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If you play the original and then OpenRA you will be amazed how well OpenRA is balanced.
As an example, while in the original game using allied artillery against soviet tesla coils was a dead sentence in OpenRA is great to be able to fire well beyond its range forcing you to come out of the base to defend it.
They also added a ton of features which make the game truly enjoyable and fun to play.
Well done OpenRA team!
Weird. I find the balance for player vs AI to be actually pretty horrible. AI can outrange artillery sight so you have no choice but to push forward always or micro manage units. I have a fork of OpenRA on my GitHub where I try to address this, along with pathfinding bugs, enabling Tiberian Sun and fixing bugs with that. I also updated it to cross platform .NET 10 and bumped the performance up about 6-10x fixing minor bugs. Debating if I'll roll any of the code over as pulls to the main project ever after I tried to fix a random bug before and they were not welcoming to me but that was like a decade ago.
Tangential, but I got introduced to Red Alert C&C through various 'Hell March' videos by random fans of various militaries on YouTube. It's funny how it vibes with nearly every military you throw it over.
I actually loved the imbalance of OG RA, I live for vaporizing my foes with tesla coils!
To me in second grade, Red Alert was literally just building Tesla Coils.
APC + flamethrowers was the new WTF in OpenRA, if I remember correctly.
doesn't that ruin the point of the tesla coils?
Related. Others?
OpenRA – Classic strategy games rebuilt for the modern era - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42823667 - Jan 2025 (122 comments)
OpenRA – Classic strategy games rebuilt for the modern era - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37553193 - Sept 2023 (169 comments)
OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28511076 - Sept 2021 (199 comments)
OpenRA Release 20210321 (and new website) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26533422 - March 2021 (10 comments)
OpenRA: An open, cross platform and expandable implementation of Command&Conquer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23342320 - May 2020 (3 comments)
OpenRA: Classic strategy games, rebuilt for the modern era, open source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021 - April 2017 (1 comment)
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(p.s. reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers!)
This is possibly related
EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, along with other games
i was about to say with AI there are a lot of new games being published, even web ones. but this one seems to be in the works for a while
Open RA2 also exists. I think RA2 is significantly better and the peak of what an RTS can be.
Say what you want about EA, but they not only tolerated Open RA, but they straight up opened sourced the older games.
More publishers need to do this. I wouldn’t even mind a crowdfunding effort( give the proceeds to charity) to release the source for other games.
RA2 is still available on Steam, and despite its age runs with only minimal issues on Windows 11. It works on Linux too, but it works a lot better if you add the cnc-ddraw DLL and change the launch options to:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw=n,b" %command%OpenRA is awesome.
Whoever runs it, you're awesome!
The player base is only slightly lower than when I used to play RA2 on dial-up like 20 years ago.
I've boycotted EA ever since they ruined the franchise.
Played OpenRA a few years back, and as an 80s/90s kid played the original. OpenRA is great in my books. I've linked this before, but I suggest watching some.of the competition replays of OpenRA from the "five aces" YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmywk-96Irk).
When I was a teenager, I lived on a farm and our neighbour's were another adult couple. He was late 40s and she was late 50s, her name was Jane.
Jane had an infectious laugh. She was always baking. She died her hair bright red. She drank too much wine. She didnt know much about the details of technology but she was intrigued by it, she read books and she volunteered to help as a teachers aide at the local primary school.
And Jane had a secret, she was one of the best Red Alert 2 players I had ever seen. We'd have matches over dialup and she would totally wreck me in such a short amount of time. I couldn't figure out a strategy to beat her, it was different every time.
I still have very vivid memories of Jane sitting in the corner of her farm house, big thick glasses on, glass of red wine, leading the comrades into war, and laughing as she bombed the allies into submission.
If you met Jane on the street you would never ever guess that under that farmer's wife persona, lurked a dangerous and cunning war strategist. Totally unexpected and utterly fabulous.
Love you Jane
We used to play RA on my friend's home network, which was thin net running IPX. The house rule was that if we'd collectively built enough units that the game started slowing down you had to attack. It was good times.
OpenRA is amazing. Sort of related, recently discovered a great remake of Heroes of Might and Magic II:
Timely. I just downloaded Augustus last night and played a bunch of Caesar III with the assets for $5 from GOG.
