Hi!
Red Alert 2 works great with windows 7, 8 and 10.
It is a problem with windows 7, 8 and 10 when you download a good copy of the game ( There are many bad, bad downloads pages, so take care). If the game not will start. A string error pops up “FATAL string message” Go to your RA2 folder. Find RA2.exe. Right click your mouse. Couse properties. Then let your OS solv the problem and confirm all of it. Then the “string” problem is gone and you can open the game. In windows 7 it’s no problem but in windows 8 and 10 you have to do a bit more ot it crashes.
In windows 8 and 10 all you have to do is using CnCGraphicsPatch. It will take care of grafikk problems witch makes the game stop and you have to restart your beloved computer time after time. I got the patch and can email it to you or you can download it on: http://www.stuffhost.de/files/cnc/ No virus, no pop ups, a clean site.
But this you have to know: (it’s not RA2.exe you have to patch, it’s “game.exe” in the RA2 folder you do it with.
Read this:
At the time of release, this project was merely a day old, so if anything does not work, send me a message.
This patch is designed to improve rendering in Windows Vista and later.
It might not have an effect on earlier versions of Windows, or it might even have a negative impact.
This patch is also stupid, because it does not automatically distiguish between OS versions to select the best behavior.
Sorry for that, but I won't change it.
Testing showed this patch is working even with mods like Twisted Insurrection for Tiberian Sun and Mental Omega 2.0psi (which is using NPatch).
So chances are good it is working for other mods, too.
How to use
Download the patcher and either put in in the same directory as the game or put the game.exe/gamemd.exe file in the same folder as this patcher and run it.
The patch is not applied until you apply it explicitly, and it can be undone again using the patcher.
To prevent issues with Windows Vista or later, I recommend to put the patcher into a separate folder and copy the game file into it.
Copy it back after patching.
Also: Back up your original game file, just to be sure.
You will need the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 to run this tool.
After all files are patched, this patcher is not needed any more.
Background
The dimetric Command & Conquer games use several temporary graphics to draw to.
Some of them are allocated in Video RAM, some of them are allocated in system RAM.
When the game wants to draw something, the data has to be copied from VRAM to system RAM,
which is an expensive operation and it gets more obvious the more objects (units, debris, ...) are on the map.
The patch changes the game to not allocate surfaces in VRAM in the first place, so this cannot become an issue.
The following bytes need to be changed. This is not optimized. If you understand the raw assembler instructions,
you can optimize it by putting a jmp there.
Game Offset Original Patched
Tiberian Sun 0008AC2F 3C 01 75 0C 90 90 90 90
Red Alert 2 000AA51F 3C 01 75 0C 90 90 90 90
Yuri's Revenge 000BA61F 3C 01 75 0A 90 90 90 90
Credits
The patches solve the problem the same way as it is done by Ares, the Yuri's Revenge expansion dll.
The original fix was implemented by DCoder. I applied this solution to TS and RA2 and coded the patching tool around it.
CnCPatcher © AlexB
And you need to download ipxwrapper-0.6.1 (258 kB) and understand the readme.txt in the *.rar file. Then you can play mulitplayer game. A good download site: http://www.solemnwarning.net/ipxwrapper/ No virus, no pop ups, a clean site. But you have to read the readme.txt
And if you want to know more about old games as RA2, HL, CS or Quke. It’s running for free on my computer. Send me a mail. I got all this games. I give it away for free. If you have a FTP server running or I can send you this games for free on a memoreystick. As long as you pay for freight and send me a memoreystick before that. J 4 GB is all that it takes for RA2, Quake, Half Life and CS. And RA2 is almost fit for fight. Just ipxconfig.exe has to be sett up right if you have wifi or lan…
Good luck for all the old games!
Knumort 😇 gmail.com
