
EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3 - haunter
https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/gnevp8/remaster_update_and_open_source_mod_support/fr97x9x/
======
capableweb
One of the best things that could happen to the gaming landscape would be if
companies like EA and similar learned from Microsoft's move to open sourcing
more software and involving the community more gives them a lot more goodwill
and business as a side-effect.

And then us gamers get more long-lived games as a benefit as well.

~~~
enitihas
But Microsoft has not open sourced anything that was making $ for them.
Neither windows nor any part of office, or any part of enterprise suite. What
Microsoft has open sourced are things where similar stuff was already open
source, and Microsoft wouldn't have made much money selling those. e.g,
VSCode, tyepscript.

EA also open sources stuff like that. They even have open sourced a java
library to be able to write async await style code in java. They off course
won't open source money making games, and neither does MSFT.

~~~
habitue
We probably don't expect these companies to open source their primary
competitive advantages. We expect them to open source things once
good_will_value > expected_sales_volume for a given title/piece of software.

The thing is right now Microsoft is getting into the habit of open sourcing
things that hit that criteria, and EA is just flatly evaluating that to False
every the time. Even when they aren't actively selling a title they own the
rights to. The expected value of a title you don't sell is $0 [0], so in
effect they're valuing goodwill negatively!

When it's framed that way, it's actually pretty dumb for EA not to be making
that calculation. If they do and open source more low sales titles, EA will
make more money from better goodwill, and consumers will get more value from
older games

[0] This isn't strictly true, because they retain the rights to sell the title
in the future, and that option is worth something. But barring very strange
circumstances, we expect that if an old title isn't worth the effort to sell
today, it likely won't be in the future either. The option is not worth a ton
vs. the goodwill of open sourcing it.

~~~
harha
One aspect EA might be considering are potential losses in other product
lines, say if fans were to expand old games with new campaigns that are better
than what EA is offering today.

For Microsoft this seems to have worked out fine - they’ve helped create an
eco system around VS Code and now they are integrating it in all sorts of ways
with their paid services.

~~~
rangibaby
> One aspect EA might be considering are potential losses in other product
> lines, say if fans were to expand old games with new campaigns that are
> better than what EA is offering today.

Valve especially has made a ton of money buying and selling fanmade expansions
to their games, way more than they would have by not allowing mods

~~~
harha
Good point, it really depends on how companies decide to look at this topic
and what they decide to optimize. The „old“ Microsoft probably wouldn’t have
created a platform for Mac devs deploying on Linux as another comment in this
thread described.

------
rnestler
There is also the [https://www.openra.net/](https://www.openra.net/) project
which provides reimplementations of the classic C&C games. Me and some friends
played it a few times on Linux, OSX and Windows and it worked smoothly :)

~~~
bredren
Direct link to OpenRA's 4/20/20 release highlights video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2sQP3YYBMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2sQP3YYBMA)

As noted elsewhere ITT, "we made the decision to go with the GPL license to
ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA."

Given the progress of OpenRA, and quality of the above release video, the open
source version seems like it is likely to eclipse the capability of the
original game in the foreseeable future.

I'm curious what the OpenRA community pulls out of this newly released source
code that can be used directly or by reimplemented in OpenRA to create
substantial leaps in progress.

I'm also curious which of the existing OpenRA algorithms and methods are
better or more efficient than the original source.

Regardless, this release and the resulting introspective should make for some
good reading!

~~~
cookiengineer
What I like about OpenRA is that they not only extended the game, but also
rebalanced it. A lot of units have behavioral changes on purpose. Artillery,
GPS, helicopters, mammoth tanks, tesla infantry... they all allow quick
changes of strategy and don’t allow the old style gameplay of just spamming
mammoth tanks.

The only thing that is unbalanced at the moment is sea vs land. Allied
cruisers with GPS are just overpowered and almost unconquerable.

