OpenRA (0)

OpenRA
First release date
2010-09-24
Platform
Mac PC Linux
Theme
Command & Conquer Command & Conquer: Red Alert Dune
Franchise
Command & Conquer Command & Conquer: Red Alert Dune

The OpenRA project builds upon the groundbreaking real-time strategy games from Westwood Studios. Its engine allows for modularity with three mods available as standard (Red Alert, Command&Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000) and more in development (C&C: Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2) or unofficial. The engine offers content management for each mod, so that the player can download music or - optionally - choose the directory containing the video briefings, should the player have the original C&C or Red Alert games.

OpenRA aims to re-create the original single-player missions and campaigns with re-written scripting and AI. As of December 2016 no campaign is complete yet, so the game is more suited for skirmish mode (human vs AI) or multiplayer battles than single-player missions.

The multiplayer community is vibrant with many players, as well as public and private servers, as well as "master server" which coordinates the communication and lists the games advertised online. Setting up your own server is easy and it's the way to go for LAN parties, but not necessary for online play - there is never a shortage of public ones. The first player to join a game becomes an admin, who can set the map or game options (tech level, starting credits, MCV re-deploy, explored map, fog of war, number of starting units, engineer capturing mechanics etc.), as well as open/close player slots, kick players etc.

The project has been in active development since 2010 (first release: 2010-09-24) and is mostly written in C# and Lua. It is free and open source (GNU GPLv3 license), available for multiple operating systems (including Windows, MacOS X, various GNU/Linux distributions and FreeBSD). Requires the .NET framework (or Mono) to work.