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I'm Confused about the beginnings of CnCNet...


fir3w0rx

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I'm under the impression that Hifi is the owner of CnCNet because of how he was talking in the xwis / cncnet merger topic, plus cncnet.org is registered to him. But, according to Nyerguds, it was him and Myg that started it. And to confuse me even further, the Credits section says that Tore was the founder!?!?!..???  .

 

Can somebody please tell me the detailed, chronologically accurate story of the beginnings of CnCNet?

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Tahj... that page doesn't even mention me :dry:

 

Tore is the founder of this website, the C&C Communications Center. CnCNet was never "founded", it was started as a small tool (in fact, originally just a thipx32.dll override, if I remember correctly) by Myg, and it was far from his first experiment in reviving C&C95 multiplayer. I actually played C&C95 over TCP/COM with him back in those days. That's from late 2004, a solid year before the earliest things mentioned in the cncnet article.

 

By the way, someone should really fix the glaring spelling errors in that. "its" <> "it's"  ;)

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The thipx32.dll override was something hifi created. The original CnCNet (called C&C95Online at the time) worked a bit differently. It was more an application that hooked into the C&C95.exe if I remembered correctly.

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To me HiFi is king. The guy has serious skill and obviously knows what he's doing. I respect him as a programmer/reverse engineer.

 

Granted some others have contributed substantial work. I'd like to mention Nyerguds here (I don't know the hierarchies and people behind CnCNet, so no offense to the other real programmers that I unintentionally left out) because those guys obviously know what they're doing as well. They all have solid programming and reverse engineering background.

 

As for Rampastring, well, he might have made the UI and be responsible for the client (which is a lot of work, don't get me wrong) - I deem the quality of his work flaky at best. Certainly not a veteran nor a reverse engineer. Some credit is due here still.

 

Now there are some others that did graphics design, web design work and perhaps web development too, obviously. Usually a programmer won't do graphics design himself. I give them some of the credit too.

 

Anyone else claiming for fame about creating or helping create CnCNet are just leeches.

 

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Ok so I'm a little more clear on how it got started, but...

 

1. How did Hifi end up owning cncnet.org?

2. @Nyerguds - In your link (http://planetcnc.gamespy.com/Viewab36.html?view=Techtroopers.Detail&id=74), which one is Myg;  Tim Gokcen (was HeXetic his old nickname) or Adam Krock?

3. Why are there 2 websites for (cnc-comm.com & cncnet.org)? Which one is the server that the games connect to?

 

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Ok so I'm a little more clear on how it got started, but...

 

1. How did Hifi end up owning cncnet.org?

2. @Nyerguds - In your link (http://planetcnc.gamespy.com/Viewab36.html?view=Techtroopers.Detail&id=74), which one is Myg;  Tim Gokcen (was HeXetic his old nickname) or Adam Krock?

3. Why are there 2 websites for (cnc-comm.com & cncnet.org)? Which one is the server that the games connect to?

 

1. He bought it, how everyone get's their domains.

2. None of them

3. The Command & Conquer Communications Center was/is where CnCNet originated and over time they just merged into one. (The CnCNet site used to be part of the cnc-comm.com domain too (cncnet.cnc-comm.com))

 

Myg's projects have been around since 2006 where he made C&CGLE a little while later he made LANMate, both VPN based solutions.

 

In 2007 I started the Command & Conquer Communications Center a site to discuss the classic C&C games and getting them running on modern systems.

 

In late 2008 I tracked down Myg again and asked him to start his C&C95 projects anew. He started experimenting with other methods and with help from Nyerguds testing a few methods he made C&C95Online (0.5) an application that hooked into the C&C95.exe and made it read IP addreses from a central list on the Internet. Eventually the project changed names to CnCNet (1.0) and Irony took over. Irony made some UI changes and somehow the server ended being PHP (with a cron job) based so it could run on the same server as the site (1.2) These old versions of CnCNet had issues going through NAT's and only worked on certain routers without fiddling.

 

In 2010 hifi appeared interested in how CnCNet worked so he could make something similar for RA. He ended inheriting the project from Irony and in early 2011 CnCNet v2 was released, a total rewrite. CnCNet v2 was the first that supported RA1 and TS. v2 was a thipx32.dll (C&C95, RA 1.08) and wsock32.dll (RA 3.03, TS) override. He rewrote it again with CnCNet 3.0, sidetracked a bit with 3.5 and thought about a web based client...eventually 4.0 happened the first version with tunneling support, RA2 got supported somewhere in here too.

 

Myg did chime in at one point with an updated thipx32.dll that significantly increased performance for C&C95 games.

Some developer named psde did at one time try to develop some kind of client for CnCNet (3.5?) in Qt but ended up leaving.

