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If you look on http://www.openttd.org/en/abou... you'll see the list of supported platforms:

* *BSD, especially FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
* Linux
* Solaris
* Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7

Notice what's missing from that list? You should be glad it works at all!

*The* big new feature of OpenTTD 1.4.0 is CargoDist, i.e. exactly that - passengers and cargo having specific destinations.

If only the summary wouldn't be just a jumbled tangle of text... :-(

Some games that have, IMO, succeeded in the polish department, have done so because they by design don't require many assets or they can "borrow" from another game (commercial or not), to get them started while new content is generated . If I was to start an amateur OSS game project, I'd try to keep that in mind. A good example of the former is naev, and of the latter, openTTD.

The problem isn't the tedium part. F/OSS people do a lot of tedious tasks too.

The problem is, that the whole thing needs a basis which makes people interested to improve on. F/OSS people are not very good at putting together a comprehensive seed for a healthy game, as this is a quite complex task (you really need a development team with project coordinators, artists, programmers and other staff to get this done).

Two examples of successful F/OSS games originating in commercial seeds are OpenTTD http://www.openttd.org/en and the Warzone 2100 project http://wz2100.net./

In the first instance, the commercial game (Transport and Tycoon Deluxe) first inspired some extensive modding (ttd patch) and then a complete rewrite of the engine (openttd project) including graphics and sound. Overall very tedious tasks, and the project is doing better than ever (they just released version 1.0). They are also improving the game with new features that improve gameplay a lot. Runs on Linux, OS X and Win.

The other one, Warzone 2100 was GPL'd by the original developer studio some years ago (2004). In this case, the engine was improved a lot too, and development is active with roadmap and good progress - fully playable stable versions are available for all major platforms as well.

The problem with OSS games is really, that they need a mature seed to take off, like releasing an old codebase. That's very rarely happening though. Game studios don't want to compete against OSS games, which is why they virtually never release sources for old games. And game developers give up any kind of right on their code as soon as they sign a contract, so they can't do much to prevent their codebase from getting murdered.

I hope someone will surprise us all one day, and show how to plant such seeds in F/OSS word. There is nothing on the horizon that I'm aware of so far though.

Program on anything you want...copy the files over to your MAc and compile them.

or compile them on a linux machine

http://devs.openttd.org/~truebrain/compile-farm/apple-darwin9.txt

Or stop thinking the world revolves around you.

FYI, there is a patched version flying around the openttd forums which implements cargo and passanger destination, which means that cargos and passangers want to go to a specific location not just to any city,
this gives the game much more depth
http://wiki.openttd.org/Passenger_and_cargo_destinations

openTTD supports custom AI's written in the scripting language Squirrel. See http://wiki.openttd.org/Noai . There's a quite few AI's to download, of varying quality and personality.

The original (now removed) AI did indeed suck badly, but it's stupidity did provide players with some amusement at the same time. ;)

I'd recommend you to check out OpenTTD in that case. It is an open source remake of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and better than ever. Has all kinds of new stuff and functionality that improves it in most ways imagineable. http://www.openttd.org/

On the internet, you can actually turn words into links. I believe this technology is referred to as "Hypertext."

I can second talking to other projects that have done similar things, such as the team behind UQM* or OpenTTD**.

* http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
** http://www.openttd.org/en/

xmoto is nice, but there's so much more :)
some i have played and did like enough :

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://www.openttd.org/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://chromium-bsu.sourceforge.net/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5
https://sourceforge.net/projects/koules/ (original page seems to be down)
http://neverball.org/

You do need the original game files but this is pretty easy to do with the help of Google.

Actually, this is no longer true:
http://wiki.openttd.org/OpenGFX_Readme

OpenGFX isn't 100% complete, but it is already playable.

