Just a few months back I was porting your version of Rodent's Revenge to Flutter for fun. Maybe I should polish it up a bit and publish it somewhere...
Hah, I remember playing this game on the primary school computers but didn't know what it was called. Might I suggest adding a section to the readme explaining how to install/compile this?
It's strange, too, how rarely the developer will just think to make an alternative asset pack to accomplish this. It doesn't have to look great! It can be eyebleeding programmer-art. But having it there means the game can be run, after installing it, without first having to load some assets into it. And that's valuable for e.g. knowing whether your setup is working.
What’s the legal aspect of such kind of projects? I’m working on cloning a quite popular board game that doesn’t have any software version, but didn’t consider releasing it publicly because I assumed a huge risk of legal issues. So currently it’s only for myself and close friends ...
Trademark: if the game is trademarked, you can't re-use the name. Anything with a trademark needs to be replaced with a new name/logo that is sufficiently different as to not induce confusion in the consumer.
Copyright: all the source code is rewritten so there is no copyright there. The game assets like textures and levels are under copyright and needs to be re-created from scratch as well. Or require the player to own the original game and provide an import method. A lot of Doom engines for example would require you to provide the WAD files.
Patents: this might be more tricky to work around. Patents protect algorithms and methods of production which might be integral to the game. I am not aware of games who are protected by patents.
IANAL, but based on my reading this is my opinion. Consider the release and success of the mobile game `Words With Friends`. Not only did it largely clone the scrabble experience, but it completely dominated the mobile game space for a time. I found a Quora[1] question which gives some details about the legal relationship between Scrabble(Hasbro) and WWF while researching the topic.
Short version, can they sue you? Yes, just like anyone in the US can sue anyone else for whatever reasons valid or not. In Hasbro v Scrabulous, Hasbro dropped the suit given that they were losing and Scrabulous had run out of money. Had they continued the suit they would have had a judgement on the record regarding the legality of cloning the game experience and possibly been ordered to pay legal costs had they actually lost. As it happened they didn't need to win because they just buried their competitor with legal fees.
Game clones are in a legal gray area. Note that you do NOT have to copy source code in order to infringe copyright: the relevant legal criterion is "substantial similarity". In Atari v. Philips, the court ruled that K.C. Munchkin, a Pac-Man-like game, was similar enough to Pac-Man to infringe because both involved a gobbler eating dots while being chased by ghost monsters -- despite different designs and colors being used for the gobbler and monsters, a different maze layout, different rules, and of course no code in common.
Note again that if you clone Tetris, YOU WILL BE SUED and you will probably lose. Tetris is the most vigorously defended game IP in the world, by a company that, like Oracle, is mostly legal department, and judges have ruled that the shapes of the tetrominoes, the manner in which they spin and fall, and the dimensions of the game board are all copyrightable game elements.
Which one? BoardGameArena has quite a bit of them already (to name's a few: Carcasonne, Terra Mystica, 7 Wonders, Seasons, Race for the Galaxy, Through the Ages, Puerto Rico) and they have nearly 100 more licenses available over BGA Studio that still require developers to make (here's a few: The Castles of Burgundy, Galaxy Trucker, For Sale, Santorini, Myrmes).
I don't know how they acquire theses licenses, but if they did, maybe you can too and if you can't, maybe they already have it made, or needs a developer to implement it (which can be you!).
Minor Nitpick: Xonotic isn't a clone of Nexuiz, Nexuiz was the original name of the project until the project originator sold the name and rights. This caused the community to fork the project from the last stable version and continue development with the new name, Xonotic. Today Xonotic has a small but passionate community whereas Nexuiz languishes in obscurity.
I didn't know the "real" nexuiz still survived! It was cool to me because I didn't get to enjoy the unreal tournament days and had some interesting maps.
A Warcraft 3 world editor clone would be really good for game innovation. If someone was willing to start up a project like that, I would definitely help fund development.
Blizzard’s world editing tools helped players innovate new genres like the MOBA but its restrictive IP terms killed innovation dead in its tracks.
All Blizzard does now is make reskin of old game(but excellent games) and release classic version of MMO’s.
Vivendi Games bought them in the late 90s and started trading long-term quality for results. Blizzard North, Diablo creators, were laid off due to slow development of D3 in 2005. Insiders say that the culture shifted slowly towards business and away from caring about games per se. Blizzard's big thing was that they'd innovate and build without fear of costs, famously canceling numerous games (Titan, eg) with no ROI because they felt it just wasn't right.
