Command & Conquer: Renegade

Command & Conquer: Renegade is a first person shooter game develop by Westwood studios. It is the first first-person shooter game in the Command & Conquer series. The game takes place during the First Tiberium War, and features both a single-player campaign and a multi-player mode.

Multi-player
The multi-player of this game takes the form of 'Command and Conquer Mode', in which players are divided into the two teams: GDI and The Brotherhood of Nod. Each team starts with a base and may purchase vehicles and advanced character classes with the objective to destroy the enemy base and defend their own base. Destroying buildings may hamper essential resources such as creating advanced characters, decreasing production rate, funds, and vehicle construction. The game is won when one team destroys the other team's base or the time limit expires and the team with the highest points is declared the winner. Damaging and destroying enemy units and structures earns points. Some servers allow the 'endgame beacon' that causes the game to be instantly won by the team that successfully detonates a superweapon beacon on the opposing team’s pedestal located in their Barracks or Hand of Nod. Gameplay is a combination of FPS and RTS elements, since team members receive money from tiberium harvesting and must purchase their own individual equipment

Weapons
The game features a wide variety of weapons, including:
 * Vervac Commando Elite Silenced Pistol ("Falcon"): standard 9mm magazine used by both GDI and Nod. It has an integrated silencer, a 12 bullet magazine and unlimited ammo.
 * Cobretti AR-70 Automatic Rifle ("Raptor"): The standard issue assault rifle for both the GDI and Nod foot soldiers. It is fed from 100 round box magazines and is reasonably accurate at medium distances.
 * Chaingun ("Condor"): A six-barreled, man-portable chaingun. It primarily issued to GDI and Nod Officers. It uses a self conatined 100-round belt magazine. It has a very high rate of fire and uses ammunition up very quickly.
 * Vervac R-59 Sniper rifle ("Pierce"): A long range sniper rifle, this weapon is the standard issue weapon of Nod Black Hand operatives. It is equipped with a high precision scope, a directional microphone and a four round magazine of armor-piercing bullets.
 * Flamethrower ("Dragonfly"): This simple weapon fires a long stream of ignited gas, highly effective against infantry and light vehicles. Nod Flame Soldiers are, however, resistant to this weapon.
 * Chemical sprayer ("Venom"): A weapon utilizing raw, unrefined Tiberium as ammunition, it is effective against most infantry and lighter vehicles. As with all the tiberium-based weaponry in the game, the chemical sprayer heals tiberium mutants. It has been noticed, that prolonged use of this weapon can result in genetic mutation as users have been known to turn into Visceroids as a result. Also, streams of Tiberium can cause accidental mutations in victims. Nod Chem Warriors are resistant to this weapon.
 * Sarcus A-6 66mm Rocket launcher ("Locust"): A portable anti-armour weapon, this rocket launcher is reloaded with cartridges containing six 66mm rockets. The missiles are accurate and deal tremendous damage, but have no tracking equipment and are ineffective against faster moving targets, such as infantry and attack helicopters. Gunner has a high proficiency with this weapon in Multiplayer mode, and as such, can fire rockets slightly faster that hit things slightly harder.
 * Laser rifle ("Firefly"): an experimental Nod weapon, this portable Obelisk module fires red beams of amplified light, dealing massive damage to infantry and vehicles alike. It is the standard issue weapon of Nod Black Hand Stealth Troopers. The "magazine" on this weapon has 100 shots before requiring "reloading"
 * Laser chaingun ("Tarantula"): an advanced version of the laser rifle, the Tarantula fires highly accurate and devastating laserbeams down three rotating barrels. It is the standard weapon of Officers and Black Hand Heavy infantry guarding the Temple of Nod.
 * Tiberium auto-rifle ("Mantis"): a bullpup assault rifle firing Tiberium gas cartridges, this weapon possesses a very high rate of fire, as well as a very distinctive discharge sound. Unlike the Chemical Sprayer, it is very accurate at long ranges and less cumbersome. It is the weapon Acolytes (early Nod cyborgs) are armed with. In multiplayer it is carried by Sydney, and is effective against infantry and vehicles alike.
 * Tiberium Flechette Gun ("Talon"): a submachinegun firing processed Tiberium shards at high speeds. The processing has removed Tiberium's hazardous properties and the weapon can be employed by any personnel. This weapon does heal Nod tiberium mutants.
 * Grenade launcher ("Kestral"): a standard grenade launcher, fed from a 6-round cylindrical magazine. It fires highly damaging, but also highly inaccurate projectiles, effective against all targets. It is the standard weapon of GDI Grenadiers.
 * Personal Ion Cannon ("Merlin"): A shoulder-mounted heavy weapon, firing accurate particle beams. The damage dealt by the Ion Cannon beam is tremendous, often destroying an armoured vehicle with a single blast. This weapon fires one round, with a short recharge period. The Nod introduced a similar weapon, the Railgun, to compensate for this destructive cannon.
 * Volt auto-rifle ("Black Widow"): this strangely-shaped weapon fires a constant electrical beam that deals high damage to all targets but suffers from short range. This weapon can fire 100 bolts of electricity before requiring a recharge.
 * Remote C-4 ("Hair-Trigger"): A brick of C4 explosives with a remote detonator. It is highly destructive against all targets, especially buildings.
 * GS-2 Ion Cannon beacon ("Godsend"): A GDI device, that broadcasts a signal, allowing for highly accurate targeting of the space-based Ion Cannon.
 * Nuclear Strike Beacon ("Retribution"): a targeting device emitting an ultra-low frequency signal, providing target coordinates for Nod's tactical nuclear weapons.

