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OpenRA, the excellent free and open source RTS game engine for playing classic Westwood titles has a huge new release finally out as stable today.

This stable release has been a long time coming too, as it's quite a big overhaul. With a more up to date rendering engine using OpenGL/ES 3.2, along with proper zooming support it makes OpenRA feel a lot more modern with niceties you find in newer games. It also includes better HiDPI support with scaling, high-res artwork and other tweaks to be a more comfortable experience. Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000 gained support for more missions, modding support expanded and the list goes on.

Since it's a big stable release they also put out a fresh update trailer you can see below:

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Prefer the raw changelog? Find it here.

If you want to play Commander & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn), Red Alert and Dune 2000 this is the best way. A fully cross-platform game engine, with cross-platform online support and the majority of the single-player is hooked up too (not all yet). OpenRA shows how awesome FOSS can be. With thanks to EA though, since they made these games free years ago making it easy for everyone. Eventually Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun will also be supported which I'm personally looking forward to!

You can download OpenRA from the official site. It includes an AppImage for each game it supports, to make it easy to run across different Linux distributions. When you open it, OpenRA will then download the data you need to play.

If you missed our previous article, the OpenRA-powered game Fractured Realms had a pre-release recently and seems like it could be worth watching!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments
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Koopacabras May 3, 2020
blast from the past, I used to play this endlessly on a pentium 166 mhz. This and Quake 1.
Like Quake 1 was a landmark for FPS, RA was for strategy games.
Tchey May 3, 2020
I played them a long time ago.

From a 2020 point of view, which one is the "better one", more advanced gameplay ?
Are they just "the same" with different thematics ?

I’ve just lost a game in Dune2000 and it was actually fun.


Last edited by Tchey on 3 May 2020 at 5:07 pm UTC
Dragunov May 3, 2020
I tried playing OpenRA, but it was nothing like the original games. If you want the originals then CnCNet has them packaged for all operating systems.
coolbober May 3, 2020
Quoting: DragunovI tried playing OpenRA, but it was nothing like the original games. If you want the originals then CnCNet has them packaged for all operating systems.

Thanks for info, however I see that Dune 2000 is windows only...
chorn May 3, 2020
Quoting: DragunovI tried playing OpenRA, but it was nothing like the original games.

Do you mean a champaign mode, giving you the single missions one after one, with the videos in between? That seems to be missing indeed. Apart of that, from style it feels to me reasonably enough like the original, but with improvements in the right corners.
RossBC May 3, 2020
All this hard work may end up having to be taken down eventually.
EA is remastering the c&c titles atm.

https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-conquer-remastered
Dragunov May 3, 2020
Those games were released as freeware, why would it need to be taken down?
oldrocker99 May 4, 2020
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I loved these games 'way back in the day. They have been remastered, and look ready for 2020. All the music has been remixed by the franchise's original composer. It is the complete C&C series, with all the expansion packs (back before Steam, and DLCs), and is available for Windows on 6/5/2020.

I bought it already. It's too important historically a franchise to ignore, and the games richly deserved their great popularity.
flesk May 4, 2020
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I was also a big fan of the franchise (especially RA2) in my youth, and have kept the boxes of most of them to this day. RA3 turned me off the franchise though, but I'm not sure if it was genuinely a much worse game than its predecessors, or if my tastes had just changed by then.

If I'm reading the remaster page correctly, the collection will only include games from the main C&C series, which were never my favorites. Nevertheless, I will definitely buy it if, and only if, it is released for Linux.
Liam Dawe May 4, 2020
Quoting: mortigarAll this hard work may end up having to be taken down eventually.
EA is remastering the c&c titles atm.

https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-conquer-remastered
No, they specifically reached out to the OpenRA community and developers about it. They can't touch OpenRA anyway, it's not using their code.
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