https://github.com/TheSuperHackers/GeneralsGameCode

For context, I love huge, massive maps with loads of players. OpenRA replays the entire game to restore, it doesn't have a save-current-state routine.

So 20 hours of massive map + 8 players means 2 hours of pegged CPU to reload the save.

Heartbreaking.

EA released CnC and Red Alert as free downloads twenty years ago.

Moving everything to TCP/IP came with a lot of improvements, but we also lost important things. Reminds me of the move from Flash to HTML5.

These days, I'm having incredible fun developing good old AI scripts with LLMs, for my own vibe-coded RTS game. Just choose all AI players here to make them battle each other: https://egeozcan.github.io/unnamed_rts/game/

I even let the LLM generate a tournament script to make AI scripts from different LLMs battle (headless): https://github.com/egeozcan/unnamed_rts/blob/main/src/script... GPT-5.5 leaves all in the dust currently. I cannot beat most in the game I set the rules myself :)

If you are like me, you can just make LLMs create your personal RTS game and also develop custom AIs. It's so much fun.

I'm able to get the mechanics down. But I can't get the graphics past RA1 level yet without killing the process power.

It's super impressive this works at all.

It helps that this is a childhood favorite game of mine.

What are the possibilities for just giving Claude that each turn. Yes, insane over kill, but in a couple of years Claude level AI will run locally on laptops...

If you meant _playing_ raw based on LLM input - that's probably the wrong tool for the job. The latency for you to react to a mango shot is faster than a billion tok/s lol

Because there is no collision between the sky and floor it determines that this is the quickest route. Even with zoning it does something you'll never think of.

Using LLMs as NPCs can be hilarious to watch.

Developing AI scripts, however? They are crazy good! I try to re-balance the game to give a little edge to the humans, then it takes a single iteration for your not-even-sota LLM to destroy me. I mean I'm not the fastest RTS player but for the lack of skill, I have the advantage of being the designer of the game :)

About the RA2 AI scripts: You can react to enemy faction, composition etc. but it's impossible to program it to pull back its tesla tanks when they are under threat from a bunch of rocketeers. Those things are hard-coded in the game engine. I think the only exception was the DeeZire mod which patched the game exe, if I'm not hallucinating.

For a lot of games it can be surprisingly easy to make an AI which beats the median player even when limited to just basic strategies, simply by not getting distracted by the gut feelings that humans have.

Even for more complex strategy games like say Starcraft II where that's not enough, there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software)

I hate the term "AI" applied to games, since AI means so many things and usually implies something smart, "intelligent". But in reality, it is more like a "bot" or a "computer player". And the main goal is not to be super-smart, but to be plausible enough and provide an appropriate challenge to the human player.

There are some "fair" bots in games - like in my favorite turn-based Mechanized Assault and Exploration from the mid 90s. Computer players follow the same rules as the human ones - e.g., if something is not visible to the radar, the computer will not see it. The only "cheat" is the resource boost computer players can have on the higher difficulty settings, but it is totally optional. And as an experienced player, you always let the computer have it, since you want a challenge, and without that boost, it has no chance whatsoever.

I didn't play enough doom to really love it in the same way.

Continuously shifting the goalposts of what "AI" is is, of course, a well-known phenomenon, giving rise to what's called the AI effect or Tesler's theorem [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

That is why I prefer to call them "bots" or "computers" - just to separate them from a shifting mess of definitions of what "AI" actually means. It reminds me of "Destination Void" by Frank Herbert, where the main characters were trying to build artificial consciousness and were struggling to define what it actually means.