I’m looking for a new PC game to play, and I thought it’d be fun to try an open source game next. The idea of playing something a little indie, plus something that I could crack open the source code to, or even potentially contribute to, seems appealing.
What are the open source games that you just can’t stop playing? Or that make for a nice diversion for a couple of hours here and there?
I’m fine with something that’s graphically rough around the edges, but I’d like a game that’s relatively stable, and that doesn’t require a lot of configuration to set up. Also, I’m looking for something that will run on Windows or OS X. (Ideally on both.)
I’m pretty open as to the genre. My preference would be for a game that isn’t just a clone or remake of a commercial game or board game.
The best ones I’ve found so far tend to be strategy games. I’ve played a lot of MegaMek, which I find to be loads of fun, since I’m a big fan of the original Battletech board game. FreeCiv looks fun too. Although both of these fail the clone/remake test.
My own personal obsession is at http://www.u5lazarus.com – it’s a remake of Ultima 5. Only downside is, you need a working copy of Dungeon Siege to play it. But the mod is intentionally open source!
From your listed choices it may not be your cup of tea, but I used to enjoy a good game of bzflag.
Back in university where all the machines were *nix based and we only had 10M of disk, Nettrek (?) was popular. I think this is the main site.
Maelstrom. (I have a really short attention span for games, preferring to spend the bulk of my unproductive computer time on message boards, so my suggestions would tend to favor quick arcade games rather than drawn-out strategy games.)
You will either love me or hate me for suggesting Nethack. The graphics range from ASCII to primitive, but many, many people can’t stop playing. From the Nethack info page:
My younger brother showed me this game some years ago (he’s a total geek) and I haven’t decided yet whether he did me a favor or not.
I’m going to have to second the recommendation of Nethack as well as the words of warning. Do not start playing this game you have a lot of more important things to be doing.
Although most of the open source gaming that I’ve done has been remakes (Doom, Star Control 2, etc.), I did find a pretty fun arcade style sidescrolling game called Blobwars that might be enjoyable if that’s your kind of game.
Awesome, thanks everyone. I’ll take the warnings about Nethack to heart
I tried about 15 minutes of BlobWars, and it’s great: exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. I found another game – an arcade-y space shooter – called Project: Starfighter at the same website. Looks fun too.
Tried a bit of BZFlag. The mostly mouse-based controls took some getting used to, so I ended up just dying a lot, but I can see the point of the game, so I’ll put that on my list for ones to spend some time figuring out and practicing.
Had less luck with Netrek – I couldn’t tell from the website at http://www.netrek.org/ which client I should be downloading, which version, etc. The site is a little light on the documentation. Looks like somebody made a more user-friendly site at http://www.playnetrek.org/. I downloaded the Win32 client and tried the default configuration they provided, but ran into technical difficulties. So I might put that one near the end of the list for now, until I can find a guide to help me get started on it.
There’s Transcendence, a Nethack-meets-Subspace sort of game. Buzz around random star systems and upgrade your ship with bigger weapons and miscellaneous doohickies. There’s a plot somewhere, but I get blasted before I get anywhere.
Sort of NetHack-light is IVAN, which is similar but without quite so many permutations (the levels are random, but you’ll always encounter the giant plant in the last Tunnel level, for instance). The armor and damage system is better in my opinion. You can get your limbs lopped off, and if you’re lucky, replaced with something better. Or beat a guy over the head with his own severed leg.
Oooh… even if you don’t want remakes, I heartily recommend The Ur-Quan Masters, an open-source port of the 3DO version of Star Control II (one of the greatest PC games of all time).
There are various fanpatches out there, including things like new music and graphics tweaks. Game’s kinda weird to run, since it opens up a DOS command prompt and is constantly extracting stuff from the zip files teh game is stored in, but if you can ignore that going on in the background, the game is super fun.
As for totally indie games… uhm… I can’t think of any that I play
By the way, I should note that I played TONS of Maelstrom back in college, when it was a shareware game. I’m giddy to see that it’s been open-sourced, maintained and improved. Hooray for Ambrosia Software!
