Command & Conquer Gold

[Feda]

The classic mode of DTA is only TD.

[Nyerguds]

Well, it's been a bit of a friendly competition at some point, between me fixing TD and Bittah making DTA...

And technically, TD HAS skirmish now :P

[X3M]

And technically, TD HAS skirmish now :P

Really? How?

[Nyerguds]

Really? How?

Start a network game, enable AI players, start without any other LAN players joining. It's one of the features of my patch.

They can't build bases though, of course, which is why I said "technically". For more info, RTFM.

There's even an option in CCConfig to set the maximum amount of AI opponents you get in a skirmish game, so you can do a 1v1 on a 6 player map rather than getting swamped by 5 AIs.

[X3M]

Then let us continue here :D.

Some might not even understand why I am saying that :D.

 

I've tried that skirmish. Rather ehm, "boring" :D. But it is something at least.

Is it in your future plans to make something interesting out of it?

[Nyerguds]

Is it in your future plans to make something interesting out of it?

Did you read the article on ModDB I linked to? :P

If you want extra C&C1 battles, you should check out Solo's project on cncnz - he's collecting, cleaning up, testing and fixing all C&C1 missions and mini-campaigns ever made. And boy, there sure are a lot of those. And if you're interested in playing them, he's always looking for playtesters.

(side note - mini-campaign support is also added in my patch ;))

[X3M]

ModDB?

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Solo's project.

I will try out some next week.

I guess, simply downloading them and placing them in your file?

---

Anyway, I also noticed how they try to reach the most northern west unit. I can abuse this greatly with sand

bag walls and rocket soldiers behind it. With the 5K that I got.

 

So, MCV missions win, while the 50 unit missions fail.

[Nyerguds]

ModDB?

Oh, come on...

They can't build bases though, of course, which is why I said "technically".

^ that's a link. Click it. Read it.

 

Solo's project.

I will try out some next week.

I guess, simply downloading them and placing them in your file?

You mean folder, not file. And, yes.

 

Anyway, I also noticed how they try to reach the most northern west unit. I can abuse this greatly with sand

bag walls and rocket soldiers behind it. With the 5K that I got.

Abusing bugs in C&C never made the game any fun, in my opinion. Especially in skirmish... what are you trying to prove, then? That you can win a game by cheating? No, the challenge is to actually build up a base and try to stay alive when they all come rushing in :P

Besides, as I said in the manual, it's a lot more fun on Capture The Flag mode, where you can build up a base and then do tactical strikes against the AI players' Mobile HQs.

 

So, MCV missions win, while the 50 unit missions fail.

Huh? Not a clue what you mean with this.

I hope you didn't try Skirmish without bases, because that's rather pointless, especially with 5 vs 1.

[X3M]

I did try those 5 vs 1 :D, I like challenges.

With proper placement, I had like destroyed half of them. Which is a pretty good result to standard strategy.

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Abusing bugs or not, if they always go for the upper left unit. There is no point in those maps anyway.

---

Right, I read the stuff you linked too.

 

The last thing that pops up in my mind. And it probably already has been asked, is:

How about taking red alert as a basis instead, and then implement the dawn structures? So, you already have a proper skirmish working. But all is replaced with dawn stuff.

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I even read the following.

stalkerforever Dec 19 2012, 7:16pm replied:

btw, can u make the migs shoot air and do more damage to ground? cause now theyre pretty useless just like the scouts in starcraft

 

That guy totally missed the point of scouts in starcraft :D. And totally missed the point of migs as well. Migs are strong and fast. Scouts actually got me plenty of wins, they are the air equivalent of vultures and zerglings.

[Nyerguds]

Abusing bugs or not, if they always go for the upper left unit. There is no point in those maps anyway.

Then you could say there is no point in the entire game, because it happens in all normal missions as well.

 

The last thing that pops up in my mind. And it probably already has been asked, is:

How about taking red alert as a basis instead, and then implement the dawn structures? So, you already have a proper skirmish working. But all is replaced with dawn stuff.

Go back. Read the article again. I'm not going to repeat what I already wrote there.

It's the part starting with "Another grave misconception is that I could just 'copy it from Red Alert'."

And yes, it is relevant: recreating C&C on RA1 would require the reverse implementing of TD superweapons. There are C&C1 mods for RA, sure, but that has nothing to do with what I'm doing on C&C1. I'm upgrading the original. Leave the modding to the mod makers, I just want to upgrade the original game.

And as I said, with the hundreds, if not thousands of custom missions created for C&C1, skirmish really isn't something that bothers me too much.

