About
What Reforged is
Zero Hour Reforged is Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour compiled from the source code Electronic Arts released under GPL-3.0. It runs as a 64-bit Windows program, draws with Direct3D 11 and plays the maps and missions you already own.
One person builds it, Olcay Seygan, with AI help on the code. There is no CI server and no debugger on the machine, so every change is proved on headless matches that must replay to the same checksum, and on frames compared pixel by pixel, before it ships.
It is free and has no company behind it. You need your own copy of Zero Hour; Reforged brings no game data.
Measured against EA's source
Each row gives the source EA released first, then this build. A logic frame is the step in which the game rules are computed, 30 times a second. The changelog has the measurements in full.
| Measurement | EA source | Reforged | Reforged / EA source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Longest logic frame | 2,976 ms | 243 ms | |
| Route search, 23 cells | 256 ms | 25 ms | |
| Total pathfinding time over one match | 11.8 s | 1.6 s | |
| Frame time under heavy fire and smoke | 11.6 ms | 6.7 ms | |
| Longest frame of a fight's first explosions | 141 ms | 38 ms | |
| 20 tanks against 20 head-on: last arrival | 72 s | 23 s | |
| Average Crusader trip as two armies of 420 cross | 167 s | 91 s | |
| Hard AI's first superweapon | 12.5 min | 4.9 min |
Part by part
Rendering and performance
Direct3D 11| Measurement | EA source | Reforged |
|---|---|---|
| Renderer | Direct3D 8 | Direct3D 11 by default, bloom and anti-aliasing on; Direct3D 9 with -d3d9 |
| Frame rate | rendering tied to the 30 Hz logic step, 30 FPS at most | logic fixed at 30 Hz, rendering decoupled, frame rate uncapped |
| Base game textures | Zero Hour's downscaled copies | 481 textures at 4x resolution |
| Terrain texture | 64 pixels per cell, 16-bit colour | 128 pixels, full colour, relief shading from the map's sun |
| Infantry shadow | flat blob | shadow volume built from the model's pose |
| Widescreen interface | 4:3 command bar stretched horizontally | three pieces at their drawn aspect ratio |
| Field of view above 16:9 | vertical angle shrinks, picture zooms in | horizontal angle widens, more map visible |
| Tree rendering | one buffer, about 730 trees; the rest are not drawn | four buffers |
AI
Sees what it scouts| Measurement | EA source | Reforged |
|---|---|---|
| Base building | a wrong value left it with urgent items and one power plant only | full base, scouting, expansion to new supply piles |
| Vision | auto-targets units under the fog of war | sees only what it has scouted; stealth works on it |
| Production choice | random pick among teams of equal priority | damage, armour and cost against the units it sees you field |
| Retreat | not in the code; teams fight to the last unit | Hard pulls a team out of a lost fight |
| Banked money | Hard sits on 117,000 | one more attack group per 8,000, up to four |
Orders and movement
840 units routed| Measurement | EA source | Reforged |
|---|---|---|
| Mouse | left selects and orders, right drag scrolls | left selects, right orders, middle button moves the camera |
| Shift queue | move orders only | any order type, kept by the units |
| Mass move order | route queue holds 512; 329 of 841 units never move | all 840 units get a route |
| Long bridge on Golden Oasis | one tank in ten stuck under the deck | 20 of 20 tanks cross |
| Diagonal movement | up to 40% above the unit's speed | the unit's defined speed |
Other
64-bit| Measurement | EA source | Reforged |
|---|---|---|
| Replays | only the last match kept | every match in its own file; timeline with seeking |
| Countdowns | rounding bug, 10 seconds shown as 11 | real seconds |
| Memory | 32-bit, 4 GB address space at most | 64-bit |
| Crash report | none for background-thread and loading faults | written for both, sent by the launcher |
Roadmap
Next 2
- 01Turkey as a fourth factionA fourth side that hits from long range and needs drones to see what it shoots at.
- 02Online play on our own lobby serverInternet games through a server of our own, in place of GameSpy, which shut down years ago. Coming soon; accounts and the ladder are already on this site.
Done 9
- 01Direct3D 11 and sun shadowsThe sun casts one shadow map over the whole field, and the base game's textures are back at four times Zero Hour's size.
- 02A skirmish AI worth playingThe computer builds a real base, spends its money, expands and picks its fights.
- 03Shift queues and attack linesQueued orders with Shift, buildings laid out in rows, attack lines and a reworked mouse.
- 04Pro RulesA competitive rule set, one box away in the LAN and online lobby.
- 05A new HUDThe command bar sits in the middle of the screen and scales with it.
- 06Replays you can rewindEvery match is kept, and a replay rewinds and changes speed as you watch.
- 07Fewer out-of-sync gamesTwo audits closed the ways two machines or a replay could drift apart.
- 08Mac and Linux buildsThe game runs natively there and on the Steam Deck, built from source. The launcher does not offer them yet.
- 09LAN play between two PCsMatches on separate machines, tested and working.
Not planned 3
- 01Mod supportReforged is one game with one set of rules.
- 02An Android portMeasured, and not on the schedule.
- 03Direct3D 12Direct3D 11 draws the game and stays.