Multiplayer-only weapons
In addition to the above, certain weapons can only be acquired in multiplayer games:
 * Shotgun ("Vulture"): A single barrel, pump-action shotgun that holds eight shells. Though it appears in single player, wielded by Black Hand operatives and officers, it is non-usable by the player. In Internet games it is very useful in tunnel combat, or when picked up by a Stealth Black Hand soldier, due to its devastating power at short ranges.
 * Ramjet Rifle ("Hawkeye"): this advanced anti-materiel rifle fires a jet-propelled shell which can pass through multiple infantry targets. The round is also effective against light vehicles. The rifle is equipped with a scope. Used against the player at least once in single player mode in the last mission by a Nod sniper. It is wielded by Havoc and Sakura in Multiplayer.
 * Repair gun ("Gizmo"): basic tool of engineers and technicians, it can be used to disarm C-4 charges, mines, and superweapon beacons, as well as repairing buildings, vehicles, and infantry. Two versions of the gun exist. The Multiplayer mode version is carried by Engineers, Hotwire, and Technicians. The latter two have a higher proficiency with the repair gun, and as such, can repair/disarm twice as fast, and operate the gun at longer ranges. The other version, used in Single Player mode, is very different from the multiplayer Repair Gun. Primary Fire would have it emit a very weak, blue Repair Beam for about four seconds, pause for one second, and repeat. Secondary Fire would do the same, but the beam would be red, and instead of repairing things, would injure or destroy them (a "dismantle beam" of sorts). This version is carried by Nod engineers and technicians, and GDI's Engineers and Hotwire.
 * Mass driver ("Scorpion"): Nod's answer to the GDI's Personal Ion Cannon. It is a railgun that accelerates 30mm metal slugs to high speeds and deals slightly less damage than the Personal Ion Cannon, but possesses a faster reload and has a slighly longer range. It is wielded in Multiplayer exclusively by Gen. Gideon Raveshaw.
 * Proximity C-4 ("Feather") an explosive mine mainly used defensively against infantry, especially Stealth Black Hands and engineers, or light vehicles.
 * Timed C-4 ("Tick-Tock"): an explosive charge with a thirty-second fuse. Wielded by all character classes. Nod technicians and GDI Hotwire characters have additional timed C-4 charges

Development
The game engine, called the "Renegade engine" or "Westwood 3D", was developed in-house by Westwood, although it was based on the SurRender 3D engine, which was licensed from Finnish middleware company Hybrid Graphics. It is designed to support real world physics and allow seamless movement from indoor to outdoor environments. The "Westwood 3D" engine was re-used as the base of the Strategy Action Game Engine used in Command & Conquer: Generals, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.

When the game missed its shipping date, Westwood made a humorous video titled Havoc Takes on Westwood in which Havoc, the game's main character and hero, goes to Westwood Studios to make sure the game doesn't miss its shipping date again. Ironically, even after the video was made, they missed the shipping date once again.

The game originally featured a different commando (Logan Shephard), looking much more akin to the original Command & Conquer unit and was much less action-oriented than its final incarnation. Also, Nod troopers looked more like their Tiberian Dawn equivalent, donning professional urban camouflage uniforms rather than red jumpsuits easily distinguishable on the battlefield.

Support and Re-release
After the closure of Westwood Studios in February, 2003, the responsibility for maintaining the official forums for Command & Conquer: Renegade was passed on to Christine "Crimson" Korza of Blackhand Studios, a non-profit organization whose mission statement includes keeping the game's community active, enhancing and patching the game, and keeping multi-player games cheat-free through their RenGuard software.

Renegade was re-released in at least two EA Classics boxes (one including Comanche 4 as a bonus, and the other including Freedom Force) sometime after its initial release and was included in two Command & Conquer compilations: The Command & Conquer Collection, and Command & Conquer Collected.

On February, 2006, Renegade was shipped in the compilation, Command & Conquer: The First Decade along with 11 other Command & Conquer titles on a two DVD set. The bonus DVD contains slightly less than an hour's worth of content involving all the games included. The game DVD of Command & Conquer: The First Decade, Command & Conquer: Renegade included its latest patch (1.037) by default, has a sanctioned No-CD application on it, plus the CD components such as the movie files are now installed into its folder. Command & Conquer: Renegade, along with a few other titles had problems with its registry entry in the compilation's initial release, which has been since fixed in the 1.02 patch for Command & Conquer: The First Decade.

While Westwood originally intended to make a sequel to Command & Conquer: Renegade set in the late Red Alert universe (known only as Renegade 2), the project was cancelled before any official announcements were made.

Concept art depicting Red Alert styled structures and vehicles can be found online, as well as a test level depicting a Soviet refinery. Red Alert: A Path Beyond, an active fan project boasting 6000+ players monthly (February 2008), has now implemented Red Alert styled gameplay and content using the Renegade engine, also becoming the first of three fan projects to receive permission to release in a stand-alone fashion and the only one to have be promoted in an official capacity by EA. No record exists of another fan project being promoted and directly linked for download by Electronic Arts in a similar fashion.

No official expansion packs were ever released for the game. However, a software development kit (SDK) was released by Westwood Studios so that users could add their own content to the game. The studio also released a number of high-resolution models to the mod-making community, including some from the Red Alert games, particularly the second. Many fan sites have been established to celebrate the game and allow players to download new maps and custom expansion packs.

In July, 2006, EA Games released a software development kit (SDK) that catered for 3DS Max software for Command & Conquer: Generals and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth games. Although Renegade used the same basic game engine as these other two games series, it was not made compatible to this new SDK. However, members from the Red Alert: A Path Beyond community modified and re-released it to be compatible with Command & Conquer: Renegade after informing EA. An updated version was officially released, but lacked the ability to properly enable collision settings on the 3D meshes used by the game.

Concept Art
These are images of conceptual art taken from the development of Command & Conquer: Renegade