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Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

378 points| pabs3 | 3 years ago

While there are fewer of them, there are quite a few fully open source, open content games out there, like Thrive, 0ad, Warzone2100, Endless Sky etc.

What is your favorite fully open source, open content game?

Edit: please vote on the comments people post too. Up if you like, down if you dislike, don't vote if you haven't played it or are neutral on it.

373 comments

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[+] ninjin|3 years ago|reply
OpenTTD is probably my favourite, but let me put a classic that I really enjoyed into the mix: XBattle [1]. Real-time strategy with an emphasis on area of control and supply line “flow”. All while “abusing” X11 to get multi-player support. It gave me many hours of joy at the Solaris boxes we had at university in the mid 00s. My only concern would be whether it counts as open source with its home-made license [2].

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20011128105604/http://cns-web.bu...

[2]: https://paste.sr.ht/~ninjin/fdd615d6e32e1316014dece892128697...

[+] matthews2|3 years ago|reply
Designing your rail network in transport tycoon feels like software engineering sometimes, having to refactor old lines to fit the new ones in neatly.

A very dangerous game to play though, you'll boot it up in the morning for a way to kill an hour and... it'll suddenly be midnight.

[+] spacetraveler11|3 years ago|reply
XBattle looks so cool, amazing that this game was made 30 years ago. Kind of similar to a game I had been working on (and might just get out of the dustbin to reactivate).

Anyone looking to get started with hexagonal grids should check out [1] from Red Blob Games. Comprehensive tutorial on hex grids explaining coordinates, fields of vision, pathfinding and more.

[1] https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

[+] tasuki|3 years ago|reply
I never understood OpenTTD. Passengers just board your vehicles and go wherever you take them? That makes no sense to me. How is that supposed to work?

I've played a bit of Simutrans, where each prospective passenger has an origin and a destination, and if you can take them there, they use your services, otherwise they don't.

[+] sliken|3 years ago|reply
I really liked Xbattle, but seemed pretty dated, and at least when I played required players to xhost + the server, which back then wasn't that unusual.

There was a similar game, written in java (server and client I believe), called Europa. Had a grid of X's, simple UI (tell units where to go) and the "water pressure" would slow from the cities that make armies to wherever you pointed them. Even included things like using 3 armies to make 1 paratrooper that could jump a square or two.

The author even sent me a copy, not sure I still have it though.

[+] dleslie|3 years ago|reply
Easily the best:

Dungeon Crawl https://crawl.develz.org/

OpenRA https://www.openra.net/

Battle for Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/

FreeCiv http://freeciv.org/

Endless Sky https://endless-sky.github.io/

[+] themodelplumber|3 years ago|reply
> Dungeon Crawl

This is a favorite. And just to add, after I got a bit tired of roguelikes I tried out Flare and got hooked on the old version in my distro's repos. It's an isometric 3D action RPG.

Later I found it is still under active development and really fun, with a greatly improved base campaign and community mods available as well.

Be sure to get the AppImage rather than whatever might be in older repos if you're running Linux.

https://flarerpg.org/

Recent presentation by Justin, the lead developer: https://flarerpg.org/2022/02/21/i-love-free-software-day-202...

Blog: https://flarerpg.org/blog/

Forums: https://opengameart.org/forums/flare

[+] tarentel|3 years ago|reply
I've been playing DCSS on and off for about 12 years now I highly recommend it to anyone even knowing the learning curve is wildly steep and most people probably won't be able to win without putting in a lot of effort.
[+] thebeardisred|3 years ago|reply
Big ups for FreeCiv. I've spent more than a few minutes in that.
[+] kevdev|3 years ago|reply
+1 for Endless Sky. Excellent game!
[+] obfuscator|3 years ago|reply
Shameless self promotion: Reverse RPG https://r-rpg.com/

I wanted a game like wordle, which I can play in like 5 to 10 minutes, but I don't really like word-puzzles. But everything else about wordle is great: no barriers, easy to pick up, replayable. So I made rrpg and intend to add content to it.

