What do you think about openra

[Blade]

More like equivalent to "There is already a setting in OpenTTD and someone made a NewGRF so you don't need that workaround." but okay. I got it a long time ago. There is also a challenge to work with the limitations of the classics that adds to the appeal.

 

The best solution may be to just recommend each others projects. I added links to the cncnet.org community at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/FAQ#this-is-not-true-to-the-original about a year ago and also advertised it on our social media pages.

 

I am really sick of this hostility. The recent incident with Graion Dilach on www.moddb.com/games/openra who crossed a line with his personal attacks and wishing us failure, is making me angry and sad. He seems to be agitated by your aggressive and almost religious hate speech against our hobby project.

 

See, this is the problem, you think OpenRA is to RA what OpenTTD is to TTD and behave as such, but it isn't. OpenTTD reverse engineered the TTD binary and created a compilable version that pretty much matched the original and only then did they start to build upon it with mostly optional changes. It can to my knowledge still use the original data files as they are, any new formats are optional. If you had reverse engineered the original binaries and then built upon them I'm sure many of the qualms people are saying they have would not be an issue. As I've tried to explain, personally I have no problems with your project, I'm not hostile to it, I just think it is misrepresenting itself as a recreation when its really an imitation that uses the original GFX to make it seem more familiar than it really is.

 

Also, I think you are being disingenuous suggesting this is some kind of "religious crusade" based purely on some kind of ideology like you are the victims of persecution for your strange minority beliefs. The people I see being most against the way you PORTRAY openra (and not against its existence) are the ones most versed with how the original games are actually programmed and who do have some inkling of what it would take to reverse engineer them to create something that could truly be called a recreation and the fact that isn't what the open RA team actually did. It doesn't help when your website suggests that the originals have been "improved" by "more modern RTS features" either.

[Matt]

If you had reverse engineered the original binaries and then built upon them I'm sure many of the qualms people are saying they have would not be an issue.

 

That would be impossible as OpenRA does not just re-create the Command & Conquer: Red Alert engine, but also the Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000, soon to be the Tiberian Sun one. We can't just disassemble the source code of all those original games, somehow try to merge it without any alterations and start building upon that which is also legally and ethically questionable.

[djjammin1337]

More like equivalent to "There is already a setting in OpenTTD and someone made a NewGRF so you don't need that workaround." but okay. I got it a long time ago. There is also a challenge to work with the limitations of the classics that adds to the appeal.

 

The best solution may be to just recommend each others projects. I added links to the cncnet.org community at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/FAQ#this-is-not-true-to-the-original about a year ago and also advertised it on our social media pages.

 

I am really sick of this hostility. The recent incident with Graion Dilach on www.moddb.com/games/openra who crossed a line with his personal attacks and wishing us failure, is making me angry and sad. He seems to be agitated by your aggressive and almost religious hate speech against our hobby project.

 

See, this is the problem, you think OpenRA is to RA what OpenTTD is to TTD and behave as such, but it isn't. OpenTTD reverse engineered the TTD binary and created a compilable version that pretty much matched the original and only then did they start to build upon it with mostly optional changes. It can to my knowledge still use the original data files as they are, any new formats are optional. If you had reverse engineered the original binaries and then built upon them I'm sure many of the qualms people are saying they have would not be an issue. As I've tried to explain, personally I have no problems with your project, I'm not hostile to it, I just think it is misrepresenting itself as a recreation when its really an imitation that uses the original GFX to make it seem more familiar than it really is.

 

Also, I think you are being disingenuous suggesting this is some kind of "religious crusade" based purely on some kind of ideology like you are the victims of persecution for your strange minority beliefs. The people I see being most against the way you PORTRAY openra (and not against its existence) are the ones most versed with how the original games are actually programmed and who do have some inkling of what it would take to reverse engineer them to create something that could truly be called a recreation and the fact that isn't what the open RA team actually did. It doesn't help when your website suggests that the originals have been "improved" by "more modern RTS features" either.

 

 

Blade what's the difference between imitation and re creation? You lot are seriously the most pedantic bunch I've ever seen.

