Command and Conquer: Generals/Unused content in the original

See Command and Conquer: Generals/Unused content in the original/Missions and maps for unused stuff in the missions and maps.

POW logic
You were at one time intended to collect POWs (prisoners of war) in this game. However, it was removed, probably due to time constraints.

All three factions have individual POW trucks designed for this purpose. Normally, only the American POW truck can be seen in the game, in the third USA mission where you have to protect the escaping forces. All three also have selection pictures and a full voice set.

You were able to capture all infantry in this game, only Colonel Burton was not able to be captured. Most of them have unused surrender animations and voices for surrendering. Each faction had their own way of capturing infantry:


 * America used the flashbangs to collect prisoners of war. Some removed voices for the Ranger directly reference this. The POW truck took them to the detention camp, where they powered up the CIA Intelligence special power.
 * China used stun bullets to collect prisoners of war, which were removed from the final game. The POW truck took them to the Propaganda Center, where they powered up the Defector special power. This special power, removed from the final game, converted enemy units to your side.
 * The GLA used tranq darts to collect prisoners of war, which were removed from the final game. The POW truck took them to the Prison, a building which was completely removed from the final game. There, it powered up the Demoralize special power, which made enemy units fire at only one fourth their normal rate.

Some leftovers of the old POW logic are still in the game:


 * The Defector is still functional, and has a hook in the American Command Center (likely for testing purposes). If you add it to the game, it works as intended - select a unit and it will be converted to your side, after which you have a short period of time before it is considered an enemy unit by the opponent.
 * The models of the Chinese and GLA POW Trucks, and the GLA Prison, have been removed from the original game, however they can be seen in the expansion, even though they're unused even there.
 * Also in the expansion pack, there's an unused weapon bonus named, appropriately, DEMORALIZED_OBSOLETE.
 * The CIA Intelligence has some leftover coding which makes it have a longer duration if you capture prisoners, from the original 30 seconds up to four minutes. Since there are no prisoners in the game anymore, the code does not have an effect any longer.

Removed GLA mission
The third GLA mission was completely removed from the game.

In this mission, the civilians have been subject to Chinese propaganda and thus switched to the Chinese side. Your job is to use the Toxin Tractors to kill the traitors. You get access to several utilities like the Anthrax Bomb through the course of the mission to quickly kill many civilians. Once 300 civilians have been killed, the mission is completed.

This mission was likely considered way too brutal and ethically unacceptable, which led to its removal.

Six years after the game's release, EA released the level as a free download.

Guard icons
Each faction has unique guard ground textures designed for their faction. These are never used, as there is only one Guard button in the game, which uses a generic "guard" texture.

Defector
This cursor was intended for the removed Defector special power. The removal of the special power made this cursor unused as well.

Guard
The developers certainly did a lot for such a small function of the game - they even devoted a unique cursor for the Guard function, however it is never used.

Heal
No idea what this was intended for. It could have been planned for the Ambulance, or perhaps used when you send injured soldiers to the barracks.

No entry
When you cannot enter a building (because it is full, or for any other reason), the standard "invalid" cursor is shown. Therefore, this cursor is not used at all.

Out of range
This cursor was intended to appear when you tell a unit to attack an enemy unit, but it is not within range of the unit requiring it to move up to the target. This would have been useful especially for artillery units, but for some reason it was removed.

Place
This could have been used as a cursor when you place a structure. It was left unused for whatever reason.

Sell
Sell does not require a target in the final game, as all structures have sell buttons to sell themselves. However, the developers might have intended Sell to work like in the original Command and Conquer, where you select the MCV, press Sell, and select a structure for selling.

Spy Drone
The Spy Drone has a unique mouse cursor all for itself! This is certainly very surprising, and it's easy to guess why this did not make it into the final game.

Unused sounds
The Stealth Fighter has a voice set for attacking airborne units. However you can never actually hear these voices, as the stealth fighter is unable to engage airborne targets. It probably was originally able to attack airborne units, but the developers noticed the unit is so weak against aircraft it's easier to not bother at all.

