So, to commemorate the event, I thought I'd set give a slightly more detailed description than the magazine was able to. I can also present to you an interview with Daz, creator of the It Came From Red Alert! mod. FS-21 has unfortunately moved on to pastures new since completing his project, so I was unable to interview him. You can, however, find an interview with him in 2005 on the subject of his frankly excellent project C&C: Reloaded here. As for Robot Storm, it would be a bit silly of me to interview for a mod of which I'm part, so instead stay tuned for some new unit previews in the style to which RS fans have become accustomed, but which I have recently sorely neglected (I have valid excuses!
)So anyway, on with the show!
C&C Reloaded
This project had been running for a number of years before it was hosted at the Guild, and later Revora. Ambitious to say the least, it sought to add an extra two sides, the GDI and Nod, in their Tiberian Sun incarnations, to the Yuri's Revenge universe, pitting them against the existing sides of the Allies, Soviets and Yuri. All five sides remain relatively unchanged, with only a couple of extra units per side (such as the Allied Stealth Bomber) to cover for the glaring gaps that would have rendered one side completely at the mercy of another (the TS sides have been given naval units, for example).
The AI has been configurated to deal with the new burden of additional sides, and the graphics of the TS side have been significantly neatened to match up better with RA2's higher-res SHPs and voxels. Another treat: a number of maps allow you to fight in fully-ported Tiberian terrain.
It's fair to say that the amount of work, almost solely by FS-21, put into this mod was phenomenal, and it was a joy for me to see it released when it finally was in 2005, both because we all know the Tiberian sides were the superior sides, and also because the end-result was something I'd been dying to see for a long time; the Tiberian factions squaring up to the Red Alert 2 ones.
For anyone looking for either an integrative blend of Command and Conquer gaming, an extension of the familiar C&C gameplay formulae with an added twist, or a mod which should forever have a time-honoured place in C&C community history, give C&C Reloaded a try. Proof, as if it were needed, that even among the earlier successes of C&C modding, before your N-Patch and your fancy 3D modellers rendering kickass SHPs left, right and centre, there was plenty of high-quality well-made stuff out there.
Robot Storm
Now, I've had the privilege of following this mod like some sort of ragtag dog-on-a-string type for a couple of years now, and I've seen it evolve through a number of iterations, one of the earliest of which had three or four distinct human splinter factions. I'm sure the majority of the YR players amongst you have played 1.96, the public release which was in itself a number of years in the making, and recently Apollo informed me that the public version had reached its third birthday.
To me, there are two RS mods; the first, being 1.99, with the three factions you all know and love (Allied Legion [League? Ha!], Freedom League and NEXUS [Inspired by the Warzone 2100 AI of the same name]), and the second being the currently-in-progress 2.1, complete with all-new building graphics and many more RS-specific graphics, sounds and other toys than were previously used, as well as the brutal Osiris faction. Both are uniquely brilliant in their own way, and in my mind they form part of the same storyline (though I feel Apollo and Elerium disagree
). I certainly won't get rid of 1.99 when 2.0 and 2.1 are released.The gameplay is so radically different from YR's that the article's comment that it "remains consistent" with RA2 felt a little of an injustice to it – the pacing of the game is about twice as fast, the AI is massively overhauled so that it is no longer a pushover (and yes – it's even tougher in 2.1…no longer can one player hold off against five Brutals), the units are very distinctive and must be combined if you are to have any hope of success (to the point infantry are now useful) and, as I said in my first full review of the mod, it gives YR gameplay something it always lacked: fun.
I urge anyone who plays or intends to play YR to download this immediately if you haven't already. And I'm not just saying that as a member of the staff team! Or maybe I am, but even if I wasn't on the team I'd be a fanboy so either way, you'd be getting the same message.
It Came From Red Alert!
It is interesting to note that two of the three Guild-hosted YR mods featured in the magazine article, and indeed three out of all the mods in the entire article overhaul at least part of the game to another, earlier game in the Command and Conquer series (Are you listening, EA? Take the hint!), and that the majority completely rewrite the entire gameplay of the 'host' game' (Reloaded being the exception, since the original sides and play style have been mostly preserved)
Being as ICFRA is a conversion of Yuri's Revenge to the original Red Alert/Aftermath/Counterstrike universe, it goes without saying that the gameplay is going to change a bit. Daz' aim with this mod was to remain as faithful to the original Red Alert as he possibly could, given the constraints of the YR engine. He went to great lengths to preserve the artwork style of the units and structures (with tech structures like the derrick and hospital receiving a similar makeover), and although the voxels are quite clearly different and more detailed they lose none of their essence, or their RA-like feel. The natural imbalances of the sides from Red Alert (Allies being piss-weak but fast and sneaky, Soviets being offensive and defensive powerhouse monsters who trundle along slower than your Gran behind the wheel) have been restored, and the cartoony style of RA2 and beyond has been lovingly restored to its righteous roots, reminding us of what it meant, and still means, to be a great RTS that oldbies and newbies alike cannot help but love. If you've never played the original Red Alert (why not?), this taste of nostalgia should serve as an advertisement of what you're missing and chivvy you to add the great classic to your collection (with The First Decade, you have no excuse at all not to). If you have, it should serve as an inspiration to blow the dust off the copy and whip your way through the campaigns again.
