
Show HN: OpenRA – RTS project that recreates Command and Conquer games - ZakWheaton
http://openra.res0l.net/
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voltagex_
The codebase is in C# if anyone wants to jump in.

Also:
[https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/36085-openra](https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/36085-openra)
\- yes, that's $1600 in bounties.

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i80and
Speaking as somebody who contributed a pathfinding fast-failing optimization,
the development team is really helpful and the codebase is quite nice to jump
into!

If you want to get a feel for RTS design, OpenRA is great stuff. Plus, it's
really fun, so there's that too.

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dublinben
It's so great to see the RTS genre getting love from the free software
community. It's really been abandoned by commercial game development studios,
much like point-and-click adventurers.

I can't wait to have some cross-platform Command and Conquer style games with
my friends.

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ekianjo
> It's really been abandoned by commercial game development studios

Not really. Starcraft 2 comes to mind. And not too long ago Supreme Commander.
Wargame: European Escalation... and so on.

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chongli
Not to mention the Total War series, though they are significantly different
in some respects. I think the problem with traditional RTSes is that they are
just too damn hard to play effectively for most people. As a former follower
of StarCraft II, I remember vividly the discussions about _ladder anxiety_ and
even experienced it myself when playing. It's such an incredibly high-pressure
game, I'm really not surprised people avoid playing it.

~~~
dragonwriter
Total war is real time tactical plus turn based strategy,not really RTS.

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chongli
Yeah, I'm aware of the difference. Personally, I think it's splitting hairs in
an already extremely small genre (by number of titles, not players).

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dragonwriter
Just because the RTS genre is small doesn't mean that it makes sense to
consider things that are very different part of the genre -- having
construction/replenishment, strategic movement, etc., outside of the realtime
game and part of the turn-based game makes Total War very different
structurally from an RTS, and very different in its appeal.

~~~
chongli
Who gets to decide which structural features are allowed and which aren't
allowed in the genre? I'm sorry but I've had this sort of argument with tons
of other people regarding other genres. Personally, I don't think you can
define strict rules for what should/shouldn't be in a game for it to be
classified into a genre. Otherwise a genre would be nothing more than a list
of games that never changes.

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jqm
These are the only kind of computer games that entertain me for some
reason(except card games). First person shooter games bore the heck out of me
and I don't play them.

There is one in particular called "Cossacks" that is hands down the best game
ever IMHOP. I have been playing it for over 12 years and keep an XP machine
(last windows machine in the house for a long time now) specifically to play
Cossacks. I play it regularly too... at least a couple of hours a week
usually.

And I really really wish someone would do a project like this with Cossacks.
It is so much richer and more complex than the Command and Conquer series
(although those were good as well... not complaining and this is a neat
project). I think it actually takes years to get the nuances of Cossacks down.
Best game EVER!

(I realize this is not normal. I don't know if I should seek counseling or if
I'm just a game monogamist.)

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shaggyfrog
Another similar project is ORTS, which has been around for a decade:
[https://skatgame.net/mburo/orts/orts.html](https://skatgame.net/mburo/orts/orts.html)

~~~
ricree
The most polished I'm aware of off the top of my head is Spring
([http://springrts.com/](http://springrts.com/)), which started off as a Total
Annihilation clone, but grew into a pretty solid engine in its own right.

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akurilin
Anything that helps people relive these amazing PC classics has my support.
Same thing with OpenTTD!

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egeozcan
There is also 0 A.D.[0], which is inspired by Age of Empires.

[0]: [http://play0ad.com/](http://play0ad.com/)

~~~
jckt
Glest/MegaGlest[0] is also another FOSS RTS project. When I last played it it
felt a bit like Warcraft 3, but definitely not a clone (no heroes as far as I
remember).

[0]: [http://megaglest.org/](http://megaglest.org/)

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navs
Awesome! Just awesome. My late father was a huge C&C fan but his fondness for
the series ended around the time of C&C Generals. I remember with Red Alert 2,
they introduced killer dolphins and Giant Squids. The RA series just became
more and more comical over time. The first RA and its expansion packs remain
my absolute favorite.

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RobotCaleb
I host this and have been involved off and on for the last few years. If you
want to contribute the dev team is very approachable (often a problem) and
willing to help out where needed. The codebase is rather pleasant as well.

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sonofsam
Surprised no one mentioned: [http://zero-k.info/](http://zero-k.info/)

This is an extremely polished open source game (spiritually based on Total
Annihilation). Everyone should check it out.

~~~
lunixbochs
Spring was mentioned, which is a superset of Zero-K

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spingsprong
I remember trying this out a few years ago, and was amazed that it ran at
0.5fps on my modernish PC, when the original game from 1996 ran fine on a
66MHz PC with 16MB of RAM.

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darylteo
Wasn't there a version of C&C running completely in WebGL or JS/Canvas in some
way?

~~~
ygra
[http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-
and-...](http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and-conquer/)

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yincrash
def fun and an easy game to play with your friends quickly. Plays really
differently than the real RA, but doesn't mean it's bad.

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akusete
Love the project. Crashes on my mac though :(

~~~
jauer
On the off chance that it was a beach ball instead of a outright crash,
apparently there's some cache generation that happens on first run on OSX
10.9+. It started working after ~5 minutes of beachball on my 2011 MBA.

~~~
Milanium
This has been fixed in
[https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/5244](https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/5244)
and will be shipped in the next version.

