Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection

	This article is written from a real world point of view.

Command & Conquer:The Ultimate Collection
Developer	Original games: Westwood Studios EA Pacific BreakAway Games EA Los Angeles 2012 Origin release: BioWare Victory Kalloc Studios 2024 release: Electronic Arts Luke Feenan Matthias Wagner (FinalSun & FinalAlert 2)
Publisher	Electronic Arts
Release date	2 October 2012 (Origin) 7 March 2024 (Steam)
Genre	Real-time strategy Real-time tactics First-person shooter
Modes	Singleplayer, multiplayer
Platforms	Microsoft Windows
System requirements	EA account or Steam account

Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection is a compilation containing all 17 Command & Conquer titles up to its release with the exception of Sole Survivor, along with a 20-track music disc (US only), a piece of exclusive commemorative art spanning all three Command & Conquer universes (US only) and an early access code to the then-upcoming Command & Conquer. Pre-order on Origin was available as of 31 August 2012. The physical European release only featured a download code for Origin.

2012 release

In 2012 The Ultimate Collection released exclusively through Origin. All included games that previously had SecuROM and SafeDisc DRM, had it removed to improve compatibility with modern systems. It contained digital Additional Content in the form of a compilation of trailers and wallpapers. It is likely that the 2012 release was also supposed to contain digital and/or physical separate manuals for each game and expansion pack it contained as in 2024 unreleased manuals for the Ultimate Collection were found in the EA PR archives.

The pre-Tiberium Wars games within The Ultimate Collection, as it was released in 2012, were likely ported from the outdated and troubled 1.01 patch version of The First Decade compilation. The 2012 release of the Ultimate Collection writes certain registry files incorrectly, causing connection issues with users of other versions of the individual games. It included new launchers and Origin-DRM, which caused the inability to run mods and command line parameters. Several of its games were recompiled to fix various issues, causing incompatibility problems with existing community patches in the process.

Fixed launchers were created by community members Bibber and later on Medstar to fix these issues. These launchers had to be updated in July 2017 and May 2018 respectively to fix incompatibility issues caused by updates of the Origin client's inner-workings.

2024 release

Years later, some team members at Electronic Arts started an initiative of releasing more of their classics back-catalogue on Steam. Together with a small group of C&C community members they began working on bringing the Ultimate Collection to Steam. On March 7, 2024 the Ultimate Collection got surprise-dropped on Steam as a single-purchase bundle containing all games in the Ultimate Collection. The Additional Content from the 2012 release of the Ultimate Collection was not included in the 2024 release due to licensing reasons regarding music.

For this new release release, the original Origin Ultimate Collection releases of all game in this collection and the Steam releases of C&C3 and Red Alert 3 were discarded. Work was done from scratch by community-member Luke Feenan and Technical Director at EA Brian Barnes, based on each game's original patched CD-ROM release. However, the Steam-release of C&C4 was left untouched, but got relisted on Steam to be included in the Steam's Ultimate Collection. Unlike the 2012 release of the Ultimate Collection, it was chosen not to recompile any post-Red Alert 1 games to ensure compatibility with community-made patches.

The EA App version of the 2024 release is equal to the Steam version with the exception of C&C3, Red Alert 3 and Generals having been combined with their expansion packs into one library entry each. Additionally, the EA App version still includes the launchers created for the 2012 release, which do not support support the ability to run mods and command line parameters.