Red Guard Bayonet
The Red Guard was planned to have a bayonet to stab other infantry. The feature is fully finished, and it seems it got inadvertently removed while weeding out the POW logic.

Force Move
You were supposed to be able to tell a vehicle to crush enemy infantry, rather than engaging them with its weapon, using the Alt key. It was scrapped in favor of the Waypoints function. Most vehicles have a full voice set for the Force Move function, which is never heard due to the function being removed.

Unused text
COMMAND AND CONQUER GENERALS COMING: CHRISTMAS 2002

Command & Conquer Generals Coming February 2003

These were probably used to create game teasers.

The Communicator is not available in the Multiplayer Playtest

Another leftover from an earlier test build, presumably. The prototype has multiple comments referring to the Multiplayer test.

This is like a test string, dude

This is like a really long test string, dude. It makes sure that the word wrap and the spacing works

Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece as white as snow

And everywhere that Mary when, the lamb was sure to go

These are, quite obviously, test strings.

Major General

Lt. General

General

At one time, the ranks actually went up to eighth rank, instead of stopping at 5 Star General. They come just after the used rank names.

&Climb Cliff

It appears that there was once a button for infantry to climb a cliff. In the final game, infantry automatically climb cliffs if you order them to move to a location.

Starlifter

According to Wikipedia, the Starlifter is a military strategic airlifter. It may have been intended as another cargo plane, for whatever reason.

Secret Police

An obvious leftover from the prototype, because the name is designed for the old sidebar interface. What this unit would have been like is completely uncertain.

Seismic Tank

Another one of these. The concept of a Seismic Tank sounds really cool, too bad it did not make it into the final game.

Prop Blimp

Shortened here but written out fully in its internal name, PropagandaBlimp. It seems that the Chinese faction used to be much different from what it is now.


 * Cruise &Missiles
 * Tomahawks can be given a flight-path

This is a removed upgrade for the Tomahawk missile launcher which allowed you to control the Tomahawk missile by setting waypoints. Beside these text strings, there are several voices referring to the waypoints function, but at the end it was removed for whatever reason.

Extra &Fuel

Extra Fuel was a planned upgrade for America which allowed aircraft to stay in the air longer if they needed to land but had no airfield available to land on. As it has no accompanying description, it was cut early in development.


 * Guard &Close
 * Order unit to move to guard a specific location, but not to pursue targets out of the area

This is a fully functional button which is never used in the game. It works similar to the plain Guard, but the unit will not follow an enemy unit if it moves outside its guard radius. It was most likely designed with aircraft and artillery in mind (which are not really supposed to move), one wonders why the developers never used it.

!Fire &Missiles
 * &Fire 20mm Cannon
 * Fire 20mm Cannon at the target
 * Fire antitank missiles at the target

Removed buttons for the Comanche helicopter. For some reason it got ground attack button for both its weapons. The ground attack button for the vulcan would have been absolutely pointless though, since the vulcan has a range of zero and therefore cannot actually hit anything.

!Nuke &Bombardment !Anthrax B&ombardment !Explosive &Bombardment !&Tomahawk Bombardment
 * Inferno &Bombardment
 * Bombard a location with inferno cannon shells
 * Bombard a location with nuke cannon shells
 * Bombard specified location with anthrax warheads
 * Bombard a location with explosive warheads
 * Fire tomahawks at a location

Apparently, all artillery originally had ground attack buttons to have them target a ground location, instead of targeting an enemy unit. This would have been very useful, one wonders why they removed it.

Rail Gun

Another prototype leftover, this time from the American faction. Apparently some kind of upgrade, but no idea really.

&Anti-Tank Grenades

A Chinese upgrade. No idea who or what would get this.

&IR Goggles

The goggles, they do nothing!

...they really don't, even in the prototype. Go figure.

&Radar

The upgrade icon for radar for the GLA. The obvious catch with that is that the GLA does not actually have the ability to purchase Radar as an upgrade.

