Beta Renegade
CnCSaga took part in the multiplayer beta for the game Renegade from November 2001 to mid-January 2002.
Westwood organised a public beta with 1,500 participants for its first action game set in the Tiberian Dawn universe. This beta took place in three one-week phases, with 500 players able to take part in each phase.
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CnCSaga, participating as an Official Fansite (the only French-speaking participant), is lucky enough to be able to play the game throughout the entire period. The game CD comes with a Renegade T-shirt and a thank-you letter (plus other goodies, but these are exclusively for fansites).
This beta is a brilliant experience and great fun. Every day, members of the game’s development team take turns on the servers to play alongside the participants.
Renegade 1025 BETA:
A few weeks after the game’s release, Westwood contacted a number of these beta testers (including RedAlertFusion) to take part in the beta for the Patch designed to add helicopters to multiplayer mode.
This time there was no CD, just a file to download online. This beta was also great fun, and the comments in the news posts on RedAlertFusion at the time all said the same thing: “How did you manage to get the helicopters?”, “Can’t wait for the Patch to be released!”, etc... After 2–3 weeks of testing, Westwood released a Patch that added the option, on certain maps, to have helicopters and staircases to access the rooftops of certain buildings.
Mél Beta: Your personal invite to the Renegade beta test!
Greetings!
It’s time for the Command and Conquer: Renegade beta test to move into the big leagues, and whilst there’ll be a sign-up page for people to register on, you’re being personally invited to secure a guaranteed place in the upcoming beta! You’ve been selected based on your contributions to our growing community or to the wider gaming community. You could go through the whole sign-up process and take your chances of being selected at random from all the applicants, or you can reply to this email and guarantee yourself a place to play for all three weeks! This is a special invitation just for you!
We have a few requirements for taking part, and we’d like you to confirm the following via email. Please simply use REPLY to respond to this invitation and answer all FOUR questions.
You will be required to agree to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before you are permitted to take part. As an NDA is a legal document, you must be 18 years of age to enter into a contract of this nature; otherwise, you will need a parent or guardian to agree to the contract on your behalf. You’ll see the NDA later, but essentially, you’ll be agreeing to keep confidential anything you see during the beta test unless you’ve been given written permission to share this information. Please confirm that you are not underage, or if you are, that you have a parent or guardian willing to assume legal responsibility for you under this contract, and that you are willing to agree to an NDA in principle.
You will need a computer system that meets our minimum specifications.
These are:
Processor: PII 400
Memory: 96 megs
Hard Drive: 700 megs
Input: Keyboard, mouse
Video Card: 16MB
OS: Win98, Win 2000, ME, XP
Please confirm that your system meets these basic requirements.
You will need to provide us with a correct postal address, as well as a contact telephone number and a valid email address that you check regularly. Please include your name (first and surname), address, flat number or other relevant information, town, county, country and postcode, as well as your telephone number, in your reply to us. We will not be sharing this information with anyone, but we will be posting your beta CDs to this address, so please ensure it is accurate!
Early beta tests of this nature give you the chance to experience a game whilst it is still new, in development and, as a result, less stable than it will be when it is finally ready for full release. It’s an exciting opportunity to be involved at such an early stage in testing a project, and for many, the knowledge that they are among the first is enough to keep them enthusiastic despite the instability. The test will run 24 hours a day, with only occasional breaks to switch over the servers when we update to new versions, for three weeks. The test will be in multiplayer CnC mode only. Please bear in mind that you’ll be seeing the game in an unfinished state, with a few months still to go before fine-tuning, balancing and bug fixing are complete. This means you’ll be there to help us, make suggestions and provide feedback, but you’ll also encounter bugs and crashes. If, knowing that your battles may be interrupted by server issues, you still wish to take part, please confirm that you accept our invitation!
Fansites: you will be allowed to publish one post on your site after each day of testing, but each post must first be approved by me, so after the day’s testing, draft it up and send it to me. I may offer suggestions or ask you to remove or rewrite parts of it, but I will not alter anything myself. We will also grant you access to the beta forums, so you can discuss the beta, offer suggestions and receive technical support. You are part of an elite group to have been personally invited to this test.
We hope you’ll choose to join us in the Command & Conquer: Renegade Closed Beta Test. Please reply with your email address, confirming your system specifications, your eligibility to sign an NDA, your full postal address and telephone number, and your acceptance of our invitation, by Wednesday 28 November at 5.00 pm PST.
Brotherhood, Unity, Peace!
~c.
Cliff Hicks
a.k.a. Devinoch
Online Community Manager
Beta Email 1025: ATTENTION ALL BETA TESTERS!
Hey everyone, I know it’s been quiet since we said we were doing some testing. Dedicated server testing went so well internally that we’ll be releasing the free dedicated server software very soon. And on that note, I know everyone’s curious about the flying vehicles beta, so let me give you a brief update on what’s happening:
This version of the beta is being taken offline right now. You may uninstall or delete that version. In the near future (hopefully sometime next week) we’ll be sending you a download link to a private FTP server, where you’ll be able to download a new version of the beta – this version will be approximately 100 MB in size and will include the flying vehicles maps (there are two: variations of ‘City’ and ‘Walls’). You will also receive a new serial number via email, as this test will use a different set of serial numbers. Everything will be configured to point to a beta server, and it will be completely incompatible with the retail version. We’ll be sending out an email shortly, so keep an eye on your inbox!
Thank you for taking part in this first phase of the beta, and we hope you’ll all join us for the second phase! See you in the skies!
~c.
Cliff Hick
aka Devinoch
Online Community Manager
