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Hi everyone and thank you for bearing with us as we continue to discuss. We never thought that the Renegade source code would ever see the light of day after all of these years, but the impossible is happening right now and it's our duty as the Renegade/W3D Engine modding community to provide clarity and direction. We've noticed your discussions, saw your questions, and had our own chats about going forward. Regarding the source code release, we have answers for you. Where does W3D Hub stand?The release of the Renegade GPL-licensed source code by EA has presented us with both opportunities and challenges, but before we get into unpacking that let's start with explaining what we have been working on already. We currently have two main development branches that are closed source: the Scripts 4.x branch and the Engine 5.x branch. Both of these closed source codebases are compliant with EA's modding guidelines for the Command & Conquer franchise: https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/modding-faq Scripts 4.x Branch Purpose: The 4.x branch is primarily focused on maintaining and improving Renegade while ensuring compatibility with older content and systems. Key Features: Compatibility: Ensures that existing Renegade maps, plugins, and other content remains functional on a variety of operating systems. Bug fixing: Fixes various bugs that were present in the released game. Anti-Cheat Measures: Includes various anti-cheat mechanisms to protect the integrity of the game. Engine 5.x BranchPurpose: The 5.x branch is a completely reverse engineered version of the W3D game engine, incorporating an expanded set of features and development improvements. 5.x no longer supports Renegade, as it's primary function is to advance and support games such as Red Alert: A Path Beyond, Tiberian Sun Reborn and Battle for Dune: War of Assassins. Key Features: Advanced Features: Introduces new functionalities and improvements over the 4.x branch, such as better graphics, physics, and tools. Future-Proofing: Designed to support future development and expansions, making it a more flexible game engine than 4.x. The Issues We FaceThe Renegade source code has been released under the GPL license, which means any code using that must also be open-sourced and available to the public. We are unable to open-source our current 4.x and 5.x branches because of the following: Releasing our code requires the explicit permission of everyone who was ever involved, and after 20+ years of code contributions and some of its developers having left us or otherwise, this is not possible. Third-party libraries, such as FMOD which we use for our audio system, are not compatible with the GPL license. Releasing 4.x and 5.x code opens the door to cheaters who can exploit our games, which cannot be done for the sake of fairness and enjoyment of our games as they are. Our Decisions The Future of 4.x and 5.x With both the 4.x and 5.x Branches, we will continue as we have always done. The Tiberian Technologies scripts patch will remain with 4.x and Red Alert: A Path Beyond, Tiberian Sun: Reborn, Battle for Dune: War of Assassins and other projects will remain on 5.x for the foreseeable future. The reality is that we still need these branches to fix Renegade in it's current form and also maintain our own game projects. This ensures that no development is halted and that our games remain available to you to play. To clarify our position, we will not be using the released GPL code in these branches as that would not be GPL-compatible. In layman's terms, 4.x and 5.x will have to pretend the code is not there, and continue that work without peeking or using any of it. A New Project Emerges: OpenW3D Using the released Renegade source code and complying with the GPL license, we are starting a new open source game engine project, simply named OpenW3D. We aim to bring the source code up to modern standards, get it building and usable, and then begin implementing the features and upgrades we developed across 4.x and 5.x and the rest of Renegade's modding history. We are not tossing away our 4.x and 5.x work, but rather we are looking to get back to that point - this time from the source code. With the benefit of hindsight taking away a lot of the guesswork, and renewed interest in coding and modding bringing activity, we hope to get this ball rolling! Here's an initial plan of action: Bring the codebase up to par with modern C++ standards (ideally 20) Put it into a modern build system (CMake, Sharpmake, etc.) Remove/replace 3rd party stuff that makes it incompatible with GPL (can be done simultaneously with above steps) As a baseline, just get Renegade working in it, and maybe build a single test map, just so we know that we can go from raw dev data to an exported and functioning game Start planning upgrades and porting over one of the W3D projects We are also mulling over the possibility of cross platform support as well, which should excite all of you Mac and Linux fans! We have hands already on this plan of action, with several of our experienced programmers tackling the codebase now. We aim to expand development shortly with some dedicated collaboration areas on our new Mattermost communication platform, so stay tuned for more info! Quickfire FAQ Here's a quick FAQ of what has been explained above! What's happening? Should I be concerned? - EA has released the Renegade source code under the GPL licence. This is great news for us as it will allow us to work on a new game engine. No need for concern! A new engine you say, what's that? - Yup, we're working on a new game engine called OpenW3D. This will be an open source version of the W3D engine that aims to be an accessible platform for developing Rene-like (Renegade-like) games. We're aiming for it to be a more robust platform than what we use currently. Sounds good, how can I get involved with OpenW3D? - Our infrastructure for supporting open development isn't quite ready yet, but in the meantime we'll be opening a public channel for OpenW3D in our Discord server. Eventually we will open a dedicated space for development on our Mattermost communication platform. Stay tuned for more info! How does OpenW3D affect the Tiberian Technologies scripts patch? - The short answer is, it doesn't. The team at TT will keep developing the TT scripts patch for Renegade on the W3D 4.x codebase as normal. The team won't be using at any of the Renegade source code that EA has just released though, as that would violate the GPL licence. So what codebase or game engine do your games, like APB, AR and TSR, use? - These games use the W3D Engine 5.x codebase described earlier in this post. Some other games use 4.x though, such as Interim Apex and ECW. Is W3D Hub using the Renegade source code in existing projects like APB and TSR? - No, we won't be, as including any of the release code would require us to release our code under GPL, which we cannot do. What about using the Renegade Source code in the TT scripts patch? - This is also not possible due to GPL. Will any of your games switch engine to OpenW3D? - Not in the short term, but in the long term when the engine has developed a lot more, we can evaluate whether we want to move our projects across. It's simply not realistic to switch engine at this stage, as it is way too early in development. Thanks for Reading Whew, that was a lot, but thanks for bearing with us! This is a really exciting movement for the community and couldn't have been possible without people at EA like CCHyper, Jim Vesella, Brian Barnes, as well as talented people in our own community here at W3D Hub such as @ jonwil , @ Unstoppable and @ Jerad2142 . It's down to the hard work of these people that we can even think about doing this today. To re-iterate, we will be opening a new channel on Discord to cover OpenW3D development and Interested people from all levels of experience are encouraged to come and engage with us in there. Once we have our infrastructure in order, we'll have more information on how to sign up soon too! Thank you for reading, and please let us know if you have any further questions, concerns, or feedback. - OWA and the W3D Hub Team

