Fully playable Caesar 3 open source game engine Julius has a new release

Another brilliant open source game engine, Julius is a fully playable replacement for the original 1998 release of the city-builder Caesar 3. Powered by modern code, it brings with it various UI updates along with support for modern platforms while reusing the original assets.

Lots of little usability / quality of life improvements to keep this classic running nicely. A new release of Julius went up recently with version 1.6.0 adding in:

• Minimap of the scenario can be displayed when selecting a map to play
• Bridge cost is shown before building the bridge
• Roads lead into the access ramps to indicate that access ramps are part of the road network
• Undo is disabled after certain houses upgrade to prevent visual corruption
• Granary info window shows cart status when it's getting food from another granary
• Construction: plaza shows as green when over a road with people on it. Previously it was red but the player could still place it
• Construction: fountain shows as red when over a building or other non-clear tile. It still indicates whether that tile has reservoir access
• New options: display and cursor scale (both previously command-line only)

There's also various bug fixes, and SDL version update and a new Android port.

Finally getting around to testing it out myself today, I found it to be a very impressive reimplementation. Simply download the AppImage for Linux from the GitHub page, open it and point it to wherever you have the original installed (either through Wine from GOG or Proton on Steam) and it really does just work. Wonderfully smooth. Thanks to the style of it, the visuals actually hold up surprisingly well today too.

You need a copy of the original game to work with it. You can buy a copy from GOG or Steam.