
Warzone 2100: A Free and Open Source Real-Time Strategy Game - BuuQu9hu
https://wz2100.net/
======
edem
I am still waiting for a strategy game which gets near to the Total
Annihilation experience (the most satisfying strategy experience I had so
far). I am waiting since 1997 (20 years)! What I would like to see is real use
of terrain features, monumental maps and units which are well designed. Take a
look at the Prophet from TA:Escalation: [0]. 2 naval cannons, 2 plasma
batteries, 2 flak guns with built-in multitasking.

[0][[https://images.discordapp.net/.eJwNxkEOgyAQAMC_cC-7wGYFP0MIE...](https://images.discordapp.net/.eJwNxkEOgyAQAMC_cC-7wGYFP0MIErTRQmA9Nf17zVzmq-5xqlXtIn2uANsxcxubntJGqkXX1upZUj-
mzu2CJJLyfpWPTDBhCZ4QmZ3xFJ6DZRNwYfJESI44WDA2WhcNx9cDEYN-96p-f1VVJAw.GAe1ysUqLULZdL03aFIy-
ihPduU)]

~~~
snippyhollow
A few years ago SpringRTS, and in particular the BalancedAnnihilation mod [0]
were active and playable. There is also Planetary Annihilation [1] (that I
used to play competitively online, a few of the top players are ex-StarCraft
II Grand Masters).

[0]
[https://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Annihilation](https://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Annihilation)
[1] [http://www.uberent.com/pa/](http://www.uberent.com/pa/)

~~~
Pica_soO
Eh, there is also, with the same
Engine([https://springrts.com/](https://springrts.com/)) , and improved gfx
and ux:

Zero-K (www.zero-k.info)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUcqY4GfRpI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUcqY4GfRpI)

TheCursed
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiBh8l200oo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiBh8l200oo)
[http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-cursed](http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-
cursed)

BalancedAnnhilationReloaded:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK0u2OYLubo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK0u2OYLubo)

Evolution RTS:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/291150/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/291150/)

Spring:1944 [http://spring1944.org/](http://spring1944.org/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76jFZvpvwoA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76jFZvpvwoA)

KernelPanic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doF7owZ0blk&fmt=18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doF7owZ0blk&fmt=18)

And various Original TA Derivatives. Try some, have fun.

~~~
astrobe_
I've played Warzone, Zero-K and SC2. I think Zero-K is the better of the
three. Warzone's huge tech tree is overwhelming and I believe it doesn't
really add to the game, because it's likely that only a few tech paths are
actually viable if one talks competitive play. SC2 is pretty and all, but
suffers from hard-to-solve balance problems. Zero-K has solid gameplay
elements (like terrain deformation and good unit control) a great variety of
units available to all players to master, and it handles nicely a dozen of
players without population caps. The only problem is the small player base.

------
robotjosh
I played a little bit years ago. I didn't like how the map was zoomed in so
far, I wanted to zoom out more. I messed with the source code to let me zoom
out more and shared how to do it. They told me I was cheating so I never
played again.

~~~
ifdefdebug
Well that's rude at best. If your patch gives you a better game play to the
point of being considered "cheating", then maybe it should be made part of the
game. Because now cheaters can use it silently and lough about other players
stuck with their narrow view ports...

~~~
matheweis
It used to be part of the game, not 100% sure why they ever changed it but
iirc it had more to do with technical limitations than game dynamics... also
not sure why anyone would call it cheating if they understand the game well. I
would have never banned you from my servers. Lots of people call anything
cheating when they aren't good enough to win. All the more reason for neutral
game servers rather than biased player hosting.

~~~
robotjosh
Yeah, I was told the game had to be shitty because some players still had
pentium 3s. This argument was ridiculous as I was playing on a eee-pc (single
core intel atom) with an external 19" monitor. My hardware was too good it
wasn't fair? I started playing because it was open source, I thought players
would be encouraged instead of discouraged from patching the source.

------
throwaway7767
I played this game so much when it came out. Really great strategy game.

I tried playing through a campaign using the open-sourced engine a while ago
but it felt like the pathfinding had taken several steps backwards since the
original game. You really start to feel it in the later missions, where the
pathfinding becomes the biggest hurdle - your units get stuck while retreating
and so get destroyed before they manage to return to a repair station. Never
did manage to finish it because of this.

Too bad, because in all other respects it's great. But the pathfinding makes
it unplayable for me once a decent number of units are involved in fighting.

~~~
DanBC
Total Annihilation also suffers from really bad path finding when you get
above a certain number of units.

Luckily, for TA, it's a really simple patch to increase the number of
pathfinding cycles.

[http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42529](http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42529)

What's the problem with pathfinding in Warzone?

~~~
throwaway7767
> What's the problem with pathfinding in Warzone?

