Command & Conquer Gold

[Nyerguds]

I noticed you helped working on C&C4.

What exactly did you do?

Uhh... nope. I didn't help on C&C4 at all. The only thing I was ever officially involved in was being invited as beta tester for the official First Decade v1.03 patch, which was never even made in the end.

I got C&C4 for free from the EA C&C community manager though. But they seem to do this for all community leaders (like, big C&C fan site webmasters), and I got on that mailing list through the TFD patch 1.03 thing. Though the fact I remained on that list was definitely because they had gotten no budget to decently fix the games, and he was grateful people like me did their best to make it all work after all. Heck, he also gave me the new Ultimate Collection (which is kinda logical, mind you, since it required tweaks in my patch, so I needed a testing platform for that).

 

Balancing is not an endless debate if you systematically test.

Which is something I don't have time for. I hardly even play multiplayer.

On top of that, it'd affect the campaign. The missions are, after all, tailored to the final game balance, so messing with that may give C&C3-like fiascos in terms of keeping the campaign playable.

 

PS, heb je misschien voor mij alle "orginele" data van C&C in een excel bestandje of in een tekst bestandje?

Here ya go. All original C&C1 internal stats.

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cnc95upd/inirules/

Mind you, there are some minor fixes in there, courtesy of my 1.06 patch, like giving the Advanced Comm Center the ability to detect stealth and making it uncapturable, and a fix in the infantry animation sequences, in the Engineer's entry. There may be more... I'm still in the process of reverse engineering and correctly documenting all of my patch changes (which was sorely needed; it's a mess)

This is, of course, not everything. I'm still looking for the way the game stores turret offsets for tanks, and their deviation from the center of the unit (like the rocket launcher, which has a turret on the back of the vehicle).

[X3M]

Thanks for the ini.

 

Rather complicated. But now I can take a look at it.

 

And is there not a mission where you have to capture the Adv. Comm. Centre?

[Nyerguds]

And is there not a mission where you have to capture the Adv. Comm. Centre?

There is. Unfortunately, rather than the game having one exception making it capturable only there, it was always capturable, but with a special logic added to the mouse cursor code (facepalm) preventing the player from giving that capture command in singleplayer, in any mission besides Nod #12.

This had the silly side effects that:

-The AI can capture your Advanced Com Center and you can't capture it back. I tested this in the Covert Ops mission Blackout, where the AI reinforces engineers by heli to harass you.

-The Advanced Comm Center is capturable in multiplayer, while the Temple isn't, which makes no sense at all.

So I changed that, and made a new system that can change the capturability for any building in any mission, and added that to the coding of Nod mission #12.

[X3M]

Brilliant.

 

And for the turret stuff, perhaps the creator of DTA can help you?

[Nyerguds]

Uhh, how so? I'm talking about searching through the bowels of the game exe file and finding out where there's a list of these turret/firing position offsets. Bittah just mods TS. I'm the one doing the binary-bowel-diving-in-C&C95.

[Feda]

DTA is a TS mod, doesn't have anything to do with the C&C 95 engine.

[X3M]

Well, I thought that there where also offset turrets in that game. But if it is really depending on the engine. Well, I don't know programming of these days. Engines are all written in different languages?

Or is it to say that they are different languages?

 

binary-bowel-diving-in-C&C95

What's that?

 

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Perhaps a stupid question. Regarding your ini file.

But the rifle damage is 15. The health of the same rifle infantry is 50. The effect is 256 out of 256.

This means that he would only need 4 shots. Yet it often takes more.

This means they miss occasionly, a part or completely? Where can I find this/these numbers?

[X3M]

I guess, it is a 0 to 15? Or a 1 to 15?

And any number in between. Perhaps some sort of dice effect?

 

---

 

Regarding your turret offset.

I am following ArtegaOmega on youtube. And in part 62. He says, that he doesn't understand why he selects the rockets instead of the tank itself. He is talking about the MRLS.

And why does he say this? He noticed that the health bar is offset as well.

 

Perhaps you can use this as an extra hint in finding what you seek?

[Nyerguds]

You're missing the point. I hack the game. This involves opening the game's exe file and finding out what the stuff inside it means. It means going a LOT deeper than what you can see on the screen ingame.

In fact, it doesn't even matter (much) what language the game was written in. The final result is in the language your CPU needs to read, and that has to be the same for all programs. That language is X86 Assembler (for 32-bit programs). The bytes in any exe file can be translated back to these X86 Assembler commands (by a program called a "disassembler"), and that way, you can kinda get the source code of any program back. Of course, unlike normal source code, this does not have any of the handy names for functions or variables or class names, meaning that despite seeing all the logic, it still takes loads of work to figure out what it all means.

 

Perhaps a stupid question. Regarding your ini file.

But the rifle damage is 15. The health of the same rifle infantry is 50. The effect is 256 out of 256.

This means that he would only need 4 shots. Yet it often takes more.

This means they miss occasionly, a part or completely? Where can I find this/these numbers?

Infantry drops down when they get attacked. In this prone state, all damage done to them is halved ;)

[X3M]

Ah, ok.

I had the impression that mini-gunners could miss, just like how grenadiers could miss.

