[HN Gopher] Soldat: a 2D (side-view) multiplayer action game
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Soldat: a 2D (side-view) multiplayer action game
        
       Author : albertzeyer
       Score  : 392 points
       Date   : 2021-02-07 21:23 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | albertzeyer wrote:
       | I was surprised and happy to see this also being open sourced. As
       | a developer of OpenLieroX (http://www.openlierox.net/), we also
       | took inspiration of Soldat. The main difference is mainly the way
       | you control the game, i.e. with mouse aim cursor in Soldat, and
       | purely with keyboard in Liero. And also the ninja rope.
       | 
       | Once we added mouse aim support to OpenLieroX as well, but the
       | Liero community didn't liked it, and basically it became another
       | game. Network play between both versions would be unfair. It
       | would really need a different name.
       | 
       | Teeworlds (https://www.teeworlds.com/) is also a more recent very
       | similar game, also with mouse aim, and ninja rope.
       | 
       | Interesting also that Soldat is implemented in Free Pascal /
       | Lazarus.
        
         | ulrikrasmussen wrote:
         | We have replaced our daily table soccer break with a round of
         | teeworlds at work. It's a great game for that purpose. Like
         | table soccer, the game mechanics are simple enough that anyone
         | can join and have fun instantly, but there is a lot of
         | opportunity to gain skills by learning to use the rope
         | efficiently, combined with "classic" FPS stunts such as rocket
         | jumps. Highly recommended.
         | 
         | I also recall playing Soldat a lot back in high school. I think
         | there wasn't a Linux version available, which I guess is why I
         | stopped. Perhaps one will appear now that it is open source?
        
           | ulrikrasmussen wrote:
           | Forgot to say: I have also played Liero a lot with shared
           | keyboard, and didn't know about OpenLieroX! I'll definitely
           | try that out, as it sounds like it's right up my alley :)
        
           | fho wrote:
           | It actually ran quite well in Wine even back than.
        
           | app4soft wrote:
           | > _I think there wasn 't a Linux version available, which I
           | guess is why I stopped._
           | 
           | I just came in comments to see is there a Linux build.
           | 
           | Now I know.
        
         | someperson wrote:
         | Soldat 2 is available in early-access, which might have
         | provided the motivation to open-source the original.
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | I haven't used Pascal for around 15 years, when I used to build
         | Windows desktop apps using Delphi - nice to see some Pascal
         | code for the first time in a while!
         | 
         | BTW, I found the screenshots at soldat.pl, but it would be nice
         | to include a couple in the GitHub readme too.
        
           | shoozza wrote:
           | Yeah good point, probably better to include the screenshot
           | than an icon.
           | 
           | Will do.
        
         | gspr wrote:
         | Ooh! What happened to OpenLieroX? I used to love it, but I see
         | there hasn't been a release in ages. Is development still
         | ongoing? Is it still tied to that quirky abandoned networking
         | library that I can't remember the name of? How did it stand up
         | to the original Liero being opened up?
         | 
         | (Rereading the above I sound super critical. That was not my
         | intention!)
        
