Nearly finished but abandoned games

[Wuzzy]

Hey, I'm looking for a list of nearly finished but abandoned games. (FOSS, of course)

I'm thinking of games into which a significant amount of work has already been put into, and they are already having lots of features and are basically feature-complete or mostly feature complete. But they are not technically finished. Either there are some important features missing, or there is that ONE bug that ruins everything, or it is lacking in basic help files (missing manual, build instructions, etc.), or it has some terrible usability design flaw that the dev wanted to fix forever but never got around to do it. And stuff like that. Basically a game that is almost finished, but still not finished enough to be “ready for prime time”. And just before the game reached the finish line, the developers jumped ship for some reason …
I am NOT talking of early prototypes, concepts, only half-finished games, etc.

I hope you get the idea now. I post this thread in the hopes that eventually, someone (haha!) will look at one of the dead projects and try to revive them.

There is one game that immediately comes to mind:

EDIT: THIS IS FALSE:
- OpenArena 0.8.8

This one is basically finished, but the main menu is kind of buggy and it was dropped by the developers a long time ago. It's stuck at 0.8.8 for 6 years now. Ironically, they started working on 3.0.0 instead of first simply releasing 1.0.0 … :/ And 3.0.0 might be something very different as well.
END OF EDIT

[SteveSmith]

I've got loads. Just choosing one at random, "Physics Space War" just needs a better name, a front-end, and a lot of polish, but it all works. https://github.com/SteveSmith16384/PhysicsSpaceWar

[leilei]

*sigh*

Great, another "is oa ded" thread to distract me from productivity because everyone expects I put out a large creative work for free on the double to satisfy "release early, release often" entitlement mantras. That is how passion dies. v0.8.8 was a result of frustration and burnout. OA is not dead nor was "almost finished", and the reasons of its stagnancy are more complicated than a version number. It's even had a code commit just yesterday, and i'd prefer to keep my pending data reboot under wraps, since the last time I showed it here years ago, it didn't go so well (read: didn't appease nextgen graphics expectations) and I don't need any more further demotivation from false 'dead' rumors, I've had enough bad faith actors doing that already, thanks.

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" - Leonardo da Vinci

......anyway on the topic to possibly actually abandoned games that do deserve revival: OpenMortal and Eat the Whistle. OpenMortal actually had a decent-sized roster for a free fighter (and as far as I know, it's the ONLY Free fighter that doesn't shamelessly rip sprites and sprite edits) but I think downstream repos shedded it off just for being "old". Eat the Whistle is a technically well-done Sensible Soccer clone that's had longstanding unresolved "parody" asset issues. Or maybe they're "dead" because they possibly use SDL1 and/or Allegro and old libraries are apparently the devil and there's this constant desire for whatever's on the "new" libraries like SDL2, bgfx or whatnot that renders their existence invalid. I know DOSBox gets a lot of this "dead and outdated" because switching to SDL2 would regress a lot of functionality regarding CD access, kind of vital for maintaining dos game compatibility....

[SteveSmith]

There is also this list: https://github.com/Trilarion/opensourcegames

[Wuzzy]

- Pingus 0.7.6: Basically playable, but the organization of the levels is very chaotic. The main story mode has “Tutorial Island” and that's it. Other levels are all over the place, either in level sets or selectable indirectly through the level editor. To complete Pingus, this needs a complete restructuring of how level selection works, and also a review of all the user levels to put them together in nice playable level sets.

EDIT: But development seems to be active. https://gitlab.com/pingus/pingus

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[Wuzzy]

Wait, so OA 0.8.8 (the SVN repo) is still active? Shoot, I didn't know! I thought this dev branch was abandoned completely in favor of OA3 (which is active).

I am very sorry for the false claims I made. I will edit my first post.

In my defense: On http://openarena.ws/page.php?6, OA 0.X is listed as “deprecated”, so I assumed this means “nothing will happen here” and I didn't download the entire SVN repo just to check …

And I never claimed that OA as a whole is dead, only that OA 0.8.8 is abandoned. But even this seems to be false.

