C&C95 NOD Campaign

[nubonamission]

Hey!

I am thinking of running the original C&C NOD Campaign, I haven't really started to plan it out properly yet so I'm in very early stages. I need to do some testing still with recording (plan is to use FRAPS).

If all goes smoothly I intend to upload initial runs of each map to youtube, and then get feedback/criticism on each map and then do an improvement by re-running it.

No useful bugs or breaks that I can use come to mind, if anyone knows any let me know.

Give any ideas, tips, whatever, it will be appreciated! I am no stranger to hardcore gaming, but as far as doing an "official" speedrun this will be a first so any advice there, specific to recording and anything I haven't thought of...

Thanks,
nub

Edit:

Also, I may play around with the speed settings but I'm pretty sure I'll just play with it on fastest. It's pretty damn fast and it makes things hard to control, but I think I'll get used to it and this is speedrunning right? Also, I take it this is allowed in the rules?

And another question, should this be done as individual levels?

[lag]

Speed setting - I think the in-game time would be taken as the record, so it would probably serve you better to play on a lower game speed.

Individual levels - Tricky one. It's only the deployment area that depends on what path you take on the main map, right? I think that would mean it's IL. Don't quote me on that.

Oh, and someone did start speedrunning C&C before. I'm not sure if they did any of the NOD campaign, though. The runs are definitely on youtube if so.

[IsraeliRD]

Heya,

While I can't help in any way such as actually playing the game (I think I did 2 missions at best, and just forgot about the game), I have went online to find things to help you out:

http://www.r1ch.net/old/c&c/ 
1. Find a defensive structure (eg, Adv. Guard tower, Obelisk) and click on sell.
2. Move the dollar symbol over the structure.
3. Click left to start selling, right IMMEDIATELY to switch to pointer mode, and quickly click left again on the half sold structure and hit S.
4. The structure should remain intact, and you should have got a free minigunner or two! This works best with a low game speed.

This is confirmed by Westwood as "ability to sell a building and then stop the selling process in order to gain bonus infantry", but it says that to do the bug you need to, "hitting the 'S' key to stop a building from selling". It was fixed in 1.22.

This one you'll have to find out yourself, but in 1.07 it is possible to place a structure at any position in the map. Some kind of a cheat but one I can't find atm on how to do. 1.19 fixes this.


After loads of search, I found out that 1.07 is regarded by Westwood as "Initial Release Version". However, before we jump and say 1.07 should be used, note that 1.18P still has these problems and contains these fixes:
--> Adjusts cost of Nod turrets to $600.
--> Fixes problem with not receiving the nuclear missile when the special crates are found in certain Nod missions.
Found in: ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/cc1/info/CCFAQ30.TXT

While the first is an increase (hopefully you won't need that much), the second one might be required in case you do not receive the nuclear missile in 1.07, so I'd recommend you to check that you can get the nuclear missile crates.


Other info that will be useful in case you don't know (credits to Westwood's FAQ list - ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/ccgold/info/CCGFAQ13.TXT)

b) Building a Nuclear weapon in NOD single player missions.
To allow your Temple of NOD to launch nuclear missiles in the final battle, you will need to retrieve the crates on levels 6, 8, and 12.   If you do not find the crates before finishing the mission, the nuclear missile will not be available.  You may have to sell or destroy enemy buildings to get a few of   the crates.  Note that you only get ONE nuke to use in solo missions, but it is much more powerful than the one in multiplayer games.


Also - http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/196957/2598  but probably less required (version 2.8 ).


Finally, there are 25 missions per campaign, 15 of which are a must (the other 10 depend on your choices), so if you're going after ILs I believe you need to run the entire game (30 missions I'd presume, but you may be asked for all 50). If you're going for a single-segment run I don't think you'd need to run the entire game, but can do NOD only.  Again, best to ask Mike first.

Good luck running!

[ExplodingCabbage]

THIS page will be useful. In particular the 'cheats' section contains many useful glitches including full explanations of the ones IsraeliRD mentioned. Some, like the ability to place buildings anywhere, are probably so powerful that they deserve to be a seperate run category. Also, the 'infinite minigunner' exploit combined with the glitch that lets you sell infantry (and sell vehicles without a repair bay) provides a source of infinite money without Tiberium, and the 'silo money cheat' is an even more powerful way to get a sudden boost of money.

As for whether the run would be IL or not, I'm not sure. The fact that there are lots of different mission trees, and that getting the nuclear tech on earlier levels affects your ability to launch a nuke on the final level, all make figuring out how to make an IL table work complicated, though not impossible. One other thing though - it's suggested in the FAQ I linked to that your starting cash for some missions depends upon your score from the mission before. If this is true, then of course we can't have an IL table.

As far as version goes, you probably want to stay pre-1.18 due to the silo money cheat, unless you're doing a run without it. Note that the increased cost of turrets is probably actually an ADVANTAGE, since it means you can sell prebuilt turrets for more money and you're never going to want to waste money building turrets of your own anyway - they suck.

Lag mentions that someone started running C&C before. This is true, but if he's talking about the same run that I saw, it sucked.

Before you can start anything, are you aware that SDA doesn't allow runs done on DOSBOX due to its rules on emulators? So if you want to submit here, you'll need to make the game run in Windows or install a full MS-DOS OS (ha!). As lag has said, timing will most likely be done using the in-game timer; before you can do anything, you'll want to check that this is internally consistent (e.g. that the time taken on the in-game timer for a minigunner to cross the map is the same or very nearly the same regardless of game speed setting and how powerful your computer is). If it isn't, then seeing as this is an old DOS game without (as far as I know) an internal frame limiter, things will be complicated.

