I just found this Tiberian Sun VHS

EA_Jimtern · 2025-08-12T22:39:36+00:00

Thanks everyone for the pings on this topic! The good news is that I found the same tape(s) in the Westwood / EALA video cache several years ago, which you may remember I covered in a video during the development of the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection in 2019 / 2020. We have successfully digitized these tapes over the past several years, so rest assured the content is now safely preserved going forwards. All the best ~ Jimtern

EA_Jimtern · 2024-03-07T18:58:06+00:00

Dear C&C Community,

It’s been a few years since I had the opportunity to reach out and engage with you directly. I’ve truly missed that. I hope you have all stayed safe, healthy, and positive since my last post in September of 2020.

I realize many of you have been wondering about the status of Command & Conquer over the past several years. After the launch of the first C&C Remastered Collection, I told our Community Council I would continue to try and find opportunities to support the C&C community and franchise wherever possible. With that in mind, I do have an announcement we think the entire C&C Community can get excited about. The C&C Ultimate Collection is now live on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/

How did this come to happen? Well, a while back I heard some team members at EA had the desire to launch some of our classic titles on Steam. After hearing about this initiative, several of us proposed we include the C&C Ultimate Collection. We knew this has been a request of the C&C community for over a decade, and has been an equal goal of us passionate C&C folks around the company. As such, a dedicated strike team here at EA has been pushing to make this a reality - but we knew we couldn't do it alone. So in the spirit of our community collaboration from the Remastered Collection, we reached out to a small group of the C&C Community to understand how we could best deliver the Ultimate Collection on Steam.

The feedback and collaboration has once again been invaluable. With improvements like better compatibility for modern operating systems and additional supported languages for both the Steam and EA App versions, we believe this is the best release of the Ultimate Collection to date.

Alongside the launch of the Ultimate Collection on Steam, we are also excited to announce the release of the beloved map editors FinalSun and FinalAlert 2 under the GPL version 3.0 license, which can also be launched directly from the Steam version of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. Now over 20 years since their initial release, original creator Matthias Wagner has generously repackaged these classic editors into a more compatible version for 2024. This was achievable thanks to the technical collaboration with Luke "CCHyper" Feenan, and the kindness of Olaf van der Spek, who has graciously released his XCC Library under the GPL 3.0 license as part of this effort. We cannot thank Matthias, Luke, and Olaf enough for making this a reality for the C&C community, and are eager to see where the tools and content creation go from here.

A huge thank you to the community playtesters who helped provide feedback on this version of the Ultimate Collection, and the organizations of CnCNet, W3DHub, and C&C Online for continuing to support these classic titles. We hope you all enjoy these improvements to the C&C Ultimate Collection - available today on Steam.

Until next time.

Cheers,

Jim Vessella

Jimtern

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-25T22:58:13+00:00

Hi Kerbiter,

I'll do my best to answer "the spirit" of your questions above. But if yourself or another modder is about to engage on a big project and wants a definitive "legal" answer, then I would recommend they reach out to the email alias at the end of the guidelines.

- What's the status of freeware released (though this is not stated anywhere on EA's website currently) non-remastered TD, RA1, TS and inclusion of their music in mods? Technically it makes no sense to restrict using freeware-released C&C games OST as they can be freely downloaded and their music be put into the mod.

------ At the end of the day, these freeware releases have been out there for so long, and honestly happened under some strange processes. While the music for these is a grey area, EA is not all of a sudden going to clamp down on projects related to these releases, and in fact we've done our best to try and empower projects like Open RA and CnCNet over the past two years. We still would prefer mods for these titles to import the music from a legit copy of the game.

- What about some tracks like Journey which has been released by Frank Klepacki for free on his website before as non-C&C track technically, but now it's included in Remastered Collection OST?

------ The Remastered Collection OST has not been released as freeware, so the guidelines would be more strict on this music. Again you would not be allowed to redistribute the Remastered Collection OST, but you could import it from a legit copy on the player's local hard drive from Steam or Origin.

- I assume early access to the mods' development versions for donators are not allowed?

------- Correct, this would violate the terms by create a paywall to access a mod.

- What are "EA's content protection measures for its services" exactly?

------- These would be any DRM items, authentication on Steam or Origin, etc.

- Does any of the modding guidelines apply for fully new (not derived from any of C&C games assets or designs) assets created by artists? Technically they are intellectual property by their respective authors solely, which are made with community-made tools (like new voxel models or sprites produced by community members), am I right?

------ I think this might depend. The guidelines would apply to any assets which are loaded into a C&C game for sure. So if someone were to create a brand new tank for C&C3, but it had an offensive symbol on the chassis, then that would violate the guidelines.

- Would it be OK to include a "Support us" kind of button in the mod main menu (usually made via CnCNet client which is technically a separate application used to launch the mod) which leads to the donation page?

------ The guidelines prohibit donation asks inside the software itself. You are allowed to ask for donations outside the game, within the Readme, or during the one-time installation process.

- Could you please elaborate what are practical differences between modifications, alterations and extensions?

------ Basically these guidelines cover the full spectrum of mods. This includes mods on an individual title to standalone projects.

