Command and Conquer; Tiberian Dawn came out in 1995 and was followed shortly after in 1996 with Red Alert. Hidden in the lounge at my friend Ian’s house with his mum upstairs asleep, his chronically underpowered 233mhz pentium computer wurring away I was absolutely amazed by the entire C&C experience. The installer was immensive and fell modern and damned cool, the video’s looked beautiful and like nothing else I’d experienced and the music track was fantastic. Many hours were lost.

So now, 15 years after the first game was released lets have a go at getting it all running in time for Christmas. After a couple of days of failure (and the need to multiplay with my brother) I gave up getting it running in WINE under Linux and cracked on with a Windows 7 install.

In 2006 Westwood packaged the first 8 years of gaming into one 8gb installer. Some of the games still work “out of the  box”, others (like Generals; ironically the latest games) are a bit of a pig to get going; but they all will work!

Ready, Commander?

I’m installing this on a Windows 7 Professional x64 system. It was a clean install of Windows with all of the Updates and the right drivers. I’ve then gone through and tried it on another Win7 Pro and a Win7 Ultimate; it seems to work, but as always please get in contact and let me know if you’ve had problems.

Stick the DVD in the drive (or mount your ISO) and start the installer. Personally I do a custom installation just to avoid installing Renegade; its awful.

Type in your serial numbers, make a cup of tea and try not to be too upset its missing all the fantastic original installers.

Once the install is done, download and install the unofficial (but officially endorsed) patch for The First Decade.

More information and download links for The First Decade v1.03-r4

When you install it, make sure to Run as Administrator.

Command and Conquer; Tiberian Dawn

There are two ways to do this, either set compatibility mode to Windows 95 and live through the corrupt videos (but 1024×760 in-game resolution) but you’ll also find that alt+tab breaks horribly and you get possibly slowdown and crashes on multi-core systems.

You can change the resolution by running ccsetup.exe in the install directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Command & Conquer(tm))

The easy fix is to use the cnc-ddraw.dll fix. If you’re using ddraw then you need to disable compatibility mode.

Download the file and extract it into your game folder, then run the game as usual.

If you don’t run the game as Administrator, then it refuses to save the ddraw.ini configuration file and even if you create one manually it won’t read it; if you don’t want to enable full screen or change the mouse sensitivity then you should be OK.

Note 1: Make life easier for yourself and change the permissions on the ddraw.ini file; set it so Users have full control.

Note 2: I found that when I’d enabled full screen, it would give me a blank screen until I had alt+tabbed in and out of the program, after that it was fine.

Note 3: Control + Tab to release mouse capture!

Red Alert

Exactly the same information as for Tiberian Dawn, except use the rasetup.exe to change the resolution to 640×480.

You can then edit the ddraw.ini file (see note 1 above) to either run full screen, or change the resolution to upscale the video window to something better.

Red Alert 2 & Yuri’s Revenge

Delete the wrong shortcut

For some reason after all the patching is done we end up with two shortcuts to launch Red Alert II.

Click on the start menu and type in “red alert 2″ to the “search for programs and files” box, notice the two shortcuts pop up.

Delete the one entitled “Command & Conquer™ Red Alert™ 2″; you should be left with “Red Alert 2″.

Just make it compatible

For both the Red Alert 2 and the Yuri’s Revenge shortcuts:

1. Right hand click and select properties.
2. On the Compatibility tab click “Change settings for all users” at the bottom.
3. Tick the “Run this program in compatibility mode for” box and select “Windows XP (Service Pack 3)” from the dropdown list.
4. Disabling Desktop Composition and Visual Themes doesn’t hurt either, though it doesn’t seem to be necessary.
5. Click OK to close the property boxes (and then repeat the instructions for the other shortcut).

C&C Generals and Zero Hour

Trying to start either Generals or Zero Hour flashes the splash screen and then crashes out. If you’re really lucky then it might just freeze on the splash screen and not even have the decency to crash; it just sucks CPU cycles (and in one case) takes down the browser. So, lets get it running:

1) Crash the Game;

Yup, thats right; before we start you need to try and run both Generals and Zero hour. It will crash when you run it, but it will create the savegame folders in My Documents.

