OpenRA – Classic strategy games rebuilt for the modern era
111 comments
·January 25, 2025kingo55
sandreas
I wonder if they did implement C&C funpark command line easter egg (Dinosaur levels) and the Shift-Speaker-click Ant missions from C&C 2 mission packs :-)
tetha
Oh that first level caught me off-guard in a good way.
Like, at first they fixed that weird error condition how you could detonate the tech lab Einstein is in, which broke a trigger and failed the mission. Now you just blow it up, Einstein is there and you can go from there.
And then I continued with the normal motions of this mission and... no, not gonna spoil it. That was a great introduction of new content to the mission. And the second mission does it in a similar way. Hah!
piyiotisk
Thanks my favourite is tiberian sun and I was looking to find a way to play it on mac. I think with this I might be able to do it
1727706962
I've just finished both campaigns (and moving on to Firestorm!) on my M1 Macbook by running the game through https://www.portingkit.com/ .
It guides you through installation and wraps the game in Wine and other layers as its own .Application for running on arm or intel macs. Porting Kit has bespoke configurations for compatible games.
Also see https://github.com/Kegworks-App/Kegworks (formerly Wineskin, the upstream tech leveraged by Porting Kit without the bespoke angle) which i've used for various modern games to great effect.
ozarker
Woah this looks awesome, thanks for sharing!
unixhero
This is huuuge. Thanks a lot for mentioning it.
kingo55
I love how faithful this is to the original games but at the same time they've modernised the gameplay so that it doesn't feel it's age.
When you go back and play the originals (even Red Alert remastered) the modernised gameplay added by Open RA becomes very apparent. I can't go back to the originals now.
vunderba
I'm like that for Doom. I grew up playing id Software games (Wolfenstein 3D, Catacomb Abyss, Doom, etc). The Brutal Doom mod completely ruined the vanilla experience for me. It's just scatalogically absurd and dialed up the shock value to eleven. Great fun.
MortyWaves
What differences do you notice? The remastered has some terrible code behind its UI, you can just feel it.
Menu hangs on start for up to 10 seconds for no apparent reason, people leaving the game during the “connecting to server” stage seems to make everyone else wait indefinitely usually forcing them to quit.
On the multiplayer screen, tab between “Join” and all the other tab buttons and notice how each one moves a few pixels.
Then the obscene inefficiencies overall. Sitting at the main menu not even moving my mouse gets the CPU hot enough to make the fans loud. During gameplay a 4v4 multiplayer match turns into one big lag fest about 15 minutes in.
goosedragons
Feel the same way with OpenRCT2. I could have sworn the original games had controls for speeding up and slowing down park time but nope. Going back to Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 I just can't play it at 1x speed anymore. OpenRCT2 just has some nice little fixed.
bondarchuk
That was so nice about the og though, you have to wait so you just spend the time building some technically useless but nice looking stuff. Fast forward kind of ruins that.
hnlmorg
To be honest, I always found Westwood strategy games to be very one dimensional compared to other strategy games even in its own era.
I never understood why people loved them so much. Perhaps it was because of their simplicity thus allowing for more mainstream appeal?
Im sure I’ll get downvoted by the Red Alert fans with their rose tinted glasses for saying this because a lot of people forget just how basic those games were. But I played a hell of a lot of strategy games back then (it was my favourite genre) and Westwood did some of the most simplistic games in the genre.
Where Westwood excelled at was the presentation more than the game play. Great music, FMV in the later games, etc.
Anyhow, I might check out this OpenRA project if they’ve tweaked the mechanics.
bee_rider
I only played a little bit of Red Alert 2. And quite a bit of StarCraft, although non-competitively.
The complexity difference was sort of interesting I think. I recall there was a lot more… stuff the units could do. Basic infantry for one side could lay down, take cover behind sand bags (maybe?), garrison in NPC buildings. Gain experience and level up. And these are just the most basic dudes.
It is neat stuff that makes the game feel good to pick up and play. But designed in complexity in a game can get in the way of developing emergent complexity. I think this is particularly noticeable in an RTS, where there’s already a lot going on.
StarCraft Marines only really have like one thing they can do (stim), otherwise it’s just positioning. This promotes the whole emergent “micro” gameplay skill. Which isn’t to say micro doesn’t exist in C&C (I have no idea what competitive play looks like there), but there are a lot of alternatives (Deploy them? Let them go prone?).
rvba
I knew a guy who was high level RA player and he said that the high level game mostly revolved around 2 types of units: tanks and dogs - where you would send the dogs to bait out first shot and then your tanks to finish the job.
