Open Source Game Clones

http://osgameclones.com/

by madc • 9 years ago

309 78 9 years ago

osgameclones.com

kiddico2• 9 years ago

You missed the best clone of them all :P https://github.com/raxod502/TerrariaClone

salqadri3• 9 years ago

Just submit a PR to https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones/

katastic• 9 years ago

It's not a real game. It's a project online to show all the bad code the guy wrote when he was a young coder.

Fordrus• 9 years ago

Oh... oh my Gosh..... it's full of... he globally declared his LOOP INDEXING VARIABLES?!

I really appreciate him making that available, fantastic little cautionary tale, clearly from an enthusiastic and thoughtful learner of Java - glad he's made good progress since then, though, that's... I mean, dang it is REALLY bad, but it is also amazing as a sort of exercise in him just knowing what he wants to do and finding (bad) ways to make it happen. And that's admirable, even if it is also horrifying to see unfold. :D

salqadri3• 9 years ago

This is an amazing list; thanks a lot for sharing! Here is a link to the underlying github repo where people can contribute to that list: https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones/

axonic• 9 years ago

I stumbled upon this when searching for examples of successful open source games. Great list, thanks for this.

AdmiralAsshat2• 9 years ago

It would actually be really cool if games officially adopted this kind of engine-based model that we see in some of the examples, where the "engine" would be FOSS (meaning it can be ported, modded, improved, etc.), and the "game" that is sold is the compiled binary blob graphics, assets, scripts, etc.

In short, I guess it would basically be like selling RPG Maker games or DOOM wad's, but without the engine itself being proprietary.

pvg5• 9 years ago

Isn't UE reasonably close to that already for most practical, if not ideological purposes?

AdmiralAsshat2• 9 years ago

But that only works if Unity open sources the engine. A ubiquitous engine is not the same as an open engine. The fact that we now have jDoom, Doomsday, and other enhancements to the engine that let us play Doom, Doom2, Hexen, Heretic, etc. only work because id software released the source code. Otherwise, it would be like any other proprietary engine, and we'd have to reverse-engineer it if we want to be able to play those games again.

I'm sure you could argue that Unity is currently more cross-platform than engines were 10-20 years ago and already works on Mac/Win/Linux/Android/whatever, but we can't guarantee it will be around in 20 years.

badsectoracula2• 9 years ago

Considering that ideology often comes from practical considerations and that the practical consideration in UE's licensing is that you are still bound to Epic and unable take the code and run with it, then i'd say that no, it isn't reasonably close.

AgentME• 9 years ago

Don't people usually end making changes to the Unreal Engine executable and tie their game to it? As far as I know, it's not possible for me to take the Unreal Engine source code, compile it possibly with modifications, and play arbitrary Unreal Engine games with it (like say Gears of War 4).

rhn_mk1• 9 years ago

I've heard a couple of good things about Godot [0]. However, I couldn't tell you any titles that use it without looking it up.

Perhaps there is no standard engine in the FOSS world because the engines are not advertised as strongly as the most popular commercial ones. Unity, after all, will gladly let you know it's being used whenever the game starts.

[0] https://godotengine.org/

epigramx• 9 years ago

I had been hacking the open source quake 3 engine while in the community of Urban Terror, a closed source game on top of it. I believe a problem that studios would face with what you are suggesting is that there is still a lot you can control at the low level, ranging from cheats to game behavior.

PS. Of course one could claim you can never be certain of those (hacking disassembled code is always an option) but in any way you look at it, if you do have the resources to have your own engine you retain more control.

heavenlyhash• 9 years ago

KeeperRL is a game being developed and sold in that model! It's both on Steam (where I bought it), and on Itch.io (which seems to be the thing, for indie games now..?) and on Github -- same thing, full open source. If you buy it, you're essentially buying the build/bundle/autoupdate conveniences, and I think some assets; if you build it from source, you've got the same essential product.

  - http://keeperrl.com/
  - http://store.steampowered.com/app/329970
  - https://miki151.itch.io/keeperrl
  - https://github.com/miki151/keeperrl

Not a shill or by any means a sockpuppet; just a pleased owner/supporter, and I like and want to support this model!

Mind, this is a game, not an "engine". And I'm okay with that; building an "engine" rather than building an actual game is something that we OSS nerds are already prone to self-nerdsniping on, and the resulting engine-with-no-game doesn't really help anyone (including, typically, other game makers, because without a single trial-by-fire, that "engine" code tends to be pretty useless). It's good that it's OSS, even if (and especially if?) it's not an "engine".

daeken6• 9 years ago

Not quite ready to submit this to the list yet, but I've been working on a Quake 3 engine clone from scratch in C# with Bridge.NET, targeting the browser and WebGL. It's been a super fun project so far -- a few days of part-time work and I have levels rendering nearly perfectly and I'm making progress on character model rendering. Repo is at https://github.com/daeken/WebArena and you can see a live version at http://demoseen.com/bridge/

Still a ton to do, but I'm really digging it.

