Electronic Arts appears to be doing its best to please longtime fans of the Command & Conquer series with two major announcements they've just made. First of all, mod support has been confirmed for the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. That isn't all, though, as they also plan to fully release TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll alongside all of their corresponding source code, for players to have fun with, and for use in creating those previously mentioned mods. According to the press release, the open sourcing of the game's code will allow fans to create new maps, custom units, replace art, or even change certain gameplay elements. To assist in making the most of those assets, a map editor will also be made available with the launch of the Remastered Collection.

Today we are proud to announce that alongside the launch of the Remastered Collection, Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license. This is a key moment for Electronic Arts, the C&C community, and the gaming industry, as we believe this will be one of the first major RTS franchises to open source their source code under the GPL. It’s worth noting this initiative is the direct result of a collaboration between some of the community council members and our teams at EA. After discussing with the council members, we made the decision to go with the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA. Our goal was to deliver the source code in a way that would be truly beneficial for the community, and we hope this will enable amazing community projects for years to come.

The source code will be released under the GPL 3.0 license, meaning it'll still be compatible with community projects such as CnCNet, a method of playing the games online, and Open RA. However, one promised feature won't be making it into the game for launch: LAN Play. The development team wasn't able to get the feature working in time for the launch of the game due to COVID-19, but is still planned for release in a future patch.

Mod support will be available for both PC players on Steam or Origin, with the former utilizing Steam Workshop, and the latter requiring manual addition of modpacks. Command & Conquer Remastered Collection will launch on June 5th for $19.99.

Source

 

[Jokey_Carrot]

 

[Xzi]

Very pleased with how much work they seem to be putting into this, especially considering it's only $20. Mods are a very welcome addition.

With how fast the RTS genre has been dying off, I certainly never expected to be playing the original C&C and Red Alert with an active multiplayer community in 2020.

 

[XDel]

The Release of source code is always a good thing!!!

 

[lordelan]

EA doing good things?
Something very very evil is going on, I'm pretty sure!

 

[drazenm]

You'll probably have to spend real money for building units, has to be some micro transaction trap

 

[Deleted User]

better than the shitty pickle rick memes

 

[Deleted User]

25 years later, RTS is still the only genra that keeps my gamer heart beating.

Tower defense, moba, turn based tactical...
Gosh, so many half baked, tasteless paliatives we had to endure while waiting for the king's return. Besides, the popularity of these ersatz always added salt to the wound.

We have an old saying in France (Bernard Fontenelle), "if you want the truth, turn your back on the multitude". Never been so true.

 

[FAST6191]

EA... source code... GPL 3? Did I fall into the portal to crazy universe again?

LAN Play became the key impact of the Covid-19 situation as we realized the challenge of developing / testing a “local area network” feature in a workplace time of social distancing.

That does not bode well for the release if they can't figure out how to do a VPN or run 10 VMs on a server somewhere and have it all play together.
That or my bullshit excuse alarm was not a false positive.

Probably not going to be quite as bad as the Warcraft efforts but hey.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Umm... Ok holy shit, major props on then releasing source code. Nobody else does this kind of thing anymore. Companies wanna hold onto their stuff so they can endlessly port and remaster every gen now.

The Sims source code when?

 

[Xzi]

EA doing good things?
Something very very evil is going on, I'm pretty sure!

I think being forced back on to Steam has humbled EA a little, at least to the point of giving some of their developers (Respawn, Petroglyph) a little more freedom from micromanagement. Their games have seen a noticeable bump in quality since the release of Apex Legends.

 

[6adget]

i think EA is trying to go back to its early days that made them great. before they got so greedy. not sure how many of you were around when they first made "battlefield 1942". they made a mod manager so that anyone could mod the game however they wanted. i ended up joining TNT gaming clan. made a lot of good friends that i still talk to. we modded one map that was capture the flag. people would have to wait 30 minutes or more to join the game it was so busy. it was the modders that made the battlefield series as popular as it was at one time. before EA fucked it all up. if they can go back to that model once more we just might have some good times again.

 

[Scarlet]

they already fucked up the series. call me bitter but them releasing source for a game they didn't even make doesn't undo the poor decisions and subsequent years of neglect.

gamer move EA, but it just doesn't clear the bad air

 

[SilverWah]

Half of its source code gets pricetagd for only €59,99 with the other part going for €100 to call it Deluxe Edition content.

