Oh my God-it's full of stars!: Free and Open Source procedural space sim round up (a la Infinity or Elite)

"The thing's hollow..it goes on forever..-and--Oh my God--it's full of stars!"

Bowman's memorable utterance in 2001 A Space Odyssey encapsulates perfectly the way the space and its' exploration resonates with the imagination and nothing encapsulates the experience of stepping out and living amongst the stars as well as David Braben's immense procedural opus, the Frontier Elite/Elite series of games.

The Elite and Frontier Elite series left a long shadow, inspiring academic work in procedural generation (see vterrain.org) but towering over countless emulation attempts, for both the depicted universe (space and surfaces of all objects on a scale of light years, to meters) procedural gameplay (location/assets/mission/incidental event combination, with a full range of mission types), interaction (action based reputation, politics etc.). Although a lot of academic work was done, like with a lot of areas of game development, not much in the way of actual realisation was ever done (a genre of space sims emulated a fraction of the scope of the game, often using large FPS style rooms with space/planet wall paper). There were a few foss/indie projects (Oolite, FFEd3d, Ad astra, Evochron series) that attempted to follow.

Recently with the advent of very powerful hardware ( just begging for realistic procedural simulation) the I-Novae engines indie creator decided to implement a procedural universe, with stunning results (see here and here for motivation), and the proof of concept has further stirred opensource attempts. I-Novae people are mainly focussed on an MMO, which largely gets around interaction/social simulation in a by replacing it with standard MMO player-player interaction mechanics.

Which leaves a large empty space for commercial, indie, or most importantly FOSS singleplayer games, as well as, and much more interestingly, a chance for FOSS to produce the standout significant modern game in a genre first.

The procedural space sim bug has resulted in quite a few FOSS projects, often the result of a single founder's inspiration, occurring independently and in isolation, and subsequently attracting some attention from the community:


Pioneer:

(Download, more recent v7.5/Source/Forum/Screenshots)
Most developed procedural planets (along with Spaceway). New sim, released online by Tomm Morton (creator of glFrontier), and associates, and whose development has avalanched a bit. OpenGL 2.0, lua/c++, all bodies spin/orbit around each other, scriptable procedural models, economy/life/missions implemented but require fleshing out, procedural cities/ground vehicles etc. mean FPS/RPG/air/ground stories/gameplay of sci-fi tv franchises like Star Wars/Star Trek/Doctor Who/BSG/Babylon 5 (and game worlds from books) etc. can be potentially recreated therefore also of interest to franchise modders.

There is a weight/substance to planets when viewed from a distance which is not even present in Infinity (as far as youtube vids show). Probably a combination of not looking plastic-y due to phong-like lighting model/strong specularity and planets having a realistic radius allowing you to be reasonably distant and still see the planet stretch away despite turning a lot.

Note: all screenshots are from earlier versions of Pioneer, and the graphics have improved even more since then.


Spaceway:


(Download/Screenshots) Virtually identical specs to pioneer, has procedural spaceships half implemented, no life/cities yet. Created by FOSS Orbiter's oglaclient author Artlav and shares some code with it. Intended to be a procedural replacement for orbiter he is looking at a game as well. Sourceforge says GPL license. Code not released yet as apparently he is waiting until it is cleaned. Good atmospheric scattering. Many galaxies simulated.

Titaniumart's Planetary space:


(Ogre thread/Screenshots) More speculative, long presence in Ogre forums, where they have mentioned it will be opensource, and a procedural 'snap-in' will be released, potentially allowing FPS/RPG devs to incorporate procedural terrain easily. Due for a tech demo soon.

Vegastrike:


(Download/Source/Forum/Screenshots) Have recently started looking into procedural planets. Mostly included here for completeness.Features a large procedurally generation universe, with economy/empires/wars simulated. Multiplayer/modding community. Released version is years behind, and graphically of a previous era, looking for a coder to port to Ogre.


Project Simerge:


(Code) Windows/Linux support. Inactive, but code may be of some use (Sourceforge shows 5 week old commits, thanks Charlieg). A partly completed procedural sim, the developer released code under GPL3 and is considering a seperate closed source game. Working prototype.Building interior support.

FOSS tech demos/source:

Sponeil.net: Windows/Linux.
Various tech demos, including planet/volumetric cloud generation.

Galaxy Engine: (Download/Source/Ogre thread) Procedural planet tech demo.

OgrePlanet: (Source) Another recently started attempt..

