A Special Announcement from EA

Discussion about the game and its default mods.
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Goztow
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by Goztow »

Renegade has Renegade X
Please do not compare Ren X with Ren. I tried Ren X but I went back to Ren which had way better gameplay.

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NodCommander
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by NodCommander »

I can foresee this becoming quite the debate on what to do and what to not do.

In my opinion, you should take a look at how the classic arch-competitor of C&C did their remake, StarCraft and do it even better.

What did they do well? What was less good? What things splits people's opinions?

A remastered OST would be great. Some might argue for a reimagined OST, similar to what Renegade X has done with the original Renegade OST, while others could see that as strongly undesirable. The first released sample of the StarCraft Remastered OST featured a very different version of one of the original tracks which was met with a lot of criticism; Blizzard eventually settled for a polished up, higher quality version of the original OST, as opposed to a reimagined version. The latter approach is very similar to what the mod team behind the mod for Red Alert 3 called The Red Alert did with their OST; as they were lucky to have an audio professional helping them out to drastically freshen up the original RA1 OST to make use of modern PC speakers better. (If anyone is interested in the latter, I have the complete set of the resampled RA1 OST saved locally. PM me.)

Remastered graphics I think is sort of expected when it comes to a remaster. But how should it be done? Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert 1 both had very simple graphics with large areas of units and structures in single colours; this just never looks right in any higher quality/resolution versions. It works in OpenRA simply because the exact graphical style is kept; but I think most of us would expect a little more from a "HD remaster".

Story? Don't touch. No, seriously. Don't meddle with any classic story elements; but instead enhance the storytelling. Again, I will draw a parallel to the StarCraft Remastered who polished up the voice acting, added some cool almost comic-style like screens before/after some important milestones in the campaign. All which greatly helped set the mood. As a sidenote, a lot of people, to this day, seems to not fully understand the storyline progression and timelines.
In Chronological (ish) order
  • Red Alert's Allied campaign is the only canon campaign. After this, you either go into Tiberian Dawn, or Red Alert 2. The Soviet ending is what-if and not canon. A sample of this is seen in the (silly) ant-missions, which are supposedly set after the Allied victory. The Allies having confiscated Soviet war machinery (grenadiers, mammoth tanks...)and are in the process of reforming into the GDI (change in colour).
  • Tiberian Dawn's campaign has the GDI campaign as the canon ending. Nod is a what-if.
  • Tiberian Sun assumes a GDI campaign ending, Nod is a what-if
  • Firestorm has both campaigns run "at the same time", both endings are canon.
  • Red Alert 2 has the Allied campaign ending be the canon, Soviet is a what-if
  • Yuri's Revenge was never truly followed up on, so it is up to the player to decide what campaign and ending is the "real" one. Unless you count Red Alert 3, which I personally do not even though I like that game in it's own way.
I list this specifically because it has been a pet-peeve of mine when people assume that both campaigns are canon in Red Alert 1. This is simply wrong.

Aesthetics is somewhere in between story, world building and graphics. This area is one where the classic Westwood titles looks very different from the EA-era of C&C. The Tiberium flora and fauna of Tiberian Sun vs Tiberium crystal formations of Tiberium Wars. Cold War era experimental weapons and pretty grim world of Red Alert 1 vs the anime-inspired, silly world of Red Alert 3. I at least strongly prefer the original takes on the Red Alert and Tiberium universes.

Cinematics is a really hard one. StarCraft never had any live action elements so this was never an issue for them, while live action have almost been a trademark of C&C. Keep the live action scenes while remaster the "action scenes" seems like the most realistic compromise to me. Unless you can get Joe Kucan to play Kane for some new, extra scenes again. If he is given his original character's role again, and put as a cutscene director, I think he would love to do it. If nothing else, I think he would love to bring back the Kane to his former glory.