~~~
jsmeaton
What’s interested me about projects like this is the how of it all? Are they
decompiling binaries to help write their version? Copying
assets/textures/sounds? Or is it a painstaking clean room type of
implementation?

~~~
IshKebab
It varies from project to project but I think _usually_ they reverse engineer
the asset formats and then reimplement the game engine to use that. Then you
have to provide your own copy of the original game to use the assets (graphics
& levels), or use demo versions.

Some games are decompiled versions of of the code, e.g. Devilution which I'm
fairly sure is not legal (though I doubt anyone is going to care).

------
jakearmitage
> After discussing with the council members, we made the decision to go with
> the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open
> RA. Our goal was to deliver the source code in a way that would be truly
> beneficial for the community, and we hope this will enable amazing community
> projects for years to come.

Sweet.

------
aasasd
People pining for other games might find this list handy:
[https://osgameclones.com](https://osgameclones.com)

~~~
accidentalrebel
Didn't know there were a lot of them! Thank you for sharing!

------
steelframe
As someone who got to be quite good at Red Alert back in the late 1900's, I
look forward to taking a look.

While the commercial value of the code dropped to about 0 over a decade ago
(or did it?), eventual release of source code is better than never releasing
source code.

~~~
necovek
I laughed at "1900's" — technically, you could have gone with "1000's" just as
well :)

~~~
pfundstein
Or "last millennium"

------
petercooper
I can't _wait_ till they release the source code for FIFA 20 in about 2045.
There is so much speculation in the community on how the game is rigged that I
will be the first to download _that_ repo ;-)

------
Mobius01
Wonderful. Now please open-source SimCity 2013 so we can fix it.

------
tekstar
If you're looking to just play the classic C&C games including Red Alert,
either single player or multiplayer, check out cncnet.org.

I've been playing old classic multiplayer games with some friends while we're
isolating. Halo 1 for PC, BF1942, Battlefield II. All free or like 5$.

Red Alert mostly ok under WINE on OSX or Linux but it prompted me to get
windows running on a machine.

~~~
jrimbault
Battlefield 2 can't be bought nowadays, but that doesn't stop a small
community from working on mods even now. Forgotten Hope 2, one its biggest
mods (a complete WW2 overhaul), had a new release last Friday.

~~~
p1necone
Battlefield 2 was the last battlefield game I really enjoyed, after that the
scale of the game got a lot smaller it seemed. Other than the kinda clunky
gunplay it feels like the high point of the series to me still.

~~~
jrimbault
Many of the community mods have excellent gunplay. I really recommend playing
them. The 2005 graphics are offset by the very high framerate we can achieve
on modern hardware. Also mods like forgotten hope have fixed many of the
original game 's bugs.

------
hiq
The post mentions TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll, I assume it's not the
whole source of the games, is it?

~~~
haunter
Most likely the whole engine and the bare metal game without the arts/graphics
and music/sound. That's how a lot of opensource clones work.

For example OpenTTD [0] was reverse engineered and you have 2 options to
actually play the game

\- either have the original game and use the arts/graphics and music/sound
data from the original files

\- use the open source remake of the arts/graphics and music/sound

The 2nd option where a lot of open source clones fail. It's one thing to have
the engine and the bare metal game but the actual arts/graphics usually takes
more time to recreate. That's where OpenTTD is really successful because you
can just download the game and play.

As another example an open source clone of Red Alert already exist [1] but
it's just the engine. To actually play you need the original arts/graphics

0 [https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

1 [https://www.openra.net/](https://www.openra.net/)

~~~
tialaramex
To just make it playable you can just have any bunch of people with suitable
tools make placeholder art, a sprite that says "TANK" on it is good enough for
the tank moving code to run.

But that looks really bad, and to make it look good (as almost any even mid-
budget video game looks) you need an art director who can deliver consistency.
For a small game that art director might also just make all the art, so it
ends up consistent that way, but games even from the C&C era are too big for
that to be realistic, so now you've got several (and maybe hundreds of)
volunteers making art and they need to obey that director's stylistic vision
or the result is something that lay people can see is "wrong" but they aren't
sure exactly why.

There's a little element of this in the programming side. One guy who
stubbornly insists on calling loop variables 'x' another insists they should
be named 'k' and three others who don't care can already get heated. Or maybe
you've run into somebody who believes code should use character U+0009 for
indentation instead of using U+0020 as god intended. But the players won't
notice that part, whereas if the art isn't consistent that's very visible and
detracts from the experience.

