[HN Gopher] Serflings is a remake of The Settlers 1
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Serflings is a remake of The Settlers 1
Author : doener
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-11-22 08:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.simpleguide.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.simpleguide.net)
| ensocode wrote:
| Anyone runs this on linux?
| YoukaiCountry wrote:
| I absolutely loved The Settlers 1 and 2 as a kid. I feel like
| they are responsible for a fascination with distribution
| logistics that carried into adulthood.
|
| By the way, there is also an open source clone of these games
| that is very well done: https://www.widelands.org/
| skywal_l wrote:
| It's one of those game you start playing in the morning and
| when you want to make a little pause, you realize is 10PM.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I would think it's more common that you start playing in the
| afternoon and when you make a little pause, you realize it's
| 4am.
| YoukaiCountry wrote:
| I have done both!
| yvdriess wrote:
| Same,tThe Settlers 1 theme now immediately starts playing in my
| head for the rest of the day.
| slightwinder wrote:
| There is also a modern continuation from the original Creator,
| called "Pioneers of Pagonia"[1]. It's Early Access at the moment,
| but v1.0 is planned for release in some weeks (11.12.2025). And
| so far it looks promising, seems to be a pretty good game for
| Settler-Fans. As I remember, it's a reaction on the catastrophic
| fail of the latest official Setter-Game, which is not with
| Ubisoft, so I guess serving the old fans is one of the goal.
|
| [1] https://pioneersofpagonia.com
| oersted wrote:
| It's a shame that Pioneers of Pagonia doesn't stick to the same
| strict path-network mechanic, that was my favourite part of the
| earlier Settlers that later went away.
|
| From the recommendation of another commenter, here's a more
| recent indie game that seems focused exactly on that style of
| path logistics:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/677340/The_Colonists/
| noxa wrote:
| As a Settlers 1/2 fan I spent quite a bit of time in The
| Colonists - can recommend it if you liked the road
| building/flag mechanics and the chill gameplay.
| lukan wrote:
| "strict path-network mechanic"
|
| What exactly does that mean here?
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's been a while since I played these games. With settlers
| 1 and 2, a major portion of the game was managing the
| transport of resources. That meant setting up strict
| pathways and even blocking some resources from going down
| some paths to setup a "priory" route for shipping important
| goods.
|
| I believe Settlers.. 3? got rid of that completely. Instead
| of manually placing paths and controlling the shipping
| routes the game would just figure it out for you.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Settlers 1/2 are logistics simulators. The core of gameplay
| is that the map consists of vertexes on which you can place
| flags, and then connect flags with paths. On each path
| there will be exactly one porter, who will carry stuff from
| a flag to another. Arranging your network so that goods get
| where they are going in a reasonable time is like 90% of
| the gameplay.
| nottorp wrote:
| Exactly. It looks like a RTS but it wasn't originally.
| peepee1982 wrote:
| I think my kids might love this. I certainly loved the original
| as a kid. Not even the second or third installment. The first one
| has always been my favorite, because it was so god damn punk rock
| simple.
| saubeidl wrote:
| There's also Widelands [0], which is basically an open source
| Settlers II with extra features.
|
| [0] https://www.widelands.org/
| jamesu wrote:
| The Settlers 2 was one of my favorite games growing up - really
| felt like they polished up the mechanics of the first game and
| made the UI more tolerable. If anyone is looking for a more
| modern 3d equivalent but in a slightly different setting, I'd
| recommend The Colonists.
| kobbs wrote:
| "Return to the Roots" is a faithful remake/modification of The
| Settlers II for modern computers, with multiplayer support!
|
| https://www.siedler25.org/
| krige wrote:
| Watching this project eagerly but it's still missing some
| functionality at the moment.
| stormking wrote:
| It has been completely playable for the past 10 years, what
| exactly are you missing?
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| The way I see it, S2 was pretty lazy. They took a system that
| was fairly polished already and tinkered with it without
| understanding how it would impact the whole, like how they made
| a level-up system that heavily incentivizes a degree of
| micromanagement the UI isn't built to support.
|
| Or take the pig farm: Clear pros and cons in S1; in S2 it's
| just a bad bakery. Or the perpetually broken ship navigation,
| and no way to do naval invasions.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The 20th anniversary edition was a nice recreation of the game
| in 3D
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Well that's quite exciting :)
|
| I sank a non-trivial amount of time in my younger years in to
| both Settlers and Settlers 2. I'm hoping now that it's not rose
| tinted memories!
| oersted wrote:
| I did try going back to Settlers 2 last year and it was just as
| good as I remember it, it really holds up. At least the remake
| which is also the one I played when I was a kid.
|
| https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_settlers_2_10th_anniversary
|
| I'm gonna try Widelands from the recommendation of another
| commenter, it looks like it's a deeper open-source clone of
| Settlers 2.
|
| https://www.widelands.org/
|
| And The Colonists also looks great, a modern indie successor
| that also has the path network mechanic that I loved at its
| core.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/677340/The_Colonists/
| nzgrover wrote:
| Farthest Frontier is a recently released game in the same
| vein: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1044720/Farthest_Fro
| ntier...
| oersted wrote:
| It's great, but that's not what I meant.
