Command & Conquer: Infiltration

During last night's first episode of C&C TV's Battlecast EA announced Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath, the first expansion for C&C3 Tiberium Wars. The expansion is set for "early 2008".

The expansion is focused on Kane and his rise back to power from Tiberian Sun to beyond the end of Tiberium Wars. A new global domination meta-game is being added and is described as "Risk on steroids" by producer Jim Vassella. The player will be able to move their forces around a global map and enter a regular battle when encountering the enemy. Units will be carried over from one battle to the next much like Rome: Total War. Aside from the usual additions of new units each side will have two sub-factions with unique units, upgrades, powers and structures along the line of factions in Red Alert 2 and generals in Zero Hour. The 360 version will have a new interface better suited to the console (if such an interface exists, gamepads, ha).

"As the title suggests, Kane's Wrath is all about Kane, and the rise of Nod ollowing the second Tiberium War, taking the player through the third Tiberium War and beyond," said producer Jim Vassella. The campaign features live-action cinematics, with Joseph Kucan, Michael Ironside, and Grace Park reprising their roles.

The latest patch was released and contains so many changes in addition to new maps that we won't even bother to list them here when you can just view the change notes as well as download the patch on the offical C&C3 patch page. Another notable addition is the option of the classic left click setup. Alternatively you can use the in game updater that never seems to work properly.

Summer has arrived and with it work is busier than ever. Here is the majority of what we haven't had time to post about over the last two-three weeks:

Tiberian Dawn-based total conversion for C&C3 announced.
Near Conflict, a modern combat total conversion for C&C3, also announced.
A C&C3 Map Manager released to make installing and organizing your maps easier.
Nicholas Worth who played Alexander Romanov in RA2, General Marzaq in TS and Kolinar Koltrass in E:BFD has died at the age of 69 from heart failure.
C&C3 sold 128,000 copies in the USA in the first week and now over 1,000,000 worldwide.
EA has launched a Tiberium Earth theme, based on Tiberium Wars, for Google Earth.
Derelict Studios has posted up three World Builder tutorials: Getting The Minimap To Show Up, How To View The Official C&C3 Maps, Post Effect Options.
EA approved map repository for C&C3 has been launched along with a new podcast.

I'll have a week off next month and maybe I can get to updating the units/structures which are woefully behind and get around to that review of C&C3.

The latest charts are in!

1. TMNT
2. Diddy Kong Racing
3. Sonic & the Secret Rings
4. Oblivion
5. Bratz Forever Diamonds
6. C&C 3
7. Resistance
8. Animal Crossing: Wild World
9. Motorstorm
10. Twilight Princess

... bye bye C&C =)

In other news a documentary about C&C3 is now available to view on your XBOX360. I'm just going to steal some Kotaku goodness here:

The 20 minute documentary includes interviews with the actors, cinematographers, and costume designers that created the Tiberium cheesefest we all know so well and love.

Now the all important Australian software sales chart!

Diddy Kong Racing
TMNT
C&C 3
Resistance
World of Warcraft
Motorstorm
Burning Crusade
Ricky Ponting Cricket
The Sims 2: Seasons
Animal Crossing Wild World

C&C3 no longer top dog. Down to 3.

In other news, my post could've been so much more creative if it wasn't for the fact that I was having so much fun playing Company of Heroes!

The Worldbuilder for C&C3: Tiberium Wars has been released. It includes documentation and is 7.7Mb. You can download it from our new utilities section. When we update our backend in the upcoming month, provided things stick to schedule (cue laughter), we will open the proper downloads section which will allow user submissions for files such as maps.

Make sure your maps are decent because Apoc is planning to have the dev team review and rate maps for posting on the official site.

Tiberium Wars has managed to in the top spot for the week of March 25th through the 31st with the Kane Edition dropping to 7th:

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts - $47
The Sims 2 Celebration Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $15
World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $32
The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $29
The Sims 2 - Electronic Arts - $27
World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $20
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Kane Ed - Electronic Arts - $59
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Shivering Isles Expansion Pack - 2K Games (Take 2) - $26
The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $28
Stalker: Shadow Of Chernobyl - THQ - $39

Update (by Azkabaz):

But now for the overall game sales figures that are actually important - the Australian figures:

C&C 3
TMNT
Resistance
Motorstorm
Guitar Hero II (360)
Ricky Ponting Cricket
The Sims 2: Seasons
Final Fantasy XII
WoW: Burning Crusade
Animal Crossing

So we've all been playing online against each other and I've come to a stark realization ...I suck. That and Ankle is a dirty rusher! Oh and ...I'm sorry stepoman.

Overall my impressions have been favourable although it seems like rushing is used a hell of a lot more than it should be; unless your highly ranked player it seems really prevalent. But ultimately masses of units is what C&C has almost always been about, a bigger force than your enemy, and it's often quite difficult to beat an opponent unless you have shit load of units. I guess this is just a problem with every single traditional formula RTS. The only place I've seen rushing negated was in Company of Heroes.

We will be uploading some of the staff replays to a gallery on cnc-i soon, probably around the same time we put our reviews up, so you can laugh at ~~our~~ my crapiness. If anyone wants to play a match with us my id for C&C3 is azkabaz[cnci] and Ankle's id is Einkoro.

Apart from the World Builder being ready soon™, as in next week if we are all really lucky, the big patch to fix up a heap of the crap we have been running into will be up and out in May.