[Blade]

 

That would be impossible as OpenRA does not just re-create the Command & Conquer: Red Alert engine, but also the Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000, soon to be the Tiberian Sun one. We can't just disassemble the source code of all those original games, somehow try to merge it without any alterations and start building upon that which is also legally and ethically questionable.

 

Well, I'd argue it doesn't recreate any of those engines, its a novel engine that is skinned and scripted to imitate them. Of course you couldn't just merge those games, especially Dune 2000 which doesn't share much code with the others. However you could share code that makes sense to share such as IO. Scummvm manages to pretty accurately recreate many game engines that the team has taken apart over the years and has answered questions of the legality in several forum threads. I don't really understand how you can think its ethically questionable?

[djjammin1337]

Blade what are you talking about? ScummVM is a virtual machine that runs games made using the Scumm scripting language developed by lucasarts.

 

It's not really the same as reverse engineering a game like c&c

[Nyerguds]

The people who just complain that it's not like the original and that you're "calling it the wrong thing" are really sad people... If they don't like it, don't play it.

Our issue wasn't the playing or not playing of OpenRA, but his rampant uncalled for advertizing... which, as he said, he stopped doing.

 

I personally have no issue with OpenRA, but I don't play it either. Though that's probably more because I'm mostly a single player & storyline kind of gamer. I have, however, often given them information on the internals of C&C1 (and, in fact, Dune 2 / Dune 2000) on their bug tracker when it was relevant to the subject.

 

Blade what's the difference between imitation and re creation? You lot are seriously the most pedantic bunch I've ever seen.

More than you seem to think. There are several Dune II remakes, but none that really feel like Dune 2, except for Dune Dynasty... which is built on OpenDune, a complete reverse-engineering of the original Dune II exe file. It adds multi-select, unit and even building queueing, and a lot more extras, but despite that, the actual gameplay still feels like Dune II.

 

As I commented on the OpenRA github tracker, this is largely due to random number generation algorithms, and the precise way inaccuracy and damage spread systems work. Those are incredibly important for balancing, because they determine how fast stuff dies. Another large part is timing, as in, build time, weapons rate of fire, unit speeds etc, since even if you have the values from the exe, they don't really mean anything unless you can somehow accurately convert them to seconds.

 

That would be impossible as OpenRA does not just re-create the Command & Conquer: Red Alert engine, but also the Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000, soon to be the Tiberian Sun one. We can't just disassemble the source code of all those original games, somehow try to merge it without any alterations and start building upon that which is also legally and ethically questionable.

Come now. Dune 2000 is a recent addition, and I'm fairly sure most of the internals of C&C and RA are the same; the big difference between those games is in the AI, not in the gameplay. And the legality is a non-issue, as proven by the fact the C&C community managers praised me for hacking their games 

[Blade]

Blade what are you talking about? ScummVM is a virtual machine that runs games made using the Scumm scripting language developed by lucasarts.

 

It's not really the same as reverse engineering a game like c&c

 

I almost decided I wasn't going to dignify any of your posts with a response, but since you have no idea how scummvm is developed I feel I must. How do you think they created a scumm scripting language interpreter that behaves accurately compared to the original? Also, you have no idea how scummvm is structured, it doesn't just recreate the scummvm interpreter, it recreates the engines of a hugh swath of 2D point and click game engines, most of them reverse engineered from orignal binaries to behave accurately. This already includes many of the none RTS Westwood games and Blade Runner is being reverse engineered now as well. So you see, it is EXACTLY like reverse engineering a game like C&C apart from perhaps how much code there is to reverse.

[Matt]

There is currently no majority for removing the term "recreation" from the http://www.openra.net front-page inside the OpenRA community. It seems like the average gamer understands it better than re-invention, re-envisioning or re-imagination and has no problem to differentiate between the classics catered by CnCNet or the dead re-implementation projects like http://freera.sourceforge.net/. It would be pretty cool if everyone of our harsh critics here, would team up and revive the FreeRA project. Open Source is all about diversity.