I haven't looked at the algorithm so can't explain what's going wrong from
that side. But essentially, a lot of warzone maps have tight corridors that
only barely fit 2-3 units side by side. A big part of the game is the tactical
squadrons where you have a commander and assign armies to them, and then you
can configure the army so units automatically retreat to repair at a certain
damage threshold. So it's normal to have a huge army advancing and at the same
time have a smaller number of units automatically retreating through the same
corridor. When a unit's calculated path is blocked by another unit, they'll
both sort of wiggle around turning a bit in any direction and advancing, doing
this dance until they break free. This takes a long enough time that your
damaged retreating units are dead by the time the gridlock is resolved.

This was also a problem in the original codebase, but it feels like it's a lot
worse with the current wz2100 code.

------
smnscu
Does anyone have a list of open source games such as this one? i.e. that are
rewrites of older games

Popular-ish examples:

* [https://freeablo.org/](https://freeablo.org/)

* [https://openmw.org/en/](https://openmw.org/en/)

~~~
helb
I've found this – [http://osgameclones.com/](http://osgameclones.com/)

My favorite ones (apart from OpenTTD) are:

\-
[https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH](https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH)
(Theme Hospital)

\- [https://openrct2.website/](https://openrct2.website/) (Roller Coaster
Tycoon)

~~~
evolve2k
0AD (Age of Empires) [https://play0ad.com](https://play0ad.com)

~~~
helb
Yeah, i love 0 A.D., but i don't consider it a "rewrite". There are at least
two ongoing attepts to create open source AoE:

\- [https://github.com/angered-ghandi/OpenAOE](https://github.com/angered-
ghandi/OpenAOE) (AoE I)

\- [https://github.com/SFTtech/openage](https://github.com/SFTtech/openage)
(AoE II)

HN posts about openage:

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830652)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8511084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8511084)
(with some links to other interesting games in the comments)

------
simonmales
I don't play games too often, but have enjoyed this in the past. As far as I
could find, this was the only once commercial game that opened sourced it's
engine AND data files.

Majority of previously commercial games do not open source the data files,
e.g. FreeSpace and Quake.

apt-get install warzone2100

Done.

~~~
CliffyA
Saga of Ryzom went open source with creative commons assets.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzom#Source_code_and_assets_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzom#Source_code_and_assets_freely_released)

Tho on second thoughts I think the server side quests and world map may not
have been released, so it probably does not count.

------
sliken
Not sure why this is posted. It's an old game, no particularly note worth
releases in the last month.

It's definitely a fun RTS, one of my favorites, and opensource.

~~~
wonko1
I think it's nice to see order stuff that people might not be aware of on HN
from time to time.

I'd not heard of it, and it looks great. Wonder how feasible a iOS would be?
(Currently supports Windows and Mac so at least somewhat portable).

~~~
matheweis
Sort of supports Mac... No one on the current team has any Mac hardware.
Myself and a couple others occasionally make unofficial builds but that's been
about it for the last year or two.

As far as iOS, as with many open source projects, a major issue is the
licensing probably can't pass the App Store rules.

~~~
ssalazar
> As far as iOS, as with many open source projects, a major issue is the
> licensing probably can't pass the App Store rules.

Are there actual documented incidents of GPL or other FOSS software being
rejected from the iOS App Store due to the source code license?

~~~
matheweis
The GPL in particular is fundamentally not compatible with the App Store re
distribution clauses.

VLC for iOS being the precedent setting example from a few years back.

To answer your question directly, I'm not sure of cases where Apple will
outright reject the initial submission of some OSS app - especially if you
aren't totally up front about it. But clearly re VLC they will pull it once it
is brought up (also leaving to distributing developer open to liability
depending on how unhappy the contributors are)

------
frik
It's sad that RTS (Real Time Strategy) games are more or less dead for more
than a decade.

I still play 10-20 year old RTS games like Age of Empire series, Age of
Mythology, Empire Earth, C&C Generals from time to time. Especially playing
skirmish mode against hard AI on random maps is really great.

Several spun off genres like Tower Defence, MoBa sprung off as Mods from Age
of Empires series and WarCraft 3. Since 2009 also the Facebook games like
Farmville, et al and Free2Play casual games implemented kind of RTS mechanics.

On consoles various unsuccessful RTS games like C&C 4, Halo Wars 1 and some
failed Free2Play efforts like C&C Generals 2 meant basically the end to
Triple-A RTS games as we knew them. The RTS genre was the best selling
Triple-A genre on PC, even stronger than shooter and RPG, back in the late
1990s after all.

Now that all old genres like adventures or RPG (except RTS) got a successful
revival, it would be great to get new Triple-A RTS games for PC.

~~~
m_mueller
The UI is the problem. Controllers or touch screens are just not precise
and/or fast enough. I could see VR bringing back RTS however, simply because
top down view on a map is much easier to implement than first person. It's
like the old graphics constraints (which also made RTS popular because it was
far more believable than FPS for a while) applied to a new input dimension
(movement).

Personally I hope for a return of the RTS Battlezone which combined both. My
favorite game still.