I haven't really thought about licensing, but I guess I will open-source it, if people like it. Right now it's just js in the browser, so anyone could copy it. Written with nx in typescript.

[+] latexr|3 years ago|reply
Played it for a few minutes and found it pretty fun!

I’ll return later to finish my run, but wanted to point out the opening quote character is wrong (it’s the same as the closing quote): it shows up as ”some dialog” instead of “some dialog”. Also, I’m on a phone and occasionally one of the options is highlighted. At first I thought it might mean something, but on closer inspection it may be a selection bug.

Both are minor issues which do not detract from the experience, but they may also be quick fixes.

[+] ArekDymalski|3 years ago|reply
Real fun! Very clever idea and well written, engaging story. And the bits of humor are nice.
[+] deadbyte|3 years ago|reply
I died from infections, but at least I was a rich man.
[+] az_reth|3 years ago|reply
It's very fun! Would love to dig around in the source code.
[+] kurupt213|3 years ago|reply
I had enough fun to save and play again
[+] obfuscator|3 years ago|reply
Wow, thanks everyone! I am a bit overwhelmed :)
[+] croo|3 years ago|reply
This is very fun, thanks for the link.
[+] alex_duf|3 years ago|reply
This is pretty amazing, thanks for sharing!
[+] aljarry|3 years ago|reply
This is pretty fun! Thanks for sharing :)
[+] anjbe|3 years ago|reply
The Ur‐Quan Masters, better known as Star Control 2.

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

According to Wikipedia:

> Released to critical acclaim, Star Control II is widely viewed today as one of the greatest PC games ever made, and has appeared on numerous publications lists of the greatest video games of all time.

It was open sourced in 2002, and is available in most package repos (as “uqm”).

[+] agiacalone|3 years ago|reply
Second this. I played the hell out of the original SC2 back in the day...and UQM improves on the entire experience.

They even updated the Super-Melee mode to be playable over the Internet.

[+] fullstop|3 years ago|reply
This was one of my most favorite games as a teenager. It still holds up!
[+] willis936|3 years ago|reply
This looks pretty cool.

Does anyone know how to get sound working on WSL1 + VcXsrv?

[+] CGamesPlay|3 years ago|reply
Screeps, the open source game for programmers. It’s really, really hard though.

https://screeps.com/

Side note: I don’t think downvotes should be for comments you “don’t like” or even “disagree with”. Downvotes should be used to discourage people from posting bad content, but on HN we try to be a bit more objective about what “bad” is rather than “I don’t like it”.

[+] em-bee|3 years ago|reply
i have read elsewhere explicitly stating that downvotes may be used as a sign of disagreement.

that said, in a topic like this, can there be any bad comments? (other than someone throwing insults at a game or recommending a game that is not actually FOSS?)

so why not use downvotes for games that you played but didn't like?

let the most popular games rise to the top.

[+] JadoJodo|3 years ago|reply
I've loved the idea of this game for a long time, but have avoided it due to the perception that it's basically just Code Golf: The Game. I'm curious to hear others' thoughts, though.
[+] Aeolun|3 years ago|reply
I very much like the new version, Screeps: Arena, which is much more bounded and doesn’t require nearly the same time investment.
[+] FrostKiwi|3 years ago|reply
Xonotic[1] is excellent (Named Nexuiz in the past, but that name was essentially stolen). Hours of Quake like fun with beefed up graphics and a bunch of interesting gameplay twists. One the mobile side there is Shattered Pixel Dungeon[2], also to be found on F-Droid. The polish behind that project is insane for something FOSS and the hours I put into it are something to be embarrassed about.

[1] https://xonotic.org/ [2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.shatteredpixel.shattered...

[+] flashgordon|3 years ago|reply
Apologies in advanced for not submitting a game. Does anybody feel an unbreakable urge to just break from free of the dreary day job and write games for fun each time you see a HN post like this? My fantasy is to just go and Browserize a game (and not just by wasming it). Gaaaaah the tragedy of limited time!
[+] sliken|3 years ago|reply
Warzone 2100. Open source, I believe their goal was the ultimate real time strategy, and I believe they landed pretty close to that. You can design your own units, each with strengths and weaknesses that reward different strategies. The campaign was fun, rewarding, and had a fair bit of variety. There's even a few AI projects to make smarter teams of tanks (which allows MUCH more complexity than controlling an AI).

