Discussion about new stuff for Tiberian Dawn

[Chimas]

Hi,

 

You've probably had this kind of discussion in the past, but ...

 

Have you ever thought about other features Tiberian Dawn could have? I mean in a new engine, of course.

Also, features and units that didn't show up in the rest of the series or even mods.

Did anyone tried to set a mod team to create this engine?

Or have you discussed this wishlist, at least?

"Don't panic", I don't have skills to propose or do that, just asking for the sake of a good discussion.

Greetings

[cn2mc]

It's a touchy subject, really. After all it is one of the best and most complete games in the genre. So much so infact, that you could easily call it the ultimate RTS even today, if it wasn't for a few very minor flaws:

 

1. Pathfinding - it very much needs improvement to prevent units getting stuck in narrow spaces and to prevent harvs from going for faraway or unreachable Tiberium.

2. Now, even though that pathfinding is all the AI I need, I wouldn't mind having some sort of rudimentary skirmish AI, which possesses a threat assessment mechanism and uses that to determine its targets, instead of proximity to the North pole. Very much like it worked in later games.

3. Full control of units. Of course, this starts off with the player being able to select and target units in the air and might include the option to get your men to go prone (just as you can in C&C get them to stand up by doubleclicking them away). Maybe a 'deploy' keyboard command could work for that, which will also be useful for APC's, choppers and any other units, which might need deployment of some sort. I am tempted to say I kinda like the q-move of RA, so I think a limited number of movement waypoints and patrols for units, like say 3WP, might be good for the game. TD's slower tanks will be harder to abuse than RA's anyway. Also, having at least mission making options for fully controllable (and fully rotating) hovercraft and gunboats would be nice too.

4. Fix South advantage. It's really rarely decisive for games but it is an annoyance. I actually think that South advantage is negated by some of the original game's North advantages, like units coming out between the enemy and your factories instead of behind them as they would in the South. Also, harvesters travel a couple of squares less every other trip or so.

 

Now, basically these are the flaws of TD. And for '95 they are pretty minor. For me everything else in this game has stood the test of time. The fluidity of gameplay and the many yet simple and intuitive things one can do with their units, as well as the (sort of) assymetrical balance of GDI and Nod went unmatched until StarCraft came out and was reasonably patched and expanded. C&C simply is a versatile little RTS. All of these suggestions are made as improvements for the old game, which would not change its feel or balance. Now for some possibly game-changing additions:

 

I've always wondered what TD will play like with real fog of war? I assume that more scouting men and vehicles will generally be built and moved around, and that having a comm. centre will be more of a neccesity rather than a luxury. Which reminds me that the game needs a 'jump to' key for 'base is under attack' and 'unit lost' events, maybe activated by building said comm. centre. I also imagine that FoW would make certain tactics like APC rushes a bit scarier but I don't think it will really change the game balance. Giving air units sight and the ability to scout would make for some fun games, but I'm not sure if they should then remain with only barracks/HoN as prerequisites, maybe add comm. centre.

 

I have loads of other crap ideas but will refrain from posting them for now. The fact that we can still play some C&C online is good enough for me.

[MrFlibble]

Personally I would probably be more than content with a version of TD that would include the skirmish option of the RA variety while keeping everything else (including the DOS resolution and interface) the same.

 

Overall C&C is a game very well put together, and I'd rather say that it would be not unreasonable to ask the opposite question to what this thread is about, namely: what features of TD do later games miss? I like it how the Westwood guys tried to create an entire world of their own in TD, complete with news footage, intrigue around the Tiberium that is slowly revealed to the player over the course of the campaign etc. etc. There was this premise that the player connects to the command network in real time and is thus a real commander of either side's forces. I'd say no other Westwood game repeated that on the same scale, with Red Alert's retro camp sci-fi setting and Tiberian Sun's complete lack of player commander character (which was averted in Firestorm though).

 

That said, introducing any significant changes into TD would essentially make it a different game altogether.