~~~
bredren
>Or maybe you've run into somebody who believes code should use character
U+0009 for indentation

"The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been
sinning from the beginning." John 3:8

~~~
folmar
"These shall ye use of all that are in the charcodes: whatsoever hath US-ASCII
in the keyboards, in the memories, and in the disks, them shall ye use.

And all that have unicodes in the keyboards, and in the memories, of all that
move in the disks, and of any living thing which is in the extended ranges,
they shall be an abomination unto you."

------
nightowl_games
The pathfinding code and the networking will be interesting to look at.

~~~
EamonnMR
Explanation of RTs networking in that period:

[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_o...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php)

I did a Python implementation here:
[https://github.com/eamonnmr/openlockstep](https://github.com/eamonnmr/openlockstep)

~~~
djmips
Any bites? Anybody make a game with your tech?

~~~
EamonnMR
None yet, but I don't really blame them. As-is it uses TCP rather than UDP.
Also, if you want to prototype an RTS you'd probably make a mod for Starcraft
II - the air is, I think, well and truly sucked out of the room.

------
Arbalest
So they're releasing the code?

But what about the art assests. Moving to the future, those become more
valuable, particularly as coding becomes more advanced. While coders have a
habit of happily rewriting things to make them work better, visual stuff has a
lot more nostalgia factor, as well as actually having them available makes the
progress made on the code side seem a lot more real.

Surely this isn't the only game where code is only part of the issue (if it
is, I really don't know what the plan is in this instance).

------
haunter
Also here [https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-
con...](https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-conquer-
remastered/news/remaster-update-modding)

They also confirmed it will be in C++

------
lbeltrame
If you want to see what can be done with a donated codebase, look up Freespace
Open[1], which, from the original code of Freespace 2 from Volition (a game I
loved, but that wasn't very successful) was improved a great deal by the
community around it, with several improvements to assets, game engine, and
even generated several total conversions.

[1] [http://www.hard-light.net/](http://www.hard-light.net/)

------
peterhj
Would be glorious if at some point they also released sources for the voxel
RTS's (Tiberian Sun, RA2).

------
paedubucher
I'd rather play those two games using OpenRA. Releasing Tiberium Sun (> 20
years old) RedAlert 2 (also 20 years old) would be a great move that actually
made a difference.

~~~
outworlder
I've found Generals fun too. Specially multiplayer.

------
gentleman11
Apparently the old EA head has moved on to be the Unity CEO. Good for EA, but
makes me worry about Unity

~~~
DonHopkins
To his credit, in 2007 when John Riccitiello was CEO of EA, he was
instrumental in supporting our successful campaign to relicense the original
source code of SimCity Classic free under GPLv3 and bring it to the OLPC XO-1
children's computer.

EA Donates Original City-Building Game, SimCity, to ''One Laptop per Child''
Initiative: [https://ir.ea.com/press-releases/press-release-
details/2007/...](https://ir.ea.com/press-releases/press-release-
details/2007/EA-Donates-Original-City-Building-Game-SimCity-to-One-Laptop-per-
Child-Initiative/default.aspx)

>REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 2007--Today Electronic Arts
Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) announced the company will donate the original SimCity™ --
the blockbuster 1989 game credited with giving rise to the city-building game
genre -- to each computer in the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative. OLPC
is a not-for-profit humanitarian effort to design, manufacture and distribute
inexpensive laptops with the goal of giving every child in the world access to
modern education. By gifting SimCity onto each OLPC laptop, EA is providing
users with an entertaining way to engage with computers as well as help
develop decision-making skills while honing creativity. This is the first time
a major video game publisher has gifted a game to the world.

Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold: [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-
sourcing-simcity-58470a2...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-
simcity-58470a275446)

>Excerpt from page 289–293 of “Play Design”, a dissertation submitted in
partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in
Philosophy in Computer Science by Chaim Gingold.

>[...] The next chapter looks closely at the code to SimCity, which is
possible only because it has been open sourced. There are few instances in
which a company has open sourced the code to a commercial game, which makes
the story of how this happened remarkable for a number of reasons. Recounting
this story not only explains the provenance of my research materials, but
reveals how social forces, in this case a heterogeneous collection of agents
and agendas, shape software.

