RTS AI
A standalone modern RTS built on OpenRA, with seven factions and project-made art, sound and maps. No Red Alert or Red Alert 2 installation is required.
The optional local co-commander offers advice and explicitly reviewed orders when its required runtime is configured. The Mac alpha includes an ARM64 companion but no neural inference, speech runtime or model; it does not demonstrate spoken questions. Hosted AI remains disabled by default.
Status: in development. This is the canonical standalone game checkout. The earlier OpenRA AI Classic alpha remains a historical release; it is not the current standalone build. See the product direction and MIGRATION.md for integration status.
One product, two gameplay modes
Launch launch-game.cmd, open Game modes, and choose Classic or Isometric. Both standalone profiles have 16 country choices, seven authored modern faction packs and six campaigns. Classic currently uses the shared modern army on an original rectangular terrain set; additional mechanics and maps from the historical Classic fork remain a porting task.
The two delivery surfaces are Downloadable RTS (Windows EXE installer and portable ZIP, plus a separate macOS 15+ alpha DMG) and Web RTS (RTSAI-WebGame, static browser game with direct peer multiplayer, chat and optional calls). Classic/top-down and isometric profiles are now available in the browser. Complete parity between the two surfaces remains a roadmap item. See Mac alpha requirements and checksums; it is ad-hoc signed, not notarized, and Intel/another-Mac acceptance remain pending. See the delivery roadmap.
The default launcher and standalone Windows package load only project and engine resources. The old owned-content importer and rtsai-classic manifest are retained for migration reference, excluded from the standalone package, and are not the dependency-free Classic/top-down mode.
Independent project. EA has not endorsed and does not support this mod.
Factions
Seven modern factions, each with its own doctrine, signature units and voice lines:
| Nation | Status in this mod |
|---|
| China | Playable |
| Iran | Playable |
| Türkiye | Playable |
| Saudi Arabia | Playable |
| Yemen | Playable |
| Israel | Playable |
| Hezbollah | Playable |
These are fictional game factions, not claims about real-world forces. The shared faction catalog (names, roles and stories used by the game and the website) lives in alibad/OpenRA-AI.
Each modern nation also has its own announcer. Every modern voice is synthetic and made locally with
openly licensed speech models; docs/audio-provenance.md lists the engines,
licenses and voices.
All modern-faction art is rendered from the project's own 3D models: 69 prerendered vehicles, ships and aircraft,
28 infantry in faction uniforms, 25 buildings and defenses, and 122 build-menu cameos with name bars.
docs/art-provenance.md explains how each file is made; the per-file record is
mods/rtsai/modern-factions/ART-PROVENANCE.json. What changed in the next alpha:
docs/release-notes.md.
Build and run (Windows)
Requirements: the .NET 10 SDK.
.\make.cmd all # downloads the pinned engine and builds the mod
.\make.cmd test # rules and YAML checks
.\launch-game.cmd # start the game
For a local engine export: sh ./fetch-local-engine.sh ../OpenRA-wt-rtsai-engine, then .\make.cmd all. mod.config pins the exact engine commit.
A Windows release (per-user installer, portable zip, voice pack) is built on Windows with
packaging\windows\build-release.ps1; the first-launch flow, installer options, code signing and the AI
companion host are described in docs/first-launch.md.
The engine is the slim rtsai/engine branch of alibad/OpenRA: upstream OpenRA bleed plus a few small commits. They add loopback-service hosting for the companion, in-process screenshots, held-key tracking for push-to-talk, a headless platform for automated tests, an interceptor magazine for missile jammers, missiles that follow raised ground and ramps, consistent turret depth, and a fix for a divide by zero between near-equal ramp tilts. mod.config pins the exact commit.
Layout
| Path | Contents |
|---|
mods/rtsai | Game rules, maps, chrome and the modern factions (their art: modern-factions/art-*.yaml and the vehicles, infantry, buildings and icons folders, installed by RTSAI-Art's tools) |
mods/rtsai/standalone | Original terrain, maps, shared buildings/units, effects, sounds, UI and their provenance |
resources/ | Preserved legacy source resources and migration inventory; not mounted or shipped as game content |
mods/rtsai-content, mods/rtsai-classic | Legacy owned-content references, excluded from standalone distribution |
OpenRA.Mods.RA2 | RA2 game logic |
OpenRA.Mods.RTSAI | The AI companion bridge (loopback gRPC), its in-game HUD, and the faction bot doctrines |
tools/ | Porting and validation scripts |
The companion's voice and strategy service lives in alibad/OpenRA-AI (services/companion).
License
Code is GPLv3, like the OpenRA engine and the OpenRA Mod SDK this repository is built from. See COPYING.
