In an uncharacteristically charitable transfer, EA has simply made the supply code for 4 of its legacy Command & Conquer titles freely obtainable to the general public underneath the GPL license. This contains the restored unique supply code for each Command & Conquer and Crimson Alert, in addition to the SAGE-powered Command & Conquer: Renegade and Command & Conquer: Generals. Whereas fan initiatives like OpenRA and OpenSAGE have produced their very own approximations of the code that powered these titles, having free variations of the unique code to work with is a big profit to online game preservation and future builders.
Recovering and restoring the supply code for these titles was made attainable by the mixed efforts of EA technical director Brian Barnes, Respawn producer Jim Vessella, and Luke Feenan, a long-standing member of the C&C neighborhood who was concerned within the improvement of the Command & Conquer Remastered Assortment in 2020 and bringing the C&C Final Assortment to Steam final March.
Along with the supply code for its legacy titles, EA is bringing Steam Workshop help to its extra modern Command & Conquer titles, full with a modding help pack. This assortment of belongings comprises the supply XML, Schema, Script, Shader, and map information for the entire C&C titles that use the SAGE engine:
These modding instruments will let customers make new maps and belongings together with extra basic modifications to those older titles, similar to probably including help for larger refresh charges or ultrawide resolutions. Options that at the moment must be shoehorned in with instruments like Sage Meta.
Lastly, to cap off this announcement, EA launched a 35-minute video containing alpha gameplay and beforehand unused archival footage from Command & Conquer: Generals and Renegade (under).
Whereas I’m not holding my breath for a brand new Command & Conquer title to look any time quickly, hopefully, making these belongings and instruments obtainable will encourage the event of some new RTS titles within the grand custom of the classics.