What a nice poster this edition included.

In the end, the gameplay feels like Sim City by building a huge base and turtling.

I've been playing Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert a lot for the past couple of decades, but it's only now that I finally finished the Allied campaign!

I think I actually like this one more than the Soviet campaign. As much as I like Mammoth Tanks and V2 launchers, I really like having GPS, cruisers, and cheaper base defenses. They're both damn good campaigns, though. And taking Stalin out was a super satisfying ending, especially given how nasty he is in the Soviet campaign.

This is probably my favourite retro game. I love how varied it is, especially with expansions and skirmish mode. I also love the dark and moody feel it has.

Found my original copy of Command and Conquer Generals.

I've been working on modernizing C&C Generals Zero Hour, mainly focusing on improving the visuals and eventually the performance, without changing the original gameplay.

The game now runs on a native 64-bit Vulkan renderer, based on the Vulkan project available on ModDB. Credit goes to the original developer for the groundwork. I've been building on top of it with additional graphical improvements and UI changes.

I haven't touched the unit behavior or balance since I want to preserve what makes the original game great. I also haven't replaced many of the original textures. Most of the improvements are on the rendering side rather than just replacing everything with higher-resolution textures.

Here's what I've added or improved so far:

• Volumetric smoke and dust, both adjustable in the settings.
• Improved shockwave effects, including directional shockwaves that follow the direction of the blast rather than just expanding uniformly.
• Changes to the shaders and lighting.
• Unit and building outlines to make them stand out more. The original textures are pretty dated, so this helps quite a bit.
• Further lighting improvements, including Ambient Occlusion and Global Illumination. AO was already part of the original Vulkan project.
• Improved shadows, including proper cast shadows for infantry.
• Moved the HUD to the bottom-center of the screen and made it so it doesn't scale with screen resolution.
• Added optional General portraits at the top of the screen, with a net worth indicator below each portrait.

A bit more about the General portraits:

I wanted the portraits to reflect how each General is doing in the match rather than just being static images.

The net worth displayed below each portrait doesn't include remaining cash. It only counts the value of what a player has spent, so someone sitting on a huge amount of unspent money won't necessarily appear ahead.

The portraits also change depending on how the match is going:

• Victory portrait: Appears when a General's net worth is above the match average and they've destroyed enemy units and buildings worth at least 20% of an enemy's net worth.
• Defeat portrait: Appears when a General's net worth is below the match average and they've lost units and buildings worth at least 20% of their own net worth.
• Normal portrait: Appears when neither condition is met.

There's also a visibility restriction for enemy net worth. You can only see an enemy General's net worth if you currently have vision of their Command Center. Otherwise, that information stays hidden.

I realize that even with this restriction, knowing how much an opponent has spent could influence decisions and change the meta a bit. That's why I made the entire General portrait feature optional through a pre-match toggle. Players can decide whether they want it enabled before starting a match, rather than having it forced on everyone.

What I'm currently working on:

One of the bigger things I'm trying to tackle is separating the renderer from the simulation.

The original game is heavily single-threaded, so most of the work still runs on one CPU core, even on modern hardware. I'm trying to change that so rendering and simulation can run more independently and make better use of multicore CPUs.

I've already made some progress on this. For example, the camera is no longer tied to the simulation, so it can update independently instead of having to follow the game's simulation updates.

As you can probably see in the video, though, the particles are still tied to the simulation. That's something I'm still working on.

Right now, I'm focusing on improving how the engine goes through everything in the game world and figures out what actually needs to be drawn on screen. It's one of the things I need to sort out before I can properly separate more of the rendering work from the simulation.

There's still quite a bit to figure out, especially since I don't want to introduce multiplayer desyncs or mess with how the game behaves. But at least some parts are already running independently now.

As for the overall goal of the project:

I just want to bring the visuals and performance of Generals Zero Hour closer to modern standards without losing what made the game great in the first place.

Mod compatibility is also one of my priorities. I'm trying to keep as much compatibility with existing mods as possible, so people won't have to give up their favorite mods just to use the graphical improvements.

I'm not trying to remake Generals or change how it's played. I just think the game still has a lot of potential, especially now that we have access to its source code.

There's still a lot of work to do, but I wanted to share what I've been working on so far.

Looks freaking awesome!

So after 2 years of development, Strike Order is finally coming together. This is not an AI game, this is a real 2 year development project that is coming out May 2027 on Steam and my Website.

Good god, it's been a long 2 years. My name is Rhys, I'm 36 and live in the UK. I've always dreamt of making my own games since Red Alert, then Generals came out and man, if you're a fan, you know exactly what I mean, you're getting just as old as me and you still play it.

Campaign,

Skirmish/Online

Tutorials

Advanced Map Editor (Competition Coming Soon)

and more...

11 years ago, I tried to follow the dream, but mental health and all that life stuff happened, then I had kids, and it was just difficult to do anything. So 5 years ago, I started planning how the game would work, look, feel and interact with the player, then started designing and looking into code and how things work and just overall learning. (wow coding is a bitch to learn).

Anyway, to cut this shorter, I went to Universtity about 4 years ago, did 2 years out of the 3, they were pushing a lot of irrelevant stuff on us and I couldn't deal with other work rather than the £16k lessons I paid for to learn to design and develop a game.