2) File Permissions

We need to change the file permissions on a few folders; you need to do this for the Data and UserData folder in both the C&C Generals and the C&C Generals Zero Hour folder.

Open Windows explorer and navigate to the install directory (“C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Command & Conquer(tm) Generals”).

Right Click on the Data (or UserData) folder and click Properties. On the Security tab click Edit.

Select the entry for Users (YourComputerName\Users) and tick the Allow: Full Control checkbox. OK to save. (Make sure you do this for all the folders).

3) Create An Options File

Open Notepad and then copy/paste the following:

AntiAliasing = 1

BuildingOcclusion = yes
DrawScrollAnchor =
DynamicLOD = no
ExtraAnimations = yes
GameSpyIPAddress = 0.0.0.0
Gamma = 50
IPAddress = 0.0.0.0
IdealStaticGameLOD = High
LanguageFilter = true
MaxParticleCount = 5000
MoveScrollAnchor =
MusicVolume = 55
Resolution = 1024 768
Retaliation = yes
SFX3DVolume = 79
SFXVolume = 71
ScrollFactor = 50
SendDelay = no
ShowSoftWaterEdge = yes
ShowTrees = yes
StaticGameLOD = Custom
TextureReduction = 0
UseAlternateMouse = no
UseCloudMap = yes
UseDoubleClickAttackMove = no
UseLightMap = yes
UseShadowDecals = yes
UseShadowVolumes = yes
VoiceVolume = 100

Save the file in your My Documents folder and call it options.ini. (Make sure you set the Save As type to All Files other wise you end up with options.ini.txt which doesn’t help)

Copy the file into both “My Documents\Command and Conquer Generals Data” and “My Documents\Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour Data”: If these folders don’t exist then you need to start the game and let it crash first.

4) Set Compatibility Mode

In the install directories (once again, do this for both Generals and Zero Hour), right hand click on the generals.exe and select properies.

Compatibility Mode -> Change settings for all users -> Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP SP3.

You should find both Generals and Zero Hour to now work and run fine

Battlefield Control Online…

So there you go. If you’re starting a LAN game then make sure the Windows Firewall isn’t blocking you and otherwise rock on.

No doubt I’ve forgotten to write down a vital step, but I’m sure people will complain when it doesn’t work.

Happy Christmas and Happy Gaming.

When  I first got it, I thought it was the dogs-danglies, however after using it for a little while, two inconsolable problems came to light.

Personally I dislike wide-screen monitors. I spend a lot of time typing and whether it be paragraphs of text or lines of code / config files; all of which (especially if you hope it to be printable) have a habit of being in portrait; eg: Scrolling Down!

I have got nothing against the idea of the wide-screen format, but I do object to these ridiculous resolutions I now have to endure. My nice monitor at home is an old 19″ Sony Trinitron; approximately 7 years old now and happily supports a resolution of 1280×1024. The CiBox replaced another old Sony Trinitron; this time a 15″ and came with my first PC in 1996. It supported (before it finally died) a resolution of 1024×768.

OK, I suppose, just having typed it now, that in comparison 1440×900 isn’t as awful a resolution as it could be, but seriously, its nowhere near as high as it could be. I have config files going on for thousands of lines and these screens are not helping.

I was swapping a hard-drive in a £2,000 Sony VAIO laptop last month and it booted Vista. I couldn’t work out why it had such massive icons until I realised the screen in this slick shiny box was only 1366×768. What the freakin fuck!?

My other major annoyance is with the colours on this hunk-o-junk. I didn’t realise it until the guy I was coding with wanted me to look at some background boxes I couldn’t see. No matter how I try and adjust it, pale-pastel colours just don’t exist on this thing. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has this problem. Anyway, onto the bit you might be interested in:

[HowTo: Engineers Menu]

1. Switch off the monitor.
2. Hold down the Volume-Down button.
3. Tap the Power button. Keep the volume-down button held down.
4. The monitor will power on. It should show you adjusting the volume down, however the OSD will applier on the Left (usually its on the right).
5. Select System from the OSD Menu.
6. Power cycle the monitor as usual to reset.

