EA just surprised launched the Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection on Steam in a big bundle, along with a few other classic titles. As someone who grew up playing Command & Conquer, I love to see them all revived like this making them really easy to pick up properly.
The downside to how EA have done it; you have to buy them all in one big bundle.
Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection includes:
- Command & Conquer
- Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Counterstrike
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The Aftermath
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Firestorm
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge
- Command & Conquer: Renegade
- Command & Conquer: Generals
- Command & Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars: Kane's Wrath
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Uprising
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
Writing about it on Steam, EA's Jim Vessella (Producer on C&C Remaster), wrote in an announcement about it:
How did this come to happen? Well, a while back I heard some team members at EA had the desire to launch some of our classic titles on Steam. After hearing about this initiative, several of us proposed we include the C&C Ultimate Collection. We knew this has been a request of the C&C community for over a decade, and has been an equal goal of us passionate C&C folks around the company. As such, a dedicated strike team here at EA has been pushing to make this a reality - but we knew we couldn't do it alone. So in the spirit of our community collaboration from the Remastered Collection, we reached out to a small group of the C&C Community to understand how we could best deliver the Ultimate Collection on Steam.
In addition they've launched the map editors FinalSun and FinalAlert 2 as open source under the GPL, these can be launched directly from Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. The source code appears packaged with the games on Steam in the installed folder.
If C&C is not your thing, a bunch of other EA classics also launched on Steam including:
- SimCity 3000 Unlimited
- Populous
- Populous 2: Trials of the Olympic Gods
- Populous: The Beginning
- Dungeon Keeper Gold
- Dungeon Keeper 2
- Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack
- The Saboteur
Thanks to Valve's Proton, some of them should be playable on Linux / Steam Deck too in only a few clicks. Although it seems a few of them do have problems running right now, so hopefully we will see Valve implement some fixes. For any problems you do encounter, remember to check for a post on the Proton GitHub and add your log files.
Let me know how you get on with them in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
"The downside to how EA have done it; you have to buy them all in one big bundle."
It seems to be possible to purchase individual titles using steamdb (you might need the extension installed or maybe just be logged in through steam, I'm not sure, I have the extension), for example if you only want Generals:
- go to https://steamdb.info/sub/799323/ and click "Add to cart"
- go back to steam, you should see it in your cart
- it will display "There was a problem displaying this item; p is undefined" but disregard it and click "Continue to payment".
I haven't tested it any further than the last payment step, but it seems possible.
Last edited by pb on 8 March 2024 at 7:13 pm UTC
It seems to be possible to purchase individual titles using steamdb (you might need the extension installed or maybe just be logged in through steam, I'm not sure, I have the extension), for example if you only want Generals:
- go to https://steamdb.info/sub/799323/ and click "Add to cart"
- go back to steam, you should see it in your cart
- it will display "There was a problem displaying this item; p is undefined" but disregard it and click "Continue to payment".
I haven't tested it any further than the last payment step, but it seems possible.
Last edited by pb on 8 March 2024 at 7:13 pm UTC
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slaapliedje Mar 8
Well, I only needed 5.18 to buy the ones I didn't already have... but now I need to figure out how to buy them for my brother...
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boltronics Mar 9
I purchased all of the games, and just finished performing limited testing via Proton. They all seem to work perfectly out of the box, with just these exceptions:
* Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun and Firestorm - some in-game options menus are rendered black or missing
* Command & Conquer Renegade - the mouse cursor doesn't move, although the menus can mostly be navigated with the keyboard
* Commnad & Conquer Red Alert 2 - the screen goes entirely black after the intro video finishes playing
It's quite impressive how far Proton has came. According to one reporter on protondb, https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw can be used to fix Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. I've tried it and it does indeed make the game playable... but it's not a great experience. It includes a "cnc-ddraw config.exe" utility and a custom ddraw.dll file that you can use by setting the game launch options in Steam to this:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%
With these changes, the missing menus will now appear, but they'll be rendered at the top-left hand side of the screen in their native 800x600 resolution (which is quite tiny on my 4k panel). No amount of tinkering I've done so far has been able to solve this.
Furthermore, the actual gameplay is stretched to fullscreen (when it's clearly meant for a 4:3 monitor) and I was unable to find a work-around. The game speed also had to be turned down somewhat or it was completely unplayable. I'm on a 7950X3D, it's possible that YMMV.
Tested on Arch with a RX 7900 XTX with the free software driver stack, and graphics details maxed out for all games (and a resolution of 1600x1200 for games meant for 4:3).
We got a remaster for the original C&C, so hopefully we can get one for Tiberian Sun and Firestorm next.
Edit: To clarify, all the non-C&C EA classics seem to work fine as well without any tinkering — aside from telling some games to use Proton 9.0 (Beta) although I can't remember if that was ever necessary. Populous: The Beginning looks like it doesn't remember the selected resolution when set from the main menu, but it looks like actual gameplay does use higher resolutions so I think that it's just a quirk of the game and is actually running as intended.
Last edited by boltronics on 9 March 2024 at 8:53 am UTC
* Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun and Firestorm - some in-game options menus are rendered black or missing
* Command & Conquer Renegade - the mouse cursor doesn't move, although the menus can mostly be navigated with the keyboard
* Commnad & Conquer Red Alert 2 - the screen goes entirely black after the intro video finishes playing
It's quite impressive how far Proton has came. According to one reporter on protondb, https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw can be used to fix Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. I've tried it and it does indeed make the game playable... but it's not a great experience. It includes a "cnc-ddraw config.exe" utility and a custom ddraw.dll file that you can use by setting the game launch options in Steam to this:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%
With these changes, the missing menus will now appear, but they'll be rendered at the top-left hand side of the screen in their native 800x600 resolution (which is quite tiny on my 4k panel). No amount of tinkering I've done so far has been able to solve this.