|
| Farthest Frontier has the kind of strict grid of Anno, and
| is reminiscent of the older more predictable and mechanical
| pathing of classics like Caesar or Pharaoh. Newer indie
| city builders like Lethis or Nebuchadnezzar have revived
| this style. But transporters still move independently
| through the grid of paths, the main factors are distance
| from producer to consumer and how many stops a transporter
| takes in their route.
|
| But in Settlers 1 and 2 you literally build a graph with
| buildings as nodes and paths as edges with a strict
| throughput limits per link. It's quite interesting to
| optimize the resource flows through this graph. It's a lot
| like designing a good network, except that you have tons of
| types of resources moving to tons of different producers
| and consumers, with long multi-step supply chains. It's
| closer to Factorio perhaps in feel, but there are
| significant differences.
| oersted wrote:
| I never played the first, but Settlers 2 was fantastic. I always
| preferred it to later installments because it had a strict grid
| of nodes, creating a complex graph of buildings and paths, rather
| than the more freeform pathing.
|
| It was such a joy to grow the supply chains and deal with the all
| messy network logistics and bottlenecks. It sounds quite boring
| said out-loud, but we are in HN after all, I think you'll get it
| :)
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Yes, S2 is still the best. Few years ago I finally finished all
| missions, the only thing missing is a more detailed story; but
| that's how it usually was in the 90s I guess.
| afavour wrote:
| Sounds like Transport Tycoon. I remember realising it said
| something about me that while my friends were building epic
| rollercoasters in Rollercoaster Tycoon I was much happier
| making train links between coal mines and power stations,
| creating a local and express rail serving linking a dozen
| cities...
| throwaway34521 wrote:
| I still play the open source version from time to time. They
| have added a lot of new features and gameplay improvements.
|
| https://www.openttd.org/
| mathgeek wrote:
| Same! The other game that sequels never beat for me was
| Populous. There's some charm in the first one that I love.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > To get the game to start you need one file from the original
| settlers 1 game because graphics and sounds are read from there.
|
| Leaving aside the moral aspect of compensation for the artists
| who created the original graphics and sounds (who probably won't
| see any money from sales of the original game anyway), would it
| be legal to reverse engineer (intentionally simple) prompts for
| each piece of art needed, and then commission either humans or
| GenAI to create these, to then be able to distribute the remake
| without any dependency on the original?
| growt wrote:
| If I included the exact same graphics as the original, but I
| did paint them all by hand myself, would you think that makes a
| difference? No it doesn't. And what you are proposing is just
| the same with extra steps. They could include graphics that
| don't look the same but I guess that defeats the reason for the
| game.
| afavour wrote:
| There's a middle ground. For instance OpenTTD has fan made
| artwork that matches the aesthetic of the original game
| without being a direct copy. Still plenty of reason to play
| even if it doesn't look exactly like it does in my memories.
| falcor84 wrote:
| For me the game is mostly about the mechanics and I don't
| think I'd have any issue playing it with an entirely
| different visual and auditory design, assuming it can be made
| to be self-consistent.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| > They could include graphics that don't look the same but I
| guess that defeats the reason for the game.
|
| How does that defeat the reason for the game?
| gruez wrote:
| >would it be legal to reverse engineer (intentionally simple)
| prompts for each piece of art needed, and then commission
| either humans or GenAI to create these, to then be able to
| distribute the remake without any dependency on the original?
|
| Sounds like clean room design. If you can prove the art was
| independently created, and you weren't just abusing the process
| to launder the original works (eg. prompting the AI a bazillion
| times until it looked exactly the same as the original), then
| you'd probably be fine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
| crooked-v wrote:
| Of course, to legally be in the clear with AI art you should
| make sure it's both from sources that have proper licensing
| to avoid later possible lawsuit implications (Adobe's
| focusing on this, for example), and also keep in mind that AI
| art is uncopyrightable. Fortunately, the latter is a non-
| issue for MIT license-type projects.
| shkkmo wrote:
| In a clean room design, the person doing the implementation
| needs to have never seen the original. So the same would
| apply to the human or GenAI doing that in this case.
| astariul wrote:
| What if I prompt a first AI to create a detailed prompt
| from the original resource, and then ask a second AI to
| create the resource from that prompt ? The AI creating the
| resource have never seen the original.
| kiicia wrote:
| There is no issue with creating new graphics and sounds from
| the scratch, OpenTTD did exactly that for Transport Tycoon
| Deluxe. It's not identical but is enough to convey original
| intent and be freely available.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I still tidy my house using the Settlers resource movement
| algorithm, moving things closer towards where they need to be
| even if they don't go all the way to their final destination.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm like this too. It's an incremental system that given enough
| time converges on the tidy state. I can take something to the
| foot of the stairs that I know needs to go up there, and then
| when I later go upstairs I can deposit at the top of the
| stairs, then when I'm accessing the linen closet I'll glance
| over and be like oh yeah, some of those items belong in here,
| I'll put them away now and get the others later. In some ways
| it's a permission structure to do part of a task without
| feeling like you're now chained to completely finishing it
| before you can do anything else.
|
| This all drove my ex nuts though; from her perspective the
| whole thing was an exercise in deck-chair rearrangement that
| only served to increase overall entropy while in the
| intermediate states.
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(page generated 2025-11-24 23:01 UTC)