A brand-new map for every game of Beyond All Reason
Eclipse is a free launcher that sits next to BAR. Press one button and it builds a complete, balanced map in a few seconds — then plays it, offline against AI or online with other people in its own rooms. Nobody has seen the map before. Not even you.
Free to download. No Beyond All Reason yet? Eclipse downloads it for you (it is free too); if you already play, it uses your install. Eclipse is an unofficial project, not affiliated with the BAR team.
Three steps to a game nobody has played before
Download Eclipse
About 70 MB, Java included, no admin rights. One click: it installs in seconds and starts by itself.
It sets up the game
No Beyond All Reason yet? Eclipse downloads it for you (free, about 2.5 GB). Already have it? It finds your install.
Create game → Generate map → play
A few seconds later you are in a game on a map that did not exist a minute ago.
Pick a format and a size. The rest is done for you.
Every map is symmetric, so both sides get the same terrain and the same resources. The defaults give you a normal BAR opening; the settings are there if you want to play with them. The terrain itself comes from the Neroxis generator that Forged Alliance Forever has used for years.
The settings
Format — 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, 8v8, FFA 4 or FFA 8, or set players per team and the number of teams directly. Up to 16 start positions.
Map — size from 8×8 to 32×32 with a recommendation per format, one of 20 styles (valleys, plateaus, rivers, islands, Setons-like and others) or a custom mix of terrain, biome and reclaim style, and the symmetry: mirrored, point, quad or diagonal.
Economy — how much metal the spots next to your start are worth, how rich the richest contested spot gets, whether all spots are equal, and how much reclaim is lying around.
How it keeps maps fair and playable — the details, for the curious
Both sides get the same terrain
Maps are built from a symmetry rule, not from scattered noise. The conversion to BAR keeps it: the heightmap filters, the cliff sharpening and the metal-spot merging are all symmetric.
Mirrored metal spots are worth the same
BAR metal spots differ in value, and Eclipse varies them — but only from numbers that are identical for mirrored spots. Spots that match are grouped and given the group average, so rounding cannot hand one side a richer start.
Metal is placed like a BAR map
The spots next to your start keep the standard income, so your opening is the normal one. Spots get richer with distance from every start, poorer in a crowd, and richest when lone and contested. The default range is 2.0–3.5.
Vehicles are checked
BAR vehicles climb far less than bots. The map is scaled vertically so generated ramps stay drivable while cliffs stay cliffs, and if a map is passable for bots but not for tanks the terrain is flattened in steps until they get through.
Reclaim is budgeted
Supreme Commander maps are full of reclaim and BAR maps are not, so nothing is copied over blindly: rocks and wrecks are kept up to a budget of about 600 metal per start position. Mirrored rocks are kept or dropped together, and experimental wrecks are never placed.
Trees and rocks from the game
Forests, rock fields and crystals on the crystalline worlds are the ones Beyond All Reason ships itself, placed by name. No files of the game are copied into a map, so a map stays small and is yours to share.
The ground is painted by the generator: slope and height decide where rock, gravel, grass, sand or snow go, and the surface detail comes from real photographed materials (CC0 textures from ambientCG) so it holds up close. No AI-generated images. It will not match a map somebody spent a month on: the cliffs are softer, because the heightmap is upscaled from a Supreme Commander one, and nothing is placed by hand. Generation takes about 8 seconds for an 8×8, 15 for a 16×16 and around 35 for a 32×32.
Where the maps are made and played
Eclipse is a launcher for Windows and Apple Silicon Macs that sits beside your Beyond All Reason install (on a Mac it brings its own). It generates maps, keeps them in a library, and starts a game on one — offline against AI, or online in a room with other people. Your BAR settings and keybinds are left exactly as they are.
Your map library
Generated maps stay. The preview draws the real metal spots, geo vents and start positions with the game's own icons, and lists the map's size, player count and where each team starts. From the library you can start a game on a map, or delete it.
Every map keeps the code it was built from, so any map can be rebuilt exactly — by you, or by somebody else on another computer.
Offline or online
Offline skirmish vs AI generates the map and starts BAR on this computer right away.
Online game opens a room on the Eclipse server that other people can join. The map, the game version and the engine version download by themselves while you sit in the room; you press Ready, and Eclipse starts BAR when the host starts the game.
Rooms, chat and parties
Teams with faction icons, flags and ratings, eight start-box presets or your own drawn on the minimap, votes, a public chat channel, whispers, a friends list and parties.
Replays and keybinds
Your local replays with map, date and engine version, playable in a click — and a full editor for BAR's shortcut keys with a searchable list of actions.
The official servers too
A read-only view of what is running on the official BAR servers, with one button to open BAR and join. Eclipse never asks for your BAR account.
How to install
Five minutes, start to first game. 64-bit Windows or an Apple Silicon Mac, Java included, no administrator rights needed.
No need to install Beyond All Reason first
If the game is not on your computer, Eclipse downloads it on its first start — free, from the BAR team's own servers, about 2.5 GB — and keeps it up to date. If you already play, it finds your install and uses it as it is.
Download and run EclipseSetup.exe
Windows will warn about an unknown publisher — that is normal for a small project that has not bought a code-signing certificate, not a sign that something is wrong. Choose More info → Run anyway. It installs in a few seconds, with nothing to click through, and starts Eclipse by itself.
Download EclipseSetup.exe
On Linux? There is an untested .tar.gz build
(unpack, run bar-map-launcher.sh) — if you try it, tell us how it went.
On a Mac: unpack, drag to Applications, open once
Apple Silicon Macs (M1 or later, macOS 13.3 or newer), about 135 MB. Unpack, drag Eclipse.app into Applications, then open it once through System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (it is not notarized). Beyond All Reason has no Mac version, so there is nothing else to install: Eclipse brings its own build of the game engine, the same version Windows players run, and downloads the game itself, about 2.3 GB, before the first game.
Download for MacGenerate a map and play it
Create game → Offline skirmish vs AI → leave ★ Generate map selected → Start skirmish.
Make an account to play with other people
Sign in to play online → Create account. Your first 90 days are free, with no card and nothing to enter. One account per person. Use a password you do not use anywhere else — the launcher's connection to the game server is not encrypted yet.
Free, online play included
Everything that has to do with playing is free for everyone: the map generator, the rooms of the Eclipse server, offline games against AI and replays. Prime is optional — a way to support Eclipse.
Free
- Generate as many maps as you want
- The map library and previews
- Offline skirmishes against AI
- Create games on the Eclipse server and join other people's rooms
- A freshly generated map for every match
- Replays and the shortcut-key editor
★ Prime
- Everything on the left is the same, free
- The gold ★ Prime badge on your name and profile in Eclipse
- Keeps the server and the generator going
- Unlocks nothing of the game: Beyond All Reason is free, from the BAR team