Gameplay is a very tricky question. The StarCraft Remastered kept painstakingly to the original's gameplay. In some ways, it helped keep the feel of the game, and helped to attract fans who are strongly conservative towards the original's gameplay and who disliked the big changes that Blizzard enacted as they released StarCraft II. However, in my opinion, the genuinely and wholly good contribution that EA Games brought upon C&C has been a balanced and modern gameplay. Let's face it, if we all agree on that we loved Westwood's original storytelling and world building, then their Achilles Heel was balance. The only Westwood-era title that was ever considered balanced without community contributions was Renegade, while all previous titles contained absolutely laughable balance issues. Less important in an era before online play was as widespread today, as playing against the campaign AI is a different thing altogether. In either case though, at least the very early C&C title's gameplay have not aged well compared to modern titles. You can go down different routes to balance the gameplay; either try to modernise it while trying to keep it as similar as possible to the original (Like OpenRA has so expertly done), alternatively go down a route more similar to what you at EA Games did with C&C3 and reimagine how the game should play from scratch.

Finally, what games do I want to see remastered? That is a hard question. I love both the Tiberium and Red Alert universes in different ways. It sounds natural to start from the beginning, though.

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avalach21
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by avalach21 »

Goztow wrote:
Sun Oct 14, 2018 9:29 am
Renegade has Renegade X
Please do not compare Ren X with Ren. I tried Ren X but I went back to Ren which had way better gameplay.
I don't want to stray too off topic, but could you elaborate on your opinion? I am curious :-)

Hawk
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by Hawk »

I'm all for every C&C game remastered (much like the The Ultimate Collection)

But personally, I'd like the C&C: Red Alert trilogy remastered. Honestly, Red Alert 3 is my favorite game of the series, and runs fine on modern systems. I'd like to see the series get 60fps+ support.

draco
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by draco »

The thing I dislike the most is the apparent incapability of infantry and other things to look up an shoot the helis in range...planes fine but helis are typically low flying and they fly lower than planes or jets. there is no reason why light infantry can not look up and shoot the helis with their rifles. the same goes for the buggy & apc. even tanks can look up an shoot helis if they really wanted to and there are AA shells for that very thing. just make a "corridor" AA range on the tanks and give light infantry the ability to look up and say "hey there is a heli I should probably try to shoot it instead of letting it hover over me and unleash hell"

other than that what I hate is how units have longer range than they can actually see it creates situations where I feel ive been cheated out of range because the enemy has a scout next to their infantry an my infantry charge is wrecked by units shooting outside of their sight.

SCOUTS & PLANES/HELIS SHOULD have more sight than they do range and ARTILLERY SHOULD have more range than they do sight. other wise keep the range and sight values the same.

jonwil
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by jonwil »

As the guy mentioned previously in the thread in regards to Renegade and the community-made enhancements the last thing I want is a remake or remaster of C&C Renegade. Any remake or remaster would simply fracture what community Renegade has left. If its a remake or remaster on the existing engine (regardless of whether they did just what was necessary to make things work or whether they did a big rewrite) it would make all the stuff I do a lot harder (do I support the new upgraded engine or not, how much reverse engineering do I need to do to the new engine etc) and might well kill off the scripts project.

If (as is more likely if they did decide to remake renegade) its a remake on a new engine like Frostbyte it will also be bad since I doubt whatever they use is going to be anywhere near as moddable as Renegade currently is.

The idea of somehow making what we do for the scripts project official would be amazing though and something I would go for very much (especially if it involved EA doing something similar to what they did when Final Alert 2 became "official" where Matze was able to get access to technical information and possibly even code for Red Alert 2)

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NodCommander
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by NodCommander »

jonwil wrote:
Mon Oct 15, 2018 9:19 am
As the guy mentioned previously in the thread in regards to Renegade and the community-made enhancements the last thing I want is a remake or remaster of C&C Renegade. Any remake or remaster would simply fracture what community Renegade has left. If its a remake or remaster on the existing engine (regardless of whether they did just what was necessary to make things work or whether they did a big rewrite) it would make all the stuff I do a lot harder (do I support the new upgraded engine or not, how much reverse engineering do I need to do to the new engine etc) and might well kill off the scripts project.

If (as is more likely if they did decide to remake renegade) its a remake on a new engine like Frostbyte it will also be bad since I doubt whatever they use is going to be anywhere near as moddable as Renegade currently is.

The idea of somehow making what we do for the scripts project official would be amazing though and something I would go for very much (especially if it involved EA doing something similar to what they did when Final Alert 2 became "official" where Matze was able to get access to technical information and possibly even code for Red Alert 2)
You know, a Battlefield-like title set in Tiberian Dawn or Red Alert 1 would be... Beyond cool. No need to go crazy with sci-fi designs or such; keep it the authentic/modern day style of the original titles.