(Lyberta, I have checked the repo, and there is certainly a lot of C code. http://openarena.ws/svn/source/code/game/ But I also see a few .asm files.)

My first post was not meant to insult OA devs, or to imply they are not working hard enough. Not at all. It's more confusion about why version 1 is skipped completely. This question is more about strategy/“marketing” than the actual work. But if you don't want to talk about that, I will shut up about OA in this thread now.

[Jastiv]

(Lyberta, I have checked the repo, and there is certainly a lot of C code. http://openarena.ws/svn/source/code/game/ But I also see a few .asm files.)

My first post was not meant to insult OA devs, or to imply they are not working hard enough. Not at all. It's more confusion about why version 1 is skipped completely. This question is more about strategy/“marketing” than the actual work..

I understand the whole temptation of skip version 1. I mean its not finished. I think part of the problem (or one of the good things) about open source development is people work on stuff for years, like on and off whenever they feel like it. Its not like "oh, I didn't ship this year, have to throw the whole thing out." The other thing is a lot of projects don't have that many developers on them, like 1 or 2 maybe really dedicated developers, and then the rest of the people contribute stuff "when they feel like it." I bet if free software game development had even a fraction of the money proprietary development gets things would get done in a more timely manner. We could be paid to make cool stuff, fix that bug, and more importantly be on the hook to get stuff done instead of slacking off.

I've also started to realize that doing things like marketing and trying to get the word out about a game take time away from things like actual coding or artwork. But then, does marketing count as work? What free software project credits their marketing department? (okay, I think maybe some do but still)

[anon666]

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" - Leonardo da Vinci

oh thats a nice quote

"when something is finished it is also dead" - meself

on topic:
- iichantra http://iichantra.ru/en/ (your typical 90% ready project, its actually playable but dead (and it was more playable when it was an alpha))

[leilei]

OA3 will still be in C and this won't change.

Also the code was always developed on another code service, previously it was on Google Code until that shut down, and there's been a github migration for the code part which had active development since 2014:
https://github.com/OpenArena

The new OA3 code *is in there*, just the data's still being brewed and concocted offline until it's ready since I know open development on media gave me more regrets. I need a chance to set a solid, coherent fresh direction that's not dictated by whoever makes anything, and maybe that'll lead into consistent something after that (like Wesnoth etc). more likely there'll be complaints about being an insult to linuxdom for using GL 1.1, seeing polygons, not using the latest 'modern' language, not following the last year's trendy subgenre, or something, so when I do have something to actually share next time, I am not going to think about this place. i've already been condemned to Hell by a born again neo-Nazi here from the last time I posted artwork. I very much don't like having to come back here to a place where i'm more damned than appreciated.

by the way, there was exactly one 3d character artist who tried to contribute models for OA3 and it's just unanimated realistic russian soldiers. If this were any other open source project starving for art, i'm sure they'd easily be part of their cast (then put on the eternal looking-for-an-animator-to-go-through-hell-for-free backburner). But i'm a 3d technical artist, and I don't have to go down this path, and I have a vision. A vision that don't smell of shameless bootleg clone. I feel I have the skills necessary to accomplish this- it'll just take a long while, while juggling attention with emulation hobbies that's also important. Did I make myself clear?

On the topic of abandoned games and judgment though, special mention has to go to World of Padman. Ente was....VERY creative in the early 2000s and most of the bulk in that game were produced in the early 2000s. It hasn't had much significant new art since. Similar idtech3 'free' games also had peaked in the 2000s with asset production, so they're probably just as stagnant (if not more). Maybe Urban Terror isn't since they thrived off mapping contests in the past and they probably still do them...but also realize there's been a very long tools issue that's plagued id tech3 and gatekeeping. When these mods games were first produced, MD3s had to come from professionals that had access to 3D Studio MAX + Character Studio so they could use the Q3 BIP files Paul Steed (RIP) put out to animate characters with a sane level of quality. Mappers had to use Q3Radiant or GTKRadiant, there was no Trenchbroom and QuArK was laughably unusable. Coders needed MSVC6 or LCC, and today there's still the LCC legal issues with no other alternative compiler to produce crossplatform QVMs still... Also when there's good artists and mappers that suffer through that pipeline, they'll likely have this hobby passion drained and use this experience to get a job in the games industry. I know many who have, and were already industry veterans by the time those graduated into stand-alone games.

