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Do you still have to hold down shift to access the hidden ant missions?!

Yes.

No command and conquer discussion can be had without inculding this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yMy7JuGpJM

Just replayed the "Under Siege" Nod mission, that one's just as much of a micro-management intense PITA as I remember, but victory was mine

Going to give it another go tonight, as I've just learned that there are also secret dinosaur missions in C&C.

Oh gods yes in the first game! I'd forgotten about them!

Darn it this is where RA2 and 3 dropped the ball (although to be fair they did have mecha-squid and dolphins and bears)

You didn't know about the Dino missions?

I remember them being quite tough.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You didn't know about the Dino missions?

I remember them being quite tough.

To be fair, they used to be only accessible through modifying a command line, unlike the Ant missions where you just needed to shift-click on the right spot in the game menu. They are really micromanagement intensive in a game with some fairly dumb unit AI

I've had a skim through the tiberian dawn source code they released. Some interesting stuff in there. Here's a link for anyone else interested: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection
The coding style and documentation is at a surprisingly good standard, considering the age of it.

There appears to be some kind of infantry melee combat system that never made it into the final game, featuring punches and kicks. It's disabled behind a compiler flag.

Also spotted a couple of references to sandworms, so apparently they were doing a bit of work on dune 2000 at the time.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, they used to be only accessible through modifying a command line, unlike the Ant missions where you just needed to shift-click on the right spot in the game menu. They are really micromanagement intensive in a game with some fairly dumb unit AI

Oh, gak, yeah, I forgot about that.

Same command line would swap GDI/NOD in their respective missions, allowing you to do the various Covert Ops with swapped units. Sure made the NOD missions easier when you could build Mammoth Tanks.

Only thing I'm really missing right now and that's something these older C&C games never had, is an attack-move option. But other than that, these games have aged gracefully in my eyes. Yes, they are still frustrating sometimes and graphics / audio aside, it is a direct port with all the AI path-finding and targeting problems still intact. Biggest minor annoyance is that deploying units from transports takes a few clicks to happen. If you click too fast you select all transports and if you don't you just reselect it. I keep hammering the D-key, but that's no longer the deploy function for transports.

But as is, I can easily swap between games when one has an annoying mission, or play an alternate mission in the campaign without having to start all over, something you couldn't do with the originals as far as I can remember.

Ant missions were fun and on the dinosaur missions now, they are indeed a tad harder, with the dinos being massive damage sponges and you not being given a lot of resources to work with.

The only thing you can do to kind of 'fake' attack/move is have your finger over the 'S' key at all times, move near some enemies and hit 'S' and they'll stop and start attacking.

It's not perfect, but that's about all we have.

Some of the stuff you unlock for completing missions is really nice by the way, they've even included a first version of the Hell March that's pretty close to the one we know, with only real change being, for a lack of a better description, wimpier guitars that lacked that bit of oomph.

Also nice to see that EA has kept everything and I mean, everything, put in storage somewhere.

Indeed, a lot of the game all this background and game data just gets lost between mergers and downsizing and bankrupcy and such. There's whole games out there with the source codes lost and other aspects missing. GOG does a lot of work behind the scenes trying to pull together old games.

It's rather like the TV and movie industry in the earlier days. Back before set props became collector items and before gag reels and old film were wanted. Heck even old TV shows got recorded over leading to the only surviving copies being on home-VHS recordings lost in attics.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, they used to be only accessible through modifying a command line, unlike the Ant missions where you just needed to shift-click on the right spot in the game menu. They are really micromanagement intensive in a game with some fairly dumb unit AI

Oh, gak, yeah, I forgot about that.

Same command line would swap GDI/NOD in their respective missions, allowing you to do the various Covert Ops with swapped units. Sure made the NOD missions easier when you could build Mammoth Tanks.

Ah, command line augments... those were the days

Has anyone tried the multiplayer yet?

"At least your mother tipped well!"

Super fun game that deserved a remaster. Just hope they do DUNE 2000 at some point, along with Emperor: Battle for Dune.

Dune 2K is really retro but Emperor Battle for Dune would be great to see remastered- though potentially might have legal issues if the Herbert foundation (or whoever holds rights) doesn't want to see it done - which I believe I've heard is a reason GOG hasn't been able to bring the Dune games back through their service and also likely why EA hasn't sold them in years either.

We might see a Dune remaster if the upcoming movie is a hit.

With regards to the dummied out melee options:



Someone has made a workshop mod that puts it back in!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124412717

That's hilarious . I didn't even realize that was a thing in the original game, and I played it a ton!

 RiTides wrote:
That's hilarious . I didn't even realize that was a thing in the original game, and I played it a ton!

It wasn't. It got dummied out.

Really enjoying the music the most out of all of the parts of the remaster.

Agreed, Klepacki's work is amazing, been listening to it while doing spreadsheets for work

Bit sad that of all the bonus music you can unlock for the jukebox, it looks like Destructible Times is not part of the list.