[Godwin]

Chrono has talked a little about me, I joined the C&C (TS) editing community in mid-2000, i remembered that was around the time when we were still trying to figure out what on earth voxels are and how they work, and it was a very exciting time when we finally got to edit voxels and add them into TS. XCC used to be the main place modders met in those days, then TS Eclipse sort of came along(it was just a mod in the beginning, and grew into a network of sorts), and became rather popular, sucking in all the talent they could find, including me, as I became pretty interested in making voxels. At the same time I was working on my personal mod, called Hybrid TS, you can still see the site today at http://www.geocities.com/gdkoay
After making only 2 voxels for eclipse, I was sacked, as the team members claimed that I could not possibly work on my own mod and their mod and also join Wipeout studios at the same time. Yes I had joined Wipeout, and originally intended to place Hybrid mod under the network, but due to certain reasons I gave up on the project (as well as my RA2 project called Tiberium Infestation) and worked full time on AR2. By this point in time the most popular hangout forum for modders was RA2mods.com, which if I remember correctly, was hosted by RaGe. Then it switched to RA2source by MHR(or maybe they both existed together at the same time, RA2source later became Westwood source, but focus on modding slowly deminished)where AR2 was hosted. Eclipse also became a meeting place and host later for AR2(circa 2002, and we were not officially part of the Eclipse Modding Network), and after its demise(again, there was a period they coexisted, where one soon overtook the other), Federation Studios.

Notice how I only give brief statements here, that is because I cannot really remember anymore in detail the series of events that happened.
All the while I worked on AR2, as well as doing some work for Blitzkrieg, since it's seen as a sister-mod as Smurf is a good friend of Chrono. I released a number of voxels for download, and also got quite good in creating SHP structures by copy&pasting techniques, so I helped out people with SHPs at the popular forums, especially Sleipnir's Stuff. Later on I also developed a way to paint surface normals on voxels, after studying the voxels of Strategic Commander, who used to work for Eclipse(I think), which also had hand-applied normals. Why the method was not released to the public during that time(almost a year before I developed my technique)is still a mystery, perhaps Eclipse was trying to protect its secrets and stay at the top of the community.

So now I still am working on AR2, as well as TC and an unannounced Generals mod at Derelict Studios.

[Cyborg]

Holy shit Chrono! thats like your entire life story!
I read it all though,and I must say it was VERY interesting to read! Interesting to learn how the modding community has evolved!
I'm wondering though,how do you manage to write that much!? I wouldn't have managed to write half as much! :lol:

[Phoib]

Don't forget Truewar1 for RA2 and YR :P

I'll list my history sometimes, not that it was such community based...

[needleman]

There WAS a fair-sized E:BFD modding community (Bi-la kaifa, etc.); it just wasn't anywhere "near" here, so to speak. Of course, after Generals came out, they mostly moved there.

Now if only there was an easy way to convert E:BFD models to Generals. That would kick ass.

[DeeZire]

I think I can plug a few gaps thanks to some ageing bookmarks. History from my perspective is a little mixed as I went away for some time due to exams etc.

Played about with C&C for a while. Struggled to really do much with it since it was a good while before anybody came up with anything useful. There were no utils like we have today, and it was all based on the ability to edit the main GAME.DAT file, and even then you had to substitute one thing for another. Made a few maps thanks to a project called CCMAP (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jarit/ccmap/).

Whilst studying, we got to grips with Red Alert and had a blast. Nurple led the way in innovative terms and spawned an entire generation of what we may now call 'noob' mods but as ppl have said in those days they were the coolest thing. At one time, there were entire tourneys on WOL and ppl wouldnt play unless you had a Nurple (map). His page is still up at http://www.nurple.com.

Then Moritz Mertinkat and Vladan Bato seemed to crack just about most things between them and really led the way in file formats. Vladan churned out the MixManager utility (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/8682/index.html) and further on came RACK, an all-in-one editor for Red Alert - sadly, the original site has gone but you can still grab it and lots of other usefulness at http://ra-archive.go.to/.

At this time there was no central hub for the editing community (Id even go so far as to say there wasnt an editing community in the true sense but there was a hardcore band of people churning out some work and following Nurples lead). The main community site was the infallable IncREDible Alert - none have surpassed it since IMHO. Its a shame the site disintegrated, but I managed to keep most of it archived at http://www.deezire.net/ia.htm.

Andrew Griffin did some serious digging and research and churned out the first conclusive guide to INI editing in the form of the RA Mission Creation Guide over at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/5458/.

This, plus the file format breakthroughs, led to the beginnings of a real editing community although there still wasnt a 'home' and other than the x-packs Red Alerts lifetime was slowing down and ppl knew that TS was on the way. Afterglow (http://members.aol.com/ztxjim/glowmain.htm) springs up with info aplenty on TS after James Morley gets to visit WW a few times and gets friendly with Mark Skaggs.

