Command & Conquer: Generals

Command & Conquer: Generals
Developer: EA Pacific Publisher: EA Games Platform: Windows Released in US: February 10, 2003 Released in EU: February 14, 2003 This game has unused animations. This game has unused areas. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused enemies. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has anti-piracy features. This game has a development article This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page This game has a bugs page

This game's online features are no longer supported. While this game's online features were once accessible, they are no longer officially supported and online-exclusive features may be documented as now-unseen content.

Command & Conquer: Generals is a real-time strategy game released in 2003. Generals was the first in the Command & Conquer series that not only strayed away from the original GDI vs. NOD war, but also the Soviet vs. Allies storyline of the Red Alert universe. The game's three factions are the USA, China, and the Global Liberation Army (GLA).

The game is banned in China, presumably due to various parts of the Chinese campaign that didn't sit right with the government. In Europe, due to similarities between the game's storyline and the unraveling war in Iraq, a localized version of the game was released in Germany.

This was the last game to be developed by EA Pacific, before they were merged with EA Los Angeles. EA Los Angeles would go to create the expansion pack, Zero Hour and subsequent Command & Conquer games before their closure in 2013.

Sub-Pages

Development Info

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Notes

Bugs

Debug Tools Various advanced commands for the debugger.

Unused Content in the Original USA, China, GLA. And some unused assets.

Unused Content in the Expansion Much unused stuff is hiding in there.

Unused Content in the Worldbuilder

Mesh Mold

While Mesh Mold still exists as an option in the Worldbuilder, it is by default completely unfunctional. However, by copying the "Editor" folder from the prototype game into the final game's Data folder, you can get it to work as intended. Mesh Mold allows you to create pre-defined forms, like slopes etc. in the map by just placing them with the mouse.

Unused Scripts

The game contains a wealth of conditions and actions for its script engine. There are also some conditions and actions found in a folder called, appropriately, "UNUSED". While some of them work, others don't and are in most cases relics from older versions of the game.

• "Play a movie in the radar." and "Play a movie in fullscreen mode." are very old relics from a time where the game was actually going to have introduction FMV sequences and transmission videos throughout the mission, just like the classic Command & Conquer games. The prototype game did have these, and while the FMVs made a return appearance in the expansion pack, the transmission videos did not return.
• "Fire waypoint-weapon following waypoint path." is most likely related to the Tomahawk Remote Control upgrade, which allowed you to make the missile fly along a flight path specified by the player.
• "Set Cave connectivity index." was related to the Tech Caves which were removed from the final game. It allowed you, instead of all caves connecting to each other, to have specific pairs of caves units can go through. This script, alongside the caves themselves are fully functional in the Sneak Peak.
• "Player has attempted the mission a number of times." - Apparently the game was going to keep track of how often you won or lost a mission (maybe to make it easier after you've failed an amount of times), but it no longer does that in the final version.
• "Player has discovered another player." Perhaps the game was going to notify you whenever you discover another player, like in Age of Empires, where you do not know how many and which players are playing on your map until you discover them. It doesn't really fit this game, considering that in multiplayer matches, the number of players, and their army choices is not hidden. A similar feature is used in Red Alert 3, where in Skirmish a short movie plays after encountering enemy forces for the first time.

On top of that, there was supposed to be a help system for the scripts. It still exists in the code, however all help messages are set to be "No help."

Anti-Piracy

This game has a built-in check to see if the game executable has been altered. If it has, the game will start up correctly at first and you will be able to start a battle, but after about one minute all your units detonate and you will automatically lose the game.

BrowserEngine.dll

If this file is opened with a resource extraction utility like Resource Hacker, one will find that this browser engine module came from Earth & Beyond. This was the last game to be developed by Westwood Studios.

Regional Differences

This game was originally released in Germany uncensored under the original title Command & Conquer: Generals, but immediately pulled from stores due to the similarity with the Iraq War, only weeks before a law change disallowed banning games already rated by the USK (the German ESRB). Afterwards, EA decided to release a censored version under the title Command & Conquer: Generäle. As of note, there is no uncensored version of the expansion pack Zero Hour (released in Germany as Die Stunde Null), and installing the expansion pack will censor an uncensored version of the original game.

Censored German Version Differences Command & Conquer: Generäle, where cyborgs fight each other for liberation from other cyborgs.