OpenRA is a Libre/Free Real Time Strategy game engine supporting early
Westwood games like Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

Distributed mods include a reimagining and updating of both the Red
Alert and Command & Conquer multiplayer games.

You may run the game from desktop games menu or just manually
run the game with `mono OpenRA.Game.exe Game.Mods=ra` for Red Alert
or `mono OpenRA.Game.exe Game.Mods=cnc` for Command & Conquer.

If you have problems starting the game consider switching to
alternative Cg Renderer. You may run the game with alternative
Cg Graphics Renderer from desktop games menu or by adding
`Graphics.Renderer=Cg` parameter explicitly to above console commands
 (convenient for some integrated graphics cards).
To run explicitly with a default one use `Graphics.Renderer=Gl`
parameter. The default Graphics Renderer is a better one, so
don't forget to upgrade your graphics hardware drivers to the
latest version. For Cg renderer also try to upgrade nvidia-cg-toolkit
too. 

The RA packages will need to be extracted to ~/.openra/Content/ra/
before the RA mod will actually work. The C&C packages will need
to be extracted to ~/.openra/Contet/cnc/ for C&C mod. You may 
execute OpenRA and it will suggest to download content from original
CD or a minimal one from OpenRA site automatically. You may also try
to download minimal content pack from OpenRA site manually by using
OpenRA Utility:

cd /usr/share/games/openra
mono OpenRA.Utility.exe --download-url=http://open-ra.org/get-dependency.php?file=ra-packages,/tmp/ra-packages.zip
mono OpenRA.Utility.exe --extract-zip=/tmp/ra-packages.zip,~/.openra/Content/ra/

The same commands for C&C mod:
mono OpenRA.Utility.exe --download-url=http://open-ra.org/get-dependency.php?file=cnc-packages,/tmp/cnc-packages.zip
mono OpenRA.Utility.exe --extract-zip=/tmp/cnc-packages.zip,~/.openra/Content/cnc/

But the better choice is to download a full pack from original game CD
(or iso). However, full CD pack usage result in slower game start from
OpenRA Lobby. It happens due to a lot of unnecessary things like video
clips were pre-packaged in it. If you want optimal game start and all
music themes (made by Frank Klepacki) from classic CD you should
download them from OpenRA Forum:
http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=15063

The minimal required files for the Red Alert mod are:
EITHER:
 * conquer.mix
 * temperat.mix
 * interior.mix
 * snow.mix
 * sounds.mix
 * allies.mix
 * russian.mix
OR: (Usually pretty long game start)
 * main.mix
AND:
 * redalert.mix

The minimal required files for the Command and Conquer mod are:
 * cclocal.mix
 * speech.mix
 * conquer.mix
 * sounds.mix
 * tempicnh.mix
 * temperat.mix
 * winter.mix
 * desert.mix

If you have a case-sensitive filesystem you must change the filenames to
lower case.

Red Alert and C&C have been released by EA Games as freeware. They could be
downloaded from http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic
Unfortunately the 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
 (http://ra.afraid.org/html/downloads/utilities-3.html).
Make sure you apply the no-CD protection fix so all the files needed
are installed to the hard drive.

If your notebook doesn't show long battery life under OpenRA load you can
do several things:
1. Turn off "Show Shellmap" item under General tab of Settings menu.
2. Edit ~/.openra/settings.yaml in the "Graphics:" section to add
framelimiter. Add "CapFramerate: True" string there to enable framelimiter.
The default setting is 60 frames per second. You can change it's value by
adding "MaxFramerate: 70", for example, string in that section. Be careful
with special tab symbols at the beginning of the strings. Don't forget to
backup your settings file.

Please note: OpenRA has 2 types of released versions:
1. Release Versions or just Versions.
2. Unstable Playtests Versions or just Playtests.
Release Versions are considered as more stable ones. Playtests are also
pretty stable in most cases but they have usually more features wich are
needed to be tested before inclusion into release. So, if you have any
problems, please report them to the IRC channel #openra on irc.freenode.net
(Use http://webchat.freenode.net/ if you don't have IRC client)
or to the bug-tracker (http://bugs.open-ra.org).

You may also see servers list with
http://master.open-ra.org/list.php
or by using orabot on IRC channel:
]games (or !games)
to see the games wich are waiting to start or
]games --all
to see all games.

Please read HACKING for an overview of the engine and read OpenRA Wiki
page for more info about the game and it's development:
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki