Can you check in the files of the game on your disk whether you find multiple folders for different versions, each with a rather large .dat file inside? I believe that's the true executable.
If you only find a folder for v1.09, then yeah, I guess the Origin version is severely crippled in that aspect :-\
I thought I had one that was like 6gigs but it dissapeared.... so they must have some pretty severe protection to keep the user from messing with anything.
Nonsense. In the Origin client, go to Origin -> Application Settings. In the settings, click "Advanced" You will see a line saying "Your games will be installed to the following location:"
Select the path in the box under that and copy it, and paste it in the address bar of your file explorer (winkey+E), and press enter, and you should see the folders of your installed games under it.
Right. I installed it.
Looks like the game exes are in
Origin Games\Command and Conquer 3 TW and KW\Command Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars\RetailExe\
AND it seems that the Origin version is indeed lacking all versions except 1.0 and 1.09.
So my advice is, play on 1.0 instead?
I've tried from 1.0, 1.01, 1.02.... etc. yes my folder does have 1.0 and 1.09, and none in between, but when I tried any including 1.0.... it gave the message version not recognized please be sure to patch to newest version(possibly paraphrasing at this point)
at any rate, I'm a little burnt by it. I've been trying to find a working walkthrough for it. None are up to date
As far as the -runver, I've tried it in the origin box and in the desktop shortcut icon, going to try it in the one in the folder.
okay the one in the folder as I said Origin is trying to keep anyone out, I had entered it in and it changed and then it created a new folder one with -runver 1.0 at the end and another that was named as the original was, but that only had the launcher icon in it. and now it won't launch at all. it comes up and delivers an error message. So I tried to go in and run a repair, and that seemed frozen so now I'm having it do a update. This is aggravating to no end
I have a cnc3game DAT file in there but I don't think it's an executable?
That is the game executable, yes. But it is normally ran through a launcher, since you can't launch executables directly unless their extension is .exe; renaming them to .dat is a classic way games use to force users to use the launcher instead, which often gives extra configuration or options to the game. (It's not new. The original 1995 DOS C&C1 has "game.dat" as executable, ran by a tiny "C&C.exe" launcher program)
For example, in C&C3's case, the game's launcher can select a version from the different cnc3game.dat files in the version folders.
But yeah, it's very possible that feature was broken by Origin, then :-\
I'll look further into this, and see if maybe it can be repaired by adding the older version folders manually or something. But if these .dat files themselves were adapted to Origin, that chance is rather low.