Edit to add: WASD + Space/Shift + arrows to control the camera.

westoncb3• 9 years ago

Awesome! I wrote an MD3 loader/renderer/animator years ago[0] and had a lot of fun with it—always wanted to try loading the levels as well, though I've yet to try it. Any comment on how difficult that was in comparison to dealing with characters? I imagine you are pulling the data from WAD files (err.. does quake 3 still use those?), and static geometry is in a 3D BSP tree?

[0] http://symbolflux.com/statichtml/oldprojects/md3library.html (No source or anything available atm—just a screenshot and description, though I could up it up if anyone were interested.)

daeken6• 9 years ago

The actual level loading itself is stupid easy -- I had the geometry loading and rendering in something like two hours. The tough part is converting their "shader" model over to something that modern GPUs can understand. That took about a day and a half and still isn't entirely complete -- I'm missing environment mapping and vertex deformation.

MD3 has been pretty straightforward on the whole, but I didn't design my mesh abstraction super well out the gate, so I've mainly been redesigning that and trying to make it futureproof. I think I have it to about the minimum repeated code possible at this point, but I'm sure I'll reach some other snag down the road and have to refactor again!

throwaway2016a6• 9 years ago

Awesome. Looks great.

This brings back memories. I wrote a MD2 loader for my final project in my 3d graphics elective in college years ago. It was a ton of fun. Quake 3 came out my freshman year, the format wasn't very well documented yet but MD2 had tons of documentation.

Can't comment to how much easier / harder level loading would be but I'd venture to say probably much easier. Characters have more animation and such along with them.

indescions_20172• 9 years ago

Good on you! 60 FPS and looks terrific.

From 10 years ago, how they did the (mostly automated) managed port of Quake II :)

https://gregs-blog.com/category/quake-2-c-net-port/

throwaway2016a6• 9 years ago

Looks great. Just out of curiosity why C# for the engine but Python for the tools? What strengths does each offer that lead to those choices vs doing the tools and the engine in the same language?

daeken6• 9 years ago

I love Python for file format manipulation, especially with my Struct.py library. Also, the tools themselves are largely derived from an older version of WebArena where the client was written in Coffeescript + Three.js.

That said, the tools are unbelievably slow and will be rewritten in C# once things are functionally complete. Python just allows for very, very rapid development of this sort of thing (for me).

vvanders• 9 years ago

Really cool stuff, seeing that level brings back some pretty powerful memories.

Didn't know about Bridge.NET. That's way cool, how is it from a development perspective?

daeken6• 9 years ago

I am absolutely loving Bridge.NET so far. There are some mild rough edges and it doesn't support C# 7 syntax yet, but I went from never having used it to having built a simple 3d engine in a matter of a couple hours. I consider that a big win.

kstenerud• 9 years ago

hmm it breaks on Chrome on mac os:

System.Exception: TypeError: Cannot read property 'viewport' of null at ctor.Resize (http://demoseen.com/bridge/WebArena.js:180:37) at new ctor (http://demoseen.com/bridge/WebArena.js:158:22) at Function.Main (http://demoseen.com/bridge/WebArena.js:119:13) at http://demoseen.com/bridge/bridge.js:2973:39 at HTMLDocument.delayfn (http://demoseen.com/bridge/bridge.js:481:21) at HTMLDocument.listenHandler (http://demoseen.com/bridge/bridge.js:498:30)

daeken6• 9 years ago

Looks like it's not getting a WebGL context. Perhaps your setup doesn't support it?

geoffreymcgill2• 9 years ago

Check for browser extensions|plugins that might be prevent "fingerprinting". These plugins often disable WebGL support by default.

indescions_20172• 9 years ago

Great list!

If we were to start an archival project to preserve some of these classics for posterity, it seems there are a couple of techniques. Internet Archive's strategy of collecting (public domain?) ROMs and exposing via JSMAME. Use an open clone as reference and then port again to WebGL. Or for games ported to SDL perhaps re-compile via Emscripten to Javascript.

HTML5 and browsers are becoming performant enough. Is there some other portable emulator that might be a better target?

conradev• 9 years ago

libretro is pretty cool: https://www.libretro.com/index.php/mission/

emodendroket• 9 years ago

It's always seemed funny to me that there aren't a million Fantavision clones.

rodolphoarruda• 9 years ago

How do I know which of these could be played in Ubuntu?

soared• 9 years ago

This is a good example of when a site with a lot of images would actually be helpful - I could use some thumbnails! ('go submit a pr then')

dmm• 9 years ago

You include several clones built on Unity. These are not open source.

derefr4• 9 years ago

Is a game "not open source" if all the business-logic code and game assets are open-source, but it relies on a closed-source engine (that it doesn't ship with)?

