I'm glad that someone, when the Quake III source code was released, said "Booyah. This is just what I've been waiting for. Now I can make a standalone-multiple-OS-supporting-terrorists-vs-goodies-in-realisticish-locales-team-based-shooter." And I'm even gladder that said person then got thirty of his mates (yes, his, I'm operating under the sexist but probably correct assumption that 90% of hard-core open-sourcers are dudes) together and then actually made Urban Terror. It warms the cockles of my heart to know these guys are out there, fighting the good fight for those among us who realise that an analog stick is not a satisfactory replacement for a mouse.
That is to say, the sane.
As the world of PC gaming begins to look more and more like a forgotten (yet still delicious) piece of chocolate money discarded alongside the massive titanium-plated money-filled swinging ballsac– uh, coinpurses of the Xbox 360 and PS3, I think it's a damn good thing that there are still people out there prepared to devote inordinately large amounts of their lives to making good games even better, or just to making new, totally bitchin' games off the back of some large developer's code.
I don't pretend to know anything much at all about source code (see: my relationship with the sun), but I have played a few gnarly open source games far more than I should, and now I'm going to tell you about them, and why you should wipe the tears of rage and disappointment from your copy of Crysis 2, hurl it out the window, and then download the latest version of some of these badboys for some unfettered fun.
We'll start with a game that isn't necessarily everyone's idea of a zany good time (particularly if they're the kind of person that bought Crysis 2: Letdown in Midtown), but is still one of the more impressive examples of open source genius getting around, as well as being about as addictive as some of the less salubrious forms of amphetamine.
I speak of Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, or OTTD if you want to make it sound like a cureless hereditary disease. The original Transport Tycoon was the brainchild of Chris Sawyer, and it was published (or made, I'm still hazy) by Microprose sometime in the last century. I assume Transport Tycoon was one of those great slightly-flawed games, a The Witcher for the early nineties (although with fewer titties and cussing); a title with imagination, flair and a solid following but a few niggles which were then ironed out in the Deeeee-luxe edition. I played Deluxe a lot in my misspent youth, on account of being too poor to afford a computer that could run Half-Life until about two years after it was released. And TTD was a sweet game. So sweet, in fact, that when the source code was released, and Chris Sawyer moved on the make Locomotion (which felt like Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.7: Boring Flat Tracks Across The American Midwest and made me want to punch him in the nose or throat), some enterprising chaps decided to go to work on TTD and make it awesomer.
And they did. I don't have room here to list even a small portion of the features they added, but they've (mostly) fixed the AI (so it no longer makes train routes that look like a Bill Clinton polygraph test), and done great things with the graphics, and the sound, and the multiplayability, and the everything. The amount of work done boggles the mind, and as with all games mentioned here, I urge you to google it, download it (it's free!) and play it. And when you lose your job/girlfriend, don't blame me.
Next up is zDoom, which basically takes Doom and adds many of the features we've come to expect from FPS's these days, like freelook, crosshairs, and hi-res graphiques, not to mention the often underrated but always helpful ability to jump. There's also a console, which is handy if you're into that sort of thing, and multiplayer is possible with a few basic commands. It's actually interesting to see how well the Doom games (I play Doom II with zDoom but it works with any game that used the Doom engine) have aged – in spite of the fact that the original was released eighteen years ago, Doom still rocks, and while zDoom does add some features, it doesn't overhaul anything too majorly, and the original level design, intensity and sheer visceral challenge shine out the clearer for it. So go download it. Your itchy trigger-finger will thank you.
'But what about sandboxy space sims with awesome storylines and intense head-to-head combat?' I hear you cry. And I'm glad you cry (not only because it gets me life XP), because it means I get to wax lyrical about the many glorious aspects of The Ur-Quan Masters (UQM).
The Ur-Quan Masters sounds like a pretty shit title, if I'm honest, but to ignore it for this small shortcoming would be to unwittingly forsake one of the greatest games of all time. This is because UQM (financial advisory company? definitely not a hereditary disease, anyway) is a direct port of Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, an early-nineties classic and one of the aforementioned Best Games Of All Time.
Originally written for PC and subsequently ported to the ill-fated 3DO console, SCII offered a heady blend of combat, resource-gatherin', diplomacy, exploration, and more humour than any game should be allowed to have. UQM retains all of the above, in a pitch-perfect port to modern operating systems.
In your sojourns across the (absolutely immense) starmap as captain of the good ship Vindicator, you'll encounter over twenty different races, all utterly different.
You interact with them in gloriously-rendered (considering the age of the original) dialogue, and your conversations will range from the sublime (well, -ish - you may or may not get to pork a buxom alien in the dark) to the ridiculous, and your attitude and demeanor when dealing with your alien brethren can dramatically alter the stakes in the intergalactic war you're waging. I never played the original, but UQM completely hooked me, with the genius single-player storyline and the hectic multiplayer of Super Melee mode both good enough to warrant the download on their own, and when they're rolled into the same package it's hard to imagine a better way to use a few dozen megabytes of download quota.
These few games are just a smidgeon of what's out there, too. The world of open source is huge and slightly wild, and the games available range from ports and reworkings of classics (UFO2000 is a multiplayer must-have for X-Com fans) through to straight-up new masterpieces (GeneRally being an obvious gem).
So while it is a little hard to get excited about actual source code, I reckon it's definitely worth your while to give open source gaming a try.
You'll thank me when you're done (earning me oodles of crucial life XP).
Michael Blake is an Australian freelance journalist/drunk. He enjoys watching StarCraft II online and winning the premier league with Torquay United in FIFA 11. There's not much else to do in Tasmania.Want More Great IGN Features?
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