MrFlibble

Heh, yeah, that's the tricky thing about SCORES.MIX When I want to rename an old version of the file, I usually resort to replacing the last letter of the extension with an underscore, e.g. filename.ext -> filename.ex_ or even filename.ext -> filenam_.ex_ in some cases.

Just to make it clear: do you mean by "remixes" the remixed versions of certain tracks (Act on Instinct, No Mercy, Deception, Looks Like Trouble, Just Do It!) that were included in the original ("vanilla") C&C, or the expansion music tracks added by Covert Ops (Depth Charge, Drill, Iron Fist etc.)? I'm asking because the remixes were not included in the C&C95 SCORES.MIX, and thus replacing this file should have removed them.

Yeah. A frontend is not necessary to mount ISOs or launch games from desktop shortcuts. You can just as well make a separate config file for every game (I bet this is what any frontend does anyway), set it up to whatever configuration you want, write all the mount ISO stuff and the like in the [autoexec] section of the config, and launch any game with a particular config file using a desktop shortcut with a -conf parameter. Simple as that.

On the whole, looks pretty impressive

That's exactly what Frank Herbert warned us about (among other things, that is) in his Dune books.

Do you really need a frontend programme for that? Just copy dosbox.conf, rename it anything you want, edit anything you need there, and use the -conf parameter to load it for the respective game.

Sorry I did not reply immediately, I wanted to check something before replying, because for some reason it seemed to me that the demo title screen lacked the Westwood logo in the top left corner, but it turned out not to be the case. So yeah, there are no differences other then those I listed above. Actually, it depends. C&C and RA demo missions are made laughably easy, but others aren't. The missions in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, for example, are almost completely identical to their full version counterparts, and the Warcraft II demo campaigns are, although with different maps and briefings, comparable to the first acts of each full version campaign. The same applies to the Age of Empires (1 & 2), Starcraft and Warcraft III, where the difficulty curve in the demo campaigns is not much different from that in the respective full games. A good idea implemented in some demos is to have one tutorial level, and at least one "regular" level with moderate difficulty. Another bonus of the "separate demo content" approach is that in many cases, it's not that easy to fit parts of the full game into a shorter demo and make it look neat. For example, if we take the C&C demo, the gap between the first and the second mission (them being #1 and #10 in the full campaign) is very noticeable, not to mention that if you got the briefing videos, the beginning of the second mission briefing is full of non sequiturs concerning the cut U.N. funding plot line which is itself left entirely off-screen in the demo. Likewise, the third GDI mission in the same demo contains a spoiler for the full game, where the point is that you do not know that the Airfield is the actual objective (potentially leading you to the optional mission 7), while the demo briefing openly states that you need to destroy the Airfield. If you make a separate storyline for the demo campaign, on the other hand, this problem is easily avoided (although to be fair, using an uniterrupted sequence of levels from the full game, e.g. the first 3-5 levels, is also a neat solution to the problem). Also, it is my understanding that at least in some cases, the "extra content" put in the demos is actually "recycled" content that was cut from the full version.

I completely agree with Nyer, pure DOS (or its emulation) is fun :laugh: With frontends, you're not going to get the retro "feel" Also, mind that true, hardcore retro gamers don't use DOSBox - they have vintage machines finely tuned to run old games natively (sounds like a bit of obsession, eh? but it's cool ) (And no, I'm not among those hardcore guys mentioned above; I'm an avid DOSBox user and fan )

Well, many pre-release demos inevitably contain something that will not be found in the full game. As for different levels, like in the Age of Empires or Warcraft II demos, the features of the respective games are all there, so why should this be cheating? You get the impression of the game, with the added bonus that you will not have to play through the very same three or four first missions when you buy the full version.

Well, in any case, I did not mean to say that the DOS version is necessarily better than the Win95 one - just that both have some pros, and that there are notable differences between the two. After all, it was the enormous success of the original DOS C&C that had prompted the release of the updated Win95 edition of the game two years later. Not quite. It doesn't have internet play. And the 3.03 patch doesn't update DOS C&C, probably because the main updated feature was internet play. But that does mean that with 3.03, the DOS version is also missing all the other improvements it did. Hm, I assume you're right, but that is not relevant to those who don't play online. RA1 was developed in the era when the singleplayer element of the game was still central to a game, while the multiplayer aspect was optional at best. Internet was only becoming widespread back in mid-nineties, so just like with Win95, many people did not have it in the first place. Eh... none of the C&C or RA patches had stuff like that though. Oh, that was just a preamble for the part about the E.V.A. as presented in the installer and the game itself in the DOS version. That's debatable... monitors have gotten quite a lot bigger since 1995 too. What I wonder is why, in the case of RA1, the developers did not make a DOS version with higher resolution, like it was done with Warcraft 2, The Settlers 2 and many other titles. It's almost like they started the development using the original DOS settings left over from C&C (as you can see from the early screenshots that Siberian_GRemlin posted), then switched to Win95 and did not bother updating the DOS version to higher resolution. Interesting, I've always interpreted the game intro as the two sides trying to "break through" the TV programmes you're watching, then you get the static and the choice to pick up the side you like. However, I think that it is said in the game manual that the E.V.A. used by Nod commanders is a hacked, illegally pirated copy. BTW, the Nod E.V.A. in the video briefings for mission 4 uses red font, and I think they could have used red colours for the options menu for Nod to make it more consistent (although this would probably turn out to be an eyesore ). Meh. They were pretty much just screenshots from the game anyway. I like the fact they went to actual pictures of the units; it's like the big images in Dune II. And the fact they don't have remap is just so they could increase the number of colours used in these icons. The unit icons are not screenshots, and some of the building icons aren't either. I'm not saying that large icons made from concept renders are not as good as the DOS icons, but the sidebar design in the Win95 version is altogether different, the DOS variant is more technical/symbolic, which is, in my opinion, more consistent with the original idea that the whole programme is actual military software. Besides, the C&C DOS sidebar has a certain resemblance to the Dune II sidebar, while the Win95 version looks completely unrelated. BTW, I suppose that the C&C concept renders were, in fact, analogous to the Dune II large pics, only the "Database" option was not implemented in C&C after all (which is a pity).

