[HN Gopher] EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert
___________________________________________________________________
EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert
Author : Klaster_1
Score : 611 points
Date : 2025-02-27 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| HelloUsername wrote:
| 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/)
| adenta wrote:
| praying for Red Alert 2
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| Slightly odd (age wise) Generals got open sourced before RA2.
| I wonder why?
| apetresc wrote:
| 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.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| To acquire the source code we must first obtain the
| Tacitus.
| blibble wrote:
| 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...
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Thanks for the insight. I was wondering the same thing.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Damn, Tiberian Sun was my favourite in that series
| hammock wrote:
| 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?
| t-writescode wrote:
| 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
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| 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/
| Already__Taken wrote:
| 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.
| tomkarho wrote:
| If that ever happens I would be fascinated to see what the
| folks who made Mental Omega makes out of it.
| joshuaturner wrote:
| Apparently the source code for RA2 has been lost (along with
| Tiberian Sun)
| MortyWaves wrote:
| So not just one game like the title?
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Perhaps @dang can change URL to
| https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-
| con...
| wglb wrote:
| Best to email hn@ycombinator.com; dang can't possibly read
| all comments.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| wouldn't surprise me if dang is notified when he's
| mentioned :D
| jolmg wrote:
| He's not. He's mentioned that.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It sure seems like he does.
| MisterTea wrote:
| 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.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It was a fun time at LAN parties. There is a fan remake:
| https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/
| lloeki wrote:
| 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)
| evanjrowley wrote:
| _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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I can play it back to back for days. It's _so_ enjoyable
| and unique.
| zenlot wrote:
| Dune 2000 - countless hours spent! Ah!
| bizrod wrote:
| There's Dune 2000 assets in the Red Alert repo. I'm not sure
| how much of it is there. https://github.com/electronicarts/Cn
| C_Red_Alert/blob/main/CO...
| mizzao wrote:
| 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.
| svieira wrote:
| There is a re-implementation from scratch (I believe) here:
| https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/
| anotherhue wrote:
| EA, I've cursed your name since you smothered Westwood. But thank
| you for this.
| keyringlight wrote:
| Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood tells it a bit differently
| [0]. From memory after the EA acquisition they stopped doing
| their edutainment/casual games, which is where they used to
| nurture their junior developers along with taking on too many
| major projects because EA gave them the resources to do that.
| That led to less quality and later Westwood releases (Renegade,
| Emperor Battle for Dune) suffered.
|
| The podcast also includes details of Westwood's filming setup,
| which seemed to include motion tracking which would have been
| interesting in the context of performance capture, but before
| its time.
|
| [0] - https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/louis-
| cast...
| Flimm wrote:
| Nice! Now this piece of video game history can be better shared
| and preserved. Does this repo include the artistic assists, or
| does it include the code only?
| ratmice wrote:
| I think this qualifies as art.
|
| char insert_string1[]={"\n\r;\n\r"}; char
| insert_string2[]={";For some reason, inserting these lines
| makes it assemble correctly\n\r"};
| inetknght wrote:
| Oh boy when I see stuff like that in _modern_ code, I start
| looking for undefined behavior occurring elsewhere in the
| same or dependent translation units...
| dwattttt wrote:
| Normally I'd totally agree, but looking closely, that's a
| _comment_. If it is a load bearing comment, we're looking
| at an assembler bug there.
|
| EDIT: Looking more closely, it's less absurd than this. The
| comment is referring to directives on the next lines that
| have an impact, rather than itself.
| bangaladore wrote:
| > To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game.
|
| I take that as buy the game to get the assets.
| nicce wrote:
| > To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game.
|
| > This repository and its contents are licensed under the GPL v3
| license, with additional terms applied. Please see LICENSE.md for
| details.
|
| It does not sound open-source to me...
| josephcsible wrote:
| I think they just mean that for the game to work, you'll need
| art assets, etc. from the original game that aren't part of the
| code they open-sourced. I don't think it's a licensing
| restriction. (And even if it were, they released it under the
| GPLv3, which says "If the Program as you received it, or any
| part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by
| this License along with a term that is a further restriction,
| you may remove that term.", so you could just ignore it.)
| nicce wrote:
| It certainly sounds like all you need is in the repository,
| and the usage of the resulting binaries are still restricted.
| Whether they find assets correctly or not correctly should
| not matter, if they are somewhere else.
