[HN Gopher] EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, alon...
___________________________________________________________________
EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, along with other
games
Author : Klaster_1
Score : 1169 points
Date : 2025-02-27 18:42 UTC (1 days 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?
| slavik81 wrote:
| 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.
| mock-possum wrote:
| 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?
| piyiotisk wrote:
| Mine too! I still play it sometimes through cncnet but
| you need a windows machine or a VM?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Yuri's or bust!
| lawlessone wrote:
| Ahh, i was hoping for TBS remaster. I guess this is why i
| haven't seen it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| clemiclemen wrote:
| 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.
| cjrp wrote:
| Thanks, I just lost my afternoon to this!
| 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)
| Dead_Lemon wrote:
| I would recommend checking out the openRA fork for Red Alart
| 2, Romanovs-Vengeance,
| https://github.com/MustaphaTR/Romanovs-Vengeance
| 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.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| 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)
| adastra22 wrote:
| It sure seems like he does.
| wglb wrote:
| Between 2025-02-26 at 10:20 and 24 hours later, there
| were 10563 posts to HN.
|
| So it is simply not humanly possible.
| account42 wrote:
| 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.
| wglb wrote:
| It would be easy enough for you to validate. Just start
| with the "comments" tab and keep up for one day.
| 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/
| slavik81 wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| Licensing perhaps
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| -Is the licensing done Yuri?
|
| -No comrade premier, it has only begone.
| nunodonato wrote:
| I play this game once a year... every year :)
| cahoot_bird wrote:
| 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..
| 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...
| toxik wrote:
| I think those are holdovers from Dune 2, if you search for
| Dune you'll find explicit references to Dune 2 stuff.
| therealpygon wrote:
| 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/.
| ..
| 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/
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| 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.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Waiting for Road Rash
| alberth wrote:
| Interesting to see how much Assembly was used in Red Alert
| (19.5% of code base), whereas all the rest is < 3%)
| rightbyte wrote:
| Why would that be? Old code from C&C which in turn inherited
| from Dune?
| ukd1 wrote:
| Could be, though also maybe optimization?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Dunno just looking at some file names they seem generic.
| I would guess carry over since Dune.
| xgkickt wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > it just means the source is open, viewable
|
| That's called source-available, unless "use it as per the
| licensing" includes further freedoms
| 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)
| lucb1e wrote:
| Just yesterday I got the Linux version of an indie game
| made with Unity and it doesn't even launch. Fetched the
| Windows build, ran "wine game.exe" and it just ran.
| Couple other things (C# projects iirc) also worked well
|
| This is not a Unity game, but especially with ancient
| stuff like Red Alert? I would certainly try it and expect
| good results. Some years ago, Wine always used to give me
| trouble and never worked unless you used some special
| blend of options (like Proton and PlayOnLinux help with).
| Maybe those times have passed
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| These days Wine works better than Windows for some kinds
| of games.
| account42 wrote:
| Wine was far from useless for gaming ing 2010.
| alex7o wrote:
| Man wine works on Android now, with stuff like winlator.
| I saw a video of someone playing fallout 4.
| josephg wrote:
| Did they eventually fix the game desync bug that would
| happen when you have a multi-core CPU?
|
| We used to play Generals at LAN parties all the time - but
| once multicore CPUs hit the market, it was difficult to
| just get to the end of a game, because peers would desync
| and you'd suddenly find yourself playing singleplayer. Its
| clearly some race condition in the game engine which makes
| the game non-deterministic in a multicore situation. Does
| anyone know - is that still a problem?
| skhr0680 wrote:
| I'm going to be nice to the net code and say that it has
| issues because of its age, but multicore CPUs don't cause
| any issues as far as I know:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS0UL9QC2c4
| chpatrick wrote:
| Generals has a really annoying issue where it just
| desynchronizes and drops you out of a multiplayer game
| after a random amount of time.
| 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.
| josephg wrote:
| With the game engine opensourced, I doubt thats true. Its
| probably going to be much easier to just get this code
| building (patching out any proprietary bits and pieces) and
| going from there.
|
| Modding the game to work properly at a high framerate doesn't
| sound very hard when you have the original assets & source
| code to work from.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| There's a mod for RA3 that re-implements Generals:
| https://www.moddb.com/mods/command-and-conquer-generals-evol...
