The game was just put for sale on Steam directly, and I can confirm I run into the issue where the game loads up, the music plays, and my cursor changes, but my screen remains black (and if I click where UI elements would be the screen changes, but not in a way that is remotely usable).

FWIW, these same symptoms are all over the internet for RA2/YR on later versions of Windows, too, but the proposed fixes don't seem to translate to running it through Proton.

steam-2229850.log

using CNC-DDraw i am able to get into the menus but i have audio issues where it will play one moment and then not the next, it seems to crash when it started playing audio again.

it seems to be a little tempermental about where it goes (and losing focus makes the window invisible + sound is playing fine this time though)

Same problem with black menus here. Haven't tried CNC-DDraw yet. Intro video played fine though.

Can confirm the menu screen goes black but can still hear the game audio.

Same issue here. Video plays fine, sound works, but the menu just flashes up for one frame and goes black.
Tried replacing ddraw.dll with cnc-ddraw (from https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw) but it did not change anything.

I did not set an winecfg override in the proton prefix though. Probably it's required.

Edit: Yes that did the trick!

1. Extract cnc-ddraw.zip into the game folder.
2. Override the dll with this launch command:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%

Edit 2:
I also needed to set the game speed to 60 ticks per second. With "Emulate a 60Hz Monitor" the game simulation ran so fast, the enemy did a nuclear launch on me before I unpacked the base vehicle.

Does anyone know if the steam version even works on Windows out of the box? Surprised to see it released as the EA origin version never worked on anything newer than Win XP

Does anyone know if the steam version even works on Windows out of the box? Surprised to see it released as the EA origin version never worked on anything newer than Win XP

Yeah, I've just tried on my Wife's Win11 machine, works out of the box

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6208#issuecomment-1984824906

Thanks a lot @lubosz your override suggestion worked, also somewhat helped Tiberian Sun, but it's still artifacts part of the screen.

After using cnc-ddraw as per @lubosz's suggestion, I can see the menu and play the game, although some options don't display correctly. I've tried different resolutions with similar results.

Example:

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6208#issuecomment-1984824906

Hi, I found that RA2 does not respect the RA2.INI file for GameSpeed=, so likely the issue you were encountering with game simulation was that it's defaulting to GameSpeed=6 instead of 3.

Try checking the gamespeed slider in Skirmish before you start the game.

Also, I had a hand and attempting to write this: https://lutris.net/games/install/32030/view

My learning from that exercise was to use this config for RA2.INI and ddraw.ini:

sed -i '/^\[Video\]/!b;n;/AllowHiResModes=/!{iAllowHiResModes=yes'$'\n''};n;s/^Play=.*/Play=no/;n;s/^ScreenWidth=.*/ScreenWidth=1024/;n;s/^ScreenHeight=.*/ScreenHeight=768/' $HOME/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ \&\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/RA2.INI

sed -i 's/^fixchilds=.*/fixchilds=3/' $HOME/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ \&\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/ddraw.ini

The above sed's basically configure it like this:

RA2.INI

[Video]
AllowHiResModes=yes
VideoBackBuffer=yes
ScreenWidth=1024
ScreenHeight=768

ddraw.ini

fixchilds=3

I still haven't figured out why it appears to constantly be running at what feels like 15fps, and why it sometimes just fully locks up. However, when UI elements vanish, I find that bringing up the 'overview' by pressing the Super Key in Gnome will render the missing elements, allowing me to guess where to click the hidden buttons once I fullscreen the application again :D

Also even though we set AllowHiResModes=yes, I don't recommend actually using the higher resolutions because it breaks the UI elements in an odd ways. The highest supported res without AllowHiResModes=yes is 1024x768 and is pretty much flawless in my testing except for the intermittent disappearing that's completely random as far as I can tell.

Would be good if we can isolate the issue and provide a fix upstream here! https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw

That boxing feature in cnc-ddraw for integer scaling looks desirable too...

Edit1: Oh, and for new comers coming along, you need to set

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%

in Steam > Library > 'Right-Click' - Command & Conquer Red Alert II and Yuri's Revenge > Properties.. > General > Launch Options > the input box at the bottom.

