C&C Labs News Wire

— Thursday, September 25, 2003 —

Posted By: Mike at 11:21:48 AM ET

Few Community Updates

I've got a few community updates for everyone this afternoon.  First of all, CnC Sector has closed its doors.

Why you ask? Well Generals hasn't lived up to my standards of a 'true' CNC game, and Zero Hour certainly won't.. obviously as a webmaster, you need a certain amount of motivation to keep you going on running/operation the site, and.. well, Generals has killed that.

You can click here for the full message.  CnC Matrix is also currently down, as Malc explains, because "I did something which I didn't think would effect anything but resulted in my host deleting all of the files and databases without giving me any warning...".  The site should be back online by Monday, hopefully.  To see the full message and explanation, click here.

And on a slightly better note, here are a couple of updates from Mike (EAComMike).

Hey all,

I wanted to update everyone on several things this afternoon. First off, Command & Conquer™ Generals Zero Hour has shipped and should start appearing in stores if it hasn't already. The team is ready and waiting to see if any issues pop up requiring immediate attention. Players can expect to see the chat monitors in the lobbies for the next few weeks.

As mentioned in a previous news update, a few members of the Generals development team will be at EB in Westwood, Los Angeles, CA this Friday from 5:00-7:00. For more deatails on this, read our previous news message.

Here are a couple of other items the team has planned
We’re making some multiplayer maps for free distribution in the near future.
Generally just playing the game and having fun. We’re taking a short rest. Many of us just got back from a week long break.
Reading the message boards and looking for player feedback & thoughts on ZH.
Thanks to Deezire for the kind words.
Continuing work on LOTR which was announced yesterday.
EAComMike and the rest of the Generals team!

FYI - This is being posted in the forums because we're in the process of updating the Generals website. At the moment, the tool I use to publish with isn't working.

You can see that post in the Official Forums here.  Here's another couple posts that were in the forums, in regards to graphic problems and performance with Zero Hour:

Possible Microwave Tank Problem
We have a new unit in the game called the US Microwave Tank. It produces a cool effect around the unit to simulate microwaves. However, it’s a pretty tricky effect that some video cards can’t handle. We auto-detect any systems that can’t draw the effect correctly and don’t show the effect in those cases. However, if there is a system that we aren’t detecting properly, the user may get a visual problem. It could be anything ranging from an ugly, multicolored graphical distortion around the unit to an incredibly slow frame rate (1-2 FPS) to a black screen. In every case, the problem goes away when the unit is destroyed.

One quick solution to this problem is that we give users the option to turn this effect off manually. From the Main Menu, if they go to the Options screen and set their detail level to Custom and turn off Heat Effects, the problem should be corrected.

If this fix doesn’t work, or if you see any commonalities among machines that seem to have this problem, that information would be helpful to us. We have heard a few reports that the Radeon 9700 Pro has problems, but we have also seen that machine work just fine, so we’re trying to gather more data.

Send any helpful information to this email address and I'll pass it along:
generals@ea.com

To get the best performance...
You must have an AGP video card. PCI video cards are generally much slower than their AGP counterparts. PCI cards are normally below the minimum game spec.

Make sure to turn off automatic anti-virus protection. This is usually located on the bottom of your screen in your PC tool bar. Simply right click and turn off. Remember to turn back on when exiting the game.

Make sure your audio & video drivers are updated. This can be done by visiting their respective website and following instructions.

Also remember that if you're having any technical problems with Generals or Zero Hour you can ask for help in our Tech Questions forum!

Links