| Macha wrote:
| > the usage of the resulting binaries are still restricted
|
| To use the binaries, you need the game assets. The only
| legal way to acquire the game assets is to own the game, as
| EA have not included them in this release.
|
| This is less a licensing issue, but stating the real
| limitations, that EA aren't volunteering to do the leg work
| to remove. Which is fine.
| nicce wrote:
| You could word it differently. Why not mention it?
|
| It is separate problem if runtime assets are missing and
| the game is not actually a game without them or gives an
| error message. Let's also assume that you can bypass DX
| dependencies with other means.
|
| The current wording sounds like binaries are always
| proprietary, no matter what.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Where are the assets for openra coming from? I guess
| those could be used in a fork of this?
| amlib wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they get their assets from the freeware
| release
| oniony wrote:
| The additional terms are under term 7 of the GPLv3, so --
| assuming they're valid -- would still render this open-source.
| jsheard wrote:
| It's the same model as the idTech GPL releases - the code is
| open source, the rest of the game is not. To legally play the
| original game or a modified version of it then you'll still
| need to buy it for the assets, but there's nothing stopping you
| from _only_ taking the code and building a brand new game on it
| like various studios have done with idTech (e.g. Selaco and
| Wrath: Aeon of Ruin).
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, this seems -fine- to me. Even if they had to rip out
| some third-party licensed code that they couldn't open
| source[1], to the point where the game wouldn't even compile!
| Some code is always better than no code. The open source
| community can/will fill in any gaps.
|
| 1: Which seems to be the case here. To fully compile, you
| need:
|
| DirectX 5 SDK, DirectX Media 5.1 SDK, Greenleaf
| Communications Library (GCL), and Human Machine Interface
| (HMI) "Sound Operating System" (SOS), or disable the code
| that calls into them.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Does open-source mean it's free? I don't think that is what it
| means, it just means the source is open, viewable, and you are
| free to use it as per the licensing.
| nicce wrote:
| Yes, it actually means that.
|
| https://opensource.org/osd
| Flimm wrote:
| If it's open source, people are free to redistribute it.
| Copies of open source software can be sold for money, but
| open source licenses allow redistributing the software for
| free. In practise, that means most people won't buy the open
| source software from a seller, they will choose instead to
| get a copy from someone who is willing to redistribute it
| free of charge.
| Macha wrote:
| I mean, it sounds like the Red Alert code is available under
| GPLv3 (plus some additional "we want to be very clear, this
| doesn't cover the trademark" terms tacked on), but you can't
| build it without DX5, which gets compiled into the binary,
| thereby making the binary non-free. Someone could port it from
| DX5, GCL, and HMI and produce something that builds as GPL.
|
| The other part is it doesn't include the game assets or usable
| replacements, much like OpenRA, or OpenTTD for the first half
| of its life.
|
| I'm not going to fault EA too much for this approach,
| particularly if it paves the way to open sourcing e.g. EOL MMOs
| and the like if game devs don't feel the obligation to port
| away from all the commercial libraries. I've seen game devs who
| I genuinely believe on this say things to the effect of "Oh
| yeah, we'd totally open source dead game X, except we'd have to
| port it away from Bink and Havok and XYZ, and we don't have the
| time to do that for 0 revenue"
| nicce wrote:
| That sounds reasonable, but they could have worded it
| differently.
|
| They first statement about DX:
|
| > or write new replacements (or remove the code using them
| entirely) for the following libraries;
|
| But, they say that binary is proprietary regardless, no
| conditions. So it is very difficult to say.
|
| If the code compiles without assets (no mention about them,
| it sounds like it should compile), then the resulting binary
| should be free to use. Missing runtime assets are different
| problem, and separate from the binary usage permissions.
| lloeki wrote:
| OpenRA doesn't ship with the assets+ for Tiberian Dawn, Red
| Alert, and Dune 2000 but they're downloadable straight from
| the UI as they were made officially available by EA/Westwood.
|
| + Without the music and cutscenes. If you want that you need
| original discs or other dematerialized versions.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| It's realistically the best-case scenario we can hope for in
| most cases. If you want all old games to be FREE, then, fine,
| this won't make you happy. But for those of us who are just
| happy to be able to play the ancient PC games from our youth on
| modern systems, and are willing to PAY for it, this kind of
| license separates the engine from the assets, and effectively
| requires you to prove that you have bought the game by
| supplying the assets. But then you can do whatever you want
| with it to get it running on your favorite Linux distro, etc.
