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Installing VanillaRA
For best results, create a new empty directory to install VanillaRA into. Copy the build artifacts of your platform into this like the game executable (vanillara.exe, sdl2.dll and openal32.dll on Windows).
The paths in the first column are relative to the root directory of your VanillaRA executable. Filename casing doesn't matter on case sensitive filesystems.
On macOS when using the provided App bundle you should instead use /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Vanilla-Conquer/vanillara for your data.
You do not need any of the patches (1.07, 1.08 or 3.03) as they contain no new data that are needed to play VanillaRA. However the 3.03 patch contains the same data as the RTPatch files for Counterstrike and Aftermath in an easier to extract form.
The Red Alert demo comes in a zip archive and the required files can be extracted from it directly.
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| redalert.mix | ra95demo.zip: ra95demo/INSTALL/REDALERT.MIX
|
| main.mix | ra95demo.zip: ra95demo/INSTALL/MAIN.MIX
|
If you have physical retail CDs you can copy the files directly from them when the CD is mounted. If you are using the freeware release you can use something like 7-Zip to directly extract the necessary files from their respective ISO images.
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| redalert.mix | Allied or Soviet disc: INSTALL/REDALERT.mix
|
| allied/main.mix | Allied disc: MAIN.MIX
|
| soviet/main.mix | Soviet disc: MAIN.MIX
|
This is a bit more complicated because some of the MIX files are within an RTPatch binary diff.
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| expand.mix | Counterstrike disc, inside SETUP/INSTALL/CSTRIKE.RTP
|
| counterstrike/main.mix | Counterstrike disc: MAIN.MIX
|
This is a bit more complicated because some of the MIX files are within an RTPatch binary diff.
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| expand2.mix | Aftermath disc, inside SETUP/INSTALL/PATCH.RTP
|
| hires1.mix | Aftermath disc, inside SETUP/INSTALL/PATCH.RTP
|
| aftermath/main.mix | Aftermath disc: MAIN.MIX
|
This collection includes retail and both expansions and have been repacked to work with the original executables.
To get the data files you need unshield or equivalent program and extract the files from the multipart archive data1.cab.
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| redalert.mix | data1.cab: Red Alert/REDALERT.MIX
|
| main.mix | data1.cab: Red Alert/MAIN.MIX
|
| expand.mix | data1.cab: Red Alert/EXPAND.MIX
|
| expand2.mix | data1.cab: Red Alert/EXPAND2.MIX
|
| hires1.mix | data1.cab: Red Alert/HIRES1.MIX
|
TBD. IIRC they are laid out exactly as in TFD but as it's an Origin download you can just copy the mix files from the install directory.
The latest collection comes from Steam and is a bit of a mixed bag for playing VanillaRA. The whole Soviet CD is missing with the movies so the Soviet campaign runs without cutscenes.
We highly recommend not using this data set if you want to play the full retail campaign. However since this is the easiest fully legal way to get the expansions their data may be used along with the original retail discs.
To create a VanillaRA installation, locate your Steam Library directory and inside common the following path should contain Red Alert data: CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT
| File | Source |
|---|---|
| redalert.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/CD1/REDALERT.MIX |
| allied/main.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/CD1/MAIN.MIX |
| soviet/main.mix |
CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/CD1/MAIN.MIX (Note: this is not the real Soviet disc) |
| expand.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/COUNTERSTRIKE/EXPAND.MIX |
| counterstrike/main.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/COUNTERSTRIKE/MAIN.MIX |
| expand2.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/AFTERMATH/EXPAND2.MIX |
| hires1.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/AFTERMATH/HIRES1.MIX |
| aftermath/main.mix | CnCRemastered/Data/CNCDATA/RED_ALERT/AFTERMATH/MAIN.MIX |
Your final directory structure for a portable install should look like the following. If you ommit redalert.ini (which can be empty), then writable data will go to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Vanilla-Conquer\vanillara on Windows and a redalert.ini file will be generated there on first run. WESTWOOD/REDALERT is where the original installer installed data to.
WESTWOOD/
├─ REDALERT/
│ ├─ aftermath/
│ │ ├─ MAIN.MIX
│ ├─ allied/
│ │ ├─ MAIN.MIX
│ ├─ counterstrike/
│ │ ├─ MAIN.MIX
│ ├─ soviet/
│ │ ├─ MAIN.MIX
│ ├─ EXPAND.MIX
│ ├─ EXPAND2.MIX
│ ├─ HIRES1.MIX
│ ├─ LORES1.MIX
│ ├─ redalert.ini
│ ├─ REDALERT.MIX
│ ├─ vanillara.exe