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.
Compiling OpenRA requires the following dependencies:
- Windows PowerShell >= 4.0 (included by default in recent Windows 10 versions)
- .NET 6 SDK (or via Visual Studio)
To compile OpenRA, open the OpenRA.sln solution in the main folder, build it from the command-line with dotnet 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.
.NET 6 or Mono (version 6.4 or later) is required to compile OpenRA. We recommend using .NET 6 when possible, as Mono is poorly packaged by most Linux distributions (e.g. missing the required msbuild toolchain), and has been deprecated as a standalone project.
The .NET 6 download page provides repositories for various package managers and binary releases for several architectures. If you prefer to use Mono, we suggest adding the upstream repository for your distro to obtain the latest version and the msbuild toolchain.
To compile OpenRA, run make from the command line (or make RUNTIME=mono if using Mono). 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.
The default behaviour on the x86_64 architecture is to download several pre-compiled native libraries using the Nuget packaging manager. If you prefer to use system libraries, compile instead using make TARGETPLATFORM=unix-generic.
If you choose to use system libraries, or your system is not x86_64, you will need to install SDL 2, FreeType, OpenAL, and liblua 5.1 before compiling OpenRA.
These can be installed using your package manager on various distros:
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S openal libgl freetype2 sdl2 lua51
Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install libfreetype6 libopenal1 liblua5.1-0 libsdl2-2.0-0
Fedora
sudo dnf install SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft
Gentoo
sudo emerge -av media-libs/freetype:2 media-libs/libsdl2 media-libs/openal virtual/opengl '=dev-lang/lua-5.1.5*'
Mageia
sudo dnf install SDL2 freetype "lib*lua5.1" "lib*freetype2" "lib*sdl2.0_0" openal-soft
openSUSE
sudo zypper in openal-soft freetype2 SDL2 lua51
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and rebuilds, e.g. CentOS)
The EPEL repository is required in order for the following command to run properly.sudo yum install SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft
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.
.NET 6 or Mono (version 6.4 or later) is required to compile OpenRA. We recommend using .NET 6 unless you are running a very old version of macOS (10.9 through 10.14).
To compile OpenRA, run make from the command line (or make RUNTIME=mono if using Mono). Run with ./launch-game.sh.