How to install Red Alert 1 on Windows XP Vista 7 8 10 Linux MAC. 32 / 64bit

[RickyD]

I finally got around to play through the game and both expansions, great job you guys did there to keep that old game playable, it is very appreciated. Over the course of playing the game I stumbled on a couple of things that may be glitches, bugs or features, I don't know. The first one is kind of a major problem, the rest are mostly minor nitpicks you way or may not be interested in fixing but I'm throwing them in for good measure just in case you are interested in patching those things (or not in case those were weird game behaviors were also present in the original game and you intend for this version of the game to behave as close as the original version did.)

First of all, big exploit, the game does not save the exact number of ore on every tile. I recall one mission where I had an ore field where my collectors harvested in a checker board pattern, when I saved and reloaded my game, the checker board pattern was gone, replaced with tiles fully saturated with ore. Not only that, but I did some testing later on, you can increase the size of ore fields simply by saving and loading the game at the start of a mission, and every single time ore is spawned on the map, simply save and load the game and the game will replace the tiles with less than maximum number of ore with tiles fully saturated in ore. I do not know whether this is a bug in this version of Red Alert or if this is a feature from the original version of Red Alert, that being said, this is definitively an exploit in my book and if it's not gonna be fixed, the two guys speedrunning the game should definitively be informed of its existence because it could probably help them improve some of their records.

I would have liked if the difficulty level chosen at the start of a mission or campaign was shown somewhere on the GUI, the option menu or the briefing screen. I played the whole game on Hard difficulty but there were times where I was unsure whether I picked Normal or Hard difficulty, especially in the expansion missions where units' stats and speed are tweaked, which sometimes had me thinking "Man, units moves so fast, I think I chose the wrong difficulty level, better restart to be sure I'm playing on Hard..."

This one's more of a minor annoyance than anything, if you capture sub pens and build submarines in the Allies campaign, when you destroy all the Soviet buildings, the game will not only reveal the location of the enemy submarines, it will also reveal the location of your submarines too. Not a deal breaker but it's a tiny bit annoying when you wanted to use submarines to efficiently snipe and clear out those annoying Soviet submarines clumped together in choke points.

In the Aftermath mission Deus Ex Machina, if you put a scientist or Volkov in a chinook helicopter, as soon one of them enters the chinook, it will immediately take off and fly north to evac the unit. Not a game breaking problem but definitively a leftover copter behavior from those evac Einstein/Kosygin type of missions that doesn't belong in Deus Ex Machina.

In the final Allies campaign mission, as soon you destroy the outpost with Tanya, you are given reinforcements and a MCV. I have noticed when I played the game, the reinforcement and MCV enter from the east but below the destroyed outpost, but while watching speedruns of the game, I noticed speedrunners get their reinforcement and MCV to enter from the east but above the destroyed outpost in the middle of a bunch of ore fields. I don't know which version behave correctly.

Anyway, thanks again for keeping this old game alive.

[capsulej]

Any plans to update this to 2k or 4k resolutions? Would be kind of cool to see the whole map in one screen without scrolling

[FunkyFr3sh]

9 hours ago, capsulej said:

Any plans to update this to 2k or 4k resolutions? Would be kind of cool to see the whole map in one screen without scrolling

2k should be working fine. 4k is crashing the game, anything that's bigger than the max map size doesn't work. Max resolution is somewhere around 3000*3000 I think. I don't have a 4k screen to test this

[boshank20]

Hi,

Firstly thanks very much for the work on the installer.

RA works fine for me on my laptop but I tried to plug it in to my TV via a HDMI and it keeps crashing. Is this because of the 4k issue that you mentioned? Would there be any way to get around this?

Thanks for your help!

[FunkyFr3sh]

23 minutes ago, boshank20 said:

Hi,

Firstly thanks very much for the work on the installer.

RA works fine for me on my laptop but I tried to plug it in to my TV via a HDMI and it keeps crashing. Is this because of the 4k issue that you mentioned? Would there be any way to get around this?

Thanks for your help!

It should work fine as long as you don't set your game resolution to 4k. The config program will not even allow you to do that, unless you type it in manually.

What is the exact error message? Do you have a file named ra95-crash.dmp in your game folder? If so, could you please upload it here?

You could also try to play a skirmish game via cncnet and it should offer you to upload the crash automatically, that's a bit easier than doing it manually

[boshank20]

I don't get an error message. It starts the intro video then always freezes at the same point. I have attached a screenshot. There isn't any ra95-crash.dmp in the game folder.

I tried starting a skirmish game through cncnet5.exe and it seems to work ok. So there is some difference between running the game via that file and running ra95.exe. I have tried changing the config settings a few times but it doesn't fix anything.

Any idea what the issue might be? Is there any other info I can provide?

Thanks

[FunkyFr3sh]

52 minutes ago, boshank20 said:

I don't get an error message. It starts the intro video then always freezes at the same point. I have attached a screenshot. There isn't any ra95-crash.dmp in the game folder.

I tried starting a skirmish game through cncnet5.exe and it seems to work ok. So there is some difference between running the game via that file and running ra95.exe. I have tried changing the config settings a few times but it doesn't fix anything.

Any idea what the issue might be? Is there any other info I can provide?

