Command & Conquer for Atari ST

Command & Conquer on the Atari ST - because why not?

This is a work-in-progress port of Westwood's 1995 real-time strategy classic Command & Conquer to the Atari ST, a 16-bit computer introduced in 1985.

Build and defend your base, harvest Tiberium, fight the enemy and conquer their base in this genre-defining classic. Whether you play on the side of the Global Defense Initiative or the Brotherhood of NOD, a thrilling ride is waiting for you.

What makes this special

The original DOS version of Command & Conquer ran on 256-color VGA graphics. The ST port has to run on 16 colors. If you like the 16-color aesthetics, Command & Conquer for Atari ST is for you!

There is now full support for playback of video sequences, making Command & Conquer the first Atari ST game with full-motion video. A glorious intro, mission briefings, storytelling. everything that made the original game such a unique experience.

Why donate

This project is driven by the author's passion for the Atari ST and the original game. However, it is also an experiment in whether work of this kind can carry itself financially. Your contribution is voluntary and will motivate further development of Command & Conquer and future Atari ST projects.

You don't need to donate upfront. In fact, feel free to download the game first, and donate whenever you want and how much you want.

Hardware requirements

The DOS version of Command & Conquer required  a 486-class CPU and at least  8MB of RAM. Starting with version 0.3.0, the Atari ST port manages to lower these requirements to an Atari ST with 4MB of RAM.

Command & Conquer for Atari ST  runs on all Atari ST(e), Atari TT and Atari Falcon computers. If you don't care about Atari ST hardware, the best option is to play on an emulator like Hatari. 

Minimum: Any Atari ST-compatible computer with at least 4MB of RAM.
Recommended: 68020+ @ 32MHz, 4MB+ RAM, DMA sound, Blitter (e.g., Atari TT).

In a nutshell:

• 4MB RAM is a hard requirement
• Faster CPU is good
• DMA sound is recommended for sound effects and music, but YM-2149 and the Covox Speech Thing are also supported; disable sound for better frame rate
• Blitter is good (but not required on faster machines)
• TT-RAM is good

How to play

1. Download the executable game package using the "Download Now" button. 
2. Download the Command & Conquer CD's from cnc-comm.com. You need the DOS version of both the GDI or NOD CD.
3. Use the web-based remix tool to generate a combined ZIP file.
4. Extract the resulting combined ZIP file to some folder on the (emulated or actual) Atari ST, run CNC.TOS and enjoy the game!

Frequently Asked Questions

• Processing the videos in the web-based remix tool takes very long
  First of all, you can skip the video step altogether. Of course, you won't have any videos in the game then. If you want videos, try running at minimum quality/effort with the highest possible number of parallel encodes. You only have to do this once: You can skip the conversion step if you have a converted MOVIES.MIX from another installation that you can copy.
• The game crashes, what can I do?
  Update to the latest version if you haven't already.  If that doesn't help, have a look at the file CNC.LOG, the game's log file, often it contains valuable hints. Use the comments section to report an issue.
• I have an accelerated Atari ST with Alt-RAM, why does the game disable the Blitter?
  It's on purpose. Some Alt-RAM can't be used by the Blitter, so the game does the safe thing, which is to not use the Blitter. Usually, on those systems, the CPU is better at blitting than the Blitter is, so the choice makes sense. There are exceptions, however. Some acceleration boards add Alt-RAM which is mapped into the 16MB region that the Blitter can access. In those cases, putting "HardwareFills=1" into the [Options] section of CONQUER.INI prevents the Blitter from being disabled.
• I have a Covox Speech Thing, how do I enable it?
  Open CONQUER.INI, look for the [AtariST] section, and set "Audio=Covox"

Development

This port started as a port of the released source code of Command & Conquer Remastered Collection from EA. It was then ported onto a community-maintained fork, Vanilla-Conquer. Since this is all Open Source code released under the GPLv3 license, this Atari ST port's code is available as well: Vanilla-Conquer-Atari-ST.

The author's development process uses the following tools:

• Cursor as an AI-driven IDE
• Thorsten Otto's m68k-atari-mint cross-tools for the GCC compiler toolchain and basic libraries

AI was not used to generate any artwork, but it was used to port the software itself and to create tools for dealing with the game's assets. Most importantly, the tools to convert the graphics to 16 colors. AI was also incredibly helpful in porting the parts of the code which were implemented in x86 assembly code.

Disclaimer

Command & Conquer, Westwood Studios, and related names, logos, and assets are trademarks and/or copyrights of Electronic Arts Inc. and/or its licensors. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Electronic Arts or Westwood Studios.

This is an independent, community-developed port of open-source game code (Vanilla-Conquer / GPLv3). It does not include Command & Conquer game data. You must legally obtain the original DOS CD assets yourself (e.g. from cnc-comm.com) and use them only if you are entitled to do so under applicable law.

This software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind. Features, performance, and hardware requirements may change between releases. Save games, multiplayer, movies, and other functionality may be incomplete or absent.

Development of this port used AI-assisted tools for code porting, debugging, and asset-conversion tooling. No game artwork was generated by AI; visual assets are derived from the original game files via conversion tools.

By downloading or playing, you accept that this is experimental work-in-progress software.

C&C ST - At program start:
ST-RAM 2308478 b (~2254 KiB)
TT-RAM 0 b (~0 KiB)