To run OpenRA, several files are needed from the original game disks. A minimal asset pack can also be downloaded and installed by the game.
The following lists per-platform dependencies required to build from source.
- Windows PowerShell >= 4.0
- .NET Framework >= 4.5 (Client Profile)
- SDL 2 (included)
- FreeType (included)
- zlib (included)
- OpenAL (included)
- liblua 5.1 (included)
You need to fetch the thirdparty dependencies and place them at the appropriate places by typing make dependencies in a command terminal.
To compile OpenRA, open the OpenRA.sln solution in the main folder, build it from the command-line with MSBuild or use the Makefile analogue command make all scripted in PowerShell syntax.
Run the game with launch-game.cmd. It can be handed arguments that specify the exact mod one wishes to run, for example, run launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=ra to launch Red Alert, launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=cnc to start Tiberian dawn or launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=d2k to launch Dune 2000.
Use make dependencies to map the native libraries to your system and fetch the remaining CLI dependencies to place them at the appropriate places.
To compile OpenRA, run make all from the command line. After this one can run the game with ./launch-game.sh. It is also possible to specify the mod you wish to run from the command line, e.g. with ./launch-game.sh Game.Mod=ts if you wish to try the experimental Tiberian Sun mod.
Type sudo make install for system-wide installation. Run sudo make install-linux-shortcuts to get startup scripts, icons and desktop files. You can then run the Red Alert by executing the openra-ra command, the Dune 2000 mod by running the openra-d2k command and Tiberian Dawn by the openra-cnc command. Alternatively, you can also run these mods by clicking on their desktop shortcuts if you ran sudo make install-linux-shortcuts.
It is important to note there is an unofficial openra-git package in the Arch User Repository (AUR) of Arch Linux. If manually compiling is the way you wish to go the build and runtime dependencies can be installed with:
sudo pacman -S mono openal libgl freetype2 sdl2 lua51 xdg-utils zenity
sudo apt install mono-devel libfreetype6 libopenal1 liblua5.1-0 libsdl2-2.0-0 xdg-utils zenity wget
sudo dnf install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity
sudo emerge -av dev-lang/mono dev-dotnet/libgdiplus media-libs/freetype:2 media-libs/libsdl2 media-libs/openal virtual/jpeg virtual/opengl '=dev-lang/lua-5.1.5*' x11-misc/xdg-utils gnome-extra/zenity
sudo dnf install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lib*lua5.1" "lib*freetype2" "lib*sdl2.0_0" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity
sudo zypper in mono-devel openal-soft freetype2 SDL2 lua51 xdg-utils zenity
The EPEL repository is required in order for the following command to run properly.
sudo yum install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity
Use make dependencies to map the native libraries to your system.
To compile OpenRA, run make from the command line.
Run with ./launch-game.sh.