 

I should also say I have mixed feelings about the feature in C&C that keeps the chance of infantry emerging from a destroyed structure if it was blown up by the Commando. On one hand, this makes playing Commando missions a bit more of a challenge compared to the later games where infantry is never spawned from structures destroyed by the C4 attack. On the other hand, players will most probably resort to save summing to ensure the Commando doesn't lose health when blowing up those SAM sites, so the result is basically the same as in later games except the players have to do the annoying save-load routine.

 

Also with the Commando, when you order to attack a building, the "I've got a present for ya!" line gets overlapped with a random regular acknowledgement response from the Commando. Nyer explained to me that this is because the "I've got a present for ya!" line is played for every player in the game to hear (much like other Commando's taunts that are played randomly) as a kind of a warning. Would be nice if the acknowledgement responses were not played when a Commando is ordered to attack a structure, but I think this kind of logic is hard or impossible to implement in the original code. (How's that for a "new feature"? )

[peterthepigeon]

Also with the Commando, when you order to attack a building, the "I've got a present for ya!" line gets overlapped with a random regular acknowledgement response from the Commando. Nyer explained to me that this is because the "I've got a present for ya!" line is played for every player in the game to hear (much like other Commando's taunts that are played randomly) as a kind of a warning. Would be nice if the acknowledgement responses were not played when a Commando is ordered to attack a structure, but I think this kind of logic is hard or impossible to implement in the original code. (How's that for a "new feature"? )

 

Utterly trivial to do a detour on the code and check the sounds.

 

As far as pathfinding is concerned we'd have to reverse engineer the existing data structures and learn how to interpret the data correctly.  So that we could apply a better path finding algorithim as opposed to what is in the code now.

[Nyerguds]

Also with the Commando, when you order to attack a building, the "I've got a present for ya!" line gets overlapped with a random regular acknowledgement response from the Commando. Nyer explained to me that this is because the "I've got a present for ya!" line is played for every player in the game to hear (much like other Commando's taunts that are played randomly) as a kind of a warning. Would be nice if the acknowledgement responses were not played when a Commando is ordered to attack a structure, but I think this kind of logic is hard or impossible to implement in the original code. (How's that for a "new feature"? )

I, uh, already fixed that in my current dev version. Which is a mess right now. Really gotta work on that some more.

 

Basically, the commando's "I got a present for ya" isn't a response but a map sound, just like the explosion sounds, that every player in the game can hear.

 

I've changed the logic so that that map sound is skipped if you are the player issuing the bombing command, and made "I got a present for ya" the actual response sound of the commando when ordered to bomb a building.

[MrFlibble]

I've changed the logic so that that map sound is skipped if you are the player issuing the bombing command, and made "I got a present for ya" the actual response sound of the commando when ordered to bomb a building.

Heh, that's awesome (seems to me it's how it should have been in the first place).

 

BTW, I don't remember if Tanya's special quote is even played at all in RA under similar circumstances (IIRC she says "Kiss it bye-bye!").

[Matt]

Have you ever thought about other features Tiberian Dawn could have? I mean in a new engine, of course.

 

Yes, https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues?labels=cnc you can even post your own ideas there.

[Myg]

Hey Nyerguds, doesn't that mean the other player *won't* hear it then?

 

That was part of the original design.

[Nyerguds]

You mean on the Commando bombing thing? No, everyone on the map hears it as map sound. It was always like that. I just made sure the map sound is not played for the player that's actually giving the bombing command. For the other players, nothing changes. They still get it as map sound.

[Nyerguds]

Utterly trivial to do a detour on the code and check the sounds.

Two detours, actually. The infantry response is in the immediate code for handling a mouse click command. The map sound, however, is in the general "some command was given in the game" code. Due to the mouse command putting the mission (=unit command) in a 'mission queue', which is handled by a loop in a completely different part of the code, there is no direct connection to be found between these two pieces of code.

[Guest Elitesse]

I'd like to create Gunboats and other ships for sea battles with a Naval Yard like in Red Alert, maybe i'm asking too much but it could be very nice to have sea battles in Tiberian Dawn!

