This project started in early 2011 is intended to be an unofficial remake of “The Settlers III”® strategy game released by Blue Byte® in 1998. This game and the development work we invest has nothing to do with Blue Byte and Ubisoft®.
We (Andreas Eberle as project maintainer + the many contributors) want to create a complete redevelopment of the game for Android, Mac, Linux and Windows (so for most platforms running a JVM).
With the beginning of 2015, we open-sourced the project on GitHub. Since then many contributions of others helped us to bring the project a big step further. If you’re interested in assisting the development or if you are a 3d / graphics artist, please check out the project README and or get in contact with us!
For our development we are using the original graphical and sound content of “The Settlers III” game. Unfortunately, Ubisoft asked us to remove the screenshots showing our game since they show their graphic assets.
So just for clarity: The individual images and sounds are taken from the original “The Settlers III” game. But we developed our own logic that causes the people to walk around, do their jobs and so on, as well as the graphics engine working with OpenGL and OpenGL ES (on Android) to get the images displayed on the screen.
Working so far
- Construction of buildings like in Settlers III
- The economy is fully working.
- It is already possible to play multiplayer matches across the different platforms and devices.
- “Almost no” limit for the map size. We created a map of size 1200 x 1200 (where the maximum map size of Settlers III was limited to 768 x 768). But you can create much bigger maps (and it’s already possible to play the big map on PC).
Read more in our Project Plan.
Our Game in Action
This is a first video of our game taken after about a year of development. We hope you enjoy the video and post a comment if you like the idea of a Settlers III clone running on multiple platforms.
Hallo! Und erstmal ein fettes WOW zu diesem Projekt 😀
Wir (ich und meine bessere Hälfte) spielen sehr gern Siedler 3, jedoch ist die KI ja wohlbekannt sehr mies… :/ Da kommt so ein Wahnsinnsprojekt grade richtig 🙂
Haben alles wie beschrieben heruntergeladen, Java ugedatet, die beiden Ordner aus dem Originalspiel “benutzt”, aber es funktioniert leider nicht 🙁
Man klickt auf “JSettlers” aber es tut sich nichts…
Bei mir kam nach einer Zeit ein Error Report in den Ordner :
(A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0xffffffffa3755120, pid=5296, tid=0x0000000000001460
#
# JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (8.0_131-b11) (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (25.131-b11 mixed mode windows-amd64 compressed oops)
# Problematic frame:
# C 0xffffffffa3755120
#
# Failed to write core dump. Minidumps are not enabled by default on client versions of Windows)
Aber ich als Noob kann damit nicht viel anfangen… Bei meinem Freund startet es auch nicht, kommt aber auch kein Fehler… (Der MapEditor läuft bei Ihm allerdings…)
Irgendeine Idee was wir falsch machen? Wäre dir für deine Hilfe sehr dankbar 🙂
Lg
Hi Tamara,
uns wurde das Problem auch schon von anderen berichtet. Leider verursacht eine Komponente (JOGL) den Crash, die wir nicht selbst in der Hand haben und die nicht mehr weiter entwickelt wird. Deshalb wollen wir von zu einer neuen Rendering-Schnittstelle wechseln (LWJGL). Leider ist das etwas aufwändiger und wird sich deshalb noch ziehen. Es tut mir sehr Leid, dass ich euch da im Moment nicht mehr weiterhelfen kann :(.
Viele Grüße,
Andreas
Oh das ist schade :/ find ich aber erstklassig das ihr daran arbeitet 🙂 (y)
Dann müssen wir halt noch warten 😉
Vielen Dank!
lg
Tamara
hi
can you help me where can i download this awesome game????
someone answer me please
You can download it from our Github page. But the new release is comming soon. Then I’ll add a Download page to the website.
Sorry how can i install this game on my phone??help plz
Please follow the instructions in the Readme on Github.
Brilliant work all, can’t wait to play! Thank you so much for all of your efforts so far!
Amazing!!!
Many, many thanks for your effort.
I agree with you, the best Settlers “version” was Settlers 3. It shows the spirit of the artisan, the care for the details, the comic-style images (somehow like Asterix) and the well done balance of difficulty and ease to play.
Thanks a lot from an old time Settlers fan.
If it is not too early for that, I can help with translation to spanish (my mother’s language)
Danke schön und viel gluck!
Hi Pedro,
thanks a lot! It is never to early for another language. Just have a look at these files: https://github.com/jsettlers/settlers-remake/tree/master/jsettlers.graphics/src/main/resources/jsettlers/graphics/localization. I’m looking forward to your Pull Request on Github 🙂
Best regards,
Andreas
Hallo
Ich bin sehr froh, dieses Projekt entdeckt zu haben.
Bin schon seit mehreren Tagen am spielen und die stärkere KI ist echt ein Segen.
Allerdings hab ich noch nicht verstanden, wie ich speichern kann.
Bei mir gibt es nur die Option Beenden und Abbrechen.
