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World Of Command & Conquer

'Highly, highly recommended'
-Chris Hudak, GameSpot

This Year, Command & Conquer, the strategy-game franchise that in 1995 completely changed the direction to Strategy Gaming Worldwide is celebrating its 10th anniversary!
In 1996, Westwood Released the next smashing C&C Hit - Red Alert, and even with the release of Warcraft II, nothing could quite match the sequel to Command & Conquer for style, polish, and action.

In 1997, Westwood make a step to what can be described as one of the first MMORPG games by releasing Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor. It was a deathmatch-type game in which each player controlled a unit of their own choice, however, it should be noted that one will not simply win by selecting the mammoth tank. All units are almost equal in the beginning but recieve better stats by picking up crates.
Unfortunately, It was pulled from Westwood's online service before the end of its release year.

Command & Conquer made a huge return in 1999 with smashing hit Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.Set in the 2030s Tiberian Sun relied much more heavily on Science Fiction than its predecessor. Military technology included pulse rifles, battle mecha, cybernetic warriors, and hovercrafts. In one set of missions the commander must attack or defend a crashed alien spacecraft.

The Firestorm Expansion in 2000 plays a big role in the C&C Storyline. GDI fights Nod while its computer system CABAL becomes a renegade faction of its own after it turns on its original creators and starts the production of cyborg armies. Without a computer system to help them, Nod falls into disarray and steals GDI's EVA. The two factions must then join forces to stop CABAL from destroying the world, not realising that they are fighting an enemy that was there even before tiberium came to earth...

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 was the continuation of the Red Alert Storyline. The game featured better graphics and multiplayer and a continuation of the Red Alert story. However, unlike the first Red Alert, it did not feature connections to the Tiberian Storyline.Alexander Romanov - Secretary of Ukraine during the events of the first Allied/Soviet war, Romanov was appionted by Allied commanders to be the (presumably) puppet head of the Soviet Union. Instead, he formed the World Socialist Alliance and began a new war against the United States with the assistance of his personal advisor and unawarded Soviet Hero, Yuri.

Yuri made his revenge in Red Alert 2 Expansion, Yuri`s Revenge in 2001. It featured a whole new faction: Yuri's psychic army. The side had various "psychic" technologies, such as mind controllers, poison snipers, and genetically mutated soldiers. Although there was a new side, there was still only one Allied campaign and one Soviet campaign, but Yuri could be played in multiplayer.

2002 marked the next step in Command & Conquer History with the release of Command & Conquer: Renegade.A FPS port of the first C&C for PC. Renegade`s storyline deals with the abduction of GDI's top three tiberium research specialists. GDI's special forces commando Nick "Havoc" Parker is assigned to rescue Tiberium experts, who have been forced by Nod into bio-chemistry reaserch for the Brotherhood's top secret "Project Re-Genesis": an attempt to create genetically enhanced super soldiers. Nearly every unit and most of the structures players were exposed to in the original Command & Conquer have been re-created in the game. New characters include various Mutants, GDI elite commandos known as the "Dead Six", and Nod elites like Sakura and Mendoza.

Renegade 2 was the second FPS in the C&C franchise. However, after being presented to Electronic Arts it was canceled. Renegade2`s storyline is speculated to be that connecting thread betwean Red Alert 2 and the first Command & Conquer, featuring Scavengers as the predecessors of Nod and the followers of the fallen Soviet Empire, while the Allies slowly become a UN-sponsored initiative to combat terrorism and preserve order and civilization.

2003 Marked the release of the last Command & Conquer game. Named 'Generals', it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the C&C Storyline but utilizes the SAGE (Strategy Action Game Engine) engine. This proprietary engine is an extended version of the Westwood3D engine (used in C&C Renegade), and EA has not made any announcements as to whether or not it will license the SAGE engine to other developers, however it has been used for other EA games such as The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth. Generals also marked the return of Command & Conquer to the Mac OS in 2004. It was going to be followed by a Mac OS version of Red Alert, but that got scraped by EA too.

Promised to be out by the end of 2003, an in-dev C&C project unfortunately was caught in the midst of EA's reorganization, and the development team working on this project resigned from EA to form Petroglyph Studios (currently developing StarWars:Empire At War). The team responsible for the Command & Conquer Storyline was the next logical choice to carry on development of the project, but instead, (entitled by C&C Fans) Tiberian Twilight was canceled in favour of The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth.

