BOOST YOUR WAR MACHINE

Despite the age of the games, gameplay within OpenRA is very sluggish on the Raspberry Pi by default—with the exception of Dune2 000. You can tinker with this from within the games themselves by entering the “Settings” menu, and altering the frame rate. You can also change the “Mode” from the default (“Pseudo-fullscreen”) to “Windowed,” and even specify the window size. Click “Reset” to return the settings to their defaults, or click “Back” to confirm your changes. The game then restarts. Getting the resolution right can be tricky. If you make a mistake, open Terminal, and run

nano ~/.openra/settings.yaml . From here, you can change the “Graphics Mode” and “Window size.”

If you want to give your Raspberry Pi a real shot in the arm, you could try enabling the experimental OpenGL driver. Close any open applications, then open Terminal. Run sudo raspi

config , and use the arrow keys to choose “Advanced Options.” Next, choose “A6 GL Driver.” Enable the first option starting “G1 (Full KMS).” The Pi’s “Advanced Options” section also contains a “Memory Split” option, whereby you can choose to increase the dedicated amount of memory for the GPU, which may also improve performance. Choose “A3 Memory Split” under “Advanced Options” to change this from the default (64MB) to a higher value—256MB, for example.

Use the arrow keys to select “Finish,” then choose “Yes” to reboot the Pi. Hopefully, you’ll find the tide of battle flowing a little faster now….