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How Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Solved Pathfinding | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica

390K subscribers • 8 videos on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2025.
  • Presented by Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood Studios
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 7 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

1.2M views7 years ago2 recommendations

Game developmentComputer scienceGame programmingAlgorithms

Louis Castle explains how Westwood Studios solved the complex pathfinding and unit movement challenges in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

Westwood Studios co-founder Louis Castle talks about the development of the classic RTS, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Video Credits: “C&C Tiberian Sun - GDI Playthrough“ (erlNite): youtu.be/BpY0_y_10yw “Dune 2 Atreides Mission 4, Part 1 (No commentary)” (David Montminy): youtu.be/iuLyj0LSrlA “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Walkthrough | Human Level 12” (Katana): youtu.be/XMEcSb_GV5M “Command & Conquer LONGPLAY (GDI Campaign) Tiberian Dawn” (EnjoythestruggleNI): youtu.be/uqTqBoEkyAA “Starcraft: Original - Episode I: Terran - Tutorial: Boot Camp” (MasterKD): youtu.be/GJ796K7tHiU “Age of Empires - Glory of Greece Campaign - 4. Trojan War (Hardest, Fastest)“ (Rtheghost): youtu.be/RKXhrj052e4 “Command & Conquer Renegade Longplay #1 (PC)” (TheFireball313): youtu.be/NoBTpWdA_Lk “C&C: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge - Allied Campaign #4 (NO COMMENTARY)” (OfficialMyidentityisRobert): youtu.be/W1aujCwRBDQ Connect with Ars Technica: Visit ArsTechnica.com: arstechnica.com Follow Ars Technica on Facebook: facebook.com/arstechnica Follow Ars Technica on Google+: plus.google.com/+ArsTechnica/videos Follow Ars Technica on Twitter: twitter.com/arstechnica How Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Solved Pathfinding | War Stories | Ars Technica Video Credits: “C&C Tiberian Sun - GDI Playthrough“ (erlNite): youtu.be/BpY0_y_10yw “Dune 2 Atreides Mission 4, Part 1 (No commentary)” (David Montminy): youtu.be/iuLyj0LSrlA “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Walkthrough | Human Level 12” (Katana): youtu.be/XMEcSb_GV5M “Command & Conquer LONGPLAY (GDI Campaign) Tiberian Dawn” (EnjoythestruggleNI): youtu.be/uqTqBoEkyAA “Starcraft: Original - Episode I: Terran - Tutorial: Boot Camp” (MasterKD): youtu.be/GJ796K7tHiU “Age of Empires - Glory of Greece Campaign - 4. Trojan War (Hardest, Fastest)“ (Rtheghost): youtu.be/RKXhrj052e4 “Command & Conquer Renegade Longplay #1 (PC)” (TheFireball313): youtu.be/NoBTpWdA_Lk “C&C: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge - Allied Campaign #4 (NO COMMENTARY)” (OfficialMyidentityisRobert): youtu.be/W1aujCwRBDQ

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as an interesting look into the pathfinding and technical challenges of classic real-time strategy games.

imjasonmilleron Hacker News • Recommends

On “EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3”

With regard to pathfinding, there is this great video on some of their challenges at the time 1. 1. link to this video

saithoundon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The year of peak might and magic”

You're probably looking for something more detailed and implementation-focused, but Ars Technica had a series of 10 minute videos where they interviewed developers about technical challenges. E.g. they had one on pathfinding and CD video in second generation Westwood RTS games 1 1 link to this video

huachimingoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Now that machines can learn, can they unlearn?”

Tangentially related, sometimes making a bot do mistakes is harder than making a correct bot.See Command and Conquer's pathfinding anecdote: link to this video

shooon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Age of Empires: 25 years of pathfinding problems with C++ [video]”

see also: "How Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Solved Pathfinding" (2019, non-technical, for a general audience) link to this video