Overcharge exhausted

An unused feature of the Nuclear Power Plant. You can overcharge it in the game so it outputs more power, but it will damage itself in the process. Originally, it then stopped after a certain threshold and gave you this message. In the final game, it continues until it explodes.

All parking places are occupied

No idea at all.

!Cheer !Create Formation !Create Team 0 !Create Team 1 !Create Team 2 !Create Team 3 !Create Team 4 !Create Team 5 !Create Team 6 !Create Team 7 !Create Team 8 !Create Team 9 !Deploy Object !Follow !Go to Radar Event !Guard !Scatter !Screen Capture !Select All !Select All Aircraft !Next Object !Next Worker !Previous Object !Previous Worker !Select Team 0 !Select Team 1 !Select Team 2 !Select Team 3 !Select Team 4 !Select Team 5 !Select Team 6 !Select Team 7 !Select Team 8 !Select Team 9 !Stop Object !Type Select !Center Team 0 !Center Team 1 !Center Team 2 !Center Team 3 !Center Team 4 !Center Team 5 !Center Team 6 !Center Team 7 !Center Team 8 !Center Team 9 !Set Bookmark 1 !Set Bookmark 2 !Set Bookmark 3 !Set Bookmark 4 !View Bookmark 1 !View Bookmark 2 !View Bookmark 3 !View Bookmark 4
 * Center Base
 * Center the view about the player's base
 * Commands your forces to exult over your great deeds
 * Create a formation of the selected units and they will retain it as they move
 * Creates team 0 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 1 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 2 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 3 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 4 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 5 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 6 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 7 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 8 from currently selected units
 * Creates team 9 from currently selected units
 * Deploy selected object(s)
 * Toggle follow state of selected object(s)
 * Center the tactical view on the last radar event
 * Set the selected object(s) into 'guard area' mode
 * Scatter selected object(s)
 * Take a snapshot of the game screen
 * Selects all military units
 * Selects all Aircraft
 * Select the next object
 * Select the next Worker
 * Select the previous unit
 * Select the previous Worker
 * Select members of team 0
 * Select members of team 1
 * Select members of team 2
 * Select members of team 3
 * Select members of team 4
 * Select members of team 5
 * Select members of team 6
 * Select members of team 7
 * Select members of team 8
 * Select members of team 9
 * Stop the selected object(s)
 * Selects units by type. Double left click a unit to select all of the same type
 * Select and center view about team 0
 * Select and center view about team 1
 * Select and center view about team 2
 * Select and center view about team 3
 * Select and center view about team 4
 * Select and center view about team 5
 * Select and center view about team 6
 * Select and center view about team 7
 * Select and center view about team 8
 * Select and center view about team 9
 * Set view bookmark map position 1
 * Set view bookmark map position 2
 * Set view bookmark map position 3
 * Set view bookmark map position 4
 * View bookmarked map position 1
 * View bookmarked map position 2
 * View bookmarked map position 3
 * View bookmarked map position 4

All of these are commands which are available only as keyboard combinations. Since they don't appear in the UI, these strings are never displayed. Either there was a tutorial explaining all keyboard combinations in the game, or they were somehow available in the UI.

You don't have enough money to build that

You don't have enough money to make upgrade

These are not used as when you don't have enough funds, the button will turn gray and you will get a click noise when you attempt to buy the unit/upgrade.

The unit's production queue is full

This is not used for the same reason as above.

You can only select %d units at one time

Apparently there was a limit on how many units you can select at the same time. In the final game, there is no limit, you can select as many units as you want.