           | albertzeyer wrote:
           | I really would love to continue working on OpenLieroX (OLX),
           | but my priorities have shifted, and I just don't find the
           | time anymore, although I still really would like to. I guess
           | it's the same for the other developers. We used to be three
           | main developers.
           | 
           | When I started working on it, I was in school, and then
           | started studying at a university, and continued working on it
           | during most of my studies (and I think my studies somewhat
           | suffered from it, as I spent way more time on coding on OLX
           | than on studying...). But then I started a PhD, got full-time
           | job, now got kids, etc...
           | 
           | Also, this is kind of an infinite project. You can always
           | improve things, implement nice new ideas, etc.
           | 
           | For reference, repo is here:
           | https://github.com/albertz/openlierox
           | 
           | The code you find there is already more modern than all the
           | published builds. It is based on SDL2 now, and has lots of
           | cleanups. The merge of the Gusanos engine and OLX engine is
           | much more completed and cleaned up. Although this could still
           | further improved. I would like to use Lua as the pure
           | scripting engine (from Gusanos engine), and port over all the
           | OLX game logic to that as well, so that the core engine
           | becomes much simpler.
           | 
           | The graphics effects and drawing should be optimized further.
           | On the transition to SDL2 and due to code cleanup, graphics
           | has become slower. And it was already somewhat slow before.
           | This is maybe not much a problem on a modern machine, but
           | this game really should not require a modern machine to run
           | nicely. One reason is that this is all purely software pixel
           | based, including all graphics effects. We definitely should
           | move to OpenGL, Vulkan or so, but some of the graphics
           | effects are a bit tricky to re-implement, and probably need
           | some shader logic. But we also want to have it cross
           | platform, really running anywhere.
           | 
           | I think you refer to HawkNL, which is used for the low level
           | networking (UDP/TCP sockets, DNS)? Yea, we definitely could
           | replace that. Although we anyway provide our own fork within
           | OLX, and it's not so special. One of the many things you
           | probably could replace by sth more modern.
           | 
           | The (higher level) network engine is probably a more
           | important item which needs a reimplementation to support more
           | players, be more stable, etc.
           | 
           | OpenLiero (https://www.liero.be/) is a reimplementation as
           | well. We planned to provide this (the game physics / logic /
           | weapons) as another mod inside OLX. It already has some mods
           | which are similar, but not exactly the same.
           | 
           | And many more things...
        
             | gspr wrote:
             | Thanks for the writeup! I really hope you didn't take my
             | comment as criticism. I can definitely understand!
        
               | albertzeyer wrote:
               | No, not at all. I'm just feeling a bit sad about it
               | myself. But I'm also doing very interesting things
               | recently (research on deep learning), so it's okay.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | Something my brother and I enjoyed was to switch to the ballistic
       | mortar / grenade launcher instagib weapon and then play. You
       | could instagib but the weapon had a massive gravity effect so it
       | was hard to aim. Deliciously fun in the air.
        
       | ggambetta wrote:
       | Looks super fun, I'll give it a try!
       | 
       | Something like 10 years ago I had a similar idea - a 2D shooter
       | with the feel and gameplay of a FPS, only that in my case I
       | thought of making it top-down, and the plan was that visibility
       | would be a huge thing - your 2D character would only see things
       | from their point of view that weren't blocked by the level
       | geometry or other players.
       | 
       | I never completed that game, for various reasons. But in the
       | course of making that prototype, I did a lot of research about
       | the networking model. I read every article I could find about
       | client-side prediction, server reconciliation, and entity
       | interpolation. I didn't want all this effort to go to waste, so I
       | wrote what I had learned in article form, and put it on my
       | website.
       | 
       | That's the never-told-before origin story of my multiplayer
       | networking articles :)
       | 
       | https://gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game-architecture....
        
         | Gene_Parmesan wrote:
         | Oh wow, this is perfect timing. I do hacking on homemade from-
         | scratch 2d game engines in C++ just for fun (and because it's
         | about as far away from what I do at work as I can get). My
         | projects never get _super_ polished because they 're more about
         | learning experiences for me than making anything for
         | sale/consumption. Anyways, my most recent project was a
         | traditional roguelike (holy shit, GUI programming with only SDL
         | for comfort is a challenge), so for my next one I'm wanting to
         | do a top-down action game just for something different. I had
         | decided that I thought making it online multiplayer would be a
         | good focus for a challenge learning objective, but I've been a
         | little hesitant because networking at that level is far outside
         | my comfort zone, and it doesn't seem like something I could
         | just hack my way through like I could for simple sprite
         | rendering/movement physics/etc.
         | 
         | So basically you've lit a spark under me now. Thanks! And I'm
         | now realizing oddly this is the 2nd thing I have of yours on my
         | to-read list, I just saw the post here about computer graphics
         | from scratch a few days ago. I (and I'm sure many others)
         | appreciate your willingness to knowledge-share.
        
           | ggambetta wrote:
           | There's _two_ things I wrote on your to-read list? I 'm
           | flattered :D
        
           | anderspitman wrote:
           | It's a fun rabbit hole, and Gabriel's articles are some of
           | the best.
        