This also assumes you have extracted the CONTENTS of https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw/releases/download/v6.2.0.0/cnc-ddraw.zip into /Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ &\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/ so it looks like

Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ &\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/ddraw.ini
Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ &\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/ddraw.dll
Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ &\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/cnc-ddraw config.exe
Steam/steamapps/common/Command\ &\ Conquer\ Red\ Alert\ II/Shaders/

Lot's of this 'should' apply also to 'Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun' as well, but I don't see any open issues on this repo mentioning it. Will mention it when someone opens and issue on that game so it links to this info.

ddraw.ini

fixchilds=3

Ideally should be '2', but for some reason it's not scaling the child windows as expected. Probably something to do with the OS's compositor making it clip inappropriately due to scaling. Probably not fixable within cnc-ddraw itself i suspect... I really don't know - It's beyond me.

Interesting 'Howto' guide for windows on broken RA2 GUI elements: https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw/wiki/How-to-fix-Red-Alert-2-and-Yuri's-Revenge-UI-glitches

I suppose we need to look at what layers scaling is being applied and we might be able to work around this. Should be easier to test in gamescope. I'm running mutter on a 4k screen with no scaling enabled. So I suppose the scaling might be coming from proton itself somehow? Just thinking outloud.

Having weird artifacts here. Game runs fine, however sometimes the frames freeze entirely and leaving game unplayable.

Game is responsive, only 1 frame gets displayed after refocusing window and goes back to the frozen frame.
diagnostics.json

UPDATE: Weird black overlay on Wayland, Crashes on X11

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Command & Conquer Red Alert™ 2 and Yuri’s Revenge™
• Steam AppID of the game: 2229850

System Information

• GPU: intel hd 3000
• Video driver version: Mesa 23.3.6-1
• Kernel version: 6.7.9
• Link to full system information report as Gist: report
• Proton version: 1710947987 experimental-9.0-20240320

I confirm:

• [x] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Proton log: steam-2229850.tar.gz

Symptoms

Game is slow in the menu and crashes when you select New campaign

Reproduction

1. Start Red alert 2
2. Click Single player
3. Click New campaign
4. If game doesn't crash click "back" and repeat previous step a couple times.

Observed result: Game menu is slow and eventually crashes
Expected result: game doesn't crash

So after using the experimental version of proton I'm able to set the resolution to 1920x1080 and it looks amazing!

I'm still using the cnc-ddraw library though. Also the game no longer feels like it's running at 15fps.

So I've entirely removed the RA2 installation directory, the dll overides in advanced steam settings and reinstalled it back to default. But now the 15fps slowness and stuttering is back. Visuals look good though. I'll see if I can replicate the setting I tweaked to have it run smoothly.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6208#issuecomment-1986669388

I'm able to replicate the improvement of fps and removal of stuttering by reapply the cnc ddraw files manually following my above guide. The stock ones installed exhibit stuttering and poor fps. Dunno why.

However, if fixchilds=2 I get strange colour artifacts in the menu's; I tried capturing a screenshot of this but it does not reflect in the screenshots... Must be because of exclusive full screen mode. The artifacting also dissapears in Gnome's overview mode via the Super Key.

Setting it to fixchilds=3 again resolves this issue, and the fps/stuttering issues go away.

Very strange!

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Command & Conquer Red Alert™ 2 and Yuri’s Revenge™
• Steam AppID of the game: 2229850

System Information

• GPU: intel HD520
• Video driver version: Mesa 23.3.6
• Kernel version: 6.7.9-200.fc39.x86_64
• Link to full system information report as Gist:
• Proton version: 1710947987 experimental-9.0-20240320

I confirm:

• [+] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [+] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

Game freezes if a button is clicked before main menu video loads or after loading shortly after

Reproduction

Start either C&C Red Alert 2 or Yuri's Revenge
Start either click around the menu
Either before main menu video loads or shortly after, click menu button

steam-2229850.zip

Another observation, when running a stock RA2 installation via steam with proton experimental - along with the slowdown/speedup stuttering performance issue there is also flicking in-game cursor observed when the cursor is in motion, but fine when static.