OpenTTD (which is based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe) is a great game and you can quickly loose track of the time building intricate train networks. You do need the original game files but this is pretty easy to do with the help of Google.

  http://openttd.org/

Yeah, Locomotion was a huge disappointment.
Despite the ancient graphics, I've gone back to TTD via OpenTTD. Much better game than Locomotion.

• The Ur-Quan Masters, if you missed Star Control 2 before it was open sourced.
• Globulation 2 is still a bit pre-release, but the game is playable and has a lot of potential.
• Oolite is a faithful recreation of Elite, but with massively updated graphics. It's certainly not a modern game, but it's a wonderful nostalgia trip if you played the original.
• OpenTTD is an open source clone of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which fixes a lot of the irritating misfeatures in the original while remaining totally addictive.

There are quite a lot of fun games in the list, but these are the ones I've played and remember enjoying.

Weird that nobody mentioned OpenTTD yet, the Open-Source version of Chris Sawyers "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", creator of Rollercoaster Tycoon.

It's probably more a clone than a remake, because you can play in the exact same way as the original, but you can also enable optional bugfixes and actual game improvements, like working multiplayer support.

There is also Black Mesa, a remake of Half-Life 1 with the newer Source engine. Pretty exciting, too.

How about learning how to make the trains run on time?

OpenTTD is a well-polished clone of the Microprose game 'Transport Tycoon Deluxe'. Your job is to create and manage the transportation infrastructure of an island. Trains, Planes, Automobiles and Boats!

Hours of fun and below-the-radar learning!

Maybe. See this.

From here http://wiki.openttd.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ_installation I would say 'no'.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. http://www.openttd.org/

It's an open source recode of the original classic game, but with all the tweaks to bring it up to modern standards (8-players multiplayer, huge maps, better cargo routing algorithms, etc). Fantastic stuff.

There's also a large massively OpenTTD cooperative group, focussing on ways of making huge efficient cargo networks and other scenarios. http://www.openttdcoop.org/blog/

There are some 3D games that run on Linux.

I'm going to mention one that I play myself, Urban Terror (a semi-realistic shooter based on Quake 3).

Sure, it's a few years old. I don't care, it's still just as fun. Occasionally I'll even play some good old "regular" Quake 3.

To be perfectly honest, I don't run UrT or Q3 on Linux myself, I run Mac OS X. The point is, if I ever decided to switch away from Mac OS X to Ubuntu, almost all the games I have on my computer right now would run on Linux as well. Actually, let me go through my Applications folder right now:

• Bridge Construction Set -- yes, it runs on Linux
• DEFCON -- yup. That too.
• Kill Monty -- unfortunately, no. :-( (Then again, that doesn't run on Windows either.)
• Frets On Fire -- yup. It runs on Linux. And way better than on OS X too.
• OpenTTD -- yep. It runs on Linux too.
• IOQuake3 -- sure.
• SNES9x (and by extention, a collection of Super Nintendo games), sure, works on Linux
• Tetrinet Aqua does not run on Linux, but other (and better) Tetrinet clients do.
• The Ur-Quan Masters runs on Linux.
• Uplink runs on Linux.
• And finally, as discussed before, Urban Terror runs on Linux.

So, all the games I actually have on my hard drive and play would run on Linux if I decided to migrate. Except for Kill Monty. (But then again, that doesn't run on Windows either.)

The lack of games are not what's keeping me on Mac OS X on my machine.

Oh, and in response to your issue about not being able to flash because you'd need either Windows or DOS -- I give you FreeDOS.

Here's the educative games I suggest.

http://www.food-force.com/ Made by the U.N. Free, MacOS X or Windows. (sorry no Linux afaik) Probably the best one in my list for the 6-8 years old.

http://www.tqworld.com/ - Tranquility. After years and years, this game has something no other game offers. Well suited for the youngsters. Free, but not open source.

http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/ U.N. too. Free and web-based. Excellent. Probably best for 8 years old (older ones of your range). Surprisingly informative.

http://www.stepmania.com/ Not sure that ones counts as edutainment, but it sure is good for the children! Open source and available for all platforms.

http://www.openttd.org/ A railroad tycoon open source clone (gosh I'm getting old ;-). Suitable for your oldest ones?

