Community Summit Report

[Count von Phoib 0]

First of all: a word to everybody who keeps nagging that EA is raping the Command and Conquer franchise, comparing EA to the big bad Borg who assimilated Westwood and left Command & Conquer a quick money transvesite offering brief moments of pleasure for too little money: shut up. EA loves Command & Conquer, and is sparing little expense to make sure that C&C3 will be a real Command & Conquer game. Just like how Tiberian Sun was to Tiberian Dawn, so will The Tiberium Wars be towards Tiberian Sun. An epic improvement. If you don't like the changes, go buy The First Decade and play Tiberian Sun. This is a new game, and I like it.

 

Playing the game.

At the summit, we had about 6 hours of playing time. First a few multiplayer games, then a few games against Skirmish, and then some more multiplayer goodness, with the aliens as well this time. To make it short, I wasn't bored. It was fun to play the game, and I didn't have that much fun playing skirmish or MP games since Red Alert 2. It's fast, fun, and with the big array of superweapons, almost furious.

 

Superweapons.

There have been a lot of posts about the units, analyzing the pro's and con's of the Mammoth Tank, Nod Avatars or Annihilator Tripod's, etc. All very fun units, but you'll hear enough about them. Let's discuss the most awesome goodies: superweapons! All 3 factions have their own superweapons, who each deliver a hell of a lot of bang for your buck. My personal favorite is GDI's superweapon, the old Ion Cannon. People who played Renegade will recognize it, as it now looks like some 16 small beams spiraling together for one big beam, after which you'll literally see a hell of a blast coming down. Playing against Scott from cncworld.org, we both sat staring at the screen, saying things like "wow, let's do THAT again!" Amir said it wasn't finished yet, but I assure you, the first time you see it, you won't mind if you are on the receiving or the dealing end, it just looks spectacular!

Next is the Aliens Rift superweapon, created from the Rift Generator. Not finished yet, it showed a strange blob that sucked a good portion of my enemies base up. After some moments, I realized I actually smacked a black hole in the middle of my enemies base. I'm looking out for the finished version, if it's as awesome as the Ion Cannon, then I won't mind being on the receiving end a couple of times!

The least spectacular right now was Nod's Nuclear Missile, for the simple reason that using it made our game crash. Before everybody goes screaming, such things as crashes can be expected during development (God knows how many crashes I had during the last years of mod making...) and the minimap showed a good deal of devastation being inflicted, so I'm sure it will be a apocalyptic event if one of those babies go off!

 

Special Powers.

Ok, while the superweapons are fun, they generally don't offer much moddability. The Ion Cannon will probably be quite hard to edit, and both the Nuclear Missile and the Rift Superweapons are basicly just variatons of old Generals/Zero Hour Superweapons (code wise). The Special Powers, however, give us more options... The most interesting aspect is that the special powers now cost money! You can still stack them, and the timer continues even when you don't have money, but with some, to deploy them, you have to pay for it. Deploying now also works differently. Unlike Generals and Zero Hour, there are now also global powers that simply work with clicking on the button, and the power deploys from the building that gave you the power. These include special units being brought in at your base (the Alien Mothership) to global uncloaking or even map revealing.

The OCL's also promise more flexibility: GDI deploys several units with a sort of dropship, that actually lands to deploy its troops (or vehicles), and the Orca strike makes a weird sort of dip to tilt its weapon launchers towards the enemy. While it isn't actually going down, it may give us some flexibility to do the same kinds of stuff like the A-10 strikes from Generals.

All in all, very fun and promising stuff!

 

Skirmish.

I played about 4 games in Skirmish, and I had a fun time. Skirmish is, by default, a game against AI opponents, and while there always was a lot of complaints about the AI, things are about to change. For starters, the AI will have 5 personalities that are for the moment named Offensive (Rush! Attack! Kill!) Defensive (Defend! Turtle! Destroy with superweapons!) Overlord (Lets build 873 Mammoth Tanks and bury our enemies!) Guerilla (That big explosion was your powerplant, I'm afraid...) and Optimal (Attack his powerplants with 873 Mammoth Tanks while defending my own base as well).

