news of November 2002
Is there something the C&C community should know? Mail it to MacMark@t-online.de and let's all read it here!

[2002-11-30]
The Barracks is back and CnC revival

I got this email from one of the authors of The Barracks:

  • From: MDSdntgiv@aol.com
    Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 22:35:55 EST
    Subject: Command and Conquer GOLD
    To: MacMark@t-online.de
    MIME-Version: 1.0

    MacMark,

    Hey, this is DontGivUp from The Barracks and I'm writing to let you know that me and Ojo are planning on a revival for C&C GOLD.  This idea has generated some signifcant steam at the website as there have been nearly 300 hits in 3 days.  I have contacted you and many of the other all-time great players in hopes that now things have died down some on the ladder system with cheating (at least to my knowledge) that it may be possible to start fresh again with a minimum of cheating.  I have contacted Westwood and am awaiting a response, though I don't expect much from them.  If there is anyone at Westwood that you know that might help me along with this process, I would appreciate you sending me their email address.  If there is anything that you can do to help assist me and Ojo in the process it would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,

    DontGivUp (The Barracks)

Thanks for your mail. All email addresses I can give you are on my links page. I would suggest Virtual Ted. Westwood made a patch for C&Cgold on WindowsXP, that's nice, but not enough in my opinion. Looking at StarCraft for example I see Blizzard doing updates and patches for this game even today. And StarCraft is only 1 or 2 years younger than CnC. Blizzard even made a new version for the Unix-based MacOS X and made new versions for Windows and older Mac OS (8 and 9) to enable them (like the OS X version) with a new local network option: to play on UDP/IP protocol at home. This network protocol is used for internet play of StarCraft too. Their patches fix even cheating topics like disconnects being counted as losses. To make a long story short: Other game companies make patches and updates for their "old" games and Westwood is somewhat lazy regarding this point.

If Westwood cannot keep this game up to date there's still another hope: Some guys are working on a new implementation of CnC called FreeCnC and you can already play with it. Unfortunately I have no answer yet to the question if FreeCnC is able to play on WChat too, but maybe they answer my email. FreeCnC is planned to be available for nearly every known operating system.

Update: Emails with FreeCnC team:

  • To: comrad@drunkencat.net
    From: MacMark@t-online.de
    Subject: free cnc
    Cc:
    Bcc:
    X-Attachments:

    Hi Bernd,

    I would like to know, if FreeCnC will be able to play on Westwood's WChat service for internet games of CnC.

    To be able to play on WChat with FreeCnC would be a very big feature for all users.

    Regards,
    MacMark

  • Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 16:40:22 +0100
    From: Bernd Ritter <comrad@drunkencat.net>
    To: MacMark@t-online.de
    Subject: Re: free cnc
    Mime-Version: 1.0

    hi

    nope, i dont think so, because freecnc does not rely on the cnc protocols. we wont reengineer them and westwood (ea) wont give us the protocols.
    but freecnc users will be able to play among themselves (the same as freecraft does). actually we can have our own Wchat-Service.

    comrad

That sounds very interesting. Thanks for your fast answer, comrad ;-) A free alternative to the original that is completely independent from Westwood.

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