Command & Conquer
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? | Editable |
| Sprites? | Editable |
| Fullscreen? | Editable |
| Sound? | Editable |
| Music? | Editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Editable |
| UI/menus? |  Not editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Command & Conquer, also known as Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn is the second real-time strategy game released by Westwood Studios. After Dune II, the studio decided to make a similar game in a setting that was not tied to licensed intellectual property.
To keep Dune II's game mechanic of a harvestable resource found on the battlefield, the new story features an alien plant, Tiberium, which extracts precious metals from the soil as easily harvestable crystals as part of its growth process. As with the spice in Dune, this resource would be the focal point of the war.
The basic premise of the game is the same as in Dune II; the player has to build a base, harvest the Tiberium available on the playing field as in-game currency, and use that currency to expand the base and build armies to defend against enemies, and finally destroy their base.
Command & Conquer mixed up this basic formula in many ways. The player may be given a damaged base that is missing its construction yard, or could be tasked with objectives like finding or capturing an outpost, or clearing a landing zone, before continuing to the base-building phase of the game. In some missions, the player is not given a base at all, and must accomplish a specific objective with just the given starting units. To add even more variety, the available mission choices on the world map sometimes give entirely different mission objectives, rather than just the same objective on a different map.
File formats
The following file formats are used by this game.
| Filename | Format | Details |
|---|---|---|
| *.mix | MIX Format (Westwood) | File archives. |
| *.pal | 6-bit RGB 256-colour palette | Palettes. |
| *.cps | Westwood CPS Format | Full-screen images. Often used for internal processing to identify region clicks. |
| *.wsa | Westwood WSA Format | Animations. |
| *.vqa | Westwood VQA Format | Full-motion video cutscenes. |
| *.shp *.tem *.win *.des |
Westwood SHP Format (TD) | Sprites. Files specific to one theater (terrain set) are given the extension of that specific theater. |
| *.shp | Westwood SHP Format (Dune II) | Used for only one file; the mouse cursor sprite. |
| *.tem *.win *.des |
Command & Conquer Tileset Format | Terrain used in the game's maps. |
| *.fnt | Westwood Font Format v3 | Fonts. |
| *.aud | Westwood AUD Format | Sound effects and voices. |
| *.eng | Westwood Strings File | Ingame text. Strangely, the French and German versions of the game also use .eng, and not .fre and .ger like Dune II did. |
| *.ini *.bin |
Command & Conquer Mission Format | Missions. Always a pair, with a text script in a .ini file, and the raw terrain in a binary .bin file. |
| *.mrf | Westwood Fading Table | Palette remapping tables used as colour filters for special effects in the game. |
Tools
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Group/archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XCC Mixer suite | Windows | Edit | Edit | Edit | Edit | Edit | Read | No | No | Editing suite that can open and edit the game's MIX archives, and most of the formats inside it. Contains a map editor as external tool in the same pack. |
| Mix Manager / AUD Utilities | DOS | Edit | No | Edit | Edit | Edit | Edit | No | No | DOS Editing suite that can open and edit the game's MIX archives, and has tools for converting most of the formats inside it. |
| RAMIX | DOS | Edit | No | Edit | View | View | No | No | No | DOS Editing suite that can open and edit the game's MIX archives, and has tools for converting most of the formats inside it. |
| Engie File Converter | Windows | No | View | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Can view and convert the game's CPS, SHP, WSA, font and colour palette formats, and can visualise the game's fading tables and missions. |
| Westwood Font Editor | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Can edit the game's font files. |
| Filter Creator | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | A specialised tool to view and recreate the game's colour filters. |
| Westwood Strings Editor | Windows | No | No | No | No | No | Edit | No | No | |
| d2shpset | Windows (command line) | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | A small Dune II SHP writing utility written by OmniBlade of the Chronoshift team for Dune II SHP files. This format is used in C&C for the game's mouse cursor. |
| Red Horizon Utilities | Java (command line) | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Original site is defunct. Backups of the tools can be found here. |
| VQA Encoder | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Can convert video material into the game's proprietary VQA cutscene format. |