Just dreaming here; EA is after all seemingly out for remastering old titles, not a huge new AAA title. But one can always dream.

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kyrylo
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by kyrylo »

From the remaster I want:

1. HD graphics that looks more realistic rather than cartoony. Lessen the amount of funkiness and add more realism *with* funkiness.
2. Classic skirmish
3. Co-op campaign
4. Rebalanced factions (RA1 has terrible balance). This includes air units, naval units, and less for ground units
5. No need to introduce any new factions. Make it work with what we already have. Maybe some new unit to help with the balance.
6. Advanced map level editor. More map entities. The map types can be the same (interior, desert, snow, summer)
7. Modding support
8. Nintendo Switch support (I realise it's unlikely, but what if...)

Basically, OpenRA is already close to perfection. So you'd really need to sweat to make this remaster better than OpenRA ;)

jonwil
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by jonwil »

Mod support would be great and would probably increase sales a fair bit I suspect.
Oh and regardless of what they release, it needs to be just as fun to play as the originals were.

The reason I haven't bothered to finish C&C4 is because its just not FUN to play for me in the way a more traditional RTS is.
Played through RA2 and YR a while back and those are just so much fun (if I wasn't busy with Renegade stuff and other things I might give some of the custom campaigns a go, especially any that let you play as Yuri)
Even C&C3 and RA3 were fun for me (especially things like the Yuriko campaign in Uprising)

Francois Fourie
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by Francois Fourie »

Can EA acknowledge that the story in C&C4 is not cannon?

I've been playing C&C since I was 7 back in 1998
My school holidays used to consist of C&C every waking moment. (and after homework)

I started with Red Alert 1 (Couldn't stop playing) Red Alert 2 just made my addiction worse (but in a good way)

The Tiberium Universe is the nearest and dearest to my heart.
Once I played Tiberian Dawn after Red Alert the Tiberium Universe had me by the balls.
I obsessed over game mechanics and art direction of the Tiberium Universe in high-school, over
the story, and what the great mystery behind Kane was.

The announcement of C&C3 Tiberium Wars had me so excited and I enjoyed it.
The story was good and the aesthetic pulled me into the world but some of the unit designs erked me.

(C&C4 pissed on my dreams as a whole, (No Scrin!!!! WTF!?!?!?!?!?))

Remaster the old games in the same way that Blizzard remastered SC: Remastered. (amazing example)

But for the SAGE Engine games; C&C Generals, Tiberium Wars, Kane's Wrath, Red Alert 3 (Sorry did not like Red Alert 3) use the Frostbite engine.

Tiberian Sun would also benefit from being overhauled in 3D in Frostbite. I just really want to see the Tiberium ravaged world of Tiberian Sun step into full 3D gameplay. Stay true to the unit designs of the original Tiberian Sun. But be hardcore scientific about Tiberium Fauna and Flora. I think C&C 3 Tiberium Wars missed a huge opportunity with Tiberium Fauna and Flora.


I'd also love to see a Battlefield style C&C "Renegade" reboot. Back to 1995. I want the story to be serious AF and a hardcore Sci-Fi romp.
(Renegade X is too arcady for me.)

I believe a new FPS( First Person Shooter) will resonate with young people today because of circumstances and the world we find ourselves in.

(Singleplayer Story)
I want a C&C FPS game that takes itself and the fictional Tiberium Universe very seriously. Has a campaign thats longer than 5 hooouuurs!!!
very militaristic (GDI) , very secretive, underground but international Terrorist organisation (Nod)
Deals with the discovery of Tiberium and dives deep into The First Tiberium War.
Good world building, How the UN brings about the creation of The Global Defense Initiative
Multiple theaters of war.

The Tiberium Universe still resonates with today's world and its almost too close to comfort with the exception of Tiberium of course. Tiberian Dawn was almost predicting today's international terrorism and climate changes)

(Multiplayer)
It also has great potential to bring in fresh game-play mechanics in multiplayer including larger player counts on a server. (I won't share those game play mechanics/Design here) The standard Battlefield conquest game-play is getting a bit stale.

