Blogs - Rampastring

You might remember this thing called the "DTA Scenario Editor". We in the Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA) staff announced it in April 2022, and its first release soon followed. It has revolutionized mapping for DTA, multiplying the efficiency of our mappers and saving dozens and dozens of hours of work.

However, supporting just DTA wasn't enough. The rest of the community was still stuck with the terribly aged and often inefficient FinalSun and FinalAlert editors. I continued working on features to support Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 and their isometric 2.5D terrain, with the aim to bring more efficiency to mapping for the rest of the community as well. SCIPCION of the Global Crisis project soon adopted the editor and helped me with testing, but it was still not ready for the wider public.

But today, we've finally reached a point where I can say that the editor works as a full FinalSun replacement.

At the same time, it is obviously no longer an editor just for Dawn of the Tiberium Age, hence it needed a new name. After multiple suggestions and some thinking around, I've settled on World-Altering Editor (WAE for short), referencing Kane's World-Altering Missile.

But here you might be thinking, why switch over? Why use the World-Altering Editor when FinalSun does everything you need it to do? Well, because the World-Altering Editor does several things significantly better, including:

• Far better performance on modern systems
• Zoom levels
• Auto-save function that periodically creates a backup of your map
• More efficient sidebar with object images, categories and search
• More efficient tile selector that wastes less screen space, with TileSet search included
• Better trigger scripting dialog that allows you to view and manipulate all data of a trigger at once, rather than needing to constantly switch between tabs and open drop-downs
• Options for cloning TaskForces, ScriptTypes, TeamTypes, Triggers, and AITriggers
• You can copy/paste more than just terrain, including terrain objects, overlay, units, buildings and even smudges!
• Preview showing what scripting elements reference a waypoint
• Advanced automatic map scripting issue checking that helps you avoid making dumb mistakes
• Many new tools, including a tool for checking the distance between two points, and a tool for calculating the amount of Tiberium in a specific area
• Terrain generation!
• Proper support for setting and clearing Ice Growth tags
• ...and more!

All this, while the editor has also been designed to be familiar to existing FinalSun users, meaning it's easy to pick up!

Here are a few screenshots of these features!

System Requirements

WAE is over 20 years newer than FinalSun, so it also requires a newer system than FinalSun does. WAE requires the following:

• .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime. You can download it from Microsoft.
• A 64-bit Windows operating system.
• A DirectX 11 compatible GPU.
• Considerable VRAM. This depends on which mod you use WAE with; vanilla TS assets don't require much VRAM, but as you add more and more stuff to your mod, WAE currently requires hundreds of megabytes or even over a gigabyte of VRAM. I have planned to better optimize the VRAM use in the future.
• There is no specific CPU requirement, but naturally the faster, the better. WAE can especially be CPU intensive if you zoom very far while editing the map.

Downloads

EDIT: You can find the latest official release build from our GitHub releases: Github.com

If you have a GitHub account, you can download WAE's latest development version by downloading the artifacts from our automated build: Github.com

You can download this first release of WAE for the Tiberian Sun Client from my space on the CnCNet server: Rampastring.cnc-comm.com

WAE is not compatible with the original Tiberian Sun! All modern mods are based on the Tiberian Sun Client, so it has been the main priority.

Dawn of the Tiberium Age comes with its own build of WAE.

What about Yuri's Revenge?

WAE does support Yuri's Revenge on its "engine" level, but we do not have a convenient YR setup available yet. We will release one at a later date.

Getting WAE to work with your mod

WAE has very few hardcoded features. Everything is accessible through the INI files in the Config sub-folder. Of particular interest to most modders are most likey Constants.ini and Theaters.ini. With some tweaking of the INI files, WAE should be compatible with any modern TS mod and also many YR mods!

Limitations

WAE is still in development and is not perfect. First off, some of the editor's tools are still new, so they might have bugs, or unoptimal user experiences. We'll most likely fix these and improve the tools over time as suggestions come up.

WAE does not currently render voxel graphics. Instead, voxel units are drawn with a string representing their object ID, and an arrow that tells the direction they are facing. Voxel support is a big task so I currently can't promise whether I'm going to add support for voxels in the future, but there's a high chance I'll try.

Contact

WAE has its own dedicated channel, #world-altering-editor, on the C&C Mod Haven Discord server: Discord.gg

Join there for discussion, comments, and help!

