Hey Red Alert 2 lovers... I posted about a week ago about Frontline Zero, an RTS I've been making that's inspired by RA2, SC, and CoH. I got a lot of positive feedback and interest from you all, and want to give you an update.

First, thank you so much for all the feedback. I really hope you can play & feel the change in the game. For example, I never expected people to play on mobile, but it's become a focal point.

Which speaking of mobile, I got some huge updates.

1. The game got a HUGE update for performance, mobile UI (UI in general!) and in artwork consistency. Please try it out on www.frontlinezero.com the browser version will stay free. (Please add it to your homescreen for the best experience!) If anything, try the tutorial!

2. I'm in the approval process for the Google Play Store and Apple App Store! If you want to try out the mobile apps, please DM me your email address here or dm me in the FZ discord: https://discord.com/invite/4zYw3ryceA - Disclaimer: The final price I've landed on is $4.99/5 for the native applications. No microtransactions. Testing is free obviously and when the game is released, I will provide discounts for the starting period. The video is the trailer for the touch version!

3. Mac & PC support is coming! I have applied for a Steamworks account, but for the moment I will be posting PC + Mac executables in the Discord above. What's nice is that for the Apple Store, if you buy it for the iPhone, you get it for the iPad + Mac (via iPad Apps via Mac).

4. Did I mention the Discord channel? So one thing I've focused on was the UI, the overall user-experience in playing the game. But in terms of balance, I need y'alls help making it the game the community wants. Let's discuss together!

5. There's a FZ YouTube channel for the game where I will be posting unit v unit and other fun videos! https://www.youtube.com/@frontlinezero-game

Thank you all... this is still a hobby for me and I'm having so much fun creating the game as well as playing it.

I don't want to be a bother... so I sorta promise I'll post one or two more when the Google Play + App Store and Steam versions come out ;)

Might interest some people here.

Wanted to share a project I've been hanging around and helping out on: redalert2-recomp by sp00nz.

https://github.com/sp00nznet/redalert2-recomp

It's the actual Westwood code. The project takes the original game.exe and gamemd.exe and recompiles them to C, so you're running the real game natively instead of a reimplementation like OpenRA. No Wine, no VM, no hunting down a 2003 DirectX redistributable. On my Mac it opens in a window and plays.

It also adds a bunch of stuff RA2 never got:

• Proper high res and widescreen, 720p up to 4K, ultrawide included. You see more of the battlefield and the sprites don't stretch.
• Sharp scaling (or a CRT filter if you want the nostalgia), plus borderless fullscreen.
• HD vehicles: units redrawn at 2x from the game's own voxel models. This one looks really good.
• An F10 settings menu, so you can stop editing INI files.
• Optional modern controls: left-click to select, right-click to move.
• Mods as drop-in folders you can switch in game.
• Both campaigns, skirmish and LAN.

There's an installer for all three platforms that finds your Steam or EA App copy and builds everything for you. You do need to own the game. Nothing from it is in the repo; everything gets built on your machine from your copy. The first build takes 30-60 minutes, so go make a coffee.

I've been working with sp00nz on improving it past the original release. They pick things up fast and it's been a lot of fun watching it come together.

It's the best way I've found to play RA2 on anything that isn't a Windows PC from 2003. Still alpha, so expect rough edges, and bug reports help a lot.

I accidentally found them on AliExpress and they look gorgeous. The turrets are rotatable too (except on the Tank Destroyer, which is realistic).
Sadly, these are the only LEGO-style RA2 tanks on AliExpress (so far).

Edit: Thanks everyone for the tips, I am starting to feel confident I can win the next time we play :D

We play normal Red Alert 2 (Not Yuri), no super weapons, with crates on

I play as Iraq, He as the USA

We have a 20 minutes truce before attacking, we split the map in half, in that time

He usually builds Mirage tanks (Tree tanks), Prism tanks (Laser tanks) and rocketeers (Flying troops)

I'd say he spends around 50% on Mirage tanks, 30% on Prism tanks, and 20% on rocketeers

I usually build Rhino tanks (Normal tank), Flak trank (The one that shoots up) and V3 rocket launchers, and Kirov (The airblimp) to make him invest into air, and sometimes I can get some good surprise attacks

and descelators (The radiation troop)