The advent of TS brought the beginnings of the true editing community as people get to grips with how relatively simple it is to edit. Olaf takes up where Vladan and Moritz left off and almost from the start we are able to edit TS as we could RA except this time we can do so from a very early stage in the product life. It is this fact that spawns the central hubs for an editing community and BlueprintTS, amongst others, is born.

The fact was still that much remained to be discovered and coupled with the very nature of RA modding this led to a secrative and non-collaborative approach by the modders, which is bitterly ironic since the fact that they were able to mod at all was due to the very collaborative nature in which the tools they were using had been developed - had the likes of Andrew, Vladan and Moritz never shared ideas or code, we would not have got far in the first place.

At this time, Im still self-taught and a disciple of the collaborative CNC/RA Nurple days, so mainly out of frustration at the way the editing community had begun to run itself, I work largely alone and release a low key project. It does raise a few eyebrows and the relatively small recognition it gets is enough for people to take note of me - I still recall the noob type comments I faced for some time

Matze churns out FinalSun and I throw together the low-key work Ive done behind the scenes and pass it to him - work on triggers and actions etc, them suddenly people start to notice that I know what Im talking about and Im credited in the help menu of FS.

Then RA2 comes out, I have time on my hands so with a buddy again I churn out the RA2 mod. The community sees a lot of change, the mod ends up all over the place (in more ways than one), I get talking to Chris Rubyor who loves the mod, Harvard plays it and the next thing I get asked right of the blue by Harvard to go work at WW/EAP on some secret project. A phone call fomr him follows, and the rest is recent history LOL.

I remember the incident when I left the community that Chrono refers to. I cant recall what set me off other than immense frustration at the immaturity of the established modders, stupidity of noobs and little willingness to collaborate (at one point I thoought I was the only person giving anything away). I DO remember that it wasnt Chronos fault LOL.

[old_man_funk]

My history isnt as spectacular as the rest, but here goes:

I've always played C&C games, but never really modded them until I was old enough to really take time and learn the basics. I started off with a brief interest in modding RA2, after playing MooMans rules. I managed to add one unit to the game (a US Marine) before getting bored and moving on to Renegade. I skinned units for Renegade, mostly the infantry (as usual ) and must have created about 20-30 skins, some of which can still be found on CnC Ammo (I was under the alias of 'yakuza_24' back then). After Renegade I began to get interested in modding Generals. After a short time on the Blitzkreig 2 team, I went freelance and released my own small mod - Generals Revised. From then on (about a year ago) I've been here doing skins for some mods (Blitzkreig 2 again, World Crisis, Halo Mod and Weeraby2k's RA2 mod), reskins of original units and a few mods that I could never be bothered finishing (Codex Generals - added dosers for each type of structure, Battlefield Geneerals - added Generals of my own design and a small mod that re-enabled the POW logic). I also managed to figure out how the remappable colours on infantry worked, with the help of a few others .Now I'm working for Halo Mod again, and also Immoman's RA1 mod.

[DeeZire]

You have to bear in mind several events that forced the changes weve seen that were external to the modding or CNC scenes too. As TS was released, Internet access became more widespread, more PCs hit the home, and as modding developed at the same time this led to an influx of a new type of person - and it wasnt the friendly, collaborative 'bedroom computer geek' type either. In turn, this led to a demise in the number of sites that were truly run by such people with a love of the games - suddenly, the number of people who 'contributed and gave' was outnumbered by those who 'wanted and took' - and then complained when there wasnt much mroe to take. Free hosting practically became a thing of the past, and I recall a number of the larger sites closing as they could not secure affordable hosting if they could secure any at all. For that reason, I threw this site up and stopped hogging my buddys personal webpace LOL. Thankfully, the slow movement of people over here went fairly well and it brought noobs and oldbies alike together in a gentler way.

With growth comes change, and both can be painful, but its a testament to some of the people that are still here today that we are very fortunate to have what is still a thriving editing community and in relative terms (compared to some) is still in its infancy - although this hasnt been helped by what a lot of people consider to be lack of support (I would rather call it a lack of understanding) of the editing community's needs by the developers.

[smurfbizkit]

Thats some nice info there DZ, the "incredible alert" stuff is great...I forgot the name of that site.