Hoffentlich verlieren Sie nicht die Motivation, das Spiel weiter zu entwickeln 🙂
Hi Phillip,
aktuell kann man mittels “F2” einen Speicherstand erstellen.
Gruß,
Andreas
I would love to play the current version for fun, but when I download it it doesn’t work! I followed the instructions and pulled the two folders of files out of the amazon demo and put them in its own folder. When i run the unzip JSettlers, it asks me where to place the document and every time I do it it won’t work after that and it tells me to check my console.. Help would be appreciated!
Thanks!
Hi Trey,
unfortunately, there is a bug in the current release version causing it not to work with the Amazon Demo. However, during the next days, I plan to release a new version including this and many other fixes and improvements. I hope you’ll try again then. So far, sorry for the inconveniences.
Best regards,
Andreas
Hello Andreas!
I’m astonished! The amount of my happines increased instantly. Looking forward for playable, Android version. If you want I can ask some firends of mine to help you with UI and other Android stuff. Also I am capable of translating the game.
Best Regards,
Eryk
Hi Eryk,
if you have some friends with good Android skills, please go ahead! We can always need a helping hand 🙂 Regarding the translations have a look at the localization files here.
I’m looking forward to your Pull Request!
Best regards,
Andreas
Dear developers
First of all can I congratulate you on a fantastic project. In 2012 I became excited at a similar project called Monostrategy by the programmer Christoph Husse, unfortunately that project has not progressed. So as a life long SIII fan I am very happy to see that an SIII open source project has appeared else where.
Having played this game for a long time on a custom map I have reached some limitations that restrict its true potential. Respectfully may I make the following suggestions, and can you advise if they are possible to write in code:
Desired tweaks within current set up of SIII:
Allow cannon technology to all nations.
Allow larger Egyptian ships to all nations – maybe draw new boats according to each nation’s style.
Setting morale limits as a condition of a game.
Bigger maps – which you have done!
Improving SIII to a new level:
Allow cannons to damage troops as well as buildings and ships.
Assign formations to soldiers – square and lines.
Create war ships that can fire on other ships and land.
Create a cavalry unit – donkey/horse plus pikeman or archer (assigned to different nations, Asians horse archer, Romans have knight for example)
Brainstorming further:
Introducing game to forest areas and a hunter as seen in SIV.
Some nations have higher morale/troop strength on a given territory – Amazons in forests.
All military improvements above may be introduced as a form of technology tree, funded by gold or manna.
Lastly open source allows for games to be costumed according to the creativity of all players that use the game. Some people prefer a graphics based economic garden building as seen from SIV onwards, where as my personal preference is to bring elements of Age of Empires or Total War and improve the military aspects of SIII, which I think is still one of the greatest RTS platforms ever made. With open source hopefully SIII can develop in as many styles as gamers wish it to be.
Thanks to you developers for all your hard work, and for bringing this project to reality.
Best wishes
Robertissimo aka The General
Me and my girlfriend still play settlers III on PC. Would love to play in hi res or other improvements!
hello. is this for real. are you honestly remaking settlers 3 for mobile.?? best of luck.!!!
Wow, I still play settlers 3 on my Windows 7 PC, brilliant game. Is this project still alive?
What is the current state of the remake?
Is the project still alive?
How is everything going?
Not to steal your thunder or idea mate but me and my mates love playing massive LAN Custom Games. We have maxed game out – ( 12,000 soldiers in a 10 hour game )
x 3 human players and 1 computer.
There is a Group of us that is building this game from scratch.
New Engine, Graphics, buildings , soldiers etc
Very early stages at the moment. Will be for windows.
Anyone interestested, just ask and will keep updated.
01/03/2014
mike_bright@hotmail.co.uk
I want to help!!!
Sieht großartig aus.
Ich hoffe es gibt in naher Zukunft eine spielbare Version 🙂
I want to pledge money!
Hi,
I was just wondering if there was any news on the project?? really cant wait to try it!
Thanks
Dave
Hi Dave,
the project is still alive, although I can’t work as much on it as I’d like to (I currently have the exams season).
In the last two months I completely rebuilt the network game code. The changes should ensure that the players will never run out of sync and have a smooth gameplay. It still needs some more smaller fixes but I’ll update you when it’s done.
Best regards, Andi
Ahhh, thats so nice, finally an update again, don’t care how thin it is, but optimizing network code for facing possible desync issues before continuing to the next dev-steps sounds really well. Desync errors even ruined the best games when played at LAN-Parties in the late game when things got more and more excited, so im very pleased to hear about this!
Hope you find enough time for releasing a 1st demo in the near future. And pls pls pls, for a 1st build, I want the same system & sprites as original Settlers 3. (If BlueByte doesnt allow, you have my e-mail! ;p No seriously)
Your project looks great! Is it possible to help/support you anyhow?
Testing, debugging, artworks, bringing some coffee, anyhow else?
