15 ms·
Open source remakes of games you're still loving
- pearle 15y agoI'm still waiting for a clone of Darklands.
- murkt 15y agoLooks like there was an attempt to do that as a mod to The Elder Scrolls IV - http://www.thedarklands.com/ http://www.thedarklands.com/
- tobylane 15y agoBrilliant one here - CorsixTH, remake of ThemeHospital. https://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/ https://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/
- StavrosK 15y agoA heroic effort, that game deserves to be in the museum. Just brilliant. That said, my all-time favorite is Heroes of Might and Magic 2. I always return to it, and am just overjoyed to see the open source project there.
- barkingcat 15y agoI emailed the author with a link to Ur-Quan Masters for Star Control 2!
- Androsynth 15y agoyou beat me to it. Although UQM is not a clone or inspired by SC2, it is the actual source code used to build the game.
- mikemaccana 15y agoYou know how when you play things you played as a kid, they don't feel like you remember them, because your standards have unfortunately changed? First programming I ever really did (in terms of understanding logic and its effects on end product) was Doom PWADs when I was a kid. 15 years later, I can get: - Doomsday engine on my Mac - 500MB of high-res textures hand-crafted to replace all the original walls and ceiling/floors. - MD models for every object and monster - High resolution re-sampled sound and music - My original WAD - me and a friend made one of the largest (and highest tech - deep water, transparent textures on doors, invisible platforms) Doom II wads ever - lost it, but the internet still has thepath.zip And play Doom II like I remember it, not like how it was.
- aw3c2 15y agoI really wonder why so many people consider models like this http://risen3d.drdteam.org/caco.jpg http://risen3d.drdteam.org/caco.jpg (guessing you use those) superior to pixel art like this http://images.wikia.com/doom/images/e/ef/Cacodemon_encounter.png http://images.wikia.com/doom/images/e/ef/Cacodemon_encounter... Is it just the "it is something different/new and thus feels fresh" or do you really consider it look better objectively?
- piranha 15y agoI wonder if it's possible to get this old image of Cacodemon and make bigger nice one with that technology of depixelization which was on front page yesterday (or was it two days ago?).
- burgerbrain 15y agoThat tech specifically didn't work with anti-aliased images.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pflats 15y agoIn a 3d environment, sprites have systemic issues regarding viewing angles. If a bad guy runs directly at you, or at you from a 30 degree angle, he looks exactly the same. Models convey more information than sprites do about their environment. This isn't a blanket statement about models and sprites, but given a free camera and a 3d world, I think models work better. They don't have to look better, though: I'd say that Quake looked a lot worse Duke3D, even though they were both released in '96.
- joeyespo 15y agoI immediately thought of the Chrono Trigger remake and how they were going to open source the project. It looked beautiful while keeping true to the original. Such a shame Square Enix's forcefully shut it down. http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/ http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
- rnemo 15y agoJust as a point of correction, Doomsday is not a Doom remake, it's an advanced source port. Freedoom (freedoom.sourceforge.net) is the closest thing to a remake, it's a project to create a free IWAD (the game data). It needs to be paired with an engine though, Doomsday is one, but there's also ZDoom (zdoom.org), PrBoom+ (prboom-plus.sourceforge.net) and my personal favorite, Eternity (doomworld.com/vb/eternity).
- aw3c2 15y agoSame for ioQuake3. http://openarena.ws/ http://openarena.ws/ is a Q3A clone.
- technomancy 15y agoConspicuously absent is Marathon and its OSS successor Aleph One: http://marathon.sourceforge.net/ http://marathon.sourceforge.net/
- windsurfer 15y agoAleph One is amazing. Anyone who considers themselves a gamer should play this Bungie classic.
- roschdal 15y agoThere's also http://www.freeciv.net/ http://www.freeciv.net/ which is a HTML5 version of Freeciv, with a AGPL license.
- GeneralMaximus 15y agoFreeCiv is not HTML5. The game itself is implemented as a server, and you can write clients for it. I only know of a GTK+ client and a SDL client. Is there a HTML5 client around now?
- sciurus 15y ago"Freeciv.net is an open-source turn-based strategy game. It's built entirely in HTML5 and features in-depth game-play and a wide variety of game modes and options. Your goal is to build cities, collect resources, organize your government, and build an army, with the ultimate goal of creating the best empire. Freeciv.net is an open source project, released under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.0 or later. The project is a fork of the C server from Freeciv.org, which has origins back to 1996. The idea of creating a version for Freeciv which would be playable online in a browser came about some time in 2007, and this project has evolved into what it is now since then. The first public beta release of Freeciv.net was available in December 2009, and the code is still under continuous development."
