I’m not well versed in C&C, but it’s always good to see more games open sourced.
This is brilliant! :) aw, I hope it benefits the OpenRA developers and means more fun things to play eventually :)
Wait… this is EA… are they okay? This is very unlike them
Almost like a mistake?
I think the old Westwood dev they put in charge of the franchise just doesn’t have any oversight.
That would be a completely legendary move if the dev hired by EA just said “fuck it, I’m open-sourcing this shit!”
It sounds like that’s what happened, but through the proper channels. They hired a known CnC community/modding site admin as the dev.
I’d imagine he pitched that this was an easy way to reduce maintenance costs while fostering massive good will and making the amount of long tail sales over time higher.
That’s actually kind of a brilliant concept that should serve as an example for other video game publishers then: open-source the program so that it can be maintained by the community, but require a license to use the artwork. The community could eventually recreate and even improve the artwork anyway.
Holy shit, EA did something… Good? I did not have that on my 2025 bingo card. So, what’s the catch? There has to be a catch, right?
This doesn’t release any copyright work in the game. So you will need to go through and remove any sprites, images, audio, etc that is copyright. Which means you will need to own a copy of the game (to have a right to the copyright usage) to use any binary produced from THIS source.
Additionally, it indicates that you must include in any derivative that the source of your code is from the EA drop here.
Outside of that, it is GPLv3. Of course it has hard dependency on DirectX 5.0. So a fully free version will need to redo those parts. Also the code is very MS VC++ heavy. Don’t expect gcc to build you a binary.
That’s still pretty cool though right?
I think so. When I first saw the announcement, I was fearing some barely open source license, and was pleasantly surprised.
Heh, the red alert readme says it currently requires borland for the asm and watcom compiler for the c/c++.
Short version: You can make free stuff for them but they still own all of it and still require people to purchase a copy to use the derivatives.
You can make complete conversions with your own assets. That’s basically how old id engines work.
This is a momentous event. I only wish it had Red Alert 2 in it.
If it doesn’t then I’m not interested.
Broken clock
Is Tiberian Sun included!!!??
No. The repo has Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert 1, Generals with Zero Hour, Renegade, and components for the HD ports of TD and RA1 they put out a few years ago.
AY YO RENEGADE!?
From what I’ve read/know, the source for Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 were lost a while ago. Doesn’t mean it can’t be reverse engineered at some point, but it’s challenging. I’d LOVE for those to be next though!
Yes, if you click the link, it takes you to the EA github amd you can see folders for all included games
deleted by creator
I heard so, yes.
I hope everyone’s SSDs have enough SPACE
SPAAAACE
SPGHGHAAIGHGHSSSE!!! is literally the only thing I know about Command & Conquer.
When I first played Red Alert, it was on a computer with a 6.4GB hard drive, and I had no idea how to fill up that much space at the time. I think we’ll be fine.
its odd that they open sourced Generals and the first CNC and Red Alert, but nothing in between.
CNC3 was my favorite, and I’ll die on that hill . but RA2 was obivously the fan favorite, and Tiberian Sun had probably the best atmosphere
Sometimes licenses get in the way, it’s possible they bought an engine or tech from a 3rd party and don’t have the legal standing (or don’t know if they do or not) to release the source.
someone else here suggested that the source code for TS/RA2 was lost. which wouldnt surprise me.
These are games that were made when and before the Zoomers were being born. they are ancient by most people’s standards.
Yeah, I used to steal the physical CDs from Kmart back in the day. They’re old as hell.
Fallout source is gone too. There was just no reliable way to store source code back then, a lot of times it was just one of the developers that had it sitting in a desk drawer.
If it’s new enough, maybe a burnt CD.
still susceptible to disc rot
Now if only they open-sourced the SAGE engine, then we’d be all happy
The engine is highly optimized & produces great visuals, Of course there IS OpenSAGE
dont people already make seperate MODS for each anyways, for them anyways,. they figured they wernt making money off having the old games in thier wierd little launcher.
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some write-off move. A bit like Epic Games released all Paragon assets after they canceled the game.
Epic released those to add value to their engine not as a write off
EA released this to boost Steam Workshop content - which would boost sales - not as a write off
As I understand accounting, you really don’t need to do stuff like this to write off your assets.
I’m not saying there isn’t a cynical corporate reason for doing this but I doubt this is it.
Holy shit.
I hope they opensource Dungeon Keeper.
Can you say why? The opensource project is already insanely good.
To make the opensource project even better! :P
The compiler has optimized the rendering engine too much to be decompiled into any useable code. Somebody is working on Linux and 64bit support which will need to have this completely rewritten. https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx/blob/master/src/bflib_render_gpoly.c
The maintainer of KeeperFX told me that EA does not have the original code anymore though.
Finally someone can fix Twilight Flame
It’s about thyme!
Extremely rare EA win
Are they trying to become the not most hated studio? The bar is pretty low these days…
I feel like at some point, EA became the least hated major studio by staying exactly where they were. The rest of the industry zoomed past them.
Nah, you’re going way too far. Least hated studio? What about CD Projekt Red? Larian? Fromsoft? Who hates Warhorse more than EA?
Maybe I should clarify that to “publisher”. EA itself doesn’t really make games anymore. They fund the studios who make games.