I would like to thank Unstoppable, dblaney1 and cyberarm for their contributions to 4.8 Update 4 (If I missed anyone else who contributed to 4.8 Update 4, sorry). [blurb]Added new features, scripts, bug fixes, and more![/blurb] New scripts and changes to existing scripts by Jerad2142. New scripts and changes to existing scripts by Unstoppable. Added preliminary support for controllers - enjoy smooth vehicle steering! Added a potential fix for vehicle limits randomly breaking after custom maps. Added a new LevelEdit setting, “HideTeamBattlefieldInformation”, which will make the building icon not show up on battle field and team information screens. Added a copy constructor and equals operator overload to HashTemplateClass. (Credits to Tuna for figuring out). Added the engine call Set_Enable_Foot_Steps which can enable or disable the footstep effects and sounds of a specific infantry. Added the tt.ini keyword ReplaceBeaconWithEquipment which turns the Beacon object in the PT into an equipment menu. Added PDDUMP and PODUMP console commands that dump information about player data, objects and vehicles. Added the engine call Trigger_Smooth_Skeleton_Height_Resize which allows the programmer to make a soldier’s skeleton smoothly rescale at a set speed without spamming the network. Added PCC, PCCT and PCCP console commands to print text to client's console. Detect if FDS is running under Wine on Linux and fix console output if so. Changed how the TRAIN_TRACK_COLLISION_GROUP works (now only collides with itself). Changed how the TRAIN_COLLISION_GROUP works (now only collides with TRAIN_TRACK, SOLDIER, DEFAULT, BULLET, and C4 Improved the equipment menu to now check if your weapon is full, in which case it will block you buying more. Soldiers will have to reload guns as it only fills your bag rounds unless you don’t have the gun at all. This is unfortunately just the way powerups work and I wasn’t going to rework the system. The gameover command can now be used in single player to end the level. Note: this will result in 3 stars at best. Fixes so team GDI can now own an Obelisk. Fixed Giant Kane Hologram’s mouth movement in single player so he talks once more. Fixes for the Remote FDS Console and the opening if the F8 console is active. Vehicle Management Dialog now shows the name of AI in your vehicle instead of “None” Removed outdated code from the equipment menu that would block beacons from being purchasable unless settings had been chosen on the server. Fix PLAYER_INFO not printing some players when the player limit changes and there are more players than player limit. Fixed an issue with hearing sounds ahead of the player when game ends or if the player leaves while zoomed in with a scope. Custom Scripts Requests (That I know of): Added JMG_Utility_Zone_Damage_While_In_Zone for Mortalc13 Added JMG_Utility_Visible_Vehicle_Occupants for rackz Added JMG_Utility_Zone_Disable_Specific_Weapon_Presets for rackz Added JMG_Utility_Zone_Damage_While_In_Zone_Presets for ExEric3