[Nyerguds]

It's possible... however, at the moment, adding units is not. And removing the crapload of exceptions that makes the gunboat patrol like it does also isn't.

 

Another fringe problem is that they'd still be produced by the normal weapons factory, which would make them immediately get stuck on land.

 

But as mission unit, it's technically possible to make it; the waterbound movement type in C&C works perfectly.

[cn2mc]

... the waterbound movement type in C&C works perfectly.

 

Really? Are there also any signs of code that might affect movement speed of units on land, as in RA? (Road - 100%, grass 80%, etc.)

[Nyerguds]

Movement types are:

1=Tracked

2=??

3=Wheeled

4=??

5=Hover

6=Boat

If these values are taken over from Dune II, then 0=Foot, 2=Harvester (special case) and 4=Winged. None of these are tested though, and the C&C1 harvester does not use the Harvest one.

 

Dune II has terrain type speed modifiers though, and so does RA, so given the fact there's a Wheeled and a Tracked type, chances are that C&C has it too. I haven't found any of it, though. The known types are Clear, Water, Rock and Beach. Clear and Beach are passable. Beach cannot be built on, and helis can't land on it. Though, since these types take up IDs 0, 2, 3 and 6 there are probably more types. They're not used for terrain tiles, though, and I haven't tested their effects. Looking at RA1 I'd expect the types "Road" and "Rough" too, but the roads and passable ruins/craters/bones/etc all just use "clear".

 

 

As I said, the "Boat" movement type works fine, but it is notoriously unreliable on rivers: because C&C can only assign 2 terrain types to each template (single terrain block), some stuff that should contain clear terrain, water and rock (notably, waterfalls) actually only uses Water and Clear, which means that boats can do silly things like go up waterfalls and even on the rock cells connecting to them on the same tile.

 

Here's an example of that:

Boat types would be able to go on all the cells surrounded by green.

(note that I've identified that Unknown since I made that pic; it's a name ID in conquer.eng)

 

Overall, rivers are really poorly typed, and can't be used for boat travel consistently. In fact, the river mouth with open water north of it is impassable to boats, while the south version is perfectly passable. And there's loads more inconsistencies like that.

[Myg]

Please do not alter the game beyond the original design.

 

Nyerguds, can you make a 'bug-fix' only version available for use on cncnet and keep your extensive altercation version separate from it?

[Nyerguds]

If you mean the terrain stuff, I honestly don't know if I COULD fix that. I mean, by adding a tertiary terrain type. But if it would allow modders to use rivers consistently, I don't see how that change could do any harm. After all, as long as I don't change the original passability for land units, nothing really changes for the players by fixing the terrain types.

 

 

On the patch release thing, the problem at this moment is mostly that the next step in any development is to reverse-engineer all my hacks to up-to-date code and port it to hifi's sytem.

 

But, I guess I could release a fix version. Not exactly sure what would need fixing though, except for disabling the all-user compatibility mode on the TUC version of C&C95.

[TDG]

Hello all,

 

Perhaps it might sound a little arrogant on my part, being the new guy on the forum and this being my very first post (need to introduce myself later) and only having started to play C&C recently, but there is definitely some stuff I would love to see being added to the original game or included in a remake of Tiberian Dawn

 

Several units were planned but eventually dropped for the first game such as the X-O powersuit (which I really hoped would make it to the first game) and the microwave gun tank, I would like to see those units being brought back into the game.

I would also like to see the alien probes and perhaps some landed/crashed alien ships to appear in a mission at either side, hinting towards a possible third party. (the Scrin). These units would be hostile to GDI and Nod.

I admit I wanted to see this after playing C&C Renegade recently and coming across the flying saucer in Cairo.

 

Speaking of C&C Renegade, and I will probably get a load of flak for this, I would not mind if the in game infantry units would resemble those of that game. (guess they would have to be a little bigger than the original sprites), with the Black Hand units appearing in the Nod campaign while GDI has Task Force Talon (as suggested in Tiberian Dawn Redux) to enhance missions.

 

Hope those suggestions are not to controversial on this forum.

I am not trying to 'break' the game, I just think these would be neat additions.

[Karpet]

Hello all,

 

Perhaps it might sound a little arrogant on my part, being the new guy on the forum and this being my very first post (need to introduce myself later) and only having started to play C&C recently, but there is definitely some stuff I would love to see being added to the original game or included in a remake of Tiberian Dawn

 

Several units were planned but eventually dropped for the first game such as the X-O powersuit (which I really hoped would make it to the first game) and the microwave gun tank, I would like to see those units being brought back into the game.

I would also like to see the alien probes and perhaps some landed/crashed alien ships to appear in a mission at either side, hinting towards a possible third party. (the Scrin). These units would be hostile to GDI and Nod.

I admit I wanted to see this after playing C&C Renegade recently and coming across the flying saucer in Cairo.

 

Speaking of C&C Renegade, and I will probably get a load of flak for this, I would not mind if the in game infantry units would resemble those of that game. (guess they would have to be a little bigger than the original sprites), with the Black Hand units appearing in the Nod campaign while GDI has Task Force Talon (as suggested in Tiberian Dawn Redux) to enhance missions.

 

Hope those suggestions are not to controversial on this forum.

I am not trying to 'break' the game, I just think these would be neat additions.

More units cannot be added into the game. Blame EA for that for not releasing the source code (no, really, fuck them). I would like if the infantry sprites were made better because the infantry do look like ants.

[Nyerguds]

Oh, I can add new units to the game. But I see no reason whatsoever to do that. One of the main pillars in my patch development was always that despite the fact I fix and change things under the hood, the gameplay experience will not change. No balance changes, either.

 

So new units? Nope, that's right out. I hope I'll one day get around to unlocking enough of the game that modders can add their own, but I will never add such a thing to a patch for the game.

[TDG]

Hello Karpet,

 

Well I meant more that I would love to see these mentioned units and suggested scenario (GDI/NOD checking out an alien crash site near a large Tiberium field) in case there was ever a remake.

Would be neat if it could have been added to the original game but I don't know any people with such skills.

 

Edit; I have thought a little more on what units I would like to add to a Command and Conquer 1 update/remake

 

GDI's side

 

The X-O powersuit, a precursor to the power suit units in Tiberian Sun.

More powerful than regular infantry but not as strong yet as a tank, it is a good all round unit equipped with machine guns, a laser, and missiles and can be equipped with a jet pack.

 

 

The micro tank. The original design was actually piloted but I have this in mind as a drone controlled from the Communication Center.

Less powerful than a regular tank, it's advantage is that it is immune to Nod's microwave gun tank.

The mini tank becomes inactive when it enters an area where transmissions are blocked by enemy communication centers.

 

 

ORCA support truck. These are support units that serve as mobile resupply centers for the ORCA assault craft, reloading their missiles and repairing them on the spot.

It is equipped with a machine gun for anti infantry purposes.

 

(note; I understand that the ORCA's machine gun does not work in the original C&C, this would also be fixed)

 

 

VTOL heavy transport. These aircraft can transport several X-O powersuits, humvees, or a medium tank but are unarmed.

 

 

Nod's side

 

Armored Personnel Carrier. See Renegade

 

 

Microwave gun tank. This would be a rather insidious weapon that is designed to kill the crew of enemy vehicles such as tanks, but leaving the vehicles themselves undamaged so that they can be claimed by Nod.

 

If vehicles are in close proximity the beam jumps from one vehicle to another.

 

The effectiveness of the beam depends on how much armor a target carries. Infantry for example is less affected by the Microwave gun.

Units such as micro tanks are not affected at all as they do not carry any driver.

 

 

EMP drone. This is Nod's own remote drone designed to shut down enemy vehicles (and facilities?) when detonated.

It is a suicide unit that can only be used once.

vehicles (and buildings) that are affected need to be repaired by an engineer before they work again. (note; it shuts targets down but does not damage or destroy them)

 

EMP drones can be rendered inactive by the jamming field of an enemy Communication Center.