[bmoeller]

Ok everyone calm down. This is what we need to do. Everyone take your shirts off and sit in a circle and take turns talking about it.

[r34ch]

I like OpenRA, but I still prefer the original CnCs - But most of that is nostalgia.

 

Over the years, after playing many RTSs and going back to the classics, its clear as day to see they are clearly flawed. I mean by a bloody mile. Everyone has their ideas of how to 'fix' these classics, but the diehard lovers will cry foul no matter what happens. Including myself. Personally I thought OpenRA would be RA1 with better balancing and better UI on an enhanced engine. Clearly, as everyone who has played it will testify, the engines are miles apart.

 

If you can accept that, I think you can really enjoy OpenRA. Balancing is good, UI is nice and native linux support is awesome. As a coder myself I greatly admire the OpenRA team who make this in their free time and keep it open source.

 

What I wished OpenRA would be, was if WestWood had created RA1 with the tools of a decade ago, but with the knowledge and experience of a decade of RTSs today. Good UI, sane unit balance, logical map design, etc etc. OpenRA comes pretty close to that - albeit on a different engine. Some may argue why even bother using C&C assets when the gameplay is so different. I argue who cares. The CnCNet team have given us the high-res classics running natively on modern machines with improved multi-player support and a plethora of bug fixes.

 

Awesome.

 

Wall of text said and looking at the 'passion' flowing in this thread, it is clear that some small changes could be made to adjust 'expectations' of those who have nostalgia fuelled love for the classics. Indeed a slight tweaking of the 'Welcome back, Commander' blurb would ease things IMHO.

 

OpenRA is a Libre/Free Real Time Strategy project that loosely recreates the classic Command & Conquer titles.

 

That is a little more accurate portrayal, but I think the overal blurb needs cleaned up more (Dune isn't a C&C game, but the wording implies as such). Next time people play the 'its not CnC' card, that one line is enough to end needless arguments.

[Nyerguds]

That is a little more accurate portrayal, but I think the overal blurb needs cleaned up more (Dune isn't a C&C game, but the wording implies as such). Next time people play the 'its not CnC' card, that one line is enough to end needless arguments.

Actually, Dune II is a C&C game. And I have proof:

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/dune/dune2box/dune2-leaflet-02.jpg

 

"We're talking about our latest product, of course: Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty! This innovative game marks the debut of Westwood Studios' newest line of products, tentatively called the Command & Conquer series. According to Westwood President Brett Sperry, in this first development of the C&C series, we were trying to strike a delicate balance between the best of city-building simulators and the best of tactical combat games."

This is the paper version of Westwood's newsletter included in the Dune II box I acquired recently, and you can see at the top it is dated as fall 1992. A full three years before the release of Command & Conquer 1.

 

By extension, the games Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle For Dune can also be seen as "games of the Command & Conquer series"

[Jacko]

whenever we need a weird, obscure and not particularly useful (or very useful) piece of information about C&C Nyerguds is here to enlighten us all haha

[Nyerguds]

Well, I found out about this one literally less than a week ago

 

But, yeah, it seems "Command & Conquer" was simply the name of their line of RTS products.

[r34ch]

Actually, Dune II is a C&C game. And I have proof:

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/dune/dune2box/dune2-leaflet-02.jpg

Well, I stand corrected. O_o

 

I look forward to an updated C&C collection picture in that case. At this rate you'll need to invest in a bigger bed...

[X3M]

Wow, the best of city building games and combat games combined.

Nyerguds, do you have more of this paper? It says continued on page 3...

 

Regarding the topic. OpenRA would be awesome. However, I think the game engine would have to be build up from scratch. Then every piece of the original game has to be copied somehow.

That is an awful lot of work guys, who is planning on doing this?

[Nyerguds]

Wow, the best of city building games and combat games combined.

Nyerguds, do you have more of this paper? It says continued on page 3...

Ehh... I linked to the full topic on the fed2k forum at the end of that post. It has all the links.

 

Not to mention, I thought everyone knew by now that my site is an open directory . Just cut the filename off the url to see the rest of the files there.