JSO wrote:

Thank's to fans and modding community you can download the online installers of RA and TD with the latest unofficial community patches and you can adjust the resolution to whatever you desire. The same goes for the Dune 2000 unofficial patch.

If you mean CnCNet, then I must say that these just make the engines compatible with modern systems, albeit do nothing to improve the multiplayer aspect of the games at all. Example: In Red Alert Online by CnCNet, you will only see heavy tank spam, as nothing else is viable. There are no balance changes made upon the old games, which were not really compatible and useful for competitive multiplayer.

Whereas OpenRA - a freely available reinterpretation and reconstruction of the original engines under an openly developed fashion has successfully polished the multiplayer to be compatible with the standards of modern RTS multiplayer. If you are interested in playing the original titles like Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert online in multiplayer with features more akin to modern RTS, then I would recommend you give OpenRA a go.

For ppl more interested in the SinglePlayer aspect of these games, see the first page of the topic for a rant of mine how to make the utmost community patched versions work even under Win98SE.

leileilol wrote:

I'll believe it when I see it, post-release.....

I heard that. I'll wait and see as well, but I won't hold my breath. I could see it being a scenario where they're requiring you to have an internet connection in order to play the game in single player

This and it's probably going to be half-assed in the veins of the recent Blizzard remakes. Some things will be rejuvenated to match todays expectation of minimal graphics fidelity, whereas other things will be left way too outdated resulting in weird texture quality/palette clashes like in WC3 remastered or SC remastered.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

If you mean CnCNet, then I must say that these just make the engines compatible with modern systems, albeit do nothing to improve the multiplayer aspect of the games at all. Example: In Red Alert Online by CnCNet, you will only see heavy tank spam, as nothing else is viable. There are no balance changes made upon the old games, which were not really compatible and useful for competitive multiplayer.

Whereas OpenRA - a freely available reinterpretation and reconstruction of the original engines under an openly developed fashion has successfully polished the multiplayer to be compatible with the standards of modern RTS multiplayer. If you are interested in playing the original titles like Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert online in multiplayer with features more akin to modern RTS, then I would recommend you give OpenRA a go.

For ppl more interested in the SinglePlayer aspect of these games, see the first page of the topic for a rant of mine how to make the utmost community patched versions work even under Win98SE.

OpenRa it's difficult for single player mode than the originals. Yes for Multiplayer it's better, but I prefer single player mode and the originals...

I never finished all of the Aftermath and Counterstrike missions and the Antz secret missions. I want to play them from the beginning and 1024x768 makes me to want it badly!

For TD I finished Cover Operations, Dino Missions and also the added PSX and N64 missions. We are very grateful that those missions are ported to PC version.

I love to play them on 1024x768 resolution. No need for bigger...

JSO wrote:

I love to play them on 1024x768 resolution. No need for bigger...

Actually yes, very true. I find that increasing the resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768 is already enough. Far bigger parts of the map are visible, and starting with even higher resolutions, things get arguably too small already 😁

I've never liked how 1024x768 or even 800x600 looks on C&C and RA, the camera is so far away and everything is so small that it detaches you from the game, or so I at least feel. I don't mind it being an option of course.

But for Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 1024x768 is the optimal resolution if you ask me, always found it a bit weird they don't offer that resolution by default without having to mess with a .ini file, RA2 especially. 800x600 is just uncomfortably close.

I play Command & Conquer 95 and Red Alert at 800x400 as mentioned. It's the minimum almost-widescreen resolution (widths more than 2x height seem to give mouse scroll issues). Command & Conquer was originally designed for 320x200 so you really should stick to as low as possible resolution. Red Alert was designed for 640x400 so it's not quite so bad to go a bit higher for that one, but it will make aspect ratio correction much more problematic.

For Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 I seem to recall playing them both at release at 1024x768, so going for 1280x720 seems right to me. Especially since it's perfect for integer scaling to modern 1440p and 4K displays. Really wish those two would get a good remaster though as these have the worst compatibility problem IMO: the interlaced FMVs. I considered converting the Red Alert 2 FMVs to deinterlaced ones, which seemed possible, but dealing with Tiberian Sun's movie format seemed painful.

Interesting video on how they went about remastering the FMVs.

https://youtu.be/ikJLYYTrIxs

I'm a big fan of the original C&C, much more than Red Alert. If I could have the original game altered, I'd be happy with adding fog-of-war so that one couldn't endlessly spy on the other players after discovering regions of the map without unit presence there and TCP/IP LAN play (IPX is a little hard these days, especially if you're going to mix new and old systems). Maybe also support for larger maps and a map editor like the one in Red Alert. Oh, and player-alliances.

The game really had surprisingly good unit power balance, even for multiplayer - and friendly fire, splash damage etc. made the game a little more "real" than for example StarCraft where a bullet fired is a bullet that hit. Tiberium as a resource was also fun as it made the maps more organic. It was like a real-world resource, scattered on the map - the added bonus of it actually being toxic to your troops. A lot of things about this game make it bad for competing on merit alone, but to me that just made it more interesting.

I'm still hesitant, remasters are usually just a cheap way to get a bit of extra cash the mess that was C&C First Decade is perfect example, and lets face it any announcement is really just marketing but so far I'm liking what I see.
In this video they show a bit more of the original EVA voice actor re-recording her lines, and even still they are giving the option to use the originals
https://youtu.be/7jUIRhoFQ0M

chinny22 wrote on 2020-03-10, 13:09:

I'm still hesitant, remasters are usually just a cheap way to get a bit of extra cash the mess that was C&C First Decade is perfect example, and lets face it any announcement is really just marketing but so far I'm liking what I see.
In this video they show a bit more of the original EVA voice actor re-recording her lines, and even still they are giving the option to use the originals
https://youtu.be/7jUIRhoFQ0M

Why do you feel so strongly about First Decade? It was a decent way to get the games to run on XP at the time IIRC.. I still have a copy that I'm fond of.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-03-10, 13:43:

Why do you feel so strongly about First Decade? It was a decent way to get the games to run on XP at the time IIRC.. I still have a copy that I'm fond of.

I can't remember all my annoyances, I do remember the install paths were a mess as were the start menu entries, I think it also took up a lot of space needlessly.
Basically though you could tell it was just slapped together with minimal effort.
The Unofficial Patch on the other hand not only tidies this all up but adds a fair bit as well, so much so it's now my favorite way of playing the game. I just feel the community ended up doing what EA should have done in the first place.

i'm going to get this purely for the soundtrack. it's great to have frank klepacki back doing the whole thing again.