[Julius]

am not going to think about this place. i've already been condemned to Hell by a born again neo-Nazi here from the last time I posted artwork. I very much don't like having to come back here to a place where i'm more damned than appreciated.

Just for the record: that was a drive-by comment by someone that is not an active member of this community, and in no way representative of the usual conduct around here. Feel free to believe what you want, but I am pretty sure your contributions to OA are very much apprechiated around here.

[Evropi]

Some great suggestions here, but many are very complete projects already, like Urban Terror or World of Padman. I want to add that the latter especially is conceptually brilliant, even if I never got on with the gameplay. I want more games of any genre in a setting like that (and yes, I know the idea of shrinking down to object size is as old as time in fiction).

Some suggestions:

• M.A.R.S. - this is one of the absolute greatest FOSS games, but honestly so small. It could be seriously fleshed out. I'll confess that it's been so long I don't remember what felt was missing, but it was mostly stages and a sense of progression if I remember right. It was also excellent graphically.
  
  Of everything, this is one that I really think would benefit from being picked up. GPL and CC-BY
• Lugaru - actually one of my all-time favourite games! I've played a ridiculous amount of this back when I was in school, many many years ago. You could carry it on a stick so we put it on every computer and played it during breaks as it was so lightweight. I'd argue it's better than its spiritual successor Overgrowth (apart from the Therium-2 campaign there, which is fan made).
  
  So, okay, it's a complete game technically, but it has a very short campaign. It should have an arena mode similar to Overgrowth, with escalating stages and new enemies loading in without having to reload the map. Add AI buddies too, for said arena.
  
  The real problem is that it has some of the worst source code ever written, since David Rosen was 14 at the time - but still, what an achievement. Icculus (Ryan C Gordon) cleaned up a huge amount but it' still rough. I would defend it as a working and bug-free piece of code and if anyone can develop it further, I wholehartedly endorse it. All of it is freely licensed now, BTW, including assets (though they aren't anything to look at).
• FreeCol - admittedly I'm kind of cheating here. This is an actively developed game. You're probably familiar with it. It's also complete graphically, though not the prettiest thing (but neither is the game it's remaking!).
  
  Please note that FC is a ground-up new game that aims to match Sid Meier's Colonisation as closely as possible; it's not an engine you drop the old game's assets into. That's something I can really respect.
  
  My most played genre of games is grand strategy, with Paradox Interactive's games taking the limelight. I've played a number of other strategy games as well. Curiously, I've never gotten on with 4X like Civ, but FreeCol is an exception in that it has a clear end goal and a much more focused theme, which actually works for the mechanics it has. It's not just random modifiers, the setting and progression makes sense.
  
  What needs cleaning up is their website, that easily gives the impression it's dead. The documentation and community resources (Sourceforge Forums and mailing lists... ) is scattershot, and they really need to make a new stable release. What's really tragic is that I worked on this a massive amount as a translator since it has a prized spot on translatewiki.net - which is really hard to come by for projects. It's what Wikipedia uses and it has a highly skilled volunteer force. Countless files are not sitting with users since the developers won't make a stable release, not for stubbornness but lack of interest. I hope someone can step in just to clear up that presence and make a new release.
  
  It's very close to completion but it's tapered off more and more over the years. It''s currently a very playable game, even though some things like UI could be improved and some engine features still need adding. You'll also come across the odd bug. It's not considered complete in that it doesn't have the full featureset of the original Colonisation yet, if I'm not mistaken, but I played it for a long time without ever realising it's incomplete, to be honest with you. Still, it bears acknowledging that it has yet to meet its goals as a project, and it's incomplete in that sense.
  