- misterbwong 15y agoI'm still a bit sour about Square forcing the Chrono Trigger: Resurrection guys to cancel their remake of Chrono Trigger. CT is my favorite game of all time so hearing that this fan project got C&D'd killed me. The screens and the trailers looked awesome, especially considering it was 2004. http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/Crono0.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/Crono0.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/Guardia0.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/Guardia0.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/MagusLair2.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/MagusLair2.jpg http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/ http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
- technomancy 15y agoI'm not sure what I was expecting, but that trailer gave me chills. What a shame!
- possibilistic 15y agoI don't understand how Square can legally force them from making a remake. If it's open source software and not being sold, how can they shut you down? If the code is widely distributed, then there's no central site or repository they can force to shut down. Wouldn't this fall under the domain of artistic expression? I don't understand how fans can make artwork, music remixes (http://ocremix.org/ http://ocremix.org/), or even a miniseries (http://www.therewillbebrawl.com/ http://www.therewillbebrawl.com/) representing a particular franchise and not get sued, yet indie game remakes are hit with fire and brimstone. On that note, aren't games now considered art (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109835-Games-Now-Legally-Considered-an-Art-Form-in-the-USA http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109835-Games-Now-L...)? What gives? (I've been wanting to make an open source Ocarina of Time remake, but I am fearful of such lawsuits.)
- Impossible 15y agoFree fan games are largely ignored by game companies and sometimes actively supported, but once the game starts to look like something that competes with or damages the company's output they have to take legal action to protect their IP. This is what happened with the Chrono Trigger remake and more recently with the Unity Sonic demo that looked and played better than Sonic 4. What I don't understand is why certain talented people don't develop original IP for these sorts of things. This happens occasionally but more often than not the projects just die after getting a cease and desist. Nostalgia is a powerful thing but its easy enough to make a game that is similar to Chrono Trigger, Ocarina of Time, Sonic, etc. using original concepts inspired by them.
- malkia 15y agoHeroes of Might and Magic 3 is the game I played most. It was great fun when playing hot-seat with other players sometimes for a full day! Also big love for HOMM1 and 2
- scorxn 15y agoFreeSpace 2: http://scp.indiegames.us/ http://scp.indiegames.us/
- MrJagil 15y agoDungeon Keeper is probably my favourite game of all time. A shame theres no mac version of OpenDungeons and that they didn't make it closer to the original.
- bherms 15y agoI wish someone would tackle a remake of Grim Fandango or a sequel.
- daeken 15y agoI have a feeling it's going to come, and it'll be amazing if it does. The recent Monkey Island remakes have been fantastic, especially on the iPad -- truly the way they're meant to be played.
- asb 15y agoGrim Fandango is now completable with residual: http://residual.sourceforge.net/ http://residual.sourceforge.net/ (the intention is residual is to 3D adventure games as ScummVM is to 2D adventures).
- faboo 15y agoI had a lot of love for SimCity on the Atari ST as a kid, and was ecstatic to find Lincity a few years ago. It isn't a remake of SimCity, really; it's very much the Freeciv to SimCity's Civilization, but I've played a lot of it off and on. Good times. The top-down version apparently hasn't been updated in a while, but it's archived here: http://lincity.sourceforge.net/ http://lincity.sourceforge.net/ The fully 3D, iso-metric version looks like it's still being worked on though: http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
- jcl 15y agoFWIW, the source to the original SimCity was released under the GPL. http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/ http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/
- jfeldstein2 15y agoHow would you feel about a Myst / Riven clone for touch devices?
- zackattack 15y agoThat game was maddeningly difficult, though probably good for my developing brain.
- aaronbrethorst 15y agoi think they're both on iOS...
- jfeldstein2 15y agoThey are... this by far the top reason to ever get an ipad.
- chrisjsmith 15y agoIn the interest of us British people brought up with BBC Micros, you can find Chuckie Egg here: http://www.repton3.co.uk/chuckieegg.aspx http://www.repton3.co.uk/chuckieegg.aspx
- lmok 15y agoWidelands is an open source real-time strategy game very similar to The Settlers. http://wl.widelands.org/ http://wl.widelands.org/
- jamesu 15y agoMissing the impressive reverse-engineering of Dune2 effort: http://www.opendune.org http://www.opendune.org
- bitsai 15y agoFor those who enjoyed Wing Commander Privateer, there's WCP Gemini Gold, a remake using the open source Vega Strike engine: http://privateer.sourceforge.net/ http://privateer.sourceforge.net/ I've emailed the author to see if he'd like to add it to the list.