It had fog of war, 3D terrain and viewer, many kinds of units, and a nice UI for taking arbitrary groups of units and giving them 1 or more commands. Even some nice automation (at later levels) to avoid the tedium of telling a unit to repair itself, then putting it back in formation.

One somewhat unique feature is that in campaign mode (playing a computer, not a human) you can control time, so you never get overwhelmed with trying to control your units, but of course as your skills get better you can speed up time to not be bored.

If controlling tanks, infantry, and (at the later levels), planes/VTOLS sounds fun then give it a try. The 1st level of the campaign is a tutorial and you'll know pretty quick if you enjoy it.

Ah, sorry, just realized you named Warzone2100, well maybe someone else will find the suggestion useful.

[+] nmz|3 years ago|reply
Teeworlds https://teeworlds.com and its mod ddnet https://ddnet.tw

I've been playing for a full on decade, the game was your typical third person shooter but around 2015 a mod came out that allowed fast completion of puzzle like maps, then it diverged and it now has two versions. Everyone mostly sticks to its ddnet counterpart. but the quake style, deathmatch/ctf/team is still fun at times. though nobody plays it.

[+] domtron_vox|3 years ago|reply
Haven't seen these two so thought I'd add them to the list.

Minetest is a block building game engine (like minecraft) built around the idea mods add all content. There are a bunch of games built for it, and last I checked a active modding community. https://www.minetest.net/

The other is AlephOne, a engine to play all the Marathon games (story FPS, pre-halo bungie made games) along with a bunch more community created ones. I've sunk a good bit of time into both the trilogy and the additional 6 big community made ones. https://alephone.lhowon.org/

[+] INTPenis|3 years ago|reply
Thinking back I can probably list all the open source games I've enjoyed on one hand.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is the one I enjoy daily, also enjoyed the predecessor. Play it every time I'm on the toilet. ;)

Konquest was a really fun old game that came with KDE back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I assume it was open source, I was just a kid playing it.

Nethack of course, enjoyed many hours in that dungeon.

Doom counts right? I played a lot of Doom in the 90s and it's open source now. Quake too I believe.

Edit: How the hell could I forget Cataclysm: Dark days ahead.

This is a hard list to make, partly because I love open source and there are so few titles I've enjoyed on a regular basis.

[+] trynewideas|3 years ago|reply
Empty Epsilon bridge simulator: https://github.com/daid/EmptyEpsilon

The game itself is fun, but the best stuff I've seen is it being reused, modified, and adapted for LARPs and crowdplay.

Out of Orbit is a great and ongoing example, a Finnish escape room-ish experience that also has a Twitch game putting stream chat in the role of the ship's AI: https://outoforbit.fi/ and https://www.twitch.tv/outoforbitgame/about

Empty Epsilon powers the game part, with integrations using its DMX interface and HTTP API to provide hardware interfaces and things like Twitch chat commands modifying the game state.

[+] theshrike79|3 years ago|reply
Abuse will always have a warm place in my heart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_(video_game)

Even though I didn't manage to code a single line of Lisp for the game's internal code or actually get a single level done, the fact that it was theoretically possible was amazing to me.

Also WASD for movement + mouse for shooting in a 2D game was a novel mechanic for me and I still like 2D two-stick shooters quite a bit.

[+] akavel|3 years ago|reply
https://stuntrally.tuxfamily.org/

A car race simulator in mildly offroad tracks (think WRC). I spent a decent amount of time glued to the screen with it; the game is especially stunning with regards to its visuals, a rare quality in the world of open-source games.

Notes to the beginners: don't be afraid to dial down its quality settings if your machine is struggling, the defaults seem to require crazy beefy hardware; and yes, with some practice you will start to overcome the "ghost car", but you should ignore it in the beginning and just focus on staying in track, doing your best, having fun and watching the views :)