-------------------------------------i was going to not post my history up here, but there are some foggy spots that you guys might help fill in the blanks...and my info might help yours a little bit

ra1-------
I started modding with Ra1, mainly newbie stuff...enabling the phase transport, helicopter pad naval thing (what was the name of that again?), making oil drums buildable with no build space limit (i'd build huge lines of them up till the enemies base and blow it up, huge chain reaction), giving the chronotank missiles that shoot nukes.

ts---------
TS came out, and I spent a good deal of time just playing the game. This would be the last time when the time spent playing the game was greater than spent modding. I thinkered with a few things, and built up my ini editing knowledge mostly by the tutorials up at Afterglow (is that site still up? i vaugly recall it being up a year or two ago still...). Those tutorials are imo some of the most newbie friendly ones to date for a cnc game. They went through several different types of things and explained in great detail how to do them. After a while I started looking for some mod teams to join. An interesting bit of info is that I was in contact with some guys who wanted to make a ww2 mod for ts...but that didn't go anywhere since we couldn't edit voxels(or even swap turrets) yet.

The biggest mod for TS early on was "TS Gold", as people above have stated it wasn't much by todays standards...but then, it was king. The mod basically added a few things here and there...using unused unit images(i think, not sure if we could do that yet), and (at the time) tricky ini code. When I said that this was the "biggest" mod, it really is only due to the fact that it was one of the few out there...and it did something other than setting everything's cost to $1 or minor balance tweaks. They actually had some good things going though, they had a voxel convertor...and it worked pretty well (they showed screenshots of the units, and someone [not sure if it was them or not] posted up those voxels for us to try out). The problem is, they collapsed. I forget the exact reason, but I believe it revolved around one of the creators getting fired from some message board job or something? However, right before they quit...they had posted details of a total conversion they were planning (although it was kinda weird... something about hitler becoming a hero, and involving time travel). Anyways they imploded, and right before they left they a) posted saying they will refuse to release the voxel convertor and b) they included a virus in with the last version of their mod(did they do this on purpose? don't remember).

Eventually I hooked up with some guys that were making a mod called "Rebirth" who tried to pick up where TS Gold left off (dunno if any of you knew them they were manifesto, 711, fryem(sp?), orcaguy, mech assassin,horse, hans[was that rebirth? not sure] and some others I have since forgotten). We were all new to this stuff...and had a good 3-4 ini editors who did nothing but make cool stuff. Along the way, we started a mod war with another team...and using some infiltration I managed to start some infighting which killed that mod.

We also had a bit of a fued with "Icestorm", but in retrospect I think it was more on our part due to jelousy than theirs. They were the true heirs to the TS Gold throne...and eventually I got to know their team members pretty well (Squall (i think), chrono, mhr(i think the team leader)...and some others i've forgotten). There was some infighting in this team as well, and from what I remember it was with MHR taking most of the credit for the mod...and with his best team members leaving (i know chrono did, not sure of the names of the others). Either way, Icestorm was the most popular TS mod. Chrono went on to do Allies Revenge.

Back to my team, we had some shakeups and several of the founding members left...(manifesto and 711) so I was voted as the team leader (mostly because i actually did work). We finished up the mod and released it...but it was very newbie and was crap compared to Icestorm so it withered away. I started on "Nemesis" and got Chrono and a few others to help...but for one reason or another I quit that team. I went to work on my own mod "Daybreak", which was a decent mod I mad...but it was released far to late for it to do well.

Along the way, about the time Chrono quit Icestorm...the first big thing happened. The TS:Rising mod team (yea, the same guys making the generals mod of that name...assassin, midnightwolf, etc. ; also the same guys who run cnc source) figured it out (using early versions of XCC...it was new at the time) how to swap the turrets of units. They confided with MHR..and he got the jump on them (posting screenshots and claiming he did it.... or something like that). I think the TS:Rising team released the first file pack and explanation as to how to swap turrets then (not sure if it was coupled with their release? but that is what they were initially holding out for). After they released it, pretty much every mod made use of the swapping...some better than others. Much later on, there was a voxel editor available.

I'd also like to point out that DZ's first big mod came out at the end of the ts days. I personally dismissed it as just another icestorm or tsgold clone...and didn't even download it. However, the ppl who I talked to that played it loved the thing.

ra2--------
As with the jump from ra1 to ts(how the mix editing tools helped give the ts guys a easier time right off the bat), the jump from ts to ra2 was pretty nice. The ini format was very similar...and we already knew how to edit shps and voxels. I wanted to get a jump on the whole mod thing, so I created and released one of the very first edits for the game (enabling a few things, like the navy seal and such)...I called the mod "Chronostorm". During the early parts, MHR came back with his mod...this time calling it "Redstorm" and it did well...but he eventually quit it to focus on his site.