Thanks

 

Can you give me your settings files? Maybe I can reproduce it (I see you got some special settings there, window mode + custom res for example)

 

Could you attach ddraw.ini and redalert.ini to a post here on the forums?

 

Also, make sure there are no compatibility modes enabled for ra95.exe

 

 

Edit: 

Sorry, I missed your previous post. So this only happens once the TV is plugged in?

Can you try to change your renderer to DDrawCompat and see if it still happens? (It doesn't support windowed mode sadly)

[boshank20]

Yes it only happens when it's plugged into the TV. I tried it with DDrawCompat but it still crashes at the same point in the intro video. I just noticed an error pop-up which says " An attempt was made to set the cooperative level when it was already set to exclusive."

Googling that error message sent me here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/gg426125(v=vs.85).aspx

which gives the error code DDERR_EXCLUSIVEMODEALREADYSET for that error message. Any idea what that refers to?

 

Thanks for you help

 

 

 

[Bob_Bob]

Hi!

Thanks for everything, that's great.

But I've got a little problem :

I install the program and it went well but I've a crash message when I try to use it.

Can you help me?

Thanks

[FunkyFr3sh]

@boshank20

That error message is interesting.... Still can't help you with it, but i'll do some research and testing later.

 

@Bob_Bob

Can you attach the ra95crash.dmp file here to a post in the forums? You can find it in your game folder.

I can already see that there is a high DPI problem, the window is getting scaled (this is not supposed to happen...).

Did you enable any compatibility modes for the game? don't do that!

[Bob_Bob]

Hi!

 

Thanks.

Which folder is it ? I can find the file even in the "help" folder.

I tested with and without " compatibility modes".

[FunkyFr3sh]

14 hours ago, Bob_Bob said:

Hi!

 

Thanks.

Which folder is it ? I can find the file even in the "help" folder.

I tested with and without " compatibility modes".

 

It's probably here:

c: \Games\CnCNet\Red Alert\

 

[Bob_Bob]

Here it is:

 

ra95crash.zip

[FunkyFr3sh]

29 minutes ago, Bob_Bob said:

Here it is:

 

ra95crash.zip

 

It's crashing because the file "temperat.pal" is missing, which should be inside of "redalert.mix".

Try to re-install the game.

 

Make sure your security programs are not interfering with the installer

[Bob_Bob]

It works!

Thanks!

[yjfyy]

I want to add a language file, can I add a function in the redalert.ini GameLanguage=1 Add a custom language file?
For example: GameLanguage=7 will call lang7.mix
GameLanguage=8 will call lang8.mix

Does the language file package have examples? For example, those files are needed.

Edited May 30, 2018 by yjfyy

[Ruta]

Hello. Please, help me to install Red Alert on Windows 7 64 bit... Is it impossible?

[FunkyFr3sh]

On 5/30/2018 at 5:51 AM, yjfyy said:

I want to add a language file, can I add a function in the redalert.ini GameLanguage=1 Add a custom language file?
For example: GameLanguage=7 will call lang7.mix
GameLanguage=8 will call lang8.mix

Does the language file package have examples? For example, those files are needed.

 

You will have to use a existing filename for now (until you're done...) use russianlanguagepack.MIX + 7

 

16 minutes ago, Ruta said:

Hello. Please, help me to install Red Alert on Windows 7 64 bit... Is it impossible?

 

It depends on what you're trying to do, the easiest way is to get the installer from here: https://cncnet.org/red-alert

Make sure you click on "View all Downloads" and pick the one you need

It does work fine on win7 64bit.

 

 

If you have the CD's or ISO files and you don't want to download the game again then check the first post for instructions:

https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/1165-how-to-install-red-alert-1-on-windows-xp-vista-7-8-10-linux-mac-32-64bit/

[Ruta]

I want to install not online game, but iso file. I want to play offline Red Alert. Where to get red alert iso file and the instruction for Win7 64bit. Thanks for the answer!

[Grant]

Click "View all Downloads" at the bottom, and a "single player download" will appear - https://cncnet.org/red-alert#download

[Grant]

You don't need the ISO, download https://downloads.cncnet.org/RA1installer.exe

Select Full Web-Installation (Install CD 1 and Checkbox below CD 2)

[Ruta]

5 minutes ago, Grant said:

You don't need the ISO, download https://downloads.cncnet.org/RA1installer.exe

Select Full Web-Installation (Install CD 1 and Checkbox below CD 2)

Ok, thanks for now. It is installing now. I'll wait.

[Ruta]

1 hour ago, Ruta said:

Ok, thanks for now. It is installing now. I'll wait.

So.. Installed, and at the finish I click on Play Offline, but it doesn't work. Black screen with mouse. Do I have install something else?

[FunkyFr3sh]

3 hours ago, Ruta said:

So.. Installed, and at the finish I click on Play Offline, but it doesn't work. Black screen with mouse. Do I have install something else?

Try to click on Settings in the game launcher and then change your renderer. There are only a few, you can test through all of them and see which one works. Would be nice if you report back which one is working!

[Ruta]

1 hour ago, FunkyFr3sh said:

Try to click on Settings in the game launcher and then change your renderer. There are only a few, you can test through all of them and see which one works. Would be nice if you report back which one is working!

Thanks for help! Working! Attached photo, which renderer fit me. DDrawCompat. THANKS, THANKS, THANKS!!!