OpenRA's Red Alert is Red Alert as it was in player's dreams. The game is just as fun as it once was: fast, fun and limited in scope - but adapted to contemporary connectivity and display resolution.
OpenRA's killer feature is the extremely fast installation of a reliable cross-platform game that anyone can understand in ten minutes, that works in even the most skinny hardware... The perfect combination for an impromptu LAN party, where having fun with friends right now is more important than gaming depth and graphical sophistication.
They did some neat game mechanic tweaks, especially of the previously useless units: mechanics and thieves being able to revive and capture vehicles. Keeps the spirit of the old game but makes it more fun.
You,didn't think about it as a kid because the original Red Alert didn't include a nuke truck. Although one of the expansions (Aftermath?) did, it wasn't exclusive to Ukraine.
The nuke truck was made the Ukrainian unique unit only in OpenRA.
Not with tractors, but allied factions can do that with mechanics by capturing destroyed soviet tank husks. This is a worthwhile tactic because the soviets have bigger, more expensive tanks than allies.
Original RA had a tendency to devolve into tank spamming. That takes skill. But it's closer to tactical than strategic. Does OpenRA deal with this in any way?
There's been attempts to re-balance him using memory injection to overcome INI file editing limitations without much success
Hopefully Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 can be added to OpenRA one day. It seems like it's something the lead developer of OpenRA works on in his spare time, when he's not fixing bugs or tweaking things in OpenRA itself
Installing that game was a trip. I took the discs to a friend's house and we didn't realize the volume was cranked on the computer so we closed the drive and it boomed
WARNING
MILITARY SOFTWARE DETECTED - TOP SECRET CLEARANCE REQUIRED
His mom was very curious as to what the hell we were getting in to.
I've played it a bunch, and it really is the perfect LAN party game:
Quick to download, quick to install, no real setup or tutorial section, cross platform, runs on anything, timeless graphics, easy to understand gameplay, lots of custom game options including AI, etc. And of course, it's fun.
I've tried to find the FPS equivalent of this, but it's been much harder, surprisingly.
Original Unreal Tournament is a pretty good one for this, I copied the install to a thumb drive on high school and played it on school computers all the time. Same with GZDoom
OpenArena used to be my go to FPS for impromptu LAN parties. Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux and it's easy to get a local server up and running. Plus it works great on ancient Thinkpads.
If you can get a modern remake of Quake I or II it would fit the bill. I have one on my USB memory stick that's forever been part of my keyring, just in case there ever is the need for a spontaneous fragfest.
I'm so glad this game still exists in some way or another. And this is a really authentic reproduction. I spent hours playing this as a kid, and rediscovered this in my 30's, and, well... have spent hours more playing it. Thank you for your efforts maintaining this classic
Use GenPatcher (https://legi.cc/downloads/genpatcher/) to make the original game work basically perfectly on modern OSes, as well as implement a bunch of stability, balance, and other optional fixes.
Generlas is a very picky game, with random mismatch errors all the time on windows, even as a linux gamer I've given up on running it on linux, it has enough issues as is!
This. I think part of the reason an OpenCCG hasn't shown up is because the modding/community support for the original CD images/binaries is so strong. Plus... the game isn't exactly hard to find (it's on Origin, for example) and isn't exactly hard to find (if you know what I mean).
My friends and I have a C&C Generals night a couple times a year. We use the Rise of the Reds: Babushka's Revenge mod, which is sort of a mod of an old mod. It balances things out quite a bit and adds some new stuff. I think it includes widescreen support
Or just Google it with "DODI Repack" and get it fully patched and batteries included for modern systems, if your ethics around piracy are not super strong.
No matter the answer I imagine your cost/hour is pretty darn low if you're anything like the rest of us. When that denominator is high the ratio is always going to be low!
I'm very fond of wargus and war1gus. I had to build it myself, but I was able to play wc1 and wc2 on Mac OS with native arm64 binaries. Lovely project.
As is usually the case with these open source reimplementations, the game assets (textures, sounds) must still be retrieved from the official installation / ISO.
Cheers to those guys. I never understand the thought process of obstructing the use of materials that are so old in video-game-years. Without the community they (these assets) will just sit in the closet and die.
I can only speculate that some fear it might hurt the saleskf later editions and other new games (which is a bad reason)
And there seems to be some market for nostalgia around selling old games. We can see new versions of old consoles, bundles of old games (with preconfigured emulators), ...
You can get a copy on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/cnc-red-alert). I don't believe that this is copyright infringement. I think that we're just that old.
