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Commander of Nod's northern forces, programmer, reverse-engineer, game designer and a 東方 lunatic who enjoys swimming in the cherry blossom -colored sea.

Original creator of the CnCNet client that is used by almost every active Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 mod.

Co-leader of Dawn of the Tiberium Age and the author of various Tiberian Sun game engine improvements. Ex-staff of Twisted Insurrection.

Enjoys all cute things and large groups of enemy units to wipe out.

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World-Altering Editor


You might remember this thing called the "DTA Scenario Editor". We in the Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA) staff announced it in April 2022, and its first release soon followed. It has revolutionized mapping for DTA, multiplying the efficiency of our mappers and saving dozens and dozens of hours of work.


However, supporting just DTA wasn't enough. The rest of the community was still stuck with the terribly aged and often inefficient FinalSun and FinalAlert editors. I continued working on features to support Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 and their isometric 2.5D terrain, with the aim to bring more efficiency to mapping for the rest of the community as well. SCIPCION of the Global Crisis project soon adopted the editor and helped me with testing, but it was still not ready for the wider public.

WAE in Global Crisis

An older version of the World-Altering Editor in use in Global Crisis. Image credit: SCIPCION


But today, we've finally reached a point where I can say that the editor works as a full FinalSun replacement.

At the same time, it is obviously no longer an editor just for Dawn of the Tiberium Age, hence it needed a new name. After multiple suggestions and some thinking around, I've settled on World-Altering Editor (WAE for short), referencing Kane's World-Altering Missile.

World-Altering Editor logo

Logo of the World-Altering Editor, reusing the DTA Scenario Editor logo. Credits: Bittah_Commander


But here you might be thinking, why switch over? Why use the World-Altering Editor when FinalSun does everything you need it to do? Well, because the World-Altering Editor does several things significantly better, including:

  • Far better performance on modern systems
  • Zoom levels
  • Auto-save function that periodically creates a backup of your map
  • More efficient sidebar with object images, categories and search
  • More efficient tile selector that wastes less screen space, with TileSet search included
  • Better trigger scripting dialog that allows you to view and manipulate all data of a trigger at once, rather than needing to constantly switch between tabs and open drop-downs
  • Options for cloning TaskForces, ScriptTypes, TeamTypes, Triggers, and AITriggers
  • You can copy/paste more than just terrain, including terrain objects, overlay, units, buildings and even smudges!
  • Preview showing what scripting elements reference a waypoint
  • Advanced automatic map scripting issue checking that helps you avoid making dumb mistakes
  • Many new tools, including a tool for checking the distance between two points, and a tool for calculating the amount of Tiberium in a specific area
  • Terrain generation!
  • Proper support for setting and clearing Ice Growth tags
  • ...and more!

All this, while the editor has also been designed to be familiar to existing FinalSun users, meaning it's easy to pick up!

Here are a few screenshots of these features!

Zoom

WAE's closest zoom level allows you to view the game like you were in the DOS age, while the farthest zoom level shows basically the whole map.


WAE Triggers Window

WAE's trigger window makes scripting quick compared to FinalSun's outdated UI design. You can also assign colors to triggers to make the trigger list easier to parse!


WAE Waypoint Preview

Can't remember what some waypoint was used for? With WAE, you can just hover over it to check!


WAE Map Issue Check

Even the most experienced mappers sometimes make mistakes. These issue checks have saved us from hours of tedious debugging work.


WAE for Tiberian Sun

The entire WAE user-interface, showing an opened Tiberian Sun map.


System Requirements

WAE is over 20 years newer than FinalSun, so it also requires a newer system than FinalSun does. WAE requires the following:

  • .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime. You can download it from Microsoft.
  • A 64-bit Windows operating system.
  • A DirectX 11 compatible GPU.
  • Considerable VRAM. This depends on which mod you use WAE with; vanilla TS assets don't require much VRAM, but as you add more and more stuff to your mod, WAE currently requires hundreds of megabytes or even over a gigabyte of VRAM. I have planned to better optimize the VRAM use in the future.
  • There is no specific CPU requirement, but naturally the faster, the better. WAE can especially be CPU intensive if you zoom very far while editing the map.

Downloads

EDIT: You can find the latest official release build from our GitHub releases: Github.com

If you have a GitHub account, you can download WAE's latest development version by downloading the artifacts from our automated build: Github.com

You can download this first release of WAE for the Tiberian Sun Client from my space on the CnCNet server: Rampastring.cnc-comm.com

WAE is not compatible with the original Tiberian Sun! All modern mods are based on the Tiberian Sun Client, so it has been the main priority.

Dawn of the Tiberium Age comes with its own build of WAE.

What about Yuri's Revenge?

WAE does support Yuri's Revenge on its "engine" level, but we do not have a convenient YR setup available yet. We will release one at a later date.

Getting WAE to work with your mod

WAE has very few hardcoded features. Everything is accessible through the INI files in the Config sub-folder. Of particular interest to most modders are most likey Constants.ini and Theaters.ini. With some tweaking of the INI files, WAE should be compatible with any modern TS mod and also many YR mods!