Finally, once you've checked you can run and record the game without DOSBOX and that the timer is valid for speedrunning, you'll need to figure out what category you're going to run in (are you going to use a particular version, and are you going to avoid using certain glitches?), check Mike agrees it's a valid category, and begin. That, of course, is assuming that seeing how hugely breakable the early versions of this game are doesn't put you off running the game entirely.

[IcedCube]

I personally joined in when Tiberian Sun was released, so I know little to nothing of this game or its exploits, but I wish you good luck ;o

EDIT: I don't think you can submit this campaign for an IL-table without clearing the GDI campaign as well. (Dw, RA3 and CNC3 aren't much better either, with 30 and 30+ missions, respectively.

[nubonamission]

The in-game timer is totally borked. Mission one,  just casually run through it takes me 20-25 sec. Go to the mission debrief and it says 4m.

My version is 1.04, it's the windows version, designed for windows 95. So all I have to do is get a patched .dll and run it in compatibility mode - no emulator.

[ExplodingCabbage]

If the in-game timer is borked, the next question is whether the game runs at a constant speed.

[nubonamission]

If the in-game timer is borked, the next question is whether the game runs at a constant speed.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I haven't noticed any speedups/slowdowns.

[ExplodingCabbage]

Excellent, then it sounds like it will indeed be possible to get a run of the game accepted on SDA.

I suggest that all that's left to decide is whether to use the original version of the game, with the build-anywhere, infinite minigunner and silo money glitches, or to use the latest version, which removes all these exploits.

[IsraeliRD]

I think he should go with the glitched version. TW for example has the engineer capture exploit which then will be used in the run it.

Looking forwards to the run.

[ExplodingCabbage]

I would be interested to see both. Runs with massive glitches are really cool, but here the glitches will make many levels ridiculously easy by allowing powerful bases to be wrecked in seconds by an engineer popping out of a magically appearing Hand of Nod next to the enemy's construction yard. As such, using the version that doesn't have these glitches would make for a completely different run. I am pretty certain that Mike will agree to accept different game versions as different categories in a case like this, so it's up to nubonamission whether he thinks it's most interesting to do a run with these massive game-breaking glitches or to use the latest version and run it like it's a normal RTS.

[nubonamission]

Having problems recording atm. I sent a message to a guy on youtube with some C&C videos see if he can give any advice. Only records x seconds of black with no sound, plus when recording the game does speed up and slow down =[

[IcedCube]

TW 1.00 has the warp engi exploit, TW 1.05 has invincible units, red alert 3 has various invincibility and sell-off bugs, including insta-build and free build. On a related note OOT has infinite sword + All hovers that come along with it, Bug Kingdom and many other games have OOBs. Just because there are exploits in it that break the game, is no reason for a seperate category IMO.

[ExplodingCabbage]

SDA rules are that if a glitch is big enough, Mike may declare that not using the glitch is a seperate category.

To give an example in the context of an RTS, he recently agreed that a glitch that lets you teleport units to anywhere on the map in MechCommander is a seperate category.

I'm not an admin and there's no official rules on precisely what qualifies as a seperate category, but I think that basically the test for making a glitch or small set of glitches a different category is usually this:
* Can you simply and unambiguously define what counts as using the glitch?
* Is the glitch such that it would be impossible or extremely unlikely for the runner to use it unintentionally during a run while running honestly in a non-glitch category?
* Is the glitch extremely powerful in the sense that it either skips the majority of the game or that it completely trivialises the gameplay or some substantial aspect of the gameplay (example: making your character permanantly invulnerable in an FPS or platformer)
* Is it the case that there are no or few other glitches in the game, and that the cumulative effect of these other glitches is negligible compared to the glitch in question?

If the answer to all the above questions is 'yes', a glitch or glitch set will generally get a seperate category.

For C&C1, if I were proposing a 'no-glitch' category it would probably be no infinite-minigunner, no glitched selling of infantry or vehicles, no silo money cheat, and no build-anywhere glitch, since these are all easy to define, impossible to use unintentionally, and trivialise both resource-management and base destruction to the point that every mission with bases would just consist of the same routine of:

* Build two silos
* Glitch in lots of money
* Queue an engineer
* Put Hand Of Nod next to enemy building
* Release engineer, capture building
* Repeat
* Win

The only missions that wouldn't be trivialised by these glitches are ones where you don't have a base.

However, it happens that the latest patch removes all the most powerful of these glitches for us, so the most sensible compromise to avoid imposing arbitrary rules would be to have a v1.00 category and a v1.20 category, which would pretty much be equal to 'glitched' and 'glitchless' in this case.

[IcedCube]

May be worth checking out glitches like that in Tiberian Sun, because that is basically how it works in TW (and RA3, had the developers not removed it in Beta):

- Queue up two PPs (one in crane).
- Expose fog of war.
- Tell engi to capture building.
- Build PPs on engi.
- Teleport engi into any building.

So, essentially, it skips the majority of the game, and teleports units.

(Tbh, don't think it would need a diff. cat. for TW , but Mike can best judge that, I reckon. (I'm terribly uneducated in SDA guidelines myself))

How would that work in Oblivion and Morrowind, though, according to those guidelines? Every mission can be skipped, and its a bit trivial to assign some missions to a standard run but not others (same with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.). Happen to know?

And what about all Zelda games? TP skips the path to the Master Sword and allows for early wolf to human transformation. This is certainly a rather large glitch.

RBA would be a different category, I can imagine, in OOT, but nearly all other glitches skip entire dungeons or events in said dungeons, as well as cutscene triggers that are usually vital to progress.

Back to CNC; I can't really comment until I see the actual mission. I think the OP should really ask Mike whether in-game time will be used (because it usually is, but then again, most games don't have variable game speeds), and yet would be really unfair and plainly boring to watch on normal speeds (unlike, for example, T.S.)