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CNC-Ultimate-Collection-Fixed-Launchers
Fixed launchers for the games in Origin's Command and Conquer: The Ultimate Collection. Re-enables command-line parameters for the games, adds in some missing registry keys, and adds in some community patches automatically.
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C&C: Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert: Here, you have options, since EA released the game for free. Option 1: CnCNet's installers. These actually even come with Linux versions (don't get too excited: they're just wine wrappers) and are generally easy to work with. There are Lutris installers that wrap them, and it's overall very easy (just make sure you add ddraw to your dll overrides in wine as native,builtin). However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. You might have the best luck with the game data in C&C Remastered, but I didn't really test that. Option 3: C&C Remastered. Yeah, it means putting $20 in EA's pocket, but honestly I'd say they deserve it for this. C&C Remastered is a really, really good release, it runs flawlessly through Proton, it doesn't install Origin in your prefix, and it has full mod support thanks to game code and a map editor that are both GPLed (please, someone port that map editor to linux... I might learn C# just to do it myself). And it has substantial control improvements over the originals (right clicks! Oh, how I missed you), and a remastered soundtrack, which is honestly worth the $20 in and of itself (hence why one of the very few programming projects I completed was writing a tool to rip it from the game files). If you want to play multiplayer, CnCnet or Remastered are the way to go... or you could play OpenRA, but honestly OpenRA is less a recreation and more a new game that plays like C&C and uses its assets. Still a great time though.
C&C: Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert: Here, you have options, since EA released the game for free. Option 1: CnCNet's installers. These actually even come with Linux versions (don't get too excited: they're just wine wrappers) and are generally easy to work with. There are Lutris installers that wrap them, and it's overall very easy (just make sure you add ddraw to your dll overrides in wine as native,builtin). However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. You might have the best luck with the game data in C&C Remastered, but I didn't really test that. Option 3: C&C Remastered. Yeah, it means putting $20 in EA's pocket, but honestly I'd say they deserve it for this. C&C Remastered is a really, really good release, it runs flawlessly through Proton, it doesn't install Origin in your prefix, and it has full mod support thanks to game code and a map editor that are both GPLed (please, someone port that map editor to linux... I might learn C# just to do it myself). And it has substantial control improvements over the originals (right clicks! Oh, how I missed you), and a remastered soundtrack, which is honestly worth the $20 in and of itself (hence why one of the very few programming projects I completed was writing a tool to rip it from the game files). If you want to play multiplayer, CnCnet or Remastered are the way to go... or you could play OpenRA, but honestly OpenRA is less a recreation and more a new game that plays like C&C and uses its assets. Still a great time though.
Red Alert II/Yuri's Revenge: Hooo boy. This is where the pain starts. Red Alert II, unlike all prior Command and Conquers, was never made freeware. You'll have to buy it. Easier said than done: RA2 is, presently, only available for purchase on Origin, as part of Command and Conquer: The Ultimate Collection, which gives you every C&C game ever for the convenient price of $20. Y'know. With the less convenient problem that you just bought all the games... on Origin, the EA platform that is bad. And sucks. And of course, because EA is EA, this remaster was put together by a division separate from the one that made C&C Remastered and that hates humanity. Like most divisions of EA. So you end up with a collection of games that HAVEN'T been fixed to run properly on new versions of windows... but HAVE been modified to include Origin DRM, disable mod support, and not recognize command-line options. It's the worst of both worlds! Fortunately, there is a fix. Step one is to download the Origin client in a wineprefix (Lutris helps here) and install RA2. Ordinarily at this point you would probably have to install a cracked executable, but that's fortunately not necessary here: just go over to xwis and download their C&C RA2 multiplayer installer. This is a NoCD patch for RA2 and Yuri's Revenge, and yes, it is official and totally legal. It essentially removes all DRM, to the point that you can straight-up copy your RA2 install folder between systems and have it work. So that's great. Once you've done that, install cnc-ddraw or ts-ddraw and add ddraw to your DLL overrides. Or install CnCnet, which will do all that for you. In order to play online with XWis, you'll need your CD key, which you can find under game information in Origin. I never got this to work, but in theory it should be doable. CnCnet is much easier to get working, you'll just need to install dotnet40 and xna40 using winetricks, and run the CnCnet installer. If you want to use the game's internal LAN, the aforementioned LAN fix and wsock32 DLL override work fine. However, it seems that CnCnet detects this as a cheat or something, because it vanishes from the game directory after running the cncnet client. So that's fun. Annnd... that's pretty much everything, I think.
