James Hannigan to compose Red Alert 3? A look at his past music.

As Lion’s Red Alert Den (RADEN) reported, it appears that James Hannigan will be composing music for the upcoming Red Alert 3 soundtrack. Unlike Bill Brown, Steve Jablonsky/Trevor Morris, James’ music is much more orchestral than the composers I mentioned. The quality sounds great, judging from his music jukebox he has on his website and sounded a bit more memorable than the previous music done for Tiberium Wars. If you listened to track 2, “Primus”, the music has more electronica elements, and track 21, “Cygnus”, has plenty of electronica with sampled electric guitar riffs. Based on my analysis, I predict that the Red Alert 3 soundtrack will be more orchestral that touches on 3 elements: Empire of the Rising Sun (more Japanese ethnic sound), Soviet Union (bombastic sounding), and the Allied (more patriotic/heroic). Some electronica pieces may appear in the game as well.

PC Gamer also noted that “Hell March” will make a return to the Red Alert sequel but it’d be hard to say how it’s going to composed. However, it’s obvious Frank Klepacki will not be able to compose Red Alert 3 due to his commitments to Petroglyph Games as sound designer/music composer and not to mention his side-projects and other live performances outside of his workplace. As soon as more details appear, I will update this blog.

Lessons Learned after the development of Tiberian Sun

I found an interesting article, interviewing a number of Westwood Studios employees, after Command and Conquer 2:Tiberian Sun was finished. Gamasutra.com had a really old article way back in 2000, detailing the production of the game and how much it created frustration and screaming by various programmers and such. Some of the features that the article mentioned include:

One of the times we tried to change the rules was when harvester threat-avoidance logic was introduced. I remember hearing lead designer Adam Isgreen screaming at his computer when his harvesters refused to obey his orders to retreat. We decided to scrap that idea shortly afterward.

The basic idea behind the dynamic-battlefield concept is that players’ actions alter the battlefield. For example, a player could set fire to trees to burn a path into an enemy’s base. We wound up cutting this particular feature because it caused path-finding problems.

The article mentioned many woes during the game’s production, including locking the documents too early (which means they finished audio features, mission design, etc), post-production movie problems, adding too many features, and scheduling problems. Overall, this left a number of C&C players feeling that the game was half-baked and overly-hyped as soon as it was released to stores worldwide. I remember reading many reviews giving less-than-stellar reviews of Tiberian Sun, including PC Gamer US giving Tiberian Sun a 72%. That was back when PC Gamer US was the pinnacle of PC game reviews and their strictness. I also distinctly remember many players complaining about the graphics in the game, complaining about the looks of the game units compared to the early beta screenshots, extreme amounts of brown and grey, darkness, slow and drab music, and the highly pixelated explosions. Some of the bigger complaints include the slowness of the gameplay and taxing even on higher-end Pentium CPU systems.

The add-on, Firestorm, rectified a number of responses by C&C fans and players, including faster gameplay, better game-play balance, twisting storylines, kick-ass music, and interesting missions. However, the Tiberium universe would later be buried and overlooked with the advent of Emperor: Battle for Dune, Red Alert 2 and Generals. Westwood would later attempt to revive the Tiberium universe by planning to do a full-fledge sequel, Tiberian Twilight, and even plans for a MMORPG, Command and Conquer:Continuum until Westwood merged with EA Games to the chagrin of C&C fans worldwide. Details of the C&C:Continuum will be covered on this blog later.

To read more about what happened with the development of Tiberian Sun can be read at Gamasutra.com.

Clearing up some confusion with the Red Alert:Counterstrike/Aftermath soundtrack

I’m going to write another quick note about the music from the Red Alert: Counterstrike and Aftermath add-ons for the PC version of Command and Conquer: Red Alert.  As some C&C fans may notice on the soundtrack playlist, all of the song names from Counterstrike sounded quite odd.  It was as if it were just mere filenames.  Right now, it’s time to settle this once and for all.

Here are the correct track names, confirmed by Frank Klepacki in an e-mail discussion I had with him many years ago:

1. 2nd_hand -> The Second Hand
2. Chaos_2 -> Chaos
3. Vr_2 -> Voice Rhythm 2
4. Shut_it -> Shut It
5. Backstab -> Back Stab
6. Under_3 -> Underlying Thoughts
7. Twin_mix -> Twin Cannon Remix

If my memory serves me right, Arazoid did not appeared in the game’s soundtrack playlist and another song, Journey, never appeared in the INI files nor inside the game files.  One of the songs from Aftermath, MechMan 2, had another song title named, “Running Through Pipes”.

My blog is featured on Frank Klepacki’s website!

