EA open-sources four more Command & Conquer games
Electronic Arts (EA) is releasing the source code for four Command & Conquer titles under the open-source GPL license. The original Command & Conquer (since subtitled Tiberian Dawn) is joined by Red Alert, Renegade, and Generals, the code for all of which can now be found on EA’s GitHub page. Only the code has been open sourced, not the games’ assets and cinematics, but it will help modders and the game restoration community keep the games playable.
This isn’t actually a first for EA. Back in 2020 the company released the source code for its Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, made up of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. That code had already been adapted for the remaster’s engine however, while the new releases are the “fully recovered source code” of the series’ first two games, according to Luke “CCHyper” Feenan, a Command & Conquer community member who proposed and orchestrated the release together with EA.
Renegade and Generals, meanwhile, have been released under an open-source license for the first time. Renegade is a 2002 first- and third-person shooter set in the franchise’s Tiberium universe, while Generals is a 2003 strategy game that eschewed the Tiberium and Red Alert worlds for a near-future setting depicting a war between the United States, China, and the fictional Global Liberation Army. Its expansion Zero Hour is also included in the open source release.
Alongside the open sourcing, EA has also opened Steam Workshop support, and released a ‘Modding Support’ pack that includes the source XML, schema, script, shader and map files, for all the games that use the SAGE engine:
- C&C Renegade
- C&C Generals & Zero Hour
- C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath
- C&C Red Alert 3 & Uprising
- C&C 4 Tiberian Twilight
That move should make it easier to create mods and maps for the games, and to share some of those creations through Steam. To cap off the announcement, EA released a 35-minute video of archival gameplay footage from the early development of Renegade and Generals: