Getting openra (c&c red alert) to work multiplayer

[FreakNigh]

First start by emerging the really old version of openra to get the dependencies.

Next download whatever the latest version's source is. This is done by going to this link directly -

https://codeload.github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/tar.gz/release-20170527

where the date is whatever is supposedly the latest version claimed at http://www.openra.net/

It may also be possible to instead go to -

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA

Then click the branches drop down, then tags, then select the tag for the latest release. Then click clone / download and download the zip.

..........

After you got the latest zip, unzip and type in to the folder -

make.cmd version release-20170527
make

..........

Now you should be able to run ./launch-game.sh from that folder and play multiplayer. If you want to watch replays create a launch-replay.sh with this in it -

mono OpenRA.Game.exe Engine.LaunchPath=/home/nigh/Downloads/openra/OpenRA-release-20170527/launch-game.sh Launch.Replay=/home/nigh/.openra/Replays/ra/release-20170527/$1

[Hu]

This sounds like a good use case for a live-VCS ebuild or, if upstream is diligent about producing releases, just bumping the ebuild in Portage. What problems did you encounter with that approach that are avoided by installing by hand?

[FreakNigh]

Actually it looks like the repo they suggest to use on the site has the latest version in it -

[FreakNigh]

[Hu]

VCS = Version Control System. These are typically numbered -9999 and will always build the latest available code, which completely removes the latency and curation normally provided by the Gentoo maintainer. You build whatever the upstream developers have published, whether or not it works and whether or not anyone else has even attempted to build it. This can be helpful when projects have decent internal quality control and a bad habit of not declaring releases. It can backfire horribly when upstream tends to commit broken or poorly tested work.

[FreakNigh]

I think live-VCS would work if it could grab the top tagged code and compile it with the right release version. However just the latest code couldn't play multiplayer and the updates aren't significant even between 2014 and 2017.