 

The rest can pretty much be read at that page, except for the tremendous effort Funkyfr3sh did for the RA community and Funkyfr3sh's CnCNet 5 client which he is still updating with new features such as P2P that can traverse NAT's etc.

 

Tahj... that page doesn't even mention me :dry:

 

I have no clue who wrote it. Admittedly, I didn't read it and just assumed it was the correct literature. Maybe have Grant rewrite/update?

 

It's missing a few details. Some parts written by me (never got to finish) others by hifi and maybe some others. It needs an update adding later contributions.

 

I hope what I wrote wasn't too confusing, but it might be as my mind is many places at once right now. :P

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2. @Nyerguds - In your link (http://planetcnc.gamespy.com/Viewab36.html?view=Techtroopers.Detail&id=74), which one is Myg;  Tim Gokcen (was HeXetic his old nickname) or Adam Krock?

2. None of them

Um, yes, Adam is Myg. :dry:

 

Here's the archive.org version of the forum thread linked to at the end of the article. Check the thread creator's nickname.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050120183126/http://www.forumplanet.com/planetcnc/topic.asp?fid=1911&tid=1535309

 

In fact, that's how I first got into contact with him.

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As for Rampastring, well, he might have made the UI and be responsible for the client (which is a lot of work, don't get me wrong) - I deem the quality of his work flaky at best. Certainly not a veteran nor a reverse engineer. Some credit is due here still.

Sorry, but I'd want to know how you arrived at that conclusion  :P While I wouldn't call myself a reverse engineer, I do have 8 years of experience with C# and .NET, and I know the basics of VB.NET, Java (quite similar to C#), C++ and x86 ASM.

 

http://cncnet.org/what-is-cncnet This page doesn't mention me either, btw. It could use some updating.

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Sorry, but I'd want to know how you arrived at that conclusion  :P While I wouldn't call myself a reverse engineer, I do have 8 years of experience with C# and .NET, and I know the basics of VB.NET, Java (quite similar to C#), C++ and x86 ASM.

 

I'm 20, a university student and a (mainly C#) programmer. Hopefully I can quit writing the YR client one day and start making real games of my own.

 

You say you're 20 yet you "do have 8 years of experience with C# and .NET". This doesn't quite add up. Your basic knowledge list doesn't impress me either. But the real reason for what I said might actually lie buried within CnCNetClientYR.  ;)

 

You know, when I was a 12 year old boy (this was 13 years ago) I had my first experience with a 3 or 4 years older girl. She was taller than me by at least a head. We'd disappear into the toilet, she'd sit down, I'd sit on her lap and we were tongue kissing for half an hour.

 

While this may have worked, there's one thing we have in common. I didn't know how to properly handle and get the most out of her and neither did you know how to properly handle and get the most out of C#.

This doesn't mean that we didn't enjoy ourselves and it also doesn't mean that you're still a completely incapable phaggot either.

 

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While this may have worked' date=' there's one thing we have in common. I didn't know how to properly handle and get the most out of her and neither did you know how to properly handle and get the most out of C#.[/quote']

I admit that this is true. The code that I wrote in my first years after picking up programming was horrible compared to code that I write now.

 

About CnCNetClientYR, a lot of the issues people have brought up in recent weeks are pretty much the result of me opening up the source code to a certain person last spring. I didn't originally make the YR client; I only made the DTA client that it's based on, and Iran forked the project and made the YR client that was publicly released by CnCNet in February. Afterwards he completely abandoned it without telling me a word, and I was called in during the summer to fix the situation. By that time, I had developed the DTA client so much further that it was difficult to make a smooth transition, especially when Iran also had written his own updater while I also had my own. For most people the transition worked, but for some it didn't, and this spawned a lot of initial issue reports.

 

There have also been bugs. I've always fixed them ASAP, and lately most client issue reports have concerned a single issue (the DateTime parsing crash) that I've also fixed, but haven't pushed the fix to the public yet. http://cncnet.org/network-status Based on that, the client also seems to work as it should for almost everyone, with 80 games and most likely over 200 players at peak time.

 

When judging the client, I also have to point out that it wasn't originally created for YR, and YR still isn't the main focus. My main projects are The Dawn of the Tiberium Age and Twisted Insurrection, both are stand-alone mods based on the Tiberian Sun engine, and both are released top100 mods on ModDB with about 400 unique players (combined) each day. Issue reports from the players of those mods are very rare. Essentially, I'm supporting these mods and YR all with the same binaries, despite them having very different UIs and different sets of features enabled (for YR I had to disable a lot of features, some that Grant considered useless and some that YR doesn't support). The client that you see here is powered by the same binaries as the client in these screenshots:

Main Menu

CnCNet Lobby

Game Lobby (yes, in DTA there's multiple themes to select from, too).