USA Mission 5 - River Raid Status: Incomplete

USA Mission 6 - E3 Revamp Status: Incomplete

USA Mission 8 - Devastate GLA Status: Incomplete

China Mission 5 - Firebomb GLA Status: Incomplete

China Mission 7 - Nuke-O-Rama Status: Incomplete

China Mission 8 - Last China Mission Status: Incomplete

These messages appear to be leftover messages from development, when the missions were not yet completed., They're the only ones that still remain. Some inconsistencies are there, they will be mentioned below:


 * It says that the fifth American mission is "River Raid". River Raid is the sixth mission in the final game. A fifth American mission does not actually exist in the game, leaving an obvious gap in the row of missions. However, there is some evidence that it used to exist, including a prerelease video which shows a mission that does not appear at all in the final game, and may have been the lost fifth mission.
 * What E3 Revamp refers to is unknown. It may refer to the real-life E3 event held annually.
 * According to that last message, there used to be an eighth Chinese mission. This would put China in line with the other two factions (which also had eight missions designed for them), but due to a series of events, one mission was cut from every faction to make seven missions per faction. Unlike the other two missions, there's no evidence at all of the lost Chinese mission, other than this text.

WORLD BUILDER

Start the World Builder editor

This is in all caps, which suggests it was meant for the main menu. The developers seem to have planned to let you launch the World Builder from the main menu. The problem is that the game and World Builder together have massive memory usage, which was probably too much in 2003, when the game was released.

World Builder failed to load

Same as above. You no longer start World Builder from the game, and World Builder itself does not use the game text.

Chinese Hacker

Found among the game factions. No idea what it's doing there, and even less of an idea where it would be used.

Default Army

This is never shown or used in the game, and may be a placeholder.

A10-Strike Location Capture Building Make Defector Demoralize Disable Building Disable Vehicle Disguise As This! Dock Repair Enter Fire Bomb Burn Flash Bang Stun Bullets Tranq Darts Get Repaired Get Healed Hijack INVALID Laser Guided Missiles Make Carbomb Pick Up Prisoner Place Beacon Place Remote Charge Place Timed Charge &Emergency Repair Resume Construction Return Set Rally Point Snipe Vehicle Stab Steal Cash TNT Attack

The entire set of "mouse" messages goes unused. These are the most likely to have shown up in-game, presumably in the mouse tooltip. Some of them are obviously leftovers from the prototype, others are of newer origin. In any case, in the final game the mouse tooltip always shows the name of the object the cursor is pointing to, so these are never shown.

DX8 Cursor Polygon Cursor W3D Cursor Windows Cursor

Now those make less sense. Especially the middle two, which suggest that three-dimensional cursors were planned (?). They may have been for testing.

Officers Club Medal Player did not preorder Generals

Supposed to show up as a tooltip when you do not have the Officers Club medal (which is gotten by having preordered the game). This medal does not even show up when you do not have it, therefore this tooltip is not used.



Found among the science names. No idea what it was supposed to do.

Give My Science A Name

Please take the time to fill out my description located in Science.ini! Thanks a bunch

This is simply a placeholder used during development for sciences which did not yet have names and descriptions written for them.

Please take the time to fill out my description located in CommandButton.ini! Thanks a bunch

Similar to the above, but used for generic command buttons during development.


 * Uncapped FPS
 * Allows frame rates above 30. Affects game speed so only recommended for benchmarks

This is an unused function of the Options menu intended for the developers only, which allows you to disable the frame limiter in this game. It is hidden because it does not just affect the frame rate but also the game speed, which may be undesirable especially on fast machines.

Mouse Type

Another unused option, with an uncertain purpose.

!Current Hotkey !Reset All
 * Assign New Hotkey
 * Assigns your chosen Hotkey command
 * Displays the current Hotkey for this command
 * Resets all of your keyboard Hotkeys to default
 * colspan=2 | Customize Keyboard
 * colspan=2 | Keyboard Options
 * colspan=2 | Alt+
 * colspan=2 | Ctrl+
 * colspan=2 | Shift+
 * colspan=2 | Pick a category of keyboard command
 * colspan=2 | The description of your selected command
 * colspan=2 | Available commands for the current category
 * colspan=2 | Enter your new command Hotkey here
 * colspan=2 | The command this Hotkey is currently assigned to
 * colspan=2 | Pick a category of keyboard command
 * colspan=2 | The description of your selected command
 * colspan=2 | Available commands for the current category
 * colspan=2 | Enter your new command Hotkey here
 * colspan=2 | The command this Hotkey is currently assigned to
 * colspan=2 | Available commands for the current category
 * colspan=2 | Enter your new command Hotkey here
 * colspan=2 | The command this Hotkey is currently assigned to
 * colspan=2 | The command this Hotkey is currently assigned to
 * colspan=2 | The command this Hotkey is currently assigned to

These strings appear to be remains of a removed menu that allowed you to change the keyboard commands and hotkeys of the game.

