Command And Conquer series

Generals and Renegade are OK because they're DirectX 9, which all current stuff is still backwards-compatible with. I have them installed on my current laptop I've bought circa 2017 with pre-installed Windows 10, so I can confirm that they work (although Renegade needs a custom DLL to run, which bugs out one of the singleplayer missions into being unwinnable).

All the older stuff are DirectDraw (DX7 and older) which was already iffy in Windows 7 and Microsoft dropped it from the SDK in 2010. Many people got black screen or inverted colors for those games. You'll need a wrapper DLL for them.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 13th 2020 at 5:36:56 PM

Pulled out Generals a bit myself today and damn, how odd it feels that all my units are so fragile...

Third Chinese mission was pretty fun, though; I put four Migs on patrol at the other end of the bridge and by the end of the mission, all of them were fully promoted. I even managed to level up Lotus twice.

Oh damn, shipping to the Netherlands is 50 dollars extra.

I have to wonder, why is command and conquer so popular there?

Like half the online comunity is from the Netherlands or the Philippines and it's such a strange mix IMHO.

$40 shipping to Canada (apparently going over seas only adds $10?). Bit of an oof, but whatever.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Mar 23rd 2020 at 3:59:36 AM

Well I'm glad its a whatever to you, but its not a whatever to me.

Well, it's a niche, extra frills, special edition purchase. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be cheap. And yeah, it was more than I would have liked, but I'm not terribly surprised—especially since the last thing I want to see is my box to arrive looking like a semi ran over it. It's more of a grudging "whatever" than anything else.

Yeah, but when the price goes to 200 dollars, that starts getting pretty expensive.

Oh, yeah, that's why I said that it was more than I would have liked and that it was a grudging statement. I guess one could say I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to this series (I did buy 4, after all).

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Mar 24th 2020 at 9:14:34 AM

Well I had to do some testing, seems the milliseconds thing in Generals ain't perfect.

So you try to put a rate of fire of 1 for a unit, it wouldn't be like thousand shots per second, it'd be 20. It's a bit weird and disappointing, like if quad cannon unit has rof of 100 got promoted, it'd double the rate of fire instead being 90.90909090909091 or 83.33333333333 at elite to give an example.

If you tried to set base rof without veterancy or any bonus at 75, it'd be the same as the one at 100. At least it isn't 66.666666666666 or 60 because I did testing now and put two different units with same damage and different rof (one with 50 the other at 100) and the one at 100 took twice to destroy a building. The true differences lie with units that have cooldown of 2000 or slightly below or beyond.

I'm sorry I can't word it better. Is this just general limitation applying for all games if you tried to lower the cooldown to absurd levels?

Edited by Dhiruxide on Mar 30th 2020 at 12:01:15 PM

If I remember correctly, the SAGE engine timings are all based on framerate rather than system clock. Meaning a weapon's rate of fire set to 1 millisecond per shot may not actually be 1000 rounds per second.

That said, I've done bugs and experiments with uber high rates of fire, it sounds like something else is at play here.

Even at low frame rate it stays consistent. But below 70 that's where it can't go any lower

And what bugs and experiments? I'm using Final BIG but there's a lot I don't know about, just simple stuff.

Speaking of modding... do you guys think it'd be a futile effort to write a proper modding tool for the old games so that I won't have to edit all the INIs by hand?

There's the frame rate talking. At 30 frames per second, every frame is roughly every 33 milliseconds. And Generals doesn't always pull greater than 30 or even that high. For example unless I have tons of enemy/friendly units and stuff going on all at once the frame rate on my copy is around 20-25 frames per second. Just a hair slower than my copy of Warcraft III which usually runs around 26-27 frames per second.

Remember this is 2002-2003 technology here. 60 fps in 2003 was a pipe dream meant for computer science experiments. Nearly every game out there at the time or earlier ran at 30 fps or less.

I edit my INI's by hand. I've had typos where something that should've fired once every three seconds now fires every .3 seconds instead. (It was Comanche missiles that I typoed in that instance.)

I've also done experiments for how rapid I can make something shoot. When you start getting below a certain delay between shots it bugs out with the sound not able to keep up sometimes. You don't usually run into sound bugs if you keep your fire rates slower than 50 milliseconds. Faster than that, the game just doesn't keep up owing to frame rate.

