Hello, I'm Rain.
I have a favour to ask you guys .


I currently run a page on facebook about "Westwood Studios" together with some of the ex-Westwood employees

(Alright that's the Westwood Studios page right here):

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/We...29073921?ref=ts


We've reached our 1000 member marker which is a small milestone for the page.
For the occasion we're organizing a major update blog for the members of the page concerning all the Westwood Studios games
(Nox series,Lands of Lore, the Dune games, the C&C series,ect.)

For the last year I've been on an exchange student program with a bad laptop and slow internet.
So I haven't been on Tiberian Sun for quite some time now or any other C&C game for that matter.

All I need to know is a brief summarization of how C&C TS- FS is doing these days online
Perhaps you could help me with TD too ?
(the same will be done with the other C&C games. )

I would like to interview all of you and ask your opinions, but time is running out and there is a deadline.

so please post your opinions about Tiberian Sun/ FS in a reply here.
Be as honest as possible: The good , the bad and the ugly.

Perhaps it would be also interesting to know what communities are still active and what mods are in the spotlight nowadays.

Thanks,
Rain

online
well as for online play TS usually (when ive seen it) sits between 80 to just under 100 people online but there are quite a few less people playing firestorm
TD and RA1 allways had a few people online tring to connect via westwood chat (and the beta ra online patch)
sole survivor has a team working on it to create a server for it (since westwood never told the community how to do it) to try and bring it back
TD however has had more people playing online thank to CnC net which was relised with the newest inofficial patch.


I think Tiberian sun is and was a great game, it was the first command and conquer game i got and i have allways liked it since.
I like the story line, the units, the way it cotinued from TD (unlike CnC3) and the changes firestorm made.
and i cant realy think of any complaints i have about the game.

TS is a great game overall, the only thing that annoyed me was the AI always getting SWs before I could get a war factory up much less get an MCV. (mainly because of putting down pavement to prevent terrain deformations and Subterranean crud) Other than that it is a pretty good game would of been my choice of a perfect game had the features originally planned for it had been in there (eg. Dropship loadout, Hunter Seeker control, ect ect). Would of also been nice to see Tiberian Incursion (aka Tiberian Twilight) come out, that game looked awesome! I wouldn't ever see daylight again after got it, I would of locked myself up and played it til the end of the my life, but instead EA started development on Command & Conquer Generals the game that doesn't deserve the title of C&C. It just sickens me that EA would make money off 9/11 and off people that think itll be like the preEA C&C titles. Not to say I don't enjoy it, it just isn't C&C.

As far as I know there's always some 30-100 players online, but most of them play modified, non-westwood maps, which have no terrain detailing and the maps' layout consists of small rocks.

I don't know about TD.

I first played TS in 1999-2000, but I was about 5 years old then and didn't really understand the game. However, in 2006 I bought EA's The First Decade with playing RA2 as the main intent. However, at the same time I decided to try TS again, and since then I've been loving it and nowadays it has.. "overrided" RA2 and newer C&C's from my list of favorite RTS's.

After playing the campaigns I started modding the game, making the AI better, making maps and searching for active communities.

In my opinion normal TS had many flaws in it; some useless units, a build queue limit of 5, foolish AI (it attacks with 4 light infantries..) and a few other things, however they were easy to fix by modding the game. The only problem I have with TS nowadays are Reconnection Errors, random errors which de-sync the game in multiplayer.

Communities.. the most active ones are TiberiumWeb (this forum) and Project Perfect Mod (www.ppmsite.com). PPM is much larger, however both sites have much content and are active.

About mods, there are multiple, I'll name a few:
-The Dawn of the Tiberium Age, a Tiberian Sun to Tiberian Dawn TC. You'll find more information about it in the "About/History" topic in the forum.
-Tiberian Odyssey. I don't know much about it since I haven't been really interested.
-Twisted Insurrection. It's probably the most active TS mod at the moment.. and although I've been visiting it's forum about twice in a week I don't remember it's intent

Also, there are not only the large community mods, but I think the most of us modders have a personal mod making TS closer to what we wanted it to be. There are also lots of public assets for modders to use in mods, like the maps in my signature, new graphics and other things.

Tiberian Odyssey is basically redoing TS in the way Twisted Insurrection does but with less focus on campaigns and more on the Mod in multiplay (I believe they plan singleplay too but not as prevailent) Twisted Insurrection while currently focused on the mod aspects seem pretty geared toward singleplayer maps.

RainXc, how many Ex-WW dudes have you got helping you out, i would like to have a chat with any programmers you are in contact with

^ Oh yes, let him to talk them! ^

The people I am working with are mainly fans of Westwood studios or Petroglyph.
(fans specializing from games such as Nox to Lands of lore to some of the C&C titles)
Although we have allot of ex-westwood employees as fans in our group, there are only 2 ex-WS employee's in the the admin staff team :

1.Mike B. Legg : Now co-founder of Petroglyph.
2.Joseph B. Hewitt : freelancer nowadays. (game designer)



Through these two I usually get in contact with the other people such as Brett Sperry and Rade Stojsavljevic who now run Jet set games inc. together with a few of the other staff members and of course the others.

The landscape of the relations between the Ex-Westwood members is a bit rough, some still are in contact with eachother, others not .

- - - -

Although we have ex WS staff members in our admin staff, we get a reply from them only once in a while
But that's understandable seeing both of them are quite busy (especially Mike since he's been working on Mytheon and a new major title: a sort of MMORTS from Petroglyph)

Currently I am a freelance writer for a games magazine (called SKOAR!) and a student journalist.


The work that is being done on the blogs has been moving very slowly, allot of research is going on at the moment to figure out the puzzle within the various games. There are also a big political conflicts between certain community factions ( Such is the case in the game: noX) , which makes just the more difficult to write things down while remaining neutral.

Content of the Blogs:
Next to pinpointing the fact that these games have been around 8-10 years, and they are still alive!
We will also bring allot of criticism in the blogs , mainly towards the Xwis Strike Team
(Then again they are doing work voluntarily ) , but also towards some communities who claim the monopoly over the some of the old games.
-> I'm still working on arrangements to talk to the top guys of the Xwis ST .
-> Certain communities haven't been so forward about talking to me, like for example the Renegade community.
(so you can really see how happy I am to see the replies from the TS side haha)


The blogs we are making will consist out of a chain of each game series.
Starting from the more newer WS games to the more older ones.


We are also looking for people who are willing to represent the C&C TS side of our page.

Anyway I'm off to check out the TD side .
Thanks again for the replies, it's greatly appreciated.
I will definitely mention this community in the TS blog, that might bring some more people here. (Which might be useful)

- Rain