Foss clones of Elite series exist (not modern, as they are the same game essentially, but..) e.g. Oolite: Elite remake as for a long time gameplay just was not available elsewhere. Planets etc. nowhere near upto pioneer/spaceway standards.

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It strikes me that development of so much software so identical in spirit, scope and vision, is precisely the type of duplication an open and social philosophy like FOSS seeks to prevent. It should be possible for projects to list their particular requirements to see if a framework for a space sim engine cannot be created that allows overlapping areas to be developed in a way that avoids duplication (especially considering the drought of programmers in FOSS space sim communities like Vegastrike, Freespace open etc.).

If there is software, stats, or facts that would be relevant please feel free to note in comments.

Snippets and whippets

Complete Annihilation

Apparently the Spring mod Complete Annihilation is rather good, although it's about to be renamed and not quite fully free of its ties to the original Total Annihilation content. The goal is to be totally Free. And it's pretty complete(ish) as a game already. There's lots of lovely screenshots.

Glest Advanced Engine 0.2.12 got released. They also got a Sourceforge project for GAE.

Q3Rally

Fun racing games are always, er, fun. Well, in demand as well. So maybe Q3Rally can strike a chord with the Free gaming public? Apparently the original Quake Rally was the best Quake mod ever, although it was never completed and all that is left of it is Quake Rally: Leftovers. There's plenty of maps and cars and it is billed as a mod for OpenArena so should be totally Free. \o/

Here's a promotional video for Q3Rally that makes it look rather ooo aaah:

Dark Phear, a classic Phantasy Star-like RPG, as reported in the Ubuntu forums. Go there for links, screenshots, and more information.

Oolite, the Elite cloney-but-better game, is getting purty with shaders it seems.

The Privateer Gemini Gold team have been fairly quiet but work is ongoing and the next version will contain much better videos / graphics to make it even more immersive. Some of it can be seen on their youtube channel although the videos are currently just very short showcases.

Scorhed3d 42 and VDrift Refactor Release

Scorched 3D version 42 is out (full changelog). New features include:

Scorched3D

• Optimized graphics rendering to take better advantage of hardware


• Scripting language support for weapons and server scripts


• Much larger landscapes supported


• Added multi-lingual support for chatting and player names


• Added localization support for dialogs and messages


• Some gameplay adjustments


• Better LAN/Internet communications for less timeouts


• Some new maps

For those who don't know, it's a 3D artillery game with destructible terrain and sumptuous graphics. One thing I always think when I look at Scorched3D; why hasn't somebody re-used the engine in a different type of game? Nice effects, destructible terrain, there's plenty of possibilities there.

VDrift has emerged from the other side of a ground up refactor/rewrite with release 2-15-09. This is quite good news as projects as big as VDrift rarely survive a rewrite. Author Joe Venzon describes the highlights of the release:

I think it's a big improvement over the last release. Although there aren't any new features, there are so many bug fixes, stability enhancements, and performance improvements it's hard to make a complete list. Most of the code has been rewritten, including the car physics. Ackermann steering has been added. The in-game HUD has a new look. Font rendering has been vastly improved. More graphical options are available. The new physics numerical integrator is more stable.

I think there's also some more cars and improved tracks in this release, although don't quote me on that one.

Oolite (space rpg game) update; 1.72.2 was released a couple of weeks ago. It's a bugfix for the 1.72 test release. I couldn't play it as autopackage no longer works on my system with some obscure error and I don't fancy compiling it.

MetalChaser is a 3d mech-inspired shooter. It's a bit basic, but could grow into something good. The website isn't very clear about it, but it is open source, with a Google-code project.

Angel Engine:

This is Angel, a 2D game prototyping engine based on OpenGL and C++.



Angel was originally made by a group of employees at Electronic Arts Los Angeles for use in a GameJam they were planning for April of 2008. The source was opened in January 2009.

Curious!

Eye of the Tiger

I shall be brief, for I am in my briefs, and briefly available to briefly brief you.

Warzone2100 2.1rc1 - the first release to include the original game sound track. Read the announcement and the changelog for more details.

It's like Command and Conquer. Except it's good. See video:

Rising up... mmmmm mmmm... took my time took my chances... aaaah ooo... just a man and his will to survive... nmmmm mmmmm... its the Eye of the Tiger!" Gotta love that track.

There's a new development release of Oolite, the elite-inspired game. Version 1.72 (announcement, changelog) has been a while coming and, as such, contains a long list of fixes. Looks pretty stable to me but *shrugs* not my project.

FreeCol 0.8.0alpha3 - fixes a few bugs, they say.