 

Now this post became a bit longer than I initially wanted, but maybe it reveals something of the complex situation of the YR client :P

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Ok so I'm a little more clear on how it got started, but...

 

1. How did Hifi end up owning cncnet.org?

...

3. Why are there 2 websites for (cnc-comm.com & cncnet.org)? Which one is the server that the games connect to?

 

1. He bought it, how everyone get's their domains.

...

3. The Command & Conquer Communications Center was/is where CnCNet originated and over time they just merged into one. (The CnCNet site used to be part of the cnc-comm.com domain too (cncnet.cnc-comm.com))

Really smart ass?? :D I thought Hifi made the domain completely from scratch! What I meant was "how come Hifi got to register cncnet.rog to his name and not Myg, Nyerguds, Irony, or Tore (you)? Here's my guess:

 

Hifi joined the team, realized that these games needed a dedicated server, so he purchased one and registered it under his name. Prior to his arrival, everyone played each other using p2p. Hifi was doing such a good job with upgrading the cncnet tool and was generous enough to pay for the new server, cncnet.org (which was named after their tool) that Myg, Nyerguds, Irony and Tore didn't mind. So in short, the torch was passed on from Myg (with the help of Nyerguds) -> Irony -> Hifi, while Tore kept everybody, including the fans, together. Correct? Anyone?

 

Now about the 2 separate domains, cnc-comm.com and cncnet.org, I don't see the point in having one just for the forums and the other for allowing people to connect through. Why not just have everything in one domain?

 

Oh yeah and I agree that the CnCNet History page should be updated. People deserve the recognition, especially when they don't get paid, imo.

 

*******************

 

@Rampastring - for what my opinion is worth (maybe 2 cents), from a user's point of view, I think your YR client is awesome. I'm sure you'll eventually have all those KABOOMs fixed (I think with some of them, people just don't know how to add exceptions to their anti-virus programs).

 

@SiRaLeX - Looks like that Sustanon is working huh? Hey, probably not the right forum for this, but I've got a 4-pack hiding under my fat stomach :P. It's been hiding there since not long after I got married. I lost some of the fat by doing a LOT of cardio and of course staying away from fatty and sugary foods. But the cardio takes up sooo much of my time that I've gotten lazy and the fat is back. Do you know of an effective, but quick, way to lose body fat? I don't even care about gaining or losing muscle anymore, I just wanna lose my chubbiness.

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While this may have worked' date=' there's one thing we have in common. I didn't know how to properly handle and get the most out of her and neither did you know how to properly handle and get the most out of C#.[/quote']

I admit that this is true. The code that I wrote in my first years after picking up programming was horrible compared to code that I write now.

 

About CnCNetClientYR, a lot of the issues people have brought up in recent weeks are pretty much the result of me opening up the source code to a certain person last spring. I didn't originally make the YR client; I only made the DTA client that it's based on, and Iran forked the project and made the YR client that was publicly released by CnCNet in February.

You'll say the same in 5 years of time. True programming skill for me developed after the age of 20.  :P  I don't even mean the issues - I mean something else. Though issues are a good indicator of software quality... Oh, sheesh, Iran!

 

 

As for the 2 domains, I agree that 2 domains are unnecessarily confusing, even unprofessional. I'd prefer cncnet.org/community/ for the forums.

 

 

@SiRaLeX - [...] Do you know of an effective, but quick, way to lose body fat? I don't even care about gaining or losing muscle anymore, I just wanna lose my chubbiness.

DNP (Dinitrophenol):  By far the most effective. May literally burn you from the inside if you take too much though. https://youtu.be/AJjtO0ALwzY?t=2m56s

Clenbuterol: Safer than DNP but way less effective. Increases heart rate blood pressure. May cause cardiac problems.

ECA-Stack: Ephedrine (Pseudoephedrine works too) + Caffeine + Aspirin. Thins blood, increases heart rate and blood pressure. May cause heart attack, stroke...

 

As you can see, there's a few options. Losing fat ain't pleasant but you can do it without drugs. Six-pack abs are made in the kitchen.  :)  It takes a while. You don't really need to exercise for that. Doing cardio won't do shit.

 

Tell you what, I started in December 2014. By February/March I already lost 10 KG, that's while building muscle at the same time. Without drugs. I even dropped another 3 KG, eating next to nothing for 2 weeks in August. You see where this leads to. Extreme discipline and self-control. You can't out-cardio a crappy diet.

 

BTW, that picture was taken 10 days ago.

 

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fir3w0rx... I was never really part of the cncnet team, and as far as I know, neither is Tore. Tore is admin of this site, the C&C Comm Center.

