C&C Labs News Wire

— Tuesday, July 31, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 7:41:24 PM ET

New Tiberian Dawn Blog

The guys over at the Tiberian Dawn mod have released the tenth blog in their series, featuring new artillery units they've finished, a podcast, new music tracks, and more. They also have a new website. They've certainly gotten the jump on a lot of the C&C 3 mods out there and are worth keeping an eye on.

— Friday, July 27, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 2:45:24 PM ET

C&C Files Commenting Contest

JohnWE over at CNC Files has announced a new contest:
Finally, a different sort of contest.  No maps to make, no mods to edit, no people to beat in this one.  Just a simple You explain to Us what's happening in a replay! 

Introducing the CnC-Files Rise of the Commentators Contest.  Make or Download a replay, Add commentary. Send it in.  We'll judge the entries and you can win plenty of good stuff thanks to Filefront and EA.

Your commentary can be professional, or it can be comical.  Make good use of the telestrator, and don't be afraid to watch the replay several times before attempting to commentate it.
Sounds like a neat idea. Read more here.

— Thursday, July 26, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 6:03:19 PM ET

News Out of EA

There's been a couple news items out of EA:
  • First, on the official C&C site, there's a big banner stating "On August 7th, C&C will be revolutionized." One assumes, correctly in my opinion, that this is when EA will announce the beginnings of an expansion or a major C&C ladder season, both of which, I am relatively certain, are in the works.
  • Apoc has posted some details on the 1.07 patch. Nothing too surprising, just fixes to some pretty important bugs.
  • Mike Verdu, the Executive Producer of C&C 3, offers what essentially amounts to an apology with regards to the inconsistencies in C&C 3 and the rest of the C&C Canon. While it's good to see that EA realizes it needs to do better, it's rather disappointing to see how many issues there were and how far removed C&C 3 was from the classic storytelling, especially how EA offered much hype prior to the game's release about how they were returning to the roots and spending a lot of time studying the Canon. In any event, as EA should know, words are cheap, but a great game can last a long time. Let's see how they do the next time around (which shouldn't be too long).

— Wednesday, July 25, 2007 —

Posted By: Mike at 3:30:46 PM ET

New Generals World Poll

The old poll was a tad out of date, seeing as C&C 3 Patch 1.06 was released last week.  So I've created a new poll: Have you played the CnC: All Stars mod yet? Be sure to vote on the right side of the page!

And per usual, here are the previous poll results:

What are you most anxiously awaiting?
90
Patch 1.06
 
97
A C&C 3 Expansion
 
28
C&C 3 Modding SDK
 
2
BattleCast Client
 
35
None of the above
 
Total Votes: 252

— Tuesday, July 24, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 5:59:28 PM ET

New C&C Tiberian Dawn Blog

Tocsin writes in to tell us that the latest C&C Tiberian Dawn blog has been posted. Tiberian Dawn is a mod for C&C 3 that aims to recreate faithfully the first C&C--quite a daunting task, I am sure. The blog shows some work in progress and discusses the current state of the mod, namely how they're still waiting for the SDK (like the entire modding community) to begin their coding. In the meantime, their art certainly looks impressive!

— Wednesday, July 18, 2007 —

Posted By: Mike at 3:54:53 PM ET

Downtime

Well, it seems that the All Stars release garnered more attention than we anticipated. Despite the fact that we had 4 of our own mirrors plus FilePlanet, Generals World's server still experienced a sustained bandwidth usage of 15-20 MB downloaded per second for at least 8 hours following the initial release of the mod. According to our web host, we supposedly used over 250 GB of bandwidth in less than 24-hours.

Our website was temporarily disconnected by our host, EasyCGI, at just after 3:00 PM eastern time on Tuesday.  Access was restored today around 6:30 PM ET.

Unfortunately, you can no longer download All Stars from us directly - at least for now.  Our mirrors are still online however, and you should be able to get good download speeds from them.


All in all, I apologize for the downtime.  We haven't had much of it in our 4 years as a fansite, and I'm going to work to keep it that way in the future.

