C&C Labs News

Actually, what we've confirmed is that we will provide a "ladder kit" that will enable individuals (fansites, gaming rooms, players in general) to set up their own personal ladders. We'll provide the ladder...err...author...to enable various rules, passwords, options, etc. They'll also get to include anyone - even if its just for their closest friends. We're currently implementing the ladder kit so their will be more news to come in the near future.

The Ranking system in Generals will be ran by the players not EA. So it will be up to the fansite/fans who host ladders to monitor them.

LOL! Doesn't mean we won't patch the game, and that does not mean we won't link to the top 5 ladders around the community.
Are you saying you guys can't trust yourselves to run an honest ladder?

Yes look at our ladder, under staffed and very well ran. I've seen some killer fan ladders for UT and Quake, I think Generals could have the same.

Sorry... But it's something new we wanted to try that has worked well for other games. Like I said, we will promote the top 5 most played ladders on our site. Since this is after all about fame and recognition you will still recieve it.

Most of which just focus on what they feel are the problems that have been plaguing the community in the last year. I figured I might as well join the bandwagon, but instead take a different spin. For once, I want to focus on how to IMPROVE the community, not what is "wrong" with it.

Well let's see...community articles. Seems everyone has an opinion on the state of the community these days. Some are good and thought out, and others should have been flushed down the toilet at their concept, know what I mean? Frankly speaking, I don't think the average fan gives a hoot what state the Westwood community is in. They come to our websites looking for goodies for their game. If ya don't have what they want, they move on to the next site. Doesn't take a Master's degree to figure that one out. Fact is, people have a tendancy to complicate what once was really quite simple. Now every seems to think it necessary to analyze what's going on. And what is that you may ask? Don't ask me cause I ain't got no idea.

I do know that life is what ya make it. Works for me.

I mind my own business and update my two websites I have. Then I take some time out to entertain my cats, go to work, sleep, and get up and do it all over again.

The state of the community for me is this: When I go online and my websites are working, then I'm happy cause the fans can get to them. Then I surf to other websites in the community to see if they are online. Yep...sure enough, there they are. So for today everything is working. Will it still be working tomorrow? I have no idea. I just take one day at a time and don't worry about tomorrow =)

Hey everyone,

Ash of CNCSERIES has posted a good article about the public relations problems regarding Command and Conquer. Here is a small peice of the article:

In the past month, the Official Site was completed and set up to be viewed by all. After a beautiful Flash intro, catchy thudding music and a pleasing looking black layout, what was there? Not much, really. An information section that has been surpassed by most sites in the community and hasn't been updated once (nor since the original preview by the looks of it) with a rather.....poor way of worming out of it: a tag with "undocumented" stamped on it. Does this console you? I'm guessing it's supposed to radiate a feeling of militaristic background, but when you look beyond the graphics you see it for what it really is: a site with no info or new screenshots whatsoever. Essentially, it's a waste of space, the only purpose being to attract people to the name. Imagine it as a supermodel; simply draped over a superior product in order to catch attention. Sorry, but I've grown out of buying a product because of a pretty woman sat on top of it.

You can find the rest of it here.


Mark at CNC Universe had a responsive article to Ash's, here is a small exerpt:
 

Westwood was never known for it’s brilliant marketing technique when Virgin owned it. Part way through development of a number of titles, EA purchased Westwood. This gave them access to EA’s huge money reserves and marketing resources. Needless to say that now Westwood has gained an untimely reputation of being a sellout and a mass marketing machine, not the precision engineering company that it once was.

You Can find the rest of this article here.


There are two new scanned pages of Generals information. Here is a small clip of it:
 

And that's before you even consider the titular officer. As well as Red Alert 2-style hero characters, you'll also be able to take along a General who will open up more troop types and tactical options. Quite how autonomous these epauletted elites will be is yet to be finalised, but some of the names hint at their uses: Terrorist Cell General, BioWar General, Warlord General and so on. Is this the end of tank rushing in C&C?

You would be able to see the rest of the article in our Miscellaneous Section of our Images Gallery but given the "situation" we can't upload them. So just click on the link below to access the makeshift image viewer. It's kind of crude but I only had 20 minutes to make it and I've been awake for over 16 hours straight now.

That's it, If you would like to leave comments, i will respond, but for now, I'm out, it's definatly time for bed...

• Wayne from CNCGN has made yet another great Generals render.


• CNC Matrix has posted a new Generals fan art image:
  
  Head over here for the full sized image.


• Westwood Unleashed has posted a small preview of Generals from Hyper Magazine.


• The Taiwanese Generals Site has been launched by EAP.  It isn't Flash like the English Generals Preview website, but it has a good layout.  So, if you speak Chinese, check it out.


• CNC Universe has a scanned in version of the interview that PC Powerplay had with Mark Skaggs.  A text version can be found at CNCGenerals.com right here.

And that's all for CNC news for now.  I also just wanted to let everyone know that the Generals World Special Forces Clan website now has a new members section.  User account will be added to that later today, so check back for new on the [GWSF] site.

ALERT! ALERT!
There is another PC Game over at http://www.pcgcentral.com on the lower right hand side asking "What do you think was best PC game at E3 was?". We need all hands to cast their vote for C&C Generals.
WOOT! WOOT!
Chris Rubyor (Delphi)

A nice bonus is that EA Pacific is planning on releasing the editor several months earlier than the game. This will, I hope, allow everyone a chance to play around with the editor without getting bored of it. What I hope this will do is jumpstart a community of mappers sharing ideas. Imagine this, one guy finds a neat and novel idea for making a map much more interactive. He posts this on a community forum, and other mappers take note. Adding this to their own ideas, they come up with many different applications for the neat idea. The first week Generals is released, there's already plenty of cool and novel maps, as map makers have already had time to climb the learning curve. This sort of thing is EXACTLY what the community needs to thrive and flourish.

Here's an awsome new Generals render, this time from CNCDEN:

Click on the image to see the full-sized version.  It's available in both 800x600 and 1024x768.

Pentium 2 400Mhz
700 mb of hard drive space
16 mb graphics card
128 mb of RAM
A mouse and a keyboard (obviously)
8 speed CD-Rom drive

Hmm, I can't say for sure just yet, but the MHZ might need to be bumped up by 200 MHZ (600) and a GeForce 2 32MB minimum.

ALERT! ALERT!

There is a new PC Game poll over at http://firingsquad.gamers.com/ on the lower right hand side asking "What PC game are you most looking forward to?". We need all hands to cast their vote for C&C Generals.

Good luck and God speed!

Chris Rubyor (Delphi)
Online Community Manager
Command & Conquer
Electronic Arts/Westwood Studios

7. If you take a look on to RA2, you will recognize that there are many, many cheaters and game-washers. Do you have any plans for generals like anti-cheating tools or better and longer support, so that this cheating-wave won't overrun WOL?
[Skaggs, Mark] We've been working on this since Yuri's Revenge and have built some critical components into the new engine to eliminate the possibility of the cheats we've seen so far. That being said, hackers and cheaters won't go away so we'll have to continue to keep up with them even after we ship.

I've just made a bunch of back-end updates to CNC Generals World.  This includes a new news system.  I will email news updaters about how they can log into the new system shortly.