Of course, the funniest thing of all, even discounting the frame rate. Nothing in Generals can physically fire faster than stuff on the Tiberian Sun engine. Set the ROF to 0 on a weapon in Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2 and enjoy blisteringly absurd rate of fire that's impossible to balance. Because the Tiberian Sun engine uses frame counts for everything. The ROF value is how many frames pass before doing it again, at medium game speeds every 15 frames corresponds to 1 second real time. So something set to 0 has no frame delay and will gleefully fire more or less constantly, instantly and absurdly fast with no real recordable delay between attacks other than processing speed at the CPU level. It's a glorious display of More Dakka but again impossible to balance.

Oh that's easy, simply remove clip size and clip reload time and watch the nonstop rocket barrage. Or reduce clip size to 1, remove delay between shots and lower clip reload time to .3 or .25 . Same result really

(...if I understood it right. Forgive me if I missed something)

Another thing I learned the hard way, projectiles have hit points and can be destroyed by strong splash damage weapons. So one thing I did is double the HP of every projectile and made their armor more potent (from 25% default to 10%). So no longer will nuke cannon shells destroy passing shells or rockets, only lasers can fully destroy rockets

Sure wish Generals could be remastered, with less limitations and better optimization. I hope the C&C Remaster goes well so the goodwill can be spread

I want a C&C fighting game now where I can play as Kane. I bet his Super Moves involve one where a small army of various Nod troops doing an Alpha Strike, and another one has him drop a Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke (whether literally nuclear or Tiberium-based) on his enemy.

Also, someone made a hypothetical Super Smash Bros. Brawl profile for Tanya, complete with descriptions of her intro, particular animations, palette swaps, etc.

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 21st 2020 at 4:18:01 PM

CNC the Fighting Game? Let's make a roster of who's in shall we?

Off the top of my head, I want the following:

• Tanya Adams, representing the Allied Nations. Her appearance is based on the RA 2 one, with the ones from RA 1, YR and RA 3 among her palette swaps.
• Volkov, representating of the Soviet Union. Chitzkoi would figure into his intro, victory outro and several of his regular moves to show how nigh-inseparable they are.
• Nick "Havoc" Parker, representing GDI.
• Kane, representing Nod.

On a different note, I've been thinking... If the Tiberium universe as a whole gets a Continuity Reboot, maybe it could benefit from a Setting Update for improving plausibility, especially if it uses the past two decades as a starting point for a chain of events that justifies the establishment of GDI as a supranational military organization.

Random question: What's the most active C&C fan community out there?

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 21st 2020 at 10:42:54 PM

Yuriko would also make a great fighter.

I would have said this discussion topic.

Used to be CNCNZ.com, but now...?

Maybe the German fansites. Beyond that, maybe the Discord server for Renegade X. The fan mod sites will occasionally experience an uptick in traffic whenever a major update is released, but that's it.

That and giving room to update the techtree with more stuff. If I were to do a reboot, a Setting Update would happen but so would as a result an expansion of the techtree and gameplay options.

For example, GDI and Nod would gain air forces outside of cinematics/ORCA's. They'd also gain divergent infantry tactics, such as the GDI basic infantry is better trained and equipped and would defeat his Nod counterpart one on one every time in an equal fight but is more expensive. Similarly the Nod basic tank would lose to the GDI equivalent one on one in the early game. But there'd be twists, for example the Nod tank may have upgrades such as trading to a laser cannon for increased damage and range, a fully upgraded Nod basic tank would kick the crap out of an unupgraded GDI basic tank owing to the significant increases in firepower and would hold a fully upgraded GDI basic tank to a standstill (albeit almost always having first shot advantage). Similarly, Nod infantry diverges into Black Hand style super commando types later on that can take on GDI infantry one to one and win and even put up a good fight against GDI's vehicles. Additionally, the roster of GDI and Nod units gets expanded to cover other aspects such as APC's/IFV's (in the modern sense, not send a car full of Engineers to rush a base sense), alternative playstyles such as effective artillery and defenses, and even abilities seen in later games but not implemented early like Garrisonable Structures.

Edited by MajorTom on Apr 22nd 2020 at 6:39:20 AM

Hmm... how about GDI basic infantry being a generalist unit? That is:

• More expensive than Nod's basic infantry.
• Better at killing other infantry than Nod's basic infantry.
• Has anti-tank capabilities, but are not as good at it as Nod's dedicated anti-tank infantry unit. In exchange, GDI doesn't have dedicated anti-tank infantry of their own but since Nod vehicles are on average squishier than GDI vehicles, this drawback isn't as obvious outside GDI-on-GDI mirror matches.

Also. Taking a page out of Company of Heroes' book, how about giving Nod a tank destroyer unit meant to be used in tandem with light tanks, instead of replacing them entirely? Not as durable as a GDI tank but has comparable firepower and every enemy shooting at a light tank is one less shooting at a tank destroyer, hence how a mixed force could be effective.

