Open Source games which aren't clones or puzzles or unfinished or former commercial?

[krisse]

(I was going to post this in the gaming section but that's meant just for tablet games, whereas this topic is more general.)

I've been trying to assess the state of the open source gaming world, but it's quite difficult to do because most lists of open source games consist almost entirely of games that are either clones of commercial titles, puzzle games or unfinished.

Are there any open source games which are original, not puzzles and relatively finished? I don't mean former commercial games either, but games that were written from the very beginning as open source titles.

The reason I'm interested is because open source versions of applications such as word processors can be very close to their commercial counterparts in functionality, or even surpass them. But open source games seem a lot further away from commercial quality.

Am I wrong? I'd love to be wrong about this so please do post if you can correct me.

[GeneralAntilles]

One of my personal favorites, Tremulous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremulous)!

[m_stolle]

I used to play Armagetron a lot....

www.armagetronad.net

Not sure if you'd consider it a clone or not.

Or Tux Racer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux_Racer

Martin

[Bundyo]

Scorched3D, it is a spiritual successor of Scorched Earth, but quite different at the same time.

http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/

[qwerty12]

http://sauerbraten.org/

[GeneralAntilles]

http://sauerbraten.org/

In the same vein: Nexuiz (http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/)

Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/) is another great one, available for the tablets, even!

Hey, want to see a page that makes further discussion largely irrelevant? :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games

[krisse]

Hey, want to see a page that makes further discussion largely irrelevant? :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games

That list is full of clones, puzzles and former commercial games, which are precisely the titles I'm trying to avoid! :-)


One of my personal favorites, Tremulous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremulous)!

According to that link, it's a Quake mod which only got standalone status when the Quake 3 engine was released to open source, but that engine started out as commercial.

This is what I mean, with open source games there usually seems to be some dependence on something developed commercially.

[Bundyo]

That list is full of clones, puzzles and former commercial games, which are precisely the titles I'm trying to avoid! :-).

Yes, but the rest are also there ;)

[GeneralAntilles]

According to that link, it's a Quake mod which only got standalone status when the Quake 3 engine was released to open source, but that engine started out as commercial.


Eh, it uses ioquake3 as a base, but it's drifted pretty far from the commercial code these days.

[RichS]

The problem isn't that making games is too difficult or time consuming but that it is ridiculously difficult to make an engine that stands a chance of competing with the commercial market. Games written using Valve's Source engine are as near as dammit open source games, but rely on the structure brought in by the Half Life series.

[Mutiny32]

That PowerVR MBX capability would come in handy for fome of these games...

[qwerty12]

Let's keep this thread about "Open Source games which aren't clones or puzzles or unfinished or former commercial? "

We don't need another long discussion about why the PowerVR chip isn't used.

[lcuk]

I agree Mutiny32 :)

I also don't understand being against finding and playing formerly commercial games. They have been developed with backing from someone and will often be more polished and feature complete.

For the tablet specifically I think we need some new original games to take advantage of the features of the tablet: numpty comes to mind most readily, but even that is not original (crayon physics).

I would like to see more touch based games using the touch interface to its fullest but will also keep us entertained.

Look at all the ways the Nintendo DS lite uses the touchscreen, especially something like mario&sonic at the olympic games; small short levels with completely different uses for the stylus.

Cloning a format or genre is not a problem and infact is a compliment to the original developer. If done right gives the users a nice game with the feel of the original.

[krisse]

I also don't understand being against finding and playing formerly commercial games.

Well, let me explain why I started this thread.

-I've got nothing against OSS clones (my phone has Frozen Bubble on it).

-I've got nothing against former commercial games.

-I've got nothing against puzzle games.

BUT... as well as those kinds of games, I would also like to see open source produce original games which have no basis in commercial material. Commercial game developers can come up with mostly or totally original concepts, can open source do the same?

Puzzle games seem to be a strong field for this, but are there other genres where OSS can produce original titles?

Clones can play well, but they're ultimately derived from commercial ideas, and it implies that if the commercial game world disappeared then the OSS game world would too. That doesn't seem to be a healthy state of affairs, and it implies an almost parasitic relationship between the open source game world and commercial game world.

