Playing Rainbow Six 2: Rogue Spear in 2020 and Beyond

Instructions for playing Rainbow Six 2: Rogue Spear and its expansions. Instructions may also apply to Rainbow Six 1 as they share the same engine.

Community Resources

• AllR6 Discord

Obtaining the Game

The game and expansions are no longer available for sale. Instead, they can be downloaded from archive.org:

• Rogue Spear (Ctrl-F TORRENT)
• Urban Operations (Ctrl-F ZIP)
• Black Thorn (Ctrl-F ZIP)
• Covert Ops Essentials (Ctrl-F TORRENT)
  • Note: This is the missions disc. If you're looking for the training disc developed by Magic Lantern Playware, see here.

Installing on Windows 10

Rogue Spear

1. Get some software which can mount BIN/CUE CD images (such as PowerISO) and mount the Rogue Spear BIN file.
2. Copy the contents of the mounted disc to C:\tmp. If this is skipped, the installer will fail with an "insufficient memory" error.
3. Modify C:\tmp\Setup.exe to use Windows 98 compatibility mode, and run it. Install the game to C:\Rogue Spear. When prompted by the game, do not install DirectX 6. When setup completes, you can delete C:\tmp.
4. Download the latest release of DDrawCompat and place ddraw.dll in C:\Rogue Spear. This will patch DirectDraw (used by DirectX 6 in-game) to work on modern systems. Since the latest version may change over time, there is a known-working copy of ddraw.dll in this repo as well.
5. Modify both C:\Rogue Spear\RSConfig.exe and C:\Rogue Spear\RogueSpear.exe to change compatibility settings:
   1. Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 98 / Windows Me
   2. Reduced color mode: 16-bit (65536) color
   3. Run this program as an administrator
6. Run C:\Rogue Spear\RSConfig.exe. Select your GPU and default audio device, and click OK.
7. Rogue Spear stores its configuration in the Windows registry, and a full configuration file is distributed in this repo. Download RogueSpearConfig.reg, and edit the config as desired. For example, you may want to change VideoResolution from the default (1600x900). If you did not install to C:\Rogue Spear, you will need to edit each path in this file.
8. Right-click the config in Windows Explorer, and click Merge to apply the config.
9. Run C:\Rogue Spear\RogueSpear.exe to start the game, optionally using Borderless Gaming to get a borderless window. The game disc will need to be "mounted" to play the game.

At this point, you can run the game. The menu system will only run in 640x480 mode. Once you enter a game, the resolution will increase.

To test things out, enter a Terrorist Hunt scenario in the Training mode.

Urban Operations

Urban Ops is the only expansion which is not a standalone game. It has a shorter install process:

1. Mount the Urban Operations CUE file and copy its contents to C:\tmp.
2. Modify C:\tmp\Setup.exe to use Windows 98 compatibility mode, and run it. When setup completes, you can delete C:\tmp.
3. Install Urban Operations Patch 2.52
4. Modify C:\Rogue Spear\UrbanOperations.exe to change compatibility settings:
   1. Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 98 / Windows Me
   2. Reduced color mode: 16-bit (65536) color
   3. Run this program as an administrator
5. Run C:\Rogue Spear\UrbanOperations.exe to start the game, optionally using Borderless Gaming to get a borderless window. The game disc will need to be "mounted" to play the game.

Black Thorn and Covert Ops

Follow the Rogue Spear steps for these games, since they are standalone expansions. Use C:\<Expansion> instead of C:\Rogue Spear and edit the registry file before applying to work with BT/CO.

Unlocking All Custom Missions

For a mission to be available in custom mission mode, it must have been completed in campaign mode. In order to get around this, you can import existing save files which have finished the game, instantly unlocking all maps and missions.

First, back up any existing save files in C:\Rogue Spear\data\save and C:\Rogue Spear\mods\<ModName>\save. Then download RogueSpearSaves.zip and extract the contents to your Rogue Spear directory. This will unlock all missions for Rogue Spear, Urban Operations, and the Classic Missions from Urban Operations.

If desired, you can rename camp0000.cmp and the camp0000 folder to any number to avoid overwriting your existing saves. Additionally, you can edit camp0000.cmp to change the name of the save file (the second line).

Playing Online

Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear unfortunately do not support dedicated servers. They originally used third-party MPlayer.com and The Zone (MSN) for peer-to-peer matchmaking. Playing online also requires at least two players to be connected before the game will start.

Some players use Voobly to provide matchmaking similar to MPlayer, but we were not able to get it working in testing. Instead, we decided to host a LAN game and use Hamachi to bridge our local networks. This also allows us to play the expansions, while Voobly only supports the base game.

Required Setup

1. Open MP GAME in the Options menu.
   1. Set your PLAYER NAME
   2. Uncheck BEHIND FIREWALL
   3. Set CONNECTION to LAN
2. Open MP SERVER in the Options menu.
   1. Set JOIN PORT to 2346
   2. Uncheck USE PASSWORD

Hosting a Game

1. Click Create Game in the Multiplayer menu.
2. When prompted by Windows Firewall, be sure to allow traffic on both private and public networks. You can also open Windows Firewall and change the settings for RogueSpear.exe (or expansion equivalent) there.
3. Make sure the game has chosen your desired IP address (e.g. Hamachi). This is particularly important if you have VM or VPN software which creates virtual network interfaces.
4. In the bottom-left, select PLAYER if you want to play or OBSERVER if you are simply hosting the server.
5. Select the mode, map, options, etc. in the menu.
6. When all players have connected, click the green right arrow to start the game.

Joining a Game

Click Manual Join in the Multiplayer menu and enter the host's Hamachi IP and port 2346.

Additional Resources

Rogue Spear Help Book on Voobly.com