Source Code

WAE is open-source, with its source code hosted at Github.com. I actively accept contributions, so if you have something to improve, feel free to create issues and pull requests!

The source code is licensed under GPLv2, meaning that if you make any edits to the code, you need to make your fork available to the public.

Special Thanks

WAE's open-source nature has already shown benefits. Thanks to Morton who recently pushed some significant features to improve WAE's support for TS and especially YR!

WAE relies on some pieces of code from the following open-source projects, hence I'd also like to thank their authors:

• C&C Map Renderer
• MonoGame
• OpenRA
• Westwind.Scripting

Patreon

All of my C&C-related work is available for free. However, it has taken hundreds upon hundreds of hours to create that is off from the rest of my limited free time. If you'd like to provide some extra incentive for keeping up the work on classic C&C, including this new editor, consider supporting me on Patreon: Patreon.com

Disclaimer

EA has not endorsed and does not support the World-Altering Editor.

For those interested, I just launched a page on Patreon: Patreon.com

If you've been enjoying my stuff and feel like providing extra incentive to C&C modding, whether it's for CnCNet, the client, Tiberian Sun engine hacks, or more content for Dawn of the Tiberium Age, you are now have an option of saying "thanks" in a financial form. There's multiple tiers to choose from, hopefully they're good enough for covering any financial situation.

I'm copy/pasting my whole Patreon introduction below, in case you're interested in reading it:

I'm a programmer, hobbyist game designer, reverse-engineer and 2D graphics artist. I'm mostly occupied with Command & Conquer mods and related tools and best known as the original author of the CnCNet Client, creator of various advanced C&C Tiberian Sun engine hacks, and the co-leader of Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA).

Lately I've also been working on a new map editor for Tiberian Sun / Dawn of the Tiberium Age with advanced features, like terrain generation. I've also contributed to the "Vinifera" TS engine extension project.

Most of the work I've done is related to behind-the-scenes code on the game engine that can't be demonstrated visually. Overall I've written multiple tens of thousands of lines of code for Command & Conquer games, pioneered several trends in modding from automatic updates to CnCNet multiplayer, and practically all current classic Command & Conquer projects use my code to a significant extent - especially Tiberian Sun mods.

All of my code is open-source and while my work is often motivated by DTA, I share my creations openly with the wider TS and C&C community and provide support to other projects. I'm financially stable, but some people have previously told me that they'd like to donate. If you'd like to provide some extra incentive for my projects in the form of financial "thanks", this page provides you with an option for that - regardless of whether you're a fan of my content for DTA or my contributions to the wider community.

Regardless of which tier you are on, if you subscribe, feel free to get in touch and inform me what kind of C&C content you enjoy! Whether it's more content for Dawn of the Tiberium Age engine hacks or client features, I'm interested in hearing what made you subscribe.

GitHub: Github.com
ModDB: Moddb.com

The classic Command & Conquer games were developed with resolutions common in the 90s in mind, like 800x600. With larger modern displays the games still feel reasonable to play at somewhat higher resolutions, but going too high like 1080p, 1440p and especially 4K makes the games play badly. Many details get too small to notice, infantry might get too small to be properly seen on the battlefield, micromanagement gets tedious due to small units and the sidebar UI gets too small in the overall game viewport to be quickly used in the middle of combat.

A common way to solve this issue is to play the game at a lower resolution. But while it works, it makes the games look blurry if done with typical scaling methods. Luckily, the CnC-DDRAW renderer, nowadays mostly developed by FunkyFr3sh, gives a solution to this. By sharp-scaling the game window to your native resolution you can keep the games crisp while still using a game resolution that fits the games' design. The downside is that this requires you to use an in-game resolution that is an exact multiplication of your native display resolution.

Most common examples:

• with a 2560x1440 monitor you'll have to use an in-game resolution of 1280x720 for a 2x scaling factor
• with a 3840x2160 (aka 4K) monitor you can also use a 1280x720 in-game resolution for a 3x scaling factor
• with a 1920x1080 (aka 1080p) monitor you can use 960x540 for a 2x scaling factor, although this might be too small to comfortably enjoy mods with large maps like Dawn of the Tiberium Age or Twisted Insurrection (and it's most likely even worse for Yuri's Revenge mods as the RA2 engine forces bigger cells and so, also bigger graphics)

I personally have a display with a native resolution of 2560x1440, so I use an in-game resolution of 1280x720 and have it 2x upscaled. I'll use my setup as an example in this tutorial.

