CnC Red Alert Ultimate Collection: Are Retaliation Maps included?

@Necrochasm1759

I honestly have no idea. Retaliation is the combination of the PC expansion packs "Counterstrike" and "The Aftermath", but it wouldn't be the first time they put unique things in the console versions.

I ported the videos of RA:Retaliation to PC, in a little pack called "The Lost Files", and that's available with the community RA1 patch, but I have no idea whether there were any unique skirmish maps in there, or whether the same maps simply exist on PC anyway.

If not, I should really check whether I can find them 😉

[edit]

There's an overview of all PC maps here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/97634864@N04/sets/

Apparently there are indeed some unique PS maps. I'll see if I can dig them up.

Thank you very much, highly appreciated

@Necrochasm1759

I checked the ROM, but unfortunately the missions don't seem to use the same file format as the PC version. From a quick look it seems that maybe it could be possible to convert the terrain, if the data I found is indeed terrain (it kind of looks like terrain; has bytes grouped per 4, and I know RA terrain works like that internally), and if the Playstation version of RA uses the same terrain tile IDs as the PC version (The Nintendo 64 version of C&C1 notably didn't) but beyond that, I don't see anything identifiable. RA maps and missions ar stored as plain text, and none of these files are text files except the briefings.

So, yeah,  unless someone puts some really thorough research into that, I doubt these maps will ever make it to PC. In fact, it may be easier to just grab the RA map editor and a PS emulator and reconstruct the maps manually. A pity, though. The mission format in the PS C&C1 ROMs was identical, and these N64 C&C1 missions weren't too hard to convert, either ☹️

Anyway, if you're interested in these games, it might be worth checking out the community patches for them. Command & Conquer 1, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun have all been upgraded with community-created unofficial patches that fix a lot of their bugs and compatibility problems, and they add a ton of interesting stuff, like high resolution, and come with bonuses like these aforementioned C&C1 console missions (and the aforementioned Retaliation videos pack for Red Alert 1). For Red Alert 2 there's a more general patch that solves a lot of its graphics problems. You can find them here:

Command & Conquer 1:

• Nyerguds' C&C95 v1.06c revision 3 patch (which also adds bonus missions originally exclusive to the Playstation and Nintendo 64 versions of the game)

Red Alert 1:

• Funkyfr3sh's automatic Red Alert 1 patcher/installer
• Nyerguds' main.mix cleanup for TFD/TUC (Not really needed, but cleans up about a gigabyte of unnecessary files in the RA1 folder. Unpack in the game folder, run "patch_main.bat", let it finish, and then delete the files you extracted.)

Tiberian Sun:

• Funkyfr3sh's Tiberian Sun patch

Red Alert 2:

• The graphics system patch DDWrapper is known to solve a multitude of graphics problems, including the "black screen" issue.
  Download the zip file and extract "ddraw.dll" and "aqrit.cfg" into your game folder. Then, open the configuration file "aqrit.cfg" in Notepad, change the "ForceDirectDrawEmulation" option to 1, save the file, and try running the game again.

@Necrochasm1759

So it seems these map files I found aren't really map files, but rather, ummm... savegames? Yeah, something like that. Start-of-mission saved states of the whole mission.

I used the first ant campaign mission as test case. Here you see the mission as viewed in the map editor RAED. The indicated cells with squares and text are info from the map editor (scripting information mostly; cells that trigger actions, and the waypoints in paths used for enemy teams).

The coloured cells are some of the PS file's data overlayed on it. As you see, a lot of that stuff matches up.

However, there's information in there that shouldn't be in a mission file at all. Maps are not supposed to store each cell of bibs under buildings, and they should definitely not have the revealed terrain stored (see bottom left, around the rifle soldiers). All of that should be done by the engine on map load. This format is ridiculous. -_-

Note that this was just done by using a program to visualize byte data as image. I matched the information up with the map to prove that the file was indeed the whole map, with all its information, but I don't actually know what all of the specific byte values mean. I mean, like, to match them up to the actual data, like which terrain tiles they correspond with. That'd take a whole ton more research than this quick visualization I just did.

And to be honest, figuring out this kind of data isn't fun at all. I give up 🤒

(btw, this is the full visualized data, with all pixels stretched out to a height of 16 to make the data square. Overlaying some more of it on the map gives this ugly mosaic.)