  It's a real shame that such a wonderful game and one you'd point to for years as an exemplary free/open source game project seems to have faded away entirely due to project management. Not drama; merely indifference to creating a vibrant user and developer community.
• Free Heroes 2. It does exactly what it says on the tin, it's a reimplementation of Heroes of Might and Magic II's engine. It's just missing AI last I check, which is the most important component hahaha. That's a high-skill job but an essential one, as the game still has a small community. Compare with VCMI for the game's sequel, which is very nearly complete now (!). HoMM3 has a weirdly active community that's actually grown since the 90s as the game is so content-packed. It's deemed to be one of the greatest strategy games of all time. While I agree 3 is an excellent game, the graphics really lost a LOT with their faux-3D, and 2 was more coherent in many ways. It was really broken in terms of its economy, but 2 was genuinely more fun in that regard - allowing the player the opportunity to exploit the mess out of the in-game economy is always a good time. So in any comparative review, you'll actually see HoMM2 being rated the same or even higher than its sequel.
  
  I came to this game in the early 2010s mind you, which is a testament to its longevity. And that's worth protecting with a new engine, as even the experience on modern Windows is quite poor due to the game's age. Of all the games on this list, this naturally doesn't have free assets.

I hope this entices someone to at least check these out, if only as players instead of developers. The first three are playable right now and I can't recommend them enough. Have fun!

[GunChleoc]

MARS actually has an active fork: https://github.com/jwrdegoede/M.A.R.S.

The problem is that the original authors don't respond to messages, so we can't change the public face of it and nobody can find it.

[Evropi]

MARS actually has an active fork: https://github.com/jwrdegoede/M.A.R.S.

The problem is that the original authors don't respond to messages, so we can't change the public face of it and nobody can find it.

That's great to hear! Though I was a bit worried with the broken link :P here's the actual link.

I'm not sure I'd call it active per se, but they've put in some work to keep it running. Really, this should become the preferred version on the site, or they should rebrand if work on it is to continue.

[Jastiv]

[*]Free Heroes 2. It does exactly what it says on the tin, it's a reimplementation of Heroes of Might and Magic II's engine. It's just missing AI last I check, which is the most important component hahaha. That's a high-skill job but an essential one, as the game still has a small community. Compare with VCMI for the game's sequel, which is very nearly complete now (!). HoMM3 has a weirdly active community that's actually grown since the 90s as the game is so complete. It's deemed to be one of the greatest strategy games of all time. While I agree 3 is an excellent games, the graphics really lost a LOT with their faux-3D, and 2 was more coherent in many ways. It was really broken in terms of its economy, but 2 was genuinely more fun in that regard - allowing the player the opportunity to exploit the mess out of the in-game economy is honestly more fun. So in any comparative review, you'll actually see HoMM2 being rated the same or even higher than its sequel.

I came to this game in the early 2010s mind you, which is a testament to its longevity. And that's worth protecting with a new engine, as even the experience on modern Windows is quite poor due to the game's age. Of all the games on this list, this naturally doesn't have free assets.[/list]

I hope this entices someone to at least check these out, if only as players instead of developers. The first three are playable right now and I can't recommend them enough. Have fun!

Last I checked Free Heroes 2 still needed the non-free data, (and it does have an AI, just a non-free one with a non commercial clause) at least last time I checked. I've been tempted to get the whole series on GOG, (just for the no CD thing cause cds are a pain) but I'm not sure how well they play on Linux and I just don't use windows at all anymore. I could probably replace the heroes2 artwork, I'm just not sure people would be happy with my replacements. I'm afraid I don't have enough coding skill to replace the AI.

What I would really like to see is a free software game something like Master of Magic. Of course that is probably like those civilization games and stuff people have done that I don't play. I'm sure one of them could be forked to make it.

[Wuzzy]

Looks like Free Heroes 2 is not even close to being “nerly finished” then.