Step 1: Select your preferred in-game resolution in the client options menu

As I'll be using 1280x720 scaled to 2560x1440, I'll select 1280x720 as my in-game resolution.

Step 2: Select CnC-DDRAW as the Renderer

While still in the options menu, make sure that you've selected CnC-DDRAW as your renderer. Afterwards, press Save on the client options menu and exit the client.

Step 3: Edit ddraw.ini in your game directory

Open your game directory and look for a file called ddraw.ini. (depending on Windows settings, the .ini file extension might not show up for you; in that case, look for a configuration file called simply "ddraw". Do not open the ddraw.dll dynamic link library file though)

While there
1) change the width= and height= keys under the [ddraw] section to your native display resolution.
2) look for a key called d3d9linear= and set its value to 'false'. If the key doesn't exist, simply add it as d3d9linear=false
3) set the value boxing= to true
4) EDIT!! Latest cnc-ddraw version also needs d3d9_filter=0

So if the section originally looked like this:

[ddraw]
width=1280
height=720
.... <some other keys here>
boxing=false
.... <a lot of other keys here>
d3d9_filter=2

I'll change it to look like this instead:

[ddraw]
width=2560
height=1440
.... <some other keys here>
boxing=true
.... <a lot of other keys here>
d3d9linear=false
d3d9_filter=0

Also check that there's no section called [game] at the end of the ddraw.ini file. If there is, delete it!

Save your modified ddraw.ini file.

Next time you launch the game, you should be enjoying a sharp-looking game with a reasonable viewport.

Comparison shots:

Original 1280x720 (aka 720p) image (view original):

Sharp-scaled to 2560x1440 (aka 1440p) (view original):

I'm fairly widely known as the developer of the CnCNet Client that I first made for DTA and which has then conquered practically all of the Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 modding community. As such, I feel it's necessary to make the following announcement here:

I have retired from the lead developer's position on the client. Now, you might expect there to be some kind of juicy drama about it, but there is none. The boring truth is, I've moved on to other projects for personal reasons. In the past year or so I've been making contributions, reviewing others' code before merging it in to the main branch, assisted them and helped them plan on how to implement new features. However, with my other projects the pace at which I've provided code reviews and other assistance hasn't kept up with the demands of the contributors. Some pull requests have waited for reviews for over half a year, which has understandably been demotivating for them.

A few days ago when I learned that EA released the source code of the C&C Remastered Collection Map Editor, I forked it and made my own branch for enhancing it. I have fairly big plans for this project - we'll see if they get realized - and with this project eating my already limited time on C&C modding, I'd be even slower with providing assistance and code reviews for client contributors.

So, after almost 10 years, it's come time to move on. I built the client project as a CnCNet online play tool and updater for DTA at the age of 16 in 2011, on top of a setup tool made for DTA by Nyerguds. Since then it received multiple complete rewrites (including support for Iran's [a person, not the country] TS spawner in Dec 2013), until the current open-source MonoGame client blew everyone away in Autumn 2016 and conquered the modding scene in the next couple of years. I initially thought of retiring from the modding community in 2016 already, but writing the MonoGame-based client (along with a custom UI library for it) from scratch provided me with a fun programming challenge. With the overwhelming reception among both players and modders alike, making new features to support and enhance the client post-launch was also fun at first, but as my programming skills have improved over the years, the challenge faded away, and with the client being practically feature-complete for my dearest project (DTA), upkeeping the client and coordinating its development became less interesting and more of a chore.

From this announcement on, the client is maintained by the CnCNet team, with myself being a regular "contributor" among others. I'll still maintain DTA's version of the client myself, but builds for any other projects will be made by other people. I trust that the other client contributors, most notably Starkku and Kerbiter, will do a good job with it going forward, and I will still be providing assistance to them where it's necessary.

Thanks for all the support over the years, and I hope you're going to keep enjoying the client's capabilities (whether it's moddability, graphics, UI convenience or smooth online play for you) for the foreseeable future!

In addition to the C&C remasters' campaigns, I've also had a good time playing with the games' source code. After years of TS hacking and patching with x86 Assembly, it's so much more convenient to use C and have properly documented code for the task.