In short, I'd like to see whether the open source game world can stand on its own two feet.

As things stand, it seems that the open source world doesn't really provide many games itself but mostly takes existing commercial material and converts it into an open source form.

I genuinely hope I'm wrong about that, but that's the way things seem to be from the responses to the original post.


(former commercial games) have been developed with backing from someone and will often be more polished and feature complete.

That's exactly my point: a lot of people talk about the superiority of open source software, but when it comes to gaming it seems that commercial games (or OSS derived from commercial games) are far better than pure open source ones.

Am I wrong? I hope I am but fear I'm not.


The problem isn't that making games is too difficult or time consuming but that it is ridiculously difficult to make an engine that stands a chance of competing with the commercial market.

Why do open source games have to compete with the commercial market?

[GeneralAntilles]

As things stand, it seems that the open source world doesn't really provide many games itself but mostly takes existing commercial material and converts it into an open source form.


I think you're taking a very incorrect approach to this. Put yourself in an open source developer's shoes. You want to make a first-person shooter. You have two options, develop a completely new engine and netcode from the ground up, or start with the GPLed ioquake3 and spend lots more time making the coolest game you can.

It doesn't have anything to do with parasitic development processes or open source developer incompetence, it's simple an intelligent distribution of resources. There's no point duplicating a lot of work for zero benefit when there's perfectly good GPL code freely available for you to use.

Does being smart about your development time make your game any less original or fun to play?

[krisse]

I think you're taking a very incorrect approach to this. Put yourself in an open source developer's shoes. You want to make a first-person shooter. You have two options, develop a completely new engine and netcode from the ground up, or start with the GPLed ioquake3 and spend lots more time making the coolest game you can.

...but that just leads to more and more FPSes because the commercial (or former commercial) engines already exist.

The very first sentence is the problem: "You want to make a first-person shooter", it's already thinking along pre-made game lines.

What about all the other kinds of games that aren't FPSes?

Why hasn't something as original as, say, Nintendogs or Warioware or Viva Pinata been created in open source?

Surely the lack of commercial demands should be freeing open source game devs to explore a wider range of genres than the commercial companies?

[lcuk]

Krisse, originality does come from open source and/or individual bedroom developers.
However REALLY original good fun stuff is worth genuinely large amounts of money.

You see the good stuff in commercial offerings mainly because the developer has a chance at a happy life without worrying about the bills.

Take a look at nerbacular drop for something totally different to usual and see what it became (one of the biggest games of last year).

It takes a particular kind of developer to bring an entire new genre from conception to fully completed, and long before it becomes completed it becomes marketable.
Open source or not, the lure of $$$ is large.

[Serge]

What about all the other kinds of games that aren't FPSes?

Why hasn't something as original as, say, Nintendogs or Warioware or Viva Pinata been created in open source?

Surely the lack of commercial demands should be freeing open source game devs to explore a wider range of genres than the commercial companies?

You can look at nethack and other roguelike games. That's the genre not properly covered by commercial companies.

[Serge]

Well, let me explain why I started this thread.

-I've got nothing against OSS clones (my phone has Frozen Bubble on it).

-I've got nothing against former commercial games.

-I've got nothing against puzzle games.

BUT... as well as those kinds of games, I would also like to see open source produce original games which have no basis in commercial material. Commercial game developers can come up with mostly or totally original concepts, can open source do the same?

Puzzle games seem to be a strong field for this, but are there other genres where OSS can produce original titles?

Clones can play well, but they're ultimately derived from commercial ideas, and it implies that if the commercial game world disappeared then the OSS game world would too. That doesn't seem to be a healthy state of affairs, and it implies an almost parasitic relationship between the open source game world and commercial game world.

If clones play well, what's the problem?

In short, I'd like to see whether the open source game world can stand on its own two feet.

I don't see a big problem here. There are plenty of open source games. And if commercial game developers did their job worse, there would be more demand for open source games with more efforts allocated to developing them. There is not much focus on developing games in free software community at the moment.

