EA doesn't always treat its classic library with respect, as evidenced by its recent barely touched-up The Sims Legacy Collection. But the folks shepherding Command & Conquer, a vanguard series in the bygone genre of real-time strategy (RTS) games, are seemingly fueled by a different kind of Tiberium.

After releasing a reverential remaster of the first two games in 2020 with 4K upscaling and behind-the-scenes looks at their full-motion video scenes, EA is now opening up the series even more to its fans. Source code for the original C&C, Red Alert, Renegade (the first-person one), and Generals/Zero Hour has been dropped on GitHub. Along with Steam Workshop support for most of the series, that should enable a new generation of mods for the games. Given the extent of the code available, mods could include the kinds of modern updates, like higher and wider resolutions or beefed-up textures and refresh rates, that all good games deserve.

Building and working with this code will not be a plug-and-play affair. The namesake 1995 game and its hugely popular 1996 Red Alert sequel require some older dependencies, like DirectX 5 and the Greenleaf Communications Library (for a full build and tool access) and the Borland Turbo Assembler (TASM 4.0) to compile. Renegade and Generals, however, call for a whole lot more nostalgia: STLport 4.5.3, the SafeDisk API, the GameSpy SDK, the RAD Miles Sound System SDK, and at least eight more.

Read full article

Comments

It's the year 2000 all over again, because I've just spent the past week playing The Sims, a game that could have had a resurgent zeitgeist moment if only EA, the infamous game publisher, had put enough effort in.

A few days ago, EA re-released two of its most legendary games: The Sims and The Sims 2. Dubbed the "The Legacy Collection," these could not even be called remasters. EA just put the original games on Steam with some minor patches to make them a little more likely to work on some modern machines.

The emphasis of that sentence should be on the word "some." Forums and Reddit threads were flooded with player comments, saying the game either wouldn't launch at all, crashed shortly after launch, or had debilitating graphical issues. (Patches have been happening, but there's work to be done yet.)

Read full article

Comments

After 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced. Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed to install the newer EA app, which launched in 2022.

The launch of Origin in 2011 was a flashpoint of controversy among gamers, as EA—already not a beloved company by this point—began pulling titles like Crysis 2 from the popular Steam platform to drive players to its own launcher.

Frankly, it all made sense from EA's point of view. For a publisher that size, Valve had relatively little to offer in terms of services or tools, yet it was taking a big chunk of games' revenue. Why wouldn't EA want to get that money back?

Read full article

Comments