         | mizzao wrote:
         | Surprised no one has mentioned
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_%28video_game%29 - spent
         | many hours here when I was younger.
         | 
         | There is a reverse engineered version that is still running
         | here: http://freeinfantry.com/
        
         | superdimwit wrote:
         | https://closequarters.io/ This is similar to what you are
         | describing, although development has sadly appeared to have
         | stopped.
        
           | ggambetta wrote:
           | Wow, that does look super close to what I had in mind! Add
           | the shadow-like line-of-sight visibility thing, and it's
           | almost the exact same idea.
        
         | sdwr wrote:
         | I played around with the same idea last year! A top-down
         | shooter with line of sight and peeking, inspired by CS. Didn't
         | get very far with it myself, but the idea has tons of
         | potential.
         | 
         | Visibility with partial cover/between different heights would
         | look interesting in a Flatland sort of way, with the body shape
         | morphing based on angle. And I think a 3D level is pretty
         | readable from above if height is shown as a color gradient.
        
         | hawski wrote:
         | Soldat had a realistic game mode were it was like that. It also
         | included ghosts of players if you would hear steps or them
         | shooting.
         | 
         | I also wanted to do a realistic top down 2d shooter. My gimmick
         | was to have akimbo guns and mouse look - view always centered,
         | horizontal mouse move rotates the view, vertical changes the
         | angle between player's hands. You would be able to run forward
         | and shoot on both sides.
        
           | ggambetta wrote:
           | That's a very original idea! My first though is that it's a
           | pretty unintuitive control scheme, how long did it take you
           | to master it? Did other people "get it"? I can imagine that
           | kind of thing being a barrier for adoption :(
           | 
           | OTOH if you can start playing just with the horizontal axis
           | and WASD, and only user the vertical axis as an expert
           | feature... I can see it becoming super compelling. The "easy
           | to learn, hard to master" kind of thing.
        
             | hawski wrote:
             | I never went far with it. When I was more into gamedev I
             | was one of those wasting time on trying to write a generic
             | engine instead of just writing the damn game.
             | 
             | My initial tests with just the mouse look were promising. I
             | did a lousy game for a small competition that used this
             | part of the idea and it was fun for me, but you could
             | barely call it a game.
             | 
             | With the akimbo play I hoped that the cool factor would win
             | people if it would not be too easy to grasp.
             | 
             | Maybe some time in the future I will return to the idea,
             | because I still have a small candle for gamedev. If anyone
             | wants to experiment with the idea be my guest, I don't
             | mind. Just let me know, because I would love to try it out
             | myself ;)
        
         | anderspitman wrote:
         | Man. I always just assumed you were a grizzled netcode veteran
         | that decided one day to share your hard-won-in-the-trenches
         | knowledge with the rest of us plebs. Those articles are
         | fantastic.
         | 
         | EDIT: Also, yes. If you have any interest in networked 2D games
         | and haven't tried Soldat, I highly recommend it.
        
           | ggambetta wrote:
           | Sorry to disappoint! I'm not a grizzled netcode veteran. I
           | guess my strength is explaining complex topics in an
           | accessible way - that's the main contribution of these
           | articles, and the same can be said about my Computer Graphics
           | book. [IMPOSTOR SYNDROME INTENSIFIES]
        
         | chromanoid wrote:
         | The game is nearly twenty years old. It's really a pity that
         | you didn't play it at its peak. Do you know "Running with
         | Rifles"? I think line of sight is not a thing there, but it
         | still reminds me of your idea.
        
         | chazapp wrote:
         | I've been trying to build that very game as a .io game using
         | Phaser3, MatterJS and WebSockets. Thanks a lot for these ! Your
         | articles are one of the most important ressource i've been
         | refering to in order to build it. I'm still struggling with
         | entity interpolation and reconcialiation, but i'm hanging in
         | there and i hope to finish building a complete game loop
         | sometime this year. There are still a lot of issues to fix
         | before reaching that point, but I like what i've built so far:
         | https://mtvs.chaz.pro
         | 
         | Thanks again for these truly useful articles !
        
           | ggambetta wrote:
           | Looks very promising, well done!
           | 
           | If your world is going to be tile-based, doing shadow-like
           | visibility should be simpler than if you did arbitrary meshes
           | :)
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | Your comment made me remember a game -- has anyone played
         | Tremor Gold? I can only find a mention in this 13 years old
         | article: https://www.tigsource.com/2008/02/20/multiplayer-on-
         | one-keyb...
         | 
         | ...I _think_ I have it on a shovelware CD somewhere...
        