Also, all of the AI is XML driven, which means that editing it should now be considerably easy then the "script, make the necessery sacrifices and pray it works" method of the last 3 SAGE-based games. In fact, the AI designers told me that 4 of the personalities where mods of an original personality, that it was quite easy to edit, and that it was actually important to them that the AI was to be easily edited, so they could change the personalities when they needed it.

Apart from the personalities, I did saw the AI do some impressive things; it deployed it's superweapons in a way that I thought "autch, why there?" and I saw the defensive one destroy the bridges leading up to it's base, while building aircraft to bomb my base to hell and back! So, the AI sure improved from the days of "let's build 8 Heavy Tanks and attack his base".

 

Multiplayer.

The major part of the games I played was with multiplayer, and one of the things I noticed that it was quite fast. Games lasted 15-20 minutes, but against a good opponent definitly longer. The user interface has been improved a lot, however. Like RA2, you now have the ability again to make waypoints, but new to this are also formations and freeselect. With formations, your units automatically seek the best position (eg tanks in front of artillery) and freeselect lets you paint around the units you want to select, which is very usefull to select just the units you want.

What also will be added is VOIP, Voice over IP. Since we were playing against the person sitting next to us, we haven't tested it yet, but it sure feels more rewarding to shout "Die, you b*tch!" in stead of typing "die, you *****".

However, there are a few missed opportunities with multiplayer modes. Where the Xbox 360 version will have modes like "King of the Hill" and "Capture the Flag", while those modes are missing on the PC version. Why is still beyond me, I will not buy a Xbox 360 just to play these versions, but I sure want to play them. The amount of RTS players on the PC is much larger, but still the Xbox players get more modes. A missed opportunity in my eyes.

However, we are compensated, in a way that seems strange at first, but seems to become better and better each time I hear or read about it:

 

RTS as a Sport.

Most of us males here know the joy of watching a good game of sports, be it football, baseball or basketball. It's sitting on your ass, enjoying the game with a snack, and spending your time by just watching others do the hard work.

With FPS games, you already have the opportunity to watch games on the internet, but like the Koreans, we'll now also be able to watch RTS games online!

The best thing of it is, you don't have to own the game, simply download the 800 Mb client (for English and German users, the other languages can download a 1,5 Gb client) and watch the game. If you're not sure if you like the game, download it, watch, and then decide to buy it if you like it.

When you have the client, you can watch scheduled games or impromptu games, which are arranged on the fly. You can then watch the game, and if the game has a commentator, watch the commentator's comments, which includes teleprompter arrows and other things drawn on the screen. (Helpful as tutorial videos for your mods, as the replays save them as well!). Custom maps are also supported, as they will be uploaded to the central server, and can be downloaded from them.

Mods are also supposed to be supported, but that's something we can only see after we played the game. The chance is very big, however, that all players also need the mod installed beforehand, or else there will be those dreaded mismatches again...

 

XML, heaven or hell?

Something of which we heard more then that we saw, XML's will be the most important change for us modders. At first, I was really skeptical about this. Sure, you can call it XML or INI, but in the end, it will all be the same.

Well, not quite...

Almost everything, with the exception of the interface files (which are still in that weird flash format) is now XML. Configuration files, models, maps, AI data, it's now XML. The biggest change for all users, is that CnC3 loads incredibly fast, we had map loading times of 1-2 seconds, and I'm sure thats not only because we had good PC's to test it on.

Furthermore, the XMLification of the models meant that polygons were processed so rapidly, there was additional computing space for particles... To the point where we all asked for lesser particles, because we couldn't even see our battles anymore...

However, having models as XML files will have one very significant extra: texteditable models! While there must be no mistake, you will still require Max to make a good model, it does mean that you can easily change small things. Want to name your bone CannonA in stead of ACannon? Just change it. Want to disable the housecolors? Just change the part that deals with housecolors, give it another name. The need for small edits, which took at least 5-10 minutes with gmax, where you had to load the model, edit it, check if everything is ok, check the apha's, etc, will now be reduced to seconds. Just rename it, done. It will also mean that big total conversions can standardize some units even more. We want to make an edit to both the Panzer III and the StuG-III? Just edit one model, find the relevant code, and exchange it in the other.