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| Whoa awesome. I spent hours playing Generals in the mid
| 2000s.
| 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...
| account42 wrote:
| This is less of a problem for multiplayer games usually
| because they will already need need to deal with these issues
| for syncing between clients.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| Don't forget fix all the bugs...
| czbond wrote:
| What is a modern equivalent of this genre of game? I loved C&C
| 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
| josephg wrote:
| Can confirm. I've been on both sides of that fence.
|
| I worked on a product about a decade ago which had an
| unnecessarily complicated custom layout system written in
| javascript. CSS was missing a lot of features at the
| time, so we figured we'd roll our own. It was crazy
| complicated - and it had all these weird easy to
| reproduce bugs.
|
| For fun, some pesky kid on twitter took our insanely
| layout system and reimplemented 95% of it in a couple
| hundred lines of (almost) pure CSS. At a glance, it
| looked identical to our product - but the code was small,
| clean and fast. The link got passed around the office. It
| was amazing how many reasons people had to dismiss it.
| "Ah, see - it doesn't even do this weird custom behaviour
| we have!" or "Well and good in chrome - but it doesn't
| work properly on IE8!" and so on. I've never seen a
| better example of motivated reasoning, before or since.
|
| What we should have done is reach out and offer that kid
| a job.
|
| The smartest programmer on your team isn't as smart as
| the smartest programmer on the internet.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| All you have said is that it's easy to write something
| that takes you 90% there and ignores the last 10% of
| requirements. I worked in webdev some 15 years ago and if
| I could have dropped IE support sooner my code would have
| been so much simpler as well :)
| skhr0680 wrote:
| > 95%
|
| I feel like the naysayers have a point too. 95% done?
| Only 95% left to go!
| oynqr wrote:
| Why don't you check for yourself:
| https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
| lucb1e wrote:
| It says in the readme this is a reverse engineering
| project, not stolen source code
| 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.
| onli wrote:
| No, that would be surprising. They only remastered C&C1
| and 2. If you want Generals, buy the "Ultimate
| Collection" bundle.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I checked before i posted. Liked the 'installer' bit they
| do just before the c&c remaster. One of the cooler
| installers during that time. Most were boring text
| screens with blue and white text. c&c had none of that
| crap. They start world building the second you get in.
| 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)
| swat535 wrote:
| I think this is the biggest release of open source they have
| done, if am I wrong, someone correct me please.
|
| Either way I'm very impressed !
| 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.
| tomw1808 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I am wondering what the metrics / KPIs are they are tracking
| to see if open sourcing something is a success or not. Can't
| be just "sales went up for retro games when we open sourced"
| - there must be something like community reception and
| retention, general acceptance or whatever...
|
| But yes, I agree. Let's celebrate this and hope for more.
| 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?
| esafak wrote:
| The person reviewing your PR.
| broeng wrote:
| anal_reactor says so.
| as1mov wrote:
| I recently had a PR rejected because I used the name of a
| fictional character from a 90's movie in my tests. Keep
| in mind the character itself was not controversial. The
| reason given was that it's not professional.
|
| Tbf, I chalked it up to a one singular cantankerous
| reviewer rather than the whole company.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Nowadays it would never fly to name a variable "poo", you
| need to stay professional at all times.
|
| I couldn't help but chuckle at your user name when reading
| this comment
| recursive wrote:
| Probably depends how indie/small your studio is.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I was a game dev in the mid 90s. It was unserious. There
| was all sorts of crazy shit in the graphics assets. One
| wall I remember says "CUNT" on it o_O
|
| I'm sad if developers can no longer name their variables
| _poo_ and _fuck_.
|
| Also teenage me would probably be horrified finding out 30
| years later his source code was public.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Also teenage me would probably be horrified finding out
| 30 years later his source code was public.