I can assure you, we are not that old. For works created in 1978 or later (which is the case for these) work-for-hire pieces like this get 95 years of copyright protection:
I just ran back through StarCraft + Broodwars campaigns recently and… it really really holds up. The unit pathing and computer player AI isn’t quite as smart, but the game is solid.
I would recommend getting Starcraft Remastered if you're into the original games. They're really well made. "Modern" graphics that still feel like the original and should work out of box on modern computers (even M1 macs).
If you haven't, give Starcraft Remastered a shot. Felt like the original games when I played them when I was a kid but looks "modern" without any changes on unit interactions, etc.
Id argue there is much more strategy and tactics in Starcraft Brood War.
Red alert is mostly tanks and dogs. Production is very simplified. Units are very similar.
In starcraft strategy defined as "what you want to do" is deeper, since there are more poasibilities to expand. Also much more unit mix (not sure if this counts as tactic).
Most of the games it's the usual route of eating all players from BL to TL and then moving to TR and BR and the same time. I managed to bring the average time down to 12 minutes, with the best time around 10:30, but sometimes it's manages to catch me with the pants down, if I do something wrong or just take to long to do the essentials.
I’m always terrified to download stuff like this because either what you describe will happen… or I’ll discover the game isn’t anywhere near as compelling as it is in my memories.
From the code perspective, pretty nice, they decided to work with C# and don't use any Engine.. it would be nice however if we had more documentation about it internals, architecture and etc.
RA taught me almost everything I needed to know about geopolitics. Seriously, I marvel at its applicability.
- Resources
Without resources (eg. Net national income) you cannot support a national defense.
...Limited resources lead to conflict.
...Exploit and defend distant resources to preserve your domestic reserves.
- Capability Evolution & Resiliency
...You must pursue advanced capabilities that surpass or match your adversaries, and if you manage your resources properly this is achievable.
...Your infrastructure must be configured dispersed, redundant and secure.
- Combined Arms
...Combative units need a mix of capabilities to overcome defenses, unless you overwhelm (swarm) your enemy - which carries resource risks.
- Long View
...One can easily win a battle or two and lose the war without a long-term plan.
- Intelligence
...You cannot know how your capabilities measure up against your adversaries without good intel. This often means sacrificing units for a look into your opponent's capabilities.
If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.
> If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.
Surely these "global adversaries" are a myth? Isn't the US Military like 3 times the size of the 3 next largest militaries combined or something?
There is no bogeyman except within, as far as the US Military goes. I'm not stupid - I know there are threats to the wellbeing of US society and citizens, but they aren't _existential_ threats to the US. Meanwhile the list of "de-throned and/or de-fanged by the US" nations is huge.
I think the one critical lesson missing from the "RA Theory" is you need to continue to live, and there is more to life than just squashing your "enemies."
> Isn't the US Military like 3 times the size of the 3 next largest militaries combined or something?
The PLA is larger. The PLAN is larger. China is situated far closer to the likely contested areas.
> _existential_ threats
Your head is firmly embedded in the sand. If you care you need to do some reading. A shortcut to your learning looks something like this: The CCP's ascension and probable downward spiral is only reversible through control over resources contested by the West and regional players. The parties cannot cooperatively resolve the disputed issues because more resources are required than are available and no viable alternatives exist. War is probably coming, perhaps inevitable, unless one of the key players implodes domestically.
Pretty much only if you count number of active duty troops. USA outspends China significantly, and the number of tanks, warships, planes, etc. is vastly in favor of the USA, not even to mention nuclear warheads.
>unless one of the key players implodes domestically.
If you listen to Zeihan, you'd be convinced china is on the verge of implosion due to it's demographic crash. I think he's a bit too deterministic, but it does lend credence to the 'now or never' idea that china is, in fact, serious about invading Taiwan by 2030 as things only get worse for them from there...
If I tried to apply the lessons learned from Red Alert to geopolitics then every attempt at any kind of negotiation or diplomacy would be over within minutes after I attack my opposite number with a dog as a distraction while driving a car full of engineers into their base
I'm going to add a realism mod to balance this out a bit -
The car would get a flat tire on the way, and the engineers would spend hours arguing about how to fix it and whether operations would be "more scalable" if we designed a car that didn't have tires at all; Then the commander would call them to see what the heck was going on and they would all get nosebleeds from the stress.
C&C games were among my earliest forays into modding. It was so easy with the whole game wrapped up in an ini file, and so much fun to muck with stuff.
In terms of combined arms, I tried playing the remake of the original and realised quickly that all my humans were just run over by tanks, even in a mixed group.
In RA1-2, they are good as fodder to soak up Tesla Coil hits and tank rounds so your armor can break through, especially agianst a human player. A good amount of fodder will force a human player micro against that attack, and distract them from other things.
