EA has open sourced Command & Conquer: Red Alert under GPLv3
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Holy shit, EA did something.... Good? I did not have that on my 2025 bingo card. So, what's the catch? There has to be a catch, right?
This doesn't release any copyright work in the game. So you will need to go through and remove any sprites, images, audio, etc that is copyright. Which means you will need to own a copy of the game (to have a right to the copyright usage) to use any binary produced from THIS source.
Additionally, it indicates that you must include in any derivative that the source of your code is from the EA drop here.
Outside of that, it is GPLv3. Of course it has hard dependency on DirectX 5.0. So a fully free version will need to redo those parts. Also the code is very MS VC++ heavy. Don't expect gcc to build you a binary.
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This doesn't release any copyright work in the game. So you will need to go through and remove any sprites, images, audio, etc that is copyright. Which means you will need to own a copy of the game (to have a right to the copyright usage) to use any binary produced from THIS source.
Additionally, it indicates that you must include in any derivative that the source of your code is from the EA drop here.
Outside of that, it is GPLv3. Of course it has hard dependency on DirectX 5.0. So a fully free version will need to redo those parts. Also the code is very MS VC++ heavy. Don't expect gcc to build you a binary.
That's still pretty cool though right?
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That would be a completely legendary move if the dev hired by EA just said "fuck it, I'm open-sourcing this shit!"
It sounds like that's what happened, but through the proper channels. They hired a known CnC community/modding site admin as the dev.
I'd imagine he pitched that this was an easy way to reduce maintenance costs while fostering massive good will and making the amount of long tail sales over time higher.
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I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
If I had to guess, I'd say it's some write-off move. A bit like Epic Games released all Paragon assets after they canceled the game.
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Holy shit.
I hope they opensource Dungeon Keeper.
Can you say why? The opensource project is already insanely good.
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Heh, the red alert readme says it currently requires borland for the asm and watcom compiler for the c/c++.
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Holy shit, EA did something.... Good? I did not have that on my 2025 bingo card. So, what's the catch? There has to be a catch, right?
Short version: You can make free stuff for them but they still own all of it and still require people to purchase a copy to use the derivatives.
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To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game
Was expecting a catch. Still good for modding I guess
This is a pretty standard affair for open sourced games.
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I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
Now if only they open-sourced the SAGE engine, then we'd be all happy
The engine is highly optimized & produces great visuals, Of course there IS OpenSAGE
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That's still pretty cool though right?
I think so. When I first saw the announcement, I was fearing some barely open source license, and was pleasantly surprised.
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's some write-off move. A bit like Epic Games released all Paragon assets after they canceled the game.
Epic released those to add value to their engine not as a write off
EA released this to boost Steam Workshop content - which would boost sales - not as a write off
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I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
dont people already make seperate MODS for each anyways, for them anyways,.
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I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
This is a momentous event. I only wish it had Red Alert 2 in it.
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Open sourcing old games is awesome for video game preservation.
Yeah, this should be standard practice
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's some write-off move. A bit like Epic Games released all Paragon assets after they canceled the game.
As I understand accounting, you really don't need to do stuff like this to write off your assets.
I'm not saying there isn't a cynical corporate reason for doing this but I doubt this is it.
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I hope everyone's SSDs have enough SPACE
SPGHGHAAIGHGHSSSE!!!! is literally the only thing I know about Command & Conquer.
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I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
Is Tiberian Sun included!!!??
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I'm assuming this is more about art assets. Art is not code and you shouldn't expect them for free. It's not a catch.
Which, in the immediate future, makes me wonder less about the things that are going to be done in code, and more about the creation of a new, free, visual and audio resources that make this work. That seems like quite a noble pursuit.
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Sorry, that was the wrong link.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/
If you dig some experienced players comments who bought the "remastered" stuff, they are complaining that they "re-mastered" the exact same bugs that seriously annoyed the players too. They didn't fix the bugs.
With the power of OSS, every bug can be fixed. -
I'm not well versed in C&C, but it's always good to see more games open sourced.
Broken clock
