Wow, this has been in the making since forever. I truly admire the dedication that went into this project for over a decade now. Congrats on that release!
Seeing as it's one of most popular free software games, this is sorta like Wine coming out of the alpha after eighteen years when it was actively used by game publishers for ports to MacOS.
Great news! Now if only we could get FreeCol[1] 1.0.0. Or at least 0.12.0. If you like free strategy games or loved the original Sid Meier's Colonization, this is a must-play.
There's also been a remake of Colonization in one of the recent Civilization games, I think. (But not open source.)
I am still waiting for a good remake of the first Master of Orion. The science system was very clever and the absence of base micro-management left you attention for bigger points of strategy.
In most 4X games the technologies are arranged in some fixed acyclic graph. Colonization's founding fathers are different. And so is Master of Orion: the technologies are available in six ladders and you can research anything within a few rungs of your highest technology on that ladder. Each faction in each game has some technologeis randomly missing. Some technologies might not be in your game at all.
So you never knew whether you were going to get your favourite weapon systems or terraforming tech in your game. Or whether you had to trade / loot / steal it from other factions or whether you'd just not be able to acquire it at all.
There are some remakes of MoO, but most of them take their cues from the relatively much more bloated sequel Master of Orion 2.
Ouch. You just made me wonder if Widelands (Settlers II clone) still exists, since I hadn't looked at it in what feels like at least a decade. It seems like it does, but development happens at a snail's pace:
Looks amazing, gonna get some friends to install and test a network (internet) game. We’ll probably jump a few continents to get us all connected so it will be interesting to see how the netcode handles players with varying latency.
I wonder how’s difficult is it to create tracks for STK...
Seems like the typical way is modeling them using blender, with special objects and properties to mark game details: https://supertuxkart.net/Making_Tracks
You'll have to nudge the F-Droid maintainers for that. They grab the source code and compile it themselves. The app developer isn't really involved, they just provide the source code and ideally ensure that it can be easily built by others.
Though you may want to give them a week or two before you go nudge them. They might build it on their own when they find time for it.
I wish there was a way to release free software and also charge money for it. This team deserves more than just congratulations and donations for all their good work
This seems like a fun project, but it's not really anything special. Most software has either viable or superior FOSS versions (MS vs LibreOffice as a prime example), but games seem to be severely lacking in this space.
It looks and feels like a game from the mid 2000s. It doesn't perform particularly well, and there isn't anything technically impressive about the game, especially considering it's been on the go for almost 15 years.
It's very hard to get people to collaborate on a game in harmony without a clear leader. OSS games (and a lot of open source software in general) will always suffer from having "too many cooks in the kitchen."
That's been my experience with the other (few) FOSS games I've played; they all have an almost pseudo-retro feel to them. I guess the biggest reason to want to play is that it's FOSS.
Awesome work! It's amazing how the community keeps on making the best things out of it, I can't be any less excited by all the progress they are making.
I'm pretty sure that there will be another online version of supertuxkart.com as part of their "supertuxkart", but I've never seen it mentioned on HN.
This looks great. I grew up playing supertux (pretty much the only computer game I had), and this brings back a lot of memories. I credit it with a lot of my interest in programming/open source; figuring out to mess with the game as I got older was an excellent experience.
Go Irrlicht Engine! It says their improved version is called Antarctica. I assume Antarctica is GPL-only? I could really use an enhanced Irrlicht for my program but copyleft is incompatible.
I tried unsuccessfully to get a usb Xbox controller to work with this game recently on ubuntu. Never found a workaround to get it to be recognized as a controller or keyboard. I do love this game though!
I highly recommend a Wiimote if you have one lying around. Super easy setup on Linux (couldn’t figure it out for the life of me on Windows, but that probably has more to do with me than the OS), the gyroscope works, vibration works, and overall it’s quite a lot of fun. I think I got a maximum of four simultaneously connected.