Red Alert II/Yuri's Revenge: Hooo boy. This is where the pain starts. Red Alert II, unlike all prior Command and Conquers, was never made freeware. You'll have to buy it. Easier said than done: RA2 is, presently, only available for purchase on Origin, as part of Command and Conquer: The Ultimate Collection, which gives you every C&C game ever for the convenient price of $20. Y'know. With the less convenient problem that you just bought all the games... on Origin, the EA platform that is bad. And sucks. And of course, because EA is EA, this remaster was put together by a division separate from the one that made C&C Remastered and that hates humanity. Like most divisions of EA. So you end up with a collection of games that HAVEN'T been fixed to run properly on new versions of windows... but HAVE been modified to include Origin DRM, disable mod support, and not recognize command-line options. It's the worst of both worlds! Fortunately, there is a fix. Step one is to download the Origin client in a wineprefix (Lutris helps here) and install RA2. Ordinarily at this point you would probably have to install a cracked executable, but that's fortunately not necessary here: just go over to xwis and download their C&C RA2 multiplayer installer. This is a NoCD patch for RA2 and Yuri's Revenge, and yes, it is official and totally legal. It essentially removes all DRM, to the point that you can straight-up copy your RA2 install folder between systems and have it work. So that's great. Once you've done that, install cnc-ddraw or ts-ddraw and add ddraw to your DLL overrides. Or install CnCnet, which will do all that for you. In order to play online with XWis, you'll need your CD key, which you can find under game information in Origin. I never got this to work, but in theory it should be doable. CnCnet is much easier to get working, you'll just need to install dotnet40 and xna40 using winetricks, and run the CnCnet installer. If you want to use the game's internal LAN, the aforementioned LAN fix and wsock32 DLL override work fine. However, it seems that CnCnet detects this as a cheat or something, because it vanishes from the game directory after running the cncnet client. So that's fun. Annnd... that's pretty much everything, I think.
Command & Conquer Generals/Zero Hour: Unfortunately, we are now out of the realm of games that can be entirely fixed by a simple EXE swap out of hand. Fortunately, there are still fixes. Like all games in The Ultimate Collection (Ultimately inferior, more like...), Generals is compromised by terrible EA DRM. Unlike RA2, you can't entirely remove it, but for it and all subsequent games I'll discuss, the best way to handle things is to used the Fixed Launchers Installer. This beauty applies registry fixes and replaces the executables with slightly patched versions that remove a bit of that pesky EA DRM. You still need to have Origin installed in the prefix (I tried to avoid that, believe me), but once you've run the fixer, you no longer need to launch the games through Origin (and in fact should avoid doing so), or their launchers, and can just launch the EXEs directly. Furthermore, you don't need to keep Origin running. Oh, and mods work again. So that's all lovely. The other fix required for Renegades and Zero Hour is gentool which is a d3d8.dll replacement (add that to your DLL overrides...) which fixes the multiplayer, allows for playing at higher resolutions, offers rudimentary anticheat for online play (in that it verifies and checksums the loaded content) and so on. Never leave home without it.
However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. For Vanilla-Conquer there's no need to use an installer for the classics, OP, just download the free games from CNCNZ.com then extract or mount the extracted .ISO images and copy the assets over using these guides for VanillaTD & VanillaRA respectively, then you extract the files from INSTALL/SETUP.Z for C&C: Gold *(Tiberian Dawn) using either Unshield or InstallShield Extract. And for the two Red Alert expansions I just used good ol' DOSBox to run the PATCH.EXE from both expansion *.ISOs in SETUP/INSTALL/CSTRIKE.RTP for Counterstrike and SETUP/INSTALL/PATCH.RTP for Aftermath to acheive the required *.MIX assets.
However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. For Vanilla-Conquer there's no need to use an installer for the classics, OP, just download the free games from CNCNZ.com then extract or mount the extracted .ISO images and copy the assets over using these guides for VanillaTD & VanillaRA respectively, then you extract the files from INSTALL/SETUP.Z for C&C: Gold *(Tiberian Dawn) using either Unshield or InstallShield Extract. And for the two Red Alert expansions I just used good ol' DOSBox to run the PATCH.EXE from both expansion *.ISOs in SETUP/INSTALL/CSTRIKE.RTP for Counterstrike and SETUP/INSTALL/PATCH.RTP for Aftermath to acheive the required *.MIX assets.
However, if you're a diehard Linux exclusionist... option 2: Vanilla-Conquer is a project that uses the GPLed code from C&C Remastered to rebuild the original C&C executables with cross-platform support. It works... okay, allegedly, but it would probably work better if I could get it to run: In order to make Vanilla Conquer play nice, you need to have an unmodified install of C&C Gold/Red Alert, as they would have come on-disk: The installs from the CnCNet installers won't cut it. And sure, EA put up those disks for free, you can just download them, but... well, the installers are temperamental at best. I couldn't get an install off the disks because the installer kept complaining that I didn't have the disks inserted. So good luck with that. For Vanilla-Conquer there's no need to use an installer for the classics, OP, just download the free games from CNCNZ.com then extract or mount the extracted .ISO images and copy the assets over using these guides for VanillaTD & VanillaRA respectively, then you extract the files from INSTALL/SETUP.Z for C&C: Gold *(Tiberian Dawn) using either Unshield or InstallShield Extract. And for the two Red Alert expansions I just used good ol' DOSBox to run the PATCH.EXE from both expansion *.ISOs in SETUP/INSTALL/CSTRIKE.RTP for Counterstrike and SETUP/INSTALL/PATCH.RTP for Aftermath to acheive the required *.MIX assets.
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