Open source remakes of games you're still loving

[misterbwong]

I'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/Guardia0.jpg

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/MagusLair2.jpg

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

[possibilistic]

I 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/), or even a miniseries (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-L...)? What gives?

(I've been wanting to make an open source Ocarina of Time remake, but I am fearful of such lawsuits.)

[technomancy]

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that trailer gave me chills. What a shame!

[udp]

On 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

* SCUMM (Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer, ...) - ScummVM: http://www.scummvm.org/

* Transport Tycoon Deluxe - OpenTTD: http://www.openttd.org/en/ (this has optional free replacements for the graphics/sound/music, too)

[mambodog]

Let'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/

[rnemo]

Just 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).

[technomancy]

Conspicuously absent is Marathon and its OSS successor Aleph One: http://marathon.sourceforge.net/

[aw3c2]

Same for ioQuake3. http://openarena.ws/ is a Q3A clone.

[mikemaccana]

You 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]

I really wonder why so many people consider models like this 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...

Is it just the "it is something different/new and thus feels fresh" or do you really consider it look better objectively?

[barkingcat]

I emailed the author with a link to Ur-Quan Masters for Star Control 2!

[Androsynth]

you 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.

[estel]

It'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/

[bitsai]

For those who enjoyed Wing Commander Privateer, there's WCP Gemini Gold, a remake using the open source Vega Strike engine:

http://privateer.sourceforge.net/

I've emailed the author to see if he'd like to add it to the list.

[rvavruch]

Good 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_linu...

There are a few for free as well: http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue#all_genres/price/0/

[roschdal]

There's also http://www.freeciv.net/ which is a HTML5 version of Freeciv, with a AGPL license.

[GeneralMaximus]

FreeCiv 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?

[jamesu]

Missing the impressive reverse-engineering of Dune2 effort: http://www.opendune.org

[mambodog]

Some FPS additions:

AlienArena - like UT, Q3A. Graphically impressive, seems to be actively developed.

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/

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/

Tremulous - like Gloom, Natural Selection etc. Sci-fi FPS/RTS hybrid.

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/

[jackolas]

Nexuiz got forked http://www.xonotic.org/ it's actively developed.

[naner]

Urban Terror is not open source.

[xiaomai]

Smoking Guns is my favorite, it feels like a Clint Eastwood Western:

http://www.smokin-guns.net/

[naner]

These 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.

[scorxn]

FreeSpace 2: http://scp.indiegames.us/

[duhprey]

If anyone here remembers the game Netstorm, we're doing a remake of it here, 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.

[tobylane]

Brilliant one here - CorsixTH, remake of ThemeHospital. https://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/

[StavrosK]

A 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.

[MrJagil]

Dungeon 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.

[vckadath]

This 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.

[matticakes]

For Sierra (kings quest, etc) fans there are a couple good options:

http://sarien.net/ (web based!) http://www.agdinteractive.com/ (high-res remakes) http://www.tsl-game.com/ (The Silver Lining - a completely new game continuing the Kings Quest story line)

[lucasjung]

My 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/

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

There's also a glacially-slow effort to re-work the Homeworld source code to openGL (and cross-platform): http://homesource.nekomimicon.net/sourceforum/

[joeyespo]

I 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/