To end this news article, I present to you a very insightful interview with Daz on his mod, It Came From Red Alert! Enjoy. =)
Ash: Firstly, thanks for agreeing to this interview =) What was your reaction when you saw the mag article?
Daz: Well I actually knew in advance as they contacted me via ModDB regarding permission to put the mod files on their cover disc. I was expecting a tiny mention so I was quite pleased when I saw it was three (admittedly very short) paragraphs with a screenshot and that it was second in the feature. It also made me wish I'd finished the mod and had taken some newer screenshots when I released the last release as the one in the magazine was from two releases ago.
Ash: What made you decide to bring the original Red Alert to the RA2 engine?
Daz: I fancied playing Red Alert one day and constantly found myself trying to queue units and right click scroll around the map, which weren't features of the Red Alert UI. It was getting a bit frustrating and as the majority of the coding could come straight across into Red Alert 2 I thought I might aswell.
Ash: CNC Guild oldbies may remember a different, now-defunct project by the same name that aimed to bring giant-ant missions to Red Alert 2. Am I right in saying that this project has nothing to do with that venture, or was it an evolution of concept?
Daz: Yeah it's unrelated, I'm not familiar with that project. I do actually have the ants ingame and was considering making them a skirmish faction but I chose not to pursue it.
Ash: What would you say the biggest difficulty was in getting RA-style gameplay in RA2?
Daz: There's some stuff that just doesn't want to go in properly - helicopters and planes for example, in Red Alert 2 the Harrier is somewhere between the two so gettting the distinction between the two types of Red Alert aircraft is a bit awkward. It still messes up occasionally but it's out of my hands. It took me a little while to realise that the weapon ranges for the aircraft and AA units were wrong because Red Alert 2 has actual altitudes, I had to do some pythagoras to get the right ranges. Generally there's alot of small issues like that rather than any single large issues.
Ash: Given the intentionally-imbalanced nature of the original RA, how difficult was it to retain the essence of the original, yet keep the game fair?
Daz: For the most part I just kept it as much the same as possible. I can remember people always saying that the Soviets were always better than the Allies by a long way but I always used to play the Allies without any problems so I wasn't too worried. I think the really balance breaking thing was adding the Missile Sub in Aftermath (thus stripping the Allies of their power area) hence the option to remove Aftermath additions via a game mode.
Ash: Would you say some of the newer features present in RA2 (such as garrisoning structures) have improved the overall experience?
Daz: The UI stuff definitely does, as I said that was the whole basis of the mod, and I quite like the elements that gives areas of maps more value - garrisoning and capturable tech structures - which is why I chose to keep those. Initially I got rid of garrisoning and capturable tech but with the maps having been made for a game that include those two features it felt a little wrong so I brought them back.
Ash: Was there anything you'd have liked to include that was not possible?
Daz: There's plenty of stuff that's hacky and as such not quite right - the Radar Jammer, aircraft as I mentioned earlier, the GPS sat, Parabombs, getting the Cruisers not to park right on the shore and then refuse to retreat when ordered to, anything like that where it's not exactly the same as Red Alert I would have liked to be perfect.
Ash: Were you at any stage tempted to add new things that weren't present in the original RA, and 'make the game your own', so to speak?
Daz: It occurred to me that I could but I never had any desire to. It was mentioned a couple of times by other people but the whole point of ICFRA is that it's Red Alert (bar the map structure stuff) so more units or structures would have made it something else.
Ash: Has the AI in the game been altered extensively to cope with the all-new units list and provide a greater challenge?
Daz: I tried to build the Red Alert units using appropriate Red Alert 2 units (for example the Medium Tank is under [MTNK] which is the Red Alert 2 Grizzly), because of this the original Red Alert 2 AI mostly worked. I had to remove anything from Red Alert 2 that I hadn't overwritten and some units used new tags so I had to add taskforces and such for them to get the AI to use them. A totally overhauled AI is on my list of ideal things to do but I think it might be a little beyond me.
Ash: How difficult was it to make higher-quality graphics of RA2 that still fit the theme and wouldn't have looked out of place in the original game?
