C&C Remastered, missions download to edit

[Ginger14]

I have C&C Remastered.

Is it possible to edit the original missions on both Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert? I tried using the editor, but the original missions are not there.

I have searched on here and no joy. Any help for a novice would be appreciated.

[Cat]

Search for the original mission .bin and config files and load it up on an editor. I have no clue how to extract them from the game files so what I did was search them up and download online when I was studying mission triggers years ago.

[Nyerguds]

You can extract them from the game files with XCC Mixer. For an easy method of bulk file extraction, see this picture[i.imgur.com].

They're in the classic files; the "CNCDATA" folder under "Data" in the installation folder. The campaign missions will be in "general.mix", though for Red Alert, that might be inside some other .mix archive. The TD dino missions are in sc-000.mix. The TD expansion missions are in sc-001.mix. Not sure about the RA ones though.

[Ginger14]

Originally posted by Nyerguds:

You can extract them from the game files with XCC Mixer. For an easy method of bulk file extraction, see this picture[i.imgur.com].

They're in the classic files; the "CNCDATA" folder under "Data" in the installation folder. The campaign missions will be in "general.mix", though for Red Alert, that might be inside some other .mix archive. The TD dino missions are in sc-000.mix. The TD expansion missions are in sc-001.mix. Not sure about the RA ones though.

Ok, so I downloaded XCC Mixer. I can find the files as you described, but where do I extract them to? I tried to extracting them to the "CNCDATA/TIBERIUM_DAWN" folder. However on doing this and then starting up the remastered editor and selecting the extracted file, I get an error.

Sorry, this is not my strong point! haha

[DDF3]

I would extract them to
C:\Users\Your userName\Documents\CnCRemastered\Local_Custom_Maps\(Red_Alert or Tiberium_Dawn)

The reason why they probably wont open is because the editor that ships with the remaster does not take into account all of the possibilities that can be placed inside of the files.

I would suggest you use this editor from nyerguds which you can place in any directory ,
Latest version: v1.5.0.1 (July 12, 2023)
https://github.com/Nyerguds/CnCTDRAMapEditor/releases

You haven't mentioned what you plan to do to the original missions ,but the easiest way to play them would be to open them up one by one and enter a name into the map settings . This way you can can play them as you wish from the missions tab.

[Nyerguds]

Yea, you're going to want the upgraded editor for this; the original simply fails to open some missions, and never tells you why. The upgraded editor gives detailed feedback on all issues that occurred, and tries to correct them automatically.

Some notes:

• Tiberian Dawn missions are .ini/.bin pairs; you need both files.
  
• The filename structure in both games is "SC[X]##[EA]" The [X] part is the side (in TD: G = Goodguy, B = Badguy, J = Jurassic. In RA: G = Greece U = USSR, A = Ants. M = Multiplayer maps). The ## is the mission number. The suffix is usually "EA", but varies for alternates, typically as EB and EC. In the GDI campaign, which splits into East and West at some point, you also have WA/WB/WC.
  
• Red Alert missions are .ini files inside the mix archives, but need to be renamed to .mpr to be accepted by the Remaster as custom missions.
  
• The Tiberian Dawn campaign missions do not contain their briefing texts. They are instead located in a file called "mission.ini", in which they have an ini header named like the mission (e.g. "[scb07ec]"). Inside the mission file, that header should be "[Briefing]".
  
• When playing the Tiberian Dawn campaign missions normally, the "Buildlevel" configured inside the mission file is ignored, and overridden by the actual mission number. But if you play them as custom missions, they will be used. So be warned that the Buildlevel settings in the campaign missions are not guaranteed to be correct, and might need to be changed to match the mission number.
  
• On Normal difficulty, Tiberian Dawn's AI has progressive increase in difficulty throughout the campaign; tweaks like the fact the AI does not crush infantry or evade grenades until later in the campaign (around mission 8 I think). These specific tweaks might not work correctly when playing them as custom maps, since I think the game looks at the actual mission number for that, and not the Buildlevel setting. In fact, I hope they actually set those on 20 internally as they should be, or the AI will constantly be set on early game difficulty unless you play in hard mode...

[Ginger14]

Sorry folks, I need some help...

Ok, so I have the XCC Editor. I go into XCC, find my way to CNCDATA/TIBERIUM_DAWN and then I have CD1, CD2 and CD3.

Say for example I wish to get NOD - Bad Neighbourhood mission. I know this is located within sc-001.mix. But which CD should I go to? I see that all three CD's have the same general and sc's. Does it make a difference which?

