Creating AI for an RTS game is challenging, so we’ve opted to reuse as much logic from OpenRA as possible to speed up the development process.

Current state

As of now, the basic AI for Skirmish in OpenE2140 is nearly complete. It can perform the following activities:

• Building a base and its defenses
• Collecting resources and managing the economy
• Researching technologies
• Constructing and managing an army
• Repairing buildings
• Building and utilizing superweapons

Overall, it serves as a fully competent opponent, capable of challenging human players. However, don’t expect miracles; it is still an AI, and refinement is needed to smooth out rough edges. For instance, the bot occasionally stalls its unit production to expand its economy. Additionally, building placement can be suboptimal, as the AI sometimes positions structures too close to exits of production buildings or right next to conveyor belts of Mines or Refineries.

The video intentionally displays target lines for the orders the bots issue. This illustrates how the bots control their units, allowing you to observe their strategies before you compete against them.

Bot modules

AI in OpenRA is modular, with AI players referred to as bots. Currently, we are using bot modules from the engine without modifications (though with custom configurations for OpenE2140) for the following features:

• Squad management
• Unit production
• Building repair
• Superweapons

Other modules provided by the engine cannot be applied because the game mechanics they are designed for operate differently in C&C games compared to Earth 2140 (and consequently in OpenE2140). These include:

• Base building
• Resource collection
• Capturing buildings
• Powering buildings down/up

(While powering buildings down/up is technically similar in both OpenE2140 and C&C games, the implementation differs, making the bot module for this mechanic incompatible with OpenE2140.)

Currently, we are working on the following necessary bot modules for a functional Skirmish AI in OpenE2140:

• Base building (using MCUs)
• Mining resources (using Mines/Refineries + Banthas/Heavy Lifters)
• Researching technologies

In the video below, you can see how base building and economy management are implemented. For this demo, unit production is disabled to make it easier to follow the actions of the AI bot. The bot also generates text notifications about its decisions, allowing you to observe its “thinking” in action.

There’s also the Water Base, which hasn’t been mentioned yet. This building requires additional work, as it necessitates placing the Dock in water in addition to deploying the Water Base on shore. While we consider naval units core to the gameplay, naval warfare is currently not the focal point of OpenE2140. Thus, implementing it would delay the initial release of the Skirmish AI.

Bot modules and logic for these game mechanics will also be included at a later date, as they are not strictly necessary for a functional Skirmish AI:

• Staffing buildings with crew
• Capturing buildings (using armed or unarmed infantry or civilians)
• Constructing walls
• Properly utilizing Shadows/Screamers

Next steps

Don’t expect these features soon, as we will be focusing on other essentials like remaining game mechanics and the single-player campaign. Check out the roadmap for a high-level view of our current work plan.

In general, it will take a lot of time to teach the AI to utilize all features and game mechanics available in OpenE2140. However, there’s no need to worry: eventually, everything from Earth 2140 will be implemented in OpenE2140, and it will function even better than the original game!

The basic Skirmish AI is coming soon, so stay tuned and follow us on this website, Mod DB or GitHub.

If you haven’t tried OpenE2140 yet, visit the download page, where you can find links to download the game and information on how to get it running.

We also have our own Discord server, where you can chat with other OpenE2140 fans, connect with us, the developers, and even arrange multiplayer matches!

You can find download links for the new version on the Download page.

Release with bugfixes and small new features

No release is perfect, and a few issues surfaced after the initial launch. This update addresses several of those problems. Here’s a quick summary: `

• Fixed crashes and visual bugs related to the Bantha and` Heavy Lifter units
• Debug menu is now disabled by default
• Defense Tower now requires only a Bio-Center to build (as in E2140)
• Enabled hotkeys for items in the production sidebar
• Updated the engine with additional fixes and improvements

Although these issues are resolved, some known problems remain. For the most up-to-date list, see the Known issues page.

We’ve also added a few smaller features:

• Upgraded Power Plant with two additional modules (temporary solution until building upgrades are implemented)
• UCS mechs and T 100 light tank now leave tracks in sand

For a more detailed list of changes, see the changelog on GitHub.

Next up: basic AI

Our next major focus is AI — the feature we’ve had the most requests for. We’re working hard on a basic AI that will cover:

• base building and technology research
• mining resources
• simple unit tactics
• basic attacking and defending behavior

The first AI alpha won’t include advanced tactics or strategy, so don’t expect very smart opponent. Keep an eye for future updates.