Limitations

WAE is still in development and is not perfect. First off, some of the editor's tools are still new, so they might have bugs, or unoptimal user experiences. We'll most likely fix these and improve the tools over time as suggestions come up.

WAE does not currently render voxel graphics. Instead, voxel units are drawn with a string representing their object ID, and an arrow that tells the direction they are facing. Voxel support is a big task so I currently can't promise whether I'm going to add support for voxels in the future, but there's a high chance I'll try.

Contact

WAE has its own dedicated channel, #world-altering-editor, on the C&C Mod Haven Discord server: Discord.gg

Join there for discussion, comments, and help!

Source Code

WAE is open-source, with its source code hosted at Github.com. I actively accept contributions, so if you have something to improve, feel free to create issues and pull requests!

The source code is licensed under GPLv2, meaning that if you make any edits to the code, you need to make your fork available to the public.

Special Thanks

WAE's open-source nature has already shown benefits. Thanks to Morton who recently pushed some significant features to improve WAE's support for TS and especially YR!

WAE relies on some pieces of code from the following open-source projects, hence I'd also like to thank their authors:

  • C&C Map Renderer
  • MonoGame
  • OpenRA
  • Westwind.Scripting

Patreon

All of my C&C-related work is available for free. However, it has taken hundreds upon hundreds of hours to create that is off from the rest of my limited free time. If you'd like to provide some extra incentive for keeping up the work on classic C&C, including this new editor, consider supporting me on Patreon: Patreon.com

Disclaimer

EA has not endorsed and does not support the World-Altering Editor.

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Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 83)
chenfan7810
chenfan7810

So you are the founder of CncNET. Nice to meet you!

I always think that this mod can be a campaign in the future, connecting Command & Conquer 1 and red alert 1. Let's talk about how Kane brought down Soviet, and finally let the meteorite fall on the Tiber River and bring Tiberium( Instead, refer to the setting of renegade 2)

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Rampastring Creator
Rampastring

Nice to meet you, another fellow weeb.

I'm not the founder of CnCNet however. Although I've been one of the key developers for the past 8 years.

We in DTA have been thinking of creating such a campaign to connect the storylines, but it'd take a lot of work and ideally assets that we don't have the staff for (such as videos or at least art for story-telling). Story-telling through briefings and text triggers is very limited.

That's why we've so far stuck to telling simpler stories through missions and short campaigns instead of making one "official story" for DTA.

Reply Good karma+3 votes
chenfan7810
chenfan7810

I love dta mod and love northern Europe.

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Yuriana
Yuriana

Rampastring, has marcado nuevos paradigmas. A mí, en lo personal, se me complica usar el Cliente, aunque admito que ha embellecido mi mod, que es personal, y no tiene posibilidad de promoción. Vivo en Argentina. Aquí hay pocos que han jugado C&C Yuri´s Revenge (el juego que estoy modificando desde hace más de siete años).Hay modders latinoamericanos excelentes. Pero no llegamos a formar un equipo como Mental Omega. Aunque imagino que puede ser posible. Yo me he embarcado en la aventura de traducir YR al español, pero en mi mod. ojalá que algún día retomes la aventura del modding. Eres joven. Yo, que a mis 48 años aun tengo ganas de romper las rulesmd. ini, celebro las genialidades como la tuya.
saludos desde Argentina.

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Rampastring Creator
Rampastring

Thanks for the kind words! And good luck with your modding adventures! Personally however, I have to say that... after so many years, it feels good to move on, and I'm confident leaving the client on Kerbiter's capable hands.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
Rampastring Creator
Rampastring

PS. Some people have been wondering whether the remaster would kill off DTA. At the moment I can't see that happening, not only because of the aspects mentioned in the blog post, but also because DTA offers lots of unique features, such as the ability to mix the TD and RA sides in the same game, the hundreds of original singleplayer and co-op missions and multiplayer maps, and its new terrain. I'd actually be glad if the remaster turned out so great that it killed our mod - the lack of good official C&C games is a big part of why DTA is as big as it is in the first place ;) I could then move on to modding and playing the remaster instead.

Reply Good karma+5 votes
Ollerus
Ollerus

Hello again. Months ago C&C Remastered has revealed their Soundtrack/Jukebox (https://twitter.com/OfficialCnC/status/1187065096205287426?s=20). Now I'm thinking if the client could have something like this as well that could play ingame music. It's just a random idea and I don't know if it's possible to load music from mix files, but it could still be a nice addition if it actually comes into being :)

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Rampastring Creator
Rampastring

It's an interesting idea and I've thought of it. There's some issues with it though, like potentially breaking campaign triggers that force the game to play a specific track.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
A.Productions
A.Productions

Hello. Is there a GameOptions.ini file for Tiberian Sun? I wish to add two more factions (along with GDI and Nod) but I cannot seem to find it. I see it in the Twisted Insurrection mod and the Red Alert 2 + Yuri's Games but not Tiberian Sun. What do I do about this? Thanks.

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Rampastring Creator
Rampastring

This version has it: Moddb.com

Reply Good karma+1 vote
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