[MrFlibble]

MrFlibble, on 19 March 2020 - 01:41 AM, said:

The clip Jim Vessella shows in the FMV reveal video made a very odd impression on me. Suddenly the upscaled video started to look like some homemade VHS tape or something -- an effect that was oddly missing from the low-res originals.

Turns out that most FMVs were upscaled from PlayStation originals and not from the PC version:
https://youtu.be/Ywq-L6ucZS4?t=209

This accounts for the effect I was talking about, no the upscale.

[MrFlibble]

Yesterday I went to YouTube to find gameplay videos of OpenHV and stumbled upon this:

It's an OpenRA based remake of vanilla C&C with completely new graphics and sound effects. Apparently the devs are from China. They have a GitHub page, but looks like no releases yet: Tiberian Aurora.

[NNC]

Bought and started replaying the first classic Command and Conquer in remastered, I'm almost done with the GDI campaign. I don't want to talk about the quality of the remaster, I think they did a poor job with the FMVs, particularly the animated ones, which are as fresh as 30 years old milk, but the ingame stuff, including the upscaled graphics and the remastered music are great.

The game itself is certainly a mixed bag. What I truly appreciate is the world creation: the story itself is not as vivid, as the one of Starcraft or even Red Alert 1, but the main lore, the spread of the tiberium, the terrorist cult vs the western powers has an authentic feel, and it's quite interesting to be part of it. Another thing I like is the unit and building aesthetics. I don't know what people think, but Red Alert 1 buildings (and new, non borrowed units) look cheap lego creations compared to the details in C&C 1. Just look at the Power Plant, the Refinery, the Radar, the Harvester (all look much better than in RA1). I also prefer the unit balancing in C&C 1. The agile units with strong base defense vs the heavier units with lighter defense narrative is just better than Red Alert 1's crazy assymetrical balance.

However, C&C1 missions are not very well designed. Almost every GDI level is about "destroy all NOD forces", and many of them are quite forgettable. Red Alert 1 has much better scripts and polished missions (not to mention the ingame storytelling), you can tell their differences, their characters, while in C&C1, they blend into just one big thing, with a few memorable outliers (the opening level with the gunboat or the commando mission). Having the same background all the time doesn't help either. Also, the temperate tileset looks ugly, that dark green looks depressing, except the few levels with the snow patches. The Nod uses the desert tileset, I guess it will look fresh only in the first few maps.

What's truly not my liking, how awful the resourge gathering, and the related base settling part is. This is particularly annoying after playing all the 'craft games (WC2, SC, SC2, WC3) rather recently. I can't expand my base, if I unpacked my MCV in the wrong position, I can very well find myself in deep trouble, as the nearest tiberium patches can be exhausted very easily, and you can't do anything but sending your harvesters to distant areas. Even with proper settling, the tiberium is always a scarcity, I rarely managed to operate a high economy. There was the mission for example, called Orcastration, where I simply had to restart, because the tiberium fields were depleted by the time I expanded a proper base, and I was trapped with my units in turret/obelisk hell. Not even a Weapon Factory is recommended, just build orcas and nothing else. Levels seem to be designed to follow a set route, instead of giving you a strategical freedom. It's more like a puzzle in this regard.

I enjoy the game with these flaws, but they are still quite annoying elements, that were fixed in the later games for the better.

EDIT: Finished GDI, started Nod. The first 6 levels were a cakewalk, they can be completed in an hour or two. I remember some tougher ones with the A10 harrassment. The desert setting looks infinitely superior to the temperate one.

[MrFlibble]

The Watchtower, on 20 August 2022 - 09:43 AM, said:

the ingame stuff, including the upscaled graphics and the remastered music are great.

I'd say that the music is definitely the best part of this release, thanks to Frank K's magnificent work.

And yes, truly regrettable that the neural upscales of the FMVs turned out so bad.

The Watchtower, on 20 August 2022 - 09:43 AM, said:

I don't know what people think, but Red Alert 1 buildings (and new, non borrowed units) look cheap lego creations compared to the details in C&C 1. Just look at the Power Plant, the Refinery, the Radar, the Harvester (all look much better than in RA1). I also prefer the unit balancing in C&C 1. The agile units with strong base defense vs the heavier units with lighter defense narrative is just better than Red Alert 1's crazy assymetrical balance.