|
| I am personally not opposed to this. It worked for Doom.
| ageitgey wrote:
| Who's going to be the hero that builds a modern update of C&C
| Generals/Zero Hour with 4k rendering, raytracing, etc?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I'd settle for a native Linux build.
| tete wrote:
| Would be nice. But they all work just fine with wine and/or
| proton.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I haven't tried wine in ~15 years, but it was pretty
| useless for gaming back then. Has it much improved?
| Sesse__ wrote:
| Basically the entire premise of the Steam Deck is built
| on WINE (via a Valve-developed fork, Proton).
| sho_hn wrote:
| Noting that Proton is regularly rebased on upstream, and
| Valve is contracting CodeWeavers, the same company which
| employs many core Wine contributors.
|
| Fork is certainly technically the correct word, but
| "distribution" might give more the right impression.
| khedoros1 wrote:
| When someone releases a game in a Windows version and a
| Linux version, the current Wine-based compatibility
| layers mean that the Windows one is more likely to run
| without issue than the native binary is.
|
| I built a Linux gaming desktop 5 years ago. The only
| thing that regularly causes more than minor issues is
| that many online games use incompatible anticheat
| technology. I pretty much play exclusively single-player
| games on PC, so it hasn't been a practical issue for me.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It's pretty awesome. Some of the compatibility layers
| built on Wine (Valve's Proton/Codeweavers
| Crossover/Whisky) are _almost_ plug and play. With Steam
| on Linux, a lot of games work seamlessly. I 've only ran
| into trouble with very new games and multiplayer games
| with invasive anti-cheat that freaks out when they're
| running in an environment that doesn't look like a normal
| windows install
|
| The performance hit is surprisingly low. It's not rare
| for the windows binary to run better on linux than the
| native one (when it's an option)
| gatane wrote:
| There was a reverse engineering one, and openRA.
|
| https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Vanilla-Conquer
| harshreality wrote:
| Converting the assets to use the Spring engine (or
| BeyondAllReason's active fork of it) is probably easier than
| writing a new engine from scratch for the existing assets. And
| then it'll feel like BAR but with C&C's assets. The UI is what
| gives the game most of its feel.
| SXX wrote:
| C&C Generals plays completely different compared to Total
| Annihilation like games with streaming economy that Spring
| was built for. I like both subgenres of RTS, but they are
| very different.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| There's a mod for RA3 that re-implements Generals:
| https://www.moddb.com/mods/command-and-conquer-generals-evol...
| rco8786 wrote:
| You might check out https://www.openra.net/
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's RA. Generals was a different game engine.
| blashyrk wrote:
| Even more importantly, running at 60+fps while not breaking
| gameplay, physics, shaders, cutscenes...
| LorenDB wrote:
| According to some research I did a few years back, EA currently
| owns the rights to Full Tilt! Pinball, which is what 3D Pinball
| Space Cadet was based on.
|
| EA, if you have a single shred of decency, open source Pinball!
| Macha wrote:
| From what I've heard from videos by Microsoft devs on why it
| was dropped between XP and Vista, the source code is obtuse and
| very difficult to port/work on.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Microsoft devs also claimed that making cmd faster would
| require years of research, but someone did that in a weekend
| by making it run on a GPU. I'm sure there's someone out there
| that would solve every problem Space Cadet has within a week,
| just for fun.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I'm sure there are lots of large groups of devs who are
| undone by an upstart kid with a fresh perspective and no
| fear
| oynqr wrote:
| Why don't you check for yourself:
| https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Thing that's hard to communicate is that Vista was moving
| away from how older versions of Windows rendered their
| desktop and past art styles. With Pinball originally from
| Windows 95, porting it to leverage Vista's new graphics
| paradigm on top of the artstyle was probably too much work
| for a pack in game.
|
| Though I do wish they contracted out a clone of Pinball
| instead of Purble Place.