Fire Bomb
Fire Bomb was a planned ability for the Angry Mob, which would make it bombard an area with Molotov Cocktails. It wasn't used for some reason.

Van
No idea what this is. It looks suspiciously like one of the possible variations of the Technical, but other than that there are no clues.

Conscript
This game was supposed to have conscripts, like in Red Alert 2. It is a very early leftover, since the selection picture uses the "beta" 110x91 size. They were replaced by the Red Guard during development.

Demolitions
This doesn't really belong anywhere. It also looks much, much different from the other selection pictures in the game.

Radar Jammer
This actually belongs to a removed ability of the Radar Van, which allowed it to set itself and the near surroundings in shroud, similar to the Mobile Gap Generators from Red Alert 2.

Replay Control
Replay control was meant as a way to control replays. You could make the replay play faster or slower, pause the replay, or enable frame advance mode. It was removed from the game though, leaving you with no way to control the replay, but in the Expansion Pack a fast forward mode was introduced as a makeshift replacement.

Main Menu
The Main Menu also offers some interesting hidden leftovers.
 * Apparently, it was planned that map packs would be regularly released which you could then download from the game. A hidden button "Download Map Pack" exists in the Main Menu and would presumably be used for this purpose. There's also an entry in the Windows registry called MapPackVersion which is presumably associated with it. It is always set to, though.
 * Similarly, updates were also planned to be downloaded from the Main Menu, as hinted by another hidden button "Get Update". But since updates cannot be installed anyway while the game is running, it was moved to the autorun menu.
 * A clock was also intended to be visible in the Main Menu, as a small gimmick.

Options Menu
The options menu is surprisingly full of unused stuff.
 * A hidden drop-down box would have allowed you to change the anti-aliasing. This is not possible in the final version.
 * Apparently, the way you moved the camera was saved in replays and then reflected when the replay is run. This would have been useful for example for analyzing the player's navigation, but it has been removed from the final game.
 * There is an option to disable the language filter! Anyone who has ever played an online game knows how annoying these are. This was presumably only intended for the game developers, and normal users probably were never intended to be able to switch it off.
 * There is a button that reads "Keyboard Options". You may have been able to change the keyboard layout in this special menu. This would also explain the large amount of unused text relating to keyboard commands in the game, and also why the CommandMap.ini file, which controls the keyboard commands, is not saved in the game's data files, but instead extracted in one of the game's subfolders to be easily editable. The reason why it was removed may be to prevent keyboard commands from conflicting with the in-game button hotkeys, which cannot be edited this way.
 * One hidden option in the advanced options menu disables the frame limiter, which normally limits the game speed to 30 FPS (or whatever you have it set to in the battle's options). The description says it is mainly intended for benchmarks and not for actual gameplay, because it does not just change the frame rate but also speeds up/slows down the game.
 * There is a hidden text string that reads "Mouse Type". It's possible it was intended to allow you to use the fourth and fifth mouse buttons in the game (if you have them), but ultimately its purpose is uncertain.
 * There are two hidden options "Draw scroll anchor" and "Move scroll anchor". The effects of these options are unknown.

Unused special powers
These special powers are relics of the old generals logic of the prototype, After the generals were removed, the developer team did not consider these worth keeping.

Black Market Nuke
The Black Market Nuke was intended for GLA and would drop a nuke by plane. The nuke itself is not particularly strong, but the radiation field it leaves behind destroys most units in the area.