Most of the people in congress are more calculating and competent than they look. They are largely clever and socially adept, and have smart people around them. The problem is that the incentives for public speech are misaligned.
That's why it's rarely what the politician says that matters - it's what they vote for that counts. And largely, The pentagon and NSA tell politicians what they need and they get it.
I think the real story is we elect the candidates that do the best job of convincing people that they are aligned with their wishes and values, but those wishes and values proclaimed by the politician are, at best, only a very noisy proxy for how they will vote and, at worst, entirely fabricated for the sole purpose of winning votes
Well damn, this has gotten good. Downloadable on linux as a flatpak and can automatically download the assets it needs... Luckily it has a "save mission" feature so I could save and exit and return later after only losing 20 mins of my workday. This is even better than I remember! Kudos to the devs on such a fantastic job.
45MB download, that's an insane fun-to-byte density!! I'm gonna try this on my old ThinkPad x61!
I remember distinctly about the amazing cinematic cut scene in RA for that era of technology. The engineer probably geeked out with a lot compression hacks. I thought they were skipping every other line of rendering but still retained the illusion of a full video.
All the art and sound assets are loaded from a local copy of C&C that the user must purchase on their own before running OpenRA (specifically the "C&C Remastered Collection" on Steam or Origin). OpenRA uses the assets from that local install, so it's all legal! Stratagus does the same thing with Warcraft assets.
The assets available for download within the OpenRA client are stored freeware releases OpenRA hosts. EA freeware'd the three base games back in 2008. OpenRA does prompt if you want to provide your own discs to load your licensed assets if that's preferred.
recently I played my Warcraft II via Wargus and was pleasantly surprised. It seems that they generalised the engine, named Stratagus, so it can run different games...
Amazing. Also want to point out that the double clicking of the mouse for Dune2000 definitely took me a little bit to figure out. It's been a long time since I had to do that - don't miss it. Other than that though very cool - happy to revisit the games!
174 comments
[ 0.34 ms ] story [ 398 ms ] threadOpenRA's killer feature is the extremely fast installation of a reliable cross-platform game that anyone can understand in ten minutes, that works in even the most skinny hardware... The perfect combination for an impromptu LAN party, where having fun with friends right now is more important than gaming depth and graphical sophistication.
I now see what the creators did there. I didn't think about it when I was a kid.
The nuke truck was made the Ukrainian unique unit only in OpenRA.
Original RA had a tendency to devolve into tank spamming. That takes skill. But it's closer to tactical than strategic. Does OpenRA deal with this in any way?
Hopefully Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 can be added to OpenRA one day. It seems like it's something the lead developer of OpenRA works on in his spare time, when he's not fixing bugs or tweaking things in OpenRA itself
WARNING
MILITARY SOFTWARE DETECTED - TOP SECRET CLEARANCE REQUIRED
His mom was very curious as to what the hell we were getting in to.
ENCRYPTION CODE REQUIRED - YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS TO COMPLY.
WHERE IS THE DAMN BOOKLET?
Not RA specific, but this is by far one of the best game design tricks.
Players are so trusting that if you tell them they need to hurry up they will.
Quick to download, quick to install, no real setup or tutorial section, cross platform, runs on anything, timeless graphics, easy to understand gameplay, lots of custom game options including AI, etc. And of course, it's fun.
I've tried to find the FPS equivalent of this, but it's been much harder, surprisingly.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/command-and-conquer-generals-evol...
Not the same goals but still enables playing the old C&C games on modern hardware.
It's those fast paced heavy metal riffs that goes so well with seeing conscripts being sent into a meat grinder.
And there seems to be some market for nostalgia around selling old games. We can see new versions of old consoles, bundles of old games (with preconfigured emulators), ...
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.htm
So we are solidly inside the copyright window.
Sounds reasonable.
[1]: https://zero-k.info/
Always skirmish, 1v1, powers disabled (no nukes) I play GDI, CPU is NOD.
Takes me 20 minutes, I win 90% of the time but have to focus or else I lose easily.
It's my crossword/sudoku/wordle/puzzle/meditation/mental reset.
It’s been a while but I honestly feel like that helped me train my focus back then.
Red alert is mostly tanks and dogs. Production is very simplified. Units are very similar.
In starcraft strategy defined as "what you want to do" is deeper, since there are more poasibilities to expand. Also much more unit mix (not sure if this counts as tactic).
I appreciate the simplicity of the game, but also the small details that make it fun. And that a typical game rarely lasts more than 20-30 minutes.
Most of the games it's the usual route of eating all players from BL to TL and then moving to TR and BR and the same time. I managed to bring the average time down to 12 minutes, with the best time around 10:30, but sometimes it's manages to catch me with the pants down, if I do something wrong or just take to long to do the essentials.