| johnfernow wrote:
| It may have been at one point, but since then it has been
| decompiled and ported to many platforms:
|
| - PS Vita
|
| - Emscripten
|
| - Nintendo Switch
|
| - webOS TV
|
| - Android (WIP)
|
| - Nintendo Wii
|
| - Nintendo 3DS
|
| - Nintendo DS
|
| - Nintendo Wii U
|
| - PlayStation 2
|
| - Sega Dreamcast
|
| - MorphOS
|
| - AmigaOS 4
|
| https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > EA, if you have a single shred of decency
|
| That's... I mean, I hesitate to comment on that under this
| particular post, but... yeah.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The complete C&C bundle with all open sourced games and several
| others is currently $6 on Steam, if you need the art assets
| https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer...
|
| Hopefully this causes a sales spike and encourages other
| developers to do similar things.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm there's also a c&c remastered bundle.
|
| Anyone knows if either of them includes stuff that requires an
| EA account?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| The remastered bundle does not need it.
| nottorp wrote:
| Well I hope you're right, I just bought both bundles.
|
| This is the first time I give money to EA since Mass Effect
| 2* :)
|
| * Technically i also paid for the Mass Effect collection
| for playstation, because Sony doesn't allow them to require
| a login on there. But it's the first time for a PC title
| since ME 2.
| gimme_treefiddy wrote:
| Damn looks like remastered one doesn't have the Zero Hour
| version in it.
| mclau156 wrote:
| We had to wait for a team of github users to reverse engineer
| Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time before Nintendo would do
| anything about it
| modeless wrote:
| The complete game was released as freeware by EA over 15 years
| ago. It was freely available for download from EA's servers for
| many years and has been redistributed by many third party sites
| as well. So getting the art and other assets to use with this
| code should be no problem.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100214144634/http://www.comman...
| hd4 wrote:
| I think this marks the first time EA have open-sourced a
| videogame, a welcome development.
| Macha wrote:
| That would have been Micropolis in 2008, I think (better known
| as Simcity, the open source release was renamed to be super
| clear it doesn't include the trademark)
| tete wrote:
| This is really nice and positively surprising for EA. While the
| RTSs are amazing I think Command and Conquer Renegade is one of
| the most fun games ever made as well.
|
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Renegade
|
| What these people did is really amazing:
|
| https://w3dhub.com/
| tomw1808 wrote:
| I am speechless.
|
| The most vile gaming company I know. The most beloved game I ever
| played.
|
| Now, Open source ... from them? How? Why? Marketing gag or a step
| in the right direction?
|
| But then, OpenRA has existed for a while - does that mean its
| getting even better?
|
| Where is this going?
| Macha wrote:
| The official stated reason is to make life easier for modders,
| for the steam workshop mods in their latest releases.
| sho_hn wrote:
| EA and Open Source isn't completely alien. Their C++ standard
| library EASTL was open sourced long ago and is a historically
| quite important and influential codebase in the history of
| C++'s evolution.
|
| They've also open sourced and patent-pledged a bunch of gaming-
| relatee accessibility tech over the years.
|
| And of course Micropolis/SimCity.
|
| My advice is to celebrate the successes of large corporates in
| this regard very hard and often - this provides backup to the
| champions on the inside.
| newsclues wrote:
| great news, thanks to id software for leading the way!
| tosh wrote:
| Related: If you like the old Command and Conquer classics, give
| Combined Arms a try.
|
| https://www.moddb.com/mods/command-conquer-combined-arms
| Starlevel004 wrote:
| // Homework for today. Write 2000 words reconciling "Your code
| must never crash" with "Intentionally putting crashes in the
| code". Fucktard. // DEBUG_CRASH(( "xferScienceVec -
| vector is not empty, but should be\n" )); //
|
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour/blo...
| jsheard wrote:
| // Lets discuss how Windows is a flaming pile of poo. I'm now
| casting the header // directly into the structure,
| because its the one I want, and this is just how // its
| done. I hate Windows. - jkmcd
|
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour/blo...
| poizan42 wrote:
| ... because they just casted lParam into a pointer to
| DEV_BROADCAST_HDR a few lines above, which is the common part
| of the different structure it could point to. That's just
| doing inheritance the C way. What did they expect? A C++
| class from a C api?
| inetknght wrote:
| EA game devs cursing each other out? Internal company drama
| being aired out years later? Oh boy!
| cluckindan wrote:
| *Westwood
| stnmtn wrote:
| This one made me laugh, mostly because the variable names are
| so dumb
|
| // our RNG is basically shit -- horribly nonrandom at the start
| of the sequence.
|
| // get a few values at random to get rid of the dreck.
|
| // there's no mathematical basis for this, but empirically, it
| helps a lot.