|
| I guess that's why moral rights are unalienable in many
| countries: if you are horrified what they do with it, you
| still retain that and this right did not go to your
| employer
|
| Not that I think there is anything here the devs need to
| be ashamed of, to be clear, just what came to mind as I
| read this remark
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'd just be horrified by the quality of some code. It
| included some of my best code, and some of my worst code.
| Some of it was written after three days straight with no
| sleep for those times when Eidos wanted to come for a
| personal demo.
| hasley wrote:
| Still today, I tend to increase my motivation of writing
| unit tests by using some non-serious names and strings in
| the tests.
| yobbo wrote:
| This is similar to "burn-in" for markov-chain montecarlo.
| When the chain is initialized to some bad value, it requires
| a number of iterations to get into a "good chain". But for a
| uniform RNG, any value should be good.
|
| So the RNG doesn't seem great.
| account42 wrote:
| Well it works for RC4
| moffkalast wrote:
| Game code comments are always the most entertaining :D
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv...
| account42 wrote:
| I don't get the complaint in the comment. Asserts for
| invariants/pre-/postconditions are absolutely compatible with
| not crashing: don't violate those properties.
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Nice counterexample to the "all successful games have
| terrible code" conventional wisdom.
|
| That's a modern wisdom from the last 15-ish years when people
| started to have good enough internet connections that you can
| get away with publishing a dozens gigabytes patch _on launch
| day_.
|
| In ye olde times, it was prohibitively expensive (or in the
| case of console ROM cartridges, impossible) to distribute
| patches, so projects were usually planned with plenty of
| buffer time and plenty human testers. These days it's rush to
| not collide with the releases of other AAA studios, and human
| paid-for testers have been replaced by free (or, sometimes,
| _paying_ ) early-access players.
| philistine wrote:
| I think survivor bias is at play here. C&C had many sequels,
| ports, expansion packs that helped make it popular. So of
| course it had nice code, otherwise we wouldn't have seen such
| a wide berth of reuse for that code.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I made some games as a teenager and had the experience that I
| was basically forced to stop projects because they got too
| complex. Game Maker had only limited support for things like
| variable scoping; you really need to isolate components and
| have them all do their own defined thing to make it not grow
| too complex or you'll fix one bug and cause two new ones. Even
| more so as a team, I can only imagine, though I never
| concurrently worked on game code with more than one person (for
| longer than a literal weekend project, that is)
|
| Normal software I find is a bit different because things like
| UI libraries give you a lot of structure already. In game code,
| you do so many things custom, and performance matters so much
| (each frame needs to finish around e.g. the 17-millisecond
| mark) that it's really up to you to apply the necessary
| discipline
| MrLeap wrote:
| Gamedev here. The process I have to go through to make a good
| core is never a linear thing.
|
| I'm making a custom netcode right now. I started from a blank
| folder. I had some design decisions worked out before I
| started, like I wanted udp transport for messages that didn't
| require responses (ie inputs), an isomorphic client/server
| simulation and state snapshot diffs and checksum validation.
| I had an idea what I wanted the syntax of creating a new
| request to be, but the rest I knew I'd just figure out as I
| went.
|
| The way everything fits together has taken a lot of
| refactoring, and I've disregared 3 prototype sim components.
| I've written a good 40% of the base types twice over to make
| it all click better. It's kind of sad how few libraries I've
| found for a fixed point physics simulation. I've been using
| one I stubbed together and it may end up growing into
| something permanent if I don't find something better that
| checks my boxes. That's just the way it goes.
|
| The only way I get top tier code is if I budget time to do
| controlled burns as I get a crufty feelings. There's never
| enough time to do it like that the whole way through a
| project, but I find that if you're aggressive about doing
| that the first 30% of the way into a thing, you have a good
| enough core to hang your less elegant ornaments off of and it
| wont collapse into a tangle.
|
| Another valuable process when writing things from scratch is
| finding compact archetypal islands that force your systems
| into a good versatile shape. Something simple like a boids
| simulation requires you have so much stuff worked out that if
| you write it first and stir it around and firm up the
| foundation, you'll build most of the tools you need for many
| different kinds of games.
| 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.
| jacooper wrote:
| Finally somebody can fix the mismatch errors in the game and
| make it actually playable again!
