187 replies to this topic

[hefeweize]

The main reason? It is the only server I have seen with any sort of activity for Yuri's Revenge. Cncnet has yet to implement Yuri's, but I am interested to see the activity that it brings. All that said, nothing compares to Ra2 activity on XWIS, but I've never been good at ra2 or really enjoyed it (those probably coincide with each-other) so....

 

From what I read in that paragraph he is referring to the option of paying for additional features.

 

What makes you different from GameRanger?

 

 

Yup. It's a option for additional features. Most games/apps now implement this as a source of revenue. More revenue equates to more support. Better support equates to more players. By all means, playing online ra2/ts/etc should be free. There is ways to create revenue. Joining a tournament.. Having special "tags" or bolded names. etc etc. We definitely should add cnc generals if its not a hard task. I don't see a point of merging with game ranger though as their tech is very similar to cncnet. It's quite messy in my opinion. I would call a gameranger as a central hub that hosts a few mplayer games that are no longer supported. But with minimal support in improving the game.. Kinda like gamespy.

 

The Dev's should weigh the pro's and cons of each client. Within chat and the new interface that Funkyfr3sh created. It seems as cncnet's interface offers easy "updates". Not sure if this the same case with the current setup strike-team offers. But easy updates can lead to better anti-cheat systems. I do also like the auto-screen shot functionality strike-team has.. there is a lot of pro's with both sides. Maybe there is a way to have both clients run at the same time. That's beyond my knowledge.

 

Olaf. Let's setup a meeting between you and cncnet. 

Edited by hefeweize, 20 February 2015 - 06:14 AM.

[Olaf]

You're one of the most difficult people to get a hold of or talk to! Getting near Olaf requires 3 security clearance checks and a formal invitation by the Security of Administrative affairs.

My email address if olaf@xwis.net .. how hard can it be?

[hefeweize]

Thanks Olaf. I'm definitely not the person to talk to about merging, but i will email you some cool pictures from recent vacations. we can be best friends.

 

Would you like to arrange a meeting between the staff of CNCNET? 

 

 

Also: just a update/

 

there' is tons of users in RA2 in other countries.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thaira2.com%2F&edit-text=&act=url

https://www.facebook.com/ThaiRA2Lovers/timeline?ref=page_internal

 

obviously none of can play on their servers cause of language. but it's cool to see this

 

Thai players. like 100's. not sure if cncnet is in control.

 

Funkyfr3sh, let's just say we merged with the 'new' client. If i was to download or install red alert/tib sun. Would it be forwarded to your new client? Or at least a link? assuming i have no knowledge of both cncnet and xwis. i just have a ra2/ts CD>

 

Either way. If a merge was to happen. It will take time. We keep both servers open till a master server is implemented.

Edited by hefeweize, 20 February 2015 - 07:47 AM.

[Olaf]

What makes you different from GameRanger?

AFAIK GR uses the original LAN lobby while CnCNet provides a lobby via an external client and provides options that TS didn't have before like choosing starting positions, (working) map transfers and observers.

[MrFrodo]

 

Funkyfr3sh, let's just say we merged with the 'new' client. If i was to download or install red alert/tib sun. Would it be forwarded to your new client? Or at least a link? assuming i have no knowledge of both cncnet and xwis. i just have a ra2/ts CD>

 

Either way. If a merge was to happen. It will take time. We keep both servers open till a master server is implemented.

I think this is what hifi meant by 'legacy'. EA is still sellin old CnC titles like ra2, ts etc and there has to be a default server where players can  get on without any workarounds or additional installations. And so this is where XWIS is needed, I suppose and hence, is supported by EA.

 

Be interesting to see what comes out of the 'Virtual Round table Conference of 2015" Sponsored by hefeweize. 

[NeoGrant]

My thoughts:

 

1. The benefit of working as one (i.e XWIS and CnCNet) outweighs working towards the same goal as two separate servers and communities.
2. Both teams bring large contributions and knowledge to the table.