 

[FAST6191]

Umm... Ok holy shit, major props on then releasing source code. Nobody else does this kind of thing anymore. Companies wanna hold onto their stuff so they can endlessly port and remaster every gen now.

Plenty of devs still do it, and have done for years (while not a game it is not even EA's first https://computerhistory.org/blog/electronic-arts-deluxepaint-early-source-code/ ). Most of them also say the assets are still ours as well in case they do decide to press the compile button and hope before releasing the results on a modern system. I did look to see what goes here, and I am presuming the DLL and game code being made available in turn specifically excludes assets for this one.
Wikipedia I know but a nice list anyway as of making this post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code
https://archive.org/details/gamesourcecode
For seriously major stuff (and not just leaks) the list is probably a bit light, 2011/2012's Doom 3 probably being it https://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/ or maybe Torque 3D ( http://garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/21876 ) from a similar timeframe.

However if your barrier for "holy shit" is a 1995 game, even one as notable as this, then that is a different matter.

Several of these are remade source code but for the sake of those new to this source releases/availability for games then I should also link
https://osgameclones.com/

If decompilation is also at the level we can have nice stuff for non PC games (see the recent Mario 64 effort, though it was far from the first thing in this arena to produce viable results) then things will probably accelerate there in years to come, though that will then largely join the ranks of leaked code and we will probably get all sorts of fun stuff like old compiler reconstruction.

 

[AshuraZro]

EA... source code... GPL 3? Did I fall into the portal to crazy universe again?


That does not bode well for the release if they can't figure out how to do a VPN or run 10 VMs on a server somewhere and have it all play together.
That or my bullshit excuse alarm was not a false positive.

Probably not going to be quite as bad as the Warcraft efforts but hey.

I can kind of believe it. For a small company, getting VDI up relatively quick isn't hard. But for a company like EA, I would suspect that it isn't tech limiting them but rather readyness and cost/resource approvals. This team would likely not be a priority for provisioning as their resulting product will make considerably less than many other projects on EA's list.

 

[FAST6191]

I can kind of believe it. For a small company, getting VDI up relatively quick isn't hard. But for a company like EA, I would suspect that it isn't tech limiting them but rather readyness and cost/resource approvals. This team would likely not be a priority for provisioning as their resulting product will make considerably less than many other projects on EA's list.

I would probably bet on that too, however to say oh no we can't beat LAN bugs and kung flu at the same time is a bit of a dick move or just straight lie in that case.

At the same time if they have online play then LAN should follow along from that, possibly even with a nice bit of lag mitigation from the online stuff just for giggles by virtue of it existing for the online stuff and in doing so avoid the fun of https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131781/the_internet_sucks_or_what_i_.php (LAN over VPN being a popular activity for both private servers and after they shut down the servers).
If they had single player and then had to spin off LAN and online from that, and had not made the design docs/code with that in mind, that would be a task worth noting.

The virtual desktop thing all on one server would be on the more exotic side of things, and possible that nobody on the team had any experience with such toys (granted they are almost drag and drop these days), but I would struggle to believe they are not all sitting at home on the other side of a VPN to the office for commits, grabs and other shared resources. Virtual machines playing AI would also allow you to run it endlessly, poke it with a stick (or fire missles) and see where desyncs start to trouble things.

My other thought might be that the online stuff has some nice anti cheat or server side calculations/ping mitigations that would be hard to replicate or not ideal to replicate for security. In which case a more technically valid reason but not one I am inclined to say there there for.

 

[Chary]

Good for EA. Didn't think I'd be saying that sentence ever.

 

[Pokemon_Tea_Sea_Jee]

I think being forced back on to Steam has humbled EA a little, at least to the point of giving some of their developers (Respawn, Petroglyph) a little more freedom from micromanagement. Their games have seen a noticeable bump in quality since the release of Apex Legends.

They have been forced back on to Steam?

 

[DarkCoffe64]

Well, for once, a triple ay company sees the fuckup of another *coughcoughblizzardcoughcough* and are like "Yeah, let's not do that".
Still, its EA we be talking about, there's gonna be a catch for sure.