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Mailaender edited this page Mar 14, 2013 · 32 revisions

Frequently Asked Questions

The Downloads during Windows Installation and First Game Start don't work!

Our website http://www.open-ra.org might be down. Check the http://www.open-ra.org uptime monitoring. The mirror system that full-fills the requests to deliver the dependencies is donated by fans and might also get overloaded. Please try again later.

My game just crashed!

We're sorry to hear that. Please follow the steps below to collect the basic information we need to help you.

  1. Game Version: You can see this in the mod selection.
  2. Crash Log: Depending on your operating system, this will be in a different location:
  • Windows: My Documents\OpenRA\Logs\exception.log
  • Mac OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/OpenRA/Logs/exception.log
  • Linux: ~/.openra/Logs/exception.log

Before you post this information on the forum or IRC, please read the first line of the exception.log and check the common issues below. If you have a problem that is not mentioned here, please let us know on http://bugs.open-ra.org.

If the exception mentions a out of sync, please also post syncreport.log, which you will find in the same directory, and get everyone else who was playing the game to post it, too. The sync log is only useful if we have multiple players submit their log. You can use http://www.diffchecker.com/ to find and post the trait that caused the desync exception.

"No Valid Techniques" or "Unsupported GPU"

This error occurs if the game cannot start OpenGL. This could occur for a number of reasons, depending on your operating system and graphics card

  • Update your graphics card driver to a recent version. In particular, the Intel drivers that are bundled with Windows ("Vendor: Microsoft Corporation") do not include any OpenGL support. See your graphics card manufacturer website to download the latest drivers.
  • You have an old graphics card that doesn't support OpenRA. Although OpenRA may look like an old game, we make use of modern hardware capabilities. We require Shader Model 2.0, which means that nothing before about 2004, and some more recent cards will not work.
  • Start OpenRA.Game.exe with the command line parameter Graphics.Renderer=Cg or change your Settings to use the Cg Toolkit which might lower the required OpenGL API version a bit.
  • Compiz causes issues with OpenGL applications on Linux. This is a bug in Compiz itself, which they appear to have no interest in fixing. You will need to disable Compiz before running OpenRA.

If you are sure that none of the above issues apply, create a forum thread or see us on IRC.

Unable to find an entry point named 'glGenBuffers' in DLL 'opengl32.dll'.

This error occurs can occur if you have outdated graphics drivers under Windows. See the point above on updating them.

Unable to load DLL - System.DllNotFoundException

Download the external dependencies and extract them into the main OpenRA folder.

Nobody can join my online game!

For others to join your game, you must forward a port in your router for them to connect to. By default, OpenRA uses TCP port 1234. This can be be configured in the Create Server dialog. If you have a router that supports Universal Plug and Play tick the allow UPnP checkbox. Please keep in mind that you also need to allow connections in your software firewall.

I can't see any available servers!

The OpenRA Master Server might be down. Check the http://master.open-ra.org uptime monitoring.

Can the server and clients be running different versions?

No. While there are currently no checks in place for this, it is advised that you only run identical versions of the game when playing multi-player games. While the network protocol may not change, differences in unit behavior between versions can cause desynchronization between clients.

My FPS is way too low!

OpenRA is a work in progress, and we are doing our best to improve performance.

Some hints on what you can do:

  • On Linux spawn a separate XServer to launch OpenRA in.
  • If you are running KDE press SHIFT+ALT+F12 to temporarily turn composition effects.
  • Upgrade to Mono 3.0 on Linux/Mac and start with mono-sgen OpenRA.Game.exe or mono --gc=sgen OpenRA.Game.exe to use the new and improved garbage collector.

Still not getting better? To help us fix this, we will need some information from you.

  • Enable the performance graph (from the Main Menu → Settings → Debug → Show Performance Information) and note your average Tick and Render times in a game.
  • Your perf.log from the logs directory above
  • Your computer specs (CPU and Graphics card are most important).

Please make a forum post or a bug report with the above information.

Where do bugs go?

Please report yours to http://bugs.open-ra.org with the following crucial details:

  • What you were doing when something broke
  • What you expected to happen
  • What actually happened
  • If it's a crash, the contents of exception.log.

When will you release the next version?

See Branches and Releases for more information about the release process.

How can I help?

Get involved. There are a few ways you can do this.

  • Fork the repository and start hacking. Fix that issue that's been annoying you. Have a look at Compiling to get started.
  • Add feature requests to our bug-tracker and place bounties on them if you want someone else to work on it.
  • Join the community: The forums as well as IRC chat are a great place for future mod discussions and game-play ideas.

Do I need the original RA/C&C game installed?

No. OpenRA is completely standalone. When you run the game for the first time it will download a minimal copy of the game files that it needs to run or extract the game-files from the CD.

Is that legal?

OpenRA is a clean-room implementation of the original Westwood engine based on [reverse engineering](Reverse Engineering) the game-files without any disassembling, DLL injections or binary patches of the original executables. This is a completely Free/Libre and Open Source real-time strategy engine whose default mods depend on the original game files.

Since Electronic Arts have released both C&C and RA as Freeware we mirror stripped down version separately therefore saving EA bandwidth by hosting only the ~15MB of files that we need to run the game, instead of making everyone download the 700MB game ISO CD image. Those game assets are not covered by OpenRA's GNU General Public License. We assume the files are available for individual use and may not be put for commercial gain.

This is not true to the original!

You are right. This is in fact intended. OpenRA is not a clone. We introduced many features found in today's RTS games. The changes include:

  • Careful rebalance of the factions and units
  • Power YAML game logic parser instead of simple INI rules
  • New units: such as sniper, flak truck and Volkov
  • Right-click orders to avoid miss-clicks
  • Fog of War hides enemy units
  • Spectator mode and replays for e-Sport events
  • Support for mods and mini-games
  • Tabbed build palette which allows queuing
  • Bounties for kills and unit ranks
  • New effects: e.g. tank husks and aircraft trails

If you want the true legacy experience visit our friends at Play Red Alert 1 Online and Command & Conquer Gold: Project 1.06. They use the Open Source CnCNet - Command & Conquer Online Service for matches and chatting via the internet.

Will there be a Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2 Mod?

This depends on:

  1. Voxel support
  2. Isometry and 3D terrain
  3. SHP file format changes

which is a huge lot of work and currently not on the agenda. You patches are welcome however.

Have a look at:

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