Feb 27

C&C Steam Workshop Support & Source Code

Command & Conquer™ 4 Tiberian Twilight - EA_Tethras

Dear C&C Community,

I hope the past year has treated you well and it’s great to re-connect once again. As you may remember, about a year ago we launched the C&C Ultimate Collection on Steam. This was a positive step towards maintaining the legacy of Command & Conquer, but we always had the ambition to deliver even more C&C franchise improvements to all of you in the community.

So shortly after launch in 2024, we commissioned Luke "CCHyper" Feenan (a veteran of the C&C community who was a part of our Community Council for the C&C Remastered Collection, and was involved in bringing the C&C Ultimate Collection to Steam back in March 2024), to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection. With full access to the C&C Archive at EA, Luke proposed a couple ambitious ideas on behalf of the community, and over the past year, he has devoted himself to deliver upon these initiatives.

These items have required dedicated persistence and extended collaboration with our teams at EA, support from leadership, plus months of engineering work and deep engagements with key C&C community leaders.

Today, we’re excited to say that effort has paid off, and the C&C franchise is getting even better as a result!

I’m eager to invite Luke to provide the details in his own words:

Hello C&C Community!

For those of you awesome C&C fans who I have not crossed paths with before, my name is Luke Feenan, aka. “CCHyper”. I’m a 20+ year veteran of the C&C Community, a long time modder, and an Admin of CnCNet. I was also very fortunate to have been involved in the development of the C&C Remastered Collection under the mentorship of Jim Vessella.

Over the past year I have been working alongside the amazing C&C stakeholders here at EA to restore the Perforce source code archives for the C&C games back to buildable states, which now provides us with the ability to patch these classic games in a deeper way going forward. As a long time modder, it was amazing to finally get a chance to deep dive into the source code for these games and see how they work!

Today, I have been given the pleasure to share two major announcements for the C&C Franchise with you all!

# 1 Empowering the future of the community

For those of you in the community who know me, you will be familiar with my strong advocacy for
video game preservation and my support for the video game open-source community.

It's almost 5 years ago now that EA released the source code for the C&C Remastered Collection DLL files. This release received praise across the video games industry, and has enabled the community to create amazing content for the Remastered Collection. In reaction to the restoration process of the C&C archives, EA wanted to take this one step further…

So, I’m proud to announce that EA is releasing the fully recovered source code for Command & Conquer (aka, Tiberian Dawn) and C&C Red Alert under the GPL license! I know this will empower those in the community who continue to create content for these classic entries in the franchise, and I hope it will aid communities like CnCNet to continue to support these games and keep them playable for future generations to come. But, let's not stop there!

The community over at W3DHub have been doing amazing things with the C&C Renegade engine for almost 20 years now and their projects have been pushing the absolute limits of the game. To support them in taking the game and their awesome projects to the next level, EA is also releasing the complete source code for C&C Renegade under the GPL license. All of us here are all really excited to see what’s next in store for the community over at W3DHub and what they will be able to do with this release!

And finally, in appreciation of the C&C Generals community who have kept the game alive with their consistent energy and passion, hosting multiplayer tournaments, and producing amazing content, I’m extremely happy to share that EA is releasing the full source code under GPL for C&C Generals and its expansion pack, Zero Hour! I know the Generals/ZH community is going to do amazing things with this source code release, and I’m excited to see what the team over at C&C Online does next with the multiplayer experience for these games.

You can find the source code on the Electronic Arts GitHub page;
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Tiberian_Dawn
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Renegade
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Generals_Zero_Hour

# 2 Steam Workshop Support

But now onto the second announcement.

EA is enabling Steam Workshop support for more C&C titles to allow users to upload their custom maps! We know this has been an ask from the community for a very long time so we are pleased to finally give all you map creators an official and permanent home on the Steam Workshop for your content. Now Steam Workshop support has gone live for:

C&C Renegade
C&C Generals & Zero Hour
C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath
C&C Red Alert 3 & Uprising
C&C 4 Tiberian Twilight
EA has also updated all the Mission Editor and World Builder tools so you can publish maps directly to the Steam Workshop. When you subscribe to an item on the Steam Workshop (via the Client or webpage), the games will now pull that content down when you next launch the game and the maps will be displayed in the singleplayer/multiplayer map selection menus. We're all looking forward to seeing what fun and crazy maps you upload!

And to top this off, to support the Steam Workshop we are releasing a “C&C Modding Support” pack which contains the source Xml, Schema, Script, Shader and Map files for all the games that use the SAGE engine. This has been another wish from the community for almost 15 years now so we’re excited to finally make this happen, and we hope this helps you all in continuing to make amazing content and mods for the years to come.

You can find this support pack on the Electronic Arts GitHub page;
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Modding_Support

I would like to take a moment to thank all the Community Playtesters who have supported us throughout this journey with their invaluable feedback and encouragement, also a big thank you to everyone who has reported bugs and issues for the C&C games on Reddit and Steam. And of course to the whole C&C community for supporting these games for over 25+ years!

I would also like to thank the many people at EA working at various studios and departments across the globe who have helped make this happen (there are just too many to name!). Their support for this project and the C&C franchise was really motivating during the final push to launch. I also want to thank the amazing team at EA Partners for providing me with the freedom to execute this project and the resources to help make it happen. Additionally, a shoutout to all of those who have supported me throughout this journey who are not at EA or associated with C&C franchise, you're awesome and you know who you all are!