I agree on both points. The buildings in Red Alert hold a certain charm for me but they do look like toys compared to the original C&C graphics. I think it also doesn't help that RA uses unrealistic team colours (red and blue) on the units and buildings, while C&C sticks to what can be interpreted as urban and desert camouflage patterns.

[NNC]

MrFlibble, on 20 August 2022 - 01:07 PM, said:

I agree on both points. The buildings in Red Alert hold a certain charm for me but they do look like toys compared to the original C&C graphics. I think it also doesn't help that RA uses unrealistic team colours (red and blue) on the units and buildings, while C&C sticks to what can be interpreted as urban and desert camouflage patterns.

Yea, I like the colour choices. GDI has the desert advantage, while Nod has the urban/temperate advantage. They also managed to hide pretty well in a mission with white snow patches. I think it was a cool idea to have greyish unit colour and red buildings. Never seen such themes in any other RTS games.

[NNC]

Wow, there is that Nod mission where Seth sent your troops to US, and Kane killed him, you have to capture a GDI base and only have few infantries of your own. That mission is fucking awful. Airstrikes, and full forces of GDI attack that shorthanded base, and they pick up my harvester very easily. It's irritating, so I take a break now.

There was a Tanya mission in RA1 with similar quests, but it was much better.

[gemeaux333]

They couldn't have made miracles with the FMVs, the best bases they could have got are the playstation ones which were basically the same quality as the early youtube videos (encoded in mpeg)

[MrFlibble]

gemeaux333, on 21 August 2022 - 06:38 AM, said:

They couldn't have made miracles with the FMVs, the best bases they could have got are the playstation ones which were basically the same quality as the early youtube videos (encoded in mpeg)

I'll have you know that I ran my own experiments with ESRGAN and tried upscaling a few frames from the PC version's FMVs using different models, with arguably better results. Or, at least, these models addressed some of the more glaring issues like jittery lines which are supposed to be straight.

So while no miracles can be expected, the upscale quality could have been better even with the currently available free solutions like ESRGAN.

And, they could have run their PS videos through any of the models that remove JPEG artifacts before doing the upscales proper.

[gemeaux333]

they probably felt the need to stay faithfull to the original source material...

[Dzierzan]

MrFlibble, on 21 June 2021 - 05:13 AM, said:

Yesterday I went to YouTube to find gameplay videos of OpenHV and stumbled upon this:

It's an OpenRA based remake of vanilla C&C with completely new graphics and sound effects. Apparently the devs are from China. They have a GitHub page, but looks like no releases yet: Tiberian Aurora.

Fun fact, I am one of OpenHV pixel artists.

Another fun fact, Tiberian Aurora was released https://www.moddb.co...tiberian-aurora

[NNC]

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I would have liked completely new cutscenes and animations, even some new story elements, and better varied missions, at least in C&C.

[MrFlibble]

The Watchtower, on 26 August 2022 - 10:54 AM, said:

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I would have liked completely new cutscenes and animations, even some new story elements, and better varied missions, at least in C&C.

I am of the same opinion, but it seems as if this was outside the budget. Presumably the same studio which remade the high-res graphics could've produced HD versions of the CGI cinematics with little trouble, and probably the live-action ones could have used a combined approach, leaving upscaled actors but replacing the backgrounds and other animations.

It's a real pity that the upscaled FMVs came out so poorly, this was one of the factors that seriously put me off in this remaster. It's kind of counterbalanced by the excellent remastered soundtrack, and of course one can simply skip any FMVs (that's what I basically ended up doing, although I did not play a lot of this), but it makes the release feel imperfect on the whole.

Dzierzan, on 26 August 2022 - 09:18 AM, said:

Fun fact, I am one of OpenHV pixel artists.

Wow, this is cool. I mean, that you're one of the devs -- I've been aware of the OpenHV project for a quite while already. I discovered Hard Vacuum assets at Daniel Cook's website back in 2011 and ever since nurtured a hope that someday, someone would put them to good use in a new RTS project, so OpenHV is a dream come true

Dzierzan, on 26 August 2022 - 09:18 AM, said:

Another fun fact, Tiberian Aurora was released https://www.moddb.co...tiberian-aurora

Oh yes, I noticed that the other day -- I had forgotten about the project altogether until I rediscovered my own post of the video here in this thread and checked if there were any updates.

Another OpenRA project on my radar is Fractured Realms, which feels quite Tiberian Sun-ey and has nice retro-ish graphics.