Red Alert 2 in web browser
51 comments
·November 20, 2025evanjrowley
s_dev
Shame because EA released the source code for most of the other C&C games: https://github.com/electronicarts/
So if they had it they'd would have almost certainly included RA2 in that as well.
warpspin
I loved Red Alert 2 so much at release. Always was the pinnacle of (single player) RTS for me. The over-the-top characters, the cheesy story, the terrain interactions...
Everything afterwards felt lame and was geared too much towards multiplayer balance, which does not interest me the least.
ecshafer
Starcraft becoming uber popular in Korea I think really hurt the RTS genre. I did play RTS games online when I was younger. But I think you're right, Everything went from lets make a fun game with a cool campaign, to lets make an Esport. Company of Heroes 1 to 3, Dawn of War 1 to 2, Age of Empires 1,2,3 vs 4. You can really see this.
emaro
I think the campaigns of StarCraft II are amazing (never played Broodwar unfortunately). However I kinda agree that StarCraft's success hurt the RTS genre, because it's just so freaking good. 15 years since release and there are still tournaments played, it's fun to watch and projects like Stormgate have a really hard time, because SC2 is the bar and it's super difficult to reach. In terms of unit legibility, responsiveness, balance, etc. The bad thing is, it's not an approachable game at all, it mainly is interesting in the competitive/eSport scene.
If I watch YT videos a la "New RTS games 2025/2026" there are very interesting projects which give me hope that SC2 is not the end of RTS games.
ecshafer
A lot of the new RTS games I think just end up trying to be StarCraft but not. Grey Goo for example was one that came out a few years ago and it was just Starcraft with a new skin. I am not saying Starcraft is a bad game, its a fantastic game (though I do prefer Warcraft). But it kind of sucks the air out of the genre.
Starcraft and Starcraft II, and Warcraft I,II,III had great campaigns. So it is kind of ironic that a lot of the games copying them cut the campaigns for the esports focus.
iamacyborg
DoW 2 is great, DoW 3 on the other hand…
ecshafer
I liked base buildings. DoW 2 was a good game, but the lack of base building was a let down.
teeray
> The over-the-top characters, the cheesy story
I love that they don't take themselves too seriously in this series. RA3 had some hilarious cutscenes with characters barely holding it together (the Soviet Premier was an underrated Tim Curry role IMO).
tomaskafka
Absolutely! I don't have time to play a RTS campaign, but I watched the RA3 story cutscenes and they are the top of the genre.
Xelbair
"I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism,
barely holds laughter back and takes a break
SPACE!"
philistine
He looked up! It's vital to mention that in this moment, renowned character actor Tim Curry, to highlight the fact that he was going to space, chose to look up!
jayd16
There's a lot of things going against the RTS genre.
They're technically challenging to make and creatively hard to balance.
The public doesn't want to pay $60 upfront for a campaign when fun freemium games exist.
The UX does not work well on controller so a huge amount of console players will be out of reach.
Games tend to be quite long and because it's not team play matchmaking matters a lot. This push multiplayer into being highly competitive and not pushes out the casual players.
Seems like Clash Royale likes are the best we've come up with to modernize the genre but of course its very different.
nkrisc
RA2 was loads of fun played with a friend over LAN against many computer opponents.
We’d start the game up in one computer, then pop the CD out and start it up in the next one, and so on.
RankingMember
It'd be cool if there was a similar site but using OpenRA to avoid the need for local assets.
pjmlp
> for good performance, Firefox should be avoided
Oh well.
Then again, the demo is only usable for those with existing assets.
dsnr
I wonder what’s wrong with Firefox? What is the bottleneck? The JavaScript engine? I’m guessing the thing is compiled to wasm anyway.
voxic11
The bottleneck is webgl. I'm not sure why exactly but firefox is pretty well known to have significantly worse webgl performance than can be achieved with chrome.
nottorp
> for good performance, Firefox should be avoided
Can't, for privacy reasons.
bennyp101
How does OpenRA[0] do it? Is it just a X has expired thing?
