[HN Gopher] Widelands is a free, open-source real-time strategy ...
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Widelands is a free, open-source real-time strategy game
Author : doener
Score : 591 points
Date : 2021-08-16 08:58 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.widelands.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.widelands.org)
| fps_doug wrote:
| Time to check it out again. Last time was 15 years ago, iirc.
|
| I also like RTTR[1], a re-implementation of Settlers II,
| requiring the original game for graphics, sound etc. Which is
| actually a big plus for me, for purely nostalgic reasons.
| Widelands looks just "wrong" to me subjectively. ;) Unfortunately
| quite understaffed and some internal issues last I checked on the
| project.
|
| [1] https://www.siedler25.org/index.php?lang=en
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Seafaring, new tribes, reworked and new campaigns, much
| improved routing, pack animals for increased road throughput,
| new start and win conditions; there's been a huge amount of new
| content since then :-)
| 2ion wrote:
| The soundtrack is very good.
| Asraelite wrote:
| I hadn't realized they released version 1.0 this June.
|
| This was one of the first games I played on Linux so it's nice to
| see it finally hit that milestone after watching it slowly
| progress for so many years.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| I tried this game a few months ago. concept is good. too many
| annoyances, bad design. uninstalled.
| ovi256 wrote:
| I've always liked OSS games, for the big reason that they're
| usually multi-platform, so you can play them on Linux and Mac OS
| too.
|
| I also recommend:
|
| Spring RTS (amazing RTS engine, clone of Total Annihilation)
| UrbanTerror (unfortunate name, reasonable clone of Counter
| Strike)
| neonsounds wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
| (C:DDA) yet! Highly recommend!
| TLLtchvL8KZ wrote:
| If we're giving shout-outs I would like to give one to
| etlegacy* - the assets needed from Wolf:ET are not open but the
| engine/game/mod etc all are.
|
| Very important project for me as I've been playing W:ET since
| 2005!
|
| * https://github.com/etlegacy/etlegacy
| dethos wrote:
| So many good memories. Excellent game.
| renw0rp wrote:
| W:ET is the game I've played the most in my life! Such a good
| FPS!
| ggambetta wrote:
| Same here! At some point there were rumors that Splash Damage
| was going to announce a remaster at E3 but it didn't happen
| due to Covid :(
| khimaros wrote:
| recommendations: Veloren (voxel based Dwarf Fortress inspired),
| minetest (extensible MineCraft engine), Mindustry (Factorio-
| like factory builder)
| rosetremiere wrote:
| Note that Urban Terror is not open source.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| If we're doing "best of OSS games" in this thread, we can't
| leave out Endless Sky (https://endless-sky.github.io/), a very
| competent Escape Velocity style game. I played it a number of
| years ago and quite enjoyed it. Been meaning to come back to it
| now that (presumably) the galaxy and storyline is a bit bigger.
| 2ion wrote:
| Adding to the list the only games I have played in 10 years:
|
| - xonotic (Nexuiz/Quake3-like)
|
| - hedgewars (Worms clone; written in Haskell, C++, Pascal, Lua)
|
| - tome4 (isometric Roguelike)
| kuzee wrote:
| I can also highly recommend SpringRTS. Balanced Annihilation is
| fantastic. I've played it casually for years .
| moviuro wrote:
| Don't forget:
|
| * OpenRA; Red Alert & Command&Conquer clone
| https://www.openra.net/ (a personal favorite of mine, first RTS
| I played)
|
| * Warzone2100 https://wz2100.net
| lrem wrote:
| I really don't get it, despite having written my first game
| over 20 years ago. How can a large company publish a game for
| multiple systems, but fail to support cross platform play? I
| was really disappointed a couple times.
| account42 wrote:
| A couple of pitfalls:
|
| - Using unsized C types (long in particular) that are sized
| differently between Windows and macOS/Linux. Combine that
| with cast-to-structs for (de)serialization and suddenly
| different platforms are incompatible.
|
| - Different float rounding modes (possibly changed by some
| external code) that will lead to desynchronization.
|
| Nothing that can't be fixed but considering that non-Windows
| PC platforms tend to be an afterthought its not hard to
| imagine that things like cross play are often cut.
|
| Another thing that can happen is that the different platforms
| don't all have the same version. This is usually only a
| problem with external porting companies that don't get the
| code until it is finished for the main platform, but could
| also happen for in-hosue ports when issues crop up that only
| affect secondary platforms and the release is not held back
| for the main platform as well.
| lrem wrote:
| Oh my, thanks, that makes sense. But damn, that almost
| sounds like a problem solvable with a regular expression :/
| Well, at least before you released the game and nobody will
| protest about save game compatibility yet.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Two possible reasons: one is that console platform owners
| don't like that idea and they have torpedoes it in the past.
| The second one is that gameplay and control schemes may be
| radically different across platforms. Controller input on
| consoles vs. Keyboard and mouse on PC does lead to platform
| specific differences in some games ("auto aim" in shooters,
| for example). Balancing that so that only a minimum number of
| players feel cheated is hard.
