Welcome back Commanders!

Comprised of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Command & Conquer: Red Alert and their three expansion packs - Covert Ops, Counterstrike and The Aftermath - the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is a passion project between EA and some of the original Westwood Studios team members at Petroglyph.

Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is being created alongside the C&C community, where the project was publicly revealed in October 2018 to gather community insight before development began. An active Community Council has been involved since early pre-production with 24/7 access to the development team. The title features rebuilt graphics and textures with support up to 4K resolution, along with an over seven-hour soundtrack remastered by the renowned original composer Frank Klepacki. The community has helped shape the enhancements of the game through highly requested features like revamped UI, updated controls and a Map Editor for fans to showcase their creations. Multiplayer has been rebuilt from the ground up to support a modern online experience with custom games, 1v1 quick match, Elo-based matchmaking, leaderboards, replays and much more.

Command & Conquer Remastered Collection lead producer Jim Vessella revealed the game’s commitment to the modding scene.

Since the announcement of the Remastered Collection, one of the top questions from the community has been if the game would provide Mod Support. Given the incredible C&C community projects over the past two decades, we appreciated how important this was going to be for the Remastered Collection. It’s time to finally answer the question around Mod Support, but it first requires the reveal of a special surprise for the community.

Today we are proud to announce that alongside the launch of the Remastered Collection, Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license. This is a key moment for Electronic Arts, the C&C community, and the gaming industry, as we believe this will be one of the first major RTS franchises to open source their source code under the GPL. It’s worth noting this initiative is the direct result of a collaboration between some of the community council members and our teams at EA. After discussing with the council members, we made the decision to go with the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA. Our goal was to deliver the source code in a way that would be truly beneficial for the community, and we hope this will enable amazing community projects for years to come.

So, what does it mean for Mod Support within the Remastered Collection? Along with the inclusion of a new Map Editor, these open-source DLLs should assist users to design maps, create custom units, replace art, alter gameplay logic, and edit data. The community council has already been playing with the source code and are posting some fun experiments in our Discord channel. But to showcase a tangible example of what you can do with the software, Petroglyph has actually created a new modded unit to play with. So we asked a fun question - “What would the Brotherhood of Nod do if they captured the Mammoth Tank?” Well, one guess is they’d replace the turret with a giant artillery cannon and have it fire tactical nukes! Thus the Nuke Tank was born. This is a unit which is fully playable in the game via a mod (seen in the screenshot above), and we hope to have it ready to play and serve as a learning example when the game launches.

Alongside Mod Support, I wanted to be transparent and address a feature which many of you have also been passionate about, which is LAN Play. Earlier this year, we had every intention of including LAN Play in the launch version of the game, but sadly this feature did not make it in time. Unfortunately LAN Play became the key impact of the Covid-19 situation as we realized the challenge of developing / testing a “local area network” feature in a workplace time of social distancing. We understand this feature is vital as both an avenue to play mods in multiplayer, and also to serve as a backup in case the online systems are ever down. We’re bummed this one got away, and will continue to keep this on our priority list going forward.

Now in terms of discovering user content, we wanted to take full advantage of the PC platforms to streamline this process. For Steam players, we’re utilizing the Steam Workshop for sharing both maps and mods. Players can subscribe to maps and mods directly in the game’s Community Hub within Steam, or utilize in-game menus to browse / download content as well. Origin players can use the same in-game process for downloading maps but will need to manually install mods into their respective folders outside the game. For both versions, once you’re in the game, you may navigate to the Options / Mods tab where you can then activate the mod. We’re aiming to put together further documentation on uploading content and the entire UGC process around the launch window.

Overall, we are incredibly excited to see what the community creates over the coming months. We anticipate some fantastic content for the Remastered Collection itself, some great updates in current community projects as they incorporate the source code, and perhaps we’ll even see some new RTS projects now made possible with the source code under the GPL. One final note we want to emphasize - we’ve done our best to bug fix and prepare these UGC systems for launch, but we have no doubt that once thousands of you begin creating and sharing content, some quirks will be discovered.

Please continue to share your experience once the game launches, and let us know how we can continue to improve these tools for your benefit.

EA and the C&C Community Council worked hand-in-hand to ensure compatibility with existing mod projects, and the open-source files will give aspiring modders opportunities to build custom maps, units, art and gameplay logic into the classic Command & Conquer experience. To kick off the modding scene the developers at Petroglyph created a new modded unit that players can use, which answers the question, “What would the Brotherhood of Nod do if they captured the Mammoth Tank?” The result is the Nuke Tank, a tank where the turret was replaced by a giant artillery cannon to fire tactical nukes!

Cheers,

Jim Vessella

Pre-orders for the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection digital edition and physical Collector's Editions are available now and include:

• Command & Conquer Remastered Collection (Digital) - $19.99 USD - Only available on Origin and Steam and includes the remastered versions of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, plus all three expansion packs (Covert Operations, Counterstrike, and The Aftermath), and tons of bonus features and improvements.
• Special Edition (Physical) - $59.99 USD - Only available on Limited Run Games, this edition comes in a 2-piece big box with embossing treatments and includes a Steam digital download code, Tiberium crystal 16GB USB drive with remastered original soundtrack (119 tracks, over 7 hours of music including the album, “Frank Klepecki and the Tiberian Sons: Celebrating 25 Years of Command & Conquer”); reversible 18” X 24” poster, four factional enamel pins, tech tree prints (one for each faction), and faction sticker sheet.
• 25th Anniversary Edition (Physical)  - $149.99 USD - Only available on Limited Run Games, this edition includes all items in the Special Edition plus a beautiful foil and embossed rigid box, six-disc remastered original soundtrack signed by Frank Klepacki, 100+ page art book, four faction patches, reversible beanie, metal mammoth tank replica, and painted PVC light and sound tesla coil and obelisk replicas.

The Command & Conquer series helped cement the foundation of the RTS genre’s core gameplay when Command & Conquer: Tiberium Dawn was released in 1995, introducing innovative faction mechanics with asymmetric unit creation and technology trees for a highly strategic experience. In addition to gameplay, the series pushed the boundaries for storytelling with its unique and lighthearted full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes, ultimately creating one of the most recognized villains in games with Kane, the megalomaniac leader of The Brotherhood of Nod. In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Earth has been overrun by Tiberium and while GDI (Global Defense Initiative) aims to contain the material, The Brotherhood of Nod looks to harness its power, leading to all-out war between the factions. Command & Conquer: Red Alert is set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union wages war on the Allies in a fun, action-packed, tactical RTS game.

The Command & Conquer Remastered Collection will be available June 5, 2020 worldwide on PC via Origin and Steam, and as part of an Origin Access Premier subscription.