While we didn't see this happen in action, I do have great faith in having XML's in models now, at least rigging won't be an irritating job anymore!

As for the INI's, the XML's mean that you can now import specific parts from one file to the other. You want to make a Red Alert mod, where every unit says "affirmative"? Just make a tiny file, and import it in all your Soviet units. This can also be used for more complex code structures, but how far this will affect modding can only be determined after we saw the code ourselves.

 

SDK.

With the models being changed from w3d to w3x, it means that yes, we'll have faster editing, but we also need a new exporter. They are working on this, as well as some various other editors (which I hope will include that flash editor as well!) but, sadly, it's not possible to have the SDK ready with launch. Worldbuilder will again be included (but will sadly, still be in beta phase.) but the ETA of the C&C3 SDK is at the moment unconfirmed.

 

Conclusion.

We haven't actually edited the game. We saw some XML flash by in one model, but for the rest, everything you heard is either playing experience or stuff mentioned by Greg Black, Amir, Jason Bender or Predator. So... technically, I cannot give a real judgement on editing C&C3. However, the minute I was back, Biohazard asked me to compare C&C3 with Supreme Commander, which at the time, was under consideration to be modded by Derelict Studios, and which demo I played as well.

I think my reaction was in the lines of "Supreme Commander? Forget SupCom for editing. Lets call it SuckCom. Forget to mod it. C&C3 all the way."

For all future modders, wanting to mod a RTS game; mod C&C3. The developers started caring about us modders; we'll get a SDK, we'll start editing forums here, and with the models being XML-based, art will be even less a problem then before.

And, it's damn fun to stamp around London, eliminating those pesky humans...

 

Podcast.

Also, at the summit, we got the opportunity to record a podcast with Amer Ajami and Jason Bender, you can download it here. Excuse me for my accent, and after listening, don't forget, you now know what it takes!

 

Other Community supports.

• CNC Vision Impressions from Jsuh
• Planet C&C Impressions by HeXetic
• Gamereplays.org Declassifies C&C
• CnC-Files and JohnWE
• CNCNZ Impressions - Download the Podcast from Hypnotist!
• StrategyInformer.com Impressions by Jason
• CNCDEN Impressions - longest running fan-site!
• CNC3.net Impressions from Hostile
• Banshee Impressions from Project Perfect Mod.com
• XWIS Impressions from DonCarlo
• ISOTX Impressions by Vince
• Cabal of CNCWorld Impressions
• Rengade Forums Crimsom Impressions
• Tcutch of French site CNCSaga.com Impresisons
• French site TimeofWar.com Impressions
• German C&C Community Team site Impressions
• Aschante of German F7C-network.com Impressions
• United Forum site Impressions from Germany

[TopazFreno 0]

Sweet, glad to know that EA is putting their best work into this. :)

[JohnWE 0]

Thanks for the cookies, they were quite good!

[Smurf Bizkit 0]

I need to point out that I strongly disagree with Phoib regarding SupCom. We truely don't know enough about C&C3 or SupCom modding yet to be able to determine the true modding scope available for each. All we have so far is the word of the developers on how good modding is, and typically...they really have no clue what modders want or need.

 

C&C3 modding is up in the air until we're actually modding it. Remember BFME1? It looked to be of the same modding scope as Generals, yet things like the assets.dat came out of left field and killed BFME modding.

 

SupCom on the other hand, has Chris Taylor continuously promising a high level of modding depth.

 

---------------------

 

With that said, I'm glad you had a nice trip Phoib...you did us modders proud. ;)

[BlckWyerve 0]

But as you obviously know, promising and delivering are too different things. We should consider it unmoddable until proven otherwise, IMO.

[Smurf Bizkit 0]

Yes, but who has a better track record? EA or Chris Taylor? ;)

[BlckWyerve 0]

As far as modding is concerned? EA, actually. TA was never moddable, IIRC.