My first objectives were to fix Red Alert 1's biggest issues, implement further QoL improvements and to get familiar with the source code. In the process I've also released a mod on the Steam Workshop that is, at the time of writing this news post, one of the most popular RA Remastered mods on the Workshop with over 4000 subscribers and a good share of positive votes.

If you wish for an intelligence upgrade for your Ore Trucks, generally better pathfinding for your tank blobs, and don't mind a bunch of other improvements, you might want to check the mod out on the Steam Workshop! Steamcommunity.com

I've been having a great playing the remasters. While I think there's room for further with the QoL improvements and not all of the improvements are implemented optimally (right-click scrolling shouldn't cancel building placement for example), the improvements are still significant and audio-visually the games are amazing. I've had a blast playing through the campaigns again.

I beat the Soviet campaign within the first release day and uploaded all of it on YouTube. These videos were my first playthroughs of the missions; I didn't practice in advance for them. It's probably been around 10 years since I beat the Soviet campaign last time, so my shady memories of the original game's missions didn't provide a lot of help either. As such, some of the runs can be fairly far from optimal, and despite that I consider myself generally skilled in C&C, some of the scripted surprise attacks got me every once in a while. I might do videos of more optimal runs later. Here's the videos from each mission in case you're interested in watching them:

1. Lesson in Blood: Youtube.com
2. Guard Duty (North): Youtube.com
3. Covert Cleanup: Youtube.com
4. Behind the Lines (North): Youtube.com
5. Distant Thunder: Youtube.com
6. Bridge over the River VizchGoi: Youtube.com
7. Core of the Matter: Youtube.com
8. Elba Island (North): Youtube.com
9. Liability Elimination: Youtube.com
10. Overseer: Youtube.com
11. Sunk Costs: Youtube.com
12. Capture the Tech Centers: Youtube.com
13. Capture the Chronosphere: Youtube.com
14. Soviet Supremacy: Youtube.com

The Allied campaign is going to be next, followed by TD campaigns!

Back before the coronavirus, in February this year (just 3 months ago), our total simultaneous player count at CnCNet rarely exceeded 1200. The coronavirus has increased the popularity of various online services such as games, Netflix and YouTube, and the effect reached CnCNet as well. Once the worldwide lockdowns were put into place, CnCNet's simultaneous player count quickly exceeded 2000. New player records were made in all the games, and even DTA had almost 40 simultaneous players in late April. While the records strained our servers, we could handle it fairly well by setting up new tunnel servers.

However, that was still small compared to what was to come. Apparently a few popular Thai streamers streamed themselves playing CnCNet YR, which got their followers interested in the game as well. This has resulted in a massive surge of Thai players hopping online in the last few weeks, leading to CnCNet YR exploding in popularity.

This surge has put the scalability of our systems at CnCNet into a true test. Existing tunnel servers quickly reached their limits, and we had to rapidly set up new ones with the help of the community to cope with the load. What particularly concerned me as the lead developer of CnCNet's DTA/TI/MO/YR client, however, was the performance of the client itself. Previously I could only test the client with hundreds of players online, which it handled smoothly without any trouble. These player counts were unexplored territory, and I didn't except the client to be able to handle the flood of both internal command and chat messages from over 5.5K players smoothly. There had simply been no reason for me to micro-optimize the message queues and player handling systems for workloads of this size.

However, despite the massive surges, nothing catastrophical happened. Despite the lack of micro-optimization, most people have been able to play the game through the client just fine, possibly with a slight increase in CPU usage compared to months ago. Some users of low-end hardware have complained about poor performance, but they are relatively few compared to the total player count. The largest issue was IRC network limitations; some players couldn't send and receive data as quickly as the network was sending it, which meant that we had to optimize that part of the client and reduce traffic. To achieve that, we had to cut away some unneeded extra features, like being able to display games that are in progress on the game list when there's too many people online in YR.