 

A high level vision of a merger

1. New name.
2. New universal client to work on all games. Edit: Make WOL redundant/phase it out.
3. Push to play all games externally in the universal client.  

Edited by NeoGrant, 21 February 2015 - 09:50 AM.

[hefeweize]

Excellent points Neo.

 

Olaf, are you interested in the idea? When are you available to chat with the dev's of cncnet?

 

Let's get this started. If you're not interested at the moment, please state your reasons why you think it wouldn't be a good idea. 

 

Let's setup a meeting for Friday? What works for you?

Edited by hefeweize, 23 February 2015 - 04:57 AM.

[rumblesom]

If all games are to launch via the external client, I would like the lobbies to better resemble those of the original games.

Cncnet has done some fantastic things but imo the launch lobby looks quite ugly- particularly the font.

More than for the aesthetic, I think returning players would appreciate/miss the look and feel of the game lobbies and menus as a significant aspect of their motivation is to recapture past experiences and live the nostalgia once more.

[hefeweize]

If all games are to launch via the external client, I would like the lobbies to better resemble those of the original games.

Cncnet has done some fantastic things but imo the launch lobby looks quite ugly- particularly the font.

More than for the aesthetic, I think returning players would appreciate/miss the look and feel of the game lobbies and menus as a significant aspect of their motivation is to recapture past experiences and live the nostalgia once more.

Good points Rumble.

 

I am pretty bias on the client as I grew up with WOL. So I definitely love the in-game client. But the external client is not so bad. If only it was easier to stream line if a merger was to happen.

 

I do like the ext. client for the possibility of incorporating all the players into one chat. Obviously each game will have its own filters to filter out people. This will bring more population to all games as people tend to want to try other games as well. It also seems the external client will offer more updates in a easier manner. rather then downloading updates manually and applying. Tiberian sun is officially Cheat Free this way. I've never seen so much confidence in players nowadays without calling each other "cheaters"

 

Right now, strike-team really only supports one populated game. What if strike-team/cncnet can populate a majority of the games. This will be awesome. I don't think this is something to pass up.

 

Olaf, when I meant you're a hard person to reach. This is the reason. I want to hear your view on this. I don't even know if you're open to the idea either.  By all means. I know we all have personal/jobs/lives. I know this is also your baby we're talking about. But sometimes I believe there is evolution. As a matter of fact, I think this will greatly benefit you as well.

 

In the end of this all. Its really the players that make up the game. Without us, there wouldn't be a 'strike-team' or 'cncnet'.

Edited by hefeweize, 23 February 2015 - 09:16 PM.

[Olaf]

A new MP frontend could provide great opportunities for improvements indeed..

[hefeweize]

A new MP frontend could provide great opportunities for improvements indeed..

 

Awesome. Sounds like you are interested =D.

 

How should the dev's of Cncnet contact you to discuss a possibility? Funkyfr3sh, would you and Hifi be able to setup a private chat with Olaf?

 

I think you guys need to set it up with him directly. Either here or in PM. Rumble and Tajh, can you coordinate something to get this started?

 

Please keep the rest of us posted!

 

Thanks

Edited by hefeweize, 23 February 2015 - 11:33 PM.

[FunkyFr3sh]

I think olaf and hifi are already in contact, not sure what the current state is though

[hefeweize]

Excellent news. Ty Funky

[miketehmaster]

yes I agree merger would be better, i use both, olaf's client and cncnet's client, autoss merging would be nice too for hall of fame, even though from what i hear cncnet.org is impossible to cheat on, it would prevent disconnecters (people holding the print screen shot button when losing) or just out of anger, because it will be more visible and you can see a chain of events(if they do it in multiple games or the overall profile looks rediculous, as we all get disconnected sometimes, through storms and events. i love the way xwis ladder works. its instant update is ver ynice, when i play ra2, it has taken awhile for quick matches.. for a blank record.