| CCHyper wrote:
| Hey, that would be me! :D
|
| You can check out our full announcement post here;
| https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/1izmpmb/...
| SXX wrote:
| Sorry for not mentioning you initially and thank you Sir for
| making it happen!
|
| I obviously love classical RTS and playing them since
| original C&C, but there are special place in my heart for
| Generals exactly because ot was different game.
|
| And for me as game developer seeing this game in a sad state
| make me sad. I feel it does have as much potential as AoE2
| and now more people can try to bring new life to it.
| 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.
| account42 wrote:
| Escrow for source code only costs a fortune because the
| only demand for it is b&b software where contracts require
| it. It's not a fundamentally expensive service and if it
| was required in order to receive copyright protection then
| it would just be provided by the government either for free
| or at cost.
| 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.
| account42 wrote:
| Reimplementations are never perfect replicas so the source
| code would at the very least be useful as a reference. Some
| people also want to play the original with only minor
| compatibility fixes for moderns systems without random
| unwanted "features".
|
| Your first link also talks about a "Development Roadmap" that
| doesn't give the indication that it's even fully playable
| yet.
| 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.
| scubadude wrote:
| Check out Beyond All Reason if you aren't aware of it
| https://www.beyondallreason.info/
| 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"
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Lol, we need a terminal extension to play these sounds when
| compiling. "Building-Unit Ready" is burned in my brain.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| Or we could do one for unit tests, every time a test fails it
| should say "Unit lost", "Unit lost"....."Unit lost"
|
| If a build or deployment fails "A-bomb launch detected"
| lucb1e wrote:
| Unable to* compile, building in progress
|
| as I recall, at least. I may have played tibsun to death on my
| grandma's computer. Not that I spoke a word of English back
| then, so this must have been from replaying it later actually
| 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.
| jamesfinlayson wrote:
| I thought about this recently - probably Valve is reluctant to
| because people are still licensing both the GoldSource and
| Source engines (I think the last GoldSource engine license was
| in 2020 but the game hasn't even been announced; I think four
| Source engine games are due this year). If EA released the
| Nightfire engine code (very advanced GoldSource engine fork)
| that would be great though!
|
| But it's sad that John Carmack's example has not been widely
| followed.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| I completely forgot about Nightfire! What an amazing game it
| was.
| account42 wrote:
| This might be an argument if those engine licenses were more
| than a rounding error in Valve's profits. I seriously doubt
| that that's the case.
| 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.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > you are not allowed to make any money selling it.
|
| Why not? I don't see it in the additional terms, so if you mean
| the GPL part then
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
| 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
| swat535 wrote:
| It's in the README
| 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?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Beyond All Reason sorta isn't released yet, but I'm liking that
| a lot as an old C&C2/AoE1 fan
| Macha wrote:
| C&C Remastered
|
| The 8-bit (armies/hordes/invaders) games play very much like a
| faster C&C. They had a sequel recently with 9-bit armies.
|
| Starcraft 2 for ages was basically "the last RTS", and it does
| have some differences from how the C&C formula, but then I
| always felt Generals took liberal inspiration from Starcraft
| compared to classic C&C too.
| 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).
| CCHyper wrote:
| Yup! Keeping those in there was important for us as we know the
| core community would love to see this historic data!
| voidfunc wrote:
| Wow. Please do SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4 next EA!!
| nomilk wrote:
| Alas, no red alert 2 (the best, IMO). But still this is such
| great news. Huge props to EA for this.
| 3abiton wrote:
| I don't know why they're stalling, I wonder if there still any
| revenues from the game or if it's IP issue.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| This stuff is decades old. It's completely legitimate that
| they may simply have lost the source code during a server
| migration or whatnot.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| No, because Red Alert 2 Remaster exists...
