Nice moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of a few of our favourite gaming recollections.
Command & Conquer: Crimson Alert
Developer: Westwood
12 months: 1996
Some mods take years to finish, enhancing the bottom sport a lot they change into the default method to play, or making it a platform for one thing completely new. Different mods, nonetheless, contain typing the phrase “TeslaZap” right into a textual content file and saving it. Each are good.
I am really speaking about an .ini file on this case, however an .ini file is only a textual content file used to retailer configuration variables for executables to learn. Some PC video games, particularly older ones, use .ini recordsdata to retailer issues like a person’s management or graphics settings, or sport variables. Discovering “config.ini” in a sport’s set up listing was just a little thrilling, as a result of it meant you would possibly be capable to change one thing that wasn’t within the settings menu, and also you by no means knew what that may be. It was not often something fascinating, after all, however at times you’d hit the jackpot.
I am unable to consider a much bigger .ini jackpot than the one found by gamers of basic RTS sport Command & Conquer: Crimson Alert. It is known as “guidelines.ini,” and it is a uncommon config file that delivers precisely what its identify guarantees: all of Crimson Alert’s main sport variables, buildings, and models. I doubt a lot might’ve excited me extra as a child than discovering that my favourite sport included a file containing the road “OreExplosive=no,” and that it was potential to alter that “no” to a “sure”.
With Crimson Alert’s guidelines.ini you can also make rifles shoot lightning or all naval models free. You may even invent new models. I spent hours understanding learn how to create planes that will pointlessly dogfight one another. Crimson Alert gamers would share their guidelines.ini recordsdata with one another, and for those who had an identical variations you would play networked video games in opposition to one another with the modified guidelines. Many joyful hours have been spent sending mutilated guidelines.ini recordsdata forwards and backwards.
Crimson Alert included a mapmaking software, too, and stays the easiest-to-modify RTS I’ve ever performed. They do not make ’em like they used to, do they? Properly, besides after they do. In 2020, I used to be delighted to search out that C&C: Crimson Alert Remastered might nonetheless be modified with the identical previous guidelines.ini file.