Ps.Thanks for positive and working together
it would also help people in the support forum if we have one webpage and client it would be nice..

Edited by miketehmaster, 25 February 2015 - 12:47 AM.

[hifi]

I've found Olaf completely passive and off putting when it comes to the merge question and if we ever will do something like it, he needs to re-initiate the effort as I'm not going to waste any more emails trying to get him to give a straight answer if he wants to do it or not at any level. He never has any clear opinion or desire when it comes to working with CnCNet as he sees "no point" or whatever. It's very frustrating trying to get anything out of this guy so I'm going to give up.

 

It is true that our "intentions" are to scrap WOL as the technology is inherently inferior compared to what we have done and can do with CnCNet 5. Once the missing bits are completed it will be feature complete and even more than WOL has been. It already is quite a bit more for the first two games (TD and RA) while for TS it's just handy I guess and has good mod support.

 

I also believe that CnCNet 5 RA2/YR support will attract some players and if it "goes well" it could dry out XWIS eventually if the people working on the games keep adding new fancy features to the client and everything around it. That's not really my wet dream as I have nothing against XWIS but a possible outcome if there is no middle ground. WOL is standing still while CnCNet is going forward and given the uplift CnCNet has had in the past years I don't see it slowing down with the effort that is put into it.

 

So, as long as the situation is like this, nothing of this sort will happen. We're always open for it though on our end and appreciate that hefeweize has brought it on the table again.

 

Long live XWIS, I guess.

[XWISMOSTWANTED]

olaf ? is it possible allready to play on cncnet (Ra2) ?
 

Edited by XWISMOSTWANTED, 25 February 2015 - 02:58 PM.

[aCnChaOz]

I've found Olaf completely passive and off putting when it comes to the merge question and if we ever will do something like it, he needs to re-initiate the effort as I'm not going to waste any more emails trying to get him to give a straight answer if he wants to do it or not at any level. He never has any clear opinion or desire when it comes to working with CnCNet as he sees "no point" or whatever. It's very frustrating trying to get anything out of this guy so I'm going to give up.

Omg whole communitiy speaks ingame and on skype about that we all want more activity and are Open for this new project. Im sure when u guys going on with a working ladder and are cheat free xwis will die. Not because you guys because Olaf never open for new ideas. We have since year the Problem with activity. Community had some very good ideas but you Olaf Never accept new ideas. You always the only Person which stop new ideas thats really frustating. We all thankfull to can Play our fav Game on xwis but we should work Hand by Hand to get more ppl back to Classic c&c not only ra2.

[hefeweize]

I've found Olaf completely passive and off putting when it comes to the merge question and if we ever will do something like it, he needs to re-initiate the effort as I'm not going to waste any more emails trying to get him to give a straight answer if he wants to do it or not at any level. He never has any clear opinion or desire when it comes to working with CnCNet as he sees "no point" or whatever. It's very frustrating trying to get anything out of this guy so I'm going to give up.

 

It is true that our "intentions" are to scrap WOL as the technology is inherently inferior compared to what we have done and can do with CnCNet 5. Once the missing bits are completed it will be feature complete and even more than WOL has been. It already is quite a bit more for the first two games (TD and RA) while for TS it's just handy I guess and has good mod support.

 

I also believe that CnCNet 5 RA2/YR support will attract some players and if it "goes well" it could dry out XWIS eventually if the people working on the games keep adding new fancy features to the client and everything around it. That's not really my wet dream as I have nothing against XWIS but a possible outcome if there is no middle ground. WOL is standing still while CnCNet is going forward and given the uplift CnCNet has had in the past years I don't see it slowing down with the effort that is put into it.

 

So, as long as the situation is like this, nothing of this sort will happen. We're always open for it though on our end and appreciate that hefeweize has brought it on the table again.

 

Long live XWIS, I guess.