In 2008, Activision bought Vivendi and took Blizzard along with them. For a while now we've just been seeing the long-term effects of those shorter-term profitability policies. It's sad, but it kind of happened a long time ago.
Wow, highly agree with having an OSS editor like that.
Non OSS, there's Dota 2 map editor (which spawned the amazing Auto Chess which Valve is working on an official version now http://blog.dota2.com/2019/05/dota-auto-chess/), W3 is coming out remastered now and old W3 still exist.
I'll actually try to prototype something like that. Interesting idea.
These aren't all clones. Many of them are just playable versions of games that have had their source code released. IMO a clone refers to a new implementation, but a lot of these are just modified and re-released versions of the actual game.
Also some of them aren't clones at all as I understand the term. The "similar" tag covers this, I guess. "Playable" also seems to have a pretty nebulous meaning. The absence of "playable" certainly does not mean "not playable."
the term clone has been used that way a lot even commercially just pointing to game mechanics and other game elements. i do believe what this list is showing is probably more in line with the term clone though where it is basically a copy but their own assets or the original assets(you had to buy the game and thus have the assets) but their own engine which is less common but to name a couple openmw, and gemrb.
CorsixTH is indeed a great piece of work. For the fans of the game, some of the original Theme Hospital people released a successor called Twopoint Hospital, available on Steam.
Very nice curated list! Its going to be an ever ongoing battle to keep it accurate. Something like this would be great on Wikipedia or collaboratively editable in some other way, or allowing forks on say GitHub.
I took a look at one of the FOSS clones for Ace of Spades, and elation turned to horror when I glanced at the "Recommended" Requirements[0]:
- 3GHz quad-core processor
- GPU: 1GB or more VRAM
- GPU (NVIDIA): GeForce GTX 680
Really, guys? You took a game that had a reputation of "Runs on your grandma's rig!" and turned it into that monstrosity, while somehow still keeping the same low-res polygon models? For what? Photorealistic water effects and lens flare?
It's really pretty, runs really smoothly (especially on OSes not previously supported by AoS), and those requirements really aren't that high (minimum Intel HD 3000 with 512MB VRAM + 1GHz dual core processor, that's basically any computer this decade).
Additionally, if you don't love the models, feel free to switch them out. There are plenty of pak files available for download across the web, the first to appear in my search result list was https://gamebanana.com/skins/137550.
You can still play Ace of Spades or make you own fork without post-process effects if you want. No need to get angry at some people who decided to make a prettier fork.
Its a fun game (I personally find the "tower of babel" game modes the most enjoyable), although it is a bit of a wild-west these days without much moderation/administration and a lot of trolling/racism.
You can play using a "minimum" requirement PC as well. Out of all the things getting heavier, some remake opting in to better visuals is not the one you should be calling a "monstrocity".
Some open source clones are great, "Bust A Move" on the SNES is fun, but the open source clone "Frozen Bubble", come one who has not spent hours with that game......
[+] [-] pierreyoda|6 years ago|reply
I will submit a PR though as I since switched from Sourceforge to Github [1] and now use the MIT license.
In any case, great work! Only suggestion I could make is maybe make an "Engine" category for projects like OpenMW?
[1] https://github.com/pierreyoda/o2r
[+] [-] xzn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baroffoos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ElCapitanMarkla|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdz|6 years ago|reply
OpenTTD is successful because it's readily available, you don't need an original copy of Transport Tycoon.
[+] [-] derefr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimbatm|6 years ago|reply
Trademark: if the game is trademarked, you can't re-use the name. Anything with a trademark needs to be replaced with a new name/logo that is sufficiently different as to not induce confusion in the consumer.
Copyright: all the source code is rewritten so there is no copyright there. The game assets like textures and levels are under copyright and needs to be re-created from scratch as well. Or require the player to own the original game and provide an import method. A lot of Doom engines for example would require you to provide the WAD files.
Patents: this might be more tricky to work around. Patents protect algorithms and methods of production which might be integral to the game. I am not aware of games who are protected by patents.
