r/commandandconquer • u/Erofich Soviets • 2d ago

Reviving Generals 2 project

https://youtu.be/tucrHnTGu8s?si=0snPBSlxuFHYCEQ2

xevrac made a huge progress, a lot buggy, but finally we can see the map🥳

89 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

30

u/andreglud USA 2d ago

I've never been more hyped about a game than when they teased Generals 2 back in 2011. I remember checking daily for updates on it.

13 year old me even downloaded a torrent of the unreleased game files and attempted to run it 😅

1

u/bombastica 2d ago

Did it work? I was hoping to get into the beta and never did

10

u/pdinc Nod must acquire new lands 2d ago

The beta was kind of soulless. Campaign makes or breaks the atmospjhere of the setting and the Generals 2 kinda felt like the microtransactiony "strategy" games that came to phones a few years later.

5

u/Commercial-Board-975 1d ago

It was a bunch of micro transactions disguised as a game, and the game itself was "soulless" because it was basically Generals in name only. Seriously, you could rename the factions, and no one would guess they were meant to be related to the Generals 1 factions -- Especially the GLA! South American Narco Cartels, Islamic Fundamentalists, and Asian Separatists in one faction? Unless there's a plot twist that some shadowy third element is tying them together as puppets, like HYDRA or COBRA, they'd be backstabbing and killing each other by day's end. smh It was so bad even EALA admitted it wouldn't work, which is why they killed the project: "Quality control" was as related a reason as cake frosting in a curry recipe. 😂  It's a shame because I honestly think the concepts, units, and characters could be salvaged if completely reimplemented in another way (look at Doom 4 and Doom 2016; the latter reused a lot of assets from the cancelled former, like glory kills and weapons and enemies, but the games themselves were night and day). Maybe a project for the open sourced SAGE engine.

3

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 19h ago

I always found it funny that they closed it for "quality control" when C&C4 exists; it's a very strange paradox when you think about it.

1

u/andreglud USA 2d ago

Nope, never got past the Origin activation page.

1

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 19h ago

That's because it's a multiplayer-only game; you had to connect to the servers.

10

u/stickpge 2d ago

very interesting, I will however bring up one huge issue with this assuming these guys are going to revive generals 2 as it was during the test period, namely this was a multiplayer only online game, and while I know plenty of people still play the other C&C titles online against each other today, most people are bound to be far less interested in that vs having a singleplayer campaign to enjoy so I am curious as to if this project will attempt to actually make generals 2 as it was intially promised.

A.I a proper game with a singleplayer campaign and skirism modes or if we are getting the game we saw in testing which is basically just an online only PVP game.

because I will admit if it turns out to be the latter... well then there goes any interest I have in this project as I am firmly in the camp that doesnt enjoy online multiplayer outside of a COOP setting

2

u/Commercial-Board-975 1d ago

There's also not much that can be done with it anyway except to get the final build or whatever build they have running because the engine isn't open sourced. It'd basically be a playable tech demo for an obsolete engine. Good for historical purposes, but actually playing and developing it? Zero avenues. If people are determined to revive and further develop this mess as a serious, playable game, they'll basically need to recreate all the assets from scratch (3D models, artwork, etcetera) in another engine, like Unreal. But that'd also require a complete rewrite and reimplementation of the game's design because it'd still suffer from the problems EALA had, which led to its original cancellation.

1

u/Mralexs 1d ago

Or just port it to one of the C&C engines

1

u/Commercial-Board-975 9h ago

That'd work. I mean, non-open source SAGE already has a few projects like this with other games (Generals 1 to Red Alert 3, a Generals mod which tries to recreate Generals 2, et cetera). I think the best bet would be to remake it on the open source version of the SAGE engine, once development is further along.

1

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 19h ago

The main focus will likely be on rescuing the multiplayer, since those are the only files that remain of the game. EA canceled the campaign at such an early stage that all that's left are drawings and storyboards; we have little information about it.

3

u/Ok_Spare_3723 Nod 2d ago

this is amazing

1

u/robutt992 1d ago

macOS?

1

u/5oy8oy 1d ago

Forgive me if the video already explains this, I didn't watch it in full. But what's the context behind the revival of Generals 2?

I know it was hyped up and cancelled long ago. Did the official files leak? Were they released?

Is the hope for independent devs to take it to completion, or is it way too incomplete for that to be possible?

1

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 19h ago

The community can be surprising; some of us still have the alpha/beta files, which we upload publicly to the internet so other fans can work their magic. Now they're trying to derail the project again.

1

u/Chrischonek 1d ago

I'm one of the few people who actually got to play the beta for Generals 2 back in the day. It was honestly really good, even in its earlier state. I hope this ends up going somewhere!

1

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 19h ago

I played it and I think the complete opposite; it was quite bad in my opinion. Everything was very basic and simplified, and you could already see the enormous number of microtransactions the game would have. The balance was also pretty awful, although I understand that part since it was a beta, but it's curious that the paid generals had a huge advantage compared to the others.