For the curious ones, here's the other worthy (subjective) open source games I discovered with time. http://del.icio.us/Satri/game+opensource

Have you played Open TTD? There are plenty of places you can erm acquire the tilesets for it.

I looked a while back (after discovering OpenTTD) and found nothing. I was hoping there was someone as enthusiastic about SC/2k/3/4 as the rather lively Transport Tycoon community.

I've actually been thinking along the lines of what you wrote here. If there were OS X versions of SC2k and TTDLX (perhaps with some of the OpenTTD improvements) I would buy them in a heartbeat. And if there were also modernized sets of artwork and other little things like that...

/Mikael

If you loved Transport Tycoon then I bet you will get a kick out of OpenTTD. It's a Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone which comes with quite a few goodies, including multiplayer support. Since I discovered it I started playing it exclusively. Too much for the good sake of my health, in fact :]

If anyone likes Transport Tycoon, I seriously suggest you visit http://www.openttd.org/ for an open source version that uses the original graphics. I have spent countless hours playing via an immensely improved multi-player game system.

Just remember to password your companies in game or else you could have some bastards come in and spend the millions of dollars you have earned.

seeing as you have Transport Tycoon, you might want to see http://openttd.org/ too. and TTDPatch if you are more of the solo player.

Its weird how game compatibility goes. We can run almost everything made on things like Commodores and such (various emulators for everything), and with the latest release of dosbox, we can run almost all the DOS and a lot of the Win3.1 (not that there were that many) games. Its the stuff between that and Win2k that's iffy.

It almost seems like there's this hole that's a lack of support, and its shrinking from the tail end while eating up a bigger and bigger time period. Not sure if its expanding faster than its shrinking, but its rather interesting. I think with Vista's release, a lot of older but still-playable games (late 98 era) will become unplayable, and at the same time Wine will keep getting better and will be able to play the oldest games unplayable now (95-era and such).

On a different note, software like dosbox and the like seems to go partway toward nullifying the argument for open-sourcing games. I mean, games that were open sourced (Gladiator, Rise of the Triad, the Dooms and Quakes, etc) do live on today on modern systems, but the games that weren't are still very much alive and playable. In facts, Dosbox's enhancements like modem and IPX emulation make those games better and better! Of course, no matter how good Dosbox gets, it still won't be able to make, for example, the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe be anywhere near as good as OpenTTD, but its still cool how they improve well after their support life-cycle is over.

I kinda lost my point in all that, or maybe disproved it or never had one to begin with, but its still interesting. Maybe a bit off-topic, too....

My first suggestion would be OpenTTD. It has been my way to introduce many players to strategy games and seems to be quite popular. It's not hard to learn, and very easy to set up cooperatively. It can be found at http://www.openttd.org/

As for star control, nerd!

It's literally just a new front-end for an existing game.

Actually, it is a new back end for some existing graphics and sounds.

You could replace all the graphics if you liked, but nobody has bothered yet.

You can get the complete source from the project's svn repository.

You might be confusing OpenTTD with TTDPatch, an inferior game that will be forever dependant on the original game and graphics.

I just can't get enough of remakes of classic games, there are some real gems out there.

My personal favourite is Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, it's multiplayer gameplay makes a nice change from the shoot everything that moves action of most things people play over the net.

Anyway, I'll end this post now, I'm feeling the urge to go play freeciv.

I just can't get enough of remakes of classic games, there are some real gems out there.

My personal favourite is Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, it's multiplayer gameplay makes a nice change from the shoot everything that moves action of most things people play over the net.

Anyway, I'll end this post now, I'm feeling the urge to go play freeciv.

I play OpenTTD (http://www.openttd.org) Hell of a cool one for old Transport Tycoon lovers.