A modern total conversion of OpenRA, set in an alternate near-future where the Russo-Ukrainian war has escalated into a global conflict. Realism-focused real-time strategy: two superpowers, no base building, suppression that pins infantry, buildings you garrison and fight from, and an economy of reinforcements called in from off-map rather than manufactured.
Status: playable alpha. The first public build is v0.1.0 — installers for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Grab an installer from the Releases page and run it.
| Platform | File |
|---|---|
| Windows | WW3MOD-<version>-x64.exe — or -x86 on 32-bit Windows |
| macOS | WW3MOD-<version>.dmg |
| Linux | WW3MOD-<version>-x86_64.AppImage — chmod +x, then run |
The -winportable.zip files are the same build without an installer, for running in place.
You need neither .NET nor a copy of Red Alert. Each installer bundles its own runtime, and the game still loads artwork and audio from Red Alert's data files, so on first launch it offers a Quick Install that fetches them from a mirror of the 2008 freeware release. If you own the game — disc, Origin, or The First Decade — Advanced Install copies them from your installation instead, which also gets you the music and campaign videos.
The binaries are not code-signed. Windows shows a SmartScreen warning (More info → Run anyway); macOS refuses a plain double-click, so right-click the app → Open.
Multiplayer requires everyone to be on the same version.
- Two playable factions — America and Russia.
- Reinforcement economy — no factories, no tech tree. Units are called in from off-map reserves via the Supply Route, a fixed beachhead that arrives at the map edge. Enemies who hold ground near your Supply Route contest it: first your production slows, and if they keep it long enough you are out of the war.
- Suppression system — 10-tier infantry / 5-tier vehicle suppression. Suppressed infantry go prone; vehicles lose turret traverse and accuracy.
- Garrisoned buildings — capture shelters and fortified positions; soldiers fire from directional ports, gain damage protection, and duck under suppression.
- Helicopter crew system — pilots, copilots, and gunners. Heavy damage triggers controlled autorotation; critical damage causes uncontrolled crashes. Capture downed helicopters by walking your own pilot in.
- Vehicle crew — Driver / Gunner / Commander slots. Crew eject one-by-one on critical damage and can re-enter repaired vehicles.
- Stance system — fire discipline, engagement, cohesion, resupply behavior. Per-unit and per-type defaults persist across games.
- Three-mode movement — Move (smart self-defense only), Attack-Move (fire at everything), Force-Move (pure travel, never fire).
- Nuclear weapons — a graded arsenal from tactical yields up to a Dead Hand retaliatory salvo, with fireball light, fallout and blast scarring scaled to yield.
- Scenario system — scripted map variants in Lua, including a "Frontline" co-op mode with garrisons and waves.
- 8 skirmish maps across snow and temperate tilesets.
Open an issue. Logs live in Documents\OpenRA\Logs on Windows and ~/.openra/Logs elsewhere; attaching them makes a crash far easier to chase.
# Linux / macOS
make all
# Windows (PowerShell)
./make.ps1 allThen launch-game.cmd (Windows) or ./launch-game.sh (Linux/macOS). Running a source build needs a .NET 8 or later runtime on the machine; the packaged installers above do not, because they ship one.
global.json pins the SDK to 6.0.428 with rollForward: latestFeature. A newer SDK will not do:
latestFeature cannot roll forward across a major version, so a machine carrying only 8.x or 10.x fails
to build every project with "A compatible .NET SDK was not found". It must be a 6.0.4xx band — a
6.0.1xx SDK is also rejected.
winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.6 # WindowsOr download from dotnet.microsoft.com. Installing side by side is safe and leaves an existing 8.x or 10.x SDK untouched — the pin only decides which SDK compiles, not which runtime executes.
.NET 6 is end-of-life, and depending on it is a deliberate tradeoff, not an oversight: the pin is what
makes CI and a local make check run the identical analyzer set, so the code-style gate cannot go red
for reasons unrelated to any commit. The full reasoning is in commit e4453e6b — read it before
proposing a bump.
The solution file is WW3MOD.sln. The OpenRA engine lives in-repo under engine/ (forked from release-20230225); there is no submodule and AUTOMATIC_ENGINE_MANAGEMENT is disabled.
Bug reports, balance feedback, and code contributions are all welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before opening an issue or PR.
Design references and engine notes for contributors are in DOCS/; WORKSPACE/ is the project's day-to-day working area and is written for the people already in it rather than for newcomers.
Built on OpenRA (release-20230225). Inherited and adapted assets from other community OpenRA mods are documented in CREDITS.md.
Authors: FreadyFish (lead), CmdrBambi.
Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See COPYING for the full text. All contributions are accepted under the same license.