These are the 3 legal pillars of legal protection
[+] [-] TehCorwiz|6 years ago|reply
Short version, can they sue you? Yes, just like anyone in the US can sue anyone else for whatever reasons valid or not. In Hasbro v Scrabulous, Hasbro dropped the suit given that they were losing and Scrabulous had run out of money. Had they continued the suit they would have had a judgement on the record regarding the legality of cloning the game experience and possibly been ordered to pay legal costs had they actually lost. As it happened they didn't need to win because they just buried their competitor with legal fees.
[1]: https://www.quora.com/Did-Scrabble-sue-Words-with-Friends-Wh...
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|6 years ago|reply
edit: The "legal aspects" section of this wikipedia article mention a case in 2012 that may have changed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_clone
[+] [-] bitwize|6 years ago|reply
Note again that if you clone Tetris, YOU WILL BE SUED and you will probably lose. Tetris is the most vigorously defended game IP in the world, by a company that, like Oracle, is mostly legal department, and judges have ruled that the shapes of the tetrominoes, the manner in which they spin and fall, and the dimensions of the game board are all copyrightable game elements.
[+] [-] dwild|6 years ago|reply
I don't know how they acquire theses licenses, but if they did, maybe you can too and if you can't, maybe they already have it made, or needs a developer to implement it (which can be you!).
[+] [-] TehCorwiz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrguyorama|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184463
2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5775714
[+] [-] melling|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vntx|6 years ago|reply
Blizzard’s world editing tools helped players innovate new genres like the MOBA but its restrictive IP terms killed innovation dead in its tracks.
All Blizzard does now is make reskin of old game(but excellent games) and release classic version of MMO’s.
What happened to the company?
[+] [-] WaxProlix|6 years ago|reply
In 2008, Activision bought Vivendi and took Blizzard along with them. For a while now we've just been seeing the long-term effects of those shorter-term profitability policies. It's sad, but it kind of happened a long time ago.
[+] [-] Fnoord|6 years ago|reply
They send a C&D to the platform which hosted bnetd an open source battle.net clone (IIRC Sourceforge).
All of their games run well in Wine. Heck, I played WC3 in 2005 in Wine.
[+] [-] binthere|6 years ago|reply
Non OSS, there's Dota 2 map editor (which spawned the amazing Auto Chess which Valve is working on an official version now http://blog.dota2.com/2019/05/dota-auto-chess/), W3 is coming out remastered now and old W3 still exist.
I'll actually try to prototype something like that. Interesting idea.
[+] [-] atm0sphere|6 years ago|reply
the company was co-opted some time after d2 LoD and everything has been downhill since then.
[+] [-] ludde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chubs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkesper|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin42|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smcameron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reshie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roschdal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Already__Taken|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srgpqt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCycoONE|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tokkemon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chkuendig|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haolez|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzrdude|6 years ago|reply
And not to forget, endless sky is a great escape velocity alike.
[+] [-] Fnoord|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|6 years ago|reply
- 3GHz quad-core processor
- GPU: 1GB or more VRAM
- GPU (NVIDIA): GeForce GTX 680
Really, guys? You took a game that had a reputation of "Runs on your grandma's rig!" and turned it into that monstrosity, while somehow still keeping the same low-res polygon models? For what? Photorealistic water effects and lens flare?
[0] http://openspades.yvt.jp/
[+] [-] striking|6 years ago|reply
If you still need to play using the original launcher, you can do that here https://www.buildandshoot.com/download/.
Additionally, if you don't love the models, feel free to switch them out. There are plenty of pak files available for download across the web, the first to appear in my search result list was https://gamebanana.com/skins/137550.
[+] [-] floatboth|6 years ago|reply
Who wouldn't "Recommend" something decent? The minimum is HD Graphics 3000 still.
GTX 680 is kind of a "grandma's rig" card at this point. It's from 2012.
[+] [-] maeln|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattlondon|6 years ago|reply
Its a fun game (I personally find the "tower of babel" game modes the most enjoyable), although it is a bit of a wild-west these days without much moderation/administration and a lot of trolling/racism.
I'd recommend it, just ignore the chat.
[+] [-] dcbadacd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siffland|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tazard|6 years ago|reply
And the GitHub:
https://github.com/reed-jones/minesweeper_js
Doesn't work well on Mobile unfortunately, but it's pretty good for killing time in desktop (if I do say so myself)
[+] [-] astrobe_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] account42|6 years ago|reply
https://github.com/opengaming/osgameclones