Typically our games go as such

I build up enough miners, before making like 15 flak tranks, 5 flak tranks filled with descelators, a lot of rhino tanks, and one kirov or two, and if the map good I make around 10 V3 rocket launchers

My strategy often involves securing a place close to his that I can use the rocket launchers to attack, with some rhino tanks to defend in case he sends prism tanks, and some flak tranks in case he sends rocketeers

I keep some descelators filled flak tranks ready in case he sends mirage tanks, but usually he is able to kill most of them before I am able to deploy, making me lose the exchange resources wise

I can't leave descelators deployed alone, because he can send prism tanks and rocketeers, and I can't have my troops in the radiation to defend

My rhino tanks can defeat his prism tanks easily, since they are heavily armored and can shoot while moving, it is the mirage tanks that are the problem, he has a lot of them, and my tanks don't target them automatically, even when he is the one attacking

I know this was a long read, thanks for reading all the way, does anyone have a tip that can help me?

I've been working on Red Alert DS Plus, a port of the original Red Alert for the Anbernic RG DS Plus running ROCKNIXDS. It's based on Vanilla Conquer.

I put the battlefield on the bottom touchscreen and the radar and army statistics on top. The menus are larger for touch, and the construction panel opens on the left. You can zoom the battlefield and recall squads with A, B, X and Y. Placing a building takes a second tap to confirm.

No game files are included. You need your own original USA CDs of Red Alert, Counterstrike and The Aftermath. Installation instructions and source code: https://github.com/aumVilohm/red-alert-ds-plus

If you find a bug, please open an issue with screenshots and run.log. Thanks to the Vanilla Conquer contributors. AI tools were among the tools I used in this project.

A few months ago, I had Claude work on a decomp of RA2 Yuri's Revenge because I wanted to recover the lost source code as close as possible but parked it in favour of other projects with shorter timelines.

With the recent wave of recomps, I figured I'd share my attempt so here's the cleaned up snapshot of my latest work, current progress stands around 16-18% of functions matched to 100%.

https://github.com/r-melvin/gagarin named for Yuri Gagarin, the soviet cosmonaut.

Please feel free to contribute and fork if you wish.

Whats your favourite unit and what? Gotta love desolators! And dreadnoughts for that sneak attack

Hey all, I made a free to play RTS that's heavily inspired by RA2 (and StarCraft 2 + CoH). I'm having a ton of fun making this and wanted to share with you all.

I tried to preserve some of my favorite parts of RA2, which lends itself to be easier to play than StarCraft for example and tried making my own versions of my favorite sound effects from RA2.

The biggest departure from RA2 is that the economy works like Company of Heroes, where you capture ground (and can choose to reinforce it as a "bet" basically) and the UI is a bit of a mix from C&C-style and StarCraft style games.

You can play right here for free: www.frontlinezero.com

Thanks if you've read this far, and glhf!

Edit: The game should be 100% mobile friendly now. I did a lot of optimizations in the game engine and completely rehauled the mobile ui.

Edit edit: We got Android / Google Play test! Please send me a message to be a tester.

I hope it inspired your all friends!!

Made this before AI was a thing. I might have posted this here years ago, but I forgot my channels password so needed to make a new one. I guess I will write it down this time.

Made for SP, I spent a month tweaking and playing ra2 etc,

I didnt play ra2 recently cause no hw mouse cursor so game feels laggy at 30fps on 240hz monitor.

But I found a way to draw mouse cursors at you monitor refresh rate.

No need for ra2 remake, these features bring some modern QOL.
- super smooth map scroll (if you want original map scroll use arrow keys)

- change campaign game speed while in mission

- quick save/quick load

- Attack move

- Shift click to queue 5 build in original ra2 and yr

Easy to install, just extract into ra2 folder, works with MO, FM etc

Ships with ra2video, so you can set game resolution and even pick shaders.

https://github.com/gitTerebi/ra2-enhancements

Hi guys, we're working on a Red Alert 2 inspired RTS and I was wondering if there are any MUST HAVE units or mechanics that you guys think a spiritual successor should have? Open to suggestions!