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Do you work for EA? Because they haven't announced or
| released such a thing. A year ago a developer hinted
| there might be another remaster in the future, but it
| could just as easily be Generals as RA2.
| rsstack wrote:
| No, that was gaming tabloids misunderstanding a sentence
| by EA a year ago. It was never announced.
| swat535 wrote:
| They didn't announce it, the most likely explanation I've
| heard is that the original code is lost, along with
| Tiberian Sun
| account42 wrote:
| It may be common but let's not take the average companies
| lax attitude to source code archival and backup as
| "legitimate". It's a disgrace for the industry that this
| happens so often.
| nomilk wrote:
| Some possible explanations:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40506894
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| This is what you're looking for right?
|
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection/...
| nomilk wrote:
| That's the original C&C Red Alert:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert
|
| But there was a sequel, C&C Red Alert 2: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert...
|
| Both were incredible at the time.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| Ah got it.
| dogancelik wrote:
| I really hope that one day they will open source Nox [1], it was
| my favorite childhood game after Sims. Nox was also a game
| created by the same studio that created Red Alert.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nox_(video_game)
| JanSt 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
| DEV_BROADCAST_VOLUME *vol = (DEV_BROADCAST_VOLUME*) (hdr);
| // @todo - Yikes. This could cause us all kinds of pain. I don't
| really want // to even think about the stink this could
| cause us.
| TheFileSystem->unloadMusicFilesFromCD(vol->dbcv_unitmask);
| return TRUE;
| nomilk wrote:
| This is kinda funny too:
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert/blob/0dc09bb...
| m463 wrote:
| how prescient they were!
|
| "Nationalism will bring us victory!"
|
| "China will grow larger"
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| IDK why but it ironically brings me joy to find typos in old
| code. Maybe a reminder that we're all human (well back when code
| was written by humans /s).
|
| https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection/...
| high_priest wrote:
| Some influencer coder right now "i don't use IDE, because it
| makes my coding more detailed & thorough"
| ChromaticPanic wrote:
| We want that artisanal hand crafted environmentally friendly
| codebase
| montag wrote:
| I heard this line of code `Sound_Effect(VOC_TANYA_LAUGH, Coord);`
| jaredhallen wrote:
| Shake it, baby!
| edm0nd wrote:
| You must construct additional pylons....wait....crap...wrong
| game!
| superconduct123 wrote:
| Some funny comments
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/1izpkmh/...
| iab wrote:
| ScenarioInit = 0; // Kludge.
|
| I vibe with the authors.
| bbor wrote:
| Ha, wow -- great minds think alike. Somehow I ended up at the
| exact same file (only went to one!) and was coming back to
| comment on exactly this line.
|
| What makes this especially funny is that this is the very
| second line of the entire game, at least in the case of Red
| Alert! So very CPP.
|
| For the curious: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Al
| ert/blob/main/CO...
| alanh wrote:
| A bit off-topic, but I found it very dystopian a few months ago
| to ask ChatGPT to describe the game in some detail. It refused
| to, claiming it violated content policy. Chilling.
| Jd wrote:
| A bit challenging since none of the repositories I looked at
| actually compile.
|
| EA says that if you remove (or refactor!) the dependencies it
| might work but I don't know if that's high enough confidence to
| dive in.
| haunter wrote:
| >To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game. The C&C
| Remastered Collection is available for purchase on EA App or
| Steam.
|
| Mind you EA released [some of] the games as freeware back in 2008
| so no, you don't have to buy them for the graphics, art, sound,
| and music assets
|
| Tiberian Dawn GDI
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110927141135/http://na.llnet.c...
|
| Tiberian Dawn NOD
| https://web.archive.org/web/20111104060230/http://na.llnet.c...
|
| Tiberian Sun (though no source code was released for this game)
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110823002110/http://na.llnet.c...
|
| Red Alert Allied
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100130215623/http://na.llnet.c...
|
| Red Alert Soviet
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100130220258/http://na.llnet.c...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Thanks for spoiling my weekend. :)
| eighthourblink wrote:
| .......and there goes my weekend :)
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| EA could release the source code of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and
| LHX.
| rumdz wrote:
| Please open source Nox!
| haunter wrote:
| Sim City 2000!
| guidedlight wrote:
| Maybe someone can finally make a native Mac version.
|
| It astonishes me that EA leaves obvious money on the table by not
| taking the 5 mins it would take to recompile it for MacOS.
