news of April 2002

Is there something the C&C community should know? Mail it to MacMark@t-online.de and let's all read it here!


[2002-04-30]
FreeCNC - C&C for Linux, WindowsNT, BeOS and FreeBSD

Today we got some big news promising new life to be added to our favorite game!

    "Welcome to the open source project of FreeCNC, the SDL-rewrite of the classical real time strategy hit Command & Conquer."

There's a project running that brings C&C to other operating systems than the official supported ones which are MacOS "Classic", DOS, Windows9x, WinXP and some game consoles. The screenshots at FreeCNC look very good. You should visit FreeCNC! According to that site:

    "FreeCNC has been reported to run under the following OS : Linux 2.2/2.4, Windows 98/ME, BeOS 5.x, FreeBSD 4.5 and QNX 6.2"

That's impressive. Also they say:

    "Actually there is progressing work in the Solaris/Sparc and MacOSX (PPC)-Ports. MacOSX is compiling and running."

That could mean that we get a native MacOS X version of C&C too. Currently the original MacC&C runs perfectly on MacOS X, but it runs in classic mode and a native version would be cool. That was my thought.

Other guys will be happy that they get this game for their favorite operating system too of course! This is absolutely amazing!

There's only one little problem I could imagine: What about the online feature? Can you play FreeCNC over WChat with the other guys? According to an effort to make an improved version of WChat for Mac, Westwood declined to reveal the protocol for WChat. I guess they fear that some guys would abuse those informations to hack the online gaming.


[2002-04-18]
Temporary halt on contest prizes and champions pages

As a follow up to the earlier news

  • Missing links to WW hall of fame

    I got an answer from Ted to my question that I mailed to him yesterday (that's a real fast response time!):

      We are refocusing our efforts to try and make our newest games the best they can be. Our older titles which have been out for 5-6 years are drawing too much of our time to make this a reality. Therefore, we have had to cut back slightly on some of the services. This includes a temporary halt on contest prizes, champions pages for our older games, and any other maintenance issues which required us to spend time managing and updating.

      It's unfortunate, as I would like to keep offering prizes for all our games. I especially liked the player spotlight/interview, and some of the other things we're doing. But, with 11 games that now have ladders, it's hard to keep up with all of them.

      -VT

    The positive view: So, with some luck, we will see the champions page coming back and even the prizes some time.

    The view for the next months: It's not hard to guess that Westwood will release more games year by year. I think the only way to keep up with all those ladders, prizes, cheaters and so on is to hire some guys more to do this work. Reliable sources confirm that some of the workers at Westwood "had moved on" (i.e. left the game, ahem, the company) these steps taken by Westwood are of course understandable and show some logic.

    On the other hand we have now a crying C&C community, which is probably smaller than those for the newer games, but hey it still hurts us. By th way: I heard we got more players in March than we had in February :-)

    What can we do to heal the pain a little bit? Well, I guess I will have to publish the winners of every month now. Westwood might forgive me that I will copy the images of the C&C hall of fame. I will look at the end of the month to the ladder and check the top ranked players. I will compare those guys to my reports and the black list and then choose the winners. And I will need your help, yes your help! We players know who's cheating and free win rushing and we will dq those guys on our own. I will need your informations to choose the right guys in the end. We did it already some time ago. Check this page.

    I will introduce a new page called "hall of fame" and list the winners starting with March 2002 when Westwood discontinued their own C&C hall of fame. Question to you: Who won GDI and NOD that month? Who was 2nd and 3rd?


    [2002-04-17]
    Hall of fame discontinued

    The faithful reader might have noticed the older news "Missing links to WW hall of fame". This is a follow up to it:

    I got now an answer from Ted:

      Hi Mark.

      Unfortunately, we have had to discontinue the hall of fame for C&C. Any broken links should be fixed by us soon.

      Thanks,

      -VT

    I sent back another question:

      Hi Ted,

      does this mean there will be no new entries for the coming months?
      If so, can you tell me why?

      Regards,
      MacMark

    I have some hope it would be like this: They lost the guy doing the C&C hall of fame and as soon as they get a new man for that job, the C&C hall of fame will be continued. Hold your breath.


    [2002-04-13]
    Missing links to WW hall of fame

    It looks like Westwood is working on the C&C part of their C&C universe of games page set finally - or they removed some important links just to annoy us :-)

    Faithful reader NotGood7's comment on the forum was:

      Westwood will still do something with the ladder but right now they are in the process of getting someone to do it. The previous person who was doing the ladder moved on!

    Let's see what Ted will answer.


    [2002-04-09]
    New and better forum soon

    Last year I lost my original forum provider, because he disabled his free forums due to business issues. That provider fitted by far my forum needs best. Way better than the other forum-guys out there. It had registered users with their own colors and allows me to ban even high range IP areas. Plus it has several views for the users providing a very nice and comfortable usage of the forum. Today I visit them and see them announcing that they're back with a their free forums. Great! I justed signed up my new forum and I'm currently setting everything up.

    You will recognize the change when my link to the forum gets a new target soon.


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