In Fall 2004, Mark Skaggs, ex-EALA VP and Executive Producer made this announcement:

Hi everyone,
I hope everyone is enjoying one of the best years ever for PC gaming.

On the eve of one of our own major releases, The Lord of the Rings(TM), The Battle for Middle-earth(TM), the one thing we've grown to understand is how important the community - our most loyal supporters - is for industry. This started back in our days at Westwood where the community for our games has always been a big priority. We understand that you are the most important and influential group for us and we are constantly amazed at the amount of talent used to create quality assets and mods.

Having said that, we have a MAJOR announcement to make and we are making it exclusively to our long time C&C fans. This announcement is not going out to the press and it won't appear on the EA website or anywhere else online. We are very proud to announce that the team that brought you Command & Conquer(TM) Red Alert 2(TM), Command & Conquer(TM) Yuri's Revenge, and Command & Conquer(TM) Generals has officially started work on our next project set in the Red Alert universe!

As I mentioned, we're very proud to ship what we feel is one of the best RTS games ever released. Most of you have probably heard of The Lord of the Rings(TM), The Battle for Middle-earth(TM) which hits stores this week. We've introduced some really innovative features and gameplay mechanics, which you should definitely check out when you get a chance. You will also see a major enhancement to the Sage graphics engine we originally created for Command & Conquer Generals. Expect us to leverage and continue to evolve this powerful engine as we start work on our new Command & Conquer game.

Thanks again for all your support over the years. This entire team is incredibly excited to work on the next Command & Conquer chapter. Look for an official announcement soon and have a wonderful holiday.

Mark Skaggs
VP and Executive Producer
Electronic Arts

In 2005, Mark Skaggs left EA, due to 'family problems'. Later on, an announcement is made of a new game. A game, called The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth II. And so, C&C is still left in the dust...

On 17 August, 2005, CnCDen`s Lion made public the information, that there was another C&C Game, set in the tiberian storyline that got canceled. The exact info from the site:

I received some info from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. This may be old news as well. But I don't recall ever seeing anything posted about it in past years. I'm labeling this as a rumor since I was unable to confirm the info...but the source is fairly reliable.

Back a year or so before Westwood Studios was closed by EA, there were several projects in the works that never made it out the door. One was a First Person Shooter/RTS Hybrid titled "Battlefields". The other was an MMOG with a working title of "Continuum" that may have taken place in the Tiberian universe. Just rumors...

Interesting though...

Later, it was made clear by Petroglyph Studios Members (ex-westwood employees), that C&C Continuum was INDEED in development while the 'Battlefileds' project rumor was a fake. This is what Ishmael (Adam Isgreen) from Petroglyph had to say:

posted by Ishmael-PG @ CnCDen.com

I don't think it would hurt to say a little, since that project is very, very dead.

Continuum was a MMORPG type game that was (I always used this to describe it) "C&C meets Zelda meets Counterstrike". C&C universe (Tiberian setting), Zelda ease of play, Counterstrike-like tactical battles. It was an MMORPG for those that didn't want to just stand there and beat on something while numbers floated off to tell you what was going on. The design was centered around movement, range, and abilities / vulnerabilities.

Those of you that had a chance to play Panzer Dragoon RPG (or Orta's boss battles) can get a vague idea of how combat would play... but get it off rails and with multiple players at once. =)

It was a class based game with some very fun classes for each side. Had instancing (called "crisis zones") way before any other MMG had put it in action, and was shaping up to be quite cool. We had a great world layout, had dino island in there as an event while you were flying from the US to europe on occasion, mutants taking over new jersey, a half-sunken Los Angeles (which a few years later we see NY in that state in the film "A.I." -- man I KNEW that would look cool!), and some other really fun stuff (an area 51 instance, etc.). You could ally with GDI, Nod, or Mutants. Each had their own advantages. Had a really cool class chooser concept, weapon crafting / customization, etc. Ah, the memories.

We had completed class designs, weapon construction, zone outlines, and had a rudimentary engine up and running that we were developing our combat model within. Since the game revolved around fluid combat and tactics (in a client-server setting), it was the critical thing we needed to get right first.

