Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:07 pm Post subject:
Wanna get free copies of all C&C games?
Subject description: That's a unique opportunity!
Hey everyone! Earlier at this month, Electronic Arts has released an ultimate collection for all Command & Conquer games that you pay about 50 bucks to download them from Origin. The part of the EA marketing team that is responsible for C&C products has been distributing free online copies for fan sites in order to promote it. Our news coverage on this Ultimate Collection was so "active, passionated and biased towards promoting everyone to buy it" that I am not surprised at all that we were left out of the list, of course. But that's not a problem, because I wouldn't have time to prepare a contest either. I've just finished my masters yesterday and I'm overloaded with work to do to my PhD that I've started back in august. I do have a tradition to be overloaded, but, right now, I've never felt so much overloaded in my whole life during this masters to PhD transition.
Nonetheless, other community sites are promoting it, as I said, and it is a good opportunity to collect your Command & Conquer collection. Here's some of the contests that I'm aware of:
- CNCNZ has a contest where you print their logo and post a picture of yours with it at an interesting landmark.
Bear in mind that, if you already own all C&C games and you win one of these contest, please, transfer the game to another person who actually needs them. There is nothing in this collection that you don't have... even the bonus soundtrack thing.
Some of the contests are already over, such as:
- CnC World distributed free copies for those who posted on their FaceBook channel, but their contest is over already.
- CnCDEN distributed copies for 3 random people who emailed Lion, the webmaster.
- GameSpy also had a simple contest HERE where you just needed to post a reply to get a chance of getting a copy.
And RTSGuru.com, GameInformer.com, etc...
Yea, I'm a bit late with it, don't you think? But the CNCNZ one is still open.
For those wondering if PPM is a Command & Conquer fan site, the answer is obviously yes. The problem is that we do not cover these games in a neutral way. We do have opinions and we do voice it. This site is run by fans, modders and game developpers and it is targeted for fans, modders and game developpers. Since we are not investors of EA, it is natural we do not care for its financial situation, as long as they are at least somewhat healthy and interested on producing new Command & Conquer products or improving existing products. We also have no obligation to please their marketing department regardless of how much money they spend with us (EA has already spent some considerable money in these last years, to be honest, with prizes for contests and two trips for conferences that they've promoted), although this site has certainly influenced many people to buy their products.
So, with that information in mind, what I can say is that this C&C Ultimate Collection is really the cheapest way to get all Command & Conquer games (except Sole Survivor) at once, nowadays.
It may not be necessarily a good thing for those who own most of these games. I'm not being able to find C&C games for sales at the stores here and Steam only sells C&C3 or newer games. If you only need one or of these two games that Steam sells, it might be better and cheaper to buy them at Steam, Origin or in a store, if you find them.
If you already own all the games, do not waste your money with this collection. They apply a couple of patches created by the community and distributed for free and the soundtrack and art bonus are certainly available at some fan sites (but not here)... and you can extract everything else with XCC Mixer and the tools from jonwil at CnCMods.net, all done legally and for free.
Afaik there are some serious mod compability problems which, if true, make this compilation a serious failure. It would be good to hear more about this from users. Last edited by Speeder on Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:19 pm; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
The problem is that we do not cover these games in a neutral way. We do have opinions and we do voice it.
It's a common policy to have the actual news article to remain neutral. People can voice their opinion in their replies. This gives a better impression of the news poster. To be frank, there are a couple of news posts where I disliked your anti-EA tone, Banshee. Despite the fact that I, too, criticise EA most of the time. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:28 pm Post subject:
There is a difference between blogs, fan sites and news sites. PPM is not a news site. It's a fan site. It's targetted directly to fans. In this context, there is nothing wrong on showing the opinion from the poster in the news post. What is wrong (and it's something that I don't do here) is to flame or insult anything in the news. QUICK_EDIT
Since i don't visit the official EA forums, does anyone know if there was some user feedback given, concerning updates/patches for the old games? Like someone asking for a bugfix for TS etc?
Since they officially release/sell them again, they are again in some way bound to give support to them. It's not like before, where they could say, the games are out of the store and they aren't responsible for them anymore.
I'd would like to see their reaction when someone posts
"I installed TS and noticed several problems. Where can i find a patch for
-laser/disruptor crashes
-AI pathfinding issues
-units standing on a cell, still follow any enemy unit, even without area guard
-building something cheap like walls horribly slows down the game
-having several gas clouds drastically slow down the game (e.g. from chemical missile, veinhole monster)
-airtransports dont work
-Nod Apache has no rotors
-wolverine with speed crate bonus, goes crazy and just rotates on a cell
-mammoth MKII muzzleflash is played on the opposite site, compared to the fired railgun
-tiberium stops growing after a short while
-etc etc" Last edited by Lin Kuei Ominae on Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:19 pm; edited 3 times in total QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:14 pm Post subject:
Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
Since i don't visit the official EA forums, does anyone know if there was some user feedback given, concerning updates/patches for the old games? Like someone asking for a bugfix for TS etc?
Since they officially release/sell them again, they are again in some way bound to give support to them. It's not like before, where they could say, the games are out of the store and they aren't responsible for them anymore.
How do you want to patch something you don't have the source code of? QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:31 pm Post subject:
Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
They don't have it? o.O
Well, that's their problem.