— Tuesday, July 17, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 3:48:20 AM ET

Command and Conquer: All Stars Released

By my count, it has been 4,338 days since the little known company of Westwood Studios unveiled what is in my humble opinion the beginning of the best video game series of all time: Command and Conquer. It is my distinct pleasure and honor to unveil today something which I hope dearly will be a tribute to the many wonderful hours we have all spent playing Command and Conquer, in its various forms, over the years. Command and Conquer: All Stars was conceived as a celebration and combination of, quite literally, simply the best of Command and Conquer. Using Command & Conquer's somewhat fragmented timelines, All Stars aims to recreate for the veteran player some of the great moments from classic C&C, and to awaken in the newer player a desire to see what he or she might otherwise not: the greatest units, structures, and gameplay ideas from the past dozen years. Command and Conquer: All Stars is a case study in perseverance, patience, and passion. Each of the more than 25 people who worked on All Stars over the course of its more than three years in development worked solely as a volunteer, fueled by their love of Command and Conquer and their love of creating a testament to its great history. Combined, the team has spent thousands of hours on the project, writing code, perfecting art, and "testing" the mod -- though oftentimes I, for one, was having too much fun playing to actually test. The team, through much hard work turned my first scribblings, dating from February 22nd, 2004, into a mod I have spent many hours enjoying:



I think from these images you can appreciate the tremendous work the entire team has done in turning my scrawled notes into something playable and fun. The team is very pleased with the final result, and we hope you enjoy it and find that it fulfills its goal of serving as a tribute to C&C. Perhaps I realized we had truly succeeded when the esteemed Lion of CNC Den, who has seen quite a bit of C&C history, told me that he "loved it" when I gave him an advance copy of the mod. But I will be truly satisfied if you all love it, so be sure to tell us what you think at our forums. I am quite sure that now, however, you all think I have gone on too long, and so I have. So, since a creative mod can reawaken more than a decade of memories, the All Stars team proudly points you to our downloads page, and presents you with Command and Conquer: All Stars.
Last edited by Mike on Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 7:32:08 AM.

— Monday, July 16, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 6:22:32 PM ET

Patch 1.06 Released

Patch 1.06 has been released today. It clears up a number of exploits with C&C 3. You can download it from EA's C&C 3 patch page. Apoc also posted a brief note on their new disconnecting policy, as well as a reminder that the C&C 3 ladder will reset tomorrow.

— Sunday, July 15, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 2:35:27 PM ET

C&C All Stars to Release Tuesday

After more than three years in development, C&C All Stars will release this Tuesday, July 17th. Congratulations to the entire staff on an impressive accomplishment. To celebrate, the team has released a wallpaper by General Kane Nash, seen below. It's available in a 1600x1200 version and 1024x768. Enjoy!

Last edited by Mike on Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 10:41:02 PM.

— Saturday, July 14, 2007 —

Posted By: Mike at 1:57:51 PM ET

Patch 1.06 to be Relased Monday

The official word from APOC indicates that C&C 3 Patch 1.06 will be released this coming Monday.  He posted a lengthy update on the Official C&C Forums:

I apologize for not providing this update yesterday, but I wanted to make sure our plans were solidified. We just got QA sign-off on patch 1.06 last night, a day later than expected, and are prepping it for release.

Patch 1.06 will be released this Monday. The time-window for deployment is uncertain, so stay tuned to the message boards for when I say it is officially LIVE. Hopefully I can beat out the sharp-shooters on here that eye-ball our FTP servers 24/7.

And just a reminder, patch 1.06 is a small patch with NO balance changes. However, it does address the invincibility exploit and will greatly increase disconnect reporting so we can better track disconnect frequency amongst all users and suspend and ban accordingly. Patch 1.06 will also fix the Cloaking field bug that was taking away too much money from you. There are other minor changes in 1.06, but the ones noted above are the most significant.

On Tuesday we are going to finally reset the 1v1 and 2v2 ladder. Here is exactly what will be reset:

- Your Ladder Rank
- Your WIN/LOSS LADDER record
- Your ladder Elo score
- Your disconnect/desync stats

Your historical stats will not be touched. These are the stats you can see in your Persona Profile under "Overall". This means that your overall win/loss record will be disproportionate to your new 1v1 and 2v2 record after the reset. We did not want to reset your historical stats, but if popularity is high enough, we can do this in the next ladder reset. Please note, everyone will be taken off the ladder after the reset. You will not be put back on the ladder until you play at least one ranked online match.
The update contains more info as well, including details about patch 1.07 and the upcoming ladder season.  To read the update in its entirety, click here.

— Tuesday, July 10, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 6:08:13 PM ET

New Tiberian Dawn Blog

Tocsin from Tiberian Dawn, an ambitious C&C 3 mod, emailed me recently to let us know that he's done a new blog entry. It's a very detailed piece, and also mentions that they've transitioned to a new management team, led by Duuude007 and Kushan. Check it out, if you're interested in a mod that aims to recreate Tiberian Dawn in 3D.

