The
official C&C 3 website has been updated today. There's a new community tab, which has spots for maps, mods, and more. Also, the BattleCast features are being rolled out, and you can see a ranking of the world's top C&C 3 players (though obviously it's just data from test matches). There's also a tab that has neat integrated clan support. It will be nice to see this stuff in action once the game comes out.
Also of importance, under the Worldbuilder tab, a message was posted about the availability of Worldbuilder:
Worldbuilder for Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars will be available here for direct download in early April after the game is launched.
Worldbuilder for Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars is the toolset that the game's designers used to create all of the single-player missions and multiplayer maps, and we're making it available to our player community. Worldbuilder will be available right here for direct download in early April after the game is launched.
Question: Why is Worldbuilder not included with the shipped version of Command & Conquer 3?
Answer: We made various changes to previous versions of Worldbuilder during development of Command & Conquer 3, which needed to be documented. Furthermore, references to previous projects and old functionality needed to be removed both from the software and the documentation. As a result, we wished to take extra time to best prepare Worldbuilder for its intended audience. Worldbuilder is a fairly small program that references all the artwork and other assets already built into Command & Conquer 3, so we believed that providing the toolset on a download-only basis would not overly inconvenience those looking forward to it.
We are absolutely committed to releasing the latest version of Worldbuilder for Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars in early April, and you will be able to download it right here directly from our site. The Worldbuilder download will include a detailed instruction manual (100-plus pages) that is intended both for beginning map designers as well as advanced and returning Worldbuilder users.
Well, it's nice to see WB coming out soon. I'm sure the download-only release will only amplify the "Where's my Worldbuilder!??!?!111" questions we get, but I suppose it's better to have an answer than to not. It'd definitely by nice to see the Mod SDK come out at the same time--and I'm not at all convinced that is anywhere near release--but we'll probably need to wait into the summer for that.