What Starcraft 1 does very well and what many other games cannot really emulate is the dynamics of units - that the battles can happen across the whole map - because few units are often still significant enough. There is obviously the whole "death ball" concept too - but Starcraft Brood War is full of mechanics that actually go against the death ball - for example siege tanks, or psionic storm that just annihilate clumped units. This never existed in Westwood games, what meant that most games were mostly just sitting in one place and building 50 tanks.
The whole "you can garrison marines in a building" thing in RA2 was nice.. but at the end again it was static defense.
Nales
I think this is the same reason why people preferred a "Call of Duty" over "Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory" when playing a multiplayer FPS. You do not necessarily want to invest a lot of time to enjoy something.
On a personal note, I really enjoyed "Dune 2000" and "Emperor: Battle for Dune" but I have never really been a huge fan of the "Age of Empire" series. Recently I tried "Impossible Creatures" and it was frustrating. I suppose for I am a very casual RTS player. Each to their own.
jszymborski
As someone who loved both C&C games and Impossible Creatures growing up and has played them recently, it mostly boils down to the flavour and soul of the game for me personally.
It feels really cool to escape into these worlds, each unit and building feels alive and unique.
They're mechanically not the best games, but that's never gotten in the way of the fun factor for me :)
wolpoli
I felt that Westwood's strategy games were built around their single-player campaign experience. As a result, their story, FMV, and gameplay were designed to support that focus. The simplity meant that players could get into the game easily.
However, this also meant that the gameplay wasn't well-suited for deep strategy or multiplayer, which was what RTS ended up being about down the road.
intalentive
C&C Generals is up there with StarCraft in terms of gameplay. And yes the RA music is some of the best ever game music. I still blast Hell March from time to time.
hnlmorg
That’s from 2003 though. It is one of the last games in the series and was made after Westwood Studios had been disbanded and staff finally merged fully into EA LA. Westwood didn’t even exist as a subsidiary of EA by that point.
Whereas StarCraft was released in 1998. Which, if we are to use your examples, would make C&C 5 years behind StarCraft in terms of game play. Which is a hell of a long time given how games were evolving in the 90s and early 00s
null
josefx
What timeframe are you looking at? Dune II was more or less considered the game that established the modern RTS format. C&C is mostly a refinement on the same gameplay loop (down to the spice/tiberium/ore harvesters).
What I remember is a bigger scale for the fights, C&C let you control dozens of units at a time, Warcraft I and II let you control maybe 4 or 6 at a time. The unit cap was larger and you didn't have to spend half of it on resource gathering.
markus_zhang
For me the RA satisfies my Cold War warfare fantasy.
sgarland
No, they are. RA2 and AoE2 came out within a year of each other, and it isn’t even a contest. RA2 is fun, but it’s so much simpler, and games are so much shorter.
I still like RA2 quite a bit, but it’s not in the same league as others.
Aeolun
> I still like RA2 quite a bit, but it’s not in the same league as others.
While I agree with the statement as written, what I take away from it is the polar opposite. RA2 is (to me) the best RTS ever created.
doctorpangloss
Well the best thing to come out of the RTS engines were the custom maps in SC1, SC2, WC3 anyway.
Which is to say that so much money has been spent on those designers, whether at Blizzard or Westwood, or later in the near billion dollars that has been handed out to former Blizzard people starting their own thing. And then, some guy Tya in his bedroom in China designed better games.
They should be credited for building communities first and foremost. It wasn't ever really about the games.
iamsanteri
I‘ve been playing OpenRA for over a year now. After all the hardcore triple-A games this is the one I‘ve settled on. Maybe because I played it as a kid when it came out. It‘s pretty balanced and the community is awesome. Despite it being very unforgiving at start, as you get up to speed it becomes amazingly deep and competitive. So much fun!
nadermx
I play this often. If you play multi-player these build orders help
petercooper
Great resource. This is my main problem with the game. It's so formulaic in the early stages and you really have to play to the meta to stand a chance of surviving past about ten minutes. Strategy doesn't really come into it unless you survive beyond a certain point.
tra3
Nice. Me and my son play coop against the bots and can never win. Maybe this will help.