Just for history sake, EQ was out at this time, but that was it -- this was before AO, WoW, DAoC, etc. One nice justification is to see that a lot of the ideas we were going after WERE good ones -- instancing, simple interface, immersive environments, quick transport between hubs, etc.

I realize that Mr. Skaggs doesn't get a lot of love in here, but he had NOTHING to do with this project not going forward. Suffice it to say that this one was born and died because of stuff that was going on internally at Westwood.

Personally, I wish this one had gone forward. Everyone that touched it really loved it.

There's your history lesson for the day, kids.

Ishmael (Adam I)
http://www.petroglyphgames.com

So is C&C Left to die in the dust? Who knows...

-Information gathered from Wikipedia , CnCDen and PlanetCNC.

.:: Articles From Tuesday, 13th of June 2006 ::.

» RenEvo Announce C&C FarCry!!!

[ Command & Conquer | Posted by: Mad Ivan @ 12:23am on 13th of June ]

This pits each team against each other, with the objective being to destroy each other's bases. The beauty is that the team's respective bases are bound by typical C&C rules: blow up the mining facility, and it won't be able to make money. Destroy its vehicle factory, and it won't be able to produce vehicles. Do the same with base's power.

I think you get the idea.

Key Features:
You can easily create as many different character classes as you want, including the health, armor, weapons and ammo lists, Stamina chart, Movement table, and player model.

You can easily create as many vehicles you want.

You can specify which character class a player inherits when they spawn at any individual spawn point.

You can construct the PT menu for characters and vehicles from the SoldierFactory and VehicleFactory buildings.

You can place as many PT zones as you want anywhere. These act as encapsulated areas of space whose shape can be altered per PT zone. This means you can easily fit a PT zone anywhere you want on a map and make it look and feel appealing to that map.

You can place as many Gun Emplacements anywhere you want on the map that will obey building rules including powering down on base power loss and becoming inactive when the team's BaseDefense is destroyed. Freedom to enable/disable most of this logic is available per gun emplacement.

You can enable/disable anything including PT zones, spawners, and dynamic lights when a building is powered up, powered down, and/or destroyed.

You can place no or any amount of "MCT"s, called CriticalPoints, to any building. This means a building can have more than one MCT, no MCT, or more than one building can share the same MCT.

You can specify the Resource timer on the MineFacility per map.

More to Come!!!

-C&C FarCry

.:: Articles From Wednesday, 10th of May 2006 ::.

» RenEvo Press Release!!!

[ Command & Conquer | Posted by: Mad Ivan @ 01:15am on 10th of May ]

Renegade Evolutions Talent Search

LOS ANGELES, April 29 – Renegade Evolutions (http://www.renevo.com) is looking
for talented people in the fields of game design, web design, management, and
other related fields.

RenEvo comprises talents in many fields; fiction writes, game design, game
programming, network administration and programming, web design and programming,
graphical design, conceptual art and documentation.

Our goal is to learn and evolve, by evolving other games and ideas into large
scale modifications, utilities and games.

The RenEvo team is currently working on several projects, including utilities
for Petroglyph's Star Wars: Empire at War, Westwood Studios' C&C Renegade,
CryTech's FarCry and CryEngines, the mysterious project Acheron and the Command
& Conquer inspired project C&C: The Dead-6.

RenEvo is looking to enrich its talent pool to help in shifting to higher gears
in their star projects as well as to spread and fill the ever growing well of
knowledge for future projects. If you are an intelligent person, skilled and yet
eager to learn more and develop your skills, and are willing to contribute even
your two cents – this is the place to be.

RenEvo is currently looking for the following talents:

A dedicated and skilled web designer and admin for a unique project of
streamlining and then managing our web site.

Talented and dedicated concept artists for conceptual work and
storyboarding.

Talented programmers who can think out of the box or are eager to learn…
everything.

3D Model designers, artists and animators.

3D Level designers familiar with the latest games and modification suites.

RenEvo is always looking for new talent in any field. So if you think you
have what it takes, or you are simply eager to find out and learn – we are
waiting for you.
Send your applications, complete with details and samples of work to
dante@renevo.com and cypher@renevo.com

Click an image for a better version.

->RenEvo.

.:: Articles From Thursday, 20th of April 2006 ::.


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