TD GDI-13A and 13B identical/duplicate mission - ion cannon strike

[RHANDI_GHANDI]

Both 13A + 13B are identical on TD...

Perhaps a simple set of basic changes would be good. Flip the map, modify couple of details?

"In this mission your objective is to destroy the Nod Bio-Research facility where Kane is supposed to be working. Once you build the Advanced Communication Center you’ll have access to the Ion Cannon. Both 13A and 13B are exactly the same"

Has been posted elsewhere such as reddit. Not sure who can assist. I just did the orca trick to quickly do the level again. 

[Nyerguds]

 @RHANDI_GHANDI 

Yea, the inclusion of the duplicate is a bug in the remaster. The "alternate" mission has always been in the game files, but it's never been enabled, because, as you said, it's identical to the other one.

If it bothers you... know that you can win this mission without even deploying your MCV. The target is a single building, and you can just rush your starting units there, shoot some walls, move your rocket launchers in, and destroy it.

[RHANDI_GHANDI]

@Nyerguds Yeah that's handy, I did the single Orca + Ion cannon to win, that is also rather quick. Slower than your way.

[RHANDI_GHANDI]

@Nyerguds I e-mailed them directly about this and all they said was "I think those maps were duplicated in the original game with a different starting point. Since this was a remaster, we duplicated what was in the original.

"

[Nyerguds]

@RHANDI_GHANDI The cause for this is a bit trickier than that. The game indeed had a mission (SCG05EB) that was completely inaccessible due to a bug in the original game's map screen. It does, however, appear in all console versions, and interestingly also has an entry in the official strategy guide. I heard there are actually specific pixels you can click on the map to get it in the original PC game, but I never looked into whether that was just a myth or if this was true. Anyway, given the existence of this 'lost' mission, and given the fact they had to remake the entire mission selection map screen on the remaster anyway, they made sure to look for such things.

But the mission 13 B alternate was never supposed to be enabled, even in the original game, and the files are absolutely 100% identical to the A version. So there was really no point in enabling that one.

I just extracted the files from my own DOS C&C disc and compared them, so here's the proof:

"fc" is Windows' in-built "file compare" tool. The '/b' parameter specifies binary compare, to avoid it trying to compare as text, where differences in line breaks may be ignored. The tool also tells you if one file is larger than the other.

As you see, the files are, byte by byte, exact copies, with no differences whatsoever. A modified starting point would be among the differences in the .ini file, so, no, there's absolutely no difference at all.

[RHANDI_GHANDI]

Aha thank you for that, I was under an entirely separate impression in my thought process here. Now I get it, so really what should actually happen is a patch applied that removes13B from the listing entirely, as it is only 1 version of that mission which exists.

Otherwise the option is make a copy of 13A and apply minor changes to make a new 13B mission based from that.

So we have a two possible ways to handle this. I've also noted a couple of specific bugs and it may be possible for us to forward the details directly to petroglyph to fix and release a patch for us all. For it to be worthwhile we'll need a good few specific ones as they must go through EA's approval process to implement. You'd know more about this than I do and about many more other details clearly, so I wonder how we can let's say clean a few of these little issues up?

Also randomly wondering if these mission bugs enabled/disabled/inaccessible causes the issue mentioned in "The Best Around Achievement stuck at 80/81 - Tiberian Dawn"

[Nyerguds]

@RHANDI_GHANDI All development on this game officially ended a year ago in September. We're not going to get any more patching on this. The contract between EA and Petroglyph simply ended.

As for the achievements bug on Steam, it's a synchronisation problem between what the game knows you finished and what Steam thinks you finished. Look around on the Steam forums and you should find the solution pretty quickly.