But in the bigger perspective, things have gone surprisingly smoothly. Our player count has increased five-fold and we've only had to do relatively small and quick changes to the client to keep it up and running for all players. The current CnCNet client was my first real open-source programming project when I created it 4 years ago, and it has been really exciting to see it getting put into a true test. And I think the excellent way it has handled that test shows that I really managed to build a great, maintainable and well-scaling application back then, despite that my programming skills weren't as developed as they are 4 years later now. Since its original release in DTA 1.15 in late 2016, the client has mostly seen bug-fixes and a large bunch of minor feature additions from myself and a handful of 3rd-party contributors, but its core has never needed any major refactoring. And it looks like it can surive through this without major refactoring as well.

It's great to see so many players enjoying classic Command & Conquer, and it's also a great feeling that my work has been a large part of making it possible for them, alongside the work of the other CnCNet staff. Based on historical indicators of server load, I can assume that when both singleplayer and multiplayer players are counted in, the number of unique players using my client in the past month is somewhere between 200 000 and 500 000 (yes, half a million).

Hopefully EA will also look at the numbers and figure out that there's still great demand for Command & Conquer, including new games after the remasters. Design and execute a good game, communicate with your community, keep supporting the game post-release and there's a good opportunity for profit. The series is not as popular as Fortnite, but it clearly has enough fans who miss it, and the basic formula of base building should still be attractive for newer-generation gamers as well. Doom and AoE have made a comeback, and it's possible for C&C as well.

Like the rest of the C&C community, I've been following EA and Petroglyph's C&C remaster project with great interest. I recently pre-ordered the Anniversary Edition of the game, despite that the 180€ price (with shipping) was relatively scorching. But it's the first and possibly (although hopefully not) last time when I can buy C&C merch from an original source, since I was both too young and too poor to buy merch when the series was at its peak relevance, so of course I had to get it! Hopefully that Obelisk, Tesla Coil and Mammoth tank are going to look great enough to overshadow my Touhou figurines.

But on to the point. EA / PG have, for the most part, done a great job with the remaster. The graphics look great; the feel of the games is spot-on with the original engine; the community-driven approach has been refreshing; they've listened to the community and fixed issues that have been pointed out such as the inconsistent remap color in the first gameplay preview; the menu previews and options are modern; Frank's soundtrack is as epic as expected and I'm also excited for the bonus content. I'll also be checking out the ladder on release and see how far I can climb - I finally get to put my C&C skills into a proper test. But, based on the results of the AMA they held roughly two weeks ago, I'm worried that the game will be lacking in the most important aspect for the game's longevity, specifically gameplay. IMO it would be a massive shame if the remaster was otherwise perfect, but had so much room for improvement in the very basics.

In particular there's two big issues that I can see from EA_Jimtern's replies: 1) the remasters stick to the original balance and 2) they've had a hard time with updating the games' AI. There are also other things I'll cover, but I'll focus on these points first. The post might be a bit long, but hopefully worth a read as I've been closely watching the C&C community from a relatively unique perspective for a long time. In particular I've worked on CnCNet for a decade, having written over 90% of its most popular online play client that is used by hundreds of thousands of players for playing Yuri's Revenge and mods. I am also the co-leader of Dawn of the Tiberium Age, which has also been "remastering" TD and RA1 on the Tiberian Sun engine for the last 15 years as well as receiving praising reviews and reaching high ranks on the annual Mod of the Year contest on the side. So to some degree we've faced a similar task - with similar challenges - to what PG and EA are doing with their remaster. Just with far less responsibility because we're a mod instead of an official game :)

1) Biggest issue: Game balance and lack of target audience for RA

This criticism is mostly directed at the Red Alert remaster. We know that Westwood never really did that great of a job with the balance of their games. Tiberian Dawn is a bit more varied, but high-level Red Alert gameplay is nearly completely focused on tank-spam and micromanagement. In high-level games, you never see any Allied Artillery, V2 launchers are rare, and infantry is mostly used for early scouting and a bit of support in case you have too many resources to just spend them all on tanks. Some people like it, but looking at community preferences as a whole, I think it's safe to say that most people wish the game to have more tactical options than the original Red Alert had.

Looking at the active C&C community as a whole, there are 3 signicant online communities: CnCNet, OpenRA and C&C Online. Of these, CnCNet is by far the largest, with peaks of almost 2000 simultaneous players recently. Looking at the CnCNet status page, Red Alert 1 players form roughly 30% of the entire playerbase. RA2 / Yuri's Revenge is bigger, Mental Omega is almost as big, and then there's a lot of smaller games such as Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Dawn and mods like my own Dawn of the Tiberium Age that combined have a significant population of players as well. Of non-CnCNet communities, OpenRA hits peaks of slightly below 300 simultaneous players, and C&C online seems to have similar or slightly bigger numbers as well (I couldn't find statistics on their page).

