Caesar III, running natively on iPad and iOS. Caesar III has never had a public iPad build. As far as I can find, nobody has even posted video of it running on one before. Not an emulator. CaesarPad runs Augustus as a native ARM64 iPadOS app. No Windows machine... being simulated, no game being streamed from a Mac. The game was built for a mouse in 1998. Apple Pencil might be better. Place buildings, draw roads, open advisors and run the city by touching it directly. Fingers move and zoom the map while Pencil handles precision. Classic Age of Empires will have to wait. This Saturday, we build Rome. I used Codex 5.6 Sol to build the iPad layer. Open sourcing it all below.show more

Full build-and-run guide is on GitHub. Bring your own legally purchased Caesar III files and you can get it running on your iPad. CaesarPad contains none of the original game files.

The build: one goal-based prompt after a ton of research, and Codex 5.6 Sol ran for hours doing the bulk of it. Augustus already had an upstream iOS target. Getting a complete build to compile, link, install, survive the iPadOS lifecycle, accept game files through Files, feel right with direct touch and Apple Pencil, and package as an audited unsigned IPA was the work. The engine is not mine. Julius and Augustus contributors spent years rebuilding Caesar III for modern platforms, and Alex Montgomery did the original iOS groundwork. I turned that foundation into the iPad build the community had been asking for. None of this exists without their work.

Aoe 2 wen

substantially more difficult. Maybe we'll be able to do it next year.

How did apple fumble gaming this bad

great question. Given how straightforward all of this is, it leaves me perplexed as well. They say there's no market for ports, but all of these ports and adaptations are things I know people would pay money for. I'd gladly pay 10 bucks for a Caesar III port to iPad and iPhone, but it doesn't exist.

If not for their closed ecosystem and stuff just like this, I would've bought a lot of apple hardware

Damn

Pharaoh next?

if there's enough interest. I've considered doing it for a long time.

Would be awesome. My personal favourites that I’ve always wanted to play on iPad are the Command & Conquer games.

Good job! A fantastic game. I'll try on my ipad

please reach out and LMK if you encounter any bugs or issues!

One of the greatest city building sims ever made. Amazing work

Thank you 😁

Great game!!!

Oh what a game mate. I do miss this Need to try this out

Best game ever

Do you think it will run on Vision OS since it runs iPad apps?

I don't own a Vision Pro, so I'm not going to release anything that I don't have hardware to test on. But I think, given that Caesar III can run on Mac, iOS, and iPadOS, that it will run on VisionOS.

Been using it on my Android tablet for years. Love this game

I need zeus

Thank you so much 🥹

that's amazing!

impressive

OMG, I love this game. Looking forward to spending hours on this. Thank you!

The touch controls took some time but I'm glad I spent the time doing it!

omg omg omg dude

Dang, I want to play Alpha Centauri on an iPad now.

there hasn't been too much interest, but OpenAlpha is definitely a possibility given the state of things. I believe Alpha Centauri is doable.

Rome, now touchable

Please syndicate :)

Keep em coming! 🫵🐐

Dude, I love this game growing up. Had totally forgotten about it. Boy this brings back memories 🥰

Great work! Now please do Jagged Alliance 2, with proper iPad UI interaction layer

I've considered doing it. It is doable and very possible. I just need to get around to it...

Another banger 🔥

Keep up the good Work

This is really cool

Finally, Caesar III goes native on iPad

If you like minimalist design & mind-bending logic, try Golf Puttin! Portals that keep velocity across the boards will puzzle your brain. 🧠⛳️ 👉

That is genuinely impressive engineering. Running Caesar III as a native ARM64 app without a Windows simulation layer is a huge technical feat. How did you handle the legacy API calls?

When i try to Open the game folder nothing happens. Do i need an specific name on the folder or what?

This is pretty vague. Can you send me exactly what is happening when you're trying to load the game files? Are you following the readme instructions?

It took me a while but I figured it out. I'm running it through LiveContainer and the file picker button doesn't work properly inside it. You have to turn on a fix for it on settings. So happy to be playing this on the iPad lol

if you have any other issues with this build just let me know or DM pls.

Loved that game so much. Along Pharaoh

We need classic age of empire and red alert 2

What is Augustus you neglected to mention You added iPad support to an existing project, which takes like 100 lines of code at most, misleading

There isn't space to explain everything in these short X posts. Augustus is an open-source engine re-implementation and gameplay enhancement mod for the game. It also isn't misleading. I directly say in the post what I'm doing and not doing. Read post 3 (in the thread). I directly answer all of your questions.