Doesn't seem much different to me to e.g. writing an open-source game that uses DirectX. DirectX is not, itself, open-source, but it's not really "part of" the game. The game just uses its API; and could equivalently use anything else with the same API (like the DirectX implementation in Wine.)

throwaway2016a6• 9 years ago

A purist would say that an open source game should use OpenGL. But I generally agree. Unity is free to download so there is no monetary barrier to compiling these games. So it's not free from a GNU sense of the word but it is free money wise and the gameplay parts are open source.

krapp2• 9 years ago

Is a game "not open source" if all the business-logic code and game assets are open-source, but it relies on a closed-source engine (that it doesn't ship with)?

Depending on a closed-source engine at all by definition makes the game not open source, when you consider "the game" from both a developer and user point of view.

my_ghola• 9 years ago

This is (was?) called the Java Trap: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

    If some of a program's dependencies are nonfree, this means that all
    or part of the program is unable to run in an entirely free system—it
    is unusable in the Free World. Sure, we could redistribute the program
    and have copies on our machines, but that's not much good if it won't
    run. That program is free software, but it is effectively shackled by
    its nonfree dependencies.

thriftwy• 9 years ago

There's this best game ever, Master of Magic, which countless people tried to rewrite over but nobody ever got anywhere. Even in this list.

Of these, Star Control (Ur-Quan Masters) is also one of the best games with tear-dropping story which I also recommend highly. The open-source port is of excellent quality.

throwaway2016a6• 9 years ago

This is an awesome list.

I know there are many programmers that spend long hours recreating games they like in open source. But are there artists doing the same? It would be great if many of these projects that require a copy of the original game for the assets could get contributions from artists willing to make open source skins / texture packs as well.

cr0sh• 9 years ago

Yes: https://opengameart.org/

throwaway2016a6• 9 years ago

Thanks for the link. This looks really cool.

hutzlibu• 9 years ago

Those projects are good, but I think it is a bit sad, that the open source movement allmost only manages to produce clones of games and not a new one. Well, let's see, if I can change that one day ... lot's of ideas, but not the time, nor money at the moment. Common problem, I suppose ;)

krapp2• 9 years ago

To be fair, creating a new game that's good takes a lot more talent across a lot more domains of expertise than your average FOSS hacker might appreciate. The code is just one part of it - you've got art, music, level design, story possibly, it can be as complicated as making a movie.

Cloning an existing game is easier.

lloeki• 9 years ago

If people want to try their hand at it, I recommend them to try to participate in game jam warm-ups, such as MiniLD[0] for Ludum Dare. Getting your feet wet gives quite some hint at the scope of things you have to handle.

[0] http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild/

tabletiptop• 9 years ago

Game design is a broad study and difficult to do well. Programming a game based on an existing design is the easy part.

rpdillon• 9 years ago

I recently discovered Argentum Age, a high-quality, fully open-source game that is certainly inspired by other games, but also feels quite novel in many ways. My understanding is that it has some of the same folks that have worked on Battle for Wesnoth, so I have every confidence that the team can execute on their vision.

http://argentumage.com/

dimman• 9 years ago

There’s one engine missing in that list, and it’s pretty advanced:

http://fte.triptohell.info

Supports a lot of the Quake based games (started out as a QW engine but is much more today).

Had Vulkan support way earlier than vkQuake came to be. Spike, the basically single developer behind it is really talented.

erikb• 9 years ago

Really nice, but out of date it seems. A lot of the links don't work and sometimes good alternatives aren't mentioned.

vog• 9 years ago

If you didn't play it, and are into puzzle games, I strongly recommend you to try the Pushover reimplementation. I loved that one back in the DOS times, and the free clone contains may additional levels.

kzrdude• 9 years ago

RTTR for a Settlers II remake is really good (but requires original graphics files).

microcolonel• 9 years ago

I didn't know that Allegiance was switched to an MIT license from Shared Source, that's awesome! I've not been running Windows natively on a computer for some years now, and I kinda miss playing Free Allegiance with easily 200 players in a single game, so hopefully under the new license it's more likely to be ported off of Direct3D, and then perhaps off of Windows dependence. I'm probably not going to be the one to do it though, so maybe it'll never happen.

fritzy• 9 years ago

I should submit https://spacewar.pro as a clone of DOS SPACEWAR

itomato• 9 years ago

I'd like to see an open, multiplatform clone of Subspace.

We've had a reverse-engineered server for some time: https://bitbucket.org/grelminar/asss

VikingCoder• 9 years ago

I'd love it if someone made a Visual Studio Solution that correctly built as many of these as possible.

Open Source Game Clones

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