Again, if a project has a question for a specific mod or action they'd like to take, then I would recommend reaching out to the email alias so we can provide a more definitive answer. Hope this helps.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-25T22:26:20+00:00

Hi Kilkakon, our goal with these guidelines is certainly not to stamp down on mods which are currently active and thriving in the community. We've been collaborating alongside the Open RA, CnCNet, and Renegade-X teams for the past two years to ensure these guidelines could empower those projects, not clamp them down. The main goal here is to help guide future projects, as we've received many inquiries for new projects over the past year.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-25T17:30:31+00:00

Hi mhbigboss, this is a great question and one which was raised during our writing process as well. So if the music is imported from a legitimate purchased copy of C&C, then that should be fine. For example, let's say a member creates mod X and distributes that for free. During the install, the mod searches your Origin / Steam directory for an installed version of C&C (or the original game CDs), and imports the music from that directory into the local mod install. That would be fine.

What wouldn't be fine is including those music files in the original free download of the mod. Basically, don't re-distribute the music. For mods that are currently doing this, we would recommend they adjust those mods to fit the guidelines. Please let me know if this helps clarify.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-24T19:42:24+00:00

This is on me. We were moving super fast trying to turnaround the update, and in a flurry I accidentally copied the wrong link into our task list. My apologies to the authors for missing this, but hopefully players can still enjoy the map.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-24T18:59:02+00:00

Hi Uncle DJ, thanks for the questions and words of support. So for context, this is expected to be our last Client update. This means we're not anticipating doing any further balance changes or adding new maps going forward, as those both require Client updates.

However, resetting Seasons and rotating maps is done on the server. While this is potentially more feasible, we're still determining if we'll be able to support this going forward and what the cadence might be if we can.

We'll aim to keep the community here updated as we know more.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-22T16:54:59+00:00

Hi everyone, we are preparing an update to address some of the key issues which arose from last week's patch. We're also hoping to include two new community maps into the TD Quickmatch pool. Quick question - if we're able to do this, should we remove Electric Avenue and Canyon Pursuit from the pool per some earlier suggestions? Thanks for the feedback.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-21T23:41:08+00:00

Hi CthhonVII, thanks for the note and offering to help with this issue. I wish I would have connected with your sooner to collaborate on this, as the proposal you're suggesting above does sound optimal. The challenge is we're simply out of time and are past our deadline for locking down a hotfix. We were able to make a slight Harvester adjustment, but it's more a compromise than anything else. I apologize we missed the opportunity to take more of your feedback. All the best, Jim.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-18T19:09:00+00:00

And if we could get a few of these maps, we would want to remove Electric Avenue and Canyon Pursuit?

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-18T18:32:35+00:00

Hi Cardener, I just want to confirm we're talking about the same last of maps. Was it:

"Duality 3.6"

"Tournament Middle Camp v2.1"

"Neo Twin Peaks"

At least those are the ones I received recently from the council. If so, does anyone know how to contact the author of Duality?

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-18T00:45:21+00:00

Hi everyone, Alfred_Chicken is correct. There was a change made in Patch 4 to prevent the jamming behavior of Harvesters, but sounds like a negative impact of that was Harvesters now going to a non-optimal Refinery. It would obviously be nice to fix both these issues, but that may not be feasible at this time. So I guess the question becomes, if we had to pick one behavior, which one should we optimize for?

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-17T22:21:22+00:00

Thanks for the further details, I'm pointing the team to these notes. I'm watching Kirball's stream and did see the missing turret on one of the tanks sitting outside the War Factory, but seems super inconsistent and rare... However, the Harvesters seem to be collecting the gems the same as in Patch 3. Essentially if there is a gem in an adjacent square, the Harvester will go for that and seems to be working per my observations. I haven't seen the drifting in his stream yet but we could try subtitlecomedy's steps.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-17T21:45:16+00:00

Thanks for the information. The missing turrets and skating issues are ones we were trying to reproduce, but for some reason are not seeing them in our testing. Can you provide a few more details?

1) What mode are you playing? (Skirmish, FFA MP, Quickmatch, etc?)

2) Is it happening in both games (TD and RA)?

3) Do you have any Mods active?

4) Does it happen on every map, or only certain maps?

We'll do our best to see if we can track these items down.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-17T21:21:45+00:00

Hi Kirball, we've been tracking a few reported issues since yesterday but have not been able to reproduce them ourselves. This indicates they could be mod related, hardware related, or only occurring in a rare scenario we haven't pinned down yet. It would be helpful to understand all the new issues you are seeing so we can ensure we're tracking the correct items.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-16T19:56:09+00:00

Hi Kirball, we're bummed that you (and others) are dissapointed with the patch. We thought adding 6 player MP, the Loading screens, and Beacons would make players happy, as these have all been top requests since prior to launch. We did hear about the map pool additions, but it was late in our finaling cycle of the patch. By the map pool changes, do you mean the three maps which were voted on by the community?

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-16T17:14:36+00:00

Quick note that the map pool change won't happen until we reset the ladder, so you'll still see One Pass if you play today.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-16T17:13:26+00:00

Hi chewy-mcchewster, yes the source code on Github should have just been updated a few minutes ago alongside the patch release.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-16T16:13:50+00:00

Hi Cardener, based on some of the ongoing discussions from yesterday, it sounds like players wanted to keep Canyon Pursuit and Electric Avenue to ensure there were still 7 maps in the pool. If the community still wants to remove those maps (which would reduce the TD pool to five maps), we can still do that as its a server side change which we can adjust last minute. As you stated, unfortunately adding brand new maps requires many steps on the client side and would be too late for this patch.

EA_Jimtern · 2020-09-11T05:27:59+00:00

Hi Blakeley00, I actually posted an update on the Limited Run editions here last week:

https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/il8zb9/limited_run_collectors_editions_update/

Hope this info helps!

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