- Resources
Without resources (eg. Net national income) you cannot support a national defense.
...Limited resources lead to conflict.
...Exploit and defend distant resources to preserve your domestic reserves.
- Capability Evolution & Resiliency
...You must pursue advanced capabilities that surpass or match your adversaries, and if you manage your resources properly this is achievable.
...Your infrastructure must be configured dispersed, redundant and secure.
- Combined Arms
...Combative units need a mix of capabilities to overcome defenses, unless you overwhelm (swarm) your enemy - which carries resource risks.
- Long View
...One can easily win a battle or two and lose the war without a long-term plan.
- Intelligence
...You cannot know how your capabilities measure up against your adversaries without good intel. This often means sacrificing units for a look into your opponent's capabilities.
If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.
Surely these "global adversaries" are a myth? Isn't the US Military like 3 times the size of the 3 next largest militaries combined or something?
There is no bogeyman except within, as far as the US Military goes. I'm not stupid - I know there are threats to the wellbeing of US society and citizens, but they aren't _existential_ threats to the US. Meanwhile the list of "de-throned and/or de-fanged by the US" nations is huge.
I think the one critical lesson missing from the "RA Theory" is you need to continue to live, and there is more to life than just squashing your "enemies."
Thankfully, our other grand national pastime happens to be making new enemies!
With a 3x military, we can afford to make 2x enemies and still come out ahead.
"Cha-ching!" --Tanya
The PLA is larger. The PLAN is larger. China is situated far closer to the likely contested areas.
> _existential_ threats
Your head is firmly embedded in the sand. If you care you need to do some reading. A shortcut to your learning looks something like this: The CCP's ascension and probable downward spiral is only reversible through control over resources contested by the West and regional players. The parties cannot cooperatively resolve the disputed issues because more resources are required than are available and no viable alternatives exist. War is probably coming, perhaps inevitable, unless one of the key players implodes domestically.
Pretty much only if you count number of active duty troops. USA outspends China significantly, and the number of tanks, warships, planes, etc. is vastly in favor of the USA, not even to mention nuclear warheads.
US costs are far higher for almost everything, and the PLA obfuscates their spending. I wouldn't rely on this assumption.
If you listen to Zeihan, you'd be convinced china is on the verge of implosion due to it's demographic crash. I think he's a bit too deterministic, but it does lend credence to the 'now or never' idea that china is, in fact, serious about invading Taiwan by 2030 as things only get worse for them from there...
Invest in your economy early rather than on an early defense. Just survive the first wave.
I take out harvesters (vehicles) first which disrupts my enemies ability to purchase military equipment.
Artillery is a game changer but needs support from small arms and scouts to increase the "sight" or range which will trigger a response.
I target power plants second, which disrupts radar, slows production and most importantly disables air defenses.
Troops / units are most effective when micro-managed.
A fighting force with diversity almost always wins out over a force dominated by one unit type.
Knowing what direction your enemy will attack from is critical.
By the time you've built very advanced weaponry, you should have already won a conventional war.
Probe your enemy for base weaknesses before attacking.
Don't waste your time repairing, just build new.
The car would get a flat tire on the way, and the engineers would spend hours arguing about how to fix it and whether operations would be "more scalable" if we designed a car that didn't have tires at all; Then the commander would call them to see what the heck was going on and they would all get nosebleeds from the stress.
What do you use them for?
Most of the people in congress are more calculating and competent than they look. They are largely clever and socially adept, and have smart people around them. The problem is that the incentives for public speech are misaligned.
That's why it's rarely what the politician says that matters - it's what they vote for that counts. And largely, The pentagon and NSA tell politicians what they need and they get it.
[edit]
Seriously though RA3 had:
- An eventual Oscar winner (Simmons)
- Two people with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Takei, Hasselhoff)
- An Emmy winner and Tony nominee (Curry).
- The first appearance of Gina Carano
All to further a plot that is absurd even for a video game, with a presentation that is possibly peak "pandering to teenage males."
I do need one of them to get with the program and actually build an army instead of 100s of dogs though.
I remember distinctly about the amazing cinematic cut scene in RA for that era of technology. The engineer probably geeked out with a lot compression hacks. I thought they were skipping every other line of rendering but still retained the illusion of a full video.
I'm glad they do, just a bit confused
https://github.com/OpenRA/TiberianDawnHD#asset-installation
https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert#c... (referenced EA news link dead, doesn't look like archive.ph has a clean snap) https://www.openra.net/legal/
edit:nvm it has been done :) https://github.com/OpenE2140/OpenE2140