ultimate Collection. We knew this had been a request of the C&C community for over a decade and that it had been an equal goal for us, the passionate C&C folks around the company. As such, a dedicated strike team here at EA has been pushing to make this a reality - but we knew we couldn't do it alone. So, in the spirit of our community collaboration from the Remastered Collection, we reached out to a small group of the C&C Community to understand how we could best deliver the Ultimate Collection on Steam.

The feedback and collaboration have once again been invaluable. With improvements like better compatibility for modern operating systems and additional supported languages for both the Steam and EA App versions, we believe this is the best release of the Ultimate Collection to date.

Alongside the launch of the Ultimate Collection on Steam, we are also excited to announce the release of the beloved map editors FinalSun and FinalAlert 2 under the GPL version 3.0 license, which can also be launched directly from the Steam version of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. Now, over 20 years since their initial release, original creator Matthias Wagner has generously repackaged these classic editors into a more compatible version for 2024. This was achievable thanks to the technical collaboration with Luke "CCHyper" Feenan, and the kindness of Olaf van der Spek, who has graciously released his XCC Library under the GPL 3.0 license as part of this effort. We cannot thank Matthias, Luke, and Olaf enough for making this a reality for the C&C community, and we are eager to see where the tools and content creation go from here.

A huge thank you to the community playtesters who helped provide feedback on this version of the Ultimate Collection and the organizations of CnCNet, W3DHub, and C&C Online for continuing to support these classic titles. We hope you all enjoy these improvements to the C&C Ultimate Collection - available today on Steam.

Until next time.

Cheers,

Jim Vessella

we are also excited to announce the release of the beloved map editors FinalSun and FinalAlert 2 under the GPL version 3.0 license

# Fixes and Changes

• Fixed a few code issues to allow the application to run on modern operating systems.
  
• Updated the application icons with new 256x256 graphics.
  
• You can now zoom in & out with the middle mouse button or wheel
  
• You don't need administrator access anymore if the program is installed in the program folder, as all user data and settings are now stored in your AppData folder
  
• Tunnel tube editing completely reimplemented
  
  
  • Tunnel tilesets available
    
  • You can edit existing tubes by using the tool on the end of an existing tube
    
  • You can now create curved tubes
    
  • You can now create unidirectional tubes
  
  
• LAT support for Crystal and Swamp terrain in Tiberian Sun temperate maps
  
• House colors are now read from map or rules.ini
  
• Units and buildings are now shaded in the house colors correctly
  
• Voxel units now have shading applied
  
• Minimap can now be resized
  
• Undo steps increased to 64
  
• Map rendering performance improved
  
• Several fixes for crashes
  
• Fixed addon turrets display
  
• SHP turrets and Voxel turrets + barrels have their positioning fixed.
  
• Maps up to 400x112 (or 112x400) are now allowed.
  
• Fixed minimap for non-quadratic maps.