[Smurf Bizkit 0]

I hope you are being sarcastic...and don't actually think that. TA is one of the very few RTS games to ever have a great deal of intentional mod support. (Generals for example, was unintentionally supported via Renegade and the efforts of Olaf and other community members)

[Count von Phoib 0]

Thanks for the cookies, they were quite good!

Do mention it in a video someday :D

[Count von Phoib 0]

I need to point out that I strongly disagree with Phoib regarding SupCom. We truely don't know enough about C&C3 or SupCom modding yet to be able to determine the true modding scope available for each. All we have so far is the word of the developers on how good modding is, and typically...they really have no clue what modders want or need.

 

C&C3 modding is up in the air until we're actually modding it. Remember BFME1? It looked to be of the same modding scope as Generals, yet things like the assets.dat came out of left field and killed BFME modding.

 

SupCom on the other hand, has Chris Taylor continuously promising a high level of modding depth.

 

---------------------

 

With that said, I'm glad you had a nice trip Phoib...you did us modders proud. ;)

When I played the game, and was thinking how to edit it in something cool, I came up with a very empty mind. I don't care if Chris Taylor promises a level of modding support close to HL2, as long as the game itself provides little extra in abilities, special powers or superweapons, SupCom will just be a big mapped pretty looking Red Alert to edit.

[Smurf Bizkit 0]

You forget that if support is close to that of FPS, we'd be able to add in our own buttons for unit abilities and such. :P

[Count von Phoib 0]

You forget we also need to make those damned abilities first -_-

[mastermind 0]

One thing I haven't seen anything about is what container format they're going to use (.BIG still, or something new?). That makes a big difference, as if we can't even extract files to look at from the start, it will be a bit of a challenge to get modding going (hopefully we can start looking with the demo though).

[EvilViking 0]

Awesome accent, Phoib! Great work too, it's nice to hear things from a modding perspective.

[PsiSoldier28 0]

I am slightly curious as to how Phoib is getting this info :/.

[Count von Phoib 0]

I talked to the devs ;) And played the game ;)

 

And I hate my accent, to be honest... (Smurf hates it more though :lol: )

[IconOfEvi 0]

did a podcast! And no a whiff of it before!

 

I wish ya'd have asked about Linux but yeah no one cares bout Linux but me.

 

EDIT : They should know I'm going for software engineering...drop Predapoc a line ya know ;)

[mastermind 0]

did a podcast! And no a whiff of it before!

 

I wish ya'd have asked about Linux but yeah no one cares bout Linux but me.

 

EDIT : They should know I'm going for software engineering...drop Predapoc a line ya know ;)

Nobody cares about Linux. It's not a market worth supporting, since it's so small.

[PsiSoldier28 0]

I talked to the devs ;) And played the game ;)

 

And I hate my accent, to be honest... (Smurf hates it more though :lol: )

How did you get on the inside? Did EA notice DS' '1337' power? :D

 

(PS. Ta for helping with the IP thing Phoib.)

[Count von Phoib 0]

IP thing? :huh:

 

There was a community summit in December, and EA invited me to attend it.

[PsiSoldier28 0]

Ohh, cool. Lucky you :P.

 

(I asked Flyby for help, he asked you, you solved it.)

[maskawaih 0]

did a podcast! And no a whiff of it before!

 

I wish ya'd have asked about Linux but yeah no one cares bout Linux but me.

 

EDIT : They should know I'm going for software engineering...drop Predapoc a line ya know ;)

Nobody cares about Linux. It's not a market worth supporting, since it's so small.

Correct. :lol:

[EvilViking 0]

One thing that worries me is how the devs seemed to dodge a few of your question Phoib... where, instead of answering your question, they would use it to go into a mini-speech about a somewhat-related game feature.

 

And of course, they managed to stick "Fast, fluid, and fun!" in there. :lol:

[Count von Phoib 0]

They were producers, not technical people... So they are not such INI/XML 1337's as us :P

[Feuersturm 0]

Being a slight AI fan (prefrenece towards multiplayer anyday though), I must say playing against some of those AI will give me a blast. No more 4 levels of AI to choose from!.

 

 

Go EA! (Expessialy for keeping ads out)