I don’t pretend to understand what you can do in the Factory menu. Mess about and break things at your own risk; I reset my total on-time before I realised what I shouldn’t be doing.

And after playing with it, to try and make a vivarium, I decided I needed it to run on linux.

Needed:

• PTC Pro/Desktop 8.0 Installed and Working (on Windows).
• A Windows box to steal some .dll files off (XP SP2).
• A Working copy of Linux with Wine.
  (I used Gentoo Linux (2.6.27-r4 and Wine 1.1.0
• Access to a root terminal (which you should open).

Before we start, we’re going to create a new wine “bottle” -essentially a new wine directory just for Pro/D. Its a habbit I’ve been in for a while, as it means you can have an isolated enviroment for each app, making testing much easier.  -I think I have to thank cxoffice for giving me the idea origionally.

We’re going to install Pro/D to ~/.wine-proDesktop (this is a hidden file in your home directory )

Normally, if you want to run a program in WINE, you just need to run `wine ${Program_Name}`. Because we are not using the standard WINE directory (~/.wine), we need to specify the correct dir to WINE or any of the associated programs (eg. winecfg or winefile). -this can be done in two ways.

If you just want to set the wine prefix for just one run then you can specify it on the command line, leave a space and then run winecfg:

Otherwise, we can set it for the entire session, so we only have to specify it once:

and then just:

or anything else, as they will all see WINEPREFIX as we set it.

If you want to see what it is set to, then you can  run:

to have it printed out, or just

to see a list of what there is.

.

The next step involves getting your windows box and copying three files from “C:WindowsSystem32” and putting them in “~/.wine-proDesktop/drive_c/windows/system32/” on your linux box.

• mfc32.dll
• msvcirt.dll
• MSVCIRTD.dll

You’ll also want to copy Pro/Desktop accross from the working windows installation. Copy “C:Program FilesPTC” from the windows installation to “~/.wine-proDesktop/drive_c/Program Files/PTC”. In my installation I have “Program Files/PTC/ProDESKTOP 8.0/Program/ProD.exe” as a path to the actual executable, and I’m assuming its the same on yours.
We now need to tell WINE to use the .dll files we copied from windows, rather than its built in versions. Run `winecfg` making sure to specify the WINEPREFIX as we spoke about above.

The first thing we are going to do is set wine to pretend to be Windows XP for Pro/D. On the [Applications] tab click “Default Settings” then select  “Windows Version: Windows XP” at the bottom of the window.

Click on the [Libraries] tab. In the “New override for library” box type in the dll names (mfc32.dll, msvcirt.dll, msvcirtd.dll) one at a time, hitting [Add] between them. They should be listed in the window.

Its also worth clicking on the [Graphics] tab and enable “Emulate a virtual desktop”. I set mine slightly smaller than my actual resolution. I found that enabling the virtual desktop resolved a lot of graphics lag. Hit OK to close winecfg.

Lastly, we need to install the Microsoft Visual Baisc runtime, which seems easiest done with the help of winetricks.

At the terminal, change directory to our WINEPREFIX, download winetricks and then get it to install the visual basic 6 runtimes.

And bam, thats it!

and it runs, and works. If extremely slowly.

It seems that using winetricks to install DirectX9 seems to solve a lot of the graphics lag problems, however be warned, ProDesktop now crashes when I try and open some files that DID work before DX9.

Update2:

After making sure to restart the wineserver (`wineserver -k`) I am now not having any problems with previously created files.
I can, without any problems, open an assembly consisting of 7 different pieces, created on a windows box.  -ace

The command has been aborted. It was not possible to create the graphics window. A common cause is that your display settings are incorrect. The application requires 65536 colors or greater. See the Settings page fo the Display icon in the Control Panel.

I seem to be able to toggle this error on and off quite easily.
Go into the Tools menu and select Options -> Performance.  Make sure “Disable graphics hardware acceleration” is NOT selected.

So, very simpily:

1. Sign in as you on the Xbox.
2. Hit the (X) button to get to the Blade menu.
3. Go to Settings (its the far right blade).
4. Select Profile.
5. Hit Auto Sign-In.