Ok so I did a sha256sum against my manual method vs what's downloaded and added to the OS level dll's via: https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-protonfixes/pull/46/commits/883b45e5ab92360fec3c0e63da6b09f46060eb81

They both check out, so we're using the same file... so I'm wondering what's the difference:

❯ sha256sum cnc-ddraw\(4\).zip cnc-ddraw\(5\).zip
c024d0ea42ec2d9708dc0a19342d037de7307c291dc43c01948a7d8f06b4deca  cnc-ddraw(4).zip
c024d0ea42ec2d9708dc0a19342d037de7307c291dc43c01948a7d8f06b4deca  cnc-ddraw(5).zip

By looking at that commit I'm going to take a stab in the dark, I think the file is loaded into the wine windows folder WITHOUT the corresponding .ini file, so it's defaulting to what ever the dll natively defaults to. The only difference after I manually extract cnc-ddraw.dll into the RA2 dir is setting the Steam override to:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%

For some reason the above makes it use the local manually deployed .dll in the RA2 file (I think). Removing it makes it default to the one deployed via that commit. Some other differences is the one deployed via the commit does some sort of blurry scaling, probably nearest neighbor. When I do the steam WINDLLOVERRIDES it looks like it's doing proper integer scaling. Plus the performance is way better.

So I'm reasonably sure it's something to do with the renderer being chosen (gdi, opengl, direct3d9), does anyone know how to check the default ini settings that are being inherited from the Wine environment? I don't even know where the Wine stuff goes in terms of Steam and Flatpak.

From this commit, the cnc-ddraw.zip has a sha256 checksum: c024d0ea42ec2d9708dc0a19342d037de7307c291dc43c01948a7d8f06b4deca
https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-protonfixes/pull/46/commits/883b45e5ab92360fec3c0e63da6b09f46060eb81

So I download the same:

❯ sha256sum ~/Downloads/cnc-ddraw.zip
c024d0ea42ec2d9708dc0a19342d037de7307c291dc43c01948a7d8f06b4deca  ~/Downloads/cnc-ddraw.zip

From https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-protonfixes/pull/46/commits/883b45e5ab92360fec3c0e63da6b09f46060eb81 it looks as if only ddraw.dll is extracted. (And maybe the readme.txt from the Shaders sub directory)

So I extract that file and get the checksum:

❯ sha256sum ddraw.dll
f71bf13e02503f08b1604cfe8b906656417435586188c9b5f1865f55749dd639  ddraw.dll

The above is the .dll from: 2024/03/11 https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw/releases/download/v6.3.0.0/cnc-ddraw.zip

So now we locate the wine environment used by Steam and RA2, which is:

~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2229850/

In this directory there are two ddraw.dll's (ran from the RA2 install dir(~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Command & Conquer Red Alert II):

❯ fd ddraw.dll ../../compatdata/2229850
../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ddraw.dll
../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/ddraw.dll

❯ sha256sum ../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ddraw.dll
23891b4501f0408172824832fb40c01d260beb5649753ba512701ff845d6db2f  ../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ddraw.dll

❯ sha256sum ../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/ddraw.dll
2ff86657e815d9c8d9bbebce9a7d5c30834f8fd20f2d80631ef9e12c3adad283  ../../compatdata/2229850/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/ddraw.dll

There is also ddraw.dll in the RA2 dir:

❯ sha256sum ddraw.dll
7611747c6383023df64559e4e52ae44cf1ca5329238ed1f63e25172f89d8c9fa  ddraw.dll

So conclusion... I have no idea which ddraw.dll it's using. It does not appear to be the one from https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-protonfixes/pull/46/commits/883b45e5ab92360fec3c0e63da6b09f46060eb81

Anyone with more experience know how to identify where the ddraw.dll is that RA2 is using?

Is there something like 'ldd' that I can run in this wine environment to see what Ra2.exe is loading?

Is there something like 'ldd' that I can run in this wine environment to see what Ra2.exe is loading?

I would look in the Proton/Wine log. The default Proton settings should contain +loaddll which will cause the log to contain somewhere an entry to which dll is being loaded by Wine. It'll say whether it's builtin or native and the path.

See also https://wiki.winehq.org/Debug_Channels

For a more direct equivalent to ldd look for something like Dependency Walker.

@osirase

Anyone with more experience know how to identify where the ddraw.dll is that RA2 is using?

