How to install OpenE2140?

Original game

To play OpenE2140, you must own a licensed copy of the original Earth 2140 game. OpenE2140 uses many of the original game’s assets (sprites, tiles, sounds, etc.), which are owned by TopWare Interactive and are under copyright protection. As a result, we cannot distribute these files—you must provide them yourself. You can buy the original games from these digital stores:

• Earth 2140 Trilogy (GOG)
• Earth 2140 (Steam)
• Earth 2140 (Zoom Platform)
• Earth 2140 (TopWare Interactive Shop)

OpenE2140

Download and install OpenE2140 from the Download page, according to your platform. These operating systems are supported:

• Windows 10/11
• macOS 10.15 and above
• Linux (any modern, reasonably recent distribution will do)

OpenE2140 also runs on Windows 7 and 8.1, but these versions are not officially supported (Microsoft has dropped support for them) and OpenE2140 may stop working on them at any time. Use at your own risk.

Installing the game assets

After installing OpenE2140, you will need to supply the original game assets. Currently, only the digital versions are officially supported. After installing the original game via the official clients of these stores, OpenE2140 can automatically detect and copy the necessary content from your installation.

Just start the game and press Advanced Install:

A new dialog opens, which shows all possible content packages that can be installed:

Only Game Files are absolutely necessary; the rest of them are just music soundtracks. Press Detect Disc or Installation to continue. A new dialog opens, where you can select what do you want to install.

After choosing, press Continue to start the installation process. A dialog with progress is shown:

After obtaining soundtracks, you can install them the same way. Press Back to start the actual game:

Demo version

Demo versions of Earth 2140 do not contain all the required game assets; therefore, they cannot be used to play OpenE2140. See FAQ for more information.

How to manually install game assets?

If you encounter issues with automatic installation, contact the developers via the GitHub issue tracker or the OpenE2140 Discord server.

As mentioned before, OpenE2140 requires the full set of game assets (including those from Mission Pack 2). Not all CD disks contain these files. If you already have a CD version of Earth 2140, check carefully that all required files are present. The presence of LEVEL2.WD is a strong indicator that the CD includes Mission Pack 2 and is likely compatible with OpenE2140.

In addition to these mandatory assets, you can optionally install music tracks from the Steam and GOG versions to play in the integrated music player.

OpenE2140 is based on OpenRA, which stores game files in the following folders depending on your platform:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\OpenRA\Content\
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/OpenRA/Content/
• Linux: ~/.config/openra/Content/
• For portable installations: Support\Content\ inside your OpenRA installation folder (create the folders if necessary)

The required files for OpenE2140 must be placed in a folder named e2140; otherwise, the game will not find them and will show the asset installation screen. The screenshot below shows the correct folder structure.

Note for Linux users: Linux filesystems are case-sensitive, so you must rename filenames to uppercase.

Mandatory files

All of these files are mandatory to run OpenE2140:

• FLC.WD
• GRAPH.WD
• MENU.WD
• MIX.WD
• PIRO.WD
• SMP0.WD
• SMP1.WD

Music files

OpenE2140 can play music from the soundtrack of the original game (including both Mission Packs). The music is optional though; the game will work without it. The music files must be placed in a specific subfolder within the Content folder, and must be named correctly. Here is a list of the files, their original names and names required for OpenE2140:

You do not have to copy all music files—just the ones you want. Here’s how the music player looks in OpenE2140:

Game content installer metadata

If you’re interested in technical information on how the OpenE2140 content manager knows which asset files are required and where they should be located, here are the YAML files.