Thyme

About

Command & Conquer: Generals is a 2003 real-time strategy game from EA Pacific (Mac version by i5works/Aspyr, 2004), in which players choose between three factions — the United States, China, and the Global Liberation Army. Zero Hour is its 2003 expansion pack. Thyme is a from-scratch reimplementation of Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, built as a bottom-up rewrite that currently still relies on the original game's binary for functions not yet reimplemented. It requires an installed, patched copy of Generals: Zero Hour to run, uses a custom launcher, and is licensed under GPL v2 with an exception permitting linking against that still-required closed-source binary.

How it differs from the original

Unlike the original, Thyme aims to eventually run independently of the proprietary binary and to reach platforms the original never shipped for; native Linux/macOS support is planned but not yet available, and a standalone build exists but currently has very limited functionality.

Getting started

Install and patch the original Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour first, then get a release build and place its launcher and library files in the Zero Hour installation folder to run Thyme from there; building it yourself requires Visual Studio 2017 or newer. Some antivirus tools may flag it as a false positive.

Known issues & limitations

• platform: Currently only runs on Windows; native Linux and macOS support is planned for the future.
• compatibility: Anti-virus software may incorrectly flag Thyme as a virus (false positive).

Additional notes

Related projects

The readme lists several sibling open reimplementation projects, including OpenRCT2, OpenTTD, OpenLoco, and Vanilla Conquer.