Furthermore, the actual gameplay is stretched to fullscreen (when it's clearly meant for a 4:3 monitor) and I was unable to find a work-around. The game speed also had to be turned down somewhat or it was completely unplayable. I'm on a 7950X3D, it's possible that YMMV.
Tested on Arch with a RX 7900 XTX with the free software driver stack, and graphics details maxed out for all games (and a resolution of 1600x1200 for games meant for 4:3).
We got a remaster for the original C&C, so hopefully we can get one for Tiberian Sun and Firestorm next.
Edit: To clarify, all the non-C&C EA classics seem to work fine as well without any tinkering — aside from telling some games to use Proton 9.0 (Beta) although I can't remember if that was ever necessary. Populous: The Beginning looks like it doesn't remember the selected resolution when set from the main menu, but it looks like actual gameplay does use higher resolutions so I think that it's just a quirk of the game and is actually running as intended.
Last edited by boltronics on 9 March 2024 at 8:53 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: boltronicsWith these changes, the missing menus will now appear, but they'll be rendered at the top-left hand side of the screen in their native 800x600 resolution (which is quite tiny on my 4k panel). No amount of tinkering I've done so far has been able to solve this.
Furthermore, the actual gameplay is stretched to fullscreen (when it's clearly meant for a 4:3 monitor) and I was unable to find a work-around. The game speed also had to be turned down somewhat or it was completely unplayable. I'm on a 7950X3D, it's possible that YMMV.
For Tiberian Sun, after you've done that, edit SUN.INI (in the game directory) and DDrawcompat.ini and add the desired resolution so the game recognises it.
For Red Alert same, but instead of SUN.INI edit RA2.INI and RA2MD.INI
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Seeing a whole bunch of screenshots of 4:3 games stretched to 16:9 is not exactly helping me to look at this favourably.
4 Likes, Who?
Does anyone know a good, preferably easy, way to get crt-shaders on proton?
I know that for integer scaling one simply can add a launch option, ideally one would want something similar for adding shaders.
Last edited by emphy on 9 March 2024 at 12:27 pm UTC
I know that for integer scaling one simply can add a launch option, ideally one would want something similar for adding shaders.
Last edited by emphy on 9 March 2024 at 12:27 pm UTC
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You know, back when these were a thing the first time around, I wasn't playing computer games. Never thought I'd get the chance to play them. Kind of pleased to be able to snag them now.
1 Likes, Who?
boltronics Mar 10
Quoting: BelaptirFor Tiberian Sun, after you've done that, edit SUN.INI (in the game directory) and DDrawcompat.ini and add the desired resolution so the game recognises it.Thanks. I kept at it for Red Alert 2 and got it working nicely, but it turns out that this was going down the wrong path.
For Red Alert same, but instead of SUN.INI edit RA2.INI and RA2MD.INI
In RA2.INI I have this for the Video section:
[Video]
ScreenWidth=1024
ScreenHeight=768
StretchMovies=noIn DDrawCompat.ini the related lines I have are:
SupportedDepthFormats = 16
SupportedResolutions = 640x400, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768In game I have the resolution set to "1024 x 760 x 16". This allows me to play at the game's originally supported maximum resolution, fullscreen with the correct aspect ratio which is just what I want.
The problem I was experiencing was delated to the settings I selected in cnc-ddraw config.exe. In the end I hit Restore default settings and tried again, only making the following changes:
Compatibility Settings -> Limit game speed: 60 ticks per second
I made sure not to touch anything else.
Let the driver (or the ddraw.dll replacement) perform the upscaling instead of the game. The sphere behind the Westwood intro video should be a circle instead of an oval if the aspect ratio is correctly maintained, which it is.
It's not working 100% the same as it did back in the day because the "Would you like to quit Red Alert 2?" question box is still cut off, so I have to click around to find the quit button. That's why I originally had the cnc-ddraw config.exe "Compatibility Settings" -> "Fix invisible videos / UI elements" option selected, but that was what was introducing all of the other resolution issues I was experiencing.
I tried a RA2 skirmish match without changing the "Limit game speed" setting, and before I could even get to the menu to slow the game down, I got a game over screen (the computer destroyed me in 6 seconds!). 60 ticks per second feels about right, but you could also probably go a tiny bit faster.
Sadly, I'm still not having any luck with Tiberian Sun. I can get the video and menus full-screen at the correct aspect ratio using AllowHiResModes=yes in SUN.INI and my native monitor resolution, but then starting a match causes an instant crash. Or, I can get everything looking correct at 800x600 upscaled, but then the menus revert back to their behaviour of not showing up. It's extremely frustrating.
Edit: I finally got Tiberian Sun working 100% as well, by setting the Proton version to 3.7-8. Of all the included Steam Play compatibility tool options available, this is the only one that works 100%. Proton 3.16-9 kind works but has flickering, and all newer versions cause the menus to be cut off. It seems a regression was introduced somewhere.
Last edited by boltronics on 10 March 2024 at 8:48 am UTC
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slaapliedje Mar 11
Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou know, back when these were a thing the first time around, I wasn't playing computer games. Never thought I'd get the chance to play them. Kind of pleased to be able to snag them now.I have to say, Dungeon Keeper 1&2 is one of those that there just hasn't been any proper replacements for. War of the Overworld is probably the closest, but they just didn't have the talent behind it like Bullfrog did.
Ha, weirdly, DK2 has a 3dfx trademark on it, but I can't figure out how to get it to run on my real PC (with Win98 and a Voodoo 3 1000).
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