| lrem wrote:
| Ah no. I'm thinking about games on Steam that I couldn't
| play between Windows and MacOS.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Don't sleep on Space Station 13.
| Arrath wrote:
| If you're a fan of the old school Heroes of Might and Magic:
|
| Battle for Wesnoth will be right up your alley
|
| https://www.wesnoth.org/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| BoW is hands down the best opensource game, but it's more
| like Panzer General / Fantasy General than HoMM.
|
| Wesnoth's Paper-Scissors-Rock-Spock-Lizard combat is actually
| much better that in Panzer/Fantasy General games.
| Arrath wrote:
| My bad, its been years since I last dipped into BfW and
| many more years since I played a HoMM game.
| queltos wrote:
| Another shout out goes to maxr: https://www.maxr.org/ It's an
| open source clone of M.A.X. - Mechanized Assault and
| Exploration. An imho excellent turn based strategy game that
| has aged very well. It's pretty much multiplayer only though.
| camtarn wrote:
| Holy crap, I haven't heard that name for a long long time. I
| played the heck out of M.A.X. back in the day. I'll check
| maxr out!
| fho wrote:
| Are you me? We used to play Spring (Balanced Annihilation) and
| UrbanTerror for years while the rest of the world advanced
| around us.
| lottin wrote:
| I can recommend nethack.
| majewsky wrote:
| Since we're listing well-made OSS games, I'm going to add
| _Empty Epsilon_ to the list. It 's a multiplayer spaceship
| bridge simulator. Like in Star Trek, you have a captain, a
| helmsman, a weapons engineer, and so on. Great fun for LAN
| parties especially.
|
| https://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/
| justusthane wrote:
| I hadn't heard of Spring RTS, but my friends and I played Total
| Annihilation as kids and have recently started playing Zero-K,
| which is apparently a fork of Spring. Can recommend! Free on
| Steam, actively updated.
| allgoodner wrote:
| I can't seem to open the game; the site keeps on loading; is
| there any fix for this one? I'm looking forward to trying the
| game.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Any fun games of this type for the iPhone?
| thecleaner wrote:
| 502 bad gateway
| enbugger wrote:
| Site is ded
| Tistron wrote:
| Seems their website couldn't t handle being on the front page. I
| found them on github https://github.com/widelands/widelands where
| it's described as: "Widelands is a free, open source real-time
| strategy game with singleplayer campaigns and a multiplayer mode.
| The game was inspired by Settlers II(tm) ((c) Bluebyte) but has
| significantly more variety and depth to it."
|
| It makes me quite excited. I really loved settlers II and I am
| waiting curiously for the next release of the settlers saga, as I
| haven't liked the follow-ups. The next instalment is said to be
| more like settlers II again. Maybe this open and free game is all
| I really wanted? I will try it out!
| [deleted]
| aniforprez wrote:
| On a completely unrelated note, I'm so surprised that static
| sites like this that are basically just simple advertising
| pages with text and some internal links just completely fail
| like this so often when they get a little attention. It's just
| serving HTML, CSS and some JQuery (looked at the source on
| Google cache). If they set up even the simplest caching
| solution with nginx or some other reverse proxy or hosting tool
| it wouldn't fail so spectacularly. Unless it's doing backend
| requests, there are extremely simple solutions to keep sites
| like these up
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The default option is to just front it with Cloudflare.
| SXX wrote:
| The best way is to use GitHub Pages + CloudFlare. This way
| you can also use site generator like Hugo that runs by
| Github Actions and you can even deploy some code to
| CloudFlare Actions.
|
| Here how I setup this for OSS game engine I work on:
|
| https://github.com/vcmi/VCMI.eu/
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yeah I do that. I used Pelican and it works well.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| Github pages already has a CDN in front of it, but I like
| your workflow with Hugo.
|
| The widelands site seems to go directly to netcup in
| Germany. It is likely just a DDoS detector mistaking
| sudden interest as an attack.
| dwild wrote:
| I believe Cloudflare in his case isn't acting as a CDN
| (though it's still is) but a way to use his own domain
| (vcmi.eu)
| SXX wrote:
| While I mostly use CloudFlare as DNS manager it's
| absolutely not required to use own domain on GitHub
| Pages.
|
| https://docs.github.com/en/pages/configuring-a-custom-
| domain...
| capableweb wrote:
| Not only is it a "default option" that is making the web
| less decentralized, it is also way overkill for something
| as simple as this. Make sure nginx serves cached content
| (right headers) instead of reading the content from disk
| and maybe, just maybe, throw in a static cache like varnish
| in front.
|
| For the times my websites hit the frontpage of HN, a simple
| nginx instance (without any cache in front like Varnish) on
| a $5/month Digital Ocean server was enough to handle
| things.