Dunno why I did not bother registering at the CNCNZ Forums before, it seems like loads of fun

Not necessarily. If you follow the link in my post above, there are a few demos listed which are not just slightly modified levels from the respective full versions.

Never did I state the opposite, yet demoting the DOS version of RA to some kind of secondary "support" is a bit far fetched, seeing as how not everyone in 1996 switched to Win95 yet. The DOS version has the same functionality as the Win95 one up to v2.00, plus there's no ugly "hi-res" infantry by default, and the videos aren't interlaced. As for C&C95, technically it's not an "update" but a re-release, or a different edition of the game. And even ignoring that, it is not uncommon for the updates to lack certain features that were found in previous releases, and not all such changes seem justified (e.g. building animation frames and Mentat database entries that were cut in Dune 2 v1.07 for no apparent reason). The DOS versions have pros anyway. First off, the original C&C was meant to be played in 320x200 resolution, and already in 640x480 of C&C95 everything is a bit small, no? Secondly, there's this little thing that the original game lore presented C&C as military software, the E.V.A., which the player uses to remotely command actual military units on the battlefield. To this end, the installer/setup programme and the game interface were designed in the same style, including the same font used for the installation and setup menu in-game menus mission briefings score screen map selection screen some of the briefings that are actually VQA movies. In the C&C95 edition, this uniformity was largely ruined because the installation and setup programmes were replaced with boring standard Windows menus the in-game interface got a "facelift", making it look different from the original, more minimalistic design the font used in the options menu no longer looks the same as the one used in the score screen and the map selection screen the video briefings that show E.V.A. interface obviously stand out because they are interlaced in hi-res, and the font there is still the old DOS version font, so they no longer feel like a part of the same system as the rest of the game. This is, of course, not some major issue, and the notion of E.V.A. as conceived in C&C was mostly dropped in RA1 (to come back in TS though), but still an aesthetic aspect of the game was lost. Additionally, the animation for the sidebar logo morphing into the radar map screen plays too fast in the C&C95 version to be visible (that is, unless you fixed that in one of the recent releases I am not yet aware of). Oh, and DOS C&C has remapable sidebar icons.

Well, I finally got around to checking the RA1 demo myself. Nothing too interesting there really. The demo is only for Win95, and curiously enough, the game version says v1.19D on the main menu screen, and v1.15D in the system registry (while the retail release was only v1.04). No setup program is included, and the game runs in 640x400 by default, but this can be changed to 640x480 by manually editing the REDALERT.INI file. There are three missions, one for the Soviets and two for the Allies, which are all slightly modified missions from the full game, mostly toned down to be easier for the players. The Soviet mission is based on the second mission of the campaign (protect the forward command post and destroy all Allies), with the difference that you do not start with any airfields, but can build them, as well as the radar dome. The Soviet command centre is surrounded by a chain link fence. Also, you get a single heavy tank as reinforcements. The first Allied mission is also based on the second mission of the respective campaign (clear the way for the supply convoy). You have more troops at the start, some of the periodic reinforcements have light tanks instead of rangers, and you can build light tanks from the War Factory. In addition, most of the tiny Soviet base gets easily blown up because of the many oil barrels surrounding the structures (I think there are far less of them in the full version). The enemy only has a few riflemen, grenadiers and dogs. The second Allied mission is actually the fifth one, where you have to use a spy to rescue Tanya from the Soviet complex, and then take over a small Soviet compound and destroy the rest of the Soviet presence. As far as I can tell, no significant differences here either. There are no videos except for the Red Alert logo/mammoth gets blown up by a chopper sequence at the start of the game. In spite of this, the VQP files (which are used to adjust low-res cutscenes to high resolution in the Win95 version) are included for all the videos that were supposed to be used in the demo missions. Guess the videos themselves were cut to reduce the size of the demo package. Two musical tracks are included, Hell March and Crush. Most resource files, like CONQUER.MIX, SPEECH.MIX, ALLIES.MIX, RUSSIAN.MIX, SNOW.MIX and TEMPERATE.MIX are identical to those in the full version. The only file inside LOCAL.MIX that is slightly different from the full version is PALETTE.CPS. HIRES.MIX has got everything except the stills from the cutscenes that appear in the background during the game credits (the credits themselves are disabled in the demo). It also has an advertising splash screen that appears when you quit the demo. NCHIREX.MIX has the hi-res logo sequence I mentioned above, and the VQPs for the missing cutscenes. SOUNDS.MIX is somewhat smaller than the one in the full version, because the male and female civilian voices are replaced with empty files. Also, the water explosion sound is different. GENERAL.MIX, as you can guess, only has the demo missions, MISSION.INI (the briefing text file) and TUTORIAL.INI (the in-game strings file). All-in-all, nothing that could qualify as real extra content IMO.