Multiplayer maps need to be really big, and non channeled unlike BF1 and BFV maps. Battlefield 3 had amazing maps. You need larger maps that allow freedom and possibilities for strategies and good team-play. Make the maps/ environments reflect a world invaded by Tiberium in a realistic scientific manner according to the effects of Tiberium.

If I want to fly a Orca Transport, let me. Let me transport troops. Or a Chinook for that matter since w're dealing with 1995 here.

"Renegade "2" can go into The Second Tiberium War (C&CTiberian Sun) OMG that would be fantastic. and "Renegade "3" (C&C 3 Tiberium Wars)

So Jim Vessella, you are more than welcome to talk to me or If this humble C&C fan can offer consultation or feedback I would love to.

Thank you for this platform

Francois Fourie

Wabbit
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by Wabbit »

Things I would like to see:
- Some kind of an 'Unit Editor' which allows you to create your own units
- The ability to create new Features via lua or other languages (C, C++, Java, ...)
- Choose on maps what kind of mods are enabled (if the map allows it), for example: New Units, New Factions, other features (to allow players to choose what kind of units they'll have ingame)
- Not only 3D-Remakes, old styles should be supported aswell (TD/RA-Style and TS/RA2-Style)

ponic3
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by ponic3 »

Hi there, long time C&C fan, been playing since the 90's all the way to now, and have usually had to do some careful reprograming to get the game to function on Windows 10.

Hmm a remaster? Well, if you did that I would throw my money at you without 2 thoughts, because that would be wonderful, but what would be needed? I personally feel that would be best divided in a few ways. Some questions in RA1 and C&C 1 were with balance. Commonly what would be needed in these 2 games if possible would be to tweak AI pathfinding. Specifically, when playing C&C 1 and RA1, it was very typical to be trying to order a fleet of tanks through a mountain pass and find them crawling all over each other while the AI struggled to find a pathway to success, usually resulting in your massive army entering 1 at a time and being slowly picked up off by base defences. When fighting as Nod or the Allies, were units were weaker in terms of armour, this would usually prove quite frustrating. I would say you should also consider allowing things such as rally points and ques in those original games as they are pretty basic parts of RTS now, and if you try to market the game to new audiences as well as old fans, only old fans will understand and remember the classic style gameplay. Graphics and audio would certainly need updating and or remastering.

For voice acting, I think it could be left alone in gameplay. The quotes of the units are typical call backs of the game, especially in Red Alert, such as the Crazy Ivan quotes of RA2. Returning to the old games, classic skirmish would be necessary, and an option to play old style or new style might be appreciated incase any players do not enjoy the changes. When it comes to rebalancing, perhaps adding armour or cheapening costs would be useful, but I forsee this being a difficult line to walk. Specifically because the Allies and Nod in classic C&C were made for their campaigns with those armies in mind, so that could prove to be a questionable thing to change, and or quite difficult. Adding units would not be a good thing. Adding some armour buffs to Allies or Nod in classic C&C may be a better option, or giving tanks a minor upper in damage may help too. Changing/altering aircraft mechanics may also prove useful. E.g. in C&C 1 aircraft could not be selected while in flight, so you had to order them to their place, that and they couldn't be used to scout into shroud, making it difficult to play. Minerals and ore also provided little yield and regen was slow, perhaps upping mineral-cost ratio would be useful as well.

Cutscenes and acting in all games should be left alone, although HDing them up would be appreciated to make them nice and crisp. Considering the difficulty curve in C&C 1, I believe adding an easy, medium, or hard option may prove useful to new players as well. As for which game I would hope to see remastered? Well, while I imagine it'll be C&C 1 and RA1 first, my personal favourites and the ones that started it for me and got me into playing the older ones was RA2, and YR, still my favourite. As a side note, if you remaster YR, do something about the voice actors for the Allies Mission 2, Hollywood in Vain. I know there were copyright issues, but honestly having them be typical GI quotes is boring and pulls from the mission fun.