Garrisonable Structures are a given, but anti-tank infantry garrisoned in them should be good enough to make pure tank rushes with no anti-infantry support a meatgrinder. Call me crazy but I personally don't like it when spamming one unit/weapon is all you need to win because then everybody will jump on the bandwagon and don't use anything else, an opinion that got stoked even further by a recent discovery of mine on this very site.

And if we're going to a setting update, which side do you think would benefit more from UAVs and UCAVs? GDI for the high-tech warfare aspect or Nod for the asymmetric warfare aspect? I mean, Generals says drones belong to the GDI faction - but authorities recently became worried about terrorists now having the option of strapping an IED on a quadcopter bought from any webshop of their choice and flying it via remote control to the target.

Edited by amitakartok on Apr 22nd 2020 at 6:52:31 PM

I guess there's not that much interest in the "C&C characters in a fighting game" topic, huh?

Regarding infantry, I personally take inspiration from the first Company of Heroes game and model the respective paradigms of GDI and Nod after COH's US Forces and Wehrmacht, respectively.

• Both factions would have a basic general-purpose infantry squad and an elite general-purpose infantry squad.

• GDI's basic infantry trump Nod's own in one-on-one battles since the former consist of formally trained soldiers with high-quality equipment while the latter are irregular militiamen that form the "outer" brotherhood ^note Basically those whose loyalty to Nod's cause is based on belief in a watered-down version of Nod ideology (a deliberate move by Kane to attract as much people as possible), seeing better opportunities to indulge in their love for violence and destruction as part of Nod rather than against it, mercenary greed, or simply having a common foe (be it the "imperialist" developed world or a local regime).. That being said, Nod's basic infantry are more numerous, cheaper per capita, benefit from Nod's specialization in performance-boosting buffs (be it morale-raising propaganda or combat drugs), and can be upgraded with weapons that GDI's infantry would not dare to wield (e.g. incendiary weapons, which are illegal by international law).

• Unlike GDI, Nod has a mid-tier infantry squad, consisting of the rank and file of the "true" brotherhood (think Tiberian Sun's Nod light infantry, or Renegade's Nod infantry). They're significantly superior to GDI's basic infantry if we compare each individual soldier, and consider Nod's willingness to use weapons and tactics that are anathema or even taboo for GDI. However, the GDI basic squad has more soldiers than the Nod mid-tier squad, and is similarly cheaper per capita, so the latter feels greater impact from every individual death.

• Nod's elite infantry (namely, actual Black Hand troopers) again has the advantage against their GDI counterparts in a straight "one squad versus another" fight, especially because their morale stat is so high it's almost impossible to suppress or pin them (and forget forcing them to surrender or retreat; they will not give ground unless actually ordered to). Again, however, does they suffer from the same issue of smaller squad size and greater per capita expenses.

And rather than a traditional tank destroyer, I'd give Nod a light vehicle armed with anti-tank guided missiles, which are the modern answer to the WW2-style tank destroyer. Perhaps even not a new unit; what's stopping Nod's buggies and attack cycles from being upgradable to anti-vehicle Glass Cannons that have a good chance of crippling if not destroying even an Abrams tank, but will get destroyed in one or two cannon shots if they are too reckless, thus necessiating hit-and-run tactics?

On the subject of UAVs, I don't see why we can't give them to both GDI and Nod. Just have each faction apply UAV technology differently, matching with its military philosophy. Nod, for example, would eagerly field drones as suicide bombers and platforms for dispersing chemical and biological agents, and gain a nearly unfair advantage in reconnaissance via cloaking tech-equipped drones, while GDI would favor the more traditional "heavily armed unmanned bomber" approach instead.

Last, but not least... A GIANT FUCKING YES for nerfing single-unit spamming, as well as making garrisoned infantry with anti-armor capabilities a huge threat to even tanks (less so with the likes of Mammoth tanks, but still a much bigger threat than normal) if they're not adequately supported.

Edited by MarqFJA on Dec 15th 2022 at 2:27:53 PM

You mean like say Stealth Tanks? I'd have em equipped with long range missiles that outrange non-artillery units and pack a decent punch against armored vehicles (or aircraft). They'd pack a lot of wallop but are unable to take much damage themselves. Their ambush nature also makes em harder for enemies to pick them off first at the beginning of an engagement owing to being cloaked when undetected/not shooting.

As an aside, I really like the idea of generalist GDI infantry vs tiered Nod infantry. I wouldn't make em squads though, single soldiers preferably. (Mainly because of the whole permanently diminished aspect of wounded squads that'll never regenerate/recover lost members.)