Oh, I'm sorry, I must have projected a negative attitude towards DOS games some people have into your post while it wasn't really there. Sorry for the misunderstanding! (I'm a quite a DOS fan, you know ). Ehh... and you say this even though the DOS version of C&C is the original thing..?

I don't play online, so that is kind of non-issue to me. Besides, I thought the problem was to play in windowed mode and to make in-game videos? None of that is directly related to playing on C&CNet against someone with C&C95 v1.06. The OP did not specify that he wanted to run C&C95 in windowed mode, so the solution with DOSBox is perfectly justified IMO. Oh BTW, Revolutionary already had mentioned the DOSBox variant above, although in a somewhat negative light, implying that the DOS versions of either C&C or RA1 are somehow "inferior" to their Windows counterparts, which is debatable at best.

Thanks! Do I have to get a new account there?

Hey guys, I've been busy lately and did not check things frequently, now doing a bit of catching up So I wonder what happened to Command & Patch and all the wonderful projects that were developed there (except for Nyer's C&C 1.06 patch, which is well underway, of course)? The Game Sector boards are down for a few months already, and I noticed that the link to Command & Patch was removed from this site. So what happened?

You can easily run both C&C and RA1 in windowed mode, given that you use the DOS versions and DOSBox And you can as easily record in-game movies if you use the DOS versions and DOSBox. See how easy everything is with DOSBox!

An excellent piece of research none the less

Nice! But I must confess that the "C&C meets Akira" article extra is what interested me most on your site (I remember when your site was down, there was some C&C-related conversation on another forum, and I wanted to give a link to the Akira article, and the only thing I found back then was an archived version at archive.org, with many pics missing).

Do you know if RTT preceded RTS as a genre, or vice versa? Also, are there any other games that would be close in mechanics to Herzog Zwei (except, presumably, the first Herzog instalment). Battlezone came to my mind, but I never played the game and I don't know if units there can be directly controlled by the player like in the more classic RTS games or not.

TBH, I know very little of many game genres that were not of immediate interest to me; besides, I've always been under the impression that Herzog Zwei belongs to the era when the standards of many mainstream genres were not yet established (with some interesting, unique games that are hard to classify cropping up every now and then). Real-time tactics is defined in Wikipedia as typically lacking the unit production aspect (which is removed as a step towards greater realism I suppose), which is present in Herzog Zwei. In any case, my basic argument is not that Herzog Zwei is too much different from typical RTSs to be classified as such, but rather that it belongs to a different era to which modern-time classifications do not apply.

Well, I may hold a "nominalist" view on the problem, but in my opinion, the term "real-time strategy" refers to Dune II (since the term was coined specifically for this game) or any succeeding game that follows the standards set by it. Being just a game that involves strategy and is set in real time is not enough: playing a typical FPS also includes strategic elements (you have to conserve ammo, trick your enemies, solve puzzles, choose your path through the levels, find out which weapons are more effective in which situations and against what enemies etc. etc.) and is set in real time, but no one would call a FPS a "real-time strategy", even metaphorically. Even disregarding the absence of some of the crucial RTS elements in Herzog Zwei (base construction, resource gathering, direct unit control among other things), some of which may be absent from more modern RTS incarnations as well, the very fact that the term "real-time strategy" appeared 3 years after its release makes the use of the term in reference to Herzog Zwei problematic IMO. To draw an analogy, one certainly can call an abacus or a counting frame a "calculator", but only in a metaphorical sense. Similarly, Herzog Zwei can be called a "real-time strategy" in a figurative sense, noting its similarities with the latter (and possibly its being a source of inspiration for Dune II), but from the technical standpoint that would be incorrect. BTW, I totally love the music in Herzog Zwei. It makes me feel nostalgic for some reason, even though I've never played it on a real console, and to be honest only learned of it when I got interested in the history of the RTS genre. The music is great anyway

May I remind you that "real-time strategy", as a composite term, possesses of the quality of idiomaticity, and its meaning is thus irreducible to the meanings of its components. Idiomaticity, by the way, is a pretty common linguistic phenomenon, pertaining not only to the realm of technical terms, but to ordinary speech as well, and can be observed on different levels of language.