Feedback

We’re thrilled that OpenE2140 was so well received. We’ll keep improving the game, but we still need your feedback — positive or critical. Join us on Discord; we’re eager to hear from you!

TL;DR: If you can’t wait to play, head over to Download page for links and How To Install page for instructions on how to install and start playing OpenE2140. We do recommend reading the release notes below as they contain useful information.

Multiplayer alpha

While the game is fully playable, it is still an early access alpha release — OpenE2140 is not complete. That said, most of the gameplay and UI features are implemented. Since the AI isn’t available (yet), the main focus of this release is multiplayer.

We understand that this might be a bit disappointing for some people — Earth 2140 was mainly a single-player game after all. However, making AI work with the specifics of Earth 2140 (mainly base building) is going to take some time. We’ve focused on adding as many gameplay features as possible before making this public release, because that’s what’s actually most important: without units and buildings, you can’t really play an RTS like Earth 2140.

We think your ability to play multiplayer games with others may actually be interesting, because only the old DOS version of Earth 2140 had multiplayer — and even that was hard to get working (all Windows versions came without multiplayer and never received it after release).

We’ve set up dedicated multiplayer servers, which you can use to play OpenE2140 with other people over the internet. They’re all located in Czech Republic (Europe). We will add more if these are not going to be enough:

Main changes from Earth 2140

The first thing you’ll notice when you start OpenE2140 is that the UI is different from the original. For some people, it might take a while to get familiar with it, but players with experience in C&C games (especially modern ones like C&C3: Tiberium Wars) will recognize it and get used to it quickly.

As for gameplay, expect what you saw in the launch trailer above — unit production queues, unit stances, HCU-M automatic repair, automatic ore transport, and more! We’ll post a list of changes and improvements soon.

Missing features and other known issues

As mentioned before, OpenE2140 is not complete. There are many features yet to be implemented, bugs to fix, and UI elements to polish. However, most of these are minor and don’t affect the overall feel of the game.

The biggest missing feature is the AI. While you can start a Skirmish game, there’s no AI player yet. Skirmish is still useful, though — you can try everything out at your own pace and then perhaps play online with other people.

For more information on known issues, head over to Known issues page to find out what to expect from this release. You don’t have to worry, though; we intend to finish remaking Earth 2140 in its entirety, so everything from that list will be fixed and/or implemented eventually.

Versioning

As mentioned, OpenE2140 is currently in the multiplayer alpha phase. For versioning, we’ve decided to follow OpenRA’s scheme:

release-yyyyMMdd, where yyyyMMdd is the release date in the format year, month, day.

Therefore the current version is release-20251116.

Feedback

This is the first time you get to play OpenE2140 and we’d really appreciate your feedback. We did receive some over the past two years, but that feedback was based only on videos and screenshots of what we’ve shown you, without you actually playing the game.

You can talk to us on Discord or Mod DB.

Hello everyone!

After more than 12 months, we’ve reached another milestone: Preview 7!

It contains one of the most important features: resource harvesting. Aside from that it also shows building walls using Miners and some other minor improvements.

The video is hosted on Dalek.zone. Dalek.zone is a PeerTube instance, which is maintained by Dave. Thanks a lot, man!

First public release

Since the resource harvesting is finally implemented, we can now focus on making the first public release. It requires a bit more time, since there are some minor things that require fixing/polishing. Plus we’ve fallen behind the development of the OpenRA engine, so we need to upgrade to get latest fixes and improvements. Rest assured, that first release is definitely coming.

Don’t forget to join us on our Discord server, where you can to other fans of OpenE2140 (and us developers too!).

Hello everyone!

The development is moving forward and we’ve started testing OpenE2140 internally in multiplayer matches. The tests showed some issues including bugs and crashes. We’re working hard to smooth over the remaining rough edges, so we can bring you as great experience as possible.

Release date?

You’re probably eager to know, when OpenE2140 is going to be released. There’s still no date set, but rest assured the release is closer than ever!

Don’t forget to join us on our Discord server, where you can talk to the development team and other fans of OpenE2140.

Hello everyone!

After 5 months, we’ve finished another milestone: Preview 6! It’s been long 5 months, but the results are worth it.

Preview 6 contains several important features, that we’ve been implementing these past months:

• Research
• Water Base
• Building Crew
• UI overlay for MCU deployment
• … and more!