         | jvzr wrote:
         | Sounds like you are describing Foxhole (plus an always-on,
         | massively multiplayer, multi-region, logistic-aided front
         | warfare)
         | 
         | https://store.steampowered.com/app/505460/Foxhole/
        
       | yor1001 wrote:
       | I remember play SolDat In highschools with friends.
        
       | NikolaeVarius wrote:
       | I learned alot about computers trying to set up LAN games on the
       | school network with this game.
        
       | mkoryak wrote:
       | FYI: Soldat means "soldier" in Russian.
       | 
       | So not the most creative name, but it didn't matter since this
       | game is awesome.
        
         | mahathu wrote:
         | Also in German
        
           | scotth wrote:
           | Also, french.
        
             | cozzyd wrote:
             | And Romanian :).
             | 
             | Based on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soldat it seems to
             | originally come from Italian?
        
               | worldsayshi wrote:
               | And Swedish.
        
             | RBerenguel wrote:
             | Also, Catalan (close cousins with French)
        
         | someperson wrote:
         | The creator is Polish, and it means soldier in Polish too.
        
           | skocznymroczny wrote:
           | No. The Polish word for soldier is zolnierz. There is a
           | Polish word "soldat", which is a borrowing of the Russian
           | soldat, and it's mostly used to describe Russian/Soviet
           | soldiers and comes with a negative connotations.
        
             | developer2 wrote:
             | The developer hosts the game on a Polish domain
             | (https://soldat.pl/), and even has a FAQ entry regarding
             | the name: https://soldat.pl/en/page/faq
             | 
             | Q: What does "Soldat" mean!?
             | 
             | A: "Soldat" or "Soldaat" means "soldier" in the following
             | languages: german, dutch, norwegian, swedish, danish,
             | french, slovenian, afrikaans, russian, catalan and
             | romanian.
        
               | GoblinSlayer wrote:
               | > 11. Can you give me the source code of Soldat?
               | 
               | > Eeee, no?
        
               | yetihehe wrote:
               | Even funnier, "no" in polish is "yep".
        
             | someperson wrote:
             | Thanks for the clarification.
        
       | stelonix wrote:
       | Oh wow, I love Soldat! I used to play it a lot in the mid 2000s
       | and even bought a license to get rid of the nagware and support
       | the developer. Been dreaming of having access to the code for
       | some 17 years now, this is great news!
        
       | dartharva wrote:
       | This looks very similar to the mobile multiplayer _Mini Militia_
       | : https://www.minimilitia.mobi/
       | 
       | We used to play this a lot among friends a few years ago in
       | college.
        
         | fho wrote:
         | Except this is like 20 years older :-)
        
       | loa_in_ wrote:
       | I used to do maps for Soldat. You can get creative with the
       | included editor
        
       | weiliddat wrote:
       | Glad to see this published. I really miss the follow-up Link
       | Dead. I played the alpha releases and thought it had lots of
       | potential as a deliberate 2D tactical shooter.
        
       | can16358p wrote:
       | What a lovely game it was: even though very small and basic, it
       | made into my top ten by the time played.
        
       | callesgg wrote:
       | Strange how I have been thinking about the soldat game a few
       | times the last 2 months. Then a link on hacker news... the
       | universe works in mysterious ways.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | I used to play soldat back in 2003. That is 18 years ago.
        
       | inoffensivename wrote:
       | ahhh so many hours of my high school life consumed by this game
        
       | JazzXP wrote:
       | I used to play this lunchtime at my old job, there was about a
       | dozen of us that used to play. I wrote a log parser (in PERL!)
       | that would generate stats of who was killing who the most, and
       | who had the most kills with a particular weapon to display
       | leaderboards. I'd run after a session and people would check out
       | their stats.
        
       | tarboreus wrote:
       | This is a great game. Used to play it quite a lot. Playing a lan
       | game with 2 friends was incredibly fun. I'm too old and blind to
       | play a game that needs this level of reaction now, but if you can
       | actually play a modern FPS and if people are still playing this,
       | it's quite unique.
        
         | physicles wrote:
         | Yeah we'd use it as our LAN opener so as people arrived they
         | could just jump in. For me this game is tied to those memories
         | of hefting your 19" CRT on the corner of a ping pong table and
         | trying to get set up ASAP so you wouldn't miss another round.
         | 
         | The weapons are balanced and controls are tight. This might be
         | the nostalgia, but it felt as polished as Starcraft, in its own
         | way.
        
       | S4M wrote:
       | For those who are too lazy to compile the game to see what it
       | looks like, here is the official page of Soldat:
       | https://soldat.pl/en/ It has screenshots.
        
         | tvb12 wrote:
         | The video on this page reminds me so much of Terraria. I think
         | I even saw rocket boots at a few points.
        
           | sitkack wrote:
           | soldat gameplay video
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUdsLsD23Eo
        
         | 8draco8 wrote:
         | That's a blast from the bast. I played a lot of Soldat in high
         | school in Poland like 15 years ago. We was virtually never
         | doing any actual learning we just played MoH:AA, Unreal
         | Tournament and Soldat for hours.
        
           | dbrgn wrote:
           | Soldat and UT for me as well :) And Trackmania. And of course
           | some browser games like MotherLoad.
        
             | me_me_me wrote:
             | Good old days, oh we are soo old now :(
        
       | g0ran wrote:
       | Man I remember this one, it was all the rage in its hey-day.
       | 
       | One other I would love to see resurrected is Babo Violent 2.
        
       | chias wrote:
       | Oh man, I played this a ton back maybe 15 years ago. I haven't
       | played it in forever and a half, but it's a really solid game and
       | a lot of fun!
        
       | buzzert wrote:
       | Soldat was a really excellent game for LAN parties back in the
       | day! Really fast to install, small download, and loads of fun.
        
       | GnomeSaiyan wrote:
       | Used to play this game all the time back in the late 2000's.
       | Honestly thought it died out long ago. Really glad to see it
       | still alive with an active community.
        
       | umvi wrote:
       | Wow, I remember playing this game back in 2006. It's in the same
       | vein as Liero
        
       | skocznymroczny wrote:
       | I attended a presentation by the creator of this game, it was
       | around 2010. The most fun part was the business model. I don't
       | remember the exact numbers, but he made a lot of money on a free
       | to play game before "free to play" model got really popular. One
       | notable thing I remember is that the paid version had higher
       | resolution options and it was one of the highly sought after
       | features.
        
       | abtinf wrote:
       | Is this similar to Abuse?
        
         | skocznymroczny wrote:
         | The control scheme is similar, but this is player vs player
         | only.
        
         | therealdrag0 wrote:
         | Is there a list of games like this? I remember playing a free
         | side scroller sci-fi FPS game on windows ~12 years ago. That I
         | liked a lot but never found again.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | ugotsta wrote:
           | Maybe Armajet? I think we've done a pretty good job with the
           | alternatives here (I work off and on at AlternativeTo):
           | https://alternativeto.net/software/soldat/
        
         | GoblinSlayer wrote:
         | It's more from Liero family.
        
       | zelphirkalt wrote:
       | Ah good memories ... The 8 was much fun, perhaps broken. I
       | developed an uncanny precision with it. But also 6 was great,
       | with more ammo, but still great precision. And the jetpack tricks
       | ...
        
       | wyldfire wrote:
       | Last time I learned about this game I think was when someone
       | shared WebLiero. Which was a pretty fun distraction for me and my
       | son for a few hours :)
       | 
       | https://www.webliero.com/
        
       | tillinghast wrote:
       | So... multiplayer gravity shmup?
        
       | MrYellowP wrote:
       | I love this game since 2003!
        
       | fwn wrote:
       | I played hundreds of hours of Soldat back in my school days.
       | Almost exclusively in realistic mode. There was a great
       | community, I think realsold.org, truly a flashback to think about
       | it now.
       | 
       | I think it's great that they opensourced it, although it somewhat
       | faded not by the lack of development but by a slow and steady
       | reduction in players (at least, as far as I remember, in
       | realistic mode).
       | 
       | It's an amazing game. Ruger was overpowered though.
        
       | romwell wrote:
       | OMG, I played this so much back in the day. It's super fun.
       | 
       | Soldat is to Quake as Terraria is to Minecraft.
       | 
       | Awesome to see it open sourced!
       | 
       |  _Side note: Soldat means "soldier" in several Slavic languages_
        
         | wiz21c wrote:
         | in french too
        
           | romwell wrote:
           | Apparently, it's from Latin "soldarius", so it's pretty much
           | the same in all European languages :)
           | 
           | [1]https://www.etymonline.com/word/soldier
        
         | fho wrote:
         | And in German ;-)
         | 
         | I played this so much back in the days that it is the only game
         | I can say I played it on a somewhat competitive level. A friend
         | and I dominated the 2v2 games only some Scandinavian guys were
         | better then us ... good times :-)
        
       | keyle wrote:
       | Well, shazbot!
        
         | sgtnoodle wrote:
         | I miss tribes 1. There's still servers, but the only folk still
         | playing are too hardcore.
        
           | superkuh wrote:
           | I guess I shouldn't be surprised so many Soldat players also
           | played Tribes. We love jetpacks. And yeah, the community that
           | is left in T1 is hardcore, but if you join the US (any time)
           | or EU (21:00GMT, 3pm CST) LT servers on the weekends there's
           | occasionally less hardcore pick-up games.
           | 
           | As Dynamix would say, "Join us!"
        
       | l-lousy wrote:
       | Used to play this with my cousins 10 years ago... what great game
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | I used to play this with my class mates 20 years ago... :D
        
           | damidekronik wrote:
           | About 15 for me :)
           | 
           | Great mechanics Great soundtrack (if you like heavier music)
           | Great varied modes of play
        
       | Arrath wrote:
       | Oh wow blast from the past. I played so much Soldat, and probably
       | spent nearly as much time in the map editor.
        
       | someperson wrote:
       | Soldat's gameplay (particularly its jetpack momentum) brought
       | many hours of fun to my childhood.
       | 
       | Capture The Flag (with ~5 people per team) is still my favorite
       | game mode. Great game!
        
         | anderspitman wrote:
         | Pointing the minigun down and hovering for a few seconds was my
         | personal favorite.
        
       | djmips wrote:
       | Story of Soldat (short) video narrated by the creator.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpWuOOs0TMg
        
       | anderspitman wrote:
       | I've been meaning to clone the 2D FPS style of Soldat in the
       | browser for years. I had no idea they had open sourced it! How
       | long ago did that happen?
       | 
       | It's written in Pascal!? Man I can't wait to poke around this
       | codebase.
       | 
       | EDIT: Looks like it went open source May 2020:
       | https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/638490/view/21926360...
        
       | bogwog wrote:
       | I played the hell out of this back in the day. Was this open
       | sourced recently, or has it been open for a while and I just
       | never noticed? It's been at least a decade since I last played.
        
       | 0xdba wrote:
       | For some reason this reminded me of Cannon Fodder from the early
       | 90s.
        
       | nicoboo wrote:
       | Something around 15 years ago, we've been playing a lot with some
       | friends. Simple, much more dynamic than Worms...
       | 
       | Glad to see that this great game has gone open-source.
        
       | simlevesque wrote:
       | This is the type of game I'd like to see a console port of.
        
       | Diederich wrote:
       | I saw mention of Pascal, so I had to take a quick peek:
       | 
       | https://github.com/Soldat/soldat/blob/develop/server/ServerC...
       | 
       | The last time I used Pascal was in the late 1980s on a VAX/VMS
       | system. Very fond memories!
        
       | cush wrote:
       | This is one of my all-time favorite games! I put hundreds of
       | hours in back in high school. Haven't seen it in ages. Thanks for
       | sharing!
        
       | Arch-TK wrote:
       | I don't think I've played this game for over 13 years now.
       | 
       | Such a pleasant surprise to see it open sourced.
        
       | mnming wrote:
       | There is a very similar browser version on
       | https://thd.itch.io/commando
       | 
       | I enjoy a lot.
        