 

The only actual work I did on cncnet was the first rudimentary integration of cncnet with the game itself, which boiled down to hacking C&C95 to add a "-LAN" command line parameter, which started (well, still does actually) the game in a way that made it skip straight to the Network lobby on startup. This was before the server-based architecture, so the in-game network lobby was still used as cncnet game lobby back then. Besides the differences with it being p2p, the main concern with this was that you couldn't chat unless you joined a game. The C&C95 LAN lobby doesn't show players; just games.

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Really smart ass?? :D I thought Hifi made the domain completely from scratch! What I meant was "how come Hifi got to register cncnet.rog to his name and not Myg, Nyerguds, Irony, or Tore (you)? Here's my guess:

 

Hifi joined the team, realized that these games needed a dedicated server, so he purchased one and registered it under his name. Prior to his arrival, everyone played each other using p2p. Hifi was doing such a good job with upgrading the cncnet tool and was generous enough to pay for the new server, cncnet.org (which was named after their tool) that Myg, Nyerguds, Irony and Tore didn't mind. So in short, the torch was passed on from Myg (with the help of Nyerguds) -> Irony -> Hifi, while Tore kept everybody, including the fans, together. Correct? Anyone?

 

Now about the 2 separate domains, cnc-comm.com and cncnet.org, I don't see the point in having one just for the forums and the other for allowing people to connect through. Why not just have everything in one domain?

 

Not trying to be a smartass, just putting things bluntly.

 

You do not "make" domains. You register the name and point it to 1 or more servers. Unless you mean he made it in the sense of setting up the server, then that's right.

 

As for why he registered the domain? I always saw it as he registered it because he wanted to. Greater control and a much nicer URL than the older one. Myg and Irony had at the time already handed the torch over to hifi.

 

Historically I've been the one taking care of the websites, doing things like updating the forums, moderating the forums and notifying the community on CnCNet updates. While hifi set up the servers and found good deals on where to be hosted. (in addition to creating the many different versions and technologies CnCNet ran on).

 

I have considered cnc-comm.com and cncnet.org as being the same thing ever since cnc-comm.com became hosted on the cncnet.org server (2011). Though cnc-comm has some things that doesn't exactly fit on the CnCNet website. It hasn't been until fairly recently that the forum got a "CnCNet skin" and soon both the forum and the CnCNet site will be on the same domain once the new site is done.

 

People deserve the recognition, especially when they don't get paid, imo.

 

Many of the older versions of CnCNet website did actually properly credit people, but the newer versions have always been incomplete in many ways. There has been some difficulty in placing information in Grant's websites.

 

As for people being monetarily compensated for their work: Most people working or have worked on CnCNet have never been paid. They contributed for fun, to get experience, learn or through a will to contribute to something. People have occasionally got some money if they had done some great things or done a lot of work, but most of the time no one has gotten paid for anything. CnCNet is not a business and it is not a for profit project, it is a community project created by developers and/or players for the C&C community. Most people who have contributed to CnCNet have just stumbled across the IRC and done something.

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Well... there you have it people, the 'Dawn of CnCNet'.  It's still in bits and pieces and needs to be all put together and written nicely, but everything about CnCNet's birth is pretty much all here. It may not mean that much right now, but years from now, when all the classic 2D C&C's are all up and running, every feature imaginable has been implemented, all the mods (and future mods) are also complete and working online,  plus every unforeseen future goodies that lie ahead... this will be a nice story to look back to.

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People have occasionally got some money if they had done some great things or done a lot of work, but most of the time no one has gotten paid for anything.

Have you done something "great"? What do you even consider "great"? There we have it!

 

You say you're not a business. Yet, you have to pay for the server, connection and domains. Those things are not free. Who in their right mind would work for free and pay for those things? Where do the donations go? Sure, they land in a black hole, right?

 

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You say you're not a business. Yet, you have to pay for the server, connection and domains. Those things are not free. Who in their right mind would work for free and pay for those things? Where do the donations go? Sure, they land in a black hole, right?

Um. You answered your own question. The donations go towards server/domain costs (connections? wut?). Any excess is kept for future server costs. That's it. Many of the donators to cncnet are players and devs themselves, yes. Paying to keep the online service they love running.

 

I honestly don't see your point in all this. Lots of community websites are ran this way. In fact, over the years I've gotten quite some donations on my C&C95 v1.06 project page, and technically that has never cost me a cent. And in case you're wondering, all of that mostly went to expanding my C&C collection, which in turn led to nifty stuff like multi-language video packs and the inclusion of the official Japanese voices in the game.

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(connections? wut?)

Bandwidth and a 100 Mbit/s connection ain't free...

 

 

In fact, over the years I've gotten quite some donations on my C&C95 v1.06 project page, and technically that has never cost me a cent.

Well, that means that it was/is profitable. Good for you!

 

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