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Open Source
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
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Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
Adding to this:
- Veloren
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
- Mindustry
- The Dark Mod
- Oolite
- Flare: Empyrean Campaign
- Xonotic
- Unvanquished
- Frozen Bubble
- Nethack
Yes the interface is a mess. But it's ridiculously deep once you get into it.
Oh my goodness, yes! I spent hundreds of hours playing this as a kid. Angband too.
Battle for Wesnoth
This one never gets the love it deserves. It's a fantastic turn based strategy game with multiple campaigns and storylines, multiplayer, and campaign design tools. It's an old project (started in 2003, IIRC), but it's still fantastic
Hedgewars
Basically, this is Worms but with adorable little hedgehogs instead of, well, worms. Single player is okay, and it has online multiplayer I guess, but the real fun (just like in Worms) is local multiplayer. Also, it has Portal Guns. There's really no downside to this one.
- https://www.hedgewars.org/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223810/Hedgewars/
- Itch: https://hedgewars.itch.io/hedgewars
Re-volt io and RVGL
This one's a little iffy. Re-volt was a fantastic R / C racing game with bright graphics, fun tracks, excellent controls, and a killer soundtrack. For good or ill, it was put out by Acclaim, which self destructed in 2004. The Re-volt fan community, however, doesn't know the meaning of the word "quit."
Nowadays, you can join a lively community with regular online tournaments of the game. There's a new cross platform engine called RVGL (that's Re Volt Game Launcher), and metric tonnes of mods and fan content. You still need the original game's assets, though, which is where it's dicey; they're technically abandonware not open source, unless I'm mistaken.
Anyway, links!
Unciv
This project's aim is to be Civilization V, but with more abstract visuals, and, or course, free. In short, it's FreeCiv, but Civ V instead of II and a UI from the 2020s rather than the 80s. (Not throwing shade here; FreeCiv is an amazing project that is exactly what it wants to be!)
If that's not enough to keep ya' happy, I know a few more, but they've mostly been covered by other folks here.
Edit: formatting
I just discovered Unciv on the fdroid store very recently and it blew me away. It is such a well done little Civ 5 clone.
I am definitely going to try Hedgewars. Worms was one of my favorite games when I was a kid.
Thanks so much for the suggestions!
Endless Sky.
It's an open world 2D spacefaring game, with a good core story and more being added by the surprisingly-active dev community.
Not without its flaws, but anyway I think it's a fantastic game in its own right. And it's both "finishable" and under continued development & expansion.
It’s surprisingly well written. Both major story arcs had me on the edge of my seat.
Endless Sky is great. It was inspired by the old Escape Velocity games by Ambrosia Software.
My favorites:
- OpenTTD: Old transport tycoon game, but really fun especially in multiplayer
- Minetest: Minecraft-like voxel game engine, which means there a many different game modes
- Beyond All Reason: Great RTS, also great in online multiplayer or with some friends. (Disclaimer: Possible unfree licenses for artwork)
- Dwarf Fortress (free but not open source, thanks for telling me that one): not everyone’s cup of tea, but sometimes you just get stuck in it for hours on end
Dwarf Fortress is not open source. It is freeware. Parts of the game (some graphics stuff) has the code available but you have no license to distribute it.
Possible unfree licenses for artwork
I'd still consider the game open source, even if the art is copyrighted.
Dwarf Fortress
Is there an open source version? It's a great game (also try the steam edition if you check it out), but I thought it was closed-source.
Dwarf Fortress is not open source. You are correct.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon and other forks of Pixel Dungeon (but SPD is my fave).
OpenTTD. IMO mindustry, for example, is better but it's still worth to try OpenTTD
osu! is an amazing rhythm game. Try osu!lazer, it's the new client: https://osu.ppy.sh/home/download
I also like Pioneers and Endless Sky, both space sims.
This might not count, but both Lichess, a chess website, and OGS, a Go website are open source.
There is also Mindustry, but I haven't played it.
lichess.org
It's chess, and it's great!
MineClone2 is addictive. All that Minecraft style fun, but free and open source. It's pretty comprehensive and solid for the most part.
How does it differ from Minetest?
Minetest is the engine and Mineclone2 is a game/mod for it.
Minetest is the engine, MineClone2 is the game. Minetest has a default game (Minetest game), which has no mobs or anything. It's dull without mods. MineClone2 is recreation of Minecraft on Minetest, but with some differences. For example, you can use a burger to lure villagers. It's great fun and worth a try.
OpenTTD, OpenRCT and OpenRA are all great!
Warzone 2100, from the community project website and not Steam. Some douche just took the code and uploaded it to Steam themself and does a poor job maintaining it.
tl;dr: a better Spore
From the site:
Thrive is a free, open-source game about the evolution of life.
From the lowly tidepools of your home planet, you will rise to cosmic dominance. At every step, powerful creation tools and deep simulation mechanics will aid your species’ development. Revolutionary Games is the open-source team of dedicated volunteers aiming to make Thrive a reality.
Our team seeks to accomplish two major goals: create engaging, compelling gameplay that respects our players’ intelligence, and remain as accurate as possible in our depiction of known scientific theory without compromising the former.
Minetest and several others that I play regularly have already been mentioned, so I wanted to shout out a game I've been following and playing for years, waiting for their 1.0 release: FreeOrion
It's essentially a clone of the Master of Orion series, which are classics in the 4X world.
One Hour One Life is open source, it is a 2D hand drawn survival game where you have 1 real life houre to live from a baby to an elder and contribute to the player-made society in your life as best you can.
You have to pay for an account on the official servers, but i recommend you do to support the development.
Not sure if the dev accepts community patches or not, but the game is public domain license.
Crossfire https://crossfire.real-time.com/ Battle for Wesnoth https://www.wesnoth.org/ Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv/ Dungeon Crawl http://crawl.develz.org Feudal Tactics https://github.com/Sesu8642/FeudalTactics
My PC always has 3 games installed, and depending on the distro I'm currently on they may have come directly from the default repos:
- Battle for Wesnoth
- Warzone 2100
- OpenRCT2
I have lost count of how hours I have in all 3.
Naev - an open world space exploration game. Cruise the galaxy as a bounty hunter, work as a freighter, enlist in the military, or become a pirate! Lots of ship customization and a huge map with lots of factions.
Xonotic, if you like very fast paced shooters.
This is a pretty cool newish one: https://hypersomnia.xyz/
We will play it during this upcoming event: https://onfoss.org/news/2023/08/27/Next-event-September-23rd.html
SuperTuxKart Xonotic Openarena
Xonotic is a fun spin on the Quake formula. Loved dueling with that guided rocket on aerowalk. Just a shame all the fallout that happened with Nexuiz
Open arena is just quake 3 with bad art assets, might as well play quake live to find real players.
ScummVM supports many many games. Some people might think it's an emulator, but it's actually a collection of reverse engineered game engines.
eDuke32 and other Build Engine source ports
People like giving recommendations like Super Tux Kart that haven’t aged well and don’t play well.
What's the issue with SuperTuxKart? I thought that it was great fun when I played it.
It's just not very good compared to any other kart game. Aside from the fact that it's very dated, the driving is slow, the levels are wide and uninspired, the racing itself is very simple. SRB2Kart is another open source karting game and it's sooooo much better.
I had fun playing Dink Smallwood (I think the Dink Smallwood HD Version on Android). You run around, solve tasks, and work your way through the story.
It is, as you described, not actually great, but great in a sense that you can have much fun with it. I especially liked the humor.
Beyond All Reason if you're looking for an RTS similar to Supreme Commander. I haven't tried playing it in a few years though. I'm sure it's gotten some updates since then.