Looks great. Is there any chance to access the source code for helping development? Can’t wait until final release 😉
This will be amazing please keep up the good work and get this out 😀 if any beta or alpha’s need testing let me know, I’d be more than happy try them as I still play this game now on PC. And of course they would stay offline!
Keep up the good work!!
Dave
Hi there! This project looks awesome! Just one question: are you gonna make it compatible w/ ARMv6 phones?
Hi Gothpaladinus,
Currently I don’t see a reason why our game should not run on ARMv6 phones, as long as you have Android 3 or 4 running on it.
Best regards, Andreas
this would be awsome. but please inprove the AI for this game i play it alot on PC but the AI was just boring even in the campain.
hallo
das sieht echt top aus
wan kann man den mit einer ersten spielbaren version rechnen
die dann zum download bereit steht
bin nämlich schon ganz heiß drauf
gruss jan
Hi Jan,
actually: I don’t know when a playable version will be available…
This is not just because we’re students and sometimes need to visit lectures and so on 😉
But we also would need to get rid of the original graphics or ask Ubisoft for license or something like that. Currently we focus our work on getting the game to a first alpha state. After that, we might focus on the other task.
But anyway: Thanks for your interest + best regards, Andreas
You just have to work on this!!! Would love to play it 🙂
Settler 3 is still the game I loved most of all. The idea to play it comfortably on an ipad lying on my couch would be very tempting. I would buy it straight away!
Dont give up!
I even could offer to assist in the design of some of the graphic objects. Would be quite interesting!
Keep on hacking
Settlers 3 is game of my childhood, and I very much am glad it to see on the iphone and ipad, and easily would pay money for this tremendous game. I hope that you will not give up this business and soon we will see this product on android
WOW!!!!
I want this game in my phone, guys
Me too, and I bet the few people on this site are not the only ones!
WOW, looks amazing!!
Would be really nice to have this released or a Beta release.
Contact Ubisoft and get the ball rolling, I want to play S3 on my new SIII 🙂
Just wanna sya greta ujob. Hope it comes out all well. You should add a donation option.
I was wondering if it would be available in the United States or not? And do you know when it would be released? I love this game to death, I don’t own it and since it came out in 1998 it’s impossible to find without it costing my arm 🙁
Love Settlers III! Trying to play the original on vista but nott working :(. Your clone looks reely nice! Hope you relise it soon!
Vista is not to bad, get the patches and your good to go! works even with W7!
Love this game! Great work!! i hope we can test an alpha or beta soon! I offer my self as tester if you need one, have some real devices to test on and give you feedback, 10 inch Asus tablet with ICS, galaxy 551 with A2.3 and galaxy 550 small screen cell phone with A2.2. Congratulations! see you soon!!
This looks awesome and it would be great if you could play this sweet old game with your friends over the wifi and mobile network on your phone
Settlers 3 is an amazing game. And I have to say: great clone. I hope that you will finish soon 🙂
Ps: Can you offer a download with the current version. I want to test the game on my android dmartphone 😉
This really is interesting. If you need more testers, let me know, cause I’d like to. 😀
Amazing, is there any roadmap ? Maybe something like beta releases 🙂
Settlers working on new windows systems and linux with good multiplayer (not losing connections), ehh dreams.
Hey Damian,
we have not road map yet… I think it’s very difficult to create a roadmap, because we (the developers) are both students and so every half a year the amount of free time is changing and so the progress is changing too.
Speaking of beta releases there’s also the problem that the graphics and sounds of the game are owned by Ubisoft and we haven’t asked them for licensing, yet… So releases will only be possible if Ubisoft says OK, or we create our own graphics (what’s a bit difficult, because we aren’t good in stuff like that).
But I will keep you informed here!
Best regards, Andreas
Looks quite good… Do you also have the source code public? After all you can’t go commercial with this anyway, nor anyone ;)… I started a similar project (for which you posted this video as answer) a while ago but quickly ran out of motivation due to lack of other developers ^^. Just out of interest: Does it scale? I mean ala “Metztel 4” and about 10k – 20k soldiers? What about networking?
Like to hear from you
chris!
Hi Chris,
no, we don’t have the sources public… I know that we can’t go commercial with the contents of Ubisoft but maybee we get our own ones or something like that ;). But anyway, right now, the project isn’t ready to go live, but we’re still motivated.
As I can say at the moment, we tested a map of size 1200×1200 (the unit is almost the same as in the original game) and put a working economy with more than 10 k people on just a quarter of the map.. and it works quite good! (But not on Android due to some memory limitations.)
We also already developed a working server for matchmaking and network games, as well as a nice map editor. I will create a video of the editor in the next time.
best regards, Andreas
I love the Settlers III its amazing! Is it possible to play the campaign too? like copy all the different campaign world files into the new game directory and play it there? that would be really cool!
Hello Sven, currently it’s not possible to play or load the old maps, but we also thought about that feature and I think we will implement it someday! 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m really excited about this. I’ve always loved settlers III, and would love to carry the game in my pocket, as well as run it natively on my linux installs.