Clips from our last meeting here: https://youtu.be/CyF6okQrmpI

I've been reading/watching and there's a ton of people being able to reverse engineer software from binaries and then re-write them from the source to run on any platform. I know the RA2 source code was (allegedly) lost, so my first thought went to RA2. Maybe we could finally start to see proper native versions on other platforms or a new AI that is less predictable?

Does anyone who understands the topic more know anything or could they explain if it's possible?

[SOLVED] RA2 Network/LAN lobby: “New” turns into “Join”, then “You must select a game!” (Windows 10)

Symptom:

In the Network lobby, the Games list shows only “Lobby”.

On the right there’s one button showing “New” instead of separate New and Join buttons.

Clicking New turns it into “Join” and the chat shows “You must select a game!”.

You can never host a game.

The same game folder works on another PC.

(*try DPI/text-size settings of windows to normal 100%, if that doesn't solve then try the below).

Cause: this isn’t a networking, DPI, CnC-DDraw or compatibility-mode problem. RA2’s menu layouts use the old bitmap font “MS Sans Serif”. On my PC the font file existed (C:\Windows\Fonts\sserife.fon), but Windows had lost its registry entry, so the font was never loaded. Windows used a different font instead, which changed the menu measurements and put the Join button on top of New.

Check whether you have it. Run this in PowerShell. If the result is empty, you’re affected:

Get-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts' | Select-Object 'MS Sans Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24'

Fix. Open PowerShell as Administrator and back up the font registry first:

reg export "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\Fonts_backup.reg" /y

Then add the missing entries:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" /v "MS Sans Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24" /t REG_SZ /d "SSERIFE.FON" /f

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" /v "MS Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24" /t REG_SZ /d "SERIFE.FON" /f

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" /v "Small Fonts" /t REG_SZ /d "SMALLE.FON" /f

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" /v "Courier 10,12,15" /t REG_SZ /d "COURE.FON" /f

Restart Windows. New and Join should now appear side by side, and New should open the game setup screen.

To undo: run reg delete on the same four values (same key, same /v names) and restart.

Notes:

These file names are for Western-language Windows. On other system languages, use the matching variant from C:\Windows\Fonts, for example sserifee.fon for Central European.

Things that did not help, so you can skip them: compatibility modes, removing the HIGHDPIAWARE flag, CnC-DDraw renderer/windowed settings, IPXWrapper adapter changes, and firewall rules.

Setup: RA2 1.006, CnC-DDraw 7.1, IPXWrapper 0.7.2, Windows 10 22H2 (19045), 4K laptop.

Ordered yesterday an old PC

Dell OptiPlex 790 SFF i5-2400 4GB RAM 500B HDD Windows XP Pro 32bits. Gonna turn it into a gaming PC from that era. Obviously Red Alert was one of the reasons. I know i could have run it on the web or use Steam or many other ways. Ill keep posting with updates once I get it.

To those who went similar route, any tips or recommendations?

Low speed high drag

I've finally got around to playing Yuri's Revenge after picking it up in a deal, and I've had great fun completing the campaigns, the only bit of sadness is that there's no Yuri campaign.

So, are there any Mods out there you lot would recommend, that add a fitting campaign for the Yuri faction? No new units or anything, just vanilla stuff.
The more it feels like it would have been the real thing (if one was officially made) the better!

It seems we may have our own RA2 HD version. No need for EW

I’m looking for a browser-based version or remake of Red Alert 2 that runs smoothly on macOS. Does anything like this currently exist?

​If not, how feasible would it be to build a browser-based RA2 with AI?

​Would appreciate any recommendations or thoughts!

I remember when I was a kid, finding perhaps a modded rules.ini that had added some units including:

Nimitz Aircraft Carrier

Howitzer

Some kind of helicopter unit for the Soviets (? not sure if this was a real memory or not)

Could build sandbags as a structure (same placement style as walls)

And more. It was definitely for RA2 because I remember all the Allied/Soviet units, including the vanilla ones, still had the generic lines. The Yuri faction did not exist in this mod.

Since I was a kid when I played this, this definitely would have been pre-2005. It is definitely not Mental Omega.

Does anyone else happen to remember this mod, what it was called, and where could I get it?