Edit: Oh maybe you do have to have the assets now? I swear last time I used it, it was all online :/
jsk2600
OpenRA does not distribute game assets, but they can be downloaded from OpenRA launcher.
catapart
Since you broached the topic, I've got an open curiosity about projects like that: if I manufactured entirely new assets, completely independently from the source game (possibly not even matching the source; like a different "skin" or "theme"), and then used those assets in a "clone" (in all but assets) of the source game, would that run afoul of IP law? I'm aware that anything can be litigated, but is there some quirk of IP protection for that kind of thing, or would I be able to use the cloned source with completely new assets without really infringing on anything? Does the cloned (re-coded? recomposed? clean-roomed?) source cause issues or create some kind of legal link from the original assets to the unrelated ones?
Again, just idle curiosity. No actual intentions here, so just wondering if anyone has some deeper knowledge on the subject.
coldpie
Game mechanics are not considered copyrightable[1]. If you had a clean room implementation with your own significantly different assets, it would be allowed.
However, the exact definitions of "significantly different" and "assets" is where things start to get fuzzy. While you could definitely make a very similar RTS game, exactly how similar can you get? EA doesn't own "military-themed RTS", but they probably do own "Soviets vs Allies with about 5 different unit types, air transports, and tesla coils." Getting even more fuzzy, are unit abilities considered assets, or game mechanics? It'd have to be worked out in court.
My gut feeling is these clone engines would probably lose in court. I think the specific expression of the general game mechanics being cloned here probably would constitute infringement. But there isn't much upside to the IP owners to pursue enthusiastic hobbyists cloning a 20+ year old game in a non-commercial way, so they let it slide.
[1] "Although Amusement World admitted that they appropriated Atari's idea, the court determined that this was not prohibited, because copyright only protects the specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari,_Inc._v._Amusement_World...
philistine
I'm sure if EA could undo their declarative statement that Red Alert and C&C are free to redistribute that they made way back in the 2000s, they would, but they did.
OpenRA simply downloads a copy that it loads for the purpose of assets, but the engine is completely new, and it is very different from the orignal Red Alert. At this point, I don't think a single unit acts exactly the way it did in the original game. It's endlessly being rebalanced.
afavour
IIRC if you make entirely new assets you're good to go. OpenTTD (Open source version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe) has its own custom made assets, but can also be used with the original if you own them.
Not sure it's ever been proven definitively in court, though. And if you "made" custom assets that were exactly like the original ones only with a 1px color difference or something I'm sure you'd fall foul of it. What counts as different "enough" is always debatable.
mikepurvis
It would probably be the usual clean room reverse engineering rules: one guy describes the assets to be cloned, and then another guy who has never seen the originals uses that documentation to create the replacements.
Once you've seen the originals, you're contaminated and no longer suitable for the role of doing the replacement work.
wwfn
https://freedoom.github.io/ does that for the still proprietary DOOM assets. Though the DOOM engine itself is open source, so a slight different situation than Command and Conquer.
klaussilveira
C&C is open source: https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Red_Alert/blob/main/LI...
khoury
Can't start the game in the browser without a local executable of the game?
voxic11
Copyright, you have to provide all the copyrighted material yourself so that they can't be sued for distributing it.
RankingMember
yeah, bit of a buzzkill. What's the point of being able to launch from a web browser if you've gotta go dig up the game anyways?
tgv
Now you can run it on more platforms.
Aurornis
The point is they don’t get sued for distributing game assets they don’t own.
If they could distribute them, they would.
YcYc10
But what is the point of the project?
nonethewiser
Point taken, but there is an answer to your questions. Cross platform compatibility
brovonov
Yes, because they don't own the assets.
shortrounddev2
It's a copyright thing
Joshua-Peter
Playing Red Alert 2 in a web browser is amazing! It brings nostalgia while letting you enjoy the classic strategy game instantly, without any downloads or installations.
bbarnett
Neat project.
If looking for gameplay like this, OpenRA does play a few games without original game assets. I don't think RA2 though.
tinyhouse
Where can I find / buy a local executable of the game?
doublerabbit
I will throw out that if anyone does want to play RA2/YR multiplayer you can for free here: https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2
Telaneo
Yes! This'll be fun to show some friends who are fans.
stego-tech
Incoming HN hug.
Love it, can’t wait to poke at it from home later.
1. The source code for Red Alert 2 is rumored to be lost a very long time ago[0], so the fact that the Chrono Divide team was able to achieve this is quite amazing.
2. The Mental Omega mod project[1] is still going strong, so RA2 is still worth playing today. Hopefully it will work in this browser-based version.
[0] https://forums.revora.net/topic/107344-red-alert-2-engine-so...
[1] https://mentalomega.com/