[filereaper]

Hacking rules.ini for C&C: Red-Alert!

Game was too frustrating, but hey changing this easy to understand rules.ini file completely changes it to my favour! Also you could do hilarious things like an attack dog launching an artillery as its primary weapon. It taught me how to debug and roll-changes back when the game crashed with the dreaded "Internal game error" message.

cue Neo from the Matrix who starts to see the world as just code

But seriously, it was my first introduction to "programming" and then got me into QBasic via "Complete Idiots Guide to Programming" which I borrowed from the local library. I was also super into Aerospace and this book [1] also from the local library gave me background into computer hardware.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Space-Journeys-James-Tomayk...

[bribri]

It's so funny you say this because this was my introduction to modding and programming as well, except with Red Alert 2. I remember changing the cost of the items, adding new units, replacing the graphics, etc.

[filereaper]

Ha! I had fun with Red Alert 2 as well, though RA2's rules.ini seemed much more involved.

The RA2's rules.ini pretty much exposed the games internal hierarchical layout for units, i.e an IFV loaded with GI's is different compared to a IFV loaded with Engineers.

But serializing all of these led to a much larger file than RA1, it was quite a bit more difficult to hand-hack RA2's rules.ini. I ended up caving to a utility tool like TibEd and Red-Alchemist. [1]

Good times...

[1] https://www.tibed.net/tibed1/