~~~
frik
RTS doesn't work with Controller (without simplifying the gameplay, which
would sucks, aka no base building, not hundreds of things to manage, see Halo
Wars 1 and C&C 4). But Mouse, Touch, voice and gestures works fine.

Rise and Fall (the spiritual successor of Empire Earth), was a good RTS that
allowed one to zoom-in and play in 3rd person with one's hero character
(similar to Dungeon Keeper).

Battlezone (1998) was interesting too - first person shooter combined with RTS
incl base building, similar was C&C Renegade. And Operation Flashpoint 1
(2001, now called AMA) had such a mode too.

But playing complex games like Watch Dogs 2 on PS4 nowadays, which has similar
mechanics with the hacking tool and the quadcopter (you can control cars and
what not while steering an quad copter while playing a third person character)
- I am the opinion that nowadays, a complete non-simplified RTS would work on
consoles just fine, even with a controller.

------
jon-wood
I owned a copy of this before it was open sourced and used to play some epic
multiplayer games with a friend against the computer. The big difference this
has to other RTS games is the heavy emphasis on artillery - by the late game
you end up with artillery pieces which can rain down destruction across most
of the map, and counter battery radar to destroy that.

The unit designer is also neat, allowing you to build custom units out of
various bodies, propulsion methods, and weapon systems.

~~~
matheweis
Nowadays many players disable artillery (or the major end game versions of it)
for a very different game dynamic.

~~~
jon-wood
Well that takes all the fun out, my friend and I are both notorious turtlers
and would end up playing six hour matches with a slow crawl of artillery
moving back and forth across the map.

~~~
jawilson2
That sounds like Warzone 1914.

------
coldpizza
I remember playing this on the PS1

The coolest thing about this game is that you could directly play as any unit
like it was a third-person action game

~~~
NKCSS
Sounds like C&C: Renegade

------
kriro
Seems like a cool testbed for game AI. There's even a NullBot included from my
quick research :)

------
godzillabrennus
Reading this triggered my memories of playing Black Nova Traders as a teen.
Just checked and seems like that project hasn't gotten much love in the years
since I quit playing it.

It'd be fun to have a kickstarter campaign to fund raise for new versions of
old open source games.

------
mamurphy
While we talk about free and open source reimplementations - is there anything
similar to Sim Tower? I quite enjoyed that game, and haven't seen anything
like it since.

------
flukus
Has there been any significant graphical updates since release?

~~~
matheweis
Since what release? They did have a fairly major graphics update at some point
but in the last several years the entire project has been languishing at best.

~~~
pekk
If the game is working today, in what sense is it "languishing"? We don't say
that commercial games made years ago are "languishing," we may even consider
them quite successful if they haven't been touched since release, so why the
double standard?

~~~
matheweis
Primarily a reduced number of games available in the lobby on a regular basis;
I would imagine that a commercial games that once had a large number of
players and now has fewer would also be considered languishing.

Also a lack of a current build for the Mac OS (an issue since the network play
compatibility is tied to the game version)

No double standard, I used to be quite active in the gameplay and also
contributed a little to the code itself - the community around the game just
isn't what it used to be.

Edit: If you're involved in the wz2100 project directly and have other
information, obviously I'm wrong here, but otherwise I'm just passing on my
perceptions from many years of involvement on the sidelines.

------
tlo
Have also a look at [http://osgameclones.com/](http://osgameclones.com/)

------
flashman
Personally I'm looking forward to Deadhold[1] which doesn't involve resource
management, focusing instead on unit formations and tactics (a revival of
Bungie's Myth series).

[1][http://www.deadhold.com](http://www.deadhold.com)

------
simonebrunozzi
Is there a .dmg version? I couldn't find one.

------
georgeecollins
Warzone 2100 was a really good game.

------
neverminder
Honestly this being on the first page of HN I was expecting to see something
comparable to 0AD (probably the best RTS open source game out there), but this
game really does look like it belongs in the 90s.

~~~
izacus
That's because it IS from the 90ties. It was initially (commercially) released
in 1999.

~~~
lawless123
be nice if they could add shader support etc to it.

~~~
Pica_soO
I think they could- but the problem is, the more up to date your pipeline
gets, the more the amount of work necessary grows. You cant have just one
high-poly-well textured unit. You need to remodel and re-texture all the
Units. Same goes for all GFX- like for example adding CC like cloud-shaders
for the map- you then need the shaders on the units. Its one huge mountain of
work avalanching into your project, once you breach the dam.

You can avoid part of this by using procedural units- but that easily gets out
of hand, making the units non-distinctive or physical impossible.

The best option actually is player involvment, as the players build the units.
But that is tough to balance. Oh, almost forgot: RTS Game made by some Zero-K
Devs on the side [http://www.istrolid.com/](http://www.istrolid.com/)