As a side note, I think that remaster is a safe bet. There is a bit of a sour taste in terms of EA in general and their games right now. Doing a sequel in this environment may prove difficult and what should perform well might underperform. I think EA would be safest going with a remaster to win trust, first. If a sequel to any universe becomes a thing in the future, I would hope for the Tiberium universe or General Universe. RA is my favourite, but its current docket of games is fine and very satisfying for the time being. The way I see it Tiberium either needs C&C 4 uncanonned, or acknowledge C&C 4 but tie up the giant plot hole of the Scrin, Kane's true Origins (as the explanation in C&C 4 felt tacked on and thrown in as an 'opps forgot about that' moment), and where was the Ascension too? Perhaps having GDI explore the stars and running into the Scrin would be a good plot point. Either that, or ignore C&C 4 altogether, and redo the ending from scratch. I feel having a sequel to Tiberium and saying "oh the TCN failed" or "the TCN got destroyed, Tiberium is everywhere again, oh bother" would be lazy writing and feel far too forced. Generals, while not my favourite universe, is a fun game and needs some love. Where Tiberium and RA got lots of attention, poor Generals is like the forgotten sibling sitting in the corner playing by itself. If RA ever got a sequel, I would wonder, what would the world look like now? Soviet revenge would feel too forced, already been done. But did they survive the Uprising? In my personal head canon, I always imagine the campaigns as episodic in Uprising. Soviets first, then they go to Japan and the Empire campaign is next, the Japanese attack of Vladivostok devastates the Soviet underground and utterly destroys them, the Allies swoop in to Japan and put the Empire down leaving only Takara alive (based on the final mission) and the Allies as the dominate superpower. Could we connect the RA universe to the Tiberium universe at this point? Could we even connect RA to Generals being how the Allies play similarly to the USA? Anyways these are my opinions, felt like sharing. My apologies for the bigger than life post.

1 more thing, forgot to mention. I think if EA ever needs to look at C&C games that I think were beautifully made and had so much passion in them, for the RA universe they could consider RA2/YR (although Yuri in YR was a bit unbalanced, that said he was fun to take down in a tough game). RA3 was a wonderful game with great mechanics. I loved it, but some in the community didn't, while RA2 seems to be more appreciated (like I said I loved RA3, however). In the Tiberium Universe, I would say look at C&C 3. The clear passion, love, and money tossed into C&C 3, I would argue eclipsed any C&C game in the franchise history. The story was epic, the acting was great, the factions were diverse, and the gameplay was addicting. Loved playing it, and really truly got yanked into that game. The only thing that pulled C&C 3 back was the environment of C&C 3 was too backgroundish. By that I mean, in TS, I felt like I was fighting the enemy, and the environment with the poisonous tiberium, dangerous creatures, horrid veinholes. In a Blue Zone, obviously this would not exist, but in a Yellow or a Red, I felt like it could have been implemented (especially in a Red). C&C 3 style, combined with TS environment would have been amazing.

kargul85
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by kargul85 »

A remastered version of Red Alert, I'm on!. Especially Red Alert 2, if it was fully compatible with W10, FHD resolution (I can still be isometric). An EA project incorporating community ideas could be a hit! I have a great fondness for RA2. Intro and movie feature inserts did their thing :) I'm excited!

FaN
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Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:55 pm

Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by FaN »

Remastering Generals would be so great-
this Game should bring it to the top- with 3 different Nations. Like Zero hour without Special Generals but the new Units. This could reach the E-Sport with Little Balance updates.
Make Generals great again! I loved the Clanwars 1v1 or FFA on Defcon playing all night Long.
Or NoMoney on Special Maps. Best Game ever.
SO there is hope again to switch back from SC2...
This game was funny cause u didnt have to learn lot of Build orders. And when behind u could with a cool and lucky strategic move turn the game in ur favour (Gen Stars). Or the experience Stars in ur Army was so good. This is not possible in SC2 so there was the great Thing About the game.

I bought 2x Warchest in SC2 because i think it is a good think for the Pro Players on tournaments. This could work on CnC Generals too.

ponic3
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Re: A Special Announcement from EA

Post by ponic3 »

kargul85 wrote:
Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:26 am
A remastered version of Red Alert, I'm on!. Especially Red Alert 2, if it was fully compatible with W10, FHD resolution (I can still be isometric). An EA project incorporating community ideas could be a hit! I have a great fondness for RA2. Intro and movie feature inserts did their thing :) I'm excited!
Totally agree. If those little intro and outro scenes for missions made a return (however unlikely) that would be great, especially with current gen graphics. I remember, those were always so great at pulling me into the universe.

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