the last few weeks i got interested in how to write an RTS game. as an old die hard fan of c&c red alert (one) i began to search the net. i knew a few years back there was a project that took the released sourcecode of C&C and tried to evolve it.
So what is there at the moment?
The situation is somewhat confusing:
There are 3 projects under sourceforge:
1)freeCnC
2)freeRA
3)openredalert
those were created in that order. every one of them was created by taking the code of the former.
freeCnC
was the first project. as far as ive seen it was the also the biggest project. it seems to be dead currently.it aimed to support C&C Tiberian Dawn as well as Red Alert. they made the first port to linux, there was also support for multiplayer over tcp. it seems that (like for majority of such projects) being able to run it on linux was the utmost important target....
freeCnC is also relying on Boost (as well as on SDL and SDL_mixer). if you are not used to boost, i guess its a bit difficult to read.
problem of freeCnC was that the support for Red Alert was not that great. this then lead to the project called
freeRA
which just tried to implement red alert and dropped tiberian dawn. i didnt look at the code though. the maintainer of the project seems to have abandoned the project tough, nothing is happening there and the maintainer also does not seem to respond to mails. this then lead another programmer to create the project called
openRedAlert
which is at the moment actively maintained and developed. currently it only aims at single player, multiplayer is currently not planned. in openRedAlert, boost is not required anymore, i thought the code to be quite more readable, though one can see multiple programmers have already tampered with the source code. you can also definetly see that there was at least one "purist" at work, working very low-level.
You can get a bit confused with the project because for one it is hosted on sourceforge and then also on http://code.google.com/p/openredalert/
I began to look at the code and ported the stuff to MSVC9.0. it took me 2 days to get it to compile again with VC, and i also get to the starting screen. but when starting the mission i get a heap corruption assertion.... which is bad and seems to be inside since freeCnC like one guy on the http://code.google.com/p/openredalert/ site mentioned. and i certainly wont develop that stuff on gdb if i dont get paid for it.... that wouldnt be hobbydevelopment.....
other open source projects for Command and Conquer / Red Alert
on sourceforge i once found a c&c data extractor written in .NET. the guy that did that mentioned he may create a .NET port of c&c at some point.... maybe one can encourage him.
then i found an interesting project on http://mijav.dk/ which is a proof of concept C&C on .NET, but withouth the graphics.
btw: what i find strange is that i cannot obtain the originally released source code from ea. i dont find where i could download it....
interestingly enough:
there are NO really good open source RTS out there (i speak in general, not in particular about c&c) .... strange. the best shot one has would be one of the above mentioned projects. then a VERY good project is Mech Commander 2 for which microsoft released the code to demonstrate its XNA framework. It is great because it compiles out of the box. But on the other hand that game concept is not the classic Warcraft or C&C RTS game, so its not in my interest.
having written enough for now,
happy coding
So what is there at the moment?
The situation is somewhat confusing:
There are 3 projects under sourceforge:
1)freeCnC
2)freeRA
3)openredalert
those were created in that order. every one of them was created by taking the code of the former.
freeCnC
was the first project. as far as ive seen it was the also the biggest project. it seems to be dead currently.it aimed to support C&C Tiberian Dawn as well as Red Alert. they made the first port to linux, there was also support for multiplayer over tcp. it seems that (like for majority of such projects) being able to run it on linux was the utmost important target....
freeCnC is also relying on Boost (as well as on SDL and SDL_mixer). if you are not used to boost, i guess its a bit difficult to read.
problem of freeCnC was that the support for Red Alert was not that great. this then lead to the project called
freeRA
which just tried to implement red alert and dropped tiberian dawn. i didnt look at the code though. the maintainer of the project seems to have abandoned the project tough, nothing is happening there and the maintainer also does not seem to respond to mails. this then lead another programmer to create the project called
openRedAlert
which is at the moment actively maintained and developed. currently it only aims at single player, multiplayer is currently not planned. in openRedAlert, boost is not required anymore, i thought the code to be quite more readable, though one can see multiple programmers have already tampered with the source code. you can also definetly see that there was at least one "purist" at work, working very low-level.
You can get a bit confused with the project because for one it is hosted on sourceforge and then also on http://code.google.com/p/openredalert/
I began to look at the code and ported the stuff to MSVC9.0. it took me 2 days to get it to compile again with VC, and i also get to the starting screen. but when starting the mission i get a heap corruption assertion.... which is bad and seems to be inside since freeCnC like one guy on the http://code.google.com/p/openredalert/ site mentioned. and i certainly wont develop that stuff on gdb if i dont get paid for it.... that wouldnt be hobbydevelopment.....
other open source projects for Command and Conquer / Red Alert
on sourceforge i once found a c&c data extractor written in .NET. the guy that did that mentioned he may create a .NET port of c&c at some point.... maybe one can encourage him.
then i found an interesting project on http://mijav.dk/ which is a proof of concept C&C on .NET, but withouth the graphics.
btw: what i find strange is that i cannot obtain the originally released source code from ea. i dont find where i could download it....
interestingly enough:
there are NO really good open source RTS out there (i speak in general, not in particular about c&c) .... strange. the best shot one has would be one of the above mentioned projects. then a VERY good project is Mech Commander 2 for which microsoft released the code to demonstrate its XNA framework. It is great because it compiles out of the box. But on the other hand that game concept is not the classic Warcraft or C&C RTS game, so its not in my interest.
having written enough for now,
happy coding
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