 

 

Minelayer. This vehicle is part of Nod's strategy of not always engaging an enemy directly, instead allowing enemies to run into planned traps.

 

The mines of the minelayer are both harmful to infantry and vehicles. The mines can also be upgraded to magnetic mines that are drawn to any vehicle in their proximity.

 

The minelayer itself is not heavily armored and is equipped with a machine gun for anti infantry purpose.

It is not a very good direct fighting vehicle.

 

 

Heavy cargo helicopter. Nod's answer to the GDI VTOL heavy transport. It can carry a number of light units or a singe large unit.

 

 

Alien/Unknown side

 

Alien drone. This unit would appear in single player maps and skirmish maps as a hostile third party that attacks both GDI and Nod units. It is spawned from crashed alien spaceships that will keep producing these units until the ship is destroyed. (perhaps only a few drones can be active at a time, a new one being spawned when an old one is destroyed)

This unit is both effective against land and air units.

 

 

If I would threw in navy/water units in the game I would do the gunboat and perhaps the command ship that appeared in Renegade, and an armed speed boat and submarine on Nod's side.

[MrFlibble]

Well I meant more that I would love to see these mentioned units and suggested scenario (GDI/NOD checking out an alien crash site near a large Tiberium field) in case there was ever a remake.

Would be neat if it could have been added to the original game but I don't know any people with such skills.

Visceroids could actually fill in the role of "aliens". I wonder why the Visceroid spawn logic, as well as the units themselves, are never encountered in the original single-player campaigns.

 

Nod's side

 

Armored Personnel Carrier. See Renegade

Nod can build APCs in multiplayer, and have them in certain single-player missions as well.

 

But basically, your ideas could be made a reality with some kind of a mod for a later game. There are several (at least two IIRC) Tiberian Dawn remakes that use the Tiberian Sun engine. TS is quite easily moddable, and there are lots of community resources you can use, so you could try doing something on your own.

[TDG]

Hello MrFlibble (a Red Dwarf fan, right on!)

 

Nod can build APCs in multiplayer, and have them in certain single-player missions as well.

 

I know it might not be a good start to the franchise but most of my knowledge comes from C&C Renegade and of course the Command and Conquer Wiki. I did read Nod had an APC during certain Single Player missions but I did not know that they could be bought during multiplayer sessions.

 

Visceroids could actually fill in the role of "aliens". I wonder why the Visceroid spawn logic, as well as the units themselves, are never encountered in the original single-player campaigns.

 

They aren't? That is a shame.

Anyway they should also be put in Single Player missions in a remake, but the Alien drones would be something else.

 

But basically, your ideas could be made a reality with some kind of a mod for a later game. There are several (at least two IIRC) Tiberian Dawn remakes that use the Tiberian Sun engine. TS is quite easily moddable, and there are lots of community resources you can use, so you could try doing something on your own.

 

I would definitely like to undertake such a project like these but I sadly lack the skills.

* sigh *  just another wannebee game designer with big ambitions. 

[MrFlibble]

I would definitely like to undertake such a project like these but I sadly lack the skills.

* sigh *  just another wannebee game designer with big ambitions. 

Tiberian Sun is actually a good game to start with modding, as it has an open structure and is quite easy to mod. You don't need any particular skills for that, unless you want to edit art or go for some hardcoded game mechanics. For example your suggestion of an Orca truck could be easily implemented as a "mobile helipad" - a unit that can deploy into a helipad (and then undeploy at the player's command). I think I even played some mod a long time ago which had mobile helipads. (That feature can be a balance breaker but anyway.)

 

Just check the Project Perfect Mod website and forums, this is probably the number one place if you want to learn Tiberian Sun modding.

[Nyerguds]

I would definitely like to undertake such a project like these but I sadly lack the skills.

* sigh *  just another wannebee game designer with big ambitions. 

Actually, the X-O suit is already part of the Dawn of the Tiberium Age mod for Tiberian Sun.

[Myg]

I would like to say that people should donate to Nyerguds for preserving the original state of C&C95 and its further existence.