C&C: Red Alert beta

[Siberian GRemlin]

[X3M]

3 maps

no difficulty

Interesting. The twilight version has much more than this.

[Iran]

Do you have a video of the skirmish?

[Siberian GRemlin]

11 hours ago, Iran said:

Do you have a video of the skirmish?

Added to the playlist.

[Nyerguds]

18 hours ago, X3M said:

3 maps

Four, actually. Fairly sure the "b" on the last line is another map.

[X3M]

I saw that one, but I assumed it was a map editor test made by Siberian GRemlin self. Simply naming the map b.

Enlighten us?

[Siberian GRemlin]

I've done nothing.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Siberian GRemlin

[X3M]

Wow, ok.

So a 4th map called b...

[Nyerguds]

The full beta has been released. We added a document analysing the contents, and uploaded videos of the gameplay and cutscenes included.

Check it out on reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/dflqti/a_present_to_the_cc_community/

And, yes, the 4th map is indeed just called "b".

[X3M]

You guys sure put some serious effort in this one!!
Great work!

[Tiny_mario]

Amazing that it was uploaded . Great stuff

 

 

https://downloads.cnc-comm.com/?dir=red-alert/beta

[Nyerguds]

On 10/7/2019 at 2:12 PM, X3M said:

Recognising that V2-launcher

It's simply a known render.

You'll find several versions of it in the CnC-Comm renders gallery for RA1.

[Zjorz]

Will anything from the beta be added to the full RA release?

[Nyerguds]

About a month ago, I got something really interesting out of the Red Alert 0.09 beta.

There are a bunch of pictures in there, named CREDIT1 to CREDIT9, in both 640x400 PCX and 320x200 CPS format. However, the CPS versions, while all perfectly valid Westwood CPS format, have completely corrupted image content. The PCX images themselves are slightly darkened, because they were apparently made to be the background of the credits roll, and part of their palette was also sacrificed for the colours to be used on the scrolling text.

Now, one of the images in there has a CPS version which is not corrupted, namely, the submarine one (CREDIT7). But instead of a resize of the pcx version, the CPS shows the cut-out top left corner.

However, when I looked at that image again, after months of leaving them alone, I noticed a peculiar detail.

The cps version was brighter.

This prompted me to immediately check the palettes of the other, corrupted CPS files, and indeed... all of the palettes were not only intact, but also the undarkened originals, and they could be applied to the darkened PCX images to restore them. There is still some degrading due to some colours on the palette being removed for those text colours, but overall, this made a lot of the images look a lot more clear. Especially the one unique image in there which we didn't actually have yet: the ship blueprint.

This blueprint was used in the cut shipyard video we also recovered from the beta.

As you can see from the attached image, the bright palette makes a world of difference, restoring the texture of the blue background, and making the image look overall much nicer

Compare to the original (which Siberian_GRemlin also posted in the first post):

[Siberian GRemlin]

New intelligence data received.

The beta was meant for PC Gamer magazine editorial office. Looks like it leaked from there.

[MrFlibble]

On 4/29/2021 at 4:59 PM, Siberian GRemlin said:

PC Gamer magazine

PC Gamer US, UK or some other edition? (IIRC there was also Italian PC Gamer too, maybe other languages/countries as well).

BTW, long time no see, Commander.

[tomsons26]

Regarding other pre-release things out there, i'd like to hear what you have heard of RA2, i can't really find anything on that possibility besides a single seemingly jokey post on google boards.

There is one other lead, Any games you collect? [Archive] - 3D Realms Forums this guy "helious" apparently was a tester and had a CD.

However, there is something that def was out there, Sole Survivor early on had public builds just downloadable from Westwood's website and FTP, a lot of very early Sole builds flooded the internet near 2000.

[MrFlibble]

On 5/3/2021 at 10:59 PM, tomsons26 said:

Sole Survivor early on had public builds just downloadable from Westwood's website and FTP

This is definitely the first time I hear of this. I just checked Wayback Machine snapshots of www.westwood.com from late 1997 and Sole Survivor isn't even mentioned. No mirrors of ftp.westwood.com have any builds of the game either IIRC. Maybe these were only available to closed beta testers?

[Siberian GRemlin]

On 5/4/2021 at 2:59 AM, tomsons26 said:

Regarding other pre-release things out there, i'd like to hear what you have heard of RA2, i can't really find anything on that possibility besides a single seemingly jokey post on google boards.

RA2 beta also leaked (summer 2000), but I still haven't found it. It was definitely shared on the Russian internet, but I dunno if any bootleg CD copies were made. The beta was not of interest to ordinary Russian gamers.

[PMBuggy]

I have a question about how the debug keys work. In the pdf manual from this link: https://downloads.cnc-comm.com/red-alert/beta/rabeta_instructions_and_notes.pdf, there's a Command Line Options section that lists options, play codes, etc., and debug keys need to be activated by running the game with play codes or editor codes.

I've got the "options" or command line parameters working (for example, conquer_fix.exe -XI makes all units of both sides invulnerable except that Tanya's C4 still destroys structures), but I don't know how to use the play codes and thus debug keys.

I guess Nyerguds, our global moderator and one of the authors of the document, could offer help. Thanks!

[Nyerguds]

It's all listed under "Command Line Options". So the play codes are just command line parameters too; the only difference is they don't start with "-".