Daz: Again I've tried to make things the same as much was possible at the time (the vast majority of the buildings were done two years ago when I was a much less capable modeller). I had to change the War Factory a bit because Red Alert 2 didn't like the version using the correct tile size from Red Alert but other than that everything was intended to be the same. Most of it still stands up as long as I don't open the original model files, then I'm reduced to tears.
Ash: Are there currently any plans to go through with terrain or further civilian building alterations (I have seen the Church on the website) to make the whole experience even more RA-like?
Daz: I'll cover terrain in the last question. At one point I started doing the houses from Red Alert, in fact one is in the mod files as "CGRAHOUSE1". Red Alert doesn't really have a huge amount of civilian structures, I've done the more interesting ones (Prison, Church, Hospital, Bio Lab) and Red Alert 2 has some generic houses and crop fields that look like the Red Alert ones so I chose to leave those. In Red Alert 2 civilian structures are a big deal whereas Red Alert was more open fields.
Ash: Have you themed the sidebar and UI in the same style as you have the buildings?
Daz: The sidebar has been made to look similar to the Red Alert one, but the Soviet sidebar is a bit misaligned at the moment (as the Allied and Soviet Red Alert 2 sidebars are made up of differently sized pieces). That's on my to-do list.
Ash: I read on the forum that you were debating proceeding with porting the campaign. Have you come to a decision as to whether you will?
Daz: I've got a not terribly attractive version of the first Allied mission ingame but for some reason bits of it decide not to work occasionally. My plan was to have the first mission for each side and then to add non-skirmish units and structures (Volkov, Chitzkoi, Phase Transport, Command Posts) to the code so that people could make missions themselves if they so wished.
Ash: Do you have any other further plans or directions you intend to take ICFRA, or are you altogether satisfied with the outcome?
Daz: I'm not particularly satisfied that the terrain is incomplete and the buildings don't have damaged versions, those are my main two issues along with the NPatch reliance. I'd like to do another version, it certainly needs a final version, but I've moved onto 3D engines like Unreal which obviously avoids all the irritating rendering things at exactly the right size and shape, dealing with palettes and then converting them to files Red Alert 2 can handle. However...
Ash: Anything that you would like to add that I haven't mentioned in the interview?
Daz: Just last weekend I went through and pulled all the NPatch requirements, it was really bothering me that people had to download an extra thing (which just isn't practical on the internet where noone actually reads full posts about things) and that ICFRA was probably broken by whatever the latest version of NPatch is (I know VK was breaking various things before by changing tags for no reason). As such I wanted rid of it. I ran all the voxels through the newest autonormals while I was at it as well.
I've got a version entitled RC1 on my hard drive that has the following change list.
Removed NPatch requirements, due to techinical differences the following things have now changed:
• G.P.S. Satellite is no longer a super weapon, the Allied Tech. Centre functions like the RA2 Spysat Uplink,
• The M.A.D. Tank affects an area 62% of the size it used to,
• The Parabombs have gone,
• The Soviet Spy Plane has been moved to the Radar Dome,
• The multiplayer colours will look incorrect on the pre-game menu but are fine ingame.
Changes/additions in this version:
• Flame Tower's fireball reinserted.
• Volkov added (coded, not buildable).
• Chitzkoi added (coded, not buildable).
• Removed ugly texture from Iron Curtain animations.
• Tesla Coil weapon now correctly fires in 3 bursts.
• Re-enabled campaign menu and added UI art.
• First Allied campaign mission added.
• Reverted to none-NPatch menu system.
• Soviet Rifle Infantry's text string corrected.
• M.A.D. Tank has visual explosion.
• "Retro" and "Retro Contraction" removed, remappable graphics are now forced.
• A number of small voxel detail fixes.
• All voxels renormalized with latest auto-normals.
• New map - The Hills Have Eyes Redux by Dutchgamer.
There are a couple of quite important things in there such as the NPatch removal, the Tesla Coil actually working properly (massive "feel" issue) and making the fireball graphics work so I need to get this out at some point.
That's being stopped by me refusing to do so until I do building damage frames and finish the terrain (I need to do the slopes, the pavement tiles and the road tiles). I had a little play with this last weekend too and got my work flow set up again, the only problem is that I can't see a way to Photoshop the flat terrain tile to the right angle for the slopes so I have to 3D it. This resulted in the colours not matching the terrain already ingame. I'm sure I can get it to match enough by using Photoshop on the renders though.
At the moment I've got some quite important real life stuff to sort out that's stopping me doing any big modding jobs like this, but I do intend to get RC1 out at some point.
Ash: Thanks once again for your time in taking part, and for some very insightful answers!
That's all from me, stay tuned for those unit previews in the RS forum as an addendum to this article.
Edited by Caspa, 14 April 2009 - 01:13 AM.
Because I can?
