Akte Europa Reborn
The 1997 real-time strategy game Akte Europa, rebuilt in Godot 4 and C#.
Deutsche Fassung · Changelog · Open questions
No original data is shipped — not one byte. The installer contains the
engine and nothing else. On first start it reads the two original CDs, which
you have to own, and derives everything on your own machine: maps, unit
sprites, fonts, tables, briefings, sound. The bundled .pck is about 500 KB.
Download
→ Get the installer from the releases page
Run it, point it at your CDs on first start, and wait a few minutes while the
content is derived. The derived files go into your user profile; the program
directory stays untouched.
What it looks like
Mission briefings run on the original's own screen — the picture comes out of
BRIEFG.DAT, the text out of BRIEFG.TXT, and the typeface is the game's own.
The intro films play before it, decoded from the original's own video format.
Maps are baked at full size, up to 10160 × 5285 pixels. Here "The Dam" zoomed
out, with rail lines, power poles and the dam itself:
A base with the side panel, the resource bar and the overview map:
Status
The 33-mission campaign and skirmish games are playable. From the two
discs, the first launch derives:
| |
|---|
| Maps | 44, baked up to 10160 × 5285 pixels |
| Game states | 44 (units, buildings, objectives, deposits, rail lines …) |
| Unit pictures | 4307, composed out of ROBO.CWR |
| Tables | 12, from the map files and GAME.EXE |
| Films | 35, decoded from the original's own container |
| Interface | original typeface, side panel, effects, mission briefings |
The simulation runs on the original's own numbers: prices, hit points, attack
and defence, range, reload time, speed, fuel and ammunition all come from the
game's records rather than from guessed constants. Where something could not be
recovered, the code says so — every assumption of our own is marked as such.
Road to 0.7.0
0.7.0 ships when every one of the 33 campaign missions has been played
through individually and found clean. Not before.
The reason is a lesson this project paid dearly for: a single mission played
attentively found more defects than a hundred automated harnesses combined.
Mission 1 alone produced over twenty findings in one evening — from faction
colours through missing debris and explosions to units sinking into the ground.
A harness measures what you asked it to measure; a person at the screen also
sees what nobody thought to ask about.
How it works
For each mission, in order:
- Play it, with an expectation sheet next to you, generated from the
extracted mission script — which help windows should appear, which
sub-missions exist, what the victory condition actually requires.
- Report every discrepancy, however small: a sound in the wrong place, a
tile that looks wrong under fog, an enemy that never comes.
- Read the original, do not guess. Every fix carries the address in
GAME.EXE it came from — and wherever we had to decide something ourselves,
the code says so in as many words.
- Measure, do not assert. Every fix comes with a number and a null model,
and every switch with a counter-test that restores the previous behaviour.
- Only then the next mission.
Where to watch the progress
Everything found and fixed goes into CHANGELOG.md; whatever
stays open or needs input goes into OFFENE_FRAGEN.md
(German) — including the cases where an earlier explanation of ours turned out
to be wrong. Both are kept as we go, not written afterwards.
⭐ Where we stand (2026-10-23, release 0.6.11): all 33 missions have
been played through — the whole campaign, up to the credits. Along the way mission 2 became completable for the first time,
the power plants in mission 4 and the bunkers in mission 7 became destructible,
and the enemy now plays with the original's own AI. 0.6.2 came out of
SKIRMISH (the computer opponent no longer cheats at vision; easy, normal and
hard finally differ); 0.6.3 came from the ENGINEER — landing ramps and
bridges, without which missions 8 and 9 cannot be won; 0.6.4 covers missions
10 to 14 — the buildings' own windows, built ships and buildings that behave
like the ones on the map, and allies that share their vision and play for
themselves; 0.6.5 comes out of the AIR — the airfield with hand control, its
own map screen, recycling and a patrol that actually scrambles, plus the
anti-aircraft guns and a record field we had read wrong for a year, which made
every aircraft in the game fly in the wrong direction; 0.6.6 covers missions
21 to 24 — the railway with its transport system and track repair, the
terranium search, mission scripts that pay out sub-missions and wake eliminated
opponents up again, and three rounds of reports from our beta tester
KayelGee; 0.6.7 covers missions 25 to 27 — the Dicke Bertha and the
battleship turret as in the original, fog on ice maps without shimmering, a
mission 26 that finally ends, the shipyard with its own stock, captured
airfields that come with their aircraft, and the fourth round of reports from
KayelGee; 0.6.8 brings KayelGee's fifth round with saves that finally
load properly again; 0.6.9 missions 28 to 33, the original's save window
and the closing film after mission 33; 0.6.10 KayelGee's sixth round and LAN multiplayer in lockstep again; 0.6.11 KayelGee's seventh round, Reaper's first and a skirmish computer opponent that forms groups and marches. Each is a stop along
this road, not its end. What changed, in
plain words: CHANGELOG.md.
Contributions are explicitly welcome. If you play a mission and something
feels different from the original, please say so on
Discord — especially if it seems like a
small thing. That is exactly what progress hangs on.
What is next
- Online multiplayer (LAN lockstep already runs)
- Map editor, finished
- A competitive skirmish mode
- English/German language switch
- A "Reborn" graphics mode you can toggle against the original sprites
- Wiki
Come talk about it on Discord.
Requirements
- The two original Akte Europa CDs (in the drive or as folders)
- Windows; builds for other systems are not set up yet
Building it yourself
You need Godot 4.7 (Mono/.NET) and the .NET SDK.
dotnet build "Akte Europa Reborn.csproj"
godot --path . --headless --export-release "Windows Desktop"
Importing content without the interface:
godot --path . --headless -- --import-cd # discs in the drive
godot --path . --headless -- --import=<folder> # or from an installation
Self tests
The readers for the original formats are not merely built — they are checked
against the data they read:
godot --path . --headless -- --selftest-cwp=<toolsdir>
godot --path . --headless -- --selftest-designs
godot --path . --headless -- --selftest-briefings
Among the things verified: 13 sprite frames pixel-identical against a second
implementation, 26 map files consumed with zero bytes left over, 4147 unit
pictures identical, 601 design records reproduced exactly, 33 mission texts
character for character.
Beyond the readers, the rules are checked in the running engine — the
campaign against both original executables (33 missions, no difference), the
tick rate, the economy, the rail network, transports, groups, saves. Every check
prints numbers, and every one of them can go red.
How this project works
Every mechanic is reconstructed from the original binary before it is
implemented — even where inventing something would be quicker. A reading only
counts once there is a number behind it: counted across every map, held against
a second implementation, measured in the running engine. What comes from the
data and what comes from us is kept apart and named in the code. Misreadings get
withdrawn rather than overwritten.
The file formats were opened up one at a time along the way: CWP (tiles and
objects), CWM (maps with over 130 sections), CWR (unit sprites), CWD (fonts),
CWA (effects), RPL (films), the CD's InstallShield cabinet, and the tables
inside GAME.EXE.
Legal
Copyright © 2026 chr1zZo. The code is licensed under the GPL-3.0, see
LICENSE.
Akte Europa and all related content belong to their respective rights holders.
This project is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with them, and distributes no
original data. You need the original CDs to play.