| bangaladore wrote:
| This is a terribly naive comment. I'm not going to even go into
| the specifics.
|
| Lets assume they click one button and it recompiles, how many
| people would buy it? Almost certainly wouldn't pay back the dev
| and qa cost.
| wingerlang wrote:
| I am sure there are people who has moved to macOS that grew
| on playing eg. Red Alert 1 who gladly would pay some amount
| of money to instantly own and play it again for some
| nostalgia.
|
| And by this I mean myself.
| bangaladore wrote:
| There are at least four dependencies that EA would have to
| replace for MAC. That would be an extremely complex task
| just for the first two. And who knows about the second. I
| just don't see a way for that to be profitable. Its no
| secret that games ported to Mac do poorly.
|
| DirectX 5 SDK
|
| DirectX Media 5.1 SDK
|
| Greenleaf Communications Library (GCL)
|
| Human Machine Interface (HMI) "Sound Operating System"
| (SOS)
| wingerlang wrote:
| Your assumed scenario was a magic button to recompile it.
| grg0 wrote:
| "The 5 mins it would take" --- Check the README on Red Alert,
| for example:
|
| 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;
| DirectX 5 SDK DirectX Media 5.1 SDK Greenleaf
| Communications Library (GCL) Human Machine Interface
| (HMI) "Sound Operating System" (SOS)
|
| That still look like 5 minutes to you?
| stormfather wrote:
| If anyone used to play Zero Hour, there is still an active
| community. They still have tournaments and world series. A guy
| called Dominator on Youtube casts it all and its a pretty
| entertaining blast from the past. I recommend checking out his
| channel.
| llamaLord wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there was a weird bug in the original C&C
| generals where the game engine 'tick rate' was somehow tied to
| CPU cycles and assumed single-threading or something.
|
| I remember going back and trying to play it many years after it
| came out, and it was basically broken because the entire game
| moved at like... 2-3x the maximum speed it was ever meant to
| run at
| wingerlang wrote:
| Same with Red Alert (etc) through the modern rewrite OpenRA
| (https://www.openra.net/). Similarly there is a guy FiveAces
| who has been commenting videos for nearly a decade.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| Finally we can start fixing the insane amount of bugs in Zero
| Hour.
| leshokunin wrote:
| I was a young teen when Command & Conquer came out. It was so
| damn cool. Westwood was at their peak: they made hit after hit
| after hit. The Kyrandia point & click series. The Eye of the
| Beholder series. Lands of Lore. Dune II. Everything they made was
| gold.
|
| They came in and made an RTS when we didn't have a term for this.
| It had a cool, modern soundtrack. It had a cool world and a story
| fleshed out in high production value FMV. Cutting edge CGI.
|
| We all know how Westwood died. Then the series had disappointing
| sequels, and a sad mobile title, and it all died until the
| remaster. The remaster felt like a well-executed effort, and a
| way to enjoy the classics on modern systems.
|
| Today's release of the source code is so exciting. A recognition
| that C&C is worth preserving. That its community is still excited
| for it. It allows the series to live on forever. For fans to go
| crazy. For all sorts of mods and tweaks to be enjoyed on Steam.
|
| It finally feels like after a decade and a half, C&C has a
| future. No longer a great old RTS, but one that has lots of
| excellent campaigns available on modern systems, moddable, and
| evergreen.
|
| Battle control... online :)
| kangs wrote:
| I love reading the code that these people wrote when i was a kid
| enjoying the game. Never thought I'd have the opportunity when I
| was 10 and dreaming of these things haha.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I recommend this video "This is Why We Still Play Tiberian Sun in
| 2025"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIbuqy6bI2Y
| trackofalljades wrote:
| _" I'VE GOT A PRESENT FOR YA!"_
| dagelf wrote:
| For real, CnC Generals was the game that has taught me the most
| about the frivolity of war: there are no winners, both sides
| lose, it's just a grand burning of resources... for nothing.
|
| You build a wonderful base and war machine, only to watch it
| burn.
|
| If this was "required playing" to all kids, I would be greatly
| surprised if war would still be a thing... it basically mocks
| war. In the most fun way possible!