>[...] Surprisingly, Electronic Arts agreed to the arrangement. Their legal
counsel, in consultation with Eben Moglen (Columbia Law Professor, general
counsel to the FSF, and OLPC advisor), worked through the legal logistics.
This effort was aided by Hopkins’s discovery and copying of the original
Maxis/DUX licensing agreement, on a lark, while working on The Sims. Hopkins
did the coding work of the conversion. EA executives approved of the endeavor,
no doubt aided by Will Wright’s legendary persuasiveness and considerable
prestige, not to mention the prestige of the OLPC project itself. [...]

Demo of SimCity on OLPC XO-1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpKhh10K-j0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpKhh10K-j0)

>OLPC SimCity Demo: A demonstration of OLPC SimCity running on the One Laptop
Per Child XO-1 laptop.

OLPC / EA Contract: [https://donhopkins.com/home/olpc-ea-
contract.pdf](https://donhopkins.com/home/olpc-ea-contract.pdf)

>This license and distribution agreement (this "Agreement") is entered into as
of September 4, 2007 (the “Effective Date”) by and between ELECTRONIC ARTS
INC., a Delaware corporation with its principal offices at 209 Redwood Shores
Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065-1175 (“EA”) and ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD
ASSOCIATION, INC., a Delaware corporation, located at One Cambridge Center,
Cambridge MA, 02142 ( “OLPC”).

Free SimCity Source code:
[https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis](https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis)

>Open Source Micropolis, based on the original SimCity Classic from Maxis, by
Will Wright.

------
cies
Don't miss this open source re-release:
[https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100](https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100)

If you like strategy games

------
zantana
Hey EA, how about the Bullfrog games next?

~~~
ryandrake
Yea, I'd always wanted to make a Dungeon Keeper 2 clone. Please!

I wonder why it's not more common to open source abandonware that has exactly
zero remaining commercial value. These game companies don't even have to
remain as maintainers/stewards of the code. It doesn't even have to compile.
Just release it, and many people will get it to work! How much expense could
it be to get an intern to upload the code to GitHub, slap a license on it, and
never look at it again?

~~~
thrower123
Depending on how old it is, the source code probably doesn't actually exist in
a lot of cases. Game studios weren't exactly up to the latest standards of
version control, by and large. Maybe there was a self-hosted CVS instance, or
a dusty old version of Perforce, or a NAS that had the drives fail eons ago...

~~~
zozbot234
Even in that case, the copyright holder could still "release" the published
_binaries_ under a FLOSS license, and encourage the community to reverse-
engineer a viable source code out of them. An overt legal endorsement of such
community efforts may be just as compelling as an actual source release.

------
Jon_Lowtek
What does a "RedAlert.dll" actually contain? I guess it is not the remastered
engine, it is not the models, animations or textures. It won't contain the
mission briefing videos, the mission briefing texts or even the mission maps.
It is likely not the multiplayer maps, the net code, and especially not the
multiplayer server. And it sure is not the awesome music. That dll file might
be mostly unit config, like the old rules.ini, but with a bit more code. It is
still nice for modding, and the community will make "new games" for free, that
will require the proprietary remastered engine and models/textures from EA to
be played. Hey it is still EA. And €20 (one time) for the non-open sourced
parts aren't even that much. So yeah if it would run on linux instead of
DX11/Win64 only, i might even be interested, but i think i will stay with
OpenRA.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Most of the rest of the game is already probably visible in plaintext. And the
big thing is, they're not releasing the copyright to their intellectual
property around Command & Conquer: So to legally use this, without providing
your own assets, you have to own a copy of the game.

But presumably, if you own the game, you now have everything you need to
modify it however you like.

~~~
Jon_Lowtek
That is my point.. reusing or remixing the assets, like their "mammoth tank
but with another turret" example, is just barely fair use, provided it is a
free2play mod on their engine. All this talk about "open source" sounds nice,
but 95% of the game is still "proprietary" and most of the code is still
closed and the whole thing is still mostly about selling the enhanced edition.
Which is fine. The news is just very misleading until you read the fine print.

------
secondwtq
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Homeworld 1. Yeah it's not GPL, not
even a proper open source license, it's also not well maintained like the id
ones and Warzone 2100. But it really helps the mod community (and even helps
the Remastered 10 years ago).