Without further ado, here it is. We hope you’ll enjoy it:

You can also watch the video on Dalek.zone. Dalek.zone is a PeerTube instance, which is maintained by Dave and Ben. Big thanks goes to these two guys!

Developer Diary: Implementing Water Base

One of the big features that we’re showing in the Preview 6 video is Water Base. Since the implementation was rather tricky, but also interesting, we’ve decided to give it more attention and present it in more detail. Thus we’re planning to release a Developer Diary dedicated to Water Base implementation very soon.

Future

We hope you liked the new video. As for the near future, many of you have been asking, when you’ll finally be able to play OpenE2140 yourselves. There are still lots of missing features, both smaller (like Miners disarming mines or building walls, HCU-M capturing disabled vehicles) and larger (resource harvesting, fully working AI, SP campaigns). While we could skip some (mainly smaller) features for first public releases, resource harvesting is an example of very important component of Earth 2140 (but also other C&C-like RTS games). And we don’t want to release a public version of OpenE2140 without such important features working.

As such we’d like to ask you to be a little bit more patient.

In the meantime, we’d like to invite you to our Discord server, where you can discuss with us and other fans. Occasionally, we post some interesting stuff there, so don’t hesitate and join us!

As the time passes and we’re getting closer to the end of the year, we’d like to wish everyone merry Christmas, lots of gifts and happy new year!

Make sure to follow OpenE2140’s development in 2024: we’re slowly advancing forward and the first playable public release is getting closer!

OpenE2140’s development team.

Hello everyone!

It’s been three weeks since we’ve released our last preview video, so we thought we should give you another sneak peek at what we’ve done and what we’re currently working on. Be sure to watch Preview 5 video too, if you haven’t seen it yet! Either here on ModDB or on Dalek.zone (that’s a PeerTube instance).

Why an article?

The reason we’re publishing this article here on ModDB is that aside from the channel on Dalek.zone and the videos and images here, there is virtually no public information about OpenE2140 outside of our OpenE2140 Discord server to this date. There is our GitHub repository, but there’s so many issues (a lot of them in the backlog, i.e. not currently work on) and other stuff going on that regular person, who knows little about programming or game development, likely has difficulties to follow the development there.

Also creating video takes a lot of time: it took me about 3 weeks to create Preview 4 video; Preview 5 just over 2 weeks. Writing this article? Only about 9 hours (over three days). The rest of the time we can spend working on the mod. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be any more videos. Actually the opposite: we’re planning to release several over the next few weeks/months.

Recently implemented features

Research

The most important feature that has been fully implemented is researching technologies. We did change it though, it’s not the same as in Earth 2140.

Fortunately, we’ve been able to recover unused icons for all technologies that exist in Earth 2140:

Although they weren’t used, it seems that at some point in the Earth 2140 development, the developers were thinking about making research more than just a countdown in Research Center’s popup.

Thanks to Dzierzan, we now have proper icons for all technologies with two variants for each faction:

The research in OpenE2140 has now been moved to separate tab in the sidebar. Technologies are now researched manually with each technology having time required to research and prerequisite technologies displayed in a tooltip:

And the opposite part of research are units and buildings, which require these technologies in order to be built. As with the technologies themselves, units and buildings have their prerequisites shown in their tooltip too:

The research feature has been fully implemented by IceReaper, so a huge thanks goes to him!

Building explosions

As the subtitle says, we have further progressed with building explosions. The only thing that remains to be implemented, is the fire after the building explodes.

Other stuff

We’ve also done other small(er) stuff such as:

• one new 1v1 map from Dzierzan
• gunfire sound for Tiger Hellmaker and HB Bike
• grenade throwing sound for Android A01
• support for installing game assets from game bought on Zoom platform
• other small fixes and tweaks

Currently work-in-progress

Right now, we’re hard at work to implement more features. Currently we have several features in active development:

• building crew including capturing enemy buildings
• resource harvesting
• WTP unit (with working vehicle inside)
• importing maps from Earth 2140

And since both WTP unit and building crew are in an advanced stage of development, here’s a sneak peek of them:

WTP 100 (work-in-progress)

Building crew (work-in-progress)

Future

So this was what we’ve worked on and are currently working on. But what the future holds? We’re slowly reaching a point, when we’re going to have all core game mechanics implemented. That means a first public playable release is on the horizon. Stay tuned! Follow us here on ModDB and come discuss with us and other fans to our Discord server.And if you’re adventurous, you can take a look at the development of the mod in the GitHub repository!