Interestingly Augustus is itself a fork of Julius, where Julius intends to replicate original behavior including bugs whereas Augustus adds a number of QoL improvements like better parking control for the walkers.
Anyway all that to say, open-source engine remake projects are awesome.
I have such fond memories of this game. Editing the .ini files was a delight - I distinctly remember giving Tanya (with her incredibly rapid-fire guns) cruiser shells and having basically the entire map blow up instantaneously.
Why do I hear this music every time I see Red Alert being mentioned?
OpenRA is great, it feels like a better version of Red Alert 2.
The one thing I'm missing is C&C Generals and Zero Hour. Those were also really fun to play over LAN.
Has anyone built better AIs for this?
Reminds me of 0 A.D. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_A.D._(video_game)). The usual problem with an open-source game is the art/music, but this looks pretty decent.
Shoutout to one of my favorite OpenRA podcaster - watching the game is a lot less stressful than actually playing it: https://www.youtube.com/@CovertFlobert
For people that love OpenRA: some friends and me started to play the Continue Mod a lot more recently. It's tons of fun, the mod author basically rebuilt zero hour with actual real weapon stats, vehicles, ships, infantry etc.
It's tons of fun, and runs in wine, too. Typical quirk is that the profile folder has to be setup before running it (same bug as with old generals.exe versions). But can be played easily with wireguard over the internet.
Ah man I remember playing Red Alert against my friends online where you had to put the other persons phone number in and (I guess??) you made some kind of direct network connection. No idea if it was billed as internet or what!
It is funny how StarCraft Brood War runs circles around C&C games - people still play it online, there are still 20k dollar tournaments in Korea... the game is just more fun to play and to watch.
It received an official remaster too that was only a graphics update
Meamwhile people make threads about RA what was a bad game even when it came out - "strategy" was to made few overpowered towers, then mass tanks and flood the computer with them. Mutliplayer was tanks + dogs, so the first shot of the enemy tank was wasted on your dog.
Would be nice if they finished Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2 support.
I only complain because I put in over $1,000 USD as part of a crowd funding campaign to do just that
...13 years ago :(
I wish they would release Tiberium Sun
There is an OpenRA mod called Combined Arms. It is incredible! Been a C&C fan from the beginning, but prefer the originals. Combined arms gives me the feel of the originals with the features of the latter versions. The AI can really be brutal if you suck like me, unless you turn it down.
Lots of fun.
based, been playing this for months with my friend, over anything else.
EDIT> My fav setup is to join a free empty server , set up 2 teams, 2 AI and 1 human vs 2 AI and 1 human. And then play with my friend. Great fun. The AI adds a bit of a randomness to the games. Easy smooth quick interface. Just perfect for a quick free RTS game with a friend.
We are building a command & conquer style RTS. If you're interested in taking a look at our very early demo of the game play, please check out:
https://warpact-rts-9221.web.app/
And join our discord to follow along!
Shill alert: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer...
It’s $6 for every C&C ever made right now.
Need to try this at some point. The other open RTS - beyondallreason - is really good too.
This is such a great game. Incredibly well-balanced and thought through.
wish there was OpenRA2 thats the one i been looking forward to
I heard that the Red Alert 2 source code is officially (while unannounced) lost, which is why there has been no remaster. Is this true?
I love OpenRA! Play it every weekend with my dad.
I just wish I still had the original games to use as content packs.
Every time I've tried to install this previously, this was my wall :(
OpenRA is awesome. However playing it online, for me felt highly toxic for me. I heard this a lot in the community.
So someone loves red alert like me awesome.
Also there is opendour renegade called Renegade X with UE3 ENGINE And really fun
DOS box that runs RAID disk drive partition.
Scaling text, renders over wlan0.
Would never have thought I would see OpenRA here on HN.
Great project, great game.
I Love this project, works on Mac, Linux & Windows!
Did anyone else expect Scarab of Ra from the title?
my buddy and i would direct connect our ps1 with link-cable and face the tvs away from each other for red alert. long live openra!
Are CC RA and Dune basically the same games?
Sometimes, UI is also part of the classics.