Terror Cell
Terror Cell works similar to Rebel Ambush, but it spawns terrorists instead of rebels. This has a great destruction power, and may have been too powerful.

Crate Drop
Crate Drop does nothing more than drop $2,000 worth of money. This seems like the most useless of the unused special powers, if only because America has much faster ways of resource gathering.

GLA Hole
The GLA Hole has an unused animation of the door opening, so the worker can go through and rebuild the building. Due to a programming error, this animation never actually plays, therefore the worker goes through the closed door.

Crusader
The Crusader Tank was intended to have a machine gun for use against infantry. The reason for that is, quite simply, that the tanks can damage each other if infantry walk beside them. It was removed due to a design change though.

Coding
The entire game code is formatted with tabs and empty newlines and also contains developer's annotations and comments. Actually, there is a program available to the developers which strips all of these, they just weren't able to use it because they ran out of time.

There is also a file which defines several debug keyboard combinations, like instantly building all buildings, turning off the fog of war, and others. It is unknown whether these debug commands can be re-enabled.

There are also some old leftovers which are only evidenced in the game code:

MultipleFactory = 0.9

An undocumented feature of the code allows for a multiple factory bonus. It makes units be produced faster if you have multiple factories of the same type. The problem with this is that once you get enough factories, the build time becomes almost zero. This may have been the reason for its removal.

CommandCenterHealRange = 500.0 ; command center heals your/ally stuff this close to the command center CommandCenterHealAmount = 0.01 ; command center heals close by stuff this amount per logic frame

Apparently, the command center used to heal all friendly objects around it. This would have made defending a base very easy (especially with that high range, which outranges artillery easily), perhaps too easy, which may have slowed down this game unnecessarily.

Bridges
Bridges were meant to be destroyable and repairable at some point of game development. If you change the bridge object and make it able to be damaged, you will indeed be able to damage bridges and most of them even have proper textures for being damaged. As for the repairing part, you were most likely supposed to repair bridges using the bridge towers. They still show up in the map editor but do not appear in the game anymore.

It's uncertain why it was removed, but the most likely reason was to prevent frustration on maps where bridges are the only object connecting two landmasses. Even though it is officially discouraged and no official maps do that, it's easily possible to create such a map with the map editor.

Supply docks
Similarly, the supply docks were also supposed to be able to be damaged. They all have proper models for the damaged states, and still have coding for healing themselves after a while. This would have also caused frustration if your supply dock was destroyed by the enemy and you would be left with no supplies.

Walls
Walls were planned for this game, just like in the first Command and Conquer game. They were removed, presumably because they needlessly slowed down an otherwise fast-paced game.

There are various straight and corner pieces for walls for all factions, as well as selection pictures and tooltips. Presumably you would build the walls using the removed line build feature, which allowed you to build buildings along a straight line. Each faction got a specific wall; according to the tooltips which are left in the game, they were as follows:


 * America got a security fence. It blocks vehicles from passing and triggers an alarm if enemy infantry tries to pass it.GensZHSecurityFence.png


 * China got a concrete wall, which just plainly blocks troops from progressing.GensZHConcreteWall.png


 * GLA got a burning barricade. This one does not really block anything, but the fire damages units passing by.GensZHBurningBarricade.png

CIA Agent
The CIA Agent's internal name is ChinaInfantryAgent. This is a strong hint it used to be a Chinese unit which was later converted into an American unit for use in the missions. This theory is strengthened by the fact that some missions explicitly prevent this unit from being trained, even though it is not available anywhere to begin with.

Crate
In the final game, only the GLA gets crates for destroying enemy vehicles, which they can use to either upgrade the salvager's weapon, if possible, or get a level up or money. But originally, it was intended that every faction gets a crate for destroying elite or heroic enemy units. Destroying elite units would give either $1,000 or a level up to all surrounding units. Destroying heroic units would give either $2,500, a level up to all surrounding units, or instantly spawn two American Crusader tanks at the crate's position.

This was removed because it was imbalanced and also because it did not make much sense for China and GLA to get American tanks.