Fix for random no-sound in Tiberian Sun (CnCNet) on Linux/Wine

Symptom: Matches randomly start with no in-game audio (menu sound works fine). Save/reload or restarting the match sometimes "fixes" it — it's actually a coin flip every time the game boots.

Cause: Not the game, not Wine — it's an old PipeWire bug. PipeWire 0.3.48 (stock on some distros) has a race in its PulseAudio-compat layer where a newly created audio stream can freeze at creation: the game plays sound normally into the stream, but PipeWire never drains it, so everything gets silently discarded. Nothing you do in-game can fix a boot that lost the coin flip.

Fix: Upgrade PipeWire to 1.x. :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipewire-debian/pipewire-upstream 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipewire-debian/wireplumber-upstream 
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber 

Verify:

$ pactl info | grep "Server Name"
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.0.7)

it should say on PipeWire 1.0.x. Relaunch the game and enjoy

I was playing Red Alert 2 when the game just closed and Windows claimed syringe.exe was malware and removed it. Any attempt to update CnCNet or even reinstall it is blocked, Syringe.exe contains HackTool:Win32/DllInject!MTB

I know Syringe.exe is used to inject mods into the executable, so it's most likely a false positive, but I want to make sure before whitelisting the file.

Anyone else getting this, and is there an official response?

Hey, I've been playing using CNCNet for a while. I just upgraded my PC and had to reinstall the games (using Steam) and CNCNet. My problem is my spawner/rules files don't seem to be working. I dropped them into the game directory like I've done before but it doesn't seem to work.

Some searching led me to believe that there is a process of using these after the last CNCNet update, but I'm not sure what exactly to do. Can anyone help me out?

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2026-06-20 17:40:14 UTC

VQA Encoder 0.5b2 (Problems with the VQA palette). Flickering in the keyframe...

Did anyone create VQA (ver.2 8bit) on their own?

I'm having a problem...

The image flickers when play a keyframe.

Initial data:

Sequence of 256-color BMP files.

2000 blocks

Every 8 frames is key.

I suspect that Westwood used a fixed color palette from which 256 colors were selected for keyframes. If my 256 colors do not match, there is a flicker...

Have you ever had this problem and how did you solve it?

Title

So i've been playing CNC Since the 1995 games.. great series.... i love it...

Last week i started playing Red Alert 2... and things were fine....

I also played Red Alert 3... and my game... i dunno what it did.. but it merged all my desktop icons together, and stacked them...

And so i uninstalled RA 3, and rebooted... fixed the problem...

But.. my driver graphics driver updated.... Now i can't play RA 2 or 3... it boots the game then crashes....

Anyone know why it's doing that?

I've heard Windows 11 has alot of issues with Older games... But i always could play RA 2 and below just fine...

But now.. i can't.. and i'm using the Steam Collection one...

I also tried using CNC net and tried installing the game... but it won't accept the Steam Folder Location... So i really dunno how to get these games to work... fine again.

I decided to boot up YR after a long time away and CnCnet updated, now the side dropdown has this option I don't remember being there.

Can anyone tell me what this means/does?

Hey everyone! I don't know who I should try to reach out to, but the last update took away all of the new colors. I have been playing RA2 since it was released in 2001 (which is insane, I know) and the new colors were giving me life! I miss them!! Please bring them back! They weren't hurting anybody!!

So my cousin and I purchase Yuri's Revenge via steam, and installed CNCnet. At first it worked fine, and now we're experiencing desynchronization error with any map. We have the same settings (Video, Client and Game Version). How do we fix this?

I was downloading RA1 But it gave me this. I tried Run as admin, No. Normal?, no

Help appreciated.

Can only find ten year old posts on this, but have downloaded maps from CnCNet and put them into "E:\Games\Origin Games\Command and Conquer Red Alert II\Maps\Custom" and they do not show up on the list when running "Yuri's Revenge CnCNet". None of the advice that I can find on the CnCNet forums goes beyond 'save to maps/custom' and 'make sure extension is .map'.

Mind you the maps are years old as well, maybe CnCNet has moved on and no longer supports them?

Don't want to play EA's Yuri's Revenge because the low resolution sucks and at least CnCNet can match my native resolution.

Whenever he tries to start a game of Yuri's Revenge in the CnC browser it's got a glitch. He just sees a single square of the game on his screen, nothing else. It's just black except for the single square of terrain in the center of the screen.

He's reinstalled YR and the CnC net client multiple times with no fix. Playing regular YR or Red Alert 2 without using the client works just fine.

Any idea what's causing this? I haven't been able to help him at all.

I just moved to linux because of too many issues with windows. Me and my friend play red alert 2 sometimes, via cncnet. I can play red alert 2 via steam (kinda bad though, but I presume that can be fixed by replacing the ddraw files.)

Problem is, how do I now install cncnet to work with this?
If I try to install cncnet via lutris, I can run the installer, but then the installer requires red alert 2 to be available, which lutris can't seem to find, as it tries to install into C:\Westwood\RA2 Or at the very least in the virtualized windowsish directory, due to which I can't install it all.

Any guesses on how this can be fixed?
There is an install script it seems on lutris site but that requires ea origin, and although I do have ra2 on ea origin as well, I'd rather not install that.

Any suggestions on what I can do? PS: if some of what I wrote above seems stupid, apologies. I am very new to wine/lutris, also I am stupid. :(

EDIT: Update. Found the fix. Just running the install script from https://lutris.net/games/command-conquer-red-alert-2/ - the first one is CNCNet version. Which works for me. I did go ahead and change the Renderer in options (Client -> Options (F12) -> Display - Renderer - Change Default -> CnC-DDraw.) and the resolution.

I've heard for some TS-DDraw (GDI) might be better, but for me the graphics for that seem quite weird. So CnC-DDraw it is. :)

@Mods, if you can mark this closed / archived / whatever, that might be nice, without deleting it off. I did search this sub, but found nothing particularly useful. Also, all past threads about this were like 5 years ago.

I strongly believe that Battle Fortress should be as slow as a V3 as it can outmaneuver while firing a bunch of tanks.

Late games are basically trowing all you have at once to Enemy’s battle fortresses.

Do you agree? Would you do anything else to this unit or any other?

I bet you cant keep up with whats happening