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Comment by natechols | Hacker News Reader

Any chance some of the copyright holders would be interested in open-sourcing the code? Escape Velocity in particular. EDIT: especially since these games are no longer playable without registration, ouch. Hope I still have my EV Nova code somewhere.

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Someone has made an open-source clone called Endless Sky, I believe there are unofficial ports of the various EV campaigns to the ES engine. http://endless-sky.github.io/

It's not Escape Velocity, but Maelstrom was open-sourced [1]!

A while ago I forked a version and changed the braking power-up to be controlled by a button press, instead of always active [2]. It was cool to fix something that always bugged me in a game I played when I was a kid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)#Le...

[2] https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom

Works great! If you're on Ubuntu/Debian/etc, you'll need to apt install libsdl1.2-dev and libsdl-net1.2-dev. I thought something was wrong when the build took less than 2 seconds, but it turns out computers have gotten faster in the last 25 years.

Keep an eye on Cosmic Frontier: Override. It's not the original code, but it will be a re-release of the Override scenario in a new engine designed for data file compatibility with the whole series, plus new features.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f...

https://github.com/EvocationGames/KestrelEngine

I gather the rights to EVN are a more complicated issue because ATMOS was a whole bunch of people, versus EVO where Peter Cartwright owned everything. Rights to the EV name still belong to Matt Burch who wasn't interested in having it used for Cartwright's rerelease.

Also see discussion on reddit for more background info: https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g5wgbl/i_discuss_co...

There are a couple threads scattered around, u/evopac is Peter Cartwright.

You might be interested in Endless Sky [0] and Naev [1]. Both are very similar to Escape Velocity. Both are available on Steam.

[0] https://endless-sky.github.io/

[1] https://naev.org/

I love that game. They is a free Open source clone on steam that’s pretty good btw

Thanks, I will take a look at this - it was much less developed last time I came across it but those screenshots look pretty compelling.

What's it called?

I assume "Endless Sky" was the reference, at least that's the first thing that came up on Google.

What ever happened to Endless Sky?

Is it still around? Or did it go to the graveyard of oblivion where games go to die?

https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases

Last release in May?

https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases

Version 0.9.2 released May 1, 2020

The answer is a definitive no. Matt Burch has made it pretty clear that he is not gonna open source it. Luckily there are two very good clones (Naev and Endless Sky) and a third got kickstarted (Cosmic Frontier.)

Last time I tried, my code didn't work because it had to be renewed and the renewal server has been down for a while.

You can use the expired code by resetting your computer’s clock to the date and time right after the original purchase supposedly.

I haven’t been able to test this because my Nova code was a gift and I have no idea when it was purchased, but if you have the original email with the registration code it’s a possible solution.

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