|
| UnsignedInt silly = GetGameLogicRandomSeed() % 7;
|
| for (Int poo = 0; poo < silly; ++poo)
|
| {
|
| GameLogicRandomValue(0, 1); // ignore result
|
| }
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I spent some time browing curiosities about old games, and
| what strikes me is that the code sometimes was quite
| personal. You could see the joy, the anger, the
| disappointment, the satisfaction. Nowadays it would never fly
| to name a variable "poo", you need to stay professional at
| all times.
| herewulf wrote:
| Nowadays it just depends on how shitty your job is.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| says who?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Game code comments are always the most entertaining :D
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| This makes sense because OpenRA was doing so well!
| kennysoona wrote:
| This is some very welcome and surprisingly, good news which has
| been really, really, lacking this year.
| sho_hn wrote:
| This is very cool. It should be done a lot more often for old
| games. Whoever pulled this off at EA Games, you did a great thing
| for art and culture, and chapeau for pulling it off at a big
| corp.
| grayhatter wrote:
| OpenRA did it better :D
|
| If you haven't seen it yet https://www.openra.net/ is worth your
| time.
|
| https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA
|
| I have many fond memories of playing openra as "LAN" game on the
| gaming weekends we used to have in a few open source groups I've
| been in. I can't recommend "saturday gaming" enough, for anyone
| involved in any foss community, set up a recurring gaming
| weekend! You get bonus points if you make it mostly or
| exclusively foss games!
| bee_rider wrote:
| I only glanced at the code in ANIM.CPP but for a C++ program from
| 1997 it looks kinda nice, right? The methods are all short, with
| some descriptive comments at the top of each one. Inputs and
| outputs described. Nice index at the top of the file.
|
| I've seen worse!
| pcwalton wrote:
| Yeah, I was looking at infantry.cpp, and the quality is
| actually _very_ good for 90s game code. The documentation is
| good, it 's decently well-formatted, and there are assertions.
| Nice counterexample to the "all successful games have terrible
| code" conventional wisdom.
| zamubafoo wrote:
| Shame they'll never do it for Warcraft 3 with the remaster still
| around.
| SXX wrote:
| Whoever pushed for this at EA - my deepest respect is with you!
|
| Original C&C was rewritten from scratch long ago, but open source
| version of Zero Hour is such an amazing gift.
|
| PS: if you want to send respects to the person who did it you can
| do it on Linkedin:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jim-vessella-62726825_from-th...
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Agreed. Internally at companies like this, it's extremely
| difficult to get something like this approved. This is the
| result of a lot of meetings, a lot of "no"'s, a lot of legal
| approvals.
| SXX wrote:
| Let's be honest I can't view this anything other than miracle
| that was delivered to us by some very dedicated people who
| likely pushed this for years.
|
| I hope there will be more people and companies within
| industry making similar moves. It's will both increase their
| sales as well as allow fans to keep their favorite games
| alive.
| rgbrgb wrote:
| Would be cool to jump in the codebase here with claude code and
| start riffing. Anyone get this or the others to compile on a mac?
| Angostura wrote:
| No sign of the Ma version :(
| colechristensen wrote:
| 25 or 30 years would be a good amount of time for software
| copyright to expire.
|
| It would be fantastic if there was a way (somewhat like patents)
| where IP protection could be linked up with publishing materials
| so that in order to get the law to protect your software from
| copying, you had to have it published at the end of the
| protection period. (like on release you had to store the source
| code at the library of congress or something)
| aflag wrote:
| Even if it expires after 30 years, if the company doesn't
| publish the source code, what good does it do?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Perhaps to get the copyright you should put the code in
| escrow? Not really, it costs a fortune
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant though, put the code in a
| private third party library in order to gain IP protection.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Who can we bribe at Microsoft to get Fallout 1 / 2 source code
| released? Would be really interesting when you consider that FO2
| has online modding, so it would allow for so much craziness to
| ensue out of FO2...
| SXX wrote:
| Fallout 1 and 2 were rewritten from scratch more than twice
| already.
|
| Several times as clone game engine with most popular being
| falltergeist:
|
| https://github.com/falltergeist/falltergeist
|
| Second time as MMO client-server tech:
|
| https://github.com/cvet/fonline
|
| FOnline for sure use nothing of original game except for
| assets.
|
| PS: So yeah source code of fallout wouldn't be of any use
| really except for historical archive.
