Re: C&C red alert 1 Graphics

@emoKittenCZ

There are too many people here who automatically go attacking EA for everything wrong in this collection pack. And while the pack indeed has a bunch of problems, this particular problem is not due to the repacking in this collection, and has nothing to do with multi-core CPUs, so it's only fair to point that out.

It really is completely Westwood's responsibility for using undocumented and unsupported functionality in the old DirectDraw system instead of following the official specs. In this case, if I remember correctly, that unsupported feature was giving the colour palette to DirectDraw just once at the start and then just assuming it would remember it indefinitely for all the following graphics redraws, instead of specifically setting it again each time. It's entirely possible that even in Win95 it was possible to corrupt the colours in the game this way if you alt-tabbed out and did some other stuff that happened to use that same DirectDraw system.

I've seen Westwood's coding when I dug into these games. Trust me, while the results are undeniably awesome, there's plenty of weird and awful shortcuts under the hood.

search for openra. it makes the game run perfectly in a higher resolution. i have nothing to do with it but it supports command and conquer 1, red alert 1 and dune 2000. if EA wants to shut the project down i support them in that.

the core gameplay and balance is the same. they have just added a few gameplay elements from newer games to the mix.

that, is a lie. there is no flak truck. i have played both as the allies and the soviets and all they have is the original stuff and the aftermath stuff.

i played both and there is no flak truck in neither. maybe that video shows a modded version. i have only played the default version.

then you are just trolling.

@andreasaspenberg

[Removed unkind comment - CM]

[Do not attempt to bypass the swear  filter - CM]

i will stop feeding this troll.

@plokite95@andreasaspenberg  

If you cannot keep it on topic and civil then I will be locking this thread. Posting simply to insult another user is against that rules and continuing to do so can result in action being taken. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the User Rules and Guidelines: https://answers.ea.com/t5/help/faqpage

@andreasaspenberg

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@andreasaspenberg wrote:

search for openra. it makes the game run perfectly in a higher resolution. i have nothing to do with it but it supports command and conquer 1, red alert 1 and dune 2000. if EA wants to shut the project down i support them in that.

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OpenRA is unrelated to Red Alert beyond the fact it is inspired by it. To be blunt, it is an RTS game that simply never got rid of its placeholder graphics. Neither its gameplay nor its internal workings are anywhere near the original games. It cannot even read the original game's missions; the missions they have from the original campaigns are, once again, recreations sharing none of the internal logics with the original games.

They try to get close, but I honestly don't see why they're trying to build their fan base on the nostalgia of another game when they're clearly not even trying to mimic it beyond the most superficial level.

@NyergudsWell, then it is fair to point you misunderstood my reply out 🙂
I didn't tell this issue is caused by multi-core CPU, I told that you cannot blame any developer for not developing a game with multi-core CPU support in times where there were no thoughts about CPU having more than one single core. And the same case is this. You cannot blame Westwood for doing something what worked perfectly long times ago. First time I played RA it was on DOS, not on a WIN, there were no Alt+Tab so you cannot blame them for coding a game in current meta where nothing were perfect and coders should just bypass some limitations. Many games do the same issue while Alt+Tabing. They just did awesome job, don't blame them just because they did not realize someone would like to play their game even more than 20 years later... 🙂 It is like if you develope something now and we would review that code 20 years later and blame you for not using something what will be in future meta.. 🙂
Just to make my previous post clear (I hope..).
I love to have RA1 again, I probbably lost my original CD from box version of the game I bought as a child. The only thing I am missing yet is NFS:Underground 2 :P Still dreaming EA would remake the game for WIN7 and put it in store again <3
My original post was not insulting neither Westwood nor EA. No reason to do that. Westwood made an awesome game and EA brings it back to me.

EDIT: sorry for possible bounce. I thought that Quick Reply will make just a small text window to post I replied to instead of a new post which I thought will be made by Reply...

@emoKittenCZ

Actually...

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You cannot blame Westwood for doing something what worked perfectly long times ago. First time I played RA it was on DOS, not on a WIN, there were no Alt+Tab so you cannot blame them for coding a game in current meta where nothing were perfect and coders should just bypass some limitations. Many games do the same issue while Alt+Tabing.

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Maybe you first played it like that, but the game came bundled with both DOS and Win95 versions. DirectDraw is Windows-only, so to implement the Windows version they must have read the specs and guidelines for using DirectDraw, which said they needed to re-set the palette when making graphics calls. They decided to cut corners in there, and it's entirely their own fault that that made it break in later versions of DirectDraw. Frankly I'm surprised it took that long. Because that's what happens when you take shortcuts. I'm a software developer. I know what I'm talking about here. So yes, I can blame them.

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It is like if you develope something now and we would review that code 20 years later and blame you for not using something what will be in future meta.. 🙂
Just to make my previous post clear (I hope..).

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Okay, I'll grant you that; Win95 was new, and they were inexperienced with it. But I've seen enough weird and awful shortcuts in there to just see it as "yet another dumb error in their code" 🤒

@emoKittenCZ

If anyone is toxic, it is most certainly not Nyerguds. I've known him personally for quite a few years, and he legitimately knows more about classic C&C code than anyone at EA has since Westwood Vegas was closed. If he says there were shortcuts (and there are lots of signs pointing to that throughout the franchise), then that has gravity to it. Perhaps next time try not to search for drama where there is none.