Steam release of C&C Red Alert 2 uses ddraw dll in this repo: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Command & Conquer Red Alert™ 2 and Yuri’s Revenge™
• Steam AppID of the game: 2229850

System Information

• GPU: intel HD520
• Video driver version: Mesa 23.3.6
• Kernel version: 6.8.4-200.fc39.x86_64
• Link to full system information report as Gist:
• Proton version: 1712822178 experimental-9.0-20240411

I confirm:

• [+] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [+] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

Game slows down, whenever you move the cursor, or hover over a building or unit, or when you move it to the edge to move the view of the map, whenever you're doing anything with mouse.

Reproduction

Start either C&C Red Alert 2 or Yuri's Revenge
Start either campaign or skirmish or load a savestate

steam-2229850.log

Has anyone been able to get CNCNet up and running as well? I'm on Wayland, ran the installer in the RA2 folder, everything unpacks nicely, but when attempting to run the launcher as a non-steam game under Proton Experimental it won't start. Not using any wine prefixes.

Anyone tried Proton 10 on this using the non c&cnet modifications? Seems like screenshots don't work properly on Proton 10

Has anyone been able to get CNCNet up and running as well? I'm on Wayland, ran the installer in the RA2 folder, everything unpacks nicely, but when attempting to run the launcher as a non-steam game under Proton Experimental it won't start. Not using any wine prefixes.

By the way for this I started to have problems with the bundled c&cnet from ProtonGE. I instead created a 32bit windows 10 wine prefix on Lutris, copy pasted the contents of red alert 2 from Steam to C:/Westwood/RA2 of the created wineprefix, installed c&cnet and all is good

non c&cnet modifications

Like?

screenshots don't work properly on Proton 10

You meant taking screenshots? It is working for me. What is your setup?

problems with the bundled c&cnet from ProtonGE

And what are those problems exactly? You need to be clearer in your messaging. You can disable cncnet btw..

non c&cnet modifications

Like?

I mean using the default ddraw dll, not the one bundled on cncnet

screenshots don't work properly on Proton 10

You meant taking screenshots? It is working for me. What is your setup?

Yeah, for some reason it looks like this.

It seems to happen randomly, but it also appears to occur when I switch windows away from the game. I didn't have this problem on earlier Proton versions.

My setup is Kubuntu 22.04, KDE 5.27 Wayland.

problems with the bundled c&cnet from ProtonGE

And what are those problems exactly? You need to be clearer in your messaging. You can disable cncnet btw..

The game isn't launching. Specifically, it works when I use the bundled CnCNet client, then it updates itself, and after that, it refuses to launch. However, that's okay; I just created a separate 32-bit Wine prefix specifically for playing CnCNet.

I mean using the default ddraw dll, not the one bundled on cncnet

That is provided by the linked patch, not part of the cncnet client.

It seems to happen randomly, but it also appears to occur when I switch windows away from the game. I didn't have this problem on earlier Proton versions.

Oh, I don't use Steam for that. Any reason why you prefer it over the traditional Meta + Shift + S or Prtsc?

The game isn't launching.

PROTON_LOG=1 %command% will give you a log, someone else may help you debug that.

Installing the CnCNet launcher (https://cncnet.org/yuris-revenge) and launching it with Main Menu music on in the launcher options results in very loud distorted screeching audio instead of music in the CnCNet client. Symlinking Command & Conquer Red Alert II/Resources/Yuri Theme/MainMenuTheme.ogg over top of MainMenuTheme.wma fixes this issue. Does anyone else experience this?

Installing the CnCNet launcher (https://cncnet.org/yuris-revenge) and launching it with Main Menu music on in the launcher options results in very loud distorted screeching audio instead of music in the CnCNet client. Symlinking Command & Conquer Red Alert II/Resources/Yuri Theme/MainMenuTheme.ogg over top of MainMenuTheme.wma fixes this issue. Does anyone else experience this?

I experience this (the noise is called white-noise), but I also experience that recently nothing works on steam linux. Proton used to make all games run out of the box, but now? Everything is falling apart, and it's not just CNC RA2, but all the other titles which used to be supported. I hope devs here didn't start using AI slopped coding.