Here’s the excerpt of Frank Klepacki’s May update on his news section of his website:

INTERESTING NEW C&C BLOG:

C&C completist Wilson Tam, has a detailed blog revealing and settling some of the old confusion regarding Frank’s original Tiberian Dawn score, including facts on alternate names of tracks, missing tracks, and varied versions on different platforms.

Also discussed in his blog is the German version of the Red Alert soundtrack which contained a bonus disc of bands, one of which had remixed “Crush” by Frank. A great read for what has been relatively unknown info. Check it out here:

http://cncrevealed.wordpress.com

I’m quite honoured that I’ve been mentioned on his website! His May update will be spread to many major C&C websites soon enough. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on what I should add to my blog, contact me at wilson_k_tam (at) yahoo.ca.

Command and Conquer:Generals originally has an African tribal side??

Yes, you read this right. I’m going to write about another Command and Conquer universe, the Generals series. What was unique during the production of Generals was the fact that it has gone through significant changes during pre-production and mid-production. Generals was originally conceived to include three sides: the Americans, the Khan tribe, and the African war tribe. Details of why the African war tribe was eliminated in favour of the GLA side is unknown, but the production of the game goes way back around 2001 when Westwood in LA (later to become EALA then consolidated into EA Games as a whole) were tinkering around the SAGE engine. However, the events of September 11th, 2001 changed everything and EALA decided to make it less campy (?) and be more grounded in realism. Some units from the Khans, such as the rocket buggy and scorpion tank, were later moved to the GLA side. Even when the very first Generals preview on May 2002 was made public, the game mechanics and units were either changed drastically or removed altogether. The Gamespot preview can be read at this link.

There were also evidence that EALA wanted to create the European Union playable side if one were to look at the game files from the public beta CD given to selected players. One modding group is attempting to revive the look and feel of the Generals “alpha” version. You can go to this website but it’s been about a year since we’ve heard last of the group. In any case, you can look at the concept art of the African war tribe units and structures at this link.

CD Single: “Crush” by Cobalt 60

So, what does this have to do with Command and Conquer? There’s a very elusive CD single that was released by Edel, the same label that released the German Red Alert 2CD soundtrack, containing THREE remixes of Crush. Composed by Cobalt 60, a side-project of the famous French industrial group, Front 242, created the “Command & Conquer Mix” as a cover song of Crush. According to Discogs, Frank Klepacki was credited as the original composer of the song from Red Alert. Here’s the image and the tracklist:

1. Crush (Command & Conquer Mix)
2. Crush (Grrr Remix)
3. Crush (GZ900 Remix)

The second track was remixed by Cubanate, another industrial-dance-metal group, but with a heavier beat, lasting over six minutes. The third track, my least favourite, was done by Grisha Zeme, if my memory serves me right.  Currently, Discogs show two sellers of the CD single but the high Euro makes it quite expensive for everyone else.

Again, this CD single is extremely rare and hard-to-find, which was given to various DJ’s throughout Europe and it’s no surprise that a large majority of C&C fans would’ve not known about this release.  Cobalt 60 would later compose the music for another well-known PC game franchise, Wing Commander:Prophecy, which they did the main theme and music during training/multiplayer. Much like what they did for their Crush single, they also created the Prophecy CD single to various DJ’s with three remixes of the same song and an extended, remixed track from the game.

However, this is not the last CD single dedicated to Command and Conquer… stay tuned.

How are the former Westwood Studios employees doing?

As some people know, Petroglyph Games consisted of a number of former Westwood Studios employees. Some of the major people include Joseph Bostic (main programmer of the C&C series), Frank Klepacki (now Sound Designer/Composer), Steve Tall, Theodore A. Morris, Elie Arabian, and many others.

Adam Isgreen, meanwhile, used to work with both Westwood Studios and Petroglyph Games but he recently resigned from Petroglyph on March 2008. He has a blog at http://obscured-view.com/.

Other Westwoodites went on to work for Insomniac Games, who produced the Ratchet and Clank and Spyro the Dragon series. They’re currently working on Resistance 2. Some of the major former Westwood guys include Eric Gooch (lead graphics designer and played as Seth in TD), Paul Mudra, and Dwight Okahara (both of them worked as sound designers). Eric Gooch still retains his website with C&C CG graphics and other things at http://www.cybergooch.com/ and runs his own blog at http://www.ericgooch.com/. Kevin Bacquet, who worked as a CG producer, went on to work in Hollywood and produced various CG graphics for many clients. He has his own website, showcasing some of the work he has done so far.

Brett Sperry, founder and CEO of Westwood Studios, is obviously retired and now produces photography. He has really nice photos up on his own website, which can be located at http://brettsperry.com/index.php. Louis Castle, meanwhile, is still at EA Games, and a number of employees went on to work for EA. Joe Kucan, known only as Kane and movie director, moved to California and presumably worked on various plays and other acting/directing-related stuff in Los Angeles/Hollywood. As every C&C fan knows, he reprises his role as Kane in Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath, but only as an actor. Joe even has his own fan page on MySpace. Richard Taylor now produces all of the FMV scenes for Tiberium Wars, Kane’s Wrath, and the upcoming Red Alert 3. I’m still looking for a way to contact Joe Kucan, as he’s quite a busy person doing acting stuff and enjoying nature out in the mid-west.