 

This is exactly what I thought would happen. Which is why i mentioned to open up a DEV chat between Olaf/ST admins and Cncnet. If it's already difficult to get him to share his opinion on the forums, contacting via emails will be just as frustrating.

 

Both Xwis and CNCNet did some amazing things these past years. Olaf and his team took older CNC titles under his umbrella and kept us alive. We appreciate this exponentially! People come and go. I believe Riz (former admin of strike-team) did a lot of work for strike-team who has retired already. Now CNCNET is now here and they are pretty much a new group of individuals who will reignite CNC once again.

It's already in plain sight that CNCNET has been putting a lot of effort into these games. RA1 Population has increased exponentially as well as tiberian sun. Some can say that RA1 has more activity than RA2. EVEN WITHOUT LADDERS! I'm sure once cncnet integrates a ladder system, it will thrive to superior success. 

 

HiFi, i definitely agree with you. Olaf, the community has spoken, everyone is completely open for a merge. Some will want better Windows/Mac support or even more activity. I do love the zero lag/zero cheats and fast tunneling servers.   I believe CNCNET has done their part in being amicable and friendly in discussion to getting this merger done.

 

Olaf, if you would like to reach out to them.. Please do. It would be quite unfair for CNCnet to continue to contact you without getting a proper response.  I will need the power of Strike-teams admins and current staff to really push Olaf.

 

Olaf, i hate to say it. I really do.. But i don't see strike-team living one more year without a merger. Especially if CNCNET incorporates ra2 to the roster. I love love love strike-team and all their efforts. That's the only reason why i'm for pro-merger rather than splitting the community. Please think this through Olaf. Having a community of only a small group of people on at any given time isn't really worth it? Is it? Why not have the entire CNC community united in one client?

 

Once you're ready, let us know. HiFi  blatantly pointed out he is still open to this idea. The ball is on your court now. 

Edited by hefeweize, 25 February 2015 - 08:17 PM.

[MrFrodo]

Just to point out: ra1 activity on CnCnet has always been higher than ra2 , atleast the last 15 months. And these days I compared weekday activity for ts(on CnCnet) is about same as ra2(on XWIS) activity on weekends.
(Activity here is users online for that specific game)

Btw what's the purpose of the merger? Just uniting the community? What about the newbies(and/or using the CDs)who by default get hooked up to Wol/Xwis game lobby?

And since we are all of the consensus that Xwis ts player base is dead and at this rate(esp with the development of ra2/yr) soon the last of them will also stop using Xwis and move to CnCnet. So we are not really dividing the community, everyone's just moving. Sure there will be those newbies mentioned above and old schoolers who come back everyone and then; wouldn't know about CnCnet. But as ts user base has managed somehow to get the word out, 99% of them who have expressed desire to play, now know about CncNet.

[I THINK, it's worth mentioning that EA supports XWIS/ST as they are the ones providing the service for EA customers. So a merger would obviously have an affect on ST's terms with EA. Seeing as Olaf owns ST it is probably a reason for him(XWIS as a whole infact) to think twice about dissolving legacy(WOL) support in favor of CnCnet. EA just, might pull the plug on supporting ST and Wol based titles financially and otherwise, altogether.]

[hefeweize]

Good points Frodo. I mentioned this in a earlier post. What I suggested was.. if we do merge and use the 'new' client. We would have newbies and people who do not know about cncnet get a notification in wol chat about logging on to the new server (wherever the merged server may be)

I also questioned the fact if we can have both WOL/ and MIRC style running unison to play games.

 

One of the major factors of a merger is the fact that Olaf does have "directed traffic" (officially with EA) and pre-existing gamers. Directed traffic means, popping in a CD out of the blue, clicking multiplayer and already forwarded to xwis servers redirected from the original wol. Str-Team Also holds a stronger presence in google etc etc. 

 

cncnet  would be indirect traffic. More word of mouth atm.

