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On Stratagus and Open Source Strategy Games

Posted by simoniker on from the somebody-mentioned-blizzard? dept.

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."

4 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. No more emphasis on WC2? by Inoshiro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does this mean they'll be more open to support more modern RTSes as well? I'd love to be able to play Starcraft on Linux without fighting with WINE (which doesn't exactly work with Xinerama correctly).

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    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
    1. Re:No more emphasis on WC2? by Deraj+DeZine · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

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      True story.
  2. Starting a game based off this engine by starunj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is off topic, but we're going to start a game based off this (Stratagus) engine. We could use any help we get. I'm still working on a webpage to get our ideas organised, you will find the link to the page, once its done, over here:
    http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~tsiripur

    A brief description of the game: its going to be called University, and as the name suggests, you'll be responsible for the functioning of a university. You start off with a building with some administrative staff and some academic staff. You also have some funds to build a building or 2 to start with.

    It sounds like a sim, but it isnt. It has a crazy side to it - as in you fight with other universities. Use your Computer Science students to hack and disable competing university's network. Or have sports matches - with your jocks competing against theirs.

    Its very disorganised right now, but I will try to get some order into these ideas while making the page. Any help / suggestions will be appreciated.

  3. Battle for Wesnoth by Reapy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another great open source strategy game can be found right here:

    Battle for Wesnoth

    They pretty much hit the mark on this one in terms of gameplay. It is definatly worth the download.