If I have any more information on other former Westwoodites out there, I will add it into this blog.

Westwood’s original work on Command and Conquer 3: Tiberian Twilight

I just stumbled upon some videos of Westwood Studio’s early work on what appears to be Command and Conquer 3:Tiberium Twilight before being consolidated by EA Games. This is interesting because Westwood would properly continue the C&C Tiberium storyline. According to the pictures and videos of their C&C3 early designs, it would follow GDI’s attempt to remove Tiberium from Earth when they discovered more information from the Tacitus after Firestorm. Here are the videos I found on Youtube.

This video clip is voiced over, probably by Frank Klepacki, as an example of how the game’s briefing will be done.


The two videos above shows the unit’s status bar. The top is the health meter but what is the bottom meter for?

Another video of what would the interface be like if Westwood were to continue to produce C&C3.

This is how Westwood came up with the unit upgrade system. The animation looks pretty nice.

I found numerous images from TJ Frame’s website of what appears to be his work on C&C3’s third side, CABAL. They consist of mechanized robots resembling hydras, dinosaurs, dragons, spiders, etc. However, his website went down for good. He even did some work on what Generals would look like. I will cover these topics in the near future as soon as I can find them and upload them to the blog.

Credits go to YouTube’s RogueThoughts, CNCNZ, and cncsaga.com for the video clips above.

Very rare, early German Red Alert trailer

Many years ago, there was a downloadable trailer (which contains an executable file and the trailer movie in Westwood’s VQA video format) that can be found in a number of European gaming websites and in preview CD’s as well. What was interesting is its generally high quality, high resolution of the actual video, totaling over 26MB at the time. Remember, that’s the time where 14.4Kbps and 28.8kbps dial-up modems are the rage and cable high speed are very rare! That’s not all, there are a number of cool, larger scenes that were found in briefing videos such as the Allied medium tanks and Apache helicopters chasing away Soviet tanks and the destruction of an Ancient Greece building by Soviet bombers. Recently, a Youtube uploader brought this video to the World Wide Web once again! The game trailer is very well-done, so watch the video below. Enjoy!

If anyone wants to know what the music track was, it’s composed by Mozart and the song is called Requiem (Dies Irae). This is taken directly from the Amadeus original soundtrack score. You can buy the soundtrack from Amazon.

Command and Conquer:Alarmstufe Rot 2CD German Soundtrack

I’m going to to make a quick note about the elusive special edition soundtrack for Command and Conquer:Red Alert. In Germany, by Edel, they’ve released this special soundtrack, which accompanies not only the original soundtrack score by Frank Klepacki, but they also include a second CD filled with various metal, electronica, and industrial music. Needless to say, this soundtrack is LONG out-of-print and you’re only bet is to get it from eBay. I don’t know why Edel wanted to make the second CD but the music really do kick ass. Here’s the tracklist of the actual compilation soundtrack:

Disc 01:

1. Hell March
2. Radio
3. Crush
4. Roll Out
5. Mud
6. Twin Cannon
7. Face The Enemy
8. Run
9. Terminate
10. Big Foot
11. Workmen
12. Militant Force
13. Dense
14. Vector
15. Smash

Disc 02

1. Cobalt 60 – Crush (Command & Conquer Mix)
2. Revolter – Full Screen Horror
3. 16 Volt – Two Wires Thin
4. Laibach – God is God
5. Oomph! – INRI vs Jahwe
6. Project Pitchfork – 2069 AD
7. Prodigy – Breathe (edit)
8. Machines of Loving Grace – Richest Junkie Still Alive
9. Ugly Mustard – Twist and Shake
10. Strapping Young Lad – Spirituality
11. Girls Under Glass – Burning Eyes
12. Psykosonic – Ride
13. Violent Vision – Pleasures of Sin (Radical Remix Extended)

The selection of the second CD, to say the least, is bloody brilliant. In fact, this is THE CD that got me into a lot of metal and industrial music since I first discovered the CD since 1998. I had to download this songs through various FTP sites WAY before Napster, SoulSeek, Bittorrents, and other P2P programs. Even the soundtrack was out-of-print at that year but the music really opened my eyes to a lot of bands, now counting over 625 favourite artists/bands/composers through my Facebook’s iLike application. Any fan of Command and Conquer will want to check this soundtrack out but I have to warn you that it’s very difficult to find online, MP3 or otherwise. Good luck finding this soundtrack!