Chuckpebble

Open Source (Free) Gaming

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Anybody know of any good open source games out there?

This past weekend I played around with some free FPSes (Nexuiz, Tremulous, Open Arena) and I was wondering if there's anything good out there from any other genres that any of you fellow thumbs like to mess around with.

Its kind of weird. All these podcasts I listen to, and this seems to be something that nobody talks about. Guess its a mainly a commerce thing.

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There are a bunch of free games mentioned in the Indie game compendium (stickied).

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Every week Gamasutra has an article collecting about a half dozen of the best indie games, most of which are usually free.

These seem to be mostly free as in beer rather than speech.

I haven't come across many good FOSS games, but I did enjoy playing through Neverball a while back. It's a Super Monkey Ball clone and as such it doesn't offer anything particularly new exciting, but what it does it does well.

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Dur, I feel kinda like a doof for not looking through the Indie thread yet, thanks for that tip.

Good call on the Gamasutra bit also. I'll have to check those out when I get out from behind this stupid firewall.

And, Signor, awesome. :clap:

This is the kind of thing I was looking for that I would've never found. Somehow our web blocker missed that one and I was able to download it. This is what I love about FOSS software, it runs on everything.

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Do you count free MMOs in this category? Because if so, Battlefield Heroes is one heck of a fun and unique MMOFPS...and it's free.

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Not "Free" as in "Gratis". Free as in Free Speech. Free Software is about giving everybody the privilege to modify, extend, distribute, ..., the game.

You could search through SourceForge for games:

https://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=80

But mostly that category contains tools, emulators, and engines.

Some notable entries:

Arianne RPG ( http://arianne.sf.net/ )

It's mostly an MMORPG engine, but also contains an "example" game: Stendhal

FreeCol ( http://www.freecol.org/ )

A colonization clone

MegaMek ( http://megamek.sourceforge.net/ )

A BattleTech clone

SuperTuxKart ( http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/ )

A mario kart like game

UFO: Alien Invasion ( http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/ )

A X-Com like game

SimuTrans ( http://www.simutrans.com/ )

A Transport Tycoon clone (note: not like OpenTTD, which requires the original files )

BZFlag ( http://bzflag.org/ )

Battle Zone like game

Warzone 2100 ( http://wz2100.net/ )

Originally a commercial game, but everything was released to the public.

Tux Racer ( http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/ )

A penguin racing game.

PainTwon ( http://paintown.sourceforge.net/ )

Double Dragon like game

Frets on Fire ( http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/ )

Guiter Hero like

etc. etc.

And of course there is Abuse (from Crack dot com): http://abuse.zoy.org/

But I don't know of any review sites.

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[speculating] Probably some of the free indie games have source code available, it's just not advertized a lot...

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Steven Lavelle (aka increpare) releases the source for a number of his freeware games, including Trigger (a balls-hard 2d Panzer Dragoonish puzzle shooter), Judith (a first person interpretation of the Bluebeard story), Mirror Stage (a game which uses fractals to tell an abstract story), and Opera Omnia (a game about using backwards thinking to "justify" racist claims).

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SimuTrans ( http://www.simutrans.com/ )

A Transport Tycoon clone (note: not like OpenTTD, which requires the original files )

I got this, went through the online tutorial step by step over a dozen different maps, and for the life of me I cannot construct a profitable supply line.

Is there a way to get ahead in this game?

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Both of these games were released as free and some kind of open-source:

Black Shades:

http://www.wolfire.com/black-shades

A pretty unique game which involves you protecting a VIP with a FPS engine and iron-sights.

Orbital Sniper:

http://sol.gfxile.net/games.html

This is an overhead VIP protection game, which is where the Black Shades developer got the idea.

They're simple fun that won't last you a while, but are different from anything else I've ever played, they take the old annoying brother's keeper missions from every game ever and make them fun. I'd really like to flesh both out into full games some day.

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