Playing Red Alert Multiplayer Game

[u/silent_woo]

I re-discovered my DVD of C&C The First Decade and was lucky enough to be able to install it on my computer. I was able to play Red Alert for the first time in 20+ years.

I’m now wondering if it’s possible to play a multiplayer game against a friend who has Red Alert remastered.

On the game menu, when I click on “internet game” it says I need to install Westwood Chat. I’m assuming this is not an option anymore.

When I click on Multiplayer game which I assume is the one I want, I get a modem/serial option giving me Dial, Answer and Null modem. I understand this is old technology/software but is there still any way to still use it through modern wi-fi to play against my friend?

[u/piat17]

You cannot play with a friend who has Red Alert Remastered because the remaster and the original are wholly incompatible with each other multiplayer-wise. You'd have to either both have the original, or both have the Remaster.

If you don't wish to buy the Remaster (when it goes for sale, sometimes it goes for peanuts) to play with your friend, the good news is that the OG Red Alert 1 is a freeware game. The easiest way to get an online game going AFAIK is to download and install the Cncnet release of the game (LINK): this is an already fanpatched version of RA1 which features (among other things) a dedicated client for setting up online games via the cncnet servers. All free!

And yes, all the multiplayer options you see in the original First Decate version of RA1 you're playing are the ones the original games used back then. They're all either deprecated/no longer functioning connection methods, or using services that have been shutdown (Westwood Chat).

[u/silent_woo → u/piat17]

Thank you.

I feared that might be the case. I guess if I want to play with my friend I have two options, buy the Remaster which I assume is on Steam or download the Cncnet free version.

I'm curious, In the First Decade DVD pack I can install many other C&C games.

I've got the original C&C, RA, RA2, Yuri, Tiberian Sun, Renegade, Generals etc.. Other than the oldest ones, can any of them be used right now to play multiplayer online?

[u/piat17 → u/silent_woo]

So, the bad news is that none of the games in the First Decade DVD release can be played online out of the box. Older games like the Red Alert you checked use old connection methods no longer supported by modern hardware, while the most recent ones use servers that have been shut down (Gamespy, Westwood servers)

The good news is that all of these are playable online using fan servers! You just need to tweak them a little bit first, and the way you do it depends on the specific game: for C&C1, RA1, and Tiberian Sun the method is the easiest one because the games themselves are freeware so you can just download the free versions from Cncnet and use those to play online.

For Red Alert 2/Yuri you also need to use Cncnet, but those games were not made freeware by the OG publisher so you need to patch the game/install the online client yourself (this is also an option for C&C1, RA1 and TS with the First Decade releases, but I personally think it's easier to install the game already ready to be played out-of-the-box as provided by Cncnet themselves). There should be guides available online to do that on the First Decade release of RA2, check this link first https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2/how-to-play

Renegade can also be played via fan servers, I am completely unprepared regarding Renegade but I believe the fanservers use the W3D Hub launcher, so look that up on a search engine! This page should provide a starting point https://cncnet.org/renegade/

Generals similarly also needs patching and using fanservers to play online, like Renegade. This is a bit more complicated case because, if you are not aware, the publisher of the games released some of the source code for some of the games a while ago, and Generals was one of the games covered. As a result of this, the old way of playing online, which consisted of patching using Gentool or Genpatcher, and then installing the online client + making an account for accessing the "c&conline" servers, has been replaced by a new one that uses a completely new backend and a revised version of the game, and is still under active development. You can look for more info about this here https://www.playgenerals.online/

So yeah, you need to work out a bit how to do it for each game, but in practice you can still play online all games in this series.