| brundolf wrote:
| You don't even need nginx; I've got a single Node process
| on a Heroku "hobby" node serving my site, and it's
| weathered several front-page visits peaking at 15
| requests per second without problems. The important thing
| is the static-rendering (assuming it applies for your
| site's content)
| mst wrote:
| Having a blog post of mine get posted to HN (many years
| ago) was how I discovered I'd accidentally introduced a
| bug into my web server config that meant the app server
| behind it was serving the static assets as well as the
| dynamic stuff. It entered a state of wedgitude quite
| rapidly when traffic ramped up.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > making the web less decentralized
|
| In this case, this is not a virtue. Using a CDN is
| option, reversible and is likely to spread your content
| out to be much less centralised than anything hand
| rolled.
| capableweb wrote:
| Except when 20% of the web does that the web as a whole
| become less decentralized, while your files might still
| be further spread apart in the world.
|
| What I was thinking about was the web as a whole, not my
| specific files.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Course it's decentralised. Decentralised is about
| technologies, not about which provider you pick to run
| your decentralised technologies for you.
| catern wrote:
| >that is making the web less decentralized
|
| Sadly I don't see any alternative. The need for CDNs is a
| direct result of the structure of the internet and modern
| HTTP. We could imagine alternative infrastructures -
| decentralized transparent network-layer caching so that
| the network itself caches data and responds to requests
| with cached results - but the end-to-end structure of TCP
| and HTTPS make that impossible, for better or for worse.
| So we have to use CDNs.
| majewsky wrote:
| Same for my site:
| https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/latency-matters-
| aftermat...
| sildur wrote:
| Cloudflare is awful, I get tons of captchas while browsing
| with tor.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| I can't bring myself to believe that an external caching
| layer is absolutely required to handle the load from
| something like a hacker news front page. WordPress with no
| caching I can see being taken down by 10 to 20 requests per
| second, but any kind of local caching should be able to
| handle the load easily. Does HN produce more traffic than
| that?
| lixtra wrote:
| The one time I was involved in something on the top, I
| remember about 400 concurrent users according to google
| analytics.
|
| Our cheap server had no problem to serve the static site.
| calpaterson wrote:
| I've been on the frontpage before and my logs indicate
| that the peak load was somewhere north of 350
| requests/sec though the non-peak (while still on the
| frontpage) was typically 10-20 requests/second. That is
| for a very simple page consisting of an html document,
| css, an image, a favicon and no javascript (eg
| https://calpaterson.com/printers.html). If you can serve
| from a reverse proxy cache locally that will be fine but
| if some PHP/Python/NodeJS is running on each request you
| can run into trouble with the small servers people
| typically use for their side-project's website.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| > I'm so surprised that static sites like this
|
| The person you replied to linked the github account and if
| you ckecked it you would see that it was not a static site.
|
| I am not surprised that you decided to write a comment
| instead though.
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| downvoted for snark:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| account42 wrote:
| This is also obvious from looking at a cached version of
| the site: there are there is a list of online users and
| posts in the sidebar.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Or they can just go down and people don't have to freak out.
|
| Stop recommending people join the CDN cartel
| qnsi wrote:
| I guess people want their site to be available when it gets
| viral?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| By contracting with a private company known for shielding
| propagandists
|
| Totally in line with the OSS ethos.... not
| mst wrote:
| Being against censorship of even very stupid shit is
| absolutely in line with the old school hacker ethos.
|
| "The internet treats censorship as damage and routes
| around it" was absolutely a thing.
|
| [[shakes crutch at the kids on his lawn]]
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I am generally against censorship but had to revise that
| stance after I realized we've given a global platform to
| manipulative idiots truly unworthy of global self-
| expression. If they want to espouse their crap they can
| stand on a real soapbox and shout at crowds, but nothing
| more
| gameman144 wrote:
| Neat, and who decides whose "crap" is unworthy of freedom
| of speech?
|
| Like, my main objection with censorship isn't "I think
| that this particular idea is worthy of defending", it's
| that any mechanism that lets people censor _bad_ opinions
| could also by used to censor _good_ opinions, and that
| mechanism is _way_ too powerful and prone to abuse for my
| comfort.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Yeah yeah yeah. I know. And I stopped caring. The that
| deserve to be muzzled (or worse, but that's not
| appropriate here...) are the manipulators of all kinds
| and colors. If the message has any kind of CTA,
| particularly political, it should be suppressed.
|
| Left, right, commerical, political, it doesn't matter.
| Suppress them all.
| pineaux wrote:
| life is political. So you would have to suppress all
| communication about life. Show me content and I will show
| you politics. A video of children playing in a pool: Are
| they dressed appropiately? Are they playing the right
| games? Are their surroundings a capitalistic dream
| without meaning? What about a b-actor soap series? a
| wikihow on how to make beer? a podcast on how to make
| vegan yoghurt? an article about curing meat? There are no
| things unpolitical. life is political.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| No, politics and social mores _inserts_ itselves into
| these situations. I can guarantee you that those kids are
| thinking about none of those things.
