Talk:List of open-source video games/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2

E-Magination

Why did you remove so many games on Sept 13? Were all of those not open source? Rob 13:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, what the heck happened? Just by looking through the first 3 deleted game entries, I've found that 0verkill, Asteroid (remake), and Bird Park Tycoon are all open-source, at least according to their websites. Asteroids (remake) was even hosted on Sourceforge! It seems clear that these entries were not properly reviewed, if at all, before they were deleted. Weeding out truly non-open source games from this list (and adding them to the freeware games list, remember!) is good, but random deleting is certainly not. Mysterius 06:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I've checked up on some of the deleted items:
diff
Descent was probably removed because only the engine is open source.
diff
0verkill is GLP'ed, complete with levels.
Ace of Penguins is GPL'ed, including cards etc.
Allegiance seems to be open source, but research into the license (of the worlds in particular) is required.
Automaniac comes with data.
Asteroids was probably removed because you cannot get at the source without running an executable.
Battle of Antargis - couldn't download gz file... maybe someone should try again later.
Bird Park Tycoon - zip file corrupt?
Blob Wars: Blob And Conquer was probably removed because no further information and no link was given.
Castle comes as part of an LGPL package.
Charred Dirt - both source and data for download, but no license given, so it might not actually be open source after all.
Chromium B.S.U. artistic license, both source and data, afaict.
Crossfire+ is GPL'ed.
Crystal Core - source: LGPL, art: CC
Cuyo is GPL'ed, including data.
Daimonin - some very shady things have been going there. Closing content, forbidding connections to third-party servers, etc. Definitely not an open source game.
Dark Oberon - couldn't find a license, see Charred Dirt.
Dink Smallwood - only the engine is open source [1]
Egoboo - again no license...
Foresight Exchange - no mention of source code or anything like that...
Freedroid RPG is GPL'ed.
FreeOrion relies on a non-free library.
FreeTennis is GPL'ed.
Gnome Games are open source, afaict.
Gnome Hearts is GPL'ed.
Hack is open source [2]
ioquake3 is an open source engine and shouldn't be on this list. IDs levels are still closed afaik.
JFDuke3D is GPL'ed.
Laser Squad 3D is GPL'ed.
Lentilwars no link or other info, should be removed.
Maniadrive
Marathon Aleph One is GPL'ed.
Mars: Land of No Mercy - can't find license.
Moon-Buggy is GPL'ed.
I have to stop here, the rest will have to wait. Shinobu 18:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Haha. Finally.

I prefer qaulity over qauntity. Those games mostly didnt have any proper articles. Links do not count as articles. --E-Magination 12:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Who decides if a game is "quality," though? And what is a "proper" article, according to you? Several of the deleted games did have articles, and not just stubs, either. This is a List of open source games, not "Quality open source games." I believe that with a deletion of this scale you should have at least given some heads-up on the Talk page. I don't mean to disrespect your effort, but this is a community-written encyclopedia. I hope there will be better communication in future edits. -Mysterius 04:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
    We (inclusive "we") decide what's quality. I think it's a fair reading of What Wikipedia is not to say that we should maintain some quality controls of the list by occasionally purging it of games that don't "belong". If we wanted to be rigorous about it, we could come up with some rules of thumb for what "belong" means. I'd suggest notability (measured by whether it has an article) and being actually free software/open source as basic criteria, but others might have different ideas. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
We could limit ourselves to games with a Wikipedia article, or to games that actually work. We could place a screenshot near the better ones to make them stand out. Just some ideas, comment away please. Shinobu 01:34, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Look. If a game with a proper article, proper licening etc. is deleted, Re-Add them. Be BOLD.
I will re-add moon-buggy. It is GPLed and actually works. --Jochen 07:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
":FreeOrion relies on a non-free library." I cannot see any non-free part in FreeOrion mentioned here [3] and also [4] does not refer to any non-free library needed, so maybe it should be re-added to the list? --62.169.207.133 (talk) 21:06, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

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Space Station 13 engine license

