You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

The original 'POSTAL' is now open source under the GPL

By - | Views: 17,404
tagline-image
The original version of the classic shooter 'POSTAL' [Official Site, Steam] is now officially open source under the GPL license. That's a pretty nice move by RWS.

From their announcement:
QuoteIt’s definitely been a wild ride for us all, and POSTAL means a lot to us – it’s our baby… But now we’re ready to hand the future of ‘the little shooter that could’ to the public at large. People have been asking, and we have been promising this for years now, but today we are proud to announce that the source code for POSTAL is officially released to the public on Bitbucket, under the GPL2 license. Everyone now has ‘under the hood’ access, to see what makes POSTAL tick, and anyone with the time and skills can now tweak/change/update/modify anything in the game at all! And hey, if anyone feels the urge to port the game to other platforms (The Dreamcast, for example *wink* *wink*), then they absolutely can!


I remember playing this when I was far too young for it and enjoying it wildly. It's really pleasing when developers release the source code for their old games and I wish more did so. It's a great way to keep them alive and it can still help sales by people wanting the art, music and so on to play with updated game engines.

Source code available here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
11 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
8 comments

ripper Dec 28, 2016
Please link to the announcement next time, thanks. I managed to find it here:
http://runningwithscissors.com/?p=2318
Liam Dawe Dec 28, 2016
Quoting: ripperPlease link to the announcement next time, thanks. I managed to find it here:
http://runningwithscissors.com/?p=2318
Apologies, thought I did. Fixed.
slaapliedje Dec 30, 2016
RWS are stand up guys. I had purchased the Fudge Pack long before they had released it with a Steam key, and I had already gotten one of the Postal games in Steam, but was wanting all of it there. Not only did they give me the Steam keys, they had accidentally given me a different key first. But it was good by them. They also apologized to everyone who bought Postal 3. Ha!
Liam Dawe Jan 4, 2017
Quoting: HoriI own this game already but why does it still cost 2 euros if it's open-source?
Open source does not mean something is completely free. It may not include art, audio etc.
ripper Jan 8, 2017
Well, it would be better to specify that the engine is opensource, but not the assets. Then it would be clear. If you don't specify it, most people assume it's fully opensource.

And yes, opensource doesn't mean free, but only the first one would need to pay and then could share it for free, so there's not much point in such an approach.
slaapliedje Jan 8, 2017
I don't know of a single game that was released later as open source that had the assets included. Even Freespace 2 was just dumped out there for free, then later the sources came with it and they opened the license.

Either way, 2 bucks for a game is nothing, you can barely buy a candy bar for that much.
Milanium Jan 25, 2017
Looks like it doesn't come with any cross-platform build system. I only see MSVC project files. Thought Loki software ported it properly to Linux already. In this stage this is nothing more than a dumping ground for old untidy code uploaded as click bait for "news" articles.
RogueAI Feb 1, 2017
Quoting: MilaniumLooks like it doesn't come with any cross-platform build system. I only see MSVC project files. Thought Loki software ported it properly to Linux already. In this stage this is nothing more than a dumping ground for old untidy code uploaded as click bait for "news" articles.

There's a working makefile with targets for Mac OS 10 and Linux which has been there since the initial source release. The filename uses a lowercase m, maybe that's how you missed it?
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.