Changes

The following changes were made for the 2024 release compared to the original patched disc releases:

• Any SecuROM DRM, SafeDisc DRM and simple disc-checks were removed from all the main executables of the games. This was done to allow for playing these games without their original CD-ROMs, all previously SafeDisc-protected games to be able to boot on modern Windows OS and previously community-made patches and fixes to work.
  • This was done using assembly patching for all games except C&C1 and Red Alert 1, which were recompiled without their original disc checks that were needed for reading the MAIN.MIX files on the original discs.
• Custom DRM Copy Protect code was assembly patched out of Generals, Red Alert 2 and their expansion packs to fix the issue where a player's base and units would blow up 30 seconds after starting a level.
• The original releases of Generals and Zero Hour suffered from an issue where the benchmarking code, that would determine the settings preset to generate the Options.ini from, was very memory-unsafe. This caused the benchmarking code to acces memory out of bounds, which resulted in silent memory corruption. This only became a problem on Windows version XP and later, which have memory-protection measures in place that made the benchmarking code crash due to its memory-unsafe behavior. This resulted in the Options.ini file not being generated on first boot and causing a Serious Error during boot of these games. This was fixed by assembly patching the benchmarking code to fix the memory corruptions it used to cause.
  • If any edge-case would ever occur where the Options.ini file still isn't generated on first boot, <path-to-game>\RedistInstallers\Options_Helper\Options_INI_Helper.exe executable is provided for both games for users to run manually to forcefully generate a rudimentary Options.ini file.
• EA's World Builders were added to each release where they were originally available.
• FinalSun and FinalAlert 2 map-editors were included, made open-source and updated to work with the Steam release.
• DDrawCompat was included with C&C1, Red Alert 1, Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun for improved compatibility with modern Windows OS versions.
• Red Alert 1 was recompiled to now include all four original "MAIN.MIX" files from the four original CD-ROMs in the installation-directory and switch to the one needed:
  • Allies (CD1): MAIN1.MIX
  • Soviet (CD2): MAIN2.MIX
  • Counterstrike (CD3): MAIN3.MIX
  • The Aftermath (CD4): MAIN4.MIX
• Renegade and Red Alert 2 have the compatibility flags Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows 7 applied respectively to their executables for improved modern Windows OS compatibility.
• All games have their executables added as an exception to the Windows Defender Firewall to avoid multiplayer connectivity getting blocked by it.
• Generals and C&C3 and their expansion packs Zero Hour and Kane's Wrath respectively are now fully stand-alone. The Steam releases of these expansion packs now includes the files from the base game it previously depended on.
• All games in this collection that are Generals or older now include their original manuals in digital form in all languages it was originally available.
• In the original C&C1 and RA1, the system to stretch the DOS 320×200 resolution videos to 640×400 only stretched them horizontally, while spacing out the pixel-lines vertically with black lines in between, resulting in a rather poor attempt at emulating CRT "scan lines". This system was changed; the videos now stretch horizontally as well as vertically without any "scan lines".

Official post-launch changes

The 2024 release has gotten quite some post-launch changes and updates to fix some issues and improve some matters.

Steam backend changes

The below changes were made through the Steam Store backend by EA, not through patching the games themselves.