— Saturday, July 7, 2007 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 5:03:45 PM ET

New All Stars Screens

Well, I suppose it's time I let you all in on our fun and games. We're preparing version 1.0.0.0 of All Stars now. That is, we are packaging what you guys will, in a matter of days, finally get a chance to play. Reviews of our last internal beta have been positive, the AI has been improved a bit, and we've made a few graphical refinements; all told, I am very happy with the release and I think you will be as well. Expect it sometime later this week, in both "Lite" and "Full" versions.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the five pictures below should be fifty times as valuable as the hundred words written above.

Click on any of them for a full size image. You can obviously see quite a bit of the Red Alert Alliance here, from their powerful Kirovs in the second screenshot to their Iron Curtain Generals' Power in the third that turns a bunch of Gattling Tanks and IFVs into quite a force. In the bottom two screens, you can get a glimpse of some Red Alert Alliance buildings; the Nuke Silo, Tesla Coil, War Factory, Battle Lab, and Barracks are all clearly visible, as are groups of tanks meandering about in the bases.

Sometime before the mod's release, we'll likely have at least one more piece of media for you, which I know I've been hoarding for a bit because I think it's really excellent. Until then, though, I hope these screens will tide you over. It won't be long now.

For those of you unfamiliar with All Stars, we invite you to check out our website here.
Last edited by Mike on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 2:32:24 AM.

— Tuesday, July 3, 2007 —

Posted By: Mike at 3:33:32 PM ET

Patch 1.06, Mod SDK Update

Here's the latest from C&C community manager Aaron "APOC" Kaufman, posted in this thread on the Official Forums.
- Patch 1.06 is not releasing this week but is looking good for soon after. The patch is locked, no more changes, and we're just hammering out one more bug fix in it. We will also fast track this patch through our normal approval process given that it is much smaller in size and high in importance. The reason for no release this week is largely due to the shortened work week from the 4th of July USA holiday tomorrow. Some of us, myself included will be working Thursday/Friday, but numerous key resources we need for a patch release will be in and out of office. I will not commit to an exact release date/time until I have as close to 100% confidence as possible

- Patch 1.06 will fix the invincibility exploit, the Nod Cloaking Field power money bug, and add extensive code to helping us track disconnector frequency so we can appropriately suspend and ban player accounts for disconnecting frequently. The patch also addresses a few other minor issues that are likely unnoticeable to you, the user.

- On the cheating front, we are actively pursuing those caught using cheating programs and are sending out warning messages. If the warning is not complied with, then a second offense will warrant a permanent account ban.

- The MOD SDK will be released with Patch 1.07, a patch which is already in the works. We have to make code changes to the game to make it compatible with the MOD SDK and thus a patch is needed. This is why the MOD SDK has not been released yet. We did not do this for Patch 1.06 because the MOD SDK is still getting a few last touches to it. Our goal is to release patch 1.07 in a less than usual time. We know this is critical because the MOD SDK's functionality depends on it and the community is desperately desiring the MOD SDK. This is our next highest priority after 1.06. I will keep you posted on a release time frame, we do not want this to take longer than necessary which is why we are already working on 1.07 and the MOD SDK itself is nearly complete.

- The Ladder Reset did not occur with patch 1.05 largely impart due to this latest invincibility exploit and not having the proper disconnect frequency code included in time. Our aim right now is to reset shortly after patch 1.06 deploys and get our summer ladder season kicked off officially. I am currently working on a 1st season plan which i've been doing a lot of research on, and especially how various other RTS games have handled seasonal ladder play (there are only a few who have). We know a ladder reset is critical and imminent and I can assure you that it is also amongst our highest priorities right now. We want to make sure the ladder reset is done right and done with our summer ladder season heading in to motion.
Looks like 1.06 may be coming to us next week sometime - certainly good news given the prevalence of the aforementioned invulnerability exploit in online matches.

— Tuesday, July 3, 2007 —

Posted By: Mike at 4:14:06 AM ET

New Generals World Poll

I've created a new Generals World poll, asking What are you most anxiously awaiting from EA? Be sure to vote on the right side of the page!

And as always, here are the results from our last poll:

Now that we've seen C&C 3 patched, what's your assessment of the game?
88
Superb...a legit continuation of the C&C tradition
 
21
It's fun, but it's not a true C&C
 
11
It had potential, but there have been too many issues with it
 
29
All in all, a poor showing by EA; it's hopeless
 
Total Votes: 149
A lot of you seem satisfied with the game, but there's a disturbingly large portion of our visitors who deem C&C 3 "hopeless." How can EA do better?

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