But lastly, I would like to take a personal moment to thank my two biggest supporters here at EA and throughout this journey. Technical Director, Brian Barnes, who gave me the respect and autonomy to develop this project in the technical direction I felt was best for the core community. And Jim Vessella, for pulling all the pieces in place, and continuing to share his experience, knowledge and insight with me. (And of course continuing to champion the C&C franchise here at EA!). Thank you to the both of you for always looking out for me.

Luke “CCHyper” Feenan

Thanks Luke, our teams at EA couldn’t be more excited about these initiatives. With the release of this source code under the GPL, Command & Conquer continues its legacy of being an industry-leading franchise in the effort to empower gaming communities. And with the Steam Workshop now supporting user maps across more C&C titles, modders can easily share their creations with more C&C fans around the world. We cannot wait to see what the C&C Community creates with these new resources.

As with our previous Modding initiatives, user generated content for C&C titles fall under the Command & Conquer Franchise Modding Guidelines, which have been updated to reflect this initiative. Please be sure to learn and follow within these guidelines, and be respectful of your fellow community members. This is especially important for content which has been created previously over the years. It’s vital for the health of the community that the original authors have the ability to control how / if their content is distributed on the Steam Workshop.

And while we’ve been able to test these new items with a few select community members prior to release, it’s always difficult to predict how the tools will react at scale with the entire community. We’re always listening, so please share your experience and feedback with us. We appreciate your patience as we work to improve the C&C franchise experience.

Additionally, as one more treat to celebrate the release of the source code, we were recently able to discover / digitize some rare gameplay footage from the early development of C&C Renegade and C&C Generals. We wanted to share that compilation with the community here:
https://youtu.be/qN2gryZYz6g

We imagine you C&C historians will enjoy checking out that content.

A huge thanks again to Luke, our community playtesters, and everyone who supported these efforts, and we’ll see you on the battlefield.

Cheers,

Jim Vessella

Jimtern

Feb 25, 2011

Victory: Command & Conquer back on top

Command & Conquer™ 4 Tiberian Twilight

The leaked news that EA has created a new developer responsible for breathing new life into the Command & Conquer series is now official, and it comes with a pledge to fans: C&C will be top RTS dog once again.

Victory Games, the three-pronged studio collective formed to create a "AAA Command & Conquer game", has promised fans it is "committed to bringing Command & Conquer back to the forefront for the next 10 years and beyond".

In an interview on the revamped Command & Conquer website, vice president of strategy games Jon Van Caneghem said: "We've put together a team made up of some of the best talent from previous Command & Conquer games along with a great mix of quality industry veterans. Everyone that we've brought on board is very passionate about making strategy games."

Following the launch of divisive Command & Conquer games in recent years, other RTS games, such as Relic's Dawn of War series and of course Blizzard's StarCraft, have emerged as leading lights.

Clearly, EA wants Command & Conquer to reclaim its RTS crown. An announcement on Victory's first new game is expected later this year.

So, what's in store?

"With over 30 million sold, Command & Conquer now looks to the future, with plans to combine classic RTS gameplay with bold new technology, innovative new concepts and, as always, tanks by the dozen," reads the website.

Some have speculated that C&C will go down the social route, and incorporate Facebook and other networking features.

Van Canegham has hinted in the past at a "direct-to-consumer" future for the venerable RTS series.

"It allows you to do everything you would have expected from a boxed game, but it adds a lot more to it... being connected and connected with players, and persistence, the social elements of playing against each other with other friends," Van Canegham said in 2009.

Feb 22, 2011

New Command & Conquer revealed, pulled

Command & Conquer™ 4 Tiberian Twilight

A new game in the long-running real-time strategy series Command & Conquer looks set for a reveal after the game's official website spilled new details before EA yanked it off the internet.

RockPaperShotgun noticed cncstage.com updated last night to reveal the formation of a new studio based in three locations: Los Angeles, Texas and Shanghai. It's called Victory Games and is designed to head up EA's entire strategy portfolio.

Previous C&C developer EALA was closed last year.

The information has since been pulled, suggesting someone somewhere pressed the cncstage.com button a touch early.

Victory Games' boss is Might & Magic creator Jon Van Caneghem, who EA announced in November 2009 would take charge of the series for a revival.

At the time Van Canegham hinted at a "direct-to-consumer" future for the venerable RTS series.

His comments echoed those of EA Games vice president Nick Earl, who reportedly told staff in an internal email that a team at EALA was working on "Command & Conquer with a new digital model".

"What you're seeing with all the social gamers on Facebook... they are actually already playing strategy games whether they know it or not," Van Canegham said in 2009.

"Taking a franchise like Command & Conquer and expanding it to a wider audience is part of the strategy."

Now, in an interview with cncstage.com (also pulled), Van Canegham said he's working on a "AAA Command & Conquer game".

"I can tell you it's a Command & Conquer game for the PC, but we're not yet at a stage where I can go into any details - we'll be prepared to make a more formal announcement later in the year.

"We're not just working on a game, though. Our general focus is on the future of Command & Conquer. That means updating a lot of the core technology to create a stable base for future development, and leveraging that work on this first game."

And from the website's About page:

The last C&C game was March 2010's divisive entry Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. Alec Meer reviewed for Eurogamer, awarding it a 6/10. "That it is such a giant step away from the mechanics C&C has clung onto for so long is bold and exciting in concept, but so absolute in practice that it's an insult to the faithful," he wrote.

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