Jim Vessella, also known as Jimtern, the producer of the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection, has posted an announcement about the last official patch for the game.
I know how some of you will feel about it: the last patch already? The game was released in June and, 3 months later, post-game support is already terminated! But... don't worry, maybe in 20 or 25 years whoever owns the right of the Command & Conquer franchise will patch the game again... I mean, the new remaster/remake/whatever that we will have to pay additional money for it, of course, and maybe get 256k screen resolution with 240fps and possibly other features like that which we won't be able to think about in our current time-space continuum.
However, we need to take our hats off for EA for the sustainability of the long term community post-support process that they have worked on. If you take into account how C&C95 was supported during all this time to the resources given for community support on C&C: Remastered Collection, the evolution was amazing. The old game had to be hacked with assembly, hex editing tools, which is a very unintuitive way to do things. Now, we have the source code from the game and the map editor! Yea, you have heard it right, they have released the source code from the Remastered TDRA map editor! The latest patches also added LAN support, which is the best way they could do to allow mods to be played online. Although the Glyph Engine is still hard-coded, the DLLs and the Map Editor gives great freedom and great documentation for those who wanna keep the games alive.
Whenever an official patch is released, mods based on the old patches get obsolete. Considering that many modders move into other things during their lives, new official patches render several mods obsolete in its lifetime, like what the latest August 12th patch (which we did not mention in our news, sorry!) did. So, the end of the official updates might have its advantages as well, although some people are still not a fan of path-finding and the AI of both games.
Here are the words on Jim Vessella about the last upcoming patch:
I know how some of you will feel about it: the last patch already? The game was released in June and, 3 months later, post-game support is already terminated! But... don't worry, maybe in 20 or 25 years whoever owns the right of the Command & Conquer franchise will patch the game again... I mean, the new remaster/remake/whatever that we will have to pay additional money for it, of course, and maybe get 256k screen resolution with 240fps and possibly other features like that which we won't be able to think about in our current time-space continuum.
However, we need to take our hats off for EA for the sustainability of the long term community post-support process that they have worked on. If you take into account how C&C95 was supported during all this time to the resources given for community support on C&C: Remastered Collection, the evolution was amazing. The old game had to be hacked with assembly, hex editing tools, which is a very unintuitive way to do things. Now, we have the source code from the game and the map editor! Yea, you have heard it right, they have released the source code from the Remastered TDRA map editor! The latest patches also added LAN support, which is the best way they could do to allow mods to be played online. Although the Glyph Engine is still hard-coded, the DLLs and the Map Editor gives great freedom and great documentation for those who wanna keep the games alive.
Whenever an official patch is released, mods based on the old patches get obsolete. Considering that many modders move into other things during their lives, new official patches render several mods obsolete in its lifetime, like what the latest August 12th patch (which we did not mention in our news, sorry!) did. So, the end of the official updates might have its advantages as well, although some people are still not a fan of path-finding and the AI of both games.
Here are the words on Jim Vessella about the last upcoming patch:
Jimtern wrote:
Fellow Command & Conquer fans,
It’s been a little over three months since we launched the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection and we continue to be humbled by the response from players around the world. It’s been wonderful to see Command & Conquer back in the mainstream conversation, and the growing community even more engaged in the long-term success of the franchise.
Over the past three months our full-time focus has been on supporting the Remastered Collection. We’ve done our best to listen to the community, and deliver upon some of the top requested items in a transparent and collaborative manner. Next week we aim to launch another Major Update for the C&C Remastered Collection. The focus of this update is also on community requests, including a Beacon system to ping your allies and displaying key information on the Multiplayer loading screen, amongst a handful of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. We’ll also aim to reset the leaderboards and incorporate some Matchmaking Rating and timing adjustments to address community feedback.
With this patch, we finally feel the C&C Remastered Collection will have achieved the vision we had for the game when we first started development. As such, in our spirit of transparency, we wanted to let the community know we anticipate this will be the last patch for the game.
To prepare for this transition, our goal throughout development was to create an ecosystem where the community would have the resources to take the Remastered Collection even further. Within this goal we released the DLLs and source code under the GPL v3.0, embraced community content with the Steam Workshop, and incorporated LAN Play with modding support. Today we want to add one more ingredient to that mix, which is the release of the Map Editor under the GPL v3.0 as well. The Map Editor source code is available now on Github at the link below, and will be included in the root game folder once the upcoming patch goes live. With these assets available to the community, we hope the Remastered Collection and other community projects will continue to thrive for years to come.
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection
We’re then soon approaching a special date in franchise history, with September 26th marking the official 25th Anniversary of Tiberian Dawn. We’ve of course been highlighting this anniversary throughout the project, but hope you will all come together for a special week to celebrate this franchise which we all love.
Thanks so much for your ongoing support and looking forward to the rest of September.
Cheers,
Jim Vessella
Jimtern
This announcement and roadmap may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
It’s been a little over three months since we launched the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection and we continue to be humbled by the response from players around the world. It’s been wonderful to see Command & Conquer back in the mainstream conversation, and the growing community even more engaged in the long-term success of the franchise.
Over the past three months our full-time focus has been on supporting the Remastered Collection. We’ve done our best to listen to the community, and deliver upon some of the top requested items in a transparent and collaborative manner. Next week we aim to launch another Major Update for the C&C Remastered Collection. The focus of this update is also on community requests, including a Beacon system to ping your allies and displaying key information on the Multiplayer loading screen, amongst a handful of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. We’ll also aim to reset the leaderboards and incorporate some Matchmaking Rating and timing adjustments to address community feedback.
With this patch, we finally feel the C&C Remastered Collection will have achieved the vision we had for the game when we first started development. As such, in our spirit of transparency, we wanted to let the community know we anticipate this will be the last patch for the game.
To prepare for this transition, our goal throughout development was to create an ecosystem where the community would have the resources to take the Remastered Collection even further. Within this goal we released the DLLs and source code under the GPL v3.0, embraced community content with the Steam Workshop, and incorporated LAN Play with modding support. Today we want to add one more ingredient to that mix, which is the release of the Map Editor under the GPL v3.0 as well. The Map Editor source code is available now on Github at the link below, and will be included in the root game folder once the upcoming patch goes live. With these assets available to the community, we hope the Remastered Collection and other community projects will continue to thrive for years to come.
https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection
We’re then soon approaching a special date in franchise history, with September 26th marking the official 25th Anniversary of Tiberian Dawn. We’ve of course been highlighting this anniversary throughout the project, but hope you will all come together for a special week to celebrate this franchise which we all love.
Thanks so much for your ongoing support and looking forward to the rest of September.
Cheers,
Jim Vessella
Jimtern
This announcement and roadmap may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.