C&C: Brute Force mod

Okay! We've finally reached the point in history where I can share more about my mod, Brute Force, for Command & Conquer Red Alert 2. I'm not an expert video editor, but I've tried my best to provide some quick information about what the mod entails and how to play it.

For those who doesn't know - Brute Force is a mod that takes you...

...with your soldiers to an unspecified point in time from a world conquered by Yuri and his clones. Unfortunately, Yuri has pursued you. Expand your base, train new soldiers, defend against an army of mind-controlled animals and clones then destroy Yuri! You only have access to basic units. To get better stuff, look for scattered supply packs that contain random buildings, units, and bonuses. Brute Force is a mod that turns Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge into a kind of tower defense.

I started working on it over 10 years ago and, after abandoning it for a long time, I finally decided that I wanted to make it playable and release it. It took several weeks of work every day (yes, I had the opportunity to do that, which is also why I was working on it), and now I am happy with its current state.

It's very easy to play it, all you need is:
1.) Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection - link
2.) Brute Force zip package (~40MB) - link

Everything is explained with readme files in the mod package.

Thanks to CnC DDraw game works well even on the most modern hardware. No problems running it on windows 10 or 11. I'm also using Ares and Phobos libraries that makes so much stuff possible, without them making this mod wouldn't be possible at all, so big thanks to them!

Going more into the mod itself, thanks to AI I was able to make so much new stuff, edit existing assets, create brand new one, fix my english (yeah, it's not that great at all) and do so much more that I don't even know what from start to.

Creating concept arts it's a really nice source for ideas that I can implement into the mod.
Working on this I also had an opportunity to learn some C++, visual studio, gimp, npp (yeah, really!), audacity, fl studio and more! RA2 has around 24 years right now, can you belive that?! It aged well tho, from the player's perspective.

From the modder perspecitve working with Tiberian Sun engine isn't easy, isn't that bad also - I was working with a lot more complicated engines before, anyway everything in Red Alert 2 is old, models as voxels, isometric point of view, low bitrate audio samples and issues with scaling from 4:3 to 16:9 ratio makes you angry sometimes, also trying to understand how something works without documentation (thanks God there is Ares and Phobos) takes hours, days sometimes.

Anyway, sky is the limit today. With the help of various AI engines we can create things that was not in our range even few years ago. Speaking of AI, I'm very happy of the balance that I have achieved between complexicity and performance of ingame AI opponent and AI controlled allies.

It's not an easy mod to play, but when you get the basics it's so much fun. Yuri can spam you with hundreds of his creatures to keep you focused on one spot when flanking you and attacking from the behind. From the other side, friendly AI often comes with help when you're thinking of rage quiting and turnes the tide.
AI can open random crates and even obtain superweapons or mix things in the way thats very unique. I'm still working on it, it is not perfect, probably will never be but I'm doing my best to make it, just, fun to play!

That's obvious that in this short article I have only touched a tip of the Brute Force iceberg. There is so many things I could say about but I need some rest now and I also want to play it as normal player.
Yeah, thats why I was doing that from the begining, I always loved original missions in Westwood's games where you had to buildup up your base, defend yourself for some time and then destroy the ennemy. Thats why I'm doing it. I'm not even trying competing with other mods like Mental Omega or something, I'm just doing things that gives me joy and I want to share them with others. If there is even a single person who likes is - it's worth it.

Sorry for my grammar and spelling errors, I didn't wanted to include AI here again hehe.

I will be very thankful for any feedback, no matter possitive or negative.

Thank you for reading this and I will keep you posted!

-mbnq.pl