| amacneil wrote:
| That's nice, but who is working on porting this to the typescript
| type checker?
| walrus01 wrote:
| I wonder if the current owners will ever consider open sourcing
| Supreme Commander, the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_(video_game)
| SXX wrote:
| Might be you actually interested to work on that code?
|
| I do personally know some of main developers and they know who
| owns the IP, but to push something like that it will take some
| resources unfortunately. So might be if some people get
| together on this it's could be done.
|
| It's wouldn't cost some immense amount of money, but it will
| certainly cost some. At least I pretty sure that source code
| for the games is not lost.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I wouldn't be the guy to work on the code, not being a game
| developer or even adjacent to it. I work in ISP/telecom core
| network infrastructure, so would be happy to help out with
| questions on stuff like DIYing a set of self-hosted servers
| for a revival of the game.
| SXX wrote:
| Don't you know? Multiplayer for SupCom is alive and well
| with FAForever:
|
| https://www.faforever.com/
|
| They also have patches, but they obviously limited since
| it's all just patching memory.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Yes I'm aware it exists, was thinking more of what
| theoretical infrastructure might be needed if the full
| art assets/code/etc for the final release of Forged
| Alliance was open sourced and further built upon. My
| understanding is that FA Forever is a group of people
| who've implemented a server replacement since the
| officially-hosted multiplayer servers went offline some
| time in 2012.
| russnewcomer wrote:
| It's Wargaming who owns the IP and assets, and I doubt they
| release them, if they even have them. DrDeath or Mavor might
| have copies, but neither of them would likely release them.
|
| Similarly, TA's source code never got released, and while
| Spring is great and ArmoredFish made good progress with RWE, I
| wish that code hadn't gotten lost either.
| ww520 wrote:
| We used to waste so much time on this in the lan party.
| arduanika wrote:
| Finally, EA does the optimal thing to benefit all humanity!
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Great memories, playing these when they came out against my crew.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| "Compiling"
|
| "Cannot compile, building in progress"
| klaussilveira wrote:
| > If you wish to rebuild the source code and tools successfully
| you will need to find or write new replacements (or remove the
| code using them entirely) for the following libraries;
|
| Take the hint, Valve. And Epic (UT99). Having third-party code is
| not an excuse.
| InitEnabler wrote:
| I'll just leave this here.
|
| https://youtu.be/niZpcdp2v34
| punnerud wrote:
| How hard would it be to convert this so it could run in the
| browser using WebAssembly?
| binary132 wrote:
| The comments on the Red Alert sources are so detailed. This is
| awesome. Major props to EA!
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I guess this is as close to public domain that software can be
| until the 2070s. Functionally no different to use, but you are
| not allowed to make any money selling it.
| astrostl wrote:
| Best game intro [1] ever IMO. Fun story, compact length, epic
| soundtrack ("Hell March"). They did that in 1996 and nothing
| since has even come close for me.
|
| Had a ton of fun with the game itself, too.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJnMaTx4yjI
| mhotchen wrote:
| Christ:
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert/blob/main/CO...
| icemelt8 wrote:
| As a React developer, how does one even compile something like
| this
| liamkearney wrote:
| Curious. Can anyone tell me if it's windows thing, specific
| filesystem thing, source control system thing or just a style
| thing, naming all files and directories in caps?
| abanana wrote:
| It came out not long after Windows 95, so it will have
| supported earlier versions of Windows, which had the 8.3
| character all-caps filename limitation.
| joquarky wrote:
| I wish they would release all the code and assets used to make
| Earth & Beyond.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| now, if they open source Red Alert 2 engine ... That was a
| masterpiece of using voxels
| nntwozz wrote:
| Good job, now open source Dark Age of Camelot.
|
| Thank you
| hammock wrote:
| What is the best c&c style game that has been released in the
| last couple years?
| molave wrote:
| EA... good?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| How could they neglect this awesome franchise... Just the usual
| Retardation Arts. Bring everything to the ground, kill the joy
| these games bring to the masses. Plus they are literally pissing
| on the early EOA guys' work.
|
| Worst management ever. yuck.
| Sjonny wrote:
| There are loads of .BAK files as well, and diffing them with the
| actual file gives you some insight on what they were working on.
| (Like pre and post Counterstrike addon).
| voidfunc wrote:
| Wow. Please do SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4 next EA!!
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