Open source video games

Open source video games (also known as open source games or free games) are video games which are open-source software. Open source games, which are free software and contain exclusively free content are freely distributable, and often cross-platform compatible. Many are included in Linux distributions as a result. [ [http://packages.debian.org/stable/games/All Debian Package Games] ]

Some free games are open source software, but not all open source games are free software; some open source games contain proprietary non-free content.

Background

Open source games are largely volunteer driven projects, principally the realm of hobbyists and enthusiasts. As such, open source games are often ports of older games to different operating systems or games much smaller in scope than current proprietary games, often having inferior graphics and audio. Many open source game projects are never completed. With proprietary games getting more advanced and expensive to produce, open source games rarely, though with notable exceptions, compete with their proprietary siblings. [ [http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/games.html Playing the Open Source Game] by Shawn Hargreaves]

In general free games are developed by small groups of people in their free time, without aiming for profit. Some free games are based on formerly proprietary projects, whose source code was released as free and open source software and game data as free and open content. [ [http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/543/ Linux games] from Freshmeat] An example is "Warzone 2100". [ [http://wz2100.net/about Warzone 2100 Ressurection project about page] ]

Almost all free games are volunteer run projects, and as such free game developers are principally hobbyists and enthusiasts. The consequence of this is that most games take many years to mature and that means there are only a few complete high quality free games [ [http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Complete%2C_non-casual_open_source_games Complete non-casual open source games] ] .

With the advent of Web 2.0 there has also been a development of a whole new class of web based games based on Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and similar technologies. These games are often developed for free game play but they are typically sponsored in some way by a developing company or agency. In this sense, the projects are not volunteer or community based - instead, they are fully developed and backed by companies whose goal is to make their money back through in-game advertisements and similar methods.

Examples

A popular example for free games is "Freeciv", a clone of the proprietary "Civilization". "Nexuiz", "Tremulous", and Assaultcube are a few examples of free 3D first person shooters based on id Software's engines.

Arguably the most successful free game project is The Battle for Wesnoth which has a large community contributing to the game.

One example of an open source game is "War§ow", which is based on an open source engine (a derivate of id Tech 2) but has non-free content. [ [http://www.warsow.net/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ&oldid=3166|#I.E2.80.99ve_seen_this_game_is_GPL.E2.80.99d._Where_can_I_get_the_source.3F_What_about_the_media.3F Warsow FAQ] ]

Some open source games strive to be free games but lack the manpower to replace media content that is not available under a Free Software license, such as Sauerbraten.

Other games are simply reimplementations of an old commercial game and require the original commercial game media to play them, such as OpenTyrian, a port of the classic DOS game Tyrian.

Toolsets

One of the challenges to building high quality content for games is it often requires expensive tools like 3D-modeller or a toolset for level design. As open source applications like Blender mature and professional tools like GtkRadiant are published under open licenses, this is becoming less of an issue.

The benefit of online web games is that they are typically less graphic intensive or demanding on a system, so expensive hardware is not required to develop or to play the games.

See also

*List of open source games
*Freeware games

References

External links

* [http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html Open Source Games for Windows]
* [http://games.linux.sk Games for Linux (mostly open source)]
* [http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?stquery=&sort=latest_file_date&sortdir=desc&offset=0&form_cat=80 Open source game projects] on SourceForge
* [http://libregamewiki.org Libregamewiki] , a wiki about free games and closely related topics