Great moments in PC gaming: Editing rules.ini to make Red Alert guns shoot lightning
All kinds of variables were yours to alter in Red Alert’s config file.
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Great moments in PC gamingare bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.
Developer: WestwoodYear: 1996
Some mods take years to complete, improving the base game so much they become the default way to play, or making it a platform for something totally new. Other mods, however, involve typing the word “TeslaZap” into a text file and saving it. Both are good.
I’m actually talking about an .ini file in this case, but an .ini file is just a text file used to store configuration variables for executables to read. Some PC games, especially older ones, use .ini files to store things like a user’s control or graphics settings, or game variables. Finding “config.ini” in a game’s install directory used to be a little exciting, because it meant you might be able to change something that wasn’t in the settings menu, and you never knew what that might be. It was rarely anything interesting, of course, but now and then you’d hit the jackpot.
I can’t think of a bigger .ini jackpot than the one discovered by players of classic RTS game Command & Conquer: Red Alert. It’s called “rules.ini,” and it’s a rare config file that delivers exactly what its name promises: all of Red Alert’s major game variables, buildings, and units. I doubt much could’ve excited me more as a kid than discovering that my favorite game included a file containing the line “OreExplosive=no,” and that it was possible to change that “no” to a “yes”.
With Red Alert’s rules.ini you can make rifles shoot lightning or all naval units free. You can even invent new units. I spent hours working out how to create planes that would pointlessly dogfight each other. Red Alert players would share their rules.ini files with each other, and if you had identical versions you could play networked games against each other with the modified rules. Many joyful hours were spent sending mutilated rules.ini files back and forth.
Red Alert included a mapmaking tool, too, and remains the easiest-to-modify RTS I’ve ever played. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, do they? Well, except when they do. In 2020, I was delighted to find that C&C: Red Alert Remastered could still bemodified with the same old rules.ini file.
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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the ’80s and ’90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call “boomer shooters” now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that’s right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he’s focused on the site’s news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.
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