 

At this point, I don't know if EA gives Strike-team any type financial coverage besides the fact of exclusive rights and server rerouting. I believe all prizes that was issued before has ceased and EA shutdown CNC in their books for good.  Olaf does get funding from RA2 serials from newcomers. I'm not entirely sure if he gets funded from EA for strike-team servers. But Olaf is missing a huge opportunity to makes 10x more money with doing a merger. There is soo much possibilities.

 

A big reason why I think EA doesn't care about CNC anymore is  because of the recent defunct of Victory games. CNC generals 2 was also cancelled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Games_(EA) Victory games = the 3rd developer for CNC franchise. Westwood > Ea >Victory. random trivia..

Edited by hefeweize, 26 February 2015 - 01:22 AM.

[miketehmaster]

They are working on a new Command and conquer comrade - off topic
However this goal is still a desired and feasible goal for the community
I think with patience it will come.

[hefeweize]

They are working on a new Command and conquer comrade - off topic
However this goal is still a desired and feasible goal for the community
I think with patience it will come.

 

One can only hope. 

 

I know the original developers resurfaced and created a new type of CNC game called "Grey Goo". Yup WESTWOOD DEV CREATED =).  It's actually pretty cool game released last month. 

What is the new CNC and who is creating it? The last one they were working on was CNC GENERALS II and that was cancelled. 

[Enj0y]

is it this?

 

http://www.cncftw.com/forums/Thread-Ex-Westwood-developers-make-a-new-Free-to-play-RTS

[kaki100]

It is possible to fusion it for RA2 and Yuri?

 

Yuri is dead on XWIS --> dont know why? The remaining players are on RA2 XWIS.

 

I dont know why, but yuri is also a great game with more opportunities. - There are 5-12 players online and 90% of them playing the ToE-Map with special rules.

 

 

Well, it was the same as in former times, there was people who prefered ra2 and people who prefered yuri. But only the ra2 community have survived ?? ...

 

 

 

In my opinion, the best way is to find a solution to concentrade the players on 1 server and on both games. A lot of oldschool players, who only played yuris revenge, start nowadays the game, see no games and players online, and left. Not all of the old players want to play ra2 - I think, i dont have to explain this (ra2 is faster, no yuri, not choosing spots, no 3v3, no map preview in qm, no more using tech-units etc.etc.). I dont want to start a discussion about that, which is the better game. The point is, there are people who like ra2 and people who like yuri, but ra2-player get satisfied instead of yuri players and so the yuri players have to change to ra2 or leave. So a lot of people leave, because they dont want to change to ra2.

 

 

I hope Olaf and cncnet found a solution for this. - The did great work in past, so why it should not possible to fix this problem. An activity about 200-250 players, distributed to ra2 and yuris revenge is a goal who is reachable.

Thereby we have 2 ladders (ra2, yuri -> both cm)... and not only one who is active and one there are 15 tourney games per month.

Edited by kaki100, 26 February 2015 - 11:39 AM.

[Strategst]

What response do you expect from Olaf? To be honest, the one he has given as per his usual is more than I would have given in his position. It did not even take two pages of posts for this conversation to turn from feigning interest in merging with XWIS to threatening its future as if you could not see the true intent from a mile away. Even if CNCNET is the future of Command & Conquer, a straightforward approach would have been more respectful. Automatic redirection and cooperation from Olaf is just easier for what I admit sounds like a wonderful prospect; however, even though his work has been acknowledged, the course of this topic is truly offensive to the historical accomplishments of Strike-Team and XWIS. When it comes right down to it, we are talking about dismantling years and years of hard work (cheat-free ladder, redirection, utilities like Game Spy), all done for the love of a series that is quite a dear subject, which is not being treated properly I am trying to say. "This is going to happen with or without your cooperation, so you may as well cooperate" is a pretty crappy offer to give up your baby. This should be considered when complaining about how it is just so confusing why Olaf is acting this way.