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On Stratagus and Open Source Strategy Games
Thanks to LinuxDevCenter.com for its profile of open-source strategy game engine Stratagus, interviewing the creators of the multi-platform engine formerly known as Freecraft, before the makers "received a cease and desist order" from Blizzard over name/design similarities. The author explains: "There are no essential technical differences between Stratagus and FreeCraft - Stratagus continues where FreeCraft left off. The goal of making a customizable RTS engine remains the same, although the designers now de-emphasize compatibility with WarCraft 2." The piece also discusses future plans: "The big new technology under development for future versions of Stratagus is a meta-server which will enable the engine to connect Internet players to play together. 'We intend to add a team play mode where you can share resources and technologies with your allies. [This] will allow for a much better community with features such as online chat and user statistics,' says [lead programmer] Russell."
It's really not designed as an emulator or anything like that. Stratgus seems to be geared more toward making completely new RTS games using a free engine.
True story.
You could also load Warcraft 2 data and play it with the Freecraft engine.
It only worked with the original WC2 and not the Battle.Net edition (which I have, grr).
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Freecraft still required that you have the WC2 (DOS) version files. Only with those files could you play warcraft on the Freecraft engine. Why would one do that? Freecraft worked cross platform and allowed you to play online. As for original games for the engine that you don't need to buy anything for? Only one working at the moment for Stragagus.
B O R I N G
my first suggestion would be to setup the project page on a wiki, may I suggest Kwiki?
I have found that wikis make putting your ideas down easier, and allowing group collaboration to work seemlessly. They especially work well as you are just working out details and ideas.