Vacuum Magic is R-Type style 2D side scrolling shoot 'em up action, and all Free Software. The game topic is a little off beat but the gameplay is pretty neat and there's plenty of levels to play. Check out the video:

Open Octane, announced in the forums, aims to be a fast paced car combat game where you can destroy most things in the game world. You can see the car crashing through trees and fences in the demo below:

Open Octane physics demo 2 from The Oracle on Vimeo.

It reminds me of another open source game that I can't remember right now as it's late and I have other things to do. I'm sure I'll remember later or somebody will post in the comments the game I'm thinking of...

Tactics with lasers and lite space

Laser Tactics is the new name for Nuclear Graveyard. It's a turn based 3D squad tactics game, originally a remake of Laser Squad in 3D that has since transcended the initial goal of being a remake. The author is fairly frustrated at the lack of interest in the game because it doesn't fit the standard mold. If you want to try something a bit tactical and a bit different to the usual FPS or strategy style of game.

There were quite a few links in the last post with little description of them.

OpenFracas

Pathman

Asteroid Wars

OpenFracas is like an advanced version of Risk. What it actually is, is a rebirth of the game Fracas which was open sourced but is writtin in VB6, which is frankly a bit of a rubbish language for anything other than win32 forms.

There's a new development release of Oolite (announcement + Mac, Linux, Windows), the 3D space flight adventure game. I'd seen in many places concern that Oolite development was dead, so this is a delightful reminder that it is still going. It's definitely an underrated game, given the stature of Elite in gaming history and how much Oolite improves upon the original concept. The 1.70 release was actually at the start of December 2007 but, as is the case with many open source projects, it went beneath the radar for a while.

The OpenTTD community are putting together a basic free release for the low-res verison of OpenTTD so it can be included in Linux distros etc. Good to know that the game will no longer require non-free media. Anyhow, anybody interested in getting involved can find all the relevant info in the Graphics Replacement wiki page.

And finally two cool looking new Free games.

Pathman is, "a 3D first/third person re-interpretation of Namco's popular 1980's arcade hit Pac-Man, arguably the most popular computer game of all time." Not much more to say other than check it out if that sounds like your cup of tea.

Also cool looking, but unfortunately missing any kind of project page or cross-platform availability (Windows only) is Asteroid Wars, a snazzy take on another classic game. Perhaps somebody can convince the author to register over at Sourceforge and maybe somebody can make it run in Linux.

New Sauerbraten Release

Sauerbraten has a new release with 2007-08-19 "Summer Edition". There's tons of new small features although nothing really stands out - but perhaps that's me just being ignorant of some jargon in the changelog. What does stand out is the absurdly impatient community reaction to the release. Read the linked thread to see what I mean.

OpenLieroX

I came across a fork of LieroX, itself a Liero-clone, in the Gentoo forums where the team seem to be posting news updates. OpenLieroX is a real-time, brutal, excessive Worms-clone with lots of levels and mods. Interesting. :-)

OpenLieroX is available for Windows and Mac OS X from Sourceforge, although it seems Linux users will have to compile it or wait for distro support.

One of the lesser-known open source Elite-inspired games is Elite Strike (a Vega Strike mod). After a period of relative inactivity, development has resumed. Whilst the game has a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Oolite, it's good to see the game isn't dead. Elite Strike aims to have more detailed models and graphics than Oolite.

I started a new blog called "The Free Desktop" as I wanted to post articles on things Free Software but not gaming. Somehow I got linked on the popular site Linux Today. I only mention it because, amusingly, people were accusing me of being on the payroll of Microsoft and/or Opera because I criticised Firefox. Then I see people swearing at the Sauer devs for not immediately posting Mac binaries. How wonderfully irrational people can be.

As a Free Software developer or advocate, we expose ourselves directly to the vocal minority of critical end users - so one of the best things to learn is not to be insulted by anything they say. Reacting only makes them happy and you stressed. It doesn't matter what some ignorant fool says as long as you stay calm and true to your principles. Such people will quickly disappear in Internet anonymity. Their comments are often worthless and not worth responding to. Next time somebody slams your game, remember that many others enjoyed your efforts and they are the people you should focus on.

Just Keep Them Coming

Sometimes I finish a post feeling apprehensive about being able to find more information to populate the next days ramble on open source gaming matters. However, just earlier I was explaining to a friend the difference between open source games and commercial ones, and realise just why there always is something more to talk about - Free games are not just an end product for a player; they are a process, a community oriented process, with visible progress along the way.