The engine SS13 uses is BYOND, which doesn't seem to be under AGPL or open source at all: no "AGPL" string in the distribution, but there is EULA which suggests that it's proprietary, and a bunch of different licenses for components. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.228.171.125 (talk) 18:42, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems to refer to this: LICENSE All human-readable source code materials in this repository are licensed under the GPL, version 3. All images, models, and rigging files in this repository are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license. while the github repository is called SS13remake, I'm not really sure what that means. The community of this game should answer on the forks/remakes/leaks and other ways of the code. Shaddim (talk) 20:26, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm a developer of a specific fork of SS13, so I can provide some insight here. First of all: yes, BYOND, the engine SS13 runs on, is 100% proprietary and closed. That's analogous to having an open-source Unity project, Unity being propietary, but your code might still be open. The important part of SS13 are the BYOND-based servers. There are also many "remake" projects, attempts to move SS13 into a new engine, but none have "succeeded" yet and are not worth discussing. The https://github.com/ss13remake/ss13remake/ project and its former website https://spacestation13.com is one of those remakes, so ignore it. As for the BYOND based SS13 licensing: each server has its own code, and not all servers use the same license. Most servers are open source, but there are a few (notably Goonstation) which are closed. All other forks stem from a public release of Goonstation in April 2010, called r4407, which was under the GPLv3. Since then most of the open source forks have made new code be under AGPLv3, but again there are exceptions, so I just edited the page to say GPL or AGPL. For assets, all forks except Goonstation (CC BY-SA-NC use CC BY-SA 3.0 I believe, and since that Goonstation is closed I think the asset license listed is fine. PJB3005 (talk) 18:15, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
thank you for the infos on the complicated situation with SS13. I guess, the ss13 page needs than also significant updates and claifications... would you be so kind in doing this, in best case with good sources? thank you for your contribution! :) Shaddim (talk) 08:20, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Spring is not a game, but an engine

Spring should be removed from this list in favor of listing games that use the Spring engine to run (which are nearly all open source). Zero-K already exists on this list as its own game, for example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.205.248.148 (talk) 11:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Spring devs consider games to be derivative works of the engine and thus it is not (legally) possible to have closed source spring games. --ThinkSome (talk) 00:30, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

From List to Table?

Wouldn't it be great if this list was converted to a table with columns such as "platform support", "Last update", "Category", etc. ? Lordsatri 00:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

That would be a lot of work. However, some people already made similar list. See open source games for example. Trilarion (talk) 08:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Adding http://libregamewiki.cyanox.nl/List_of_Games to the link list

How about that? it is another Free open source game list. --77.177.10.211 19:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

No, linking to other wikis isn't recommended (See WP:Reliable sources), particularly one that uses advertising. Marasmusine 07:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Nice to see penis envy is doing fine on Wikipedia. http://libregamewiki.org/ offers material above and beyond this puny article. And 93,17% of web pages Wikipedia uses as references also display ads. If you Marasmusine think we shouldn't link to it, perhaps you personally could go fetch all the data by hand then, verify it using whatever ivory tower accepted methods and then integrate into this article? 85.76.223.16 (talk) 05:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

This list is in no way authoritative. I would see libregamewiki as a useful reference. Trilarion (talk) 08:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Spicetrade

I think that this game should be in the list — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.109.97.231 (talk) 07:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It's currently not in the list. There is no WP entry for it. It's not updated for a while. There are not many links to the project page. It's open source though. I would not include it because of missing notability. Trilarion (talk) 08:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

VVVVVV

I think VVVVVV should be in here. https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV I am unsure in which category to put it. Thanks

--GamingWessel (talk) 16:17, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Open source games with closed source engines

User @Chess: has removed Space Station 13 from the list with this edit ("BYOND, the game engine on which SS13 is created, isn't free software"). I have no idea about the licencing situation of SS13 (I tried to get to the bottom of it and failed -- there are a few dozen repositories), but it would be a good idea have a clear «OS game / CS engine» policy. We aren't going to remove all Unity and similar games, are we? Ffaffff (talk) 21:28, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ffaffff: All of the games in the "Open engine and free content" section are entirely freely licensed, including the engine. I don't think Unity games should be in that category as they're not entirely open source. There should be a different category with respect to games built upon an unfree engine. SS13 in particular is a problem because of the numerous different versions only some of which are open source. Here's the "official" SS13 website [5] and it's clear that some of the variants of SS13 are closed source while many others are open source. Except it seems this list is inaccurate for the fact that now Goonstation is apparently open source under CC-BY-NC-SA [6]? The main issue is that we don't have any reliable sources speaking to the status of SS13 and while I personally could write a lot as to the free software status of SS13 & could trawl through wikis/about pages, that would be WP:Original Research or synthesis and so I'm not going to do that. Chess (talk) (please WP:PING when replying) 04:36, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks @Chess:, clear and extremely useful. I would love to have this (plus a "notability" guideline) on top of the list(s). Ffaffff (talk) 00:45, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

New column "Actively developed" (green/yellow)

How about this? Would make it easy to filter out some interesting games. Disclosure, I'm a dev on Warzone 2100. 92.254.140.169 (talk) 11:12, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

