Game Content

Automatic installation (recommended)

OpenRA will prompt you to install the original game content the first time that you launch a mod. This process occurs automatically from inside the game: the game client can download a minimal set of game files from the internet, or copy the full game content (including music and movies) from an original install cd.

Manual installation

If you would like to install the game files manually then you may copy the *.MIX files to

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\OpenRA\Content\$MOD or %ProgramFiles%\OpenRA\Support (portable installation)
• Mac OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/OpenRA/Content/$MOD
• Linux: ~/.openra/Content/$MOD (Note: Linux is case-sensitive, so you have to change .MIX to .mix)

where $MOD is the mod ID:

• ra for Red Alert
• cnc for Tiberian Dawn
• d2k for Dune 2000

On the first run the game will ask whether you want to download a stripped down version automatically as both the full motion video 🎬 and music soundtrack 🎼 are optional. For a wholesome multimedia experience you should copy the complete *.MIX content from the original game CD. Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn have been released by EA Games as freeware. You can download the 💿 CD-Images:

• CNCNZ.com: Freeware Classic Command & Conquer Games

• EA.com: Download Red Alert for free!

• ppmsite.com RA95 mirror

• ModDB.com: C&C: Gold Full Game

• Baxxster's C&C Gold Mirror (NOD and GDI)

• ppmsite.com C&C Gold mirror

Please keep in mind that the CD extracting algorithm is hard-coded to those CD-Images. Localized installation CDs and expansion packs will not work.

Note for users of 64-bit Windows: The original RA installer is 16-bit and so won't run on 64-bit operating systems. This can be worked around by using the Red Alert Setup Manager. Make sure you apply the no-CD protection fix so all the files needed are installed to the hard drive.

There are various other distributions of Red Alert already where you can also grab the content from:

• PortableRA
• Red Alert 1 Installer
• Red Alert 1 bundled with CnCNet

Same goes for Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn:

• Command & Conquer Gold: Project 1.06
• Command & Conquer Gold: Media Packs
• Command & Conquer Gold - Patched Installer for Windows 7, 8

Installing the full-motion videos

The FMVs take up most of the space on the original game media (~500MB each), so they are not included in the downloaded game assets. They can easily be added if you have the original media, though.

Tiberian Dawn

The installation of the movie files is quite straight-forward here. You need both the GDI and Nod disc for the installation, as each contains a different set of movies.

1. Insert the GDI disc.
2. Copy the MOVIES.MIX file from the CD to the cnc game content directory and rename it to movies-gdi.mix.
3. Insert the Nod disc.
4. Copy the MOVIES.MIX file from the CD to the cnc game content directory and rename it to movies-nod.mix.

Red Alert

The steps here are a bit more involved, as the .MIX files we are interested in are actually contained in yet other .MIX files. So we have to extract them first. Here, too, you need both the Soviet and Allied disc.

1. Insert the Allied disc.
2. Copy the MAIN.MIX file from the CD to your ra game content directory.
3. Open a terminal/console window, change to the directory where you installed OpenRA.
4. Run the following command: "./OpenRA.Utility.exe ra --extract movies1.mix"
5. Move movies1.mix from the OpenRA installation directory to your ra game content directory.
6. Insert the Soviet disc.
7. Copy the MAIN.MIX file from the CD to your ra game content directory (you can overwrite the existing one).
8. Open a terminal/console window, change to the directory where you installed OpenRA.
9. Run the following command: "./OpenRA.Utility.exe ra --extract movies2.mix"
10. Move movies2.mix from the OpenRA installation directory to your ra game content directory.

Dune 2000

This one is easier again. In fact, the Copy from CD option in-game during the asset installation will already copy the movies, in contrast to the other two mods.

If you have the need to install them manually, it's still easy since it just involves copying files from the CD to your hard drive. This will only work correctly for the assets from the English version of the game, as the files are named differently for other languages.

1. Insert the Dune 2000 disc.
2. Move the contents of the movies directory on the CD into the Movies (note: upper-case!) subdirectory of the d2k game content directory.
3. Optionally: if you have a non-English version of the game, you have to rename the movie files to match their English counterparts, so for example from a_br01_g.vqa ('g' for German) to a_br01_e.vqa ('e' for English).