Just bought the command and conquer pack and red alert 2 is super choppy in-game

[thanecolcy]

I just bought the command and conquer pack with a bunch of games and i have 2 issues: 1) the performance in-game sucks! its slow and choppy. pretty much unplayable. 2) if i get a notification on my desktop, in minimizes and then only comes back to a blank screen even though i can hear the game's music and sounds.

so i want to know if i just wasted my money and this is how it's going to be or is there a fix? honestly playing these old games has been a nightmare. i own the hard copy of RA2 but can't get that to install so i bought the digital copy and now that won't work.

any good advice would be much appreciated!

THANKS!

-TC-

[SgtRomeo9 · Accepted solution]

Hi @thanecolcy

If you're still struggling to get Red Alert 2 up and running, see if any of these steps resolve your issues. 

First thing I would suggest you try is go to this file in your Red Alert 2 directory: ra2(md).ini and type in the following lines:

[Video]

VideoBackBuffer=no

Next I'd suggest replacing the Direct Draw dll with a more compatible version. You can find the download link here: http://esource.freedomstudios.net/misc/ddraw.rar

Simply unzip and place in the root of your games' directory.

You can also look at simply downloading an overall game fix for Windows 8.1, 10 here: http://web.archive.org/web/20160322003041/http://cncftw.com/Data/2_Patches/Red_Alert_2-Windows_8_and...

Unzip the file and run the exe. Replace all game files as needed. Once done set all the games' exe files to the following compatibility settings:

Windows 7, Reduced Color Mode: 16bit, Disable display scaling on high DPi settings and Run as administrator.

Hope all of this helps.

Me personally, because I play and own so many older games, I have a dedicated partition and install of Ubuntu 16.04 running Wine 2.19 Stagging. All of these old games including ones from EA, they work straight out the box. Insert disc, install, double click the exe. Simple as that.

All you need to do is configure wine once and even that is crazy simple. Select Windows 7 as your Windows configuration and select emulate virtual desktop, and even that last one isn't necessarily needed. That's it.

Take Care

[SgtRomeo9 · Accepted solution]

Hi @thanecolcy

If you're still struggling to get Red Alert 2 up and running, see if any of these steps resolve your issues. 

First thing I would suggest you try is go to this file in your Red Alert 2 directory: ra2(md).ini and type in the following lines:

[Video]

VideoBackBuffer=no

Next I'd suggest replacing the Direct Draw dll with a more compatible version. You can find the download link here: http://esource.freedomstudios.net/misc/ddraw.rar

Simply unzip and place in the root of your games' directory.

You can also look at simply downloading an overall game fix for Windows 8.1, 10 here: http://web.archive.org/web/20160322003041/http://cncftw.com/Data/2_Patches/Red_Alert_2-Windows_8_and...

Unzip the file and run the exe. Replace all game files as needed. Once done set all the games' exe files to the following compatibility settings:

Windows 7, Reduced Color Mode: 16bit, Disable display scaling on high DPi settings and Run as administrator.

Hope all of this helps.

Me personally, because I play and own so many older games, I have a dedicated partition and install of Ubuntu 16.04 running Wine 2.19 Stagging. All of these old games including ones from EA, they work straight out the box. Insert disc, install, double click the exe. Simple as that.

All you need to do is configure wine once and even that is crazy simple. Select Windows 7 as your Windows configuration and select emulate virtual desktop, and even that last one isn't necessarily needed. That's it.

Take Care