We get given two basic options;

Auto Sign-In for:

• Xbox Live  (Enable/Disable)
• Windows Live Messenger (Enable/Disable)

You can probably guess your way from here.

Now might be a good place to have a quick rant about the new 360 Dashboard. Its fucking awful. </rant>

It seems to get installed without any bother, the kernel modules load fine, but then when I run workstation or player, it tells me it “Cannot initiate the installer DB” when trying to run it.

Currently going round in circles trying to get somewhere. -and I thought updating would be a good idea. 6.0 was really sweet.

——-

Edit:

Turns out, its actually quite simple. And it seems other gentoo users have been having problems((see gentoo bug ID 248813 and maybe this gentoo forums post))

The trick to getting it working, is very simple. Even if it did take me about a week of going round in circles to get anywhere. Delete (or atleast move) /etc/vmware. Then reinstall and you’re done.

However -Rather than downloading an illigal copy of vmware-workstation, or even worse paying for it, why not try VirtualBox as a direct replacement to workstation?

Its free, open source, and frankly, is preferable to vmware. Try it for a week, once you get past the fact its different, it becomes really quite sweet

One stoned evening, after not being near a net connection for a couple of days, I started suffering withdrawal, and ended up installing Opera Mini (which is surprisingly good), set up the account to allow IMAP and then tried to configure the phone. All I got was an error stating:

I spent a lot of time googling and got nowhere fast, in the end it turns out to be really simple; all you need to do is have the Thwate Premium Server CA Certificate installed. Easy

HowTo:
Gmail / GoogleMail on SonyEricsson K750i

1. Check for Web Access on your Mobile.
2. Configure Google Mail to allow IMAP.
3. Set up the email account on the handset.
4. Install the SSL Certificate.
5. Test your email.

Check for Web Access on your Mobile.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you can access the internet on your phone -and I mean the proper internet, not just for your mobile provider.

#2 in the menu is “Internet Services”. Select this and then [More] -> [Enter Address]. See if you can hit google.com or a website of your liking -if you have some bandwidth to burn you could download opera mini and have a play with that -its quite impressive.

At this point, if its working, you have the option of going to m.google.com and using their web based googlemail, or even their Java applet. NOTE: This only works with @gmail.com email addresses, not with you@yourdomain.com

-If at this point you find you can’t get on the internet, then you will have to get in contact with your network provider and get help. I am currently using GPRS on Vodafone Pre-Pay.

Configure Google Mail to allow IMAP.

Before you can access your google mail via IMAP you will need to enable it in your account settings.

1. Log into your mail account.
2. Click on Settings (top right) once you’ve logged in. Select “Forwarding and POP3″
3. Enable IMAP Access. Click Save Changes.

Set up the email account on the handset.

In the Menu select Messaging –> Email –> Settings –> Account Settings –> New Account.

Connect Using: Select the correct GPRS/GSM Account that you used to get on the internet in step 1.
Protocol: IMAP4
Incoming server: imap.googlemail.com
Incoming port: 993
Encryption: TLS/SSL
Mailbox: username@yourdomain.com
Password: YourPassword
Outgoing Server: smtp.googlemail.com
Outgoing Port: 465
Email Address: username@yourdomain.com
Download: Headers Only (much quicker)
From Name: This is the name that will be displayed in the from address when you email someone else.
Signature: Customise to your liking
Copy Outgoing: can forward mail to another address. Set to off.
Check Interval: 2 Hours -be warned, this can be expensive.

After setting up your email, if you enter into Messaging -> Email -> Inbox and select More -> Send and receve you should be rewarded with an error message stating:

. Not a problem We deal with this next.

Install the SSL Certificate.

Head to http://www.thawte.com/roots/index.html, you can leave the form blank and it will let you download “thawte-roots.zip”.

Inside of the zip file in the folder “Thawte Server Roots” you want to extract two files:
ThawteServerCA.cer
ThawtePremiumServerCA.cer

Bluetooth/Infared these two files to your phone. It will ask if you wish to install them, say yes.

Test Your Mail

Messaging -> Email -> Inbox

Select Send and Recieve: it should JustWork??? Also Check you can send Email.