I'm not sure that I would call some of these "clones". ioquake3 for example is the community maintained modernized fork of the Quake 3 <i>engine</i> source that id released. You can't do much with it without your own assets (either the original Quake3 assets, the OpenArena assets (that game is what I would call the Quake3 "clone"), or assets from any number of Quake 3 mods (tremulous, urban terror, etc).<p>I think ioquake3 is an example of where open source game devs are at their best. Providing modern engines (ideally from the original source, but not necessarily) to old games so that people can continue to reasonably play them. OpenTTD would be another example.
I was giddy when I discovered Ur Quan Masters a few years ago. I had played a lot of computer games as a kid but for me (and my friends at the time) <i>Star Control 2</i> was one of a handful that I continued to play over and over again. It was the first time I'd played a game realizing that the artistic relevance of a game could exceed a book or a movie.<p>I know it wasn't necessarily a "first" in these categories, but it was <i>my</i> first experience with a game that: (1) Was primarily quest driven with the player having a great deal of choice on which quest to take when (it wasn't spelled out the way it's done in modern implementations). (2) Had excellent dialog (it was legitimately funny at times and poked fun at itself). (2) Had a universe that felt impossible to succeed in exploring all of it. (3) Had a great balance of strategy, exploration and arcade elements. At no point did it seem like any one of the three components were after thoughts.
The problem I have seen with Open Source games is not usually with the game itself, but the art work. I wish someday these games would compete with proprietary games on "beauty" as well as functionality.
openCaesar3 make me worry. Because if the intent is merely to clone the game, with the same basic mechanics, I am not sure I will enjoy it, despite having spend countless errors on the original, <i>Caesar 3</i>.<p>Part of the problem - in this case at least - lies in the original game's mechanics, particularly its walker mechanic. If you look up any videos or guides on how to play <i>Caesar 3</i> well (or rather; best), you'll notice that most of these guides try to abuse the walker mechanic - which in itself doesn't make much sense - to the limit, creating cities that effectively doesn't really look like cities, because they avoid connecting them, inserts gatehouses everywhere, etc.<p>Sure, this is gamey, you say, but it actually proves a fundamental flaw in the city-building games because of the walker mechanic. If you are to make a clone of <i>Caesar 3</i>, it would be sad to copy this mechanic, but then some would argue that it is no longer <i>Caesar 3</i>, because you'd have to replace it with something else. Something radically different.<p>Which ends my argument with basic idea; don't clone <i>Caesar 3</i>, make something better.
I am not sure if Minetest qualifies for a Minecraft clone already. It is certainly the most playable clone. In contrast, Terasology has amazing graphics, but no fun.<p><a href="http://minetest.net/" rel="nofollow">http://minetest.net/</a>
Two more games not on that list:<p>SuperTux – <a href="http://supertux.lethargik.org/" rel="nofollow">http://supertux.lethargik.org/</a> – a Super Mario Bros. clone. It actually has a lot of original level ideas.<p>SuperTuxKart – <a href="http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/</a> – a Mario Kart clone, though with more simplistic kart physics.
It would be good if this listed the level of completion: openCaesar3 and OpenTTD may be both be under active development, but the latter has been playable for years (active development is mostly on features the original never had) while the former says it isn't "still not quite playable."
As a fan of many games by Bullfrog (especially Theme Park, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper), I wanted to create an open source clone for Theme Park.<p>Eventually I've decided to leave it for now. My research is summarized in the following post: <a href="http://kshahar.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-open-source-clone-for-theme-park.html" rel="nofollow">http://kshahar.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-open-source-clone-for...</a><p>I hope this could help someone to have an easy start.
Is it just me who finds it sad that the majority of open source game development energy goes into cloning existing proprietary games.<p>Yes, I understand that designing a game from scratch is a lot more work, but I would much rather lower number of original games than a larger number of worse versions of existing games. I also suspect this would have a larger positive impact on open source software as a whole.<p>Where's the creativity?!
I loved the old MSI Forgotten Realms Games, especially my first, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, which had a German release. I was very new to Computer Games and AD&D, and I briefly thought you had to wait 8 real time hours for your wizards to memorize their spells. I played the sequel in English, and I didn't understand anything from the story. Show how simple the gameplay was for an RPG; go to X, kill everything, repeat.
I faintly remember having success playing some of the games on a DOSBOX, so I am not sure if you'd need a rewrite in .NET
I'll mention here a blog post of mine written a while back on the subject of Open Source Games entitled "Cool Open Source Games you should contribute to". It lays out a dissemination of issues OS games face and how you could help(touching most of the issues debated in comments here), along with a nice list of projects to get you started.<p><a href="http://shinnok.com/rants/2011/07/18/cool-open-source-games-you-should-contribute-to/" rel="nofollow">http://shinnok.com/rants/2011/07/18/cool-open-source-games-y...</a>
Wow, suprised tuxkart is not listed there. Used to love playing it in 8th grade with my buddies. It was my go-to answer when people asked me "can you play games on linux?"
You should check out the games available for the Open Pandora, you get many Open Source Game Clones/Engines there : <a href="http://repo.openpandora.org" rel="nofollow">http://repo.openpandora.org</a> - like the recent Dune Dynasty and many others.
What are the parameters for "active development"?<p>The "Mario World" clone hasn't been touched in a year, but is listed as having active development.<p>Edit: Sorry.. was 1 year. The only more recent commit was a translation update 6 months ago
The dungeon keeper "clone" is not really a clone, it takes the assets from the original game and hack the executables to make it more friendly to recent pc (i'll check it anyway!)