- estel 15y agoIt's always worth mentioning Spring, which used to be an open source version of Total Annihilation, but now encompasses so much more: http://springrts.com/ http://springrts.com/
- GvS 15y agoOpen source Worms: http://hedgewars.org/ http://hedgewars.org/
- ysangkok 15y agoDon't forget Warmux. There's OpenLieroX and NiL too, but they're Liero clones instead. Like Worms, but not turn-based.
- mambodog 15y agoSome FPS additions: AlienArena - like UT, Q3A. Graphically impressive, seems to be actively developed. http://red.planetarena.org/ http://red.planetarena.org/ Nexuiz - like UT, Q3A. Also decent graphics, seems devs are working on a commercial sequel now, so the last major version was in 2009. http://sourceforge.net/projects/nexuiz/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/nexuiz/ OpenArena - like Q3A. Seems to be an attempt to recreate Quake 3 Team Arena from the GPL source with new content, some graphical improvements. http://www.openarena.ws/ http://www.openarena.ws/ Tremulous - like Gloom, Natural Selection etc. Sci-fi FPS/RTS hybrid. http://tremulous.net/ http://tremulous.net/ Urban Terror - like Counter-Strike, but a little more arcade-style. EDIT: free but not yet open source http://www.urbanterror.info/ http://www.urbanterror.info/
- jackolas 15y agoNexuiz got forked http://www.xonotic.org/ http://www.xonotic.org/ it's actively developed.
- naner 15y agoUrban Terror is not open source.
- mambodog 15y agoHmm, you're right, I saw the source for the GPL ioquake3 based part and assumed it was for the entire game.
- xiaomai 15y agoSmoking Guns is my favorite, it feels like a Clint Eastwood Western: http://www.smokin-guns.net/ http://www.smokin-guns.net/
- duhprey 15y agoIf anyone here remembers the game Netstorm, we're doing a remake of it here, http://risingstormhq.com http://risingstormhq.com. It's not entirely opensource at the moment (and built on unity), but I'm the only coder and I'm releasing components (especially generic ones) as I go (as they are cleanly separable). In the end, I'll release all the code I feel I can without making the team unhappy.
- udp 15y agoOn a slightly different vein, if you still have the old games you can often find an open source engine to play them with :- * Old Bioware games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, ...) - GemRB: http://www.gemrb.org http://www.gemrb.org * SCUMM (Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer, ...) - ScummVM: http://www.scummvm.org/ http://www.scummvm.org/ * Transport Tycoon Deluxe - OpenTTD: http://www.openttd.org/en/ http://www.openttd.org/en/ (this has optional free replacements for the graphics/sound/music, too)
- mambodog 15y agoLet's not forget the venerable DOSBox, which allows a huge variety of old games to run on Win7, Mac and Linux. Some of my favourites: Wolf3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Hexen, Duke3D, Quake, Sim City 2000, Sim Ant, Civilization, Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Warcraft & Warcraft 2, Theme Hospital, Syndicate, System Shock, X-Wing http://www.dosbox.com/ http://www.dosbox.com/
- eru 15y agoApropos System Shock, the sequel runs fine in wine, and is easier to enjoy, because they use the modern fps controlling conventions. Thief: The Dark Project uses a the same engine as System Shock 2 and is also worth playing. If you are going to play X-Com: Ufo Defense, you owe it to yourself to use XComUtil [1]. XComUtil patches the binary to remove some bugs and can optionally introduce new gameplay elements. Also the original Master of Orion is still one of the best civilization type games, if not the best. It has aged well, and really shines in its concentration on large scale decisions, and avoidance of micro-management. [1] http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XcomUtil http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XcomUtil
- ysangkok 15y agoThere is an RA1 reimplementation called OpenRedAlert.
- schrototo 15y agoIf you're on a Mac and like extra-fancy UIs, there's also the DOSBox-based Boxer: http://www.boxerapp.com http://www.boxerapp.com
- naner 15y agoThese aren't all remakes/clones. For example: ioquake3 started from the GPL release of the Quake 3 engine from iD software. It is not a clone or remake it is just a continuation. And it doesn't replace Quake 3, it is just the game engine.
