Houses

Houses (in some games known as Countries) are the available factions, playable and non-playable, in every C&C game from Tiberian Dawn to Yuri's Revenge.

Red Alert

In RA1, the houses list is hardcoded into the game executable, therefore it's not possible to add or remove houses via INI editing. However, there are several multiplayer-oriented houses named after countries such as [England], [Russia], etc. that are defined and modifiable in rules.ini.

Tiberian Sun

[Houses] in Rules.ini

TS introduced a new rules section which lists available house types, making it possible to add or remove playable houses at will:

[Houses]
0=GDI
1=Nod
2=Neutral
3=Special

These house types are available both in single- and multiplayer.

For skirmish/multiplayer, playable houses are specified with the flags Multiplay and MultiplayPassive. Singleplayer campaigns are defined in battle.ini and mapsel.ini.

Be cautious when changing this list. Many game mechanics refer to the house names and/or indexes, so changing the list can break existing missions, scripted multiplayer maps, or even crash the game. Starkku's TriggerIndexParamTool allows batch-editing house index references in maps, if needed.

[Houses] in Maps

Singleplayer missions can add a number of custom houses specific to the map. The [Houses] list must first contain the rules.ini houses at the beginning of the list, in the same order, appended with the custom houses.

Skirmish/multiplayer maps cannot add more houses. Even though some stock maps do have a [Houses] list, these maps only use the houses defined in rules.ini.

Notes

• The total number of houses should not exceed 32.
• Visceroids spawning by mutation belong to the Neutral house.
• In skirmish & multiplayer, Neutral and Special houses have hardcoded properties:
  • Neutral is hostile to all players. However, player units won't automatically engage neutral enemies, only retaliate if attacked by them.
  • Special is allied to all players.
  • Color of Neutral and Special is hardcoded to LightGrey.

Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge

[Houses] in Rules(md).ini

In RA2/YR, this section was renamed to [Countries], but the [Houses] list is created and populated by the engine on-the-fly. See Countries for more information.

[Houses] in Maps

Maps can define additional houses for their internal needs, as long as they specify which Country they represent. The contents of this [Houses] section are appended to the rules' houses list, forming a zero-based numbered list, which is used by a lot of map Events and Actions.

Trivia

• Originally, Houses referred to the three playable houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos) in Dune II, the precursor to Command & Conquer. As all C&C games up to YR were built on the previous title, starting with Dune II, the House name carried over. Perhaps there was little practical need to change it.
• According to the Sides list in TS, the Neutral house was intended for civilians and Special for the Forgotten mutant faction, however this distinction is nonexistent in the actual game. Both houses are essentially carried over from TD and RA1.

See Also

• Countries
• Sides
• Owner
• ActsLike