C&C Generals: Zero Hour — Native on Android

The real 2003 engine, compiled for arm64, playing skirmish matches on a tablet. No emulation: DirectX 8 → DXVK → Vulkan 1.3 on a bundled Mesa Turnip driver, loaded rootlessly with libadrenotools. RTS touch controls: tap-select, drag-box, long-press right-click, two-finger pan, pinch zoom.

Ported in under 24 hours as a human + AI collaboration — possible only because Ammaar Reshi's iOS/iPadOS port and the GeneralsX lineage had already carried this engine across the hard miles. No game assets included — bring your own Zero Hour (Steam, ~$5 on sale).

Get it

1. Device: arm64 Android with a Qualcomm Adreno 6xx/7xx GPU (others: #9).
2. APK: Releases → sideload (Samsung gotcha).
3. Assets: push your own game files — how.

More questions? FAQ.

Status

Menus, shell map, skirmish vs AI	✅ ~30–60 FPS at 2800×1752
Touch, audio, HOME→resume	✅
Campaign / Challenge / video	❓ #12
Non-Adreno GPUs (Xclipse, Mali)	❌ #9

Full list: Known issues & remaining work.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/fadi-labib/Generals-Android.git && cd Generals-Android
git submodule update --init --recursive references/fadi-labib-dxvk references/libadrenotools
cmake --preset android-vulkan
cmake --build build/android-vulkan --target z_generals -j$(nproc --ignore=1)
./scripts/build/android/build-adrenotools.sh && ./scripts/build/android/fetch-turnip.sh
./scripts/build/android/package-android-zh.sh --install

Full guide (toolchain, debugging toolbox, traps): Android build guide.

The port in five walls

Five mechanics had to be discovered the hard way — each broke the port until fixed:

• Vulkan 1.3 on a Vulkan 1.1 device — the stock Adreno driver caps at 1.1, so bundle Mesa Turnip and load it rootlessly (via libadrenotools).
• One Vulkan loader, not two — SDL and DXVK each bring their own; the surface has to be created through DXVK's or the instance dispatch mismatches.
• The one-producer ANativeWindow rule — the engine's device-retry loop leaked the connection → black screen. Fixed by deferring surface creation to first present.
• Shared libc++ across .so boundaries — otherwise C++ exceptions and RTTI vanish at the boundary and the real Vulkan error gets swallowed.
• A zero-initialized heap — the 2003 code silently assumes new returns zeroed memory; bionic's malloc doesn't.

The full story — the renderer night, the 2 am black-screen hunt, the touch deep-dive, and 17 cataloged bugs with root causes: The Android Journey · Bugs & Lessons · rendering pipeline · touch controls.

Contributing

Human or AI, the door is open — the repo is deliberately AI-first:

• Agents start at AGENTS.md; humans at CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Entry points: good first issue · ai-ready · help wanted.
• Device testing reports are as valuable as code — especially non-Samsung Adreno.

Credits

This project is the newest link in a chain, and says so gladly — the speed was borrowed from years of work by:

• Westwood / EA Pacific — the game; EA — the GPL v3 source release.
• TheSuperHackers — build modernization and cross-platform groundwork, with FFmpeg/OpenAL backends by feliwir.
• Fighter19's Unix port — SDL3 platform management, 64-bit fixes, the DXVK approach.
• fbraz3/GeneralsX — the macOS/Linux port: compatibility layer, vcpkg build system, DXVK integration.
• Ammaar Reshi's iOS/iPadOS port — the direct parent and the single biggest reason this took a day, not months: the touch→mouse translator (adopted wholesale, then evolved here — improvements flow back), the lifecycle handling, the DXVK-on-mobile cross-build methodology, and the porting playbook that turned debugging into lookups. Want this on Mac/iPhone/iPad? Go there.
• Mesa Turnip · libadrenotools · K11MCH1's drivers · DXVK · SDL · OpenAL Soft · FFmpeg — the load-bearing walls.

Engine code GPL v3; game assets not included, not licensed here.