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Installation

OpenReliant needs the assets from a legally obtained copy of StarLancer (discs or disc images).

Prerequisites

  • StarLancer game media:
    • Retail CD-ROMs (disc 1 and disc 2), or
    • Disc image files (.bin with .cue, or .iso), or
    • Extracted disc folders.
  • OpenReliant binary:
    • Download the latest release from the releases page (on a Mac, macOS 15 or newer; on Windows, Windows 10 or newer), or
    • Build from source using Zig 0.17.

Quickstart

1. Extract OpenReliant

Download and extract the archive for your system (Linux, macOS, or Windows). Open a terminal in that folder:

  • On Windows: right-click inside the folder and choose Open in Terminal.
  • On macOS: right-click the folder in Finder and choose Services, then New Terminal at Folder.
  • On Linux: right-click in your file manager and choose Open in Terminal.

On Windows, type .\openreliant.exe wherever these steps say ./openreliant.

2. Allow the download to run (macOS only)

Release builds are not signed, so macOS blocks them until you run this once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine openreliant

3. Install game files

From physical discs

Insert StarLancer disc 1 into your drive and run:

./openreliant install StarLancer

The installer detects the CD drive, unpacks LANCER.CAB and copies required files (about 1.2 GB) into a folder named StarLancer. Any other folder name or path works too.

When prompted, insert disc 2 and press Enter to finish copying. If you do not have disc 2 at hand, type skip when asked for it. You can run the installer again later with disc 2 alone to add its files to an existing install.

From disc images (.bin or .iso)

If you have disc images or folders with the discs' files, name them with --from, once for each disc. Each disc is optional and the two can come in either order. For a .bin with a .cue next to it, name the .bin:

./openreliant install --from "StarLancer Disc 1.bin" --from "StarLancer Disc 2.bin" StarLancer

Releases

The installer knows a release by the size of disc 1's LANCER.CAB, and says which one it is as it installs:

Release Size of LANCER.CAB
English 226,746,308 bytes
French 222,899,028 bytes
German 226,777,854 bytes

The English discs sold in North America and in Europe share one cabinet. A French or German copy plays in its language: its text, its voices and its movies.

If the installer doesn't recognize your disc because it's from another release, add --force to install from it anyway:

./openreliant install --force StarLancer

Please also open an issue on GitHub saying which release you have and the size the installer gives for LANCER.CAB, so it can be added to the list.

4. Launch the game

Run the executable with the installed folder:

./openreliant StarLancer

Without a folder, OpenReliant looks for the game itself: in the current folder, in the folders in it, then beside the executable and in the folders beside it, and plays the first that holds the game. A folder named StarLancer is tried before the others. So with the game installed next to the executable, double-clicking it or a shortcut to it starts the game, from wherever it starts. openreliant joysticks and openreliant missions find the game the same way.

The game opens in its main menu. SINGLE PLAYER leads to the pilot roster, where you type your call sign or pick one of the last ten, and choose your pilot. START GAME asks the game's difficulty, then starts a campaign: Enriquez shows a new pilot round the Reliant, and the Reliant's rooms open, walked through with the mouse. The door to the briefing room starts the first mission, and Escape opens the in-game options. GAME OPTIONS' AUDIO sets the volumes and the sound, and its CONTROL DEVICES your controls (Controllers and input). QUIT leaves the game. The other screens are still to come.

To play a mission at once, give its number, such as 1 for the first campaign mission, or 0 for OpenReliant's sandbox:

./openreliant StarLancer --mission 1

While flying:

  • Escape opens the pause menu. In it, RESTART restarts the mission, and LEAVE MISSION leaves it for the restart screen, or from INSTANT ACTION for the main menu.
  • When a mission of the campaign ends, the ITAC opens with its debriefing, whose REPLAY MISSION flies it again; then the campaign goes on to the next mission's briefing. Where you were killed or captured, or left the mission, the restart screen replays it from its briefing or its launch, or goes back to the main menu. A total failure, or a third rescue by a nanny ship, ends your career. INSTANT ACTION goes back to the main menu.
  • A mission started with --mission starts flying at once. Its LEAVE MISSION quits, and when the mission ends the pause menu opens, where RESTART or CONTINUE flies it again.
  • The keys are in In-flight keys.

The log file

OpenReliant writes what it does to the terminal it runs in, and to openreliant.log in the game folder, along with what the libraries it uses say: SDL's messages, OpenAL Soft's, and FFmpeg's warnings and errors. When something goes wrong, attach that file to your bug report. If OpenReliant crashes, or one of those libraries does, the file ends with what the crash says.

  • Each run starts the file afresh, so attach it before you start the game again.
  • A message that comes again straight after itself, such as one a mod's script writes every frame, is written once, followed by how many more times it came.
  • The file stops growing at 8 MiB, and then says so, as does the terminal. The rest of the run's messages only go to the terminal.

Improvement: the original keeps no log.

Building from source

To compile OpenReliant, install Zig 0.17. Dependencies (SDL3, OpenAL Soft, FFmpeg, libarchive) build from source automatically:

zig build --release=fast
zig-out/bin/openreliant install StarLancer
zig-out/bin/openreliant StarLancer

Next steps