       | contingencies wrote:
       | Also played Soldat years ago - another classic indy from the
       | Soldat period was _Tetrinet_. For a modern casual side-scroller
       | that 's cooperative and kid-friendly rather than pure violence,
       | try _Spelunky 2_.
        
       | rubyist5eva wrote:
       | Soldat 2 is in early access on steam - for those who might be
       | interested.
        
       | zaczekadam wrote:
       | No way! This is one of my fav childhood games! It ages well too!
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | I used to play this game so much back in the day. It was the
       | first MMO I ever played.
       | 
       | Are there any popular public servers that we can join?
        
         | SXX wrote:
         | It's F2P on Steam so I guess there are servers for it:
         | 
         | https://store.steampowered.com/app/638490/Soldat/
        
         | shoozza wrote:
         | You can see the server list here: https://soldat.pl/en/lobby
         | Just sort by player count.
        
       | Tade0 wrote:
       | I remember paying a grand total of 18,75PLN for a copy in 2004 -
       | I think me and my friends got a group discount for buying five
       | keys.
       | 
       | That was back when the company currently known as CDPR only
       | started work on the first game from The Witcher series.
        
       | rgoulter wrote:
       | This was a favourite game in the high school computing lab for
       | students who finished their work early. :)
        
       | penetrarthur wrote:
       | Give me back the years I spent playing this absolute masterpiece!
        
       | shoozza wrote:
       | What a surprise to see Soldat on hackernews :)
       | 
       | I maintained Soldat back from version 1.5+ to 1.7 before someone
       | else took over for a few years.
       | 
       | The current version on Steam is Soldat 1.7 while the open source
       | version is an unfinished Soldat 1.8 and needs some love before it
       | can be released (gui is missing, new netcode, switch to
       | lazarus/fpc, macOS and GNU/Linux support, new config file format
       | to name a few.)
       | 
       | So don't expect everything to work out of the box if you compile
       | it.
       | 
       | Any help is welcome btw ;)
        
         | MrYellowP wrote:
         | Heya mate! Long time fan, since 2003!
         | 
         | You're not the original developer? Does he get any money from
         | the Steam sale? The situation is rather weird and different
         | people seem to know different things.
         | 
         | Could you shed some light on the situation?
        
           | shoozza wrote:
           | Yes, the original developer gets the money from the steam
           | sale.
           | 
           | He's hosting the lobby server, website and forum for the
           | game.
           | 
           | Afaik the contributors didn't get any money and worked on the
           | game in their spare time because they love Soldat.
           | 
           | One of the goals was to release it as FLOSS.
        
         | FliesLikeABrick wrote:
         | Former soldat/thd devs appear to be well-represented here
        
         | Chilinot wrote:
         | Thank you for your work! I used to play Soldat for hours a day
         | when it was first released.
        
         | dbrgn wrote:
         | Thanks for maintaining it! I have fond memories of that game.
         | 
         | One time about 80% of my class in school ("Informatik-
         | Berufsschule" in Switzerland) was playing that game while the
         | teacher was talking about some boring Active Directory design
         | topics. Suddenly one of the students screamed "HEADSHOT!",
         | followed by an annoyed teacher and everyone quickly minimizing
         | the game window :)
        
         | MarcScott wrote:
         | Thanks for your work on Soldat. I still remember a bunch of us
         | sitting in our living room, all with our desktop PCs, and the
         | floor being a mess of cables connecting to power banks and an
         | old switch, playing Soldat for hours.
        
       | syspec wrote:
       | I love that this is coded in pascal
        
       | qq4 wrote:
       | It's finally open source! Wow, I hosted a server back in 2006 and
       | used to play this game all the time back then. The European
       | players would annihilate me until I learned how to prone-fly with
       | the sniper rifle. I still have a collection of maps I made back
       | then that I included on the server. For anyone that remembers...
       | 
       | \smoke
        
         | shoozza wrote:
         | The map editor (called Soldat PolyWorks) is also FLOSS. It is
         | written in Visual Basic 6 and uses DirectX 8 though.
         | 
         | Might need to rewrite it or use one of the other community made
         | map editors in the future, especially when people on other
         | Platforms want to start mapping.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-02-08 23:02 UTC)