OpenRA working to support C&C Remastered assets, Tiberian Sun work continues

The team behind OpenRA have confirmed their continued commitment to working on the game engine to support Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert and Dune 2000 on modern platforms.

Since the release of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, plus the open source code along with it from EA, people have questioned if OpenRA will continue and the good news is that it will. Not only that, it's going to get better than ever and work is ongoing.

Thanks to the open source release of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection code, the OpenRA team have already begun studying it and mentioned that while OpenRA takes things in a different and more modern direction, they have already been able to learn a few things.

The next OpenRA release will contain some initial small fixes based on what we have already learned. One example of this is the original palette remap tables that the original Red Alert used to create the different civilian infantry types that were previously missing from OpenRA’s version. There is a lot more to learn, and we expect that this knowledge will influence and inspire many details in the evolution and growth of OpenRA over the next few years.

Not only that, they're also going to be working on supporting the higher resolution art assets found in the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. It's going to take quite some time though, as the OpenRA game engine will need updating to support them.

Perhaps the even bigger news is how OpenRA support for Tiberian Sun is maturing. Actual visible work on it is slow, as the OpenRA game engine needed technical changes to support later games like Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. What's the news here then? They said work on it is "now starting to pay off" thanks to the added flexibility.

Advancements include support for the isometric selection boxes used by structures, variable terrain heights for vehicles to visibly drive up and down slopes, aircraft that would pitch and bank while flying and even the lighting effects that Tiberian Sun became known for have made it into OpenRA.

They've still got a lot more for Tiberian Sun until a public release but plenty got merged into it recently like improvements to tunnels, building upgrades, TS-specific AI features, and the drop pods for power. Exciting stuff!

See the full blog post here and download OpenRA free to play Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert and Dune 2000 on modern platforms.