Red Alert 2

This article or section is a stub. You can help ModEnc by expanding it.

Red Alert 2 is the sequel the game Red Alert, though it has been officially designated as non-canon by Electronic Arts. It's story, though continuing straight on from Red Alert's Allied campaign, makes no mention of GDI and instead has a puppet Soviet ruler called Romanov who has been installed by the Allies, who, though an aristocrat and a member of the communist party (which is actually an oxymoron), was an advocate of peace. Ever since an artificially psychic Yuri became his chief advisor, his relations to the US have deteriorated, and some signs have shown he is not acting in good faith. After he attacks America, President Dougatt orders a full-scale retaliation, which fails because Yuri remotely disables the ICBM silos. RA2 has a more funny and cinematic style compared to it's prequel and Tiberian Sun, but also better FMV acting. It has an expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge. Though it uses the TS engine, several logics have been removed from it.

EXE Switches

The following switches can be applied to ra2.exe from a command line to achieve certain functionalities:

-WIN

Runs the game in a window (as opposed to full screen)

-16

Forces 16-bit color mode

-480

Sets the screen height to 480px when 640x400 resolution is selected

widthXheight

Runs the game with the specified resolution (e.g. 1024X768)

-MESSAGES

Allows incoming messages from outside the game (WOL)

-STEALTH

Hides players names in multiplayer LAN and Internet games

-NETGEAR

Enable additional NetGear logic (helps with NetGear based LAN configurations)

-MPDEBUG

Runs the game with Multiplayer Debug Mode enabled

-SOCKET

Specifies a network socket number (between 0 and 16383)

-DESTNET

Destination network address (IP format, nn.nn.nn.nn)

-CD

Specifies CD-ROM from which to run the game (0 or 1, but 2 can be used if YR is installed)

-record

Creates a game movie file (defaults to SESSION.IPB) in the Red Alert 2 directory¹

-play [filename]

Plays a game movie file (IPB format)

-noaudio

Switches all audio off (useful for players with sound card issues)

-nostr

Starts the game without reading the .CSF file

-str

As above but the game will read the .CSF file (default)

-jabber

Disables reading of the .CSF file resulting in much jibberish!

GrabPatches²

Launches the game and gets it only to check for an updated version (patch)

Obsolete Ones

These might work in earlier games, but are obsolete in RA2:

-X

DOS 1.19+ compatability mode

-O

DOS 1.07 compatability mode

-h, /h

Would trigger the help file

-?, /?

Would output the command line options

Unknown Ones

-ATTRACT

-NOROUTER

Sounds network-related (traffic may be "routed" through a device called "router")

-DROP=

Sounds network-related (connections may "drop packets" if they are bad)

Footnotes

¹ ↑ Note that these aren't movies per say, but rather re-enactments of the battle. Therefore, any change to the game between the recording and playing of the "movie" file will damage it in unforseeable ways. e.g. if you recorded yourself how you destroyed a base with five Grizzlies, then made buildings immune to damage, and then played the recorded movie, the Grizzlies in it couldn't destroy the building and the actions on screen would make no sense at all.

² ↑ The Guide gives this one without a hyphen; this might be an error.