Openage – Free Age of Empires 2 engine clone | Hacker News Reader

Openage – Free Age of Empires 2 engine clone

openage.sft.mx

369 pointsthejj47 comments

It's amazing to see so many community powered open source projects dedicated to keeping old games alive (while also preserving the same look & feel these games had back in '90s).

Along with the OpenMW[1], OpenRA[2], OpenTTD[3] and OpenRCT2[4] listed on openage's GitHub page, lots of others exist. To name a few:

* OpenXcom[5] for X-COM: Enemy Unknown and the later Terror From the Deep games.

* Nuvie[6], Exult[7] and Pentagram[8] for Ultima VI-VIII respectively.

* GZDoom[9] (and various others) for running Doom, Doom II etc.

* Freeciv[10] for running Civilization.

[1] https://openmw.org/

[2] http://openra.net/

[3] http://openttd.org/

[4] http://openrct.net/

[5] http://openxcom.org/

[6] http://nuvie.sourceforge.net/

[7] http://exult.sourceforge.net/

[8] http://pentagram.sourceforge.net/

[9] http://forum.drdteam.org/viewforum.php?f=23

[10] http://www.freeciv.org/

The Doom ecosystem is huge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doom_source_ports

Well, Doom source ports started from Carmack's source, that's a bit different than these clean-room from-scratch reimplementations.

I'll add VCMI to your list as it's project I work on. It's open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III. We're always happy to see any C++ programmers who wish to join us!

http://vcmi.eu/

https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi

The longest list I know of is http://osgameclones.com/

Great list!

It's not a super-active project these days, but I'd also mention OpenJazz: http://www.alister.eu/jazz/oj/

I did a homebrew formula for it a while back, though there's a more complete one now in homebrew/games:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-games/blob/master/openj...

one of the last tweets from @_why said: if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive.

said right

Amazing indeed. I'd add to that list OpenJK for the Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast games [1]. This is actually based on the released original source code, but continues to improve it and fix bugs while maintaining backwards compatibility. Great work. (As with most of these, assets from original CD are needed to play.)

[1] https://github.com/JACoders/OpenJK

There is also the clone for Caesar III. Found here: https://bitbucket.org/dalerank/caesaria/wiki/Home

One of my favorite games and Caesaria, last I checked had some bugs, but pretty playable.

Yeah, last I checked it wasn't playable yet ( due to a bug they probably fixed quickly ), but they were moving damn fast! I don't remove it from my steam because I love seeing updates come in. Looking forward to trying it again soon and seeing all the improvements :)

And CorsixTH for Theme Hospital!

https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH

Don't forget Stratagus(formerly FreeCraft).

Don't forget http://www.freecol.org/

I'll add Spring, which started as a Total Annihilation engine, but has since grown into a full blown RTS engine. https://springrts.com/

Yet more evidence that things should become public domain after 15 years.

Let's not forget scummvm for Lucas Arts adventure games (with support for other adventure games data added later)

0ad started as a AOE mod then they started their own engine and assets. I've been playing a lot of 0ad lately, I recommend it.

Technically it's 0 A.D., but that's a minor note. For those unfamiliar with the project, check out http://play0ad.com. It's a very mature codebase with over 10 years of development behind it. Everything is free as in freedom. One area they excel in that many other open-source games struggle with is in the quality of their models and art. I even know several other open source games which re-use the models.

I love the music in the game: http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/ How many free games come with something like that!

So I'm a big fan of OpenTTD which is a similar premise - but I can't help but feel like the timing is going to hurt them here. OpenTTD, OpenRCT, et al, solve a problem that the original game is a subpar (or unplayable) experience on modern hardware; however Microsoft has just rerelease an HD version of AOE2 on Steam not even a year ago. So my fear is that it's directly competing with a equivalent proprietary executable with a lot of marketing dollars behind it.

Actually availability of game on Steam only benefit project like openage because it's increased audience of AoE2 a lot. It's was a good game, but community was slowly dying over many years.

In same time "proprietary executable" it's just slightly updated version of 16 years old engine with all it's problems with simulation and networking performance. There of course some patches released, but HD not going to be rewritten from scratch and obviously not going to solve main problems.

I agree that it's a good thing, I just mean to play devil's advocate above. I am afraid they'll have a harder time to attract players to the FOSS version due to the availability on Steam. And especially for RTS games, multiplayer community health/size is vital to growth.

In the short-term you are right, but in 5+ years AoE2 HD is going to run into the same problems and then this version might become more popular.

Cool project!

But i'm confused. On http://openage.sft.mx/ they say this is a reimplementation in C++14, but seems to be actually implemented in Python [1] ?

1: https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/tree/master/openage

It uses both. C++14 for the engine, and Python for the convert script and some other things. Check the README for more information.

You're looking at a wrapper around libopenage, which is written in C++:

https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/tree/master/libopenage

thanks!

Why does the screenshot have one tile have Gabe Newell in it? is it a dig at an ex-microsoftian or something?

I suppose it's full of Newell references. Found this when browsing the renderer:

    GameRenderer::~GameRenderer() { 
     	// oh noes, release hl3 before that! 
     	delete this->gaben;

https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/blob/master/libopenage/ga...

Gabe Newell is tongue-in-cheek worshipped in the gaming community and has been for many years. Far from a dig. Any time you see a photograph or reference to him, it's an in joke, much like the guy who used to work at Twitch and became Kappa. Why this happened is a mix of things from Half Life to Steam, and it's honestly been long enough that nobody remembers or cares.

The problem is, just like some recent folks on /pol/, the newer crowd doesn't realize it's a joke so Gabe has to be cautious how he interacts with the public now. I'm amazed he still handles his own email. He popped up on Reddit recently and amazingly corralled the discussion toward his (real world) car racing team, but it took work on his part. People hug him in public and he's said before that's taken adjustment.

I've seen a GABEN license plate, to give you an idea of how far that gag goes. Funny you mentioned MSFT, too, because most people who perpetuate the gag don't know he worked there at one point; it might even predate their life.

now that's knowing your meme. well explained!

Anybody know of a Command And Conquer: Red Alert clone, that supports online play? Really missing that game.

Check out http://www.openra.net/

* Actively developed (newest release just over a week ago)

* Cross platform (Linux/OS X/Windows)

* Reasonably active online player base

I play it semi-regularly and it's a lot of fun!

OpenAge has only seen one release in 2015, but looks to have quite a few contributors. Also, there are no Windows builds.

Cool looking project though.

I've successfully: cloned the repo, installed the deps, compile, loaded the assets, and run python run.py... How do I play??

The game generates a map, but there's a very different HUD, with vim-like modes and lots of keyboard shortcuts on the RHS. Is there a tutorial or short introduction in how to get started?

Edit: it's somewhat explained here: https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/blob/master/doc/usage.md

How legal is this? Just wondering.

Like many doom/quake clones (before ID released the source) I expect openage to be supplied without the artwork, you will need an original CD/image for that.

Yep, the assets don't ship with the codebase - you need to provide your own original AoE II (or AoE II HD) installation.

Where does a designer stand if they want to make the missing resources so that the whole game can be shipped for free?

Doom's done it - https://freedoom.github.io/

You can make anything you want, just don't use any copyrighted work without the copyright-holder's permission.

Have to make a mention of the PlayStation1 (!) RTS game that - in addition to being way ahead of it's time - has since been faithfully recreated for PC. https://wz2100.net/

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8511084

URL is blocked from U.A.E. (Dubai). Anyone knows why?

Website is hosted on GitHub Pages so any website using same CDN IP could be reason.

https://www.robtex.com/?dns=23.235.43.133&rev=1

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