This seems like a great and sensible step forward that keeps everything legal and provides a sensible roadmap for the future. I think targeting porting of one of the existing Engine 5.0 projects over to OpenW3D makes a lot of sense - appreciating it'll take a long time, it should help prioritise feature development once the codebase is up to scratch.

Hi everyone, In case you missed it, EA has just released the Renegade source code on their GitHub page, as well as enabling Mod Workshop support for several of the C&C titles on Steam! You can read more about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/1izmpmb/cc_steam_workshop_support_source_code/ So what does this mean for W3D Hub, the Renegade Community and the Tiberian Technologies Scripts Project? These are questions that we're currently trying to answer ourselves, so as we look ahead we have some crucial decisions to make regarding the future of the W3D Engine. We know many of you are eager to dive into the code and start experimenting, so we are currently developing a plan for our long-term goals to enhance the W3D engine and improve all of the games we support here at W3D Hub. We have some initial ideas that we're not quite ready to share yet, but once we had some more solid plans we'll share them with you in full, as well as give you information on how to get involved if you're passionate about pushing Renegade and W3D to the next stage in it's history. Speaking of history: we've been reverse-engineering the Renegade source code for over 20 years now to the point where we've added many new features and functionality to our games. With the formation of W3D Hub over a decade ago our mission statement was to preserve C&C Renegade and develop our own unique experience on it's flexible game engine. With the official source code released, we are presented with the unique opportunity and the mandate to continue that work even more now than ever before. We hope you'll all join us on this journey in the months and years to come! We've achieved amazing things with the engine over the years, but we never imagined the source code would be released in such a significant way, so a massive thank you goes out to CCHyper, Jim Vessella, Brian Barnes, and everyone at Electronic Arts who made this possible. You've ensured that the C&C Renegade community can thrive for many more years to come. Also a special thanks to our very own @ jonwil @ Jerad2142 and @ Unstoppable who have worked tirelessly over the years to improve C&C Renegade with the TT Scripts Project. As we look to the future of the W3D Engine, we are all excited about the possibilities to come. Please stay tuned for the next update where we'll be sharing our plans for the future in full. - OWA & The W3D Hub Team

Celebrate 23 years of C&C Renegade! From 22 February to 02 March, the C&C Community will see several game nights, a Community Roundtable, and more! Visit the C&C Community Discord @ https://discord.gg/zktcZQY for times and full details!

Hey Klaus, Unsure. Someone more knowledgeable will probably help in a bit and post here. Have you installed APB before? Have you tried reinstalling? Have you tried restarting your computer, then installing? You can also post in our discord for an even faster response if you'd like. https://discord.com/channels/270678524619128843/1211374839483605072