I started planning, and the initial ini code for my next solo mod, called "Liberty"...but somehow got incontact with [dk]phil who was running "Final Charge" at the time. Final Charge was a ww2 mod, and I joined up with it just as they were merging with several other ww2 mods. After the dust settled we had a strong team...and started working on the first cnc ww2 mod. The new mod name was called "Blitzkrieg", a name that I choose (this was before the german made rts blitzkrieg was announced). We worked on the mod steadily for a few months, and quickly cracked out v1.0 and released it to testers. A few more months later we released v1.5 to testers. At the point, we should've released...the mod was pretty well fleshed out, and it would've been the first real tc (or at least one of the first tc's) to be released for ra2. This issue was one of the ones that caused some pretty heavy infighting, and there were several times when the team was almost split in 2...my faction and dkphil's faction. We were in contact with Delphi pretty well and even managed to play a few games with him online. After v1.5 the team kinda died...and for the next few months, and the summer it was dead(not gone, just totally stagnated). YR was released and in the fall and [dk]phil started blitz1 over from scratch for it, with me taking a much smaller role in the mod. Blitz1 was eventually released, and did much better than we ever expected it to do (too much, we actually used up the monthly bandwidth for our host network...westwood nation within a few days of the release [we didn't use mirrors]).

During the blitz1 turmoil I started a side project...called "CNC Platinum", with proclone, but it never got off the ground due to lack of voxel editors and effort on my part.

During the the early days on blitz1...chrono and I started a mod studio called "Wipeout studios", and it hosted a few mods. One of these was Ar2 (the name i picked out btw...) which I helped out initially with...but quit later on. The place fell apart eventually...with us going our separate ways. (my mind is REALLY foggy on this whole thing...)

Ar2 went on to become the best tc for ra2(and any previous cnc game), and is still imo one of the best cnc mods ever made.

Ra2 Deezire was pretty much one of THE mods for ra2, and helped establish deezire as the premire editing guru. To be honest, I didn't follow ra2 deezire all that much...so some more info would be nice

Matze, who made the ts map editor(finalsun)...also had it work for ra2 (final alert). He sold the program to EA who released the ra2 map editor to the community.

I know there were other mods like code red, true war, moomans rules, eagle red, etc...but I wasn't too into the community at the time...so I need more info on these.

generals-----
My story for generals starts months before its release. I was talking with Proclone on icq one day, and asked if he'd want to start up a mod sometime for Generals...he said "maybe in a few months". A few months later (much to my surprise) he kept his word and we started planning Blitzkrieg 2. The plan was to just use the Blitz1 team to work on the mod for Generals...but, some people (like [dk]phil) didn't want to commit to another project and either stayed on with Blitz1 or quit. Due to this, and the new requirements for skinners and modelers, I started hiring new people. This upset a good deal of the Blitz1 team...since at the time we were all close friends, and I was basically phasing them out. By the time Generals was released...only 2 Blitz1 team members were actively working on Blitz2, the others were either glorified beta testers or had left. I'm getting ahead of myself a bit...as I mentioned with Blitz1 we had contact with Delphi (as well as Harvard), so we were able to get the entire Blitz2 team beta disks for Generals. Proclone and I worked on getting some of the models ingame during the beta (they are the earliest shots in our sites section). We also were able to get free copies of Generals shipped to the entire team (although kinda late...i was impatient and went out and bought it). Anyways, the team went through a good deal of changes...but we were able to find replacements and released the mod 9 months after it was started up. The release went even better than the Blitz1 release (we actually used mirrors this time, which helped).

Deezire came back for a Generals version of his mod...but this time instead of Generals Deezire, he named it "Pro:Gen" (err...why the removal of "deezire" from the mod name this time?). I should at this point mention that EA hired several outstanding ra2 community members to help make Generals (not sure exactly what their specific jobs were...anyone care to enlighten me?). I do know that the current Ini structure was influenced by deezire(from what i understand it could've been 1 massive ini file instead of 55+ organized inis). Deezire, RVMECH and EJAH(sp?) were hired to help out...and they made maps for the game(many of which wern't used...anyone have a list of what maps they made exactly?). Back to Pro:Gen, deezire basically turned generals into what it was ment to be...and it was damn nice, easily taking the top mod spot for a while.

Mods for Generals are, on the whole much better thought out and made than any previous cnc game. The majority of the mods are total conversions, or mods which add in new sides. Some of the big generals mods are ww2, secondwave, etc...(did i miss any big ones?).

Generals was the first cnc game since ra1 to come with a built in map editor...and it shows in the massive mapping collections online.

Unlike previous cnc games, the modding potential for Generals is barely touched...either due to the fact that many people are new to modding, or their ignorance to the capabilities of the game.

------------------------------------
yea its a massive post...i wanted to get down as much as i could right now, i know i left out chunks here and there...just point them out if you could, its late now sleep.......zzzzzzzzzz

[Chronosfera]

Swapping turret was long known even before Icestorm.
And we started Wipeout before Blitz, after you went to work on Blitz you basically left Wipeout.
I got some of the info you want in my long post above

[Smartmlp]

thats alot of crap.
but good crap at that.
:-)