Summing these up with some quick math that likely isn't super accurate but accurate enough for an informal blog post, we can see that roughly 25% of the player base are into RA1 as it is. The rest of the games, from Tiberian Sun, Yuri's Revenge, mods, OpenRA and 3D C&C games, have much more complicated balance than Red Alert. As such, I think it's unlikely for the original balance to attract the non-RA1 part of the C&C community in the long run.

But that is not the only issue. A large portion of the Red Alert 1 fanbase is rather conservative. The remaster adds QoL improvements such as unit queueing and a new, Red Alert 2 style sidebar. While the rest of the community will see these improvements as welcome, the hardcore Red Alert 1 fans will find their game ruined by unit queuing alone. In pro-level RA1, being able to keep up production by constantly hitting sidebar buttons manually is seen as a necessary skill. Queuing largely removes that aspect of gameplay. I personally prefer the game with queues, which is why we have unit queues in Dawn of the Tiberium Age, but many Red Alert 1 fans don't share that same preference.

In other words, because of the original balance, non-RA1 fans who want to play competitively will be disappointed with the game. While competitive Red Alert 1 fans will be disappointed by the QoL changes that have already been implemented - that are improvements for everyone else. In other words, I can't see any real target audience for the competitive part of the game in the current C&C community - the ladders and Petroglyph's dedicated servers will go underutilized. There will be non-competitive players who just want to have some casual fun, but a significant chunk of the most loyal player base will be disappointed from the start when they've beat the campaigns and want to hop online.

This issue is tied to that the C&C community as a whole has different tastes within it. The fans of the original game are conservative, while the OpenRA community wants a completely different game from them. Other CnCNet games provide somewhat of a middle ground. My suggestion on resolving this problem is aiming for the middle - keep the feel and core mechanics of the game similar, but improve the balance with stat changes. Make that Allied and Nod artillery piece useful so that it's a good option to build at least in some situations. Make infantry more damaging or otherwise stronger in Red Alert so that they have a more significant role on the field. With this, it'd attract more fans from the newer and more varied C&C games that have a bigger player-base. Admittedly it also is pretty much what we've done in Dawn of the Tiberium Age and so it fits my tastes, but our mod has generally received a lot of praise for keeping the original feel and mechanics but still having more varied gameplay, so I think it'd be a good recipe for the remaster as well.

2) AI

When asked about unit AI modernization such as pathfinding, Jimtern replied "I have to be honest, I think AI is going to be our white-whale for this project. We were able to bring Skirmish AI to Tib Dawn, but we found it challenging to improve certain AI mechanics.". I mostly play Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 and their mods and enjoy their almost-perfect pathfinding, but recently I've also played the original TD and RA1 and made my friends play the campaigns as well. Watching them, it's easy to say that the - directly speaking - dumb unit AI in those games will frustrate a lot of modern gamers. Fans of the originals will be used to it, but especially new players will have a hard time understanding the cliff-hugging pathfinding, and many of them will drop the game after losing a dozen harvesters that took bad routes home. The remasters are a great chance to get the next generation of gamers into the series, but being used to modern games, many of them likely lack the patience to babysit their units around. Tiberian Sun is soon 21 years old yet has no such pathfinding issues and I can't remember suffering from them in Universe at War in early 2008 either. Surely the people at Petroglyph could do better this time as well!

Other things

Then there's smaller issues. The most significant one I can see is the 4-player limitation for Tiberian Dawn, which they say is because of map restrictions. While the original maps might be too small for more than 4 players, the community - myself included - is surely up for creating much bigger maps, so aside from having to do slightly more work on the engine, there is no negative side in supporting 8 players for Tiberian Dawn as well. CnCNet has also supported 6 players for Tiberian Dawn for a decade or so, and with full access to source code EA/PG should be able to do better.

For us modders there's also the question of mod support. It's clear that mods are a big part of what has kept C&C alive despite the lack of official games, and they'd similarly help keep the remaster relevant for longer as well. Modding especially becomes relevant if the original game is lacking in some aspects; for example, if the flawed original balance is kept in RA1, that would likely be the very first thing to get fixed by the community. However, because multiplayer runs on Petroglyph's dedicated servers, it might set some restrictions on modding. Jimtern has acknowledged the importance of mod support however, so time will tell. I might talk more about modding in a later news post, because this one is starting to get too long for a comfortable read.