For the now, I have being going to CD1. On XCC, after clicking CD1, I find "Bad Neighbourhood.bin and extract this to;

C:\Users\Your userName\Documents\CnCRemastered\Local_Custom_Maps\Tiberium_Dawn

and save it to this folder just as it is named in the XCC (this is scb20ea.bin). I then go back into XCC, find the .inif file, and repeat the above process.

Now I go into my map editor, select the .bin file (again, does it matter which file I choose between the .bin and .inif?) and I only change one thing (this is just to do a test run and make sure things are working). So, I delete a GDI Mammoth Tank and click save.

Exit the map editor. Go into the game, go to mission select and go the far right (the little spanner and screwdriver symbol) and nothing there. Completely blank. If I then go to NOD missions in mission select and select Bad Neighbourhood and start the mission. Nothing has changed.

What am I doing wrong?

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by Ginger14:

Ok, so I have the XCC Editor.

XCC Editor is actually the TD map editor included in the tool. There is also a tool called "XCC Mix Editor" in there, which is specifically for modifying the contents of mix files, but which can't actually extract files from them. So, neither of those are what you need. The tool you need is "XCC Mixer". You will need to start it in Administrator mode to make it function 100% correctly.

Originally posted by Ginger14:

I go into XCC, find my way to CNCDATA/TIBERIUM_DAWN and then I have CD1, CD2 and CD3.

Say for example I wish to get NOD - Bad Neighbourhood mission. I know this is located within sc-001.mix. But which CD should I go to? I see that all three CD's have the same general and sc's. Does it make a difference which?

No, those should all be the same. I dunno why they copied the expansion files to the main campaign folders too. The game should only read the Covert Ops from the CD3 folder though, so that's the actually-used one for these.

Originally posted by Ginger14:

For the now, I have being going to CD1. On XCC, after clicking CD1, I find "Bad Neighbourhood.bin and extract this to;

C:\Users\Your userName\Documents\CnCRemastered\Local_Custom_Maps\Tiberium_Dawn

and save it to this folder just as it is named in the XCC (this is scb20ea.bin). I then go back into XCC, find the .inif file, and repeat the above process.

In my very first reply, I showed you a method to bulk-extract files using XCC Mixer. Just use ctrl+click to select multiple in the list and you can just extract them all in one go using "Copy". Click the header to sort the files by "Name" instead of "Type" to make it easier to extract pairs.

Also, that folder should be named "Tiberian_Dawn". You've been saying the game's name wrong all this time.

Originally posted by Ginger14:

Now I go into my map editor, select the .bin file (again, does it matter which file I choose between the .bin and .inif?) and I only change one thing (this is just to do a test run and make sure things are working). So, I delete a GDI Mammoth Tank and click save.

In my upgraded editor, it doesn't matter whether you choose the ini or the bin file, but I think the original can only use the ini? Not sure. Anyway, the ini is a human-readable file that can be opened and edited in Notepad, containing the all of the map's actual information, configuration, decoration, and scripting, while the .bin is a block of raw bytes containing the indestructible map terrain. Everything defining it to be a C&C map is inside the ini one, so that's generally seen as "the mission file". A .ini will work without the .bin, but not the other way around.

Originally posted by Ginger14:

Exit the map editor. Go into the game, go to mission select and go the far right (the little spanner and screwdriver symbol) and nothing there. Completely blank. If I then go to NOD missions in mission select and select Bad Neighbourhood and start the mission. Nothing has changed.

What am I doing wrong?

Well, if your folder is indeed called "Tiberium_Dawn" that's certainly wrong. And no, missions put in the Local_Custom_Maps folder will never affect the normal missions in the Campaign / CovOps Sections, regardless of their filename. You will be able to override the mission by putting it in the CD3 folder though; doesn't even need to be put back inside its .mix file (in fact, I strongly advise against modifying any of the original installation files). Just needs to have its original filename.

Note that the remaster's custom maps section accepts any filename, and thus can't use the "SCX##EA" pattern to distinguish singleplayer maps from multiplayer ones. Because of that, the map needs to be marked as singleplayer mission or it will be assumed to be a multiplayer map. This is done by adding the "SoloMission=True" flag into the ini file, somewhere under the [Basic] header. You can do this in the editor by opening the map settings ("Settings" menu → "Map Settings"); there's a "Single Player" checkbox at the bottom of the Basic settings.

You can also very easily check if the map is seen as singleplayer or multiplayer by looking at the waypoints; in multiplayer map mode, the enhanced editor shows the first 8 waypoints as flags, since they serve as multiplayer start positions.

Did the editor give any remarks when you opened it? If you're using my upgraded version, and you kept the original "scb20ea" filename, it should automatically detect the map as being a classic singleplayer mission, and warn you about the fact it marked it as such. But it only does this check for files in the original filename format, so if you renamed it, it won't work.