Updated: April 22, 2024
Red Alert is best Red Alert. Or is it? Some twenty summers ago, I used to play Red Alert a lot, and when Yuri's Revenge was released, I found the franchise even more fun and exciting than before. Entrenched infantry, Kirov airships, improved graphics, the whole deal was magical. In 2008, I got myself the Command & Conquer The First Decade DVD Collection, played some more. Then, a few years went by ...
Some time back, I got some serious Command & Conquer cravings, and decided to try the games in a more modern settings, including Linux. Indeed, I showed you how to play Red Alert as well as Red Alert 2 in Linux. Then, once Red Alert Remastered got released and had me seriously hooked on building tanks and Tesla coils, I decided to try the Linux experiment once more. Indeed, using Steam Proton, the results were phenomenal. Just a month ago, the second installment in this fine franchise got released on Valve's gaming platform. I bought it immediately and decided to try the game in Linux, straight away. Let me share the details of that experiment.
Early testing, no luck
I tried Yuri's Revenge the very next day. The game installs, loads, you can see the intro movie, but then, instead of the main screen, you get a black screen. You can hear the music, but you can't do anything. Searching through various forums points to an outdated ddraw library. One could grab unofficial builds and replace the Proton files, or wait. I decided to go with the second option.
Oh, just for fun, unrelated, here's my DVD:
Later testing, luck
Just two weeks later, there was an update for the game, plus a new version of Proton. I felt this should do it, and indeed it did. Without any hacks on my side, Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge both run just fine. The default resolution is set to 1024x768 pixels, so if you use a modern monitor/display, the game will show up with black bars on both sides in fullscreen mode. No biggie.
Change resolution
Since this is the original game, sans any modern remastering, the available resolutions are a bit meh. Now, you can manually change the resolution beyond what the in-game menu offers. In Steam, right-click on the game title, browse game files. In the file manager, look for these two files:
- RA2.INI for Red Alert 2.
- RA2MD.INI for Yuri's Revenge.
Look for the [Video] section, by default it will look like:
[Video]
ScreenWidth=1024
ScreenHeight=768
StretchMovies=no
You can change this to:
[Video]
ScreenWidth=XXXX
ScreenHeight=YYYY
StretchMovies=yes
AllowHiResModes=yes
For example:
[Video]
ScreenWidth=1920
ScreenHeight=1200
StretchMovies=yes
AllowHiResModes=yes
The resolution changes will only affect the actual games, not the main/title screen. Also, the game management screen, where you choose to load, save, abort, and whatnot, will be top-left aligned to the original 1024x768px resolution, so it may look a bit weird. But the game will look phenomenal. HINT: This has improved with yet another Steam update since, but that will be the theme of a future article.
Yuri's Revenge, 1920x1200px resolution. Looking good.
Quirks
I noticed a few small issues. The first one is, you command your units with left click, which may seems "odd" if you played a lot of RTS lately, including the remastered Red Alert or say Age of Empires II. Perhaps if this games also gets modernized, there will be a tweak to change this.
Alt + Tab makes the game unplayable. If you switch out, you want be able to switch back in. Finally, even at the highest speed, the mouse scrolling is slow. Or rather, the acceleration is slow. It takes time for the game to respond, and this makes it a bit hard to play at the moment. I guess this is a consequence of running the title on modern graphics, and should be fixed soon. But yeah, here we are.
Conclusion
For now, Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge are both playable in Linux, with little to no changes or modifications. You can manually alter the resolution if you like. There are also some bugs and issues, which I expect to be resolved soon. Give it a month or two, and we should have a gem at our hands. As I alluded earlier, I've already tested the updated version (Proton and Yuri, both), and some of the stuff mentioned above won't be necessary, at all. But we will get there.
This is a superb game, and I will review it fully and properly again, just twenty odd years late. But I find it quite illuminating that we're seeing a resurgence of old classics, and what makes it even more fascinating is the undying popularity they carry. Technically, the world of RTS today is the world of late 90s and early 2000s. And Yuri's Revenge definitely has its place on the podium. Linux users aren't left in the lurch. Far from it. Things seem quite all right, and will only get better. Stay tuned for updates.
Cheers.