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Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

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Re: Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

#112

I'll mention nethack just because no one has said it yet

And in the same vein, Pixel Dungeon / Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Seconding the latter. It's very well done, and at this point I think it's much better than the original.

Re: Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

#115

Catacylsm: Dark Days Ahead is fantastic.

Fantastic game and very actively developed. If you play the latest experimental version it can get a bit chaotic with the rate of change in the game. It’s quite different than what I played six months ago. Being able to play a cave man who works his way through the Iron Age or a modern mad max customizing his death mobile to a lab grown mutant busting out of a science lab adds a ton of variety. I’m not a fan of every change, but it trends towards realism and simulation and overall keeps getting better.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA

Re: Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

#116
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.

Re: Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

#118
post #31

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]…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Favourite open source game?

#120
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 :)

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