|
| And what exactly makes politics mandatory in an article
| about brewing beer? Curing meat? If people stick to the
| essence of what they are trying to convey without getting
| lost in political rhetoric people can, in fact,
| communicate clearly. But you have to stick to the matter
| at hand.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Just so I am clear, is "CTA" here "call-to-action". And
| you're against anything with a call-to-action in it?
|
| Like, call me out if this is the wrong acronym, or if I'm
| misinterpreting, but wouldn't all these be banned then?
|
| > Get out and vote!
|
| > Get vaccinated!
|
| > Sign your kids up for school by August 15th!
|
| > Read to your kids!
|
| > File your taxes by April 15th!
|
| Like, is that actually your position? Not trying to rebut
| (yet), but that seems like a very very different standard
| than what exists today if so.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Pretty much. People are being pulled in a thousand
| different directions by people with their calls-to-
| action.
|
| Mainly targeting advertisements and political messaging.
| More prosaic stuff like filing your taxes on time can be
| conveyed effectively without commanding people to do
| things. "Taxes are due by April 15th" would work fine,
| for example.
| fsflover wrote:
| > People are being pulled in a thousand different
| directions by people with their calls-to-action.
|
| Is that a bad thing?
|
| > "Taxes are due by April 15th" would work fine, for
| example.
|
| "Climate action is due now"
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > "Climate action is due now"
|
| Couple that with some of the evidence as to why and you
| have a pretty good message to get out.
|
| So very many people don't like being told what to do, and
| all we do is yell at them with commands and imperatives.
| Personally it has given me a burning contempt for the
| kind of folks that promulgate this stuff. If someone
| wants to compel me into action then they need to convince
| me on its merits, and those merits _alone_.
| fsflover wrote:
| > If the message has any kind of CTA, particularly
| political, it should be suppressed.
|
| This message also fits.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It ain't real life without at least a little bit of
| contradiction
|
| Can't practice tolerance without being intolerant to
| intolerance, for example...
| rcoveson wrote:
| You've come out against idiots spreading misinformation
| and calls to action _in general_ in this thread. You
| don't want tolerance, you want orthodoxy. Intolerance of
| all things that are bad, tolerance of things that are
| good. If only the cowards at Cloudflare agreed with you!
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Orthodoxy has its own issues. What I want is _nothing_ ,
| for people to reach their own conclusions on the merits
| of whatever it is they are considering, and to be left
| alone in the quiet of my own thoughts without having to
| withdraw from society completely
| rcoveson wrote:
| CDNs aren't making you look at anything. The service they
| offer makes websites quickly accessible to people who
| _request_ them. You believe that CDNs should not offer
| that service to those you consider propagandists.
|
| How does the _availability_ of a website that you dislike
| affect your ability to be left alone in the quiet of your
| own thoughts?
| mst wrote:
| I find reading the way much of society reacted to the
| original suffragettes very useful for calibration
| purposes.
|
| "Actually, women should be able to vote" would absolutely
| have been censored entirely had the establishment then
| had the sort of tools people are advocating to build now.
| core-utility wrote:
| I'm not sure what site you're referring to, and that
| proves my following point....
|
| There are multiple CDN providers. Unless they're all
| doing this, OP doesn't have to go with the specific one
| you're calling out here and can still reap the benefits.
| isuckatcoding wrote:
| CDN cartel? Why such a negative take on CDN? Genuinely
| curious (I know little about CDNs)
| leeoniya wrote:
| cdns are in a unique position (besides google analytics,
| facebook pixel, webchat services, etc), to track you
| across the internet and different domains.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Further, they are proprietary, non-open, they insert
| their branding into your site, and pass the blame for
| errors to their customers when they fail. They abuse an
| oligopoly position and obfuscate the addressing details
| of sites under their protection
| kemayo wrote:
| They didn't, though. They recommended a few things that
| this site would do to how it's set up within its server. (I
| mean, a CDN would _also_ help, but...)
| praptak wrote:
| It's probably bandwidth. You may serve static html from L1
| cache and still get DoSed.
| aniforprez wrote:
| In this case, nginx is serving a 502 status. It's possible
| whatever stack was running that was being proxied to by
| nginx was killed, possibly by RAM or CPU limitations. I
| don't think it's a bandwidth issue here
| praptak wrote:
| Fair enough, for me it's just timeouts.
| [deleted]
| INTPenis wrote:
| You were wrong technically but you have a point. These sites
| should leverage existing services like reddit or AWS.
|
| Personally I'd put a static information site on AWS and a
| community on Reddit if I was the creator for something like
| this game.
|
| It's just like SMB's today don't really need much
| infrastructure, well open source projects shouldn't either.
| wyager wrote:
| Even running a site that front-pages HN doesn't actually
| require that much infrastructure. Peak traffic is a few
| hundred RPS. Or at least it was when I was still using
| google analytics. Might be more now. But in any case, if
| you use fast web software you can serve dynamic content to
| an HN ddos off a $5/mo VPS. The problem is a lot of people
| will be like "well my website doesn't need to be fast
| because it's not popular, so I'll write it in
| python/node/ruby and make it dynamic" and then their server
| falls over at 50 RPS on commodity hardware, when if they'd
| written it with a popular haskell/rust/go/whatever
| framework, it could handle 100x that much traffic.
|
| If you hope that your writing ever reaches a large
| audience, you need to be able to serve a large audience! It
| doesn't take that much extra work to be ready for it.
| mst wrote:
| The forum's a more complicated question but for the static
| information site for an open source project that's already
| hosting its code on github, configuring a custom domain for
| the github pages site would seem even simpler than sticking
| it on AWS.
| capableweb wrote:
| That's a horrible idea. Yes, open source should definitely
| get off closed and abusive platforms like Reddit or AWS.
| Really, the open source community should start dog fooding
| more. It seems like yesterday all the communities were on
| IRC and it was easy to find everyone as long as you were
| connected to Freenode.
|
| Now everyone is using Slack, Discord or other closed-
| sourced systems that are not even built for the use case of
| "open by default".
|
| It's really sad to see, especially when a lot of developers
| in the ecosystem are cheering on projects moving to
| platforms like reddit or AWS.
|
| To run your own infrastructure is not as hard as you think,
| and it gets a lot cheaper too.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I completely get where you're coming from, I'm a staunch
| self hoster myself.
|
| But why re-invent the wheel before you have to? That's
| just a waste of time and resources that could be used to
| promote and build your project.
|
| Like in this very case, the website is now down and
| unable to promote the project because it was made in a
| traditional way.
|
| Imho it's enough to retain ownership of domains to really
| own a project. Like the widelands.org domain.
|
| So whatever happens with AWS, or reddit, that domain can
| always move and point visitors to new communities.
|
| In my personal selfhosting environment I have my own
| domain pointed to protonmail. So even if protonmail goes
| belly up I can always move my domain somewhere else.
|
| And even my domain is picked to give me maximum control.
| I use my own country's ccTLD because they have a good
| conflict resolution department that will benefit me as a
| citizen.
| la_fayette wrote:
| I think the website is built with django, maybe it has some
| community stuff on it, which requires server side
| processing...
|
| Git repo: https://github.com/widelands/widelands-website
| [deleted]
| 404mm wrote:
| Veni, Vidi, Vici !!! Settlers II was one of my all time
| favorites! I even bought the 10th anniversary edition and
| played it in Virtualbox (Mac user here) all over again.
| Settlers III was just as good but IV felt a bit too "messy"
| (it's the one where settles abandoned the pre-set routes/flag
| posts). The rest of the series was a big let down to me. I
| haven't tried anything past The Heritage of the kings (S 5).
| I'm so excited to test out Widelands!
|
| edit: widelands seems to be available via MacPorts too!
| Delk wrote:
| Didn't Settlers III abandon the routing by roads and
| flagposts? The little guys still go from building to
| building, but you don't set any roads or route markers beyond
| that.
|
| I haven't played any of the games after the third one so I
| don't know what kinds of changes they've made past that, but
| Settlers III definitely did away with the roads-and-flags
| routing.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Yep it is basically a clone of Settlers 2.
|
| I tried it a couple of years ago and it had a reasonable
| single-player "campaign" too so that was good. I seem to recall
| that the campaign kinda "ran out" half way but I guess that is
| to be expected.
|
| Otherwise thoroughly enjoyable if you liked Settlers 2 (but
| disliked their sequels)
| barbs wrote:
| It looks like version 1.0 was released a couple of months ago
| so it's possible the campaign is complete now?
| marcodiego wrote:
| I think most game styles do not fit the "open source" development
| model. Mainly because games often need a "surprise effect" when
| released and that is a poorly fit for open development and also
| because it is easier to contribute code than convince an artist
| to contribute art tailored to a very specific style.
|
| RTS and games like Wesnoth are an exception: they are born a
| certain way and slowly evolve through contributions to a point
| where they sometimes finally became very interesting. I have high
| hopes for the future of 0ad.
| yissp wrote:
| > it is easier to contribute code than convince an artist to
| contribute art tailored to a very specific style
|
| I sometimes wonder if modding scenes draw most of the volunteer
| artistic talent that might otherwise be available to open-
| source projects. There have been some pretty impressive assets
| created for Skyrim or GTA V mods, for instance.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think the bigger pull is because of the bigger audience.
| Without the modding scene, I don't think that would
| necessarily make open source games multiple times more
| popular, even if they had some percentage of the artists
| making them content, because popularity seems to be highly
| influenced by current trends, and slowly advancing open
| source games don't seem to fit in with the trend model vary
| well.
|
| No matter what the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout game is
| like, as long as it supports modding (of course it sill),
| there will be a bunch of people playing it (even if it's
| widely panned), and there will be a bunch of mods and talent
| making art for them, because that's how you get tens or
| hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions if everything
| aligns) of people using what you make.
| jl6 wrote:
| I do agree on the need for a surprise effect to make it fun to
| play, but surely the number of developers who are in on the
| surprise is so vastly outweighed by the potential number of
| players that the open development model should still work for
| the 99+% of the audience who aren't part of the development?
| drunkpotato wrote:
| I quite like Endless Sky (link: https://endless-sky.github.io/
| ), an open source Escape Velocity-style game, and Supertuxcart.
| But I think in general you're right, the vast majority of
| finished, fun, playable games are going to be commercially
| developed.
| npteljes wrote:
| What would be great is if they'd become open source after a
| certain amount of time. Then there could be a nice release,
| with the surprise element and everything, and later when the
| steam runs out, the community would pick it up if it still has
| potential, and do something else with it.
| andai wrote:
| In 2010 Notch said he'd probably release Minecraft as open
| source within a few years. I was rather looking forward to
| that.
|
| Jason Rohrer releases all his games as open source. So there
| are mobile ports, spinoffs, etc. With the latest game you
| basically are just paying for a multiplayer account, the
| whole game is on GitHub.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Yeah true - in particular for new / innovative games.
|
| Whereas open source versions of old popular games seem to do
| very well, because it's less about the surprise and more about
| the nostalgia. See openra for example.
| eloisant wrote:
| Not only they need a "surprise effect" at release, but once you
| played it enough you get bored and move to something else.
| Harder to keep contributors engaged.
|
| Unlike tools (i.e. text editors) that you can keep using for 20
| years+ and never want to stop using it.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| I think highly variable, replayable, emergent games in general
| are a good fit. A random aspect (complex interacting systems,
| or rng that doesn't railroad you) is a key component. That's
| where some games get the surprise you mention. I think of
| paradox games, 4x, Minecraft, even Skyrim as possible good fits
| for open development (notably good for modding too). I don't
| believe platformers, farcry type story/action, and multiplayer
| CoD types would make sense because the game is the same every
| run. Ie open development is viable when the team can be
| unopinionated in the way each playthrough will look.
|
| Agree that games where art direction is strong and an important
| differentiator are also not a good fit (thus making a Skyrim
| and its AAA style probably hard to replicate in an open team)
| go_elmo wrote:
| I agree mostly but skill based games that are always the same
| would be awesome open source, e.g. CS:GO
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Agree, but I'm theorizing it wouldn't be easy to organize
| open source development for them from scratch.
| theptip wrote:
| I've been thinking about this recently -- there's a healthy
| mod community around the tactics game Battletech (Roguetech
| being the most expansive mod, but there are many others) and
| the modders all seem to agree that the base game is quite
| janky under the covers; it's not a deep simulation nor is it
| graphically advanced, yet it suffers from poor performance,
| and it's also awkward to mod in some places, since there are
| some things that you just can't change with mods.
|
| I do wonder how far we are from having the default "community
| driven game" be implemented from the ground up in open source
| instead of being implemented as a mod on top of a closed-
| source commercial game.
|
| One issue is that most OSS games I've seen build an engine
| from scratch, which is fun but a massive time sink; I wonder
| how much of this is due to professional engines having OSS-
| incompatible licenses? I noticed that Unreal Engine 4 was
| made open-source (royalty-based licensing, not FOSS) which
| might be compatible with an OSS free game?
|
| Another aspect is that it's just a lot of work to build an
| A-tier game (not even considering AAA) but with a good engine
| this floor is being reduced over time; Battletech for example
| was I believe on the order of 100 developer-years of effort,
| which is huge for an open source project. But could you get
| 80% of the way there in 10 developer-years if you strip out
| some of the features the mods eschew like story content?
| Plus, with Patreon, these days it seems viable for a small
| number of developers to work full-time on niche content like
| this.
|
| In summary, I'm surprised at how few OSS games there are
| considering how much effort goes into modding. Does anyone in
| the industry (or otherwise) have insight into what's holding
| us back here?
| earksiinni wrote:
| > In summary, I'm surprised at how few OSS games there are
| considering how much effort goes into modding. Does anyone
| in the industry (or otherwise) have insight into what's
| holding us back here?
|
| I'm not in the industry, but I'm a programmer who's tried
| and abandoned various game projects.
|
| For me, it always comes down to the fact that game design
| is a deep and totally different skill set that I don't
| possess. You can't really wing it, or you can but you're
| unlikely to end up with a game that's fun and balanced.
|
| Same thing can be said for why so few OSS projects have
| solid documentation or excellent graphic/UI design.
|
| EDIT: I'd also guess that's why the few OSS games you see
| are usually clones of more popular ones, as is the case
| with Widelands. By cloning and iterating on a proven game,
| you don't have to playtest, refine mechanics, etc.
| mst wrote:
| The AI's "thinking time" in that game drives me up the
| wall, but I love it dearly nonetheless.
|
| I'm not sure I'm good enough at it to survive Roguetech
| though ;)
| theptip wrote:
| I can heartily recommend BattleTech Advanced if you don't
| want to go as far as Roguetech. It's definitely tougher,
| but not as impenetrable as Roguetech is. (Plus there's
| lots of difficulty sliders so you can probably tweak it
| to be about as forgiving as vanilla).
|
| I really enjoy the MWO-style mech customization that both
| of these add (the
| https://github.com/BattletechModders/MechEngineer mod);
| one critique I have of vanilla Battletech is that they
| simplified the mech construction mechanics a lot, and
| stripped out some of the tradeoffs that make mech design
| interesting in the canon. In vanilla, you just optimize
| for free tonnage, and can put jump jets on everything, so
| there are just a few chassis in each weight class that
| are strictly optimal for most roles; this makes it quite
| boring as there's little reason to pick other chassis. In
| BTA/Roguetech you can take an XL engine to shave off a
| lot of weight, but that means your mech will die if you
| lose your side torso. Lots of meaningful trade-offs, with
| no "best solution".
|
| I will admit that my eyes glossed over when I first
| started the game and looked at all the new part types I
| had to learn though...
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Ss13 has this issue, nobody who codes plays for long because
| the magic goes away once you see behind the curtain.
| paraph1n wrote:
| > it is easier to contribute code than convince an artist to
| contribute art tailored to a very specific style.
|
| Why is that, I wonder?
|
| The code, too, has to be tailored to fit into the specific
| architecture of the program.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| This is a great game - my first thought when I played it was that
| it was quite unique, though since it's a clone of another game I
| guess that's not exactly true. It is, at least, quite different
| to most of the RTS I have played (like AOE, C&C, etc).
|
| The military aspect is very limited, which is exactly what I love
| about it. In most other RTS I have played, economy is a secondary
| concern at best and, once you get a decent sized military, really
| not a concern at all. In Widelands, building and maintaining a
| strong, sophisticated economy is the central goal.
| doener wrote:
| Additionally to HN the game is also featured right now at
| Germany's popular gaming magazine GameStar:
|
| https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/widelands-siedler-aufbau-str...
|
| That is also where I found the game.
| sebastianz wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210811083622/https://www.widel...
|
| https://github.com/widelands/widelands
| hakonbogen wrote:
| Interesting concept, but based on the screenshots, the assets
| look significantly worse than Settlers 2. Hope this will be
| improved
| GlennS wrote:
| I'm a little wary of games which boast of their "depth".
|
| Oftentimes it means "we didn't have a cohesive enough vision to
| reject any features".
|
| All that said, I do like Settlers 2, so I will give this a try.
| gota wrote:
| Isn't that _width_? Dwarf Fortress is the epitome of 'depth'
| in a game, to the detriment of basic things like a graphical
| interface, and it couldn't be a better example of a creator's
| vision
| me_me_me wrote:
| > Isn't that width?
|
| That depends on the implementation.
|
| Number of different features/actions is the game width.
|
| Complexity of the features are the depth.
|
| A turn based strategy might give you 10000 units that vary
| slightly, but not in a meaningful way is a shallow width.
|
| A roaster of units to choose from that counter certain
| opponent's units and have bonus interactions with certain
| friendly units would be example of depth.
| zzbzq wrote:
| Breadth and depth
|
| Game communities call them both depth, which is a huge
| error.
|
| I played an RTS that claimed to have depth because of the
| insane amount of armor and weapon types. In the end, the
| armor/weapon strengths & weaknesses were still just rock-
| paper-scissors. Having hundreds of them just meant you had
| to look them up on a spreadsheet, in order to make the
| simple rock-paper-scissors decisions. This is breadth with
| no depth. Although confusingly, gamers will still call it
| "depth," not having the distinction of "breadth" in their
| vocabulary.
|
| Meanwhile simple ancient games like Go can achieve a large
| amount of complexity with simple rulesets. That's real
| depth. I think depth is probably hard to invent
| intentionally.
| me_me_me wrote:
| One could argue that Go from the design point of view is
| has no breadth nor depth.
|
| There are few rules and rules are very simple.
|
| Depth of the strategy and the gameplay comes out as
| emergent property of the game.
|
| But that's just splitting hair.
| rswskg wrote:
| This game is hard. It's settlers 2 but with many many more ways
| to mess yourself up. Sadly the community is mostly german,
| otherwise I'd be an active participant. It's a great game and a
| great advert for open source gaming.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| had to laugh when I saw that it's mostly German. Anno,
| Settlers, Patricians, we seem to love our simulation games.
| safog wrote:
| oo those are my favorite types of games as well.. along with
| things like Frostpunk, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Ceasar, EU4,
| CK3 etc.
|
| I've never heard of Settlers before, any other games of a
| similar mould?
| onli wrote:
| Knights & Merchants is the only game I know that is a bit
| similar. Settlers always felt pretty unique.
| methyl wrote:
| And, interestingly, it's also from Germany. Check out
| kamremake.com for a rewrite which runs much better than
| the original.
| botch_san wrote:
| I can recommend the cultures games
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultures_(video_game))
| ducktective wrote:
| You mean the development language is German?
| movedx wrote:
| LOL! Sorry - I just picked a German programming language.
| Damn.
|
| I think they meant the community is mostly German. Germans
| tend to have very good English skills, but if most of the
| people around you in the (game's) community are native German
| speakers why speak English and struggle along?
|
| That's probably what they meant.
| rswskg wrote:
| That is what I meant. There are great youtube communities,
| but it's mostly german.
| scns wrote:
| This. Text in the community forums.
| scbrg wrote:
| > Germans tend to have very good English skills, but if
| most of the people around you in the (game's) community are
| native German speakers why speak English and struggle
| along?
|
| Because _most_ is not the same as _all_.
|
| Unfortunately, this is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy,
| as rswskg's original comment indicates. The fact that the
| community is German speaking means that non German speakers
| won't join (effectively restricting the pool of potential
| contributors by ~99%), and thus the German speakers won't
| have any reason to not speak German.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Well, the same applies to English.
| npteljes wrote:
| The original Settlers developer studio is also in Germany. Now
| it makes sense how my version was called Siedlers II.
| kzrdude wrote:
| And the original settlers board game - Catan - is of course
| also German.
| Delk wrote:
| Die Siedler (the plural is the same as the singular), but
| yeah.
| slim wrote:
| Learn german :) it's not that difficult, it's really fun and
| imho very cool. I learned english by playing betrayal at
| krondor with a dictionnary for only help (to be honest I was
| much younger and had plenty of time)
| a20210816 wrote:
| I've played 0 A.D. lightly for about five years, and am excited
| to learn of another FLOSS RTS! I did a quick comparison of
| Widelands and 0 A.D. Overviews from the games' respective sites
| are [1,2], LibreGameWiki articles are [3,4], and source code
| repos are [5,6].
|
| It seems Widelands focuses more on economics and transport, and
| maybe less on combat. Screenshots show Widelands has much simpler
| graphics.
|
| Developmentally, Widelands seems to use GitHub as its main source
| code repository and issue management system, whereas 0 A.D. uses
| GitHub as a mirror for its main Trac deployment. Both codebases
| are roughly 2/3rds C++. Beyond that, Widelands has lots of Lua
| (27%) and some Python (3%). 0 A.D. has lots of C (24%) and some
| JavaScript (6%).
|
| Has anyone played both Widelands and 0 A.D.? How do they compare?
|
| ---
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210410230450/https://www.widel...
|
| [2] https://play0ad.com/category/game-manual/
|
| [3] https://libregamewiki.org/Widelands
|
| [4] https://libregamewiki.org/0_A.D.
|
| [5] https://github.com/widelands/widelands
|
| [6] https://github.com/0ad/0ad
| gmueckl wrote:
| Disclaimer: I loved the original Settlers II a ton as a kid and
| it still has a special place in my heart.
|
| Widelands is pretty much a clone of Settlers II and stays close
| to its formula, including the graphical presentation which
| keeps the ca. 1995 isometric 2D graphics alive. The game is
| better described as a base builder / city builder game with the
| goal of expanding one's own territory to cover a certain goal
| point. Conflict arises because said point is usually in an
| opposing faction's territory and you have to take it by force.
| Combat is very indirect with no direct control over any units
| and thus there is virtually no tactics other than trying to man
| your posts with more better equipped and better trained
| soldiers. In essence, your military strength is mostly function
| of how well your backing industry works.
|
| Gameplay in the Settler series feels much like the Anno series
| after it in that there is a military component that comes into
| play late in the game. Most of the game is leading up to it,
| but has you focus on building a thriving colony in its own
| right. Within the Settlers series, Settlers II is unique in
| that it has a transport system of paths and cutesy carriers
| that needs a lot of attention from the player to avoid clogging
| and collapse. Terrain factors a lot into this, too. Later
| entries in the series have done away with most of this, which
| changed the feel of the games a lot.
|
| Unless things have changed, 0 A.D. is a straight up RTS with
| direct unit control and less base building. Moment to moment
| tactics matter. To me, it seems vaguely inspired by the
| Warcraft and Age of Empires lines games, but is not sticking
| very close to any one of these formulas.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| There is also Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries, which is
| developed by the community using GitHub after Enlight Software
| open sourced it: https://7kfans.com/ &
| https://github.com/the3dfxdude/7kaa
| SXX wrote:
| Oh it's nice there is more 7KAA fans out there. This is one
| of my favorite games ever. It's one of few economic RTS that
| did it right, but also have have amazing mediative gameplay.
|
| There is no complex AI here, but sometimes it's just cool to
| run this game with AIs only and watch empires rise and fall
| on fast-forward.
| sebow wrote:
| Though it's C# instead of C++, OpenRA is also pretty nice and
| definitely one of the games i enjoy playing on linux.
| nabakin wrote:
| Since we crashed their servers https://archive.is/SEGE7
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Does this have co-op campaigns by chance? Would be interested in
| playing through it with my son.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| There are a handful of co-op scenarios, one involving winning
| by trading. The "skirmish"-style games can be set to have
| either "allies", where you operate separate economies but are
| on the same side, or "shared kingdoms" where you share
| everything except your starting locations. Shared Kingdoms is
| lots of fun!
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