- martinp 15y agoI was kind of hoping to see Age of Empires on that list, no luck though.
- beza1e1 15y agoTry 0AD: http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/
- kleiba 15y agoOh gosh, all of these games came out long, long, LONG after I stopped playing computer games. I feel so old... :(
- vckadath 15y agoThis is part of what bugs me about the OS mentality. All that effort to clone a commercial release and very little going towards coming up with new ideas and gameplay improvements. This is true of EVERY important category of software (From the OS on down!), not just games. Until the FOSS movement starts focusing on creating new things and not just cheap knockoffs of original, innovative software it will remain a niche.
- lucasjung 15y agoMy all-time favorite is d2x-xl, a re-work of the Descent II engine (which isn't quite a clone, because you still need some of the original game files to play): http://www.descent2.de/ http://www.descent2.de/ Stratagus/Wargus is a clone of the Warcraft II engine (which you also need original game files to play). It's no longer being actively developed, but the last release was stable and only had minor bugs (you can play all of the way through with no problem, plus multiplayer): http://wargus.sourceforge.net/index.shtml http://wargus.sourceforge.net/index.shtml There's also a glacially-slow effort to re-work the Homeworld source code to openGL (and cross-platform): http://homesource.nekomimicon.net/sourceforum/ http://homesource.nekomimicon.net/sourceforum/
- byteclub 15y agoWould be awesome to see some of these games implemented with Node.js and HTML5... Angry Birds and others have demonstrated that HTML5 is good enough for graphics, and Node.js is a good fit for server-side logic.
- ysangkok 15y agoThere are many tested evented I/O frameworks for other languages. Node.js is a good thing, but people are hyping this stuff too much.
- jholman 15y agoReading this made me think, what other old games do I _want_ to see open-source-cloned, and what does Google think about that? Mech Commander 2 : No open-source clone, BUT... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d790cde-c3e5-46be-b3a5-729581269a9c&DisplayLang=en http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=... Morrowind : http://crystalscrolls.sourceforge.net/ http://crystalscrolls.sourceforge.net/ http://openmw.com http://openmw.com (zomg I want a co-op MP TES:MW clone) Not found: Project Space Station.
- icefox 15y agoClicked on the first link to the doom project to find not a single link to a "screenshots" page. For a remake of a game I can't help but wonder if you could screw up the marketing any more than that.
- jester8113 15y agoFreeCol is a very good replica of Sid Meier's Colonization. http://www.freecol.org/ http://www.freecol.org/
- panza 15y agoThere's also 0AD, inspired by Age of Empires http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/
- yellowbkpk 15y agoAnyone remember the Mac game from Ambrosia called Avara? I've been meaning to try to clone that for quite a while. The graphics are so simple but the gameplay was mindbogglingly awesome.
- pdsull 15y agoI loved that game. I tried to make a clone with Unity a few years ago but gave up pretty early on. If you ever get something started let me know.
- doctororange 15y agoSome friends and I are getting started on cloning Tank Wars with a view to making it an AI contest. Will be sure to submit it to that list when (read: if) we finish.
- rvavruch 15y agoGood Old Games (www.gog.com) are selling classics, for really good prices some of which work in Wine: http://www.gog.com/en/mix/great_gog_games_that_works_on_linux http://www.gog.com/en/mix/great_gog_games_that_works_on_linu... There are a few for free as well: http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue#all_genres/price/0/ http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue#all_genres/price/0/
- z303 15y agoNot a remake but Warzone 2100 was open sourced by the developers a number of years ago, with people still working to enhance the game http://wz2100.net/ http://wz2100.net/
- minikomi 15y agoThis is kind of the opposite - a newly made homebrew game for an obsolete system - http://morphcat.de/superbatpuncher/ http://morphcat.de/superbatpuncher/ Super creative use within the limitaitons
- Goladus 15y agoNot an open source remake, rather a rebalancing and increased difficulty patch of the original, is Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3: http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/forum/13-final-fantasy-tactics-13/ http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/forum/13-fi...
- matticakes 15y agoFor Sierra (kings quest, etc) fans there are a couple good options: http://sarien.net/ http://sarien.net/ (web based!) http://www.agdinteractive.com/ http://www.agdinteractive.com/ (high-res remakes) http://www.tsl-game.com/ http://www.tsl-game.com/ (The Silver Lining - a completely new game continuing the Kings Quest story line)
- theclay 15y agoHopefully this will also clue in some developers to cool projects that they can contribute to.