• March 8, 2024: all games in the collection were made available to play for all members of EA Play on Steam.
• March 11, 2024: the Steam Cloud storage limit was increased from around 1 MB and 1000 files in total to 9.31 GB and 10000 files in total for each individual game to fix the issue where the Steam releases at launch weren't allowed enough Steam Cloud save storage for people with many save-files.
• April 10, 2024 & March 22, 2024: the individual Steam Store pages of the games in this collection got various corrections to better reflect the available languages in the games regarding in-game interface, full audio and subtitles.
• July 26, 2024: the Steam Store names of Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath got various corrections:
  • Tiberium Wars: changed Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars to Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, added this same change to the already-existing localized variants of the name and correcting the Korean translation of the name to be in actual full Korean.
  • Kane's Wrath: changed Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath to Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath and added the localized variants of the name with this same naming-scheme.
• July 30, 2024: the Steam Store Store name of Kane's Wrath got the registered trademark symbol added to the end of its full name to bring it in line with its official registered trademark.
• August 1, 2024: the Steam Store description of Red Alert 2 was changed from the simple "The Invasion Has Begun" to "The world erupts in conflict as Soviet forces invade American soil in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. You are the Supreme Commander. Arm yourself to the teeth with top-secret technologies and lead the Soviet or Allied troops to victory."
• August 2, 2024:
  • Tiberian Sun's .SED files (sharable seeds of Random Generated Maps) are now also synchronized through the Steam Cloud service.
  • Tiberian Sun's Steam Store name localized in Thai, was changed from "Command & Conquer™ Tiberian Sun™ і Firestorm™" to "Command & Conquer™ Tiberian Sun™ and Firestorm™"
  • Zero Hour's Steam Store description changed from the simple "The Hour Is Now" to "Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour brings you closer to the enemy than ever before. Engage opposing forces at hot spots around the globe as you match strategies and arsenals against the new masterminds of modern war."
  • Red Alert 2's erroneous "RPG" Steam Store genre tag was removed.
  • Renegade's Steam Store description changed from the simple "Command & Conquer Up Close and Personal" to the more detailed "Command & Conquer gets up close and personal in this classic First Person Shooter for one of the most iconic franchises."
• August 6, 2024:
  • Red Alert 2's .SED files (sharable seeds of Random Generated Maps) are now also synchronized through the Steam Cloud service.
  • Uprising's Steam Store page name, including the localized ones, was changed from "Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising" to "Command & Conquer™ Red Alert™ 3 - Uprising".
• August 7, 2024:
  • Removed the incorrect warning from the Steam Store page of the stand-alone expansion Kane's Wrath that claimed Tiberium Wars was needed in order to install and play the game.
  • Removed previously not needed Visual C++ Redistributables that were previously downloaded and installed with some games in this collection:
    • C&C1 and Zero Hour: Visual C++ 2010.
    • Red Alert 1: Visual C++ 2010 and 2013.
    • Generals: Visual C++ 2010 and 2022.
    • Tiberian Sun: Visual C++ 2019.

Game patches

• (Steam only) March 8, 2024: a patch was released to add the previously missing TUC_Credits_Updated.txt file, containing all credits of the 2012 and 2024 release of this collection. It was previously only included with the EA App version of the 2024 release.
• (Steam only) March 9, 2024: a patch was released to remove Steam DRM from the game's main executables to rectify the issue whereby the Steam DRM was causing the main executables to be incompatible with most community-made patches, fixes and mods.
• August 1, 2024: a hotfix patch got released to update the DDrawCompat implementation included with C&C1, Red Alert 1, Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun from version 0.5.1 to 0.5.3.
  • Note: *this hotfix patch was released due to a reported issue to EA by Valve where the latest Window Insider builds were unable to play the games that used DDrawCompat, which just so happened to recently release an update that resolved these issues. Before that situation even occurred, "narzoul", the author of DDrawCompat, already worked with EA to resolve quite some issues players encountered with these games.*
  • The most noteworthy changes and fixes the DDrawCompat upgrade brings are:
    • Support for the Steam Overlay, which previously did not open when attempting to do so.
    • Red Alert 2: fixed mispositioned or missing UI elements in DPI aware mode or when large desktop DPI setting is used.
    • Red Alert 2: fixed the game freezing for about 30 seconds when opening the Skirmish menu.
    • Red Alert 2: fixed invisible menu buttons after alt-tabbing.
    • Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2: fixed having the Nvidia Overlay enabled causing a resource leak that eventually caused non-responsive menus.
    • Fixed an issue where recent Windows Insider builds at the time were unable to play these games.
  • Also some DDrawCompat configuration changes were made, affecting the games in various ways to improve image quality:
    • C&C1 and Red Alert 1: adding the full desktop resolution as a supported resolution for these games to display at.
    • Red Alert 2: remove 640x400 as a supported resolution to display the game at.
    • C&C1: color depth while playing is now emulated. It is now set to emulate 8-bit color depth (256 colors).
    • Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun: color depth while playing is now emulated. It is now set to emulate 16-bit color depth.
    • C&C1, Red Alert 1, Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun: adjusted the scaling filter used when the internal resolution of the game doesn't match the resolution of your desktop. Instead of previously default box filter (simply duplicated pixels for upscaling), it now uses a variant of bilinear filtering for improved image quality.