So I went on my own path, I was learning from University how to code, design and all that and instead of following their actual "class models" I spoke to the tutor and told him my goal (he loves C&C) and he said ok, we will implement that into your work, so I owe him for this.

I'm now here, 2 years later, a coded game, a designed game, 98% done by myself. AI has helped with testing the game, I had several issues, being my first game, you are going to have issues. Mine was the loading times, my god!! Absolute frustration and felt like I did all this for nothing. Loading Skirmish took over 300 seconds just to load, then going into the game, it was freezing. I did a lot of work on the models trying to figure out if it was them, I got it down to 220 seconds. Then was stuck. So I paid for Codex, got it to look through the game, run a series of tests on my CPU and GPU to make sure it wasn't that. Then it went through the game, it was all down to shaders. They were loading all over the place in-game, even after changing the installation of the game, it was still doing it. Now, thanks to Codex, it takes 46-52 seconds to load. That is an insane difference. Especially when I'm testing it.

Take a look at my website www.playstrikeorder.com and youtube [www.youtube.com/@preseligames](mailto:www.youtube.com/@preseligames) the videos are coming up to being outdated so I need to get some updated gameplay up, you can see from previous videos with the direction I'm heading.

Just for all the AI haters, yes, theres a couple of in-game images that are AI assisted, not AI generated, I use AI because it's a tool, not a damned devil that ruins games. This game is legit. The faction emblems have since changed due to critisism, (It's not just a game for me, it should fit others too, so I am open to constructive feedback), the faction infantry (apart from 1) are AI generated because by god, I cannot do human models, I am getting there, but I'm not happy with it, I have done 1 and it's good, so once I get more time, I will continue to model the tiny human models.

Voices are my friends in the ADC faction, but, the ESD and MLF factions are AI voices for now. I need help with getting a Chinese and Middle-Eastern accents to speak in English.

Once this game is released, I will be adding more factions, relevant to the current factions. Strike Order will be available on Steam soon. Currently finding a bank to use, I am not very good at life.

Installed Droid Deck on my phone and the first thing was I installed was some C&C. Playing RA2 and Generals on a phone is surreal. More than 20 years overdue.

I want to play the main two stories again, but with 1080 res and add in a texture pack that cleans up the low res textures and makes it look crisp.

TY.

EDIT: searching and found this, I want some of this... (Should I just wait for this? this looks like it's not changing much but graphics?)
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/4/3990/tim-scholtens-tiberian-sun-12.jpg
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/4/3990/tim-tiberian-sun-41.jpg

Still just link me a mod that just covers textures and 1080, and nothing else changed plz, TY

This RA2 screenshot is from a mod that makes Generals in RA2 engine.

For those who are not aware, Generals is a good game despite its terrible graphics and camera.

RA2 aged like wine, Generals aged like milk.

This happened in a lot of other RTS games. When they tried to go 3D they mostly failed. Examples: Stronghold series, Caesar series, AoE series, Lords 2 -> Lords 3, Red Alert, and many other series.

You can see that in the screenshot of RA2 the graphics are clear, sharp, and everything is easy to read, the buildings the units.

The screenshot of Generals has the typical fish eye camera, everything looks weird and harder to read, buildings barely fit in the screen.

Im not saying Generals is a bad game, Im saying it is a good game, despite its graphics.

https://i.imgur.com/V4zqQIi.jpeg

It's still in pretty good shape.

Does anyone else care that all the parts work the way they’re supposed to? I think it’s awesome.

For the record, the Hawkeye propellers don’t normally stop in flight, that’s just to be in line with the music.

After successfully working Red Alert 1 + Counterstrike + Aftermath, now is the turn for Red Alert 2. I will upload the necessary files to Github (of course you will need your original copy of RA2).

Imagine a world where Smash Bros ultimate got bigger with more roster and games and Command and Conquer got invited what do you think they would look and play like

to Me it'd operate off of buildings starting off with just basic gun and normal attacks building the barracks gives you side smash abilities then you build the war factory to get down special then a air field to get an upsiecial for recovery then a Special building like temple of Nod or Battle lab with harvesters acting like a way to get credits to build or something the idea can be unique but it's hard to make a RTS like C&C in smash

Skins i'd probably do 2 perfection 2 for Nod Gdi Allies Gla and Soviets why Not USA and Chhina well there real nations and having them in smash would be controversial but for the last few make them cut skins or something

now what do you think would be your idea for C&C in smash ultimate I'm curious but also have a good day

The much anticipated skirmish AI launch is here! Also 1.02+ and the 4K mod are finally one download.

This is a huge deal for all the PvE players out there!

Will be either the Lioness with weapons of mass destruction with deadly aurora alpha and humvee army or be the Tigress with the big overlords, hot migs and nuclear missile.

As part of an effort to make infantry in RA3 viable again I'm experimenting with idea of squads like in Tiberium Wars - first results are promising. Depleted squad is automatically healed and reinforced in close vicinity of barracks. I also added 2 stage reload system that allows firing true bursts with reloads after ammo runs out. Another feature seen is dynamically changing formation. After solving the problem of garrisoning (not trivial) next on the list is squad members having different weapons.

Peacekepper with M4/M203 model and reload animation borrowed from Armor Rush with dev permission