Hyper has said multiple times that EA lost the sourcecode of TS/RA2 with the team transfer to a new location. I though everyone knew by now o.0 QUICK_EDIT
That's new to me. I thought EA had rights problems to use it.
How can someone lose the source code? Every serious company is doing monthly backups of all their data. So the source is at least on 3 different RAID HDDs, 1-10 developer PCs, some backup CDs and whatnot. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:42 pm Post subject:
Well, if I take a guess, the time the teams where transferred was after RA2/YR afaik, so that's around 2001/2002. I don't think backups as you mention where that good or that integrated back then, and would most likely be a tape instead of an HDD. Although, this is just mass guessing of me, but it may be an accurate one unless we can get to hear the story from the WW crew. QUICK_EDIT
IIRC WW had some huge render farms for TS. So i'm pretty sure they had even back in 1997-98 already some impressive storage systems. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Damn it i don't have uprising its the only game i don't have out of this series.
I also have 2 copies of TFD so don't need this.
Wounder how many DVD's or the gigs it is after purchase. I have a download cap , wounder if they allow DVD orders?. _________________ Link to a document to see what mods i have and/or working on or working with
Click QUICK_EDIT
Well EA always sold the old games in stores here, they never stopped being available even when they were freeware. I see no reason why they have to provide more support now than they have for, say, the last 15 years.
I also have no problem with Banshees opinions making it into his posts. As long as all the info gets through some opinion actually makes it interesting. As he said, this ain't a news site. QUICK_EDIT
I hear a lot of mixed information, but from what I know a lot of the TS/RA2 stuff is questionable, I don't think that any guy at EALA has look through everything since the closure of WW-EA. I would take a guess that some old backups are there. As they have a few Renegade ones (Tiberian Technologies received a few code drops from EA_APOC some time ago now of the Renegade source backup).
We will never see the light of the source code from any of the games since the TT NDA was broken and EALA have lost all trust was lost.
I just happen to have a early copy of the TT project including the code drop, and it just happens (CC95 to Renegade used the same code base, WWLib, WWMath, WWUI) that the version snapshot Renegade used didn't have many changes compared to when they snapshotted it for TS.
All in all, your never getting the source for the games unless someone changes there view internally, and still then, projects like Ares, and RockPatch before proved that the source code is not needed, just time, and hard work.
After all, something is better than nothing. QUICK_EDIT
Do you have knowledge about the structure and internal organisation of a game like TS or Ra2?
With a good plan of the components/classes of these games, it might be easier to create an open source project to create a new engine.
I mean several things are already available today for free to download, so there might not that much work left as it seems.
-WWMATH: math libraries are for free available everywhere
-WWUI: User Interface shouldn't be difficult and can be based on any public available OpenGL engine. This would also finally make the game use the GPU too.
-WWLib: i guess this includes things like A* pathfinding and other stuff like reading mix, shp, tmp etc files. All this is available for free too or already done by programmers like Olaf.
So in the end it all comes down to find the right libraries, do adjustments to them to work together and create a new OS engine.
Too bad there aren't many enthusiastic programmers here to get things started. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Aidhus, I don't think you understood the point, OpenRA for one is much more simpler as far features go codewise than TS/RA2 and thus is notably inferior on that count.
Anyhow like Hyper said, hopes for source codes are pretty unlikely to ever fullfill. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:23 am Post subject:
You can also use YR++, but that's only a skeleton of the internal object hierarchy, and not even complete. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
You can also use YR++, but that's only a skeleton of the internal object hierarchy, and not even complete.
Correct, but as you know, once you have a basic idea of how the game flows, you do not need much info.
YR++, Ares, TT are examples that we don't need the source code to patch the games, but you do need to know a lot of intermediate programing knowledge. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:58 am Post subject:
Well yea, but even then since there is amodding community already, at least the *Type classes should have identical or expanded variables. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
If people want to know if something works in TS or Ares, they should get their hands on a copy themselves. Using a certain ship that needs to dock at a certain bay. _________________
Joined: 13 Sep 2012 Location: I have no f'ing idea
Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 10:45 pm Post subject:
Hey. I recently bought the collection, and it works great. However, there seems to be a lack of mod support for some of the games. i.e. TW, KW, and RA3 and Uprising don't appear to have the Game Browser function that you use to start mods. Generals and Zero Hour also seem to be quite iffy with mods, also. _________________ I don't give a damn, but that Mammoth Tank over there does. QUICK_EDIT
LKO... Please, stop embarrassing yourself by running through the same script as every other time the conversation of source code has been performed. Every time it's "we need the source. What? We can't get the source? We should build a whole engine."
If "we" were likely to make use of the source, then "we" would be doing more to support the development of Ares and Hyper's efforts. More than suggesting more stuff to add. QUICK_EDIT
Hey. I recently bought the collection, and it works great. However, there seems to be a lack of mod support for some of the games. i.e. TW, KW, and RA3 and Uprising don't appear to have the Game Browser function that you use to start mods. Generals and Zero Hour also seem to be quite iffy with mods, also.
KW and Uprising do not support mods normally, so why would there re release do so? _________________ I am Zengar Zombolt, The Sword That Cleaves Evil! There is Nothing I can not Cut! QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2012 9:02 pm Post subject:
TFD Gen needed the DVD. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
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Wanna get free copies of all C&C games?
its the only game i don't have out of this series.
?