Tiberium Wars has managed to land in the top two spots for the week of March 25th through the 31st:

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts - $46
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Kane Edition - Electronic Arts - $58
Stalker: Shadow Of Chernobyl - THQ - $34
World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $39
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Shivering Isles Expansion Pack - 2K Games - $30
World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $20
The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $30
The Sims 2 - Electronic Arts - $37
Supreme Commander - THQ - $50
The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $30

What should be the last patch addressing the 'critical' multiplayer issues has been released. You can get it from the auto-updater ingame or download it from EA's offical C&C3 patch page. Patch notes:

Optimizations

Made further improvements to video playback on low-end Windows XP system configurations.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an error that caused some players to crash or disconnect while in online lobbies.

Fixed an error that caused players with semicolon (';'), colon (':'), comma (','), or equal sign ('=') characters in their Online IDs to not be able to see and select options from dropdown menus in online multiplayer lobbies. These characters are no longer permissible in Online IDs.

Fixed an error that caused players to desync when watching a BattleCast match in which one of the participants disconnected.

Other Fixes

All online multiplayer game lobbies will now appear properly localized in different languages.

Is it just me or does auto-update never seem to work?

EA's Predator has issued the following statement on the official forums in regards to players who disconnect to avoid a loss in ranked online matches of Tiberium Wars:

We are working on the technology behind disconnecting and the rules associated, but here is some different thinking on the matter:

It is very tough to tell who disconnected when it happens and it could have happaned for a million different reasons. Theoretically, in a 1v1 match, neither person knows why someone disconnected. Was it their ISP? Did their computer crash? Did they really pull the plug?

What we are working on is a STRICT rule that would penalize players and freeze accounts for accumulating a certain amount of disconnects. If you have a few in your profile, do not worry, you're not in danger, but someone with quite a few, say at least 10 or more, they are in danger.

There is the law of habitual averages. If you get disconnected on once, the law of averages says it may happen to you again, but not nearly as frequently as somedone who is INTENTIONALLY doing it. They will get caught sooner than later and be penalized. So what I am saying is, we are taking a hard stance on disconnects and will not let the issue corrupt our ladder system.

If someone disconnects, their win streak should be halted, that is a website bug we are fixing in the next couple of days. If someone disconnects, it does not help them on the ladder. You have to win to move up the ladder and if you aren't winning, you will start falling.

If someone is a disconnecter, they WILL BE CAUGHT.

On one hand I suffer from dialup so I tend to get disconnected frequently, usually whenever I'm about to win it seems, so I am somewhat concerned about my account. On the other hand I absolutely hate it when over half the people I've played in ranked games disconnect as I'm about to finish them off. I could easily live with a disconnect counting as a loss if it means I don't have to worry about my account being reset/frozen because of my shitty internet connection.

I'm getting rather tired of reading through reviews and pointing out glaring errors when I could be doing something productive (like updating cnc-i more) so here is a list of all the reviews since the last ones posted:

I've got my notes together for my review and now I just need some time to organize and flesh them out. Knowing my unusual schedule I wouldn't hold my breathe if I was waiting to read it.

Yet another patch for Tiberium Wars addressing multiplayer issues has been released. As usual you can get it from the auto-updater ingame or download it from EA's offical C&C3 patch page. Patch notes:

Bug Fixes

Fixed an error that caused players to experience unexpected disconnections and freezes while in online lobbies and Automatch search.

Fixed an error that prevented players in online lobbies from chatting globally after sending private messages to other players.

Version 1.04 is in the works to address the remaining multiplayer issues and then we should be able to look forward to a major patch (provided no new critical issues come to light) which may even include new maps according to Predator.

Hey, it's your silent barley posting guy [me]! Mike Verdu has been in contact regarding some of the problems being found with C&C3:

While I’m delighted that people are having a blast with the single player campaign and skirmish modes of the game, I’m disappointed that we’ve had some teething problems with the online multiplayer. Most of our customers are able to play on-line, but I know that a number of you are having trouble — and I owe you an apology. Some of you can’t connect to C&C Online and others are having issues once on-line. This is unacceptable, especially for a product that we designed for competitive multiplayer game play. I am sorry that you are encountering problems and I want you to know that the development team is working very hard to understand the issues, fix the bugs that affect the largest numbers of people, and roll out patches as quickly as possible.

We have issued one patch already and we have two more in the works. I believe we have a bead on the issues that affect the most people and I expect that we will solve these problems in a matter of days.

Just to be clear: Not everyone is having problems playing on-line… the majority of people are able to get online, play games, and a have a great time. For those that are having problems, please bear with us. We will fix these issues and make C&C the great online multiplayer game it was designed to be – and we ask for your patience as we work through the issues.

New patch this weekend and another other in the works — looks like we will have a finished game in no time!

The second patch for Tiberium Wars, version 1.02, is online and can be downloaded via the auto-update feature or manually from the official site. The patch notes are as follows:

Bug Fixes

Fixed an error that caused the list of available matches in the Custom Match Lobby to constantly refresh to the top of the list.

Other Changes

Improved the patching process to ensure all players are prompted to receive the latest version of the game when attempting to play online or using the "Check for Updates" feature in the Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars Control Center utility.

With the multiplayer problems that popped up after launch it looks like the previously mentioned first major patch has been knocked back a little and we can expect to see v1.03 address a few more issues before it arrives.