Sometimes I saw them doing almost no damage on another infantry unit. Sort of miss?

 

I find this an interesting topic.

 

Funny to see how a none prone bazooka infantry only needs 2 shots, while a prone bazooka needs 3.

But then again, if a grenadier does 50 damage, and 25 on prone. Bazooka infantry should always die in 1 shot.

Bazooka infantry are very slow. So I guess, grenadiers do miss, right?

They also do splash damage. How is that calculated?

Perhaps the mini gunners do splash damage? :D I am sure those of dune2000 do splash.

[Nyerguds]

Oh, there's definitely an inaccuracy factor involved, but I haven't found it in any weapon stats. It may be the same for all weapons.

There IS an actual "Inaccurate" option for the projectile ('bullet') types, but that's the one that makes things like the artillery and rocket launcher projectiles inaccurate. It means it can actually completely miss, whereas the "normal" inaccuracy always stays pretty close to the target, and just gives more of a natural feel to things. Note that the hand grenade indeed does have this "Inaccurate" option enabled.

Do note your damage assessment for the Grenadier is wrong:

Weapon:Grenade (damage: 50) -> Projectile:Bomb -> Warhead:HiExplosive (versus0=224)

HiExplosive does 224/256 (87.5%) versus armour level 0. So that 50 damage for the grenade weapon becomes 43 damage in reality, against infantry.

(Grenades are at their best against armour level 4, which is kinda totally not used in the game)

This inaccuracy is one of the reason I haven't seen a single C&C1 or RA1 remake I like, by the way... they never get that part right, and it makes huge differences in how fast stuff dies.

[Feda]

I was thinking the same about these remakes, you're right.

[X3M]

So for that part, TDA does it wrong as well?

Besides, the Grenadier in RA is different (weaker) than that of Dawn, or at least feels different. I am almost sure they are different.

[Nyerguds]

So for that part, TDA does it wrong as well?

DTA isn't technically a remake, it's a mod for TS. But TS generally has a problem with weapons being too accurate, especially since tank shots hit instantly in that game, whereas in TD and RA they're actually projectiles that need some time to reach their target, meaning they're naturally less accurate against moving targets.

Personally I think the Return of the Dawn mod did a much better job at faithfully reproducing C&C1 on TS. DTA took a lot more liberties.

As for RA... all infantry feels weaker there. It's a tank spam game.

[MrFlibble]

But TS generally has a problem with weapons being too accurate

Nod Artillery FTW ^_^

But honestly, it's a game breaker in vanilla TS. At least they fixed it in FS.

[X3M]

To bad you can't build them in C&C 3 any more. I wonder what the story is behind that.

[Feda]

What I don't like about RoTD is that it doesnt give that awesome C&C95 feeling, probably due to the fact units and buildings look different... Also IIRC RoTD had many bugs.

DTA doesnt give the full C&C 95 as well, but it's a lot more closer to it. Unfortunately their map editor screwes up with AI triggers or something so singleplayer missions are kinda impossible...

[Nyerguds]

Well, RotD actually uses the engine to its full extent. It's not a remake of TD in terms of graphics, but I really don't think it should be, either. Not when the TS engine can do so much more.

Not sure what bugs you're talking about though. RotD worked just fine...

[Feda]

How does it use the TS engine to its full extend? What things did RoTD exploit and DTA didn't? I'm not sarcastic, I would like to know.

[Nyerguds]

DTA doesn't use voxels, or 3D terrain. Its units are all full SHP (except for the few cases where the engine doesn't allow it), and its terrain is all flat with C&C tiles as pseudo-elevations.

Compare:

DTA:

http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/11/10865/SCRN0001.3.png

ROTD

http://imageshack.us/a/img142/2719/gdi0028an3.jpg

(couldn't find a good Temperate/Winter theater screenshot with cliffs and tanks on slopes :()

Also, ROTD has beautiful remakes for practically all building graphics...

...meaning it actually uses the size of the building blueprints in an intuitive fashion, unlike DTA.

[X3M]

Well, ROTD doesn't look appealing to me. It indeed uses the engine more. It's very obvious watching those units in "3D". But therefore it gives more of a Tiberian Sun feeling then the TD feeling.

 

Is it a mod, or can it be played standalone like DTA?

[Nyerguds]

Umm, they're both mods, and since TS is freeware, that difference is negligible anyway. But since the download of ROTD is 89 mb, I do believe it'll include the necessary game files.

As for the TS feeling, well that terrain is still TS. The green Snow theater gives a lot more TD-ish feel.

http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/files/ffa_win.jpg

[Feda]

Well, ROTD doesn't look appealing to me. It indeed uses the engine more. It's very obvious watching those units in "3D". But therefore it gives more of a Tiberian Sun feeling then the TD feeling.

 

 

Agreed with this

[Nyerguds]

Well, RoTD doesn't pretend to be Tiberian Dawn, like DTA does. It's simply more obviously a TS mod, and imo that has its own appeal.

[X3M]

I think DTA was born out of the necessity of skirmish games for TD. And the creator also wanted to add the time line between TD and TS. You get the hoover MRLS and the power suit, as well as the repair unit for Nod. Although, then you also loose the TD feeling by seeing those TS units.