Known issues

• Post-launch it was found that the 2024 release of RA2 specifically suffers from an issue where a corrupted cutscene-file for the The Fox and the Hound mission is causing crashes while attempting to display that cutscene.
• In Red Alert 1, the disabled scanlines return after playing through a campaign mission. The game originally switched between scanline stretch mode for the cutscenes, and full-stretch mode for the map animations. By accident some of this switching code remained active, causing the scanlines to return for cutscenes after map animations have played.
• Red Alert 3 has a long-standing issue in all its versions where it will try to connect to the now offline EA "Comrade News" server every time it launches the game to check if in-game news is available. The game will look for this server in vain for 30 seconds before finally timing out and starting to boot the game to the splash screen, thus delaying every boot of the game by 30 seconds.

Additional content

The 2012 release of the Ultimate Collection contained the following downloadable Additional content:

• The Ultimate Music Collection (US only)
• Gamescom 2012 trailer for Command & Conquer (2013)
• 2012 Tiberium Alliances trailer
• 116 wallpapers of different sizes regarding Red Alert 3, Command & Conquer (2013), C&C3, C&C4, Tiberium Alliances and the Ultimate Collection itself.

The Additional Content has been unavailable since the launch of the EA App and is also not included on Steam. It can however still be downloaded through Origin as of at least July 2024.

The Ultimate Music Collection

The US version contained a soundtrack CD and an art feature. The music album was eventually released on Deezer, Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music. It featured the following songs:

1. Act On Instinct (Frank Klepacki, Command & Conquer) - 02:52
2. Just Do It Up (Frank Klepacki, Command & Conquer) - 02:22
3. Hell March (Frank Klepacki, Red Alert) - 06:23
4. Big Foot (Frank Klepacki, Red Alert) - 05:16
5. Valves (Frank Klepacki, Tiberian Sun) - 04:22
6. Command & Conquer (Frank Klepacki, Renegade) - 02:59
7. Grinder (Frank Klepacki, Red Alert 2) - 02:27
8. Destroy (Frank Klepacki, Red Alert 2) - 04:38
9. Generals Main Theme (Bill Brown, Generals) - 03:13
10. Search and Destroy (Bill Brown, Generals) - 03:19
11. Mother of All Weapons (Bill Brown, Generals) - 03:22
12. The Final Hour (Bill Brown, Zero Hour) - 04:09
13. Mourning Hour (Steve Jablonsky, Tiberium Wars) - 00:30
14. Black Dawn (Steve Jablonsky, Tiberium Wars) - 01:53
15. Kane's Wrath* (Mikael Sandgren, Kane's Wrath) - 03:13
16. Act On Instinct Remix (Trevor Morris, Kane's Wrath) - 04:03
17. Soviet March (James Hannigan, Red Alert 3) - 02:47
18. Yuriko's Theme (James Hannigan, Uprising) - 03:56
19. To Save Humanity (James Hannigan, Tiberian Twilight) - 02:28
20. The End of All Things (James Hannigan, Tiberian Twilight) - 03:04

*"Kane's Wrath" is commonly referred to by fans as "Mechanical Mind". The soundtrack from The Ultimate Collection tags it as "Kane's Wrath", and the internal name within the game files refer to it as "KanesWrath", so this is considered the official track name.

Games

• Command & Conquer: Special Gold Edition
• Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert - The Aftermath
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge
• Command & Conquer: Renegade
• Command & Conquer: Generals
• Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising
• Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

Gallery

The Ultimate Collection

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  Ultimate music collection

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  Music Album art

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  Exclusive commemorative art (print version)

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Additional Content wallpapers

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Uprising

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C&C4

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Tiberium Alliances

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The Ultimate Collection

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Command & Conquer (2013)

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Videos

Launch trailer

External links

• Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection on Steam
• Bibber's fixed launchers
• Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Music Collection on Deezer
• Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Music Collection on Spotify
• Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Music Collection on Amazon Music
• Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Music Collection on Apple Music