HelloUsername
Previous discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28511076
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37553193
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31197091
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7730555
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26533422
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42823667
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23120677
dang
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
OpenRA – Classic strategy games rebuilt for the modern era - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37553193 - Sept 2023 (169 comments)
OpenRA: Open-source RTS game engine for games such as Command and Conquer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31197091 - April 2022 (80 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: AI Development Guidelines (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23120677 - May 2020 (4 comments)
OpenRA: Classic strategy games, rebuilt for the modern era, open source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021 - April 2017 (1 comment)
Show HN: OpenRA – RTS project that recreates Command and Conquer games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7730555 - May 2014 (40 comments)
BrouteMinou
One of the best RTS out there. I go there every night to get my ass kicked once or twice before bed.
I highly recommend it.
dfex
And I thought it was just me.
I didn't get my first win until I chose Turtle AI with 40% handicap. After many months of "honing" my skills, I am now about 50/50 against Rush AI on equal standings, but I still have to play larger maps so that there is some lag before they can reach my base.
vanviegen
Just wait until you try playing online. That'll be an interesting experience.. ;-)
shabgzer
Great effort, love to see that the game preserved in this way.
However, for me, the nostalgia wore off quickly. I no longer have the feeling of immersion I used to have when I was younger; I've become numb to the magic. What I see is pathfinding, a graphics engine, a sound player...
tomw1808
It's because you need more tesla coils, brrzzing.
Jokes aside, after reading a few of the official tounament strategies, its where the magic disappeared for me - its so much weight towards rushing over the enemy that wins every time, it kinda lost its bliss.
Still, sometimes its fun to just play with some like-minded friends in a multiplayer game
hagendaasalpine
I can recommend the RTS OpenHV, built on the OpenRA engine. https://www.openhv.net/
tra3
I checked the link but I can’t find anything on how it’s different from the base game. What do you like about it?
paulryanrogers
From what I've read HV originally aimed to add things like supply lines, terrain heights, deformable terrain, and "player created landscapes". Since the original was cancelled and many of its ideas implemented elsewhere, this newer fan effort may not appear as innovative as the OG could've been.
cheeseomlit
I would absolutely love to see the same sort of project for aoe2. There's OpenAge, but it seems like they're still pretty far from something playable.
Cristan
Maybe 0 A.D.? https://play0ad.com/ Its's closer to AOE1 in terms of historical period, but gameplay should be close enough.
mtlynch
I think 0 A.D. is a super cool project, but I found it pretty hard to learn.
It made me appreciate how delicate a task it is to teach the player the mechanics of a game like AoE and how good a job AoE did at that. I felt like 0 A.D. isn't approachable in the same way.
tomw1808
I love this.
Not that I play it often, however, I guess its the memories.
I remember when RA was released and I was glued to my screen, at home or at lan parties. Multi player or Skirmish, always fantastic way to kill some time with quality game play.
This and blobby volley :)
I love that they fixed so many of the shortcomings of the original gameplay in OpenRA. It's really fun to play.
wink
I know people (rightfully) loved them for the gameplay (I was more of a WC2 and SC player), but my favourites were the videos in RA3 with Tim Curry et al. It was just the right type of corny
endlessvoid94
And Lando!
cpressland
I’d love a project like this, but for Red Alert 2. It works great on my Steam Deck but often stutters on larger battles. A modern, native, Linux port would be amazing.
999900000999
Works great on Linux
cpressland
I have seen this in the past, but I figured it was mostly abandonware given the lack of recent commits. I’ll install it and check it out though, thanks for the suggestion.
kingo55
There have been plans to bring RA2 to OpenRA for some time now. I second this.
It'd be nice to also see support for Tiberian Sun and the C&C Remastered collection.
cpressland
Any sources? I’d be keen to see if I can help out, even if only financially.
kingo55
It was posted below: https://github.com/OpenRA/ra2
It works, but it's not an official release yet. Fwiw I haven't played this myself.
HelloUsername
This might interest you (RA2 in the webbrowser) https://game.chronodivide.com/
Based on this open source project, modders have created an expanded universe encapsulating RA, RA2, Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Dawn and other lore into Combined Arms mod:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/command-conquer-combined-arms
Worth a look for a new fan made entry into the C&C universe. The scale of the mod is huge...