There really are so many high quality open source game projects around, it's a joy to see them all evolving. :-)

Danger from the Deep

Just to emphasise what I mean, Danger from the Deep 0.3.0 just popped up on Freshmeat. This rather awesome project simulating WWII submarine combat gains 4 more U-boats, shader support i.e. eye candy, and better sound support amongst other improvements.

It really does look so good. I remember playing some submarine game when I was younger and just loving the immersion, stalking enemy boats before blowing them out of the water. I just wish I had the hardware to recreate that experience with DftD - maybe by the time it's "complete" I will. ;-)

And another awesome game is looming on the horizon. As seen on /., the Blender Foundation have announced a project to create a high quality open source game in conjunction with Crystal Space project. For those who don't know, Blender does have a game engine but it does not scale very well and is notoriously difficult to debug games made with it.

The previous open effort by the Blender community was Project Orange (aka Elehpants Dream), so that is a benchmark for the quality we can expect to see. High, high quality. :-D

A few other miscellaneous things...

I was quite impressed by this glossary of Oolite ships. I really should play and review that game.

I really like seeing the new artwork going into games, such as this and this going into the next version of UFO:AI - another of those awesome open source game projects.

I managed to come across a resource I once had bookmarked but lost many years ago - Amit's game programming. I can't find the specific pages that interested me (there's a ton of information there to sift through) but I'm happy I found it nonetheless.

Running out of stuff to talk about? My posts seem to get longer by the day...

Open Source 3D Space Games

Welcome to a space game special on Free Gamer!

No Gravity

Vega Strike

Oolite

Parsec

Crimson Space

At the heart of open source space game development is Vega Strike, a 3D space trading and combat game. With a dynamic universe and dynamic econmies, there is massive depth to the game. However the current stable version (0.4.3) is aging. While there is an update to the development version, it is not yet stable nor easy to try but does include some great new models and art on top of various gameplay improvements. Feature-wise it rivals commercial counterparts and the next releases should restore Vega Strikes position as one of the showcase open source games.

Vega Strike is highly moddable and has spawned some excellent mods. There's something for Babylon 5, Star Wars, and Star Trek fans, with the latter moving forward nicely.

The most well-known mod is Privateer Remake, a modernization of Wing Commander: Privateer - an offshoot of the Wing Commander series. Privateer Remake was forked to form Privateer Gemini Gold, a version more true to the original Privateer. Both games breathe life back into a popular franchise, dragging it into 20th century gaming with vastly superior graphics to the original. There are more Wing Commander game remakes being developed out of the Vega Srike mod stable, springing from the meta-project Wing Commander Universe that spawned Privateer Remake.

No Gravity is a 3D arcade space shooter set in a fantastic universe made of 5 intergalatic worlds. The website is one of the best looking sites I've seen for an open source game. The game itself does not look as pretty as more recent titles like Vega Strike, but it looks fun nonetheless. It's gameplay reminded me of X-Wing vs TIE Figheter although it's been a long time since I played that so I could be mistaken.

Another space game whose progress has been steady is Oolite. It is basically Elite for the modern PC and was developed as a response to the withdrawl of Elite - A New Kind from the Internet (although it is still available from a few freeware sites). Oolite continues to exceed Elite in many ways and should delight fans of the original as well as attracting new players to the Elite brand.

Then there's FreeSpace 2. I was somehow under the impression that the whole game had been made Free Software. However, I could only find the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project which did not contain much useful information, let alone a useful download. Increasingly convinced that the original FreeSpace 2 data was required and not Free, my interest quickly waned. If I'm wrong then could somebody please correct me.

Sadly there are those game development efforts that never quite make it. I came across Reaper whilst poking around the Internet. It's development ceased in 2002. Another space game whose candle went out a while ago is Andromeda 9, so it joins the echelons of once-promising projects.

Then there is Parsec. Once a darling of Linux gaming, Parsec suffered from being closed source. By the time the developers realised their mistake and open sourced Parsec, it was too late to interest a future maintainer.

Update: I have stumbled across Crimson Space that looks intriguing - you can enter a planet's atmosphere, it has several ships - although I'm uncertain of how complete it is and development ceased in 2002.

For people wanting an immediate fix, I would suggest No Gravity, Oolite, and Privateer Gemini Gold. No Gravity has the polish, Oolite has the depth, and Privateer the great 3D graphics. For people who are not afraid of rough edges, Vega Strike and it's burgeoning mod scene will push your 3D cards and engross you at the same time; Vega Strike is the open source future of this genre. One thing is certain, the open source 3D space game scene is very healthy.

Please comment if I missed an important open source 3D space game.