Did you try antimicro? It's what I use it to play Unepic using a controller to send keyboard presses. The game is supposed to have controller support, doesn't seem to work but it works flawlessly with antimicro, though the controller doesn't provide quite enough buttons for all the hotkeys in that game.
[+] [-] _bfoy|7 years ago|reply
I also cannot wait for openage, the Age of Empires II open source engine. https://openage.sft.mx/
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|7 years ago|reply
https://play0ad.com/ - this is a completely open source project being built.
[+] [-] ByThyGrace|7 years ago|reply
https://supertuxkart.net/Discover
[+] [-] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
I wonder if this is a reference to Larry Ellison. He owns most of the Hawaiian Island of Lanai.
[+] [-] cantcomplain|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmueckl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aasasd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ainar-g|7 years ago|reply
[1]: http://www.freecol.org/.
[+] [-] eru|7 years ago|reply
I am still waiting for a good remake of the first Master of Orion. The science system was very clever and the absence of base micro-management left you attention for bigger points of strategy.
In most 4X games the technologies are arranged in some fixed acyclic graph. Colonization's founding fathers are different. And so is Master of Orion: the technologies are available in six ladders and you can research anything within a few rungs of your highest technology on that ladder. Each faction in each game has some technologeis randomly missing. Some technologies might not be in your game at all.
So you never knew whether you were going to get your favourite weapon systems or terraforming tech in your game. Or whether you had to trade / loot / steal it from other factions or whether you'd just not be able to acquire it at all.
There are some remakes of MoO, but most of them take their cues from the relatively much more bloated sequel Master of Orion 2.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181215171436/http://sirian.war... has some really cool write-ups and http://www.sullla.com/MOO/moo.html is a bit more recent.
If you want to play, make sure to get the latest community patch.
[+] [-] vanderZwan|7 years ago|reply
> Saturday, 17 October 2015
Ouch. You just made me wonder if Widelands (Settlers II clone) still exists, since I hadn't looked at it in what feels like at least a decade. It seems like it does, but development happens at a snail's pace:
https://wl.widelands.org/news/
[+] [-] brylie|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/unknown-horizons/godot-port
[+] [-] nsomaru|7 years ago|reply
I wonder how’s difficult is it to create tracks for STK...
[+] [-] detaro|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilovetux|7 years ago|reply
Needless to say we are big fans and being able to play over the lan will be awesome!
[+] [-] kgwxd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _phaq|7 years ago|reply
Though you may want to give them a week or two before you go nudge them. They might build it on their own when they find time for it.
[+] [-] hopler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jammygit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotANaN|7 years ago|reply
It's what John Carmack did with id games.
You pay the game creators for their art, or you can find free art and play the game with that.
[+] [-] isostatic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yogthos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maccard|7 years ago|reply
It looks and feels like a game from the mid 2000s. It doesn't perform particularly well, and there isn't anything technically impressive about the game, especially considering it's been on the go for almost 15 years.
[+] [-] naikrovek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] truehacker|7 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure that there will be another online version of supertuxkart.com as part of their "supertuxkart", but I've never seen it mentioned on HN.
[+] [-] mises|7 years ago|reply
Thank you Super Tux devs!
[+] [-] ilaksh|7 years ago|reply
Go Irrlicht Engine! It says their improved version is called Antarctica. I assume Antarctica is GPL-only? I could really use an enhanced Irrlicht for my program but copyleft is incompatible.
[+] [-] rietta|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snazz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grawprog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aasasd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bitcoinmoney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filesystemdude|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leemailll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|7 years ago|reply
The switch would be a great platform to sell a port on.
[+] [-] 0xDEEPFAC|7 years ago|reply
Does it run on Android?
[+] [-] paufernandez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aasasd|7 years ago|reply
Because, even to my ultra-cheapskate taste, the Sanic game still looks too lo-fi.
Edit: well apparently it's quite possible to do something to that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSsPDEnpFGo
Though of course the handling, tracks, etc likely still need careful tinkering.