there is no guide so i'm asking here

[Snoot Boops]

i'm making maps and a few of them are good in practice and in offline skirmish everything runs smoothly and there's enough resources available, however when i take my maps online they're actually horrible to run. it's one big laggy mess and there's never enough resources available. now, i can fix the lag issue by changing my maps up so the pathing is better. that's not an issue. the real issue is the resources.

for red alert, how do i create a map so that the regrowth of the ore is higher than the harvesters ability to farm it?

Everything i've tried doesn't seem to work. and i know it can be done because i have a few maps downloaded that are popular to play on that are more than capable of doing exactly that. I tried finding them in the map editor files but i just have to many maps downloaded to actually find them to see how they did it.

so does anyone know?

[Nyerguds]

For one thing, the resource calculation in the stock editor is terribly bugged. It gives the resources far more value than they really have, and it doesn't account for the bug where harvesting the lowest stage gives you absolutely nothing (except for gems).

I advise switching to the upgraded version of the map editor; I fixed a ton of usability issues on it.

Originally posted by ＯＮＹＸ:

for red alert, how do i create a map so that the regrowth of the ore is higher than the harvesters ability to farm it?

Oh, that. It's done by extracting "rules.ini" from the classic game files, and pasting snippets from it into the map file. There are developer comments with all the settings, so the ore growth related ones shouldn't be hard to find. Just remember that ini format always requires both a header and values, so copying just the setting lines won't work if you don't also copy the header that's above it. Might be quite a bit above it when it comes to the general settings in rules.ini. I think these resource options are part of the [General] section.

The upgraded map editor has a specific "rule tweaks" section in the map settings dialog where you can put such stuff.

You can extract rules.ini by using the tool "XCC Mixer", from the "XCC Utilities" pack. It's an old tool, so you'll need to set it to always run as administrator. Once you got it, you can use it to navigate to rules.ini, which can be found inside the game archive "local.mix", which itself is located inside "redalert.mix", which you should be able to find in some folder under the "data\cncdata\RED_ALERT" folder in the game install files.

Or, y'know, you just take one of these maps that already does it, and drag it into notepad (or the upgraded editor) and see what they added


Be careful with these ini tweaks, though. A lot of maps that seriously crank up the regrowth rates also specifically block the resources into a small area that they can't grow out of. If you don't do that, they'll just fill the whole map and make it impossible to build a base. Personally, I don't see the point of such infinite money maps though. Controlling resources is just part of the game.

[Snoot Boops]

Originally posted by Nyerguds:

I don't see the point of such infinite money maps though. Controlling resources is just part of the game.

understandable. sometimes the limits on resources are a bit extreme. more-so for people just learning the game. so far i've finally been able to introduce my girl and a few friends of mine to the game since i convinced them to join the cnc world with the 90% off sale.

having resource limits for them while they're learning has not been a fun experience for them, especially when it comes to me being able to take over a good 40% of the map before they even have established a base thats capable of producing any good amount of units. so since they're not having any fun playing against me with a 2v1 or a 3v1 scenario, i figured i'd make them a 1v1 map where i can spectate and coach. we're trying to convince our other friends to play so they can do a 4v1 or more vs me. i'm used to 1v7 comp stomps so it's not gonna be much of a challenge for me but as long as they're havin fun is what matters. this has been the highlight of my social week so far, is being able to share something i have loved since i was a kid with others.

hell, my first c&c game was red alert retaliation on the ps1 and pc back in the day.

as far as blocking resources goes, already done and around the entire perimeter of the map except for in defined collection spots in the base boundaries. I just wasn't sure how to get ore to grow at rates faster than the harvester can collect it. so i'll definitely read up on that and get it running properly.

[Snoot Boops]

after a little more digging i was able to find this embeded in one of the mpr files of the maps i have. I added this text to my mpr file on a whim to see if it would do anything and it gave me the results i was looking for and results you might also be looking for if you're here reading this.

for those wanting to make a map that has a never ending supply of ore, you need to make and save your map in the editor and then open the .mpr file of the map with notepad since it's just a text document.

location of map and game files should be:
documents > CnCRemastered > Local_Custom_Maps > Red_Alert

if that's not it for you, then open up steam and browse local files to find it.

then open the save file you made that ends in .mpr with notepad and add this to the top of the file with a space between the categories.

[General]
BailCount=10
GoldValue=150
GemValue=150
OreTruckRate=1
OreSpreads=yes
GrowthRate=.01

then save the file.

it should look like this as an example

[General]
BailCount=10
GoldValue=150
GemValue=150
OreTruckRate=1
OreSpreads=yes
GrowthRate=.01

[Basic]
Win2=x
Win3=x
Win4=x

the "basic" category is standard in all save files. followed by anything else you've added to your map.

if you do this then make sure to use a tile set that allows units to drive/walk over but can't be built on so you can control where the ore is grown at or your entire map will be covered in ore that repopulates so fast you'll never be able to build on the map because your harvesters will never be able to collect it fast enough.

[Nyerguds]

Be very careful about editing the .mpr files in Notepad; if the briefing, author name or Steam workshop description contain any accented or otherwise special characters, Notepad will add an invisible marker at the start of the file that will indicate the file as being UTF-8.

Once this marker is in place, the game will no longer recognise the file as game map.

So yea, either use a text editor where you can manually control text encoding related properties such as these byte order marks, or use the upgraded editor. I made the ini tweaks section specifically for that purpose.


On a related note, the order of the ini sections is completely unimportant. When you have custom ini stuff in the map, the editor will move any sections it doesn't specifically know and control itself to the start of the file when re-saving it anyway.

[Snoot Boops]

well if that is added and nothing else is changed then anyone doing it should be fine.

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by ＯＮＹＸ:

well if that is added and nothing else is changed then anyone doing it should be fine.

No, that's my point. This happens too if the map file already contains these special characters. Notepad will recognise that, and add a marker to specifically mark the file as being UTF-8, and it'll mess it up. It won't even appear in the maps lists anymore.

Though I believe opening and re-saving it in the editor will probably fix that.

[Snoot Boops]

Originally posted by Nyerguds:

Originally posted by ＯＮＹＸ:

well if that is added and nothing else is changed then anyone doing it should be fine.

No, that's my point. This happens too if the map file already contains these special characters.

oh. crazy. my name is special characters and i was able to save it just fine and run a test play on it without issue. maybe i got lucky then.

[Nyerguds]

It might depend on the Windows version. It might just be Win11 Notepad that does it. And as I said, re-saving in the editor should fix it.

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by ＯＮＹＸ:

[General]
BailCount=10
GoldValue=150
GemValue=150
OreTruckRate=1
OreSpreads=yes
GrowthRate=.01

On a related note, the upgraded editor will actually read and use these GoldValue and GemValue keys in its calculations to show the amount of resources on the map

And, for the record, the default values are 25 for gold and 50 for gems, though gems add three more bails with that value into the harvester whenever a gem patch gets harvested down one level.