EA says "this will be one of the first major RTS franchises to open source
their source code under the GPL". Well it's not GPL, but Relic is famous for
it's RTS titles like Dawn of War, Company of Heroes (and now it's developing
Age of Empires IV). Homeworld is one of the best RTS games for me (only second
to C&C).

Sadly we can't get the source of Homeworld 2 (they even lost the source code
of expansion pack), which the Remastered was built on.

------
mikekhusid
I loved both of these games when they came out, but I'm completely shocked
that enough people still play this game to make open sourcing the code 25
years later a newsworthy event.

~~~
salmo
Unfortunately, even though these games were really popular, there's nothing
reasonably current with their style of RTS gameplay. I think the Age of
Empires franchise was probably the last one that had the same feel to me. SC3
is more of a twitchy high-speed reflex game that's too hardcore for a casual
like me. Modern mobile games go with the town + battles setup, probably
because games need to keep drawing you in (and getting you to pay) and not
just be a session when you want it.

It's probably that combined with the nostalgia of 'old folks' like me. I'd
love to relive the Wilhelm scream and cheesy futurism of C&C. And I will
always love the wololo of AoE.

~~~
dopeboy
Bingo - this genre as a whole has kinda died out. I played all the C&Cs
religiously so I'm squarely in their target market and will probably pay for
the remastered.

~~~
chongli
I wonder if the demands of their control scheme had something to do with it.
Other genres of games translate pretty well to consoles and mobile. RTS games
(of the classic sort such as C&C, TA, WC1&2) seem to demand enough precision
that keyboard & mouse are essentially required to play. So many people have
consoles, phones, iPads, and laptops now. These games would not be very
playable on any of them unless you could connect a mouse.

------
TheRealDunkirk
They're re-releasing it on Steam on June 5th as well:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/).
Maybe the source release will allow for Mac and Linux versions.

~~~
Jon_Lowtek
It is not the engine source that is released, just the "engine plugins that
specialize generic RTS engine into Red Alert / Tiberian Dawn".

------
londons_explore
Is opensourcing the main DLL file enough to consider the game opensource?

I assume there are other libraries, artwork, and some kind of launcher exe,
which would presumably remain closed source.

I guess it really jumpstarts the efforts to make an opensource version of the
game, but it really might still be a long way off yet.

------
uncheckederror
I am really impressed that EA went with the GPL v3 license. I would have
expected them to use the MIT license.

~~~
FartyMcFarter
What is impressive about it? The MIT license is more permissive, so using that
would accomplish everything GPL does and more, no?

I'm not a lawyer.

~~~
bloodorange
Well, the MIT license fails to make people release their changes if they
release some work based on it.

------
EamonnMR
I'm curious about how this is allowed under GPL. Are you allowed to link GPL'd
code against a closed source codebase? Shouldn't they be releasing the whole
thing?

~~~
skymt
You're allowed to link GPL'd code that you own against your own closed
codebase, because the GPL is just the terms under which you license your
copyright to others. See also: "open core" and dual-licensed software.

------
CivBase
I really hope this paves the way for a future where it's normal for old games
eventually go open source.

------
s_dev
Is the implication that C&C Generals will be released in 10 years? Is this a
precedent or a once off?

------
greatgib
That is so awesome! Great decision of EA for one of my 'all time' favorite
game!

------
hacker_9
Now we need a post mortem, like has been done with the Doom source code!

------
awicz
Many, many hours of my life were lost to to C&C. It’s a fine game.

------
nodesocket
Does this mean I will actually be able to play Red Alert 2 on a mac?

~~~
recrof
nope. this is about original RA1 and C&C.

~~~
nodesocket
Bummer. I for the life of me, can't find a way to play Red Alert 2 on a Mac.

------
Aeolun
I’d rather have RA2 and Tiberian sun, but I’ll take what I can get.

------
Havoc
Reddit appears to have just bought the farm

------
unixhero
Just bought it. Can't wait!

------
markus_zhang
Fuck, is this EA? I double checked and yes it is. I love the PO for this game.

------
zjhgx
Wow,glad to see that

------
advertising
Need AoE!!

------
unixhero
Whoaaaa

------
xwdv
Will it be easy to compile?

------
the8472
They should have picked AGPL, in case anyone tries to serve the game via
streaming.