[MrFlibble]

BTW Nyer, what I was really wondering about, is how realistic (or viable) could a reverse-engineering project in the vein of OpenDUNE be for C&C? I understand that there are certain differences in how one can analyse protected mode DOS programmes as opposed to real mode ones (also no idea if this is alleviated by the existence of a Win95 Gold version of C&C), but other than that, is it doable? (By which I mean that the end result will be at least as accurate as OpenDUNE in its current state; which is very accurate.)

It's not that I dislike the idea of fixing the original game - on the contrary, I prefer this method as well - it's just that an engine recreation would add several more degrees of freedom to the way the game can be changed.

I understand that you're quite comfortable with the way you do it, and my question is more of a theoretical interest.

How about taking red alert as a basis instead, and then implement the dawn structures?.

As for RA instead of TD: these are two completely different games. Yeah, they look much alike, and one is a logical continuation of the other (in the sense that they were developed by more or less the same people, and some code was re-used/upgraded or whatever), but they are very different in a number of important ways. You sure can replace all the graphics and change unit stats (and probably also edit some hardcoded stuff as well), but it will be nothing more than a RA mod with C&C units. And especially with the skirmish mode, it's going to be 100% RA skirmish with swapped unit graphics and names. Why not play some real RA skirmish instead? It only makes some sense for the sake of variety in RA, not as a recreation of the original C&C.

My two cents though :)

[X3M]

Mr Fibble, you make sense.

What I said indeed makes no sense then.

[Nyerguds]

BTW Nyer, what I was really wondering about, is how realistic (or viable) could a reverse-engineering project in the vein of OpenDUNE be for C&C? I understand that there are certain differences in how one can analyse protected mode DOS programmes as opposed to real mode ones (also no idea if this is alleviated by the existence of a Win95 Gold version of C&C), but other than that, is it doable? (By which I mean that the end result will be at least as accurate as OpenDUNE in its current state; which is very accurate.)

The thing holding that back is actually the fact that neither Hyper nor I are C++ programmers. Hyper has identified loads of the internals of C&C, but that's not enough to actually convert it to code...

I guess I could rewrite most of it in C# if I really wanted to, using Hyper's latest DB, and his insight into the class hierarchy, but that'd still be be tons of work. It takes a special kind of determination to do something like that... and I doubt either of us have that.

[MrFlibble]

Well yeah, I guess there aren't too many OpenDUNE-like projects around because they require so much time and dedication. At least, C&C having a Windows port makes it quite a bit more flexible in this respect.

On a vaguely related note, I think it woudl be wonderful if someone with enough motivation pulled off something like OpenDUNE with The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall - the original source code for which had allegedly been lost for realsies. There's this DaggerXL project that attempts to recreate the game, but it's one of those "one engine fits all" kind of thing that simultaneously tries to support such unrelated projects, as Star Wars: Dark Forces and Blood (all of them having completely different engines in the first place), and while I find any endeavour of this kind commendable, such recreations are really not to my taste.

The reverse engineering of Daggerfall on the other hand would have helped fix the plentiful bugs, and possibly find (maybe even use) some leftover stuff that was cut from the game.

My two cents though, and sorry for straying a bit off-topic :)

[peterthepigeon]

Nyerguds' weapons.ini had the indices which made testing easier.

So let's get to work.  Where is the weapon's data stored?

You can find it in the .data section of c&c, specifically in C&C95, at address 0x5034D8.
 

0044114A  |. 8A84C1 D834500>MOV AL,BYTE PTR DS:[ECX+EAX*8+5034D8]

To walk the entries, it's important to remember there are a total of 24(?) weapons.
 

#define MAX_WEAPONS 24typedef struct{    BYTE m_bProjectile;    BYTE m_bDamage;    BYTE m_bRateOfFire;    BYTE m_bUnknown;    BYTE m_bRange;    BYTE m_bUnknown2;    BYTE m_bUnknown3;    BYTE m_bReportSound;    BYTE m_bUnknown4;}Weapon_t;Weapon_t* pWeaponBase = ( Weapon_t* )0x5034D8;for ( iCounter = 0; iCounter < MAX_WEAPONS; iCounter++ ){    SetupWeapon ( &pWeaponBase [ iCounter ], iCounter );}

Keep in mind that Rate of Fire has 3 added to it by the game.  To truly have it set to 0 you either:

C&C95 location: 004B1766
 

004B1766  |. 83C0 03           ADD EAX,3

1)  Byte patch
1a) Byte patch immediate to 0

2) Set Rate of Fire to FD to cause overflow.  This works because game only uses bytes for weapon data as documented above.

 

[MrFlibble]

peterthepigeon, you should probably post your findings at the Command & Conquer Communications Center.

[Nyerguds]

He already did ;)