I’m not well versed in C&C, but it’s always good to see more games open sourced.
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?
No matter what you think of EA, this is fantastic news.
Perhaps why this feels like them trying to save face.
This feels more like some o.g. Command and conquer devs who have worked at EA for a long time that are passionate about the franchise. There was no big PR release, no product tie in or announcement, no media campaign.
Recovering and restoring the source code for these titles was made possible through the combined efforts of EA technical director Brian Barnes, Respawn producer Jim Vessella, and Luke Feenan, a long-standing member of the C&C community who was involved in the development of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection.
https://www.polygon.com/news/531365/command-and-conquer-open-source-code-ea
IIRC, a few years ago EA hired some of the original devs, put them in charge of the franchise, and then went very hands-off, but with very little budget. So far they’ve done this, and a very reasonably priced 4K remaster of TD and RA1.
Totally makes sense, considering the remaster was perfect. It was just “multiplayer works, we redid the sprites and audio and tweaked the engine to get rid of some of the bugs. Also hit space for original graphics” or whatever the button was. It was everything an OG C&C remaster needed IMO. I would love to see the same with some of these titles, but now that they’re open source it gives the opportunity for better fan made forks, so I’m all for it.
Edit: and forgot to mention the best part, EA didn’t force their launcher with the remaster or steam editions. They are purely steam games, which is a huge win
At least some of the remaster source code is in the repo, too. If the TS or RA2 source code is found, people will be immediately able to do that graphics switch for them, too.
IIRC, when the remaster was in the works, they were asking for files from the community as some of the cut scene videos from OG were lost. I think there are a few low def ones in there still because no one had them. There’s also an issue with the Nod ending theme song. I only have it because I had the game on Saturn and you could play them like regular CDs once you got past the information tracks. So I burned it in .flac.
Ah well I’m glad to see the devs sticking to their passions. I’m sure they’re proud of this move.
With that said, I’m still surprised EA didn’t try to capitalize on it somehow.
Open sourcing old games is awesome for video game preservation.
Yeah, this should be standard practice
To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game
Was expecting a catch. Still good for modding I guess
Anyone know if this is a technologically-enforced “must” or just a “pretty please”?
The entire series is on sale on Steam right now for $6 if that helps.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/
That’s only the HD remaster of TD and RA1.
Sorry, that was the wrong link.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/
I’m assuming this is more about art assets. Art is not code and you shouldn’t expect them for free. It’s not a catch.
Open source does not mean that the intellectual property is free. There’s a lot of good that comes from this, and it’s not like those games are expensive.
Though do also note that of these four, TD and RA1 were already made freeware years ago.
I realize. Intellectual property is an icky concept IMO but I know not everyone agrees
Intellectual property is what allows them to make these games GPL.
Broken clock
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.
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.
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?
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.
This is a momentous event. I only wish it had Red Alert 2 in it.
If it doesn’t then I’m not interested.
Mmmmm pre-standard C++
I’m ready for a zero hour remake!
Im now just happy that it’s far more likely for a clean 60fps mod that’s not locked behind someone’s patreon
It’s a kick ass game but some of the tropes didn’t age well.
Ak47s for everyone!
Can I at least have some shoes?
Fuck EA but cool move - if they keep being not shit for long enough I might consider their products again.
Doubt they can keep it up.
Is Tiberian Sun included!!!??
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
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!?
I hope everyone’s SSDs have enough SPACE
SPAAAACE
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.