I sincerely hope that EA / PG haven't set these covered aspects in stone yet, particularly the balance and AI. With this feedback I'm doing my part in giving them ideas on how to make a more succesful game. Maybe they'll read it, maybe they won't, but it's best to try and help them make the most succesful C&C game possible, to raise the series' popularity and pave the way for more awesome C&C games in the future. To be honest I was surprised when they announced the release date; I'd prefer that if necessary, they delayed it by a couple of months just to fix these issues. It'd be a real shame to miss this opportunity to make C&C popular again, especially when it appears they've done everything else almost perfectly, but paid less attention to a few core elements. Regardless of their decisions, I will be checking the game out, enjoying it and trying to reach high positions on the leaderboard, but I'd enjoy it much more if the game was slightly more modernized in unit AI and had more variety in its multiplayer meta.

Looking forward to the next update on the remasters!

A playthrough of the recent The Dawn of the Tiberium Age Allied single-player mission, Frostbite, on Hard mode by me. Make sure to enable HD mode when watching.

FEATURES

• Full Tiberian Sun and Firestorm campaigns included, with optionally downloadable movies (about 1.3 GB in size)
• Skirmish support with pre-defined starting locations and teams
• Dynamic map preview showing starting locations and teams on the map
• Full CnCNet multiplayer support, including automatic transfer of custom maps, passworded games and private messages*
• Support for spectators
• Allows modding similar to The Dawn of the Tiberium Age and Twisted Insurrection
• All TS INI bugs fixed - includes fixes from Aro's Tiberian Sun: UMP
• Compatibility with the latest operating systems, including Windows 7, 8.1 and 10
• Saves statistics from all games of your commander career
• Automatic updates (you can opt out) for delivery of bugfixes and possible additional content like multiplayer maps
• FinalSun Map Editor included
• Extra game options including Build Off Ally, Harder AI, Disabled Super Weapons and Disabled Refinery/Silo Storage
• Includes some of the best and most beautiful multiplayer maps created for TS by the community (selectable in the "Fan-made" gamemode)
• Supports viewing and joining DTA and TI (and soon YR) games at CnCNet

*Note: This is not the only TS MP client. Most games are (currently) hosted with FunkyFr3sh's client, which is incompatible with this client. So, on CnCNet you won't see most of the games shown in the main menu.

CREDITS

Client / Game executable / Misc.:

• Rampastring: For creating the client and applying various improvements to the game, including new game options and maps
• Bittah Commander: For editing the game executable and FinalSun executable so that it reads files from subdirectories instead of MIX files, and for helping with the client's graphics
• Iran: Created the Tiberian Sun spawner, which makes it possible to skip the in-game menu and as a result makes the client possible
• CCHyper: Provided various useful hacks for the game executable, the most important one being the WaveClass error fix
• zzattack: For making the CNCMaps Renderer and saving me a bit of time by hosting high-quality map preview images at ra2maps.zzattack.org
• OmegaBolt: For extensive testing and providing useful feedback

Mods / Companies / Communities:

• The Dawn of the Tiberium Age: For being a development and testing platform for the client
• Twisted Insurrection: For being a development and testing platform for the client
• Project Perfect Mod: For hosting classic C&C modding forums
• CnCNet (including hifi, Rampastring, Iran, FunkyFr3sh, neogrant): For providing an easy-to-use online gaming service for classic Command & Conquer and for hosting this package
• Westwood Studios: For creating the original game
• Electronic Arts Inc.: For making Tiberian Sun freeware so that I'm able to distribute this package

Mappers:

• Aro
• Aurora196
• Crash
• j4m3sb0nd
• Ixith
• Rampastring

SCREENSHOTS
Skirmish lobby (click to open the whole image):


Statistics:


Options:


DOWNLOAD: Dta.cncnet.org

Have fun!

PS. I originally released this package a few days ago at Project Perfect Mod ( Ppmforums.com ). Since then I've released multiple bug-fixing updates, so be prepared to download a few dozen extra megabytes after downloading and extracting that ZIP package.