DOOM (1993)

Linux DOOM is available under the GPL license https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM. I don't get why it isn't included. The WADs are still proprietary, but there's a section for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.157.140.47 (talk) 00:20, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

More games

I found more open source and free games that should be added to the list (at least a part of them):

Pool games:

Atomix clones

Hangman clones:

Snake clones

Minesweeper clones:

Breakout clones

Pinball games:

Solitaire clones

Puzzle games

Board games

Artillery games:

FPS games:

RPG Games:

Space shooters & Asteroid clones:

Space Invaders clones:

Tetris clones

Game collections:

—  Ark25  (talk) 06:15, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

No! We shouldn't attempt to cover every game under the sun, see WP:NOT. As is usual for list articles, I think we should limit ourselves to listing games that have an article on Wikipedia, so they are expected to at least pass the notability criteria. -- intgr [talk] 13:15, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
intgr is right, only notable stuff. Notablity is given when a article exist ...or you provide proof on your own (refs). Shaddim (talk) 10:33, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
I agree. I don't believe the notability is the perfect formula in case of this list, but it's the best rule that we can use. Some games are quite very well made so they deserve to be in the list even if there are no references for them. For example FooBillard, BillardGL and WAtomic. Most of the other games don't deserve to be in the list because they are crap, not because they are not notable. In my view, all the open source games (and the freeware) should be included in a list - not in this article but in a sub-page of a project or even in a user page. It's a shame to lose them forever (link rot). I know, Wikipedia is not everything, but in case of such a list, Wikipedia (or Wikia maybe?) is the best place to keep it.
For the moment, such games can be mentioned in places like Talk:Minesweeper (video game)#Minesweeper clones or Talk:Breakout clone#More clones. —  Ark25  (talk) 16:08, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Wikia could be indeed the right place for a "all game list". But also this WP list could still grow further with well backed notable games. Shaddim (talk) 18:57, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
http://osgameclones.com/ is imho the best place to collect an extensive list. Matthias M. (talk) 17:29, 12 April 2014 (UTC)


ONE MORE: Lambda Wars ¤ https://github.com/Sandern/lambdawars ¤ https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/270370/view/3067485017407852715 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:7D0:83A1:8380:F16E:FF1F:4980:A65 (talk) 08:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion?

It's not clear if this list should only include games with their own articles or not, as is the case with most lists. If it should only include "notable" games, this should be made clear at the top of the article. Otherwise, if the list is intended to be exhaustive, then that should be made clear. Thanks.   — Lee J Haywood 11:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Since this hasn't been addressed 4 months later, I'm going to "be bold" and add it. --irrevenant [ talk ] 11:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
The list is "List of open-source video games", not "List of *notable* open-source video games". --ThinkSome
Effectively everything should be notable, otherwise it wouldn't be on wikipedia, am I wrong? Ffaffff (talk) 11:25, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Why need at least one third-party source for a list?

User @Ffaffff: undo-ed my change because he "cannot find proper (3rd party) sources". I'd like to ask why ask for at least one third-party source for a list of video games.

--TheActualMainOne —Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I am reading this just now. On Wikipedia we need third party sources even for lists, to be sure the topic/game/listed-individual is notable. If I made a mistake revert my edits. Ffaffff (talk) 01:54, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Screenshots, please!

Since it could perhaps be a little too much to have the screenshots on the table, there could be a slideshow window for the screenshots at the end of the article. This way, the article is still easy to navigate through and curious people could get a quick view of how all these games look like (without having to search for them elsewhere). What do you think?

Luckylemming (talk) 21:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

What is the (C) of screenies? Ffaffff (talk) 01:55, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't external links to more comprehensive lists of open source video games be a good idea?

This page lists a hundred, maybe two hundred open source games, which are mostly notable as far as I can see, but there are many more notable open source video games out there. The list isn't very exhaustive. There are more comprehensive lists out there (https://osgameclones.com/, https://trilarion.github.io/opensourcegames/, https://libregamewiki.org/Main_Page) with more than a thousand open source games, quite a lot more. They were part of the article in the external links section but were removed within a recent edit (4th November 21). I wonder if this was a good idea because the number of games listed in this article won't become as comprehensive as the external resources soon, realistically. So, what was the rationale for removing the external links? I could only find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#Links_in_lists) which starts with "External link sections are not prohibited at the end of stand-alone lists or at the end of articles that contain embedded lists.". Just wonder if this edit improved the article. Disclaimer: I'm contributing to all the mentioned external sites additionally to WP, and the content there is all under compatible open licenses. Trilarion (talk) 21:39, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Mhh I am puzzled by the edit too, I think the removed links were OK as external sources (bar the Scrabble one). Of those four lists (libregamewiki, opensourcegames, osgameclones, FSF directory) is there one which is more authoritative/comprehensive than the others? Or do they complement each other? Ideally I would like each external link to be relevant (and for sure they are) but also non redundant Ffaffff (talk) 01:42, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
@Trilarion:

@Trilarion: I have readded OSGL, let me know if it is enough. Ffaffff (talk) 19:42, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ffaffff: OSGL is the most extensive one but the others are also good and still far more extensive that this page. I wondered if they should simply be mentioned in the main article text, but I'm not too familiar with WP guidelines discussion external content that "duplicates" internal content. Would a sentence "There exist lists of open source games at .... Here is a selection..." be okay? After all this is the truth. The selection on this page isn't necessarily the most popular ones. Quite a few are missing, a few others are dubious. One could maybe automatically create a list of all open source games that have pages on WP or extend the entries in this page (but then quite a lot). What do you think? Trilarion (talk) 19:53, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Exterals links are better imho, that is what I see in most wiki articles. Feel free to readd them! If you see a game on this wikipedia page that is missing, please add it, but remember that it has to be a "blue link" game (a game already with a wikipedia article) or has quality sources for its notability (which for FOSS games are a bit rare, only top top games like Wesnoth get such mentions. Thanks for contributing! Ffaffff (talk) 00:10, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

DDraceNetwork, an actively developed fork/mod of Teeworlds

DDraceNetwork is an actively developed fork/mod of Teeworlds, and it isn't mentioned in Wikipedia at all (searching yields nothing). Please add it to the appropriate table as a red link or something. Thanks. 85.64.76.29 (talk) 08:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Done, but I don't think I should add an article for it as I'm the founder of DDNet and there has been no notable coverage of it in magazines. I'm not sure how strict Wikipedia is about this. --Dfelsing (talk) 14:14, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Notability or a blue link required. Is there any source talking about this? Ffaffff (talk) 15:37, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Sure, added a reference. Dfelsing (talk) 23:49, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

"Warmux" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Warmux and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 5#Warmux until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -Liancetalk/contribs 23:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Put class 40 diesel locomotive in train yard and rail simulator

On Saturday 2601:5C6:C200:20C0:74C4:C0BD:B748:9A14 (talk) 19:49, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Bugdom

@Crowbalt: bugdoom is not free iiuc (NC). Maye it could be moved to another section of the article (adding the relevant reference?). Thanks for adding it Ffaffff (talk) 06:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Did it myself Ffaffff (talk) 09:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
I believe you're right-- thank you for making the fix! Crowbalt (talk) 20:05, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

SourceForge Games

SourceForge kindly compiled a list of games hosted on SourceForge at https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/community-docs/SourceForge%20Games/ so we can dig trough it and add on our list. // Liftarn (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liftarn (talk • contribs) 14:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Mindustry is also open source I believe

https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry RatoGBM (talk) 13:40, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

This is like the first example that comes to mind for me when thinking of open-source games... Is there some reason it wasn't included? 2601:5CC:C580:6BF0:858F:47C3:C0C4:8940 (talk) 20:14, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
It is a notable game (example), so I see it could be added. Why not do add it yourself anonymous user? You would do the commmunity a favour and learn a bit about wikipedia as an editor Ffaffff (talk) 20:38, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

OpenHV

@Matthias M.: the article seems nominated for deletion, so we would need reliable sources on notability to add it to the list. Ffaffff (talk) 21:14, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that many more entries have to be deleted if the guidelines are enforced equally. Matthias M. (talk) 12:20, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
They should, and I say it with a heavy heart, since there are a lot of very good games. Ffaffff (talk) 13:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
@Matthias M. Mayhaps… but, not necessarily. Given the (relatively) permissive licensing models employed, and source code availability, they're frequently used in scientific, academic, and research settings. Those viewing these simply as "games" overlook that they're highly complex pieces of software. Leveraging scholarly coverage for sourcing notability, instead of the banal, consumerist video game press may be fruitful… Google Scholar and Google Books are resources often overlooked regarding these entries. Coverage doesn't get more in-depth and "significant" than analysis of algorithms and statistical models, etc. There is also typically some sort of academic-ish overview of gameplay and functionality wrapped in as well. Don't discount them all just yet! Except OpenHV… because I ain't found nothin' for that! :-P -- dsprc [talk] 15:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
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