|
| Look up Jeffrey Sachs' address to EU Parliament, if you are
| unsure about the real geopolitics of this century... you won't
| find it in US media.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Sachs is a moron. Here are some reasons why.
|
| https://voxukraine.org/en/open-letter-to-jeffrey-sachs
| ch33zer wrote:
| The only thing I know about this game is that it's what Jeremy in
| pure pwnage played
| Owlettotoo wrote:
| wow I didn't expect this from EA... Good for them, good for us,
| good for everybody.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249964 "EA
| will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code
| under GPL3" May 20, 2020 253 comments
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I like to think I caused this
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42827280
| thisOtterBeGood wrote:
| Found this gem in Recorder.cpp of generals:
| //Kris: Patch 1.01 November 10, 2003 (integrated changes from
| Matt Campbell) // Since we don't seem to have any *visible*
| desyncs when replaying games, but get this warning //
| virtually every replay, the assumption is our CRC checking is
| faulty. Since we're at the // tail end of patch season,
| let's just disable the message, and hope the users believe the
| // problem is fixed. -MDC 3/20/2003
| //TheInGameUI->message("GUI:CRCMismatch");
| joerick wrote:
| Hahaha. We used to get desyncs on networked games of Generals
| pretty regularly. I remember if a game took more than 30-40
| mins I'd start to get a spidey sense things were about to go
| wrong
| elephanlemon wrote:
| Generals was one of our favorite LAN games. It seemed that as
| time went on this problem got worse and worse somehow, to the
| point where we gave up trying to play it at all. I have fresh
| hope again that this might one day be fixed!
| scarby2 wrote:
| when generals was released it was the same time my high-
| school were encouraging everyone enrolled in specific
| classes to get laptops as part of a pilot program (with
| some of the money coming from the government). I started
| bringing a network switch to school so we could play during
| free periods/lunch (the wifi was problematic).
| dzonga wrote:
| great in code documentation. but how to C++ folks cope. every C++
| codebase looks like its own different language with so many
| dialects.
| jacooper wrote:
| Now please, could somebody path C&C generals so we can play
| multi-player without every other game having a mismatch?
| lukky513 wrote:
| I hope that the events like this could start a bigger wave of
| opening the source for many other older games.
|
| To anyone else reading, who's passionate about the topic: reach
| out to the companies however you can! I can share a personal
| experience that it does sometimes work, and thanks to that, a
| somewhat niche game of Zatikon is getting a second life as a FOSS
| project :)
| CCHyper wrote:
| Our intent with this release was to support the preservation of
| video games and the open source community. I hope that this
| release leads to more positive actions towards preserving
| classic video games across the industry :)
| vanattab wrote:
| Neat! I am going to have to play with this for fun in my free
| time. C&C Red Alert was one of the first things that got me
| interested in programming and developing software, there was an
| ini file somewhere where you could control all the stats/wepons
| of the units. I had a blast making crazy units mods to units and
| it made me want to learn how to create games and software
| generally.
| yowayb wrote:
| The hardest part about making a game is the art.
| danielktdoranie wrote:
| Hopefully this means we'll get an iPadOS and macOS release :-)
| zenlot wrote:
| Just bought the pack + remastered on steam to support open
| sourcing old games.
| lacoolj wrote:
| I just reached Nostalgia Level OVER 9000.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| One idea I had for open source games like this is AI experiments
| or training. Many people have been using Starcraft. If not it,
| they often use games that are nowhere near mainstream quality.
|
| My idea was to have games in various genres with different skills
| required, like planning or physical abilities. Then, set each one
| up to work with just the engine in a way where game state is easy
| to interact with. For instance, no graphics or pop-up menus.
| Then, iterative experiments, like genetic programming or neural
| networks, could run much faster. Later, a common interface to
| many of them, like human senses, might let them be used to build
| general knowledge for AGI experiments.
|
| Curious what people think of this. Especially a few exemplars in
| each category modified to just run really fast. For each, maybe
| training data on top of it that shows how to play the game. Seems
| like a cheaper option for testing architectures vs games not
| designed to do this.
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