BTW, the quality of commercial games is declining and I don't see much originality there (or I'm just too old for this stuff already). So maybe we are not far from the turnover point :)

Free software works best when people are not very satisfied with the commercial offers.

As things stand, it seems that the open source world doesn't really provide many games itself but mostly takes existing commercial material and converts it into an open source form.

I genuinely hope I'm wrong about that, but that's the way things seem to be from the responses to the original post.

That's exactly my point: a lot of people talk about the superiority of open source software, but when it comes to gaming it seems that commercial games (or OSS derived from commercial games) are far better than pure open source ones.

Am I wrong? I hope I am but fear I'm not.

The whole issue has been discussed many times already, you may find this link interesting: http://www.osnews.com/story/8146


Why do open source games have to compete with the commercial market?
Because they also need some users. If people mostly play commercial titles, they have no time left on trying open source games as a result. Developing anything that is not needed for users is pretty much pointless.

[GeneralAntilles]

BTW, the quality of commercial games is declining and I don't see much originality there (or I'm just too old for this stuff already). So maybe we are not far from the turnover point :)


Sounds like you're getting old. There's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_4:_Modern_Warfare) still (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock) lots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gta_iv) of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_princess) great (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_galaxy) stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_World) out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_iv) there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29). ;)

[Benson]

I'm with GA here; the originality/creativity is much more in mods & wads than in the basic engine for a wide swath of games. If setting out with the goal of making a game in some existing genre renders the effort inherently nonoriginal, there are practically no original games, whether commercial, open-source, both, or neither.

(And the reason for jumping to FPSs is because they're where one of the phenomena under discussion, i.e. open-source release of last year's engine, is exhibited. But the same argument goes anywhere else it happens.)

[BoxOfSnoo]

You're looking for LiquidWar (http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5)!

A similar play-style but totally different game is Koules (http://www.ucw.cz/~hubicka/koules/English/koules.html). Man, I almost destroyed a keyboard or two with that game.

[TA-t3]

Original open source games?

As far as I know Frozen Bubble is original work.. at least I'd never seen anything like it when I first saw it. It was written in Perl too.. (well, +sdl).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Bubble
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/

[sjgadsby]

You have two options, develop a completely new engine and netcode from the ground up, or start with the GPLed ioquake3 and spend lots more time making the coolest game you can.

And this reality is at least as old as the GPL itself and goes well beyond first person shooters. Years ago, in the days before the world wide web, when you wanted to build an online multiplayer game you could download, for example, MudOS and Nightmare and begin coding on a firm foundation. People built plenty of derivative medieval fantasy games, sure, but they also built everything from a programming school to a higher-ed targeted mudlib with integrated Usenet support to Genocide, a FPS-like deathmatch game. Developers could dig into the driver code if they wanted, but doing so wasn't necessary.

These days, it's not just the modders building on existing engines. Commercial developers often buy and build upon them as well. Game development is complex and time consuming enough without worrying about building an engine from scratch.

[sjgadsby]

As far as I know Frozen Bubble is original work..

It's a Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move clone.

[Benson]

Does spacewar count as open-source? Can't beat it for originality, anyway...

[TA-t3]

It's a Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move clone.
Ah, ok. Didn't know that, I hadn't heard about Bust-a-Move. Some googling shows it's from 1994, that'll make it 6 years older than frozen bubble.

[Jobester]

Or Tux Racer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux_Racer

And supertuxkart looks okay:
http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/

[Benson]

Supertuxkart wouldn't be a Mario Kart clone, would it?

[Jobester]

Yeah - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ow21tkYewc
There's some concepts in there that seem to make it stand on it's own to me though; such as the map designs, gameplay features such as wheelies, and the homepage says they're adding new game modes (follow the leader). It's a couple aesthetic changes away from being original?

--

Companies are developing games for hardware more powerful than anyone here owns. They have a lot of competition who can make a lot of profit if their game is the better one